Disclaimer: I do not own Twilight.
Author's note: Listen to Battlestar Galactica's "Something Dark is Coming" composed by Bear McCreary. Even the title is perfect, yeesh.
The silence permeated all around her in a way that was louder than Bella, all of nine years old, had ever heard. It was so quiet. All was still and life, with all its movements and noise, was for whatever reason, gone. The silence seemed to last an eternity when at last, far away at first, then closer and closer, sirens began to sound in the night.
"Mommy?"
She jolted upright, waking and cursing herself for falling asleep. Damn it!
Three days. Bella's eyes had remained open for the last three days without taking a break until now. Whenever she faltered...whenever her body got the best of her and her blink lasted a second longer than it should have, she would see flames. Or she would imagine the flames. Or...at this point Bella couldn't distinguish between what she knew she saw and what she thought she saw. She'd long felt the pull to close her eyes but had done a fine job resisting. But now, the physical signs of her exhaustion were impossible to hide from those around her.
"Miss Swan," said Mr. Banner in a low voice. "Please stay for a few minutes after class."
Bella was so tired she didn't hear her teacher at first. Were it not for Edward nudging her softly she might have ignored him all together. She nodded and walked to the equipment cabinet to return her supplies. To her surprise, Jessica opened the cabinet door for her.
"Thanks," Bella mumbled, too tired to generate her usual 'fuck off' mask. Her mind wandered again while she carefully put away her things. She couldn't avoid sleep forever. Unlike her immortal friends, Bella's body contained living tissue and nerves that needed to rest. Her gifts did not take away from her humanity...a blessing usually, but now a curse. If she was a vampire, she couldn't help thinking, she wouldn't need to sleep. She would be able to keep her eyes open. She would be able to keep her mind focused on the here and now.
Did she really start all those fires? Why not, she answered herself for the thousandth time. She'd long been able to light the spark without ever laying eyes on it. If she could incinerate a box and a living creature's heart without seeing them, why couldn't she be the mysterious arsonist that has the town on edge? Did it really matter that she was usually asleep during the fires? Fire was such a deep-rooted part of Bella now. All the hard work of containing it...what if all that did was make it so easy to turn on and off that her body could do it automatically even in her sleep?
"Bella, do you know why I asked you to stay today?"
"What?" Bella shook her head and tried to concentrate on Mr. Banner's face. He just asked her something.
He sighed and leaned back on his desk. Bella looked around and realized the class had already emptied. When had that happened?
"Bella, you fell asleep in my class twice this week. This assignment," he pointed to the paper in his hand, "is illegible. And according to your other teachers, this behavior goes on in their classrooms as well."
Bella stayed quiet. Her experience with teachers was that they'd be satisfied if you nodded a few times, admitted fault and apologized. God knows she'd been reprimanded enough in her younger days when she involuntarily burned a strand of some kid's hair or burned a hole in someone's jeans. Besides, she couldn't exactly explain to her well-meaning teacher why her body was screaming for rest.
"I'm very sorry, Mr. Banner," she said quietly.
Her teacher sighed. "See that this doesn't happen again. In any of your classes."
She nodded and internally wondered how she'd ever fulfill that promise. She couldn't stay awake forever. But there was no way she'd let herself fall into a deep slumber either…
"Are you going to get that?"
Huh?
"Your phone," he sighed dramatically but no sooner had he pointed to her pocket then it started ringing again. And again. And again. Bella looked down at her screen, grateful for any distraction.
Liar, liar. Pants on fire!
She read the message again, unsure what to make of it. The number, a Seattle area code, was not recognizable.
Liar, liar. Pants on fire!
The same message landed in her inbox. Again and again and again. 6 so far just while she stood there to read over the phone. She turned off the ringer.
"Mr. Banner, may I please go to my next class now?" She asked shakily.
He paused only briefly before he pulled out a pass from his desk and gave it to her. "You've been my top student all year, Bella," he said gently. "Please take care of yourself so that you remain there."
On her way to the cafeteria, Bella decided to take a chance and look at her phone again. Over the last hour she had lost count of the number of times it buzzed in her pocket and had finally given up and turned even the vibrator off just to stop the looks her classmates kept giving her.
39 more messages.
Liar, liar. Pants on fire.
Bella was about to slam her locker shut but a diminutive (and a surprisingly strong one to any onlookers) prevented its close with a super strength hand.
"Why does my favorite human look as if the world were about to end?" Alice asked, leaning back into Jasper's chest.
"What?"
Alice gave her a funny look before turning to Jasper. "I thought humans started losing their hearing later in life."
Jasper smiled lovingly for Alice's sake, but kept his gentle, concerned eyes on Bella who sighed and tried, to no avail, to tone down her mounting panic at the messages in her phone and the overall weariness that impregnated every inch of her body. Jasper cocked his eyebrow as if to say, you think that'll fool me?
"Bella..." Jasper started. His worry washed over Alice who stopped smiling when she saw how exhausted their friend appeared. She gingerly took her hand while Jasper wrapped a strong arm around Bella's shoulders and walked with her down the hall, ignoring the curious looks from their classmates at the display.
"We promised Rosalie to look out for you," Jasper sighed. "She's going to kill us, you realize that."
Rosalie, whose hunting frequency had increased dramatically over the last couple of months, would be returning tonight. The Cullens' usual hunting ground was teeming with life, but even it couldn't sustain Rosalie's ballooning frenzy without drawing attention or seriously affecting its population. So Rosalie had little choice but to travel further and longer to get her fill.
"Trouble sleeping is hardly life threatening, Jazz," Bella mumbled. But she worried over Rosalie's return as well. Bella would be unable to fake her slumber with the blonde, who would see through whatever fibs Bella made up and would probably throw a fit when she found out her reasons for not sleeping.
Hell, all of them would throw a fit if they found out. She couldn't avoid them forever after all, least of all Esme.
The three of them joined Edward at their usual table after they bought themselves some lunch; a necessity for Bella, a performance for the Cullens. The most melancholy member of the family looked even more subdued than usual. The purple circles under Edward's eyes looked more pronounced than Bella had ever seen. Despite her own fatigue, she felt a flash of worry for him as she wondered what was keeping him off his balance.
Alice and Jasper, as they had done the past two days, kept the conversation flowing between the three of them, with Edward occasionally pitching in his two cents. Alice, horrified that Bella had yet to start thinking about her prom dress, was mouthing off in shock when the tell-tale signs of a vision appeared on her face. The girl was so good at transitioning out of them, Bella barely blinked when she picked up where she left off, making plans for a massive shopping trip. But a few minutes later, Bella picked up on an unmistakable gloom that had suddenly descended over Alice and Jasper. Their faces flashed with anger.
"What is it?" Bella whispered worriedly. "Are Rosalie and Emmett ok?"
"They're fine," Alice said quickly. "Nothing's wro-"
"She should know," Edward interrupted. "Or she'll be blindsided by it."
"Edward," Alice hissed. "I don't-"
"He's right, hon." Jasper put a hand on his wife's. "Let her listen."
"What's going on?" Bella sat up and fought the panic from rising up her throat. Pictures of Rosalie in dire straits flooded her mind. But what could harm an immortal? The wolves? Jacob?!
Jasper shook his head. He met her eyes and guided her questioning gaze across the cafeteria about fifty feet away...where Mike, Jessica, and Lauren sat.
Bella's ears were nothing like the Vampires'. While they could hear, literally, everything in the school without thinking about it, Bella had to tell her senses to focus. She had to ask the air in the room to deliver the sounds she wanted to hear, had to work with it to parse out what she wanted from the noise surrounding it. It was not a difficult task, but it did not come naturally to her. Listening to her friends' soft, lightning fast whispers was the only aspect of this skill that she truly had down automatically.
So Bella extended her hearing, weaving through talks of tonight's big basketball game, prom, parents' latest arguments, and troubles with assignments until she found and latched onto Jessica's annoying voice.
"...Mr. Swan kicked me out pretty fast when I mentioned it. He was kind of a jerk actually."
"Duh," Mike tisked. "His wife did die in the fire. You could've been a little gentler about it."
"Oh really?" Jessica sounded annoyed and a little embarrassed. "What would you have said, smartass?"
"'Mr. Swan, why is it that your daughter is the sole survivor of a fire that killed hundreds of people, and is the fact that she's also a raging pyromaniac have something to do with said fire?'" He blurted before he broke down snorting. "Oh I would have so asked it like that!" He laughed again.
Lauren drummed her fingers on the table, eying her friends with a mixture of disbelief and irritation. "It doesn't matter. He proved us right didn't he?" she said smugly. "By not giving us a clear answer, it's obvious she had something to do with it."
"Why do we care again?" Mike sighed, looking bored.
"Are you really that stupid?" Lauren asked. "Kyle's house was next door to mine, dumbass. And your parent's store? And Jessica's mom worked at the Rite Aid before it went down. She could've killed any of us!"
"Yeah but how do we prove it?" Jessica whined. "Her dad'll just keep protecting her."
"Her dad's not the only cop in town," Lauren said. "I bet he wouldn't be able to keep things hush hush if that teacher called the school. What was her name again?"
"Mrs. Cross," Jessica answered. "That's a great idea! Crap, she wouldn't shut up about her. I hope our teachers have shorter memories than that."
"Ditto," Mike agreed. "Hey, you guys coming to the game tonight? Coach said I'll be starting!"
"Wouldn't miss it!" Jessica gushed. "I even made the girls do a cheer just for you..."
Bella's stomach tightened so painfully she felt sick. How? How?!
"They're smarter than I gave them credit for," Edward said. "I believe they followed the same trail Alice did."
"Those articles are all public record, Bells," Alice whispered. "And it doesn't take a genius to find your old teachers in a school yearbook..."
"It doesn't mean anything," Jasper added. "Nobody's gonna believe anything they say. They'll find the arsonist and this will all blow over."
Except...finding the arsonist will confirm everything. Lauren's words came back to the forefront of her mind. Three fires with a connection to her three least favorite people? That couldn't be a coincidence. And what of the other blazes? What about those incidents came back to Bella? For there had to be something. There had to-
BOOM!
A wave of movement in the big room as everyone scrambled from their seats. Then confusion, chatter, surprise, panic. Bella's reaction time, dismal from lack of sleep, kept her still at her seat though Alice, Jasper, and even Edward had stood protectively around her the second it happened.
There was nothing to protect her from however. The awful noise came from outside the school. As the students and teacher came to this same realization, everyone in the room rushed to the windows in a flurry of movement. Bella, adrenaline coursing through her veins, joined them at the far end.
Black smoke billowed from the forest adjacent to their school. The fire generated by the explosion was small but strong, burning brightly through the foliage dangerously close to the building. The sirens sounded almost immediately from the other side of town, and it was with a stomach-churning feeling that Bella realized the trucks wouldn't get here before the flames did. Before she could think of anything else, before she could really stop and let it sink that she had probably set off this explosion, that she had set off all the explosions of the past three months, that she was exactly what her father had suspected all along, and that she had killed, once again, an innocent human being...before Bella had time to digest any of this, she quickly and expertly tempered the flames until they all but disappeared by the time the fire trucks thudded to a stop on front of the school.
Surrounded by the din of the excitable students at the close call they all experienced, Bella backed herself away into a corner far away from the windows. Automatically, she pulled her phone from her pocket.
102 new messages. The same one, every one...except the last.
Destruction be your only goal
For you to vent your jealous wrath
On gentle life with caring soul
And human victims to console:
As you are none, but psychopath.
She looked up and her eyes met Jessica's. The girl stared her down, as did Lauren and Mike next to her. Further down, Edward too watched her carefully, eyes veering to the phone clutched tightly in her shaking hands.
Who was sending these?! Bella's anger burned so brightly her phone should've melted right then and there. But it didn't. Instead, she caught a light on the screen in her peripheral vision. Another message.
Fire! Fire! Ferocious fire!
You restless wall of flame.
Fire! Fire! Roaring higher!
Your fury to never tame.
Where were Jessica's hands? Did she just send that? Or Lauren? Edward? She looked back at the boy whose behavior bewildered her since she met him. He could text at vampire speeds without her ever seeing. He could do it right in front of her and she would never know. He could...
Another message.
7. 7. 5.
Bella looked at the numbers again, confused.
7. 7. 5.
Again the texts poured in.
7. 7. 5.
7. 7. 5.
7. 7. 5.
What did all this mean?! What is 775? WHO was sending her these? And how did they know it was Bella starting the fires before even she did?!
"Bella!" Alice appeared in front of her. "What's wrong with your phone?"
"Nothing," Bella lied smoothly and put her phone away. "Is anyone hurt out there?"
"No," she whispered. "Nice job putting it out by the way. That was kind of close though. Carlisle will give you a talking to about that. But nobody noticed a thing."
Unbelievable. They were too blinded to see. All of them. Too blinded by their love for her to see that she was no less a monster than she was on that day with the poor squirrel. Or the day hundreds of people died in an instant. Here in Forks, homes and livelihoods were ruined because of her. A life, Harry Clearwater, was in ashes because of her. The school could be next. Or the Cullens' home. Or her father's.
Her father's home...
"I need to go," Bella gulped out the words as she swallowed rising bile. "Exhausted. Gonna sleep for the rest of the day."
"Ok," Alice replied quizzically, obviously trying and failing to see her future. What would she see if she could, Bella wondered briefly before the panic overwhelmed her senses once again.
She left her car in the lot, choosing instead to run as fast as she could across town on her own two impossibly fast legs. She made it in less than a minute. In open ground, Bella was unstoppable after all. She skipped right past her shed for she had no intention of sleeping like she told Alice. The house stood before her, tall and quiet, but Bella's heart thudded in her chest like never before.
The key lay in the bottom of her bag pack, never before used. She pulled it out now and inserted it into the lock of her father's front door.
The number on the door read 775.
Noise from the TV.
Past the entryway, into the living room...signs of a scuffle.
A broken vase.
An overturned armchair.
The patio door glass shattered.
Banged up and laying on its side, a wheelchair, one wheel still spinning.
Charlie on the ground, face down, his hands in his own cuffs behind him.
"Charlie!" Bella cried out and ran forward.
Then everything turned to darkness.
Author's note: Verses from 'Fire Ferocious' by Mark R. Slaughter.