Bella's POV
I felt as though a truck had hit me when I opened my eyes. My head throbbed and my muscles ached. It was as if even my fae blood wasn't able to adjust sleeping on a forest floor. There was no longer heat, higher than a fae's or human's, pressed into my side.
The absence of Paul reminded me of what he told me. Ben's ghost was real. Every time that I saw him, I'd thought it had been a sign of insanity.
But Paul saw him too.
Pain lurched at the thought of my Ben not at peace as I had wished and prayed for. Ghosts in the supernatural community were known to only wander for malevolent purposes. Like revenge, hatred, rage, or lust. Unsatisfied, decisively sinful reasons.
He had died defending us. So there were only a few possibilities that crossed my mind for his ghostly state. None were particularly pleasant.
"Here." I suddenly noticed the smell of fire and some type of charred meat being placed in front of my nose. I looked up past it into dark, earnest eyes.
Paul looked alert, as though he hadn't personally taken offense to our modest sleeping arrangements. Less anger colored the set of his jaw.
I sniffed carefully at his offering. It didn't seem tampered with. "Bugs Bunny had to die for breakfast?" It was an observation I wished my nose wasn't proficient enough to make.
"I made sure this one had a whole barrow of children depending on it too." A low rumble of amusement colored his voice. "All this work to dress it for you, and this is what I get?"
A second pulsed before I grabbed the offering and lowered my head. "Thank you." I quickly went to work on the meal. It was essential with the shit-storm we were knees deep in to refuel.
Guilt filled me while Paul put out the small fire efficiently. "Have you eaten?"
He snorted as he made the distance between us nonexistent in short strides. "Ate a deer before getting your snack. We've got to go, pipsqueak." My wrist was snatched in a warm grasp and then we were both moving northwest through the tall coniferous trees.
Pipsqueak? That was a new one.
"Bella, we are probably going to die."
I cocked my head in curiosity. "Not that I'm particularly opposed to the idea, but why this instant?" We had been continuously on the move in the wilderness in the clear for awhile.
A snort from my careless response before Paul responded, "Ben told me Drayer's time is running out."
"Yeah?" Completely out of tears, my pulse raced through my ears. My brother being almost certainly tortured at that exact second frayed me in a way nothing had in a long time. The numb, zombie Bella was gone.
"He said that we could save him." Paul grumbled. "So that's what we're doing."
I blinked once. Twice. "I'm sorry." I blurted out. Awe rushed through me along with the shame.
"Why?"
"You're literally the best and I..."
Paul stopped running abruptly and growled. "Forget it, damn it! It's done, we are alive, and I'm sick of this nonstop guilt train you're on now. Can't we just move on and fight a bunch of motherfuckers?"
I tripped over a branch while mad laughter bubbled through my chest. Perhaps all those years of acting the klutz was finally catching up with me. Paul huffed, swept me off of the ground, and then set me onto my feet. He let me go and ran an aggravated hand through his buzzed hair.
The casual irritation on his face raised my hysteria higher and I did the only thing that made sense to my crazed mind. I kissed him. A gentle jump to get my arms around his neck, I pulled myself up and pressed my lips hard to his.
Paul oofed in surprise before quickly taking my gesture a million times further. An arm under my butt and a hand wrapped in my hair, he deepened the kiss gently. As if his anger was dissipated.
His grip on my body impossibly tightened. Through our bond, I could suddenly tell that he wasn't angry, just scared. As scared as I was. But I had a resource that he didn't when we faced such uncertainty: experience.
I pulled away and met his dark eyes. "Together. We do this together. No matter what happens." And just like that, he relaxed and so did I. Because I wasn't afraid to die and neither was Paul. It was infinitely better than the pain of not being able to defend a loved one.
I didn't want to know how Paul possessed such an eerily similar resolution, but pain and deep loss was the only answer.
He reluctantly let me go after giving a sigh as a sudden sense of cool washed over us. "We're on a timeline."
We ran and ran after Paul phased. Eventually I was clinging to Paul's back once it became apparent that my speed wasn't up to par. We reached the outskirts of Olympia in human form after stopping at a truck stop to clean ourselves up. A grimace from Paul told me how he felt about the wide selection of flannel, durable button-ups available to us.
And it was here that we found ourselves utterly stomped on how to find Medora's hideout.
"We were given a city along with the word 'outskirt'. This is as far as we can go with what he told me." Paul sighed resignedly.
I leaned against a lamppost and looked around the suburbs that we were in. Quiet, peaceful, and utterly boring which conflicted against the screaming in my bones that we were close.
Inspiration struck an instance later. "They're after me. How about we let them...take us?" My voice warbled the last part out as Paul's face lost its color.
"Rabbit, that's a terrible idea. Drayer was taken by them and I was tossed around like a rag doll."
"They had Alice then! Who else do they have?" I ground out.
••••••••••••••••••••••••••
Paul's POV
"How about the cowboy? The redhead? Or my goddamn bastard of a father?"
Bella's face lost its color and she collapsed onto the sidewalk in a huff. She hid herself on her arm and her voice came muffled and high. "How the fuck are we going to do this? And was your father the newborn back there?"
I ran my hand through her hair, giving my best Neanderthal attempt at comforting her. "Yeah, don't worry so much about him though. I'm going to kill him."
Bella started rocking back and forth. "That's messed up, Paul." The rocking abruptly stopped. "He must've really hurt you."
A groan ripped through me. "Don't worry about it, I already told you not to."
"You'll have to kill him after I do." A cute growl ripped through her and I staggered in shock.
I shakily removed my hand from her hair and sat down myself. "You really are my soulmate." It was all that I could manage to say.
"I bet Jasper is already hunting us."
"Who?" The reason why she bothered to call any of the leeches by name still evaded me.
"The mate of the little one you killed. He has scars all over him. The one you called the cowboy."
Chills peppered my skin at the mention of that particular vamp. And as if summoning the devil himself, suddenly I was frozen on the sidewalk in fear. At the same time, Bella gathered herself into a battle-stance above me.
The sense of something going towards my neck and getting blocked jarred my senses and made the sidewalk beneath my frozen body shudder and crack.
"Back up, Bella. This has nothing to do with you." Rough words from a pissed vampire.
"Jasper, you betray me and then tell me it's none of my concern? Fuck you."
A long silence. "They have Edward dismantled in a bloody baggy over an open flame. She couldn't let him burn." The last sentence was a guttural growl. "This is no more betrayal than an unfortunate blackmail. Now move."
"No. Killing my mate isn't something I can let you do." Bella was firm. "Now how about you release him from that shitty gift of yours and fight us fair."
My heart was still frozen in a panicked gallop. Nearly exploding inside my chest yet inexplicably holding me in place.
A snarl from the cowboy went through the air before it was interrupted by a cold, calculating voice that was somehow still Bella's. "You have nothing left to live for, anyway, Jasper Hale. That little traitor is dead."
It all happened in an instant. Fierce anger from the leech exploded through my body and freed me. Before I knew it, I was phased and leaping towards the vamp that resembled the honey-haired vamp that attacked Drayer and I all those days ago.
His pitch black eyes met mine and it was the first time a vamp actually looked like it should. His eyes and face were not anything but evil. He brandished glistening fangs coated with venom and inhuman claws for hands.
A blade went through his throat while I landed on him and tore through his midsection. Strong arms wrapped around my midsection and squeezed. For a fraction of a second.
Two of my ribs snapped right when Bella's blades quickly sliced through one of the vamp's arms. A yelp of pain ripped through Bella's mouth when I was released and he swung around and punched her.
I took his head before she hit the ground from the impact.
"Paul!" Bella yelled my name as she quickly recovered and walked to what was left of the leech. Her lip was red and split. "We have to get out of the suburbs and burn him."
The giant crater in the sidewalk was beyond obvious. It was a modern day miracle that the streets remained empty. My mate was beyond tough and smart for seeing what needed to be done.
She slung onto my back gracefully, the body slung over her shoulder like it weighed nothing.
•••••••••••••••••••••••
Two-hundred. One. Two. Three. Drayer counted the number of footsteps he could hear people walk from the edge of his cell to the furthest exit of the dungeon. It was surprisingly big considering Medora's poor retention rate: people locked up weren't generally kept long.
Pain seared every inch of his body from his toes to the tips of his ears. The thoroughness was extraordinary, as though Medora's people had grown to love torture so much that they had discovered it to be an art form.
It would be Drayer's biggest regret that he hadn't been able to keep the pain from Éponine. He'd finally gotten to kiss the girl for whom he'd been carefully wooing and then he'd gotten her secondhand tortured.
Bella's suffering from Ben's horrible death was something Éponine would never endure, even if Drayer had to find a swift way to end himself beforehand. His baby sister had forever been changed by the experience.
Two-hundred and seventy-three. The count stopped and the cellar door slammed open. Flaming red hair flounced in.
"Your lil sissy is going to join you soon." She baby-talked at him in a disturbingly high voice. She held an ebony whip in a pale claw casually and dread filled Drayer despite himself.