That'sMzPeachesTYVM called it. Close enough ;)
Prompt #54: No Ducking Way
No lie, I gaped.
I gaped hard, which frankly, isn't an expression you see too often from my kind.
No, in my world, gaping equals surprise, which equals weakness, which generally equals death. And by death, I mean the real deal.
Because, well, that's just how we top tier predators are. Unless there's a good reason not to (like salvaging our fiendish souls), we pretty much kill and/or eat anything weaker than us.
Yeah, I know, vampires can be such misanthropic assholes sometimes.
Regardless, for several long seconds – or who knows, maybe it was days – I just stood there, silent and limp in Emmett's iron grip like a slack-jawed idiot as this new reality – that those reeking, filthy mutts had been the ones to kill my Bella's father, not the nomads as we'd been thinking – wormed its way into my brain. Despite all my advanced vampiric faculties, the notion was just so foreign and so unexpected that at first, I experienced a rare moment of uncertainty, wondering if for once my gift had been thwarted (okay, fine, twice, since it'd never worked on Bella).
In all honesty, some part of me genuinely hoped that I was wrong. I hoped that these mongrels – these supposed friends of hers – hadn't been lying to her all these years and hadn't destroyed her father out of some kind of stupid, undead xenophobic prejudice.
See, as much as I despised them, especially that controlling asshole, Jacob, who I would punch in the muzzle regardless of what happened here, I loved my Bella more.
So hoping, I shored up my backbone and listened again, harder, more focused, pinpointing the redhead's quick mind with unerring accuracy now that I'd already tasted her thoughts.
But alas, dear reader, as you might have already guessed, as much as I wished it otherwise, hope was merely that.
As I parsed through the vampire's mind, the images of her James, Bella's father, and the wolves remained, lurking just below the surface of her cool, distant observation of our meadow. Through her eyes, I watched the big, black alpha's teeth lock around Bella's father's throat, snap his flailing spine like straw, and then the dog's gaping, dripping maw turned to the redhead's mate. Howling their approval, the other wolves closed in from all sides.
The memory was as bright and bold as the midday sun.
And before you ask, yes, those images were memories, too, not just some fanciful thoughts meant to steer me astray. That redheaded bitch wasn't that good. Her thoughts were too real, too laden with the same rage and misery that I knew I'd experience myself if I didn't manage to keep my fragile human alive today.
Suddenly, as I observed those final moments, hearing the screams, seeing the lifeless corpses, all of those little snippets and hints I'd caught from the wolves before – that night in the forest when I'd first tracked my love to La Push, that meeting with Jacob only days ago – clicked.
As if in slow motion, I pulled Emmett's arm off of me and turned to my Bella, who, by the way, still shouldered her shotgun like a pro ready to take them all down.
"What?" she asked me, as her alert eyes darted past me to where the newborns stood in the meadow, some yanking at their hair, others snarling at nothing (typical, really). "What the hell is going on, Edward?"
Squeezing my fists until they cracked, I swallowed back my rage – a fury that now had far, far, far too many targets at the moment – and fought with my inner Victorian, sometimes-sexist self as to just how much I should tell her.
Understand, on one hand, the truth would hurt, and hurting my Bella in any way was inconceivable, so much so that every undead cell in my wretched body recoiled at the mere thought. In fact, as I considered just what I could stomach saying to her, I quickly decided that chewing my own arm off sounded like a freaking vacation by comparison.
Yet on the other… my love deserved to know. She should know. She should know everything. The right was hers.
And those godforsaken mutts had lied to her.
They had lied for years.
Worse, they had allowed my love to think that they had protected her when all they had protected was their own mangy, flea-ridden, soon-to-be carcasses.
That molten, red haze whipped across my vision again as my thumb abruptly splintered under the pressure of my fist. At the sound, I glanced down at it and then my Bella, blind to the spark of pain as that boiling fury washed down my spine and through each one of my limbs.
"Edward?" My Bella's voice was soft this time, a stark contrast to the bottled violence building in me. Her fingertips brushed down my forearm. "Tell me what's going on."
And because no matter what, no matter the consequences, I was her creature, in every way, for all time and eternity, my teeth snapped together and my mouth obeyed her request before my brain could catch up. "Those dogs…" My teeth grinded. "They lied to you. They're the ones who–"
An ear-splitting, bone-chilling roar came from the east before I could finish, jerking my gaze up just in time to catch a snarling mountain of browns, blacks, and grays erupting from the tree line. Trees split down the middle, sending branches spearing left and right, and beneath my feet, the ground quaked.
In answer, materializing from between a pair of firs on the opposite side of the field, the redheaded bitch suddenly shot out into the open. She moved toward Riley and her newborns in a streaky blur of pale white and fire engine red.
Halfway across, the vampire stole a split-second look at our line and the woman beside me, but then, with a snarl, she spun back to face the wall of horse-sized wolves that now pounded their way across the grass.
Her features twisted into a mask of absolute hatred and she screeched at the top of her lungs, "Now! Kill them all!"
PROMPT #55?
