Chapter 47 Chapter Notes
This chapter deals with the discovery of Henry Upchurch's body after Victoria's attack. We see the disrespect the Elders have for Old Quil, and his anger at their shortsighted ideas about the tribe's supernatural status.
The chapter title belongs to the Beatles
Chapter 47 Mother Nature's Son Tuesday, October 31st
Halloween, and fall, is Jacob's favorite time of year, and now he lives Halloween all year long. What other area boasts vampires and werewolves? He laughs at himself, as Quileute aren't werewolves, but Shapeshifters. And how cool is that?
He walks down the main street of La Push, smiling at the paper decorations and fake spider webs in store windows. Kids will be out tonight in their scary costumes, begging candy. Well, some will be scary, others will choose Buzz Lightyear and Superman, but it's good clean fun. As a kid, he'd always chosen to be a pirate, and Billy had decked him out with an eyepatch and scarf. The ragged clothing was simply pulled from a dresser drawer. All his clothes looked like they'd been worn thin by three generations and then run over by a truck.
Jacob takes a deep breath, smelling wood smoke, bacon frying, chicken on a nearby grill (at eight o'clock in the morning?) and the salty tang of the shore. As he turns the corner, Darla Bishop, Dr. Pierce's granddaughter, runs up to him, wide-eyed. She's out of breath and near tears.
He leans down. "What's wrong, honey? Where's your mom?"
She collapses onto him and cries, "Daddy's in the market." She takes a few deep breaths and gestures wildly. "Back there in the alleyway! Henry! Henry Upchurch!"
A chill runs through Jacob as he stands. Henry is a cousin, the youngest Quileute of the famed bloodline, and yet to transform. The girl points and Jacob says, "Go back and find your daddy, okay?"
She nods and Jacob takes off, sprinting toward the small knot of people blocking the entrance to the narrow alley. They part for him and he sees the boy's body tossed carelessly in a niche between two dumpsters. Henry lays face down in a pool of bloody rain water. A hideous bite has been taken out of his neck and something has brutally split his skull like an egg.
Someone must have alerted the Council, as two Elders burst into the circle surrounding this macabre scene. Henry's mother follows and, seeing her son's mutilated body, falls to her knees screaming. Jacob looks up to see Sam dashing down the street, followed by six of his brothers. Sam takes charge when he arrives, escorting onlookers aside and comforting Henry's mother.
When he's gotten the crowd subdued, he walks over to Jacob. "What happened? We were at the grocery store when Gordon yelled that Henry was lying in the alley."
Jacob shakes his head. "Darla told me. I just got here."
Sam approaches the boy's mother and helps her to her feet. "Mrs. Upchurch, when did you last see your son?"
She lowers her hands from her face, which is red and swollen from crying. "Last night before I left for work. I had the graveyard shift at the clinic. He was planning on staying overnight with his friend, Jared. I thought he was still over there."
Jared lives a few houses away from the Upchurch family. He steps forward. "He never showed. I thought he'd decided to stay home. At school he said he had a project that he needed to finish."
Sam looks up. In a low voice he says, "Is Brady around? I want to jerk a knot in him and toss his body into the sea." He doesn't look like he's joking.
"Why?" Jacob had always liked Brady. He's an older Pack member, always helpful, but he seemed to be a little jealous of Sam's status as the steward-Alpha.
"Oh, I'll let Paul tell it." Sam's eyes are wide with anger and worry. Jacob begins to have second thoughts about ever being the Alpha.
Paul extends his hand to Jacob and they shake. "Like I told Sam, I was returning to La Push from Olympia, running through the woods, when I came across Brady's thoughts right outside the res. It was weird, though. They never materialized into complete ideas, just fragments. I let him know where I was and then heard smelled Edward Cullen. After a minute, got chased him. Saw him kill a hiker. Tried to choke me.
"Brady knows we're not allowed to phase in the open or let ourselves be seen outside of the res, but he was clearly not on our land," Jared says with asperity. "I stayed in the trees, but I couldn't pinpoint his location. His thoughts were diffuse and then just disappeared. He may have passed out, died, or phased back to human. No way to tell."
Sam nudges the dirt with the toe of his shoe. "We found out later that Brady left a footprint in the mud and now it's making its way through the system. A forensic pathologist is looking at it."
Jacob frowns. "How do you know this?"
"There's a Quileute named Martha that works in the medical examiner's office. She called."
Jacob gives a short, humorless laugh.
"Not funny, Jacob." Sam's expression is stern. "Brady may be gravely injured. Or dead. We need to find him. And we don't want investigators over here, looking into this." Jacob rearranges his face for Sam's benefit.
Sam shakes his head. "You need to adopt a more serious attitude, Jacob." He then turns and gestures for the Pack to approach the body. "Lean in. You smell that? It's a vampire, but not Edward Cullen. Not a Cullen at all."
They all take turns bending near and then confer amongst themselves. Some of the Wolf boys that had been chosen to accompany Sam to the Cullen's house had recently phased and could not discern differences in scent between individual vampires. Not yet.
Sam thinks for a moment. "Paul said Brady had smelled Edward Cullen, but how did he know it was him? He's never been near a Cullen. He was in Montana when we visited them at their home, unless he came across them in Forks, which I doubt. I mean, it's not like they shop at the Quickie Mart."
Dan, an Elder in the Council, steps forward, having heard Sam's conversation. "Edward Cullen is the only one in his family that is unaccounted for. His sister told the Chief that she could not see him anywhere, which means he has to be here. Probably to keep an eye on Bella Swan."
"Why would he attack a Quileute?" Sam asks. "He knows we're not food. Maybe another vampire? Would that make more sense? Because that," he gestures to Henry, lying dead and mutilated in a puddle of bloody water, "is not Edward Cullen's scent."
Dan insists that it is Edward, restating his sister's odd ability to see the future, but not in the presence of the Quileute.
Jacob rolls his eyes. He wonders if this disagreement will morph into the sixth-graders' rejoin of 'is not!' 'Is too!'
Sam stubbornly puts his hands in his pockets and looks out into the distance. "We need to get the full Council assembled. Does the Chief know?"
They look up to see Chief Littlefoot hurrying toward them, Seth Clearwater bobbing along in his wake. "Yeah," Jacob says grimly. "He does."
Chief Littlefoot sits in his little kitchen, solemnly regarding a steaming cup of coffee. A frantic banging on his door causes him to jump, and as he rushes to answer it, finds a Wolf boy named Seth, wide-eyed and trembling. Their eyes meet and Seth says, "Vampire attack in the alley behind Main Street."
Before the Chief can ask, Seth blurts out, "Henry Upchurch. Sam asked me to bring you along. Word's gone out to the rest of the Council."
And for the first time in a long damn time, Chief Jonas Littlefoot feels tears spring to his eyes. Wordless, he and Seth make their way to the alley. Questions fly at him from the very worried crowd, but Sam steps in and says the Chief will speak to them later.
"Who found the body?" the Chief asks the crowd at large.
"Darla Bishop," Sam says. Darla is Dr. Pierce's granddaughter. "She was in town, shopping with her father. She ran up to Jacob and told him that Henry was lying in the alley.
The Chief turns and speaks softly to the onlookers, finally convincing them to disperse. He turns to Beth, Henry's mother. She is inconsolable. He motions for Sam to help him, and they find a neighbor to escort her home. He promises her that he'll be by to speak to her later in the day.
Dr. Pierce arrives, toting his battered black medical bag. The caduceus symbol is almost worn away from the front, making it look like a prop from a movie. But it's the only one Julius owns, and he carries it everywhere. He's as dapper as ever, with his button-up tightly tucked in to his pressed khakis, but his expression is grim.
His cigarette sizzles as he tosses it into a puddle, and he says, "Someone told me that Darla found the body?" Sam nods. The Chief thinks the man looks older.
They all look older.
The doctor just stands for a moment and gazes down at the boy's disfigured body. He says nothing. At that moment, the whole street beyond goes silent. No cars splash by; no children run down the sidewalk; no birds flap in the trees.
They all take a moment to mourn Henry's passing in the rare silence. As if by decree, the sounds of life on an Indian reservation resume and the spell is broken. Dr. Pierce sighs and puts on a pair of latex gloves. "Sam, Jacob, lift him out of there and lay him flat.
The Chief blanches as they get a good look at what's left of Henry Upchurch. "This wound," Dr. Pierce points to a modest bite with attendant bruising around the edges, "looks like where the vampire fed." He turns the head to show the other side of the neck. It is horribly mutilated, as if a gaping mouth filled with hundreds of teeth had chomped on it. "I don't know what to say about this side. It looks like chunks of flesh were bitten away."
The examination continues. "He has numerous broken bones, probably from what we've learned is a severe allergic reaction to the venom. He could not have survived the attack, but this is what ultimately killed him." Dr. Pierce turns Henry's head to reveal the huge crack in the boy's skull, above and behind the right ear. "He was kicked in the head while lying on the ground."
Kicked in the head while lying on the ground. Chief Littlefoot feels bile in his throat, and stumbles a few steps away. He turns and vomits onto the dirty pavement. A huge handkerchief is pulled out of a pocket and he wipes his face as he tries to think of a way out of this mess.
Dr. Pierce beckons to the attendants at the mouth of the alley and they lift Henry's body onto a stretcher. It is covered with a clean sheet and carried away. The doctor pats the Chief on the shoulder and walks out of the dim alley, head sagging. The sharp crack of a match splits the silence and cigarette smoke wafts toward them.
The Chief hadn't even gotten a sip of his first cup of coffee before Seth was banging on his door, telling him of a vampire attack. Here on the reservation. His niece is in his spare bedroom, going through an unprecedented transformation that he's sure will end up being his fault.
Back in the summer, Chief Littlefoot had thought it was going to end up being a good year. The storm of September changed all that. Now it's all a hopeless muddle, and he doesn't know the best, safest way forward for his people.
A crushing guilt presses on him. What had caused him to be so reckless? He'd been warned about the power of the Amulet, and yet he had unlocked the spell and accessed the magic, not just on a regular Tuesday during a rainstorm, but during an epic storm, something Ephraim Black had warned about, during a fucking full moon.
Demise and Destruction. That was what the storm of September promised. He shakes his head, feeling his ulcer acting up again. He knows coffee is bad for it, yet he continues to drink it. It's either coffee, or go stark raving mad, which probably, in the whole scope of things, wouldn't be completely unexpected.
"Jacob," the Chief asks, "has Bella Swan had any contact with Edward Cullen since his departure?"
Jake shakes his head. "She told me she'd called him, but he must have a new number. The old one was disconnected. She hasn't seen or heard from him or any of the family since he left."
Chief Littlefoot's expression is determined. "Sam, has Brady turned up yet?" Sam gives a curt shake of the head. "Well, be at the Town Hall with your Pack in half an hour."
He plods slowly back toward the Town Hall and the now-infamous room seven. The Chief thinks of all that's gone on in that room. When he arrives, he smells coffee. Someone planned ahead and turned on the big urn in the back. He sighs when he sees creamer and sugar laid out with the mugs. So far this has been a shitty day, with Maya writhing in his spare room, a dead Quileute on the street and a crazed cold one, roaming the reservation.
But, at least there's coffee.
The Chief fixes his cup and carefully totes it back to the table. He sits and sips, closing his eyes as the heat and caffeine seep into his cells. All hell is fixing to break loose, and he takes just a moment to collect his thoughts and come to terms with the treachery he feels at Edward Cullen's betrayal.
The Chief knows the Upchurch family very well. He'd gone to school with the father, Philip. He'd watched the little family as they slowly prospered after the family business had flourished. Had mourned with Beth after Philip's sudden death from a heart attack.
And now this.
The Chief can't imagine what Beth is going to do without him. Henry was her whole life. He wishes she hadn't seen her only son callously tossed between two dumpsters, lying in a puddle of bloody water, with his throat all but torn away, his skull cracked like a nut.
The Elders start filing in, followed by old Quil, as usual toting his tatty notebooks, Emery at his side. When they're all seated, the chatter is nearly deafening. The Chief lets them get the anger out of their systems, and after about fifteen minutes he stands, and the voices die away. All eyes are on him as he begins to speak.
"First, I would like to express my heartfelt sorrow at Henry Upchurch's death. We are undecided as to who is to blame. Paul heard Brady's thoughts, saying that he'd smelled Edward and saw him attack a hiker, which places him in this area. Sam swears that the scent on and around the Upchurch boy's body and scene of attack does not belong to Edward Cullen."
Billy Black raises a finger and all eyes point to him. "So we have no proof that the culprit is Edward Cullen?"
The Chief explains Brady's excursion off of the reservation, and of his own conversation with Alice. "She hadn't been looking for him, so she doesn't know exactly when he went missing from her visions, but if she can't see him, he has to be here. Otherwise, she would be able to at least visualize him, which she cannot. And if we are to take Brady's word, he is in this area, and is the one who killed the hiker, where the print was left."
Billy grunts. "So, logically, Edward Cullen could be here on the res, but another vampire could be the killer. Which makes more sense to me. Then we can take Sam and Alice at their word. Don't know what to say about Brady. Maybe he didn't get a good look at the cold one who attacked the hiker?"
Several Elders nod their acceptance of this idea.
The Chief stirs his coffee absently. "Sam is upset with me because I don't take his word as the gospel truth that it's not Edward's scent present in the alley. But really, what are the odds that there are two vampires in this area, and that Edward killed the hiker but another one killed Henry Upchurch? And Sam feels betrayed by Brady, who disobeyed a direct order and left the confines of our land."
"Where is Brady now?" Billy asks.
"Several of the Pack have phased but none of them have heard his thoughts. He may be dead in his Wolf form or injured as a human."
The Elders murmur amongst themselves and Quil ruffles through his papers. The Chief holds up a hand and the room grows quiet once again. "Quil, what do you have to tell us?"
"As we discussed Sunday, the prophecies from past years are coming into sharper focus for me. I do not think Edward Cullen killed Henry Upchurch or the hiker on the trail, but this incident can be grouped with the others that I spoke to Wolf about."
"Can you show us?" the Chief says.
Several drawings are fished out of a notebook. "This past winter, I saw a young woman standing in the surf at First Beach. That's when I drew the picture of the dead swan. Then, I recalled a vision from long ago. A faceless man appeared to me in various places—the desert, the plains, big cities. I drew a picture of him in his car. He was always alone. None of the visions or pictures meant anything to me at the time, but now they seem relevant."
Quil slides a drawing to the middle of the table. It's of a lean man with untidy hair, wearing a pair of big, dark sunglasses and a ball cap. In a silver Volvo.
Billy nods. "Yup. That is Edward Cullen." He looks up at old Quil and gives him a nod of approval, something the Seer neither wants nor needs. Nor appreciates.
The Elders frown and mutter as Quil says, "I will repeat: Edward Cullen is not here." He pauses and frowns. "The Cullens are not responsible for any of our troubles. We have brought this on ourselves. Jonas Littlefoot brought it down on us.
They still look unmoved by his assertion. Quil explodes. "I was nearly killed as a young man, only to wake up in hospital with a Wolf sitting beside my bed! Ephraim Black, in Wolf form, has been my constant companion. He came to me so I could save this tribe from itself! But that's not enough for you! You are intent on destroying what you do not understand!"
The Elders look abashed but the Chief is unrepentant. Have his feathers been ruffled? Quil could care less. In a rare rebuke, he shouts, "Jonas, you are more responsible for our woes than the Cullens! Are you shifting blame upon them to deflect it from yourself?"
The Chief sags in his chair. He heaves a deep, frustrated sigh and says, very slowly, looking pointedly at Quil. "I can't tell the whole tribe what I've done. Half of them would never believe it, and the other half would be paralyzed with fear. So in order to move forward, we have to act as if I hadn't meddled in the goddamn magic. Is that clear enough for you?"
Quil throws his hands up in the air. Chief Littlefoot sits up straight, with a bit of a manic gleam in his eye. He says in a low, measured voice, "So, as Seer of the tribe, what proof do you have that Edward Cullen isn't to blame? I mean, other than the visions, some of which you received when we all had more hair than belly, and could still bend over and tie our own shoes."
"Proof? Proof?" Quil turns a withering glare upon his Chief. "I never have any proof," he says in a disparaging tone of voice. "If you want proof, you need a lawyer, not a prophet. I can only tell you what came to me in visions, with Wolf's assistance." He gazes at the animal, as usual, sitting beside him.
Several Council members quietly scoff. Quil glares at them. "This situation is complicated. Please don't be so simple as to always assume that the easiest solution points you to the truth."
"Okay," the Chief says through gritted teeth, "we'll take a vote. All in favor of sending the Wolves out to hunt down the cold one who killed Henry Upchurch and the hiker, raise your hand." All of the men present raise a hand except Quil and Billy Black.
"Why do you ask me to go into the snow and eat a poisonous herb if you don't want to listen to my prophecies?" Quil asks. His voice is full of reproach.
The Chief holds his hand up. "Call Sam in." He feels a headache coming on, a real doozy. He knows what will cure it: Fifty sleeping pills. An Elder named Tim who is sitting near the door ushers in Sam to stand before them. "The Pack has the Council's permission to find Brady. Let us know when you have located him. After he is back with us and gives us his story, we will decide what action to take."
Sam nods once. "Do not go beyond our land. We have enough trouble from the footprint left in the mud." After Sam departs, the Chief turns back to the Seer. "Are you happy with that decision, Quil?"
Quil doesn't answer. He stands up and without looking back, makes his way to the door, his arm full of notebooks that the Council can't be bothered to look at. When he takes a few steps, he turns around. "I saw one more thing. Next year, you'll need another Seer to ignore. I'll never go into the snowy mountains again."
The Chief frowns as Quil limps out. "I need to go home and check on Maya." He gets slowly to his feet. "Call me if you need me. I have to call Alice Cullen and tell her the news."
The Chief walks home and finds that Maya has been hallucinating. Carmen is beside herself. "The doctor just left. Fever is up to 115 degrees." She wrings her hands. "Has it ever been that high during a transformation before? Dr. Pierce wouldn't tell me."
The Chief shakes his head sadly. "Only once. Back when the Quileute were transforming in Ephraim Black's time, they wrote that during the manifestation of a twenty-two-year-old, his temp shot up to 114 degrees."
"What happened?"
Chief Littlefoot gazes at his niece. "He died."
Carmen sags into the bedside chair. "She's been screaming about a lost baby. I don't know what it is about. Did the man who died suffer from hallucinations as well?" Carmen's voice has grown small, as if she doesn't really know if she wants an answer to the question.
The Chief brushes his hand down Maya's hair. "I do not know." The act seems to wake his niece, who swats his hand away and grabs handfuls of the hair he touched. It's a scene of utter chaos as Maya sits up and swipes her arm across the side table, upsetting the lamp and spilling a soda cup onto her bed.
She acts like the soda is liquid fire, burning into her skin. She claws at it, shrieking like she's been set alight, as they both try to restrain her. The Chief releases her long enough to call Dr. Pierce, asking him to come give her a sedative or something to calm her down. When he hangs up the phone, he hears a banging at the door, and yanks it open to see Charlie's shocked face.
"What the hell?" He pushes past the Chief and follows the screams into the spare bedroom. His mouth falls open when he sees Maya, on her knees on the small bed, trying to tear her hair out as Carmen tries to hold her arms down and away from her head.
Charlie rushes to her bedside and sits down. He croons to her softly and gently takes her hands away from her hair. "There, now, it's okay, Maya. I'm here with you. It's okay, honey. Shhh, shhh."
Maya sees Charlie through the fog of her manifestation and whispers, "Ch-Charlie?"
"Yes, baby, it's me. Shhhh, now. It's okay."
Maya collapses onto Charlie, nearly knocking him off of the bed. The heat from her body stuns him. He continues to rub her back as she whimpers. She lowers her head and looks around suspiciously, then mutters into Charlie's ear, "The baby. He died! They took him away!" After a few minutes, Maya falls back onto the mattress, eyes glazed, hair plastered to her forehead, heat emanating off of her in waves. Charlie doesn't have any idea what she's talking about.
He decides it's time for action. Chief Swan stands. "Okay. I've been a good sport, but somebody tell me what the hell is going on. Right now. And I want to know why she isn't in the hospital. Her skin is on fire!"
Carmen and Chief Littlefoot glance at each other and then up at Charlie, who looks ready to do battle with his bare hands. Chief Littlefoot didn't grow up on an impoverished Indian reservation without learning a few tricks, though. He squares his shoulders and faces Charlie, Chief to Chief.
"What's going on is tribal business. Maya's condition would not be improved in a hospital. She is under a doctor's care. Now, I have to ask you to leave. If you refuse, I can have you forcibly removed."