DISCLAIMER: I own nothing. I live in someone's fever dream; but their subconscious isn't very creative, if I do say so myself. Ironic that someone following someone else's plot and using someone else's characters would have anything to say on creativity, but I can't think of anything funny today. Sorry, guys.
A notable quotable from this chapter was " smeyer I know it was just a finger but you know what happens when boys tell the story," and I stand by it. Again, I thank NeedMoreZzz's from the bottom of my heart. If you have any notes/comments/rants I'm all ears. I love reading your comments – they make me feel like I've done what I set out to do with this story, which is re-write the twilight series in a way that satisfies those who love Jacob Black and see his character as one who was done dirty by smeyer. I hope you all feel the same way, but if you don't, let me know! I'm always open to constructive criticism, not that I've had any problems with unconstructive comments on this work.
Also, I am aware that I've spammed y'all with a bunch of chapters all at once, but that's just the way I roll. I'm personally not fond of works that only publish a chapter at a time; I'm more of a binge-reader. I figure I would rather wait a little longer for more chapters than wait a shorter time for just one. If that's not how you feel, I get it, but please understand; I am so small, and I have no money.
XXXIX
Two parasites edged slowly into the small opening of our camp, eyes intent, cold, and calculating. They glistened in the sunlight, so bright I had to blink my eyes a few times to adjust. With a jolt of surprise, I recognized the blonde one.
He was just a boy – though now he was muscular and tall, he still had chubby cheeks and a look of innocence, even with his vibrant, blood-red eyes smirking at Bella the way a cat stares down a mouse. He was closer, but my eyes didn't focus on him, because Mike Newton was – and would remain until his dying day, which would be soon, I was sure – harmless.
Behind him, a few feet to the side and a few feet back, was the red-headed leech.
Her orange hair was wild and unkempt, with twigs and leaves caught in giant, unruly curls. I wondered why she didn't dye it, since it was impossible to blend in with her surroundings when her hair looked like an overgrown bonfire. The wind blew freely through the trees, and the fire seemed to shiver around her face, as if it were alive. Her eyes were completely black, suspended above her thin cheekbones like two lumps of coal. Her lips were pressed into a tight line of disapproval as she glared hungrily at Bella.
There was a striking feline quality to the way she held her coiled body, a lioness waiting for an opening to spring. Her restless, wild gaze flickered between Bella and I, but never rested on me for more than half a second. She couldn't keep her eyes off Bella as she stalked forward.
Tension rolled off of her, nearly visible in the air. I could feel the desire, the all-consuming passion that held her suspended on the edge of success – it was palpable, a fine mist hanging in the air.
Her plan was obvious. Practical, even, though I wouldn't have admitted it. What she hadn't counted on was the truce between vampire and werewolf. If there had only been one of us there, Mike could have distracted whoever was guarding Bella, and Victoria would be free to snatch her.
Seth howled in joy as he got to the clearing, quickly pouncing on the nearest bloodsucker.
The fighting was reaching a climax – Alice had just whipped two leeches into Emmett's arms, where he slammed their heads together so hard their skulls cracked in half. The Clearwaters were bonding over ripping apart a leech who spat venom at them. Paul had just ripped off the head of the biggest newborn in the group and thrown it onto the pyre of vampire pieces. With a flash, it caught fire and joined the ever-growing pile of ashes.
I was on my own.
We're with you, man, Quil whined, feigning injury and backing off from a leech he was trying to corner.
Fight well, Jacob, was all Sam said, because I was only half-listening.
Mike looked at the red-head out of the corner of his eye, waiting on her command.
He was young for a vampire. From his stance I could tell that he would be strong, but inept. I could fight the likes of him in my sleep. The red-head seemed to know this, so she jerked her chin toward Edward, wordlessly ordering the boy forward. I watched as her eyes flickered quickly to me, then darted back to Bella.
I was eager to fight her, but I knew it would be foolish to do it alone. Just looking at her screamed danger and sent sirens going off in the back of my head. But I was smarter than she suspected, and in the back of my mind, a plan began brewing.
In my peripheral vision, Edward tilted his chin towards me and nodded once.
Better know what you're doing, leech, I growled as Mike tensed, ready to spring. Behind him, Victoria's eyes were drinking in Bella rapturously, hungrily, eyes alight with madness.
"Mike," Edward said in a soft, pleading voice.
The young bloodsucker froze.
"She's lying to you, Mike," Edward told him. "Listen to me. She's lying to you just like she lied to the others who are dying now in the clearing. You know that she's lied to them, that she had you lie to them, that neither of you were ever going to help them. Is it so hard to believe that she's lied to you, too?
Confusion swept across Mike's face. Edward shifted a few inches to the side, away from Bella, and Mike automatically compensated with an adjustment of his own.
"She doesn't love you, Mike." Edward's soft voice was compelling, hypnotic. "She never has. She loved someone named James, and you're no more than a tool to her."
When he said her lover's name, the red-head pulled her lips back in a teeth-baring grimace. Her eyes stayed locked on Bella.
Mike cast a frantic glance in her direction.
"Mike?" Edward said.
He automatically refocused on Edward.
"She knows that I will kill you, Mike. She wants you to die so that she doesn't have to keep up the pretense anymore. Yes – you've seen that, haven't you? You've read the reluctance in her eyes, suspected a false note in her promises. You were right. She never wanted you. Every kiss, every touch was a lie."
Edward moved a few inches forward, towards Mike. The redhead's gaze zeroed in on the gap between him and Bella. It would take her less than one blink to appear at our side with even the tiniest margin of opportunity. I dug my claws into the ground, an unmovable wall between her and the object of her attention.
Slower this time, Mike repositioned himself.
"You don't have to die," Edward promised, his eyes holding the confused blonde boy frozen, suspended in a trance. "There are other ways to live than the way she's shown you. It's not all lies and blood, Mike. You can walk away right now. You don't have to die for her lies."
Edward slid his feet forward and to the side, leaving a foot of space between him and Bella. Mike circled too far, overcompensating this time. The red-head leaned onto the balls of her feet.
"Last chance, Mike," Edward whispered.
Mike's face was desperate as he looked to the red-head for answers.
"He's the liar, Mike," she purred through bared, glistening teeth. "I told you about their mind tricks. You know I only love you."
Her voice was what I imagined a fluffy white kitten to sound like, a babyish, soprano tinkling. I was waiting for the strong, wild, catlike growl I knew would signal she was about to strike.
Mike's jaw tightened, and he squared his shoulders. His eyes emptied – there was no more confusion, no more suspicion. There was no thought at all. He tensed himself to attack. Victoria's body seemed to be trembling, she was so tightly wound. Her fingers were ready claws, waiting for Edward to move just one more inch away from Bella.
The snarl came from none of them.
It came from me.
Edward had heard the plan working itself through the gears in my head, and had executed his part very well, and now it was my turn.
I flew through the space between Mike and I, throwing him to the ground. Edward was now standing in front of Bella, arms outstretched, holding her against the steep cliff-face.
"No!" The red-head cried, her baby voice shrill with disbelief.
I ripped and tore at the blond vampire beneath me. It was way too easy – I had him pinned down, one paw standing on his windpipe while I tore off his hand, throwing it behind me so it didn't try to reconnect itself while I was busy.
"No," she said again through her teeth, a deranged sort of high-pitched growl.
Edward started to move toward her, blocking her path to Bella.
Mike was on his feet again after a well-aimed punch to my knee. He was misshapen and haggard, eyes wild with anxiety. With a vicious snarl, he flung his foot into my shoulder. I heard the bone crunch.
It only hurt for a second; but I yelped and backed away, limping as the bones set and healed. I started to circle him, preparing to strike again. Mike had his arms out, ready, looking almost comical with one of his hands missing.
A few yards away, Edward and the red-head were dancing.
It looked like dancing from the corner of my eyes. Not quite circling, because Edward was not allowing her to position herself closer to Bella. She sashayed back, moving from side to side, trying to find a hole in his defense. He shadowed her footwork lithely, stalking her with perfect concentration. He began to move just a fraction of a second before she moved, reading her intentions in her thoughts.
Mike glanced at her, distracted for a second.
I lunged from the side, tearing his arm off with a hideous, grating screech. I threw it into the forest with a thud. Mike roared in fury, and I skipped back as he took a swipe at me with his remaining hand.
Victoria was weaving through the tree trunks at the far end of the little opening now. She was torn, her feet pulling her toward safety while her eyes yearned toward Bella as if she were a magnet, reeling her in. I could see the burning desire to kill warring with her survival instinct.
Edward could see that, too.
"Don't go, Victoria," he murmured in the same hypnotic tone as before. "You'll never get another chance like this."
She showed her teeth and hissed at him, but seemed unable to move farther away.
"You can always run later," Edward purred. "Plenty of time for that. It's what you do, isn't it? It's why James kept you around. Useful, if you like to play deadly games. A partner with an uncanny instinct for escaping. He shouldn't have left you – he could have used your skills when we caught up to him in Phoenix."
A snarl ripped from between her lips.
"That's all you ever were to him, though. Silly to waste so much energy avenging someone who had less affection for you than a hunter for his mount. You were never more than a convenience to him. I would know." Edward's lips pulled up on one side as he tapped his temple.
With a strangled screech, the red-head darted out of the trees again, feinting to the side.
Edward responded, and the dance began again.
Mike's fist caught my flank, and I couldn't help the low yelp that coughed out of my throat. His eyes were trained on me, so I backed away, twitching my shoulders in an attempt to shake off the pain. Mike closed the distance between us, driving me toward the cliff face beside Bella.
Just like herding sheep, I thought bleakly, snapping at Mike and forcing him back again.
From where she danced, the red-head hissed. I didn't look to see what she was doing.
I wasn't limping anymore. My circling took me within inches of Edward; my tail brushed his back.
"No, he won't turn on me," Edward said, answering the question in the redhead's mind. He used her distraction to slide closer. "You provided us with a common enemy. You allied us."
I heard her teeth clench.
"Look more closely, Victoria," he murmured, pulling at the threads of her concentration. "Is he really so much like the monster James tracked across Siberia?"
I almost laughed when her eyes popped wide open, then began flickering wildly from Edward to Bella to me, around and around.
"Not the same?" She snarled in her little girl's soprano. "Impossible!"
"Nothing is impossible," Edward murmured, voice velvet soft as he moved another inch closer to her. "Except what you want. You'll never touch her."
She shook her head, fast and jerky, fighting his diversion, and tried to duck around him, but he was in place to block her as soon as she'd thought of the plan. Her face contorted in frustration, and then she shifted lower into her crouch, a lioness again, and stalked deliberately forward.
Now this was the fight I'd been waiting for.
The red-head was no inexperienced, instinct-driven newborn. She was lethal. Even I could tell the difference between her and Mike, and I knew that she would take more than one wolf to take down. Maybe more than one mind-reader, too.
Edward shifted, too, as they closed in on each other. Their crouches were identical, lion versus lioness.
The dance increased in tempo, with sharp crunches and crackings reverberating off the cliff face whenever the red-head tried to get through Edward. As Edward gained the upper hand, Mike looked up, anxious for his partner.
I struck him down, ripping and tearing and shredding, but his feet landed on my chest, and suddenly Mike had launched me back, soaring ten feet in the air. I crashed into the rocky wall above Bella's head with a force that seemed to shake the whole peak. The breath whooshed out of my lungs as I rebounded off the stone and collapsed on the ground a few feet away. A low whimper escaped through my teeth as I landed with a thud.
Sharp fragments of gray stone showered down, falling like bats as they whipped clumsily through the air and bounced off each other. I dug my claws into the ground, trying to pull myself up, but my vision was spinning and there was a sharp ringing in my ears. The world came back into perspective slowly, as three Mikes turned into two, and then just one, which was far more manageable.
Newton's not a bad fighter, I admitted, surprised.
Behind Mike, I could see the redhead's twisting flame of hair blurring this way and that, with Edward closing in. He seemed to be leaning into the choreography aspect – he leaped and spun just like a violent ballerina to the sound of metallic snaps, tears, gasps, and shocked hisses. The music sped up, and the dance quickly became deadly.
Mike lurched forward, his red eyes brilliant with fury. He had re-attached his other arm, but seemed to have lost a few fingers in the process. His mangled, broken hands curled into talons. His mouth opened, widened, teeth glistening, and I bristled on the ground, trying to calculate how hard I needed to kick to fling him clear into the trees.
Bella gasped. I could hear her heart bounding anxiously in her chest and smell the rusty crimson scent of blood. In that split second, Edward sighed, pausing in his attack to roll his eyes with exasperation.
The dance broke apart violently in that same second. Edward took advantage of the redhead's distraction and flung her halfway up a tall spruce on the edge of the campsite. Simultaneously, he twisted backward and caught Mike by the arms. As he planted his foot against Mike's back and heaved, he nodded to me.
I was up in a flash as Mike's piercing shriek of agony filled the campsite.
The red-head was crouched low, though one of her legs hung limp, as if most of it wasn't attached. She smiled, a wild, Cheshire cat type of smile, with too many teeth to mean pleasure. She coiled and sprang weakly, propelling herself forward.
I whistled through the air and collided with her mid-flight. The impact sounded like an explosion. We landed back at the base of the tree. It broke in half this time. The ancient spruce cracked like the sound of a shotgun. She rushed me, clearly off-balance, lurching forward unsteadily. I sunk my teeth into her shoulder and tore it off with an ear-splitting metallic screech.
Mike wasn't doing so hot, either. From somewhere behind us, I heard his tortured plea.
"Victoria!" He screamed as another crack echoed off the mountain.
The red-head didn't even flinch. She tried to launch herself forward, but I had her carefully pinned down.
Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker, I thought as my jowls closed around her neck, snapping off her head in one motion.
The shivering orange waves fell to the ground and bounced once before rolling toward the trees.
I dismembered the headless corpse, swift and business-like, trying to get it over with and burn the pieces before they had time to pull themselves back together. Edward had dropped all of his pieces of Mike together in a pile of quivering, twitching limbs. He covered them with dry pine needles, then started grabbing pieces of the red-head I flung in his direction.
The fight was winding down in the clearing. Leah and Seth were piling their limbs into the fire while Jared and Quil finished off the last bloodsucker. I was surprised to see Carlisle and Esme on the side with one of the younger leeches, making no move to strike.
"She surrendered," Edward explained. "Only Carlisle would think to ask."
I carried the final chunk of the red-head – her torso, cracked in half – to the fire in my mouth, avoiding the eyes I could feel boring into mine. I added it to the pile, and Edward pulled a silver rectangle from his pocket. He flipped open the butane lighter and held the flame to the dry tinder. It caught at once; long tongues of orange fire licked rapidly across the pyre.
"We need to get every piece," Edward said in a low aside.
I wanted to avoid Bella's focused gaze, so together we scoured the campsite, occasionally tossing small lumps of white stone into the blaze. I handled the pieces with my teeth, though they tasted like hand sanitizer and smelled even worse.
I had considered changing into a form with hands, but then the leech Esme and Carlisle had been holding was suddenly gone, having shaken them off after claiming to surrender. The two of them looked at each other with alarm as Paul and Sam bounded after her, but she had vanished into the trees, and all they could do was follow her scent. It was starting to lead up the mountain, towards the purple beacon in the distance…
The raging fire sent a pillar of choking violet toward the sky. The thick smoke curled up slowly, looking more solid than it should. It's noxious scent polluted my mind and made my thoughts fuzzy with how much it burned.
This is the end of the truce, I grumbled, pacing away from the fire to help corner the leech between Sam and Paul.
"Jacob –!" Bella began, her voice high and trembling before she was cut off.
Deja-vu swept over me as the unmistakable hair of the girl from so long ago – the one on the beach, who had followed Mike around like a puppy – came barreling at me from the side. I was so surprised to recognize a leech that I was slow to respond, and she got her arms around me, squeezing.
I felt the right side of my body get crushed into a gelatinous mush. My vision was replaced with a sharp, blinding white light, and I could no longer feel anything but the whoosh of air as it left my lungs. It felt like I had been submerged underwater. Through the din, I heard a sharp bark from Sam as he leaped onto the leech. Paul was on his heels, already ripping off the girl's leg.
The world was spinning again, except this time it wasn't because I was hurtling through the air. I felt the pull of vertigo on my stomach and had to try very hard not to pass out. I limped away from Paul and Sam as feeling returned to my body. It started with sharp pins and needles in my hand, then progressed to a dull throb, and finally became a deep, painful ache, throbbing with each thrum of blood whistling past my ears.
Shift, Jacob, Sam ordered distractedly, tossing a piece of the girl's arm to Edward, who threw it over his shoulder into the fire casually, as if throwing out yesterday's newspaper.
The pack was on their way, leaving the clearing behind. Emmett held his fist out for Paul to knock with his nose, an inter-species fist bump. Alice was telling the wolves to clear out; the Vultures were coming. Edward's voice was clearer than hers as he explained.
"We knew there was a good probability of this happening. Earlier this morning, Alice saw it and passed it on to you, correct? The Volturi decided it was time to intercede. They aren't coming for us. It's just the normal contingent of the guard that usually cleans up this kind of mess. Nothing momentous, they're merely doing their job. Of course, they seem to have timed their arrival very carefully. Which leads me to believe that no one in Italy would mourn if these newborns had reduced the size of the Cullen family." The words came through his teeth, hard and bleak. "I'll know for sure what they were thinking when they get to the clearing. It's all going to be fine. Alice can see that."
I crawled towards Bella, a sharp whine coming out of my nose as I exhaled. She seemed to understand and came over to me on her hands and knees to kiss the sides of my face with her palms.
"You'll have to leave quickly. The Volturi do not honor truces with werewolves. The Volturi won't recognize the scent – they won't realize the wolves are here; this isn't a species they are familiar with. The pack will be fine." I heard Edward assure Sam before darting off into the trees without a second glance.
Bella buried her face in my neck and started to sob. "I'm so sorry," she murmured over and over again, her hands resting on the soft fur behind my ears.
Then Sam was there, pushing Bella away. I growled weakly, panting with the amount of energy it took to fill my lungs.
Shift, Jacob, Sam ordered again, this time with the double timbre of the Alpha, and I had no choice but to oblige.