Carlisle
Jacob was gone and Carlisle was almost ashamed at the inexplicable relief he felt at that. And yet, not all his worries were alleviated. If one went, another one cropped up. He sat in his study, alone, the door open three inches. A sign that any of his family was welcome to join in should they wish so.
But none came. And Carlisle was glad for it.
He did not believe he could do much to solve any predicament his children would be in given his own current state. He was scared. That was one emotion he could name. Yet he failed to see why. He never saw his children as soldiers or fighters but he knew every single one of them was capable of defending themselves and each other. His creator was not feral enough to ignore that fact. The man had shown enough restraint to stand near a hospital ER, the blood bank beside it, and scores of humans without attacking anyone but him. He could be convinced to talk.
But what would Carlisle say?
What could he say?
He was certain a sorry would not counter centuries of grief.
The sound of laughter floated up to his study and Carlisle smiled. Renesmee's laughter was infectious. She made the entire house happy with her mirth. And given that she had spent most of the day scared and sad, to hear her playing with her family was a relief beyond measure. It had taken an entire day and a one on one conversation with every single member of this family for her to understand the situation in which they had been last year. His granddaughter was an understanding child though, and quick to forgive.
Last he saw she was scaling Emmett's back to use his shoulder as a launching pad. But Bella had rushed out to put a stop to whatever Emmett-approved activity they had been indulging in.
Carlisle was pulled out of his thoughts and his back stiffened when he heard it.
The regular, rhythmic thump of a heart. Not Renesmee's but equally fast. It was associated with the soft footfalls of running paws. One of the wolves was here. A soft swoosh signified whoever it was had changed into their human form. Carlisle took a sniff, trying to figure out who it was but the person was downwind from him.
He heard the hurried pull of fabric over skin and quick footsteps.
"Hi Bella!"
Carlisle exhaled when he heard the happy, enthusiastic voice of Seth Clearwater. Whatever seemed to be triggering his anxiety was apparently specific to Jacob and not his entire pack. Bella greeted the young boy and directed him towards Carlisle's office when he asked for him.
It took a couple of minutes before the young teenager bounded up the stairs and knocked on the door.
"Please, come in, Seth," Carlisle called out.
The moment Seth entered, the dank smell of his kind filled the room. And it did not bother Carlisle in the least bit. He frowned for a moment before schooling his expression smooth.
"What can I help you with?" He asked with a genuine smile.
The boy was startled away from the paintings and the books he was admiring and Carlisle felt bad for not giving him a moment to take it all in. Despite his near-constant presence in the vicinity of their house, Seth had never been in his office before and it usually took people a moment to gather themselves.
"Oh yeah, hi doc," he didn't seem to mind though. "Sam found the smell of a vampire in a bunch of the houses. He wanted to know if it was the same one that accosted you in the hospital in the morning."
Seth offered him a pillow case. It had a red, cartoon car printed on it. Cars. He remembered the movie it was from. Carlisle had seen Emmett watching that with Renesmee on repeat. He said Renesmee loved it and wanted to watch it again and again. Esme had smiled at the lie. Their granddaughter was not in the least bit fond of it but she let Emmett use her name so that he could watch it without being heckled by Jasper.
It was popular among young kids and Carlisle idly wondered how old was this boy that had phased. He took the material from Seth, and put it to his nose, certain to smell his creator.
Edward was in his office in an instant.
"It's a different one?" he asked, his eyes wide.
Carlisle took another whiff. This was different, far too different from the strong, almost spicy scent of his creator. The smell on the pillow was more…floral in a way although it did not quite smell like any particular flower. It smelled like…forest.
Edward did not require an answer, but Carlisle spoke aloud for Seth's benefit. "It's a different scent, a different vampire."
Seth whistled as Carlisle handed the fabric back to the young boy. He took another wide-eyed look at the office but was now impatient to report the news. Carlisle reminded himself to invite the boy for a tour sometime. He hopped out and within a few moments, Carlisle heard him slip out of his clothes and phase.
Edward stood rigid for a minute, listening in before he sighed. "Jacob and Sam have their packs on it. They have found this scent all over La Push. Paul picked up your creator's scent from the hospital. They have found it around in Forks but nowhere close to the people. They had trouble differentiating the scents. They are dividing up now. Sam, Jacob and a few of the younger ones are going to look for the missing wolves and whoever is their Alpha so that they would be able to talk to him. Rest of the wolves from both the packs will be under Leah and Jared's command, hunting down the vampires."
His son looked at his face searching for something. Carlisle wasn't even sure what he wanted. He just raised an eyebrow and Edward shook his head.
"Carlisle, you know they will kill your creator if they come across him first? If you really want to talk to him, perhaps some of us should go out and look for him."
And there it was.
The unrelenting fear, the anxiety that Carlisle hadn't felt in decades. It felt like a very tangible grip on his spine and Edward balked back under its intensity.
"We aren't dividing." Carlisle's statement was final.
Edward nodded, still wide eyed at whatever he had felt in his father.
"It's going to be okay, Carlisle. We will figure something out," Edward reassured him before he turned and took his leave, going to stand beside Bella in the backyard.
Carlisle slumped back into his chair. He spent the next few hours trying to occupy himself with medical journals, papers, books. The sun slanted in through the west window and then gave way to the dim twilight. Carlisle did not bother to turn on the lights in his office, preferring the cool, blue embrace of the night. He tried to read the Bible. But he could not focus on that either. He had every word memorized and his brain supplied it even if his eyes only glazed over the paper.
The night outside had turned silver. Bella and Edward had gone to and brought back any essentials Renesmee would need for the next few weeks from the cottage and the three of them had taken up residence in Edward's room again. They were gone and back in less than ten minutes and Carlisle had spent those ten minutes fidgeting to the point that Jasper had sent in a crashing wave of calmness up at him.
He brought his focus back at the book in front of him, reading the passages. As he read through the Psalms, he tried to remember his human memories. Of standing in a corner while his father gave sermons to their small parish. There wasn't much he could remember. A few vague flashes. A gray church. A group of indistinct faces. Candles.
His church had many candles. He remembered that a lot more vividly than most other memories. Their soft yellow glow would warm the cold gray of the stone floor and walls. He tried to see if he could reach out to and find a memory of his father talking about the paragraph he was reading.
Nothing. Moments like these. Moments from the church. He had forgotten most of them. And the human memories that he did recall, were not something he wished to dwell on for too long.
A soft, sad sigh reached his ears and Carlisle was instantly on his feet. He knew the source of the sound and its cause. A pause in the soft strokes of graphite on paper gave him the confirmation he needed. He pulled out a small box from his top drawer and picked up a new eraser from it. He walked down the stairs and into the backyard at a pace just slightly more than a human's run and looked around.
His children were rough housing around. Renesmee was asleep in her room. His eyes darted into the forest and found what he was looking for. Just a few trees down from his backyard, perched on one of the highest branches, sat his wife.
A sculpture of diamond under the sun and a carving of the moonlight itself at night, she was a sight to behold. But he frowned. Her lips were down-turned and it felt like a stab to his heart to see that. That had to be fixed.
"Simp," Emmett muttered behind him and Jasper snickered when they saw what was clasped in his hands.
Carlisle ignored the good natured ribbing of his sons and crouching low, jumped as high as he could. He landed about three-fourth of the way up the first tree. From there, he took a second leap to the top of the next tree and then hopped from branch to branch.
Esme sat stretched out on one of the thinner, shorter branches near the top of the tree with her back against the trunk. Her skirt draped down and she held a small sketchbook and a pencil in her hand. She shifted just a little as Carlisle approached, raising her upper body up and away from the trunk so Carlisle could slide in behind her. He stretched out his legs too and she made herself comfortable on his lap.
Carlisle worried for a second that the branch would not take both their weight but the tree held steady and after a moment the two relaxed, Esme now leaning against his hard chest instead of the tree. She smiled up at him when he slid the eraser in her hand.
A satisfied smile graced his lips too. Her frown was gone.
Carlisle hummed, happy. Even if he died this instant, he would die a happy man. He had chased away whatever had bothered his wife. He had made her smile. Surely there couldn't be a better purpose to life than that.
This time it was Edward who snickered and Carlisle shook his head. He didn't say anything though. They enjoyed ribbing him when it came to him and Esme but he knew his sons were equally committed to their mates and he could not be more proud of that fact. They were good kids, and good men.
He looked over Esme's shoulder at what she was sketching when she absently handed him the plastic wrapper the eraser came in. He pocketed it and looked. It was a shaded sketch of the view from the treetop. The forest, the occasional bird that flew by, the river stretching lazily across the entire scene. It was new perspective. A beautiful perspective. The sparse cloud did not do much to cover the moon shining brightly and Esme had used clever strokes of the pencil to illuminate the entire scene with its glow. Right now she was using the very tip of the eraser he had brought her to remove a sliver of shading from one side of the moon she had drawn.
He smiled again. Esme was a perfectionist when it came to certain things and her sketches were one of those. No one would have cared if the moon was shaded an extra millimeter. Carlisle certainly wouldn't have. Anything his wife created was perfection to him. But if the night before her told her the moon was not a full moon tonight, it would not be a full moon on her sketch either.
She first corrected the error on the moon she had sketched. And then also on its reflection in the river below.
Once done, and happy with her sketch, she handed the eraser back to him. With a care only Esme could muster, she placed a translucent sheet over her sketch and then shut the book down. She leaned back more into him and resting her head on his shoulder, looked up at him. Carlisle silenced her soft 'thank you' with a chaste kiss to her supple cheeks. His hands tightened around her waist and he pulled her closer still.
They sat in companionable silence until Esme looked towards their backyard. He followed her eyes.
Bella and Emmett were wrestling, as were Jasper and Edward. Alice and Rosalie sat on the steps laughing at their antics. Esme's worried eyes were trained on Bella as Emmett came hurtling down on her and she fought back, her hair flying all over the place.
"She won't get hurt, will she?" Esme worried and Carlisle could not stop a laugh.
Esme frowned at him and Carlisle hurried to explain himself. He wasn't mocking her worry. He never would mock her so.
"Look," he said, gesturing at the two pairs wrestling.
It took Esme a moment to see it. Bella and Emmett were fighting exactly as Jasper and Edward were, their movements same down to the even the extent of their ducks and attacks.
"They aren't fighting," he said. "They are training her. Edward is reading Emmett's mind and mimicking his attack and Jasper is showing Bella how to counter such an attack."
"All right, he knows," Edward laughed, jumping out of his crouch. "We can drop it."
He and Jasper separated and started instructing Bella on how to fight instead of demonstrating it.
"Does it bother you?" Esme asked, looking back up at him and Carlisle heard the questions she did not voice.
Does it bother him that his children were preparing to fight, possibly kill his creator?
He shook his head.
"They mean the best," he relented. "And sooner or later Bella would have to learn how to fight. Now is as good a time as any."
As much as he hated any interaction coming to a fight, he knew it was a necessary skill all his children needed to possess. He remembered the exasperated alarm in Aro's face when the Volturi King came to know Carlisle had never learned how to fight and had forced him to take a few lessons from the Volturi guards before his departure from Volterra.
It was not something he could claim he excelled at. But he knew enough to survive if it came down to it. An irate Siobhan had trained Edward and Tanya and her sisters had taught Rosalie, Emmett and Edward further. With Jasper's arrival, their skills had developed into full force for instead of teaching them his own fighting style like all the previous instructors, Jasper had taken the time to assess the best techniques for each and trained all of the family enough that they could each develop and flourish into what was most suited for them.
The night sky rang out with howls and Carlisle's grip on Esme tightened. He looked down and caught Edward's eyes. The sound was pained and with so many wolves howling, it created a bone-chilling cacophony throughout the forest. The sound was only getting louder with each passing second.
"Carlisle!" Edward called out.
Carlisle gathered Esme into his arms before he jumped down and sprinted the short distance to his family. He let his wife hop down onto her own two feet and then turned to his son.
"Edward what is it?" he asked.
"Leah." Edward's brows were furrowed with concentration. "Jared. Paul. And two more wolves. They're all injured. Severely. They want to know if you would be willing to help them."
"Of course." That was not even a question.
Esme had already sprinted into the house.
"Emmett, Jasper, Rosalie, help me get the beds down," she ordered her kids as she bolted into one of the rooms. "It'll be easier for Carlisle if he doesn't have to rush from room to room. Alice, Bella, clear out the dining room."
Edward rushed out to meet the wolves and to let them know that Carlisle would be willing to help.
The patriarch of the house rushed into his office to get the emergency medical kit he kept in his bag. He would help them. That was never a question. But something else weighed heavily on his mind, the question hammering away in his head and his ears despite the racket created by the wolves.
What had the wolves come across that had managed to injure five of them in one go?