"What do you mean she's disappeared entirely?" Edward snapped irritably. The vampires were about ten hours into a car ride. Unfortunately, this had been the rare instance where regardless of the amount of money the family had thrown around, they hadn't been able to secure a private flight, or even a public flight in a timely manner to the rockies. Emmet had taken the immediate opportunity to argue what he had been arguing for decades-that the family needed their own private jet that they could use whenever they pleased. Carlisle had swiftly reminded him of all the legal guidelines that unavoidably came with that-attention that was unwanted and would force them all to fake their deaths-again, earlier than they wanted.
Alice rolled her eyes. Responded verbally for the sake of the family.
"I can see roughly where she stopped traveling. Between the six of us, we should be able to find her, yes? Jasper, honey, you should hunt a lion before we get there, just in case."
Her mate nodded silently, eyes almost completely black at this point.
"How much longer do we have to travel?" Rosalie asked irritably.
"With my driving, only about four more hours, give or take," Esme said, flashing a smile, but the irritation she had at her passengers' constant squabbling was clearly shown in the murderous intent of her eyes and the sharpness of her teeth. The other passengers in the seat gulped. The adopted matriarch of the group could be scary indeed.
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Jacob snarled, pacing the span of the cage he had been placed in. When he had expressed being ridiculously upset at the territory constraint, Sam had put him in a were cage like an animal until he was deemed 'able to control himself'. The teen understood why, logically, but the fact of the matter was the treatment made him all the more angry. His human form was utterly tossed away in rage, and shards of the huge iron cage were currently being scraped away by the claws and teeth of his wolf form. He had lost reason and thought-the confinement had not been a wise decision on his alpha's part, as the newly changed were simply grew more vicious and attacked the bars of the cage more and more violently the longer the confinement went on. He had come to his alpha with reasoning, and his alpha had responded by putting him in a kennel like a puppy.
The blow to his pride, dignity, and his overall trust in his alpha was too much. Were all pack members to allow themselves to be treated like objects?
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Ouch! What is that stuff? The great and mighty dragon in front of Bella whined with all likeness to an overgrown puppy as she dabbed hydrogen peroxide into a rather deep slash wound.
"Well, I warned you it would sting! It's antiseptic!"
What?
"Do you live under a rock? It helps prevent infection."
Admittedly, it was late, and she was feeling rather cranky and tired. Fallow shoved his huge muzzle inches from her face and hissed his displeasure, showing his large teeth.
Well, that was uncalled for.
And he mocked how she talked.
How quickly over the past couple hours had she grown used to his huge figure and previously scary tendencies-she hardly flinched at this point. The fact that the dragon currently had a huge ziploc bag of instant ice packs gauze wrapped around his swollen jaw and entire head probably helped things, though. The dragon had to have the swelling in his jaw go down-since Bella had no idea if any anti-inflammatory pills were safe to give him or what dosage, this silly get up was the solution. She had also managed to get the bleeding in his mouth to stop-that part had been a bit scary, besides having to resist fainting from the smell of blood while doing it. Fallow had had four missing back teeth-and quite blatantly it looked like they had been ripped out by some sort of massive force. She had put pressure on the section of gums that had been torn until the bleeding had stopped. That injury alone looked incapacitating pain wise.
Fire more than likely works better than your little potions, and it would feel better. The dragon added. Well, that answered one of the million questions buzzing around Bella's head. She would assume from that statement dragons weren't harmed by fire-actually, Fallow's statement had specifically insinuated it was used for healing.
"If you feel like breathing fire on yourself, go right on ahead," she suggested, with just a little bit of irritation. Fallow's overall demeanor was more than a little pompous, and if she hadn't found him so beat up, she would have assumed he had been pampered and treated like royalty his entire life. But the wounds and swellings all over his body were very obviously huge claw and tooth marks, so she could only deduce that he had been thrown out of his group or the like-the claw marks were obviously too big to be his-which was more than slightly alarming.
In response, she found electric blue and green eyes the size of her hands stare at her with furrowed eyebrows.
Maybe I don't want to!
"So…..you can't. But others can." Bella quite frankly, wasn't stupid. Being away from her previous love interests had started to allow her to...remember the intellect that had originally gotten her into advanced level classes.
Fallow chose not to respond, which was enough of an answer. With a final dab on the rather deep chest wound, her current bottle ran empty.
"It's a good thing I bought a ton of supplies in case I needed it. That being said...I'm going to run out of a lot of this stuff in a single night. Does fire really help you heal?" Bella asked disbelievingly, cringing non too slightly at how much of the first aid supplies she was going to go through in a single night. And many of the wounds he had really should be stitched up completely, she noted.
Fallow snorted. As if dragons could be harmed by fire.
"...right. So if I built a regular fire, and used the flames from that-
The yellowish white dragon thumped his tail on the ground frustratedly.
Unfortunately that won't work. The flames for healing have to be pure.
"Pure?"
They can't come have….fumes from anything that is being burnt, or there is risk of causing infection instead of healing it.
Bella drooped. So making a fire, whether by torch or a simple bonfire, wouldn't work for this. She resigned to risking buying some bulk antiseptic spray and wound wash spray, and a bunch of washable bandages. Sighing, she moved on to the antiseptic ointment, glad she had bought more than a few large tubes (she often tripped and hurt herself, after all).
What's that?
As with everything, despite Fallow's pompous demeanor, he was also demandingly inquisitive, she was learning. She had no problem explaining it to him, and every other question he threw at her almost constantly-after all, what else was she going to do in the middle of the night while on the run from a bloodsucking killer?
"Are your scales supposed to be this fragile?" Bella asked after explaining what a wound ointment was. It seemed odd to her-the dragon's scales were paper thin and practically crackling to the touch. Even the scales of a snake seemed sturdier. The question was met with a pause of silence, then a huff.
No.
The curt tone suggested that the dragon had no desire to move further with the topic. Bella bit her lip, holding back the next question on her tongue, and instead grabbed a large piece of gauze with a big roll of wrap. She looked up at the huge dragon-laying down, the top of his shoulder blades were still an inch or two above her head.
"Didn't you say your shoulder was broken?"
Unfortunately. As well as three ribs, my back ankle, my right wing, and-
"Your collarbone," Bella finished. The collarbone was easy to spot, and rather disturbing to see. It was quite prominent within his scales, and also very obvious to see that it was in two pieces-and the pieces weren't aligned properly. Honestly, she had no idea how the dragon kept moving his head and neck with that type of injury. She also had no idea how to fix it.
Bella shook her head.
"I need to cover this wound here-it's too big to leave open to the air in the middle of the forest. Flies could get in it."
Nothing could describe the look on the dragon's face except utter disgust at the idea. His head wrapped in a bowtie vet wrap get up with an ice pack, Fallow's dignified expression looked ridiculous. Unable to help herself, Bella laughed.
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Every great killer returns to the scene of the crime, or so they say. This was absolutely the case with Victoria. How sweet it had been to see her prey go up in flames. A bit dramatic, yes, but she had been angry. She had been left all alone in the world after her deadly, breath-taking, beautiful James had been killed. All for that one little human girl. Absolutely NOTHING would bring James back. He had been so perfect-calculating, cold. Ruthless in how he hunted and thought. He deserved eternity as a superior being simply by how he had existed. He was supposed to last forever-they had had plans of replacing the Volturi once they both grew stronger through a few more centuries of blood consumption. She was going to be queen.
As a mate, he had been PERFECT. No ounce of kindness, not one shred of softness was seen in his eyes. The rather, admittedly to herself, insane vampiress wrought with glee at the rare coldness that had been between them. It had been their little secret-no one knew how close they really were-no one knew violence was actually the most exquisite of love languages!
Oh, how Victoria had loved every inch of the revenge she had wrought. The thought process in how she was going to kill the girl took quite a while. She had considered simply drinking her dry-but the blood from that girl's line had been claimed by James. In one last act of loyalty, she had decided she wouldn't make the young girl her dinner. But neither would her death be quick-she wanted the girl to be afraid. Feel and show the terror that so many others she had killed had had. It would be slow. And fire had been so PERFECT of a solution. Some would say her hair was fire-red….it worked well as a subtle trademark, something to take pride in. Perfectly painful, although she had to say she had gotten a bit ahead of herself. Blowing the girl up had been a bit too quick of a decision while she had been in the moment-she should have burned her more slowly.
The morning after the deed was a rainy day-perfect, as she had been chased out of the area by the wolves last time. Oh, how they had been angry. It was so lovely to have created so much chaos. Her ability to sense danger had served her well then as it had many times in the past-allowing her to laugh and dodge the danger with every swipe and attempted bite the wolves had tried.
But today, the rain hid the vampiress' scent, and the cloud cover made it possible for her to go outside easily enough. With interest, on her way to the scene she had browsed the humans available as though she were at a grocery store looking at the vegetable section. Forks would be an easy enough place to drag someone off and have them 'disappear' while she enjoyed a lovely lunch.
When she arrived, the former Police Chief's house was beautifully wrecked, and the cleanup crew was still, well, cleaning. The second story of the building had wonderfully collapsed, and the once older standing log house was covered in soot, being burned to the point of much of it looking like charcoal. Oh, it was wonderful. Just wonderful. Even the driveway had bubbled and cracked from the heat, as was evident even after the flames had been long since been extinguished. A blood curdling shriek brought the vampire to attention. A middle aged woman with blonde hair and tan skin had just arrived, and was making a terrible scene.
"Ma'am, I'm sorry, both occupants are thought to be dead."
"NO! My baby was in there! My daughter! Where is she?!"
Immediately, a smile crept up into Victoria's expression. Just when she thought the enjoyment of the deed was at its end. The man talking to the woman, presumably that girl's mother, shifted uncomfortably.
"I'm sorry, but we haven't recovered the body yet."
The woman let out a sobbing howl, and Victoria's smile turned into a frown. What did they mean-hadn't found the body? She knew from sneaking around that the police chief's body had been found by his workmates-she assumed that the girl's body would have also been found. She remembered fondly his attempt to save his daughter from a literal bomb-it had been laughable, and quite savory of a moment. There was no way the girl could have lived through that. Still-Victoria put her graceful, beautiful speed to work the moment everyone's eyes were focused on other things.
What she found was cause for enragement. Motorcycle tracks were hidden in the foliage, and unmistakably-the girl's scent was entangled in them. There wasn't even a blood scent. Numerous questions circled the vampiress' mind, and she thought closely about her months monitoring the girl named Bella. Nothing had seemed out of the ordinary, absolutely nothing had pointed her to be anything but human.
She snarled, growling low in her throat. She had lost her quandary, could not TRACK scent as one of those DOGS could, her prey had over a nine hour head start and she had no leads.
Victoria paused as the woman in her forties shrieked again, apparently shaking the clean up crew's manager. As infuriated as she was, she smiled. She perhaps wasn't quite so out of luck as she had first thought.
