28. Alternatives
I couldn't look away from Bella. For the first time in days, a faint blush colored her cheeks. I smelled Jacob's wolf stench, but didn't bother to glance at him or even listen to his mind. All I could see was Bella's lips curving into a smile. All I could hear was her heart, responding to his visit. It was thumping louder and harder, and I swore I could almost feel her pulse against my skin, even from where I stood.
Her distraction with the mutt made her lose her fight to keep her food down. As with every other time she'd eaten since the day I'd left her alone on the island, Bella paled and grimaced. Knowing what was coming, she looked for Rosalie and the bowl she had ready.
Damn. I realized that, though I'd told myself not to, I had hoped anyway. My legs gave out, and I sank to my knees.
"Sorry about that," Bella said to him when she was done.
Ah, she was apologizing to him for getting sick? Always, always, she took the blame upon herself! Afraid to touch her, but needing to anyway, I groaned and rested my head against her legs. Bella's soft hand brushed across my cheek, and I fought against the sobs that wanted to shake me again. She was the sick one, she was the one who was dying because of what I had done in my carelessness, and yet - true to her generous and caring nature - she was the one who was trying to sooth me.
"I'm so glad you came to see me today, Jacob," she said with warmth in her voice.
Another groan escaped me at her words, and I clutched at the blanket which covered her. Even if she wouldn't acknowledge it, I was certain she knew how little time she had left. Of course she would want to see the mutt she loved before she died. No doubt she thought she would convince him to love the thing as well.
And why not? Everyone else was supporting her choice. Though Carlisle argued with her, his refusal to act essentially had the same effect. Why should Jacob be any different? Hadn't he approved of the other risks to her life? He was the one she had gone motorcycle riding with, and never once had he thought to suggest she even wear a helmet! He was the one who had told her about cliff-diving as a recreational sport. But even through those risks, her life had only ever been truly threatened by me. Indeed, she had taken those risks because of me!
"What is it, Bella?"
She didn't answer him. Instead, she continued to caress my cheek for a moment before saying, "Help me up, Rose?"
A low snarl rumbled in my sister's chest, but when Bella insisted, "Please, Rose?" she acquiesced. Bella's body shifted away from me as my sister helped her to stand.
"No. Don't get up," Jacob whispered.
"I'm answering your question," she snapped.
I tried to be glad that at least he was acknowledging her frailty and argued with myself. Yes, he had helped her to risk her life, but when the risk had had anything to do with vampires, he had done the opposite. He'd tried everything he could to win her from me, to protect her from me, to convince her that becoming what I was was a mistake. He might be reckless, but at least he knew the real threat when he saw it.
Rosalie pulled Bella to her feet, and without her support, I sank into the cushion where she'd been sitting. I buried my face in the place where she'd been, seeking the residual heat of her body, trying in vain to soak up even a tiny portion of her gentle warmth. Instead, I breathed in the scent of her that was permeating the couch.
I didn't need to look through his eyes to know what he was seeing, but I couldn't help hearing his reaction. He gasped in shock, his heart jolted. He made a choked noise, a kind of strangled groan in the back of his throat as he fought against the realization of Bella's condition. Through Jasper, I was aware of both his fear and his disgust.
No. It's not possible. ...can't be that pregnant. But she is!
Though he was fighting it, his mind conjured an image of Bella's naked body entwined with mine. The two of us making love was definitely not something he wanted to imagine, and he had known that had been our plan, but what seemed to make it worse for him was knowing that we had. The proof was in front of him in the form of Bella's distorted body.
...don't wanna see this... something I hate growing in the body of the girl I love... bad enough, but far, far worse... it's sucking her life from her to feed its own... it's no baby; it's a monster, just like its father. I always knew he would kill her!
Even as the thought flowed through Jacob's mind, I felt a rage overtake me. He was right, of course, and I had always known it, too. Nevertheless, hearing the accusation in his mind came close to unhinging my own. I was on my feet without having made the decision to rise, and my muscles trembled as I stared down at him. He was kneeling on the floor as I had been and would have been an easy target had I given in to the desire to pound his self-righteous words right out of his head.
I saw myself in his mind as he glared up at me. Despite their furtive glances, my family had, for the most part, been avoiding really looking at me or meeting my gaze. Jacob felt no such constraints and stared right back into my eyes. I had fed only a few days ago, and they should still have been an amber at the least, if not the bright gold of our wedding day, but my stress and grief had leached all of the color from them, leaving my eyes as black and dead-looking as a shark's. It seemed rather fitting for the world's best predator.
Mastering my desire to end him right then and there, I snarled, "Outside, Jacob."
He rose swiftly to his feet. His hands trembling with the wolf that wanted to burst forth, he nodded his willingness and said, "Let's do this."
Emmett had never trusted the wolves and, despite our cooperation that spring, still held a grudge against the big grey one, Paul. Jasper had already been aware of Jacob's murderous rage before he had entered out house, and he felt the pain and fear and disgust rolling off the wolf as he saw what I had done to the girl we both loved. My brothers came to my defense, knowing how close he had come to attacking me at our wedding, and that was when Bella had still been glowing and vibrant with health, before I had planted the seed of her destruction.
Nu-uh! Stupid mutt thinks he can just waltz in here and attack my brother? I don't think so!
Got your back, Edward. Shall we send this dog away with his tail between his legs, or just remove his legs for him?
...my pack'll clean up my scraps when they tear me apart? ...don't really care so long's I get to rip him up first! ...huh, don't really wanna kill girls, even filthy leech girls... plenty here to kill without them, if the others don't kill me first. ...might make an exception for that blonde, though...
"No," Bella said as she saw the potential for a deadly fight between us. The demon within her threw off her already dubious balance, and she staggered as she reached for me. Rosalie hovered protectively, her arms extended in case Bella should fall, but she caught herself on my arm. Her eyes were wide and full of fear, and her heartbeat increased in speed until it fluttered and thumped wildly.
"I just need to talk to him."
Bella needed to calm down! However much I might like to, I had no intention of attacking him. I needed his help, and if anything could save her at this point, it was the werewolf who wanted me dead. I brushed my fingers against her silky cheek. It may not have turned pink with a swirl of blood like I was used to, but her skin was still as soft and smooth as ever.
Trying to convince her that neither of us would harm the other, I said, "Don't strain yourself. Please rest. We'll both be back in just a few minutes."
She stared into my eyes for a moment, searching for - and apparently finding - reassurance. She nodded her acceptance and sank wearily back toward the couch. Rosalie caught her and guided her into her place, tucking a blanket around her legs. Bella looked toward Jacob and said sternly, "Behave. And then come back."
...not gonna promise anything today.
He didn't answer, but simply turned to follow me as I strode from the house.
...wasn't that hard to separate him from his coven, now was it? ...guess he'll know when I'm ready to attack him, which means I'm gonna have to make that decision very quickly...
"I'm not ready for you to kill me yet, Jacob Black," I muttered. "You'll have to have a little patience."
...as if I care about his schedule. "Patience isn't my specialty."
I could feel an echo of the fire in his bones and knew the wolf in him was begging to be allowed to pounce upon my unprotected back. He was holding the urge back, but it would only be a matter of time before he lost control of his form. I paced quickly down the long drive away from my house with the angry werewolf practically tripping on my heels. When we were beyond where my family could hear us, I stopped.
I felt my control slipping away as I tried to come up with the words that needed to be said. He had to save her! Bella had to live; that was what was important, what had always been important. It was why I had left her the year before. It was why I had allowed my family to fight the army without me. It was why I had tried - albeit not very hard - to convince her to choose him when she finally admitted to us both that she loved him. Bella could not be allowed to die! The resolve to save her in whatever way I could firmed within me, and I spun to face the boy who was my last hope.
An expression of shock crossed his features as he took in the look on my face. My barely contained composure had failed me, and if it were still possible, I would have had tears streaming from my eyes. I ran a shaky hand across them, but there was nothing to wipe away.
How could I form the words I needed to say? Would they even do any good? I had very recently been reminded of exactly how stubborn my Bella was on the night we had finally made love a second time. Over the past week since we'd come back home, that knowledge had been confirmed over and over as she foiled every one of both my and my father's attempts at persuasion and reason.
Well, what I was about to suggest was far from reasonable. If my plan from the previous day had been reprehensible, surely this one was only slightly less shameful. It was just as painful for me to try and imagine the wolf with my wife as it had been for him to imagine her with me. I loved her more than anything, more than my own worthless life. Even if I was alive, what meaning would my life have without her in it? The wolf could save her, if I could just convince him to try. I opened my mouth to say the words, but nothing would come out.
The shock on his face faded and was replaced by one of dread and grief. He found his voice before I found mine. "It's killing her, right? She's dying."
...happening too fast! ...lost her so many times, in so many ways... even if she was never mine to lose. This wasn't my fault!
As if he had spoken the accusation out loud, I felt the truth in his words. "My fault," I agreed in a whisper. Of course it was my fault.
What had I been thinking? Vampires weren't supposed to mate with humans! We were made to kill them, not to love them. Surely there was a reason why they were our prey, why those few who did fall for a human turned them before mating with them, why it had taken the Denali sister centuries of practice to not kill the human men they loved, why the predator I'd killed in Seattle had killed every woman he'd bedded. Vampires weren't compatible with human life. We were a different species. Lions and lambs simply weren't meant to fall in love.
And I had dared to think that God had forgiven my sins! Surely there could be no greater punishment than giving a man exactly what he wanted. Surely falling in love with a human and then slowly watching her die was proof that I could never atone for the murders I had committed. Surely giving in to the temptation to love her had only added to my sins. For a moment I thought it would have been better if I had given in to my monstrosity her first day in school, rather than force her to suffer this slow, starving death.
Unable to support myself, I fell to my knees and gripped the dirt with my fingers. It was all I could do not to start screaming, but when I spoke again, my voice was a mere whisper. "Yes. Yes, it's killing her."
...want a fight, not an execution. Where's his smug superiority now? Wait a minute, this is ridiculous... "So why hasn't Carlisle done anything? He's a doctor right?"
Sighing, I gained a hold on my pain. It wasn't important, didn't matter. Only Bella's life mattered. I raised my head to look at the boy who had always saved Bella and explained, "She won't let us."
...Oh, ugh. Jeez. Of course she'd want to die for the monster's spawn. That's so Bella.
"You know her so well," I acknowledged, bitterly. "How quickly you see... I didn't see. Not in time. She wouldn't talk to me on the way home, not really. I thought she was frightened - that would be natural. I thought she was angry with me for putting her through this, for endangering her life. Again. I never imagined what she was really thinking, what she was resolving. Not until my family met us at the airport and she ran right into Rosalie's arms. Rosalie's!" I exclaimed in fury. "And then I heard what Rosalie was thinking. I didn't understand until I heard that. Yet you understand after one second..."
I groaned. As if I had needed more proof that the wolf belonged with her and I didn't, he showed his understanding of my mate within a heartbeat, where I'd had to have Bella's reasons practically spelled out for me.
"Just back up a second. She won't let you. Did you ever notice that she's exactly as strong as a normal hundred-and-ten-pound human girl? How stupid are you vamps? Hold her down and knock her out with drugs."
Shocked to hear my own plan repeated back to me, I whispered, "I wanted to. Carlisle would have..." I trailed off. My father had been all for removing the thing, was still trying to persuade her to allow it, but when Bella had convinced him that doing so was murder, he had been unwilling to proceed. At least, not until and unless she gave her permission.
...noble murderers? There's a first...
"No. Not noble. Her bodyguard complicated things."
...oh. That's what Blondie's up to. What's it to her? ...the beauty queen want Bella to die so bad?
"Maybe. Rosalie doesn't look at it quite that way." I shook my head, frustrated. Rosalie had been jealous of Bella from the start, and had been willing to kill her to protect our family, but her actions didn't feel malicious to me, nor to Jasper. Selfish, yes, but hateful? No.
"So take the blonde out first," he said harshly. I saw him imagine me tearing my sister apart with a wicked grin on my face. "Your kind can be put back together, right? Turn her into a jigsaw and take care of Bella."
He didn't see us as a family and couldn't know that - despite all of our arguments and differences - I loved my sister, and she loved me. But to hear the mutt talk so callously of attacking her wasn't the worst part. The worst part was: if I had thought that plan would work, I may just have done so, would probably already have done so. The physical damage would be easily fixed - although she would surely have been furious at the thin scars that would have been left - but the emotional damage an attack of that kind would have caused my family would've been irreparable.
Even so, Jacob regarded me as a monster already - and I was - so what difference would one more monstrous action have made, so long as Bella lived? Giving him an excuse that he would understand, I said, "Emmett and Esme are backing her up. Emmett would never let us... and Carlisle won't help me with Esme against it..."
My voice faded away as I thought of the look on Carlisle's face as he denied my request. He'd known the consequences of his refusal, and I'd seen how heavily they'd weighed on him, but he had to consider not just his own actions and how they would affect me and Bella, but also how it would have harmed his mate. How it would have harmed the rest of the family. The grief in his eyes had been clear, and I saw now that he knew there wasn't any way that he could save all of us. Any actions he took would destroy our family.
Bella had to be convinced to change her mind. That was the only way to keep us whole.
"You should have left her with me," he growled.
"Yes," I sighed. I should have tried harder to convince her to go to him! After she'd spent the night crying for him in my arms, I had known how much she loved him. I chose to ignore the fact that she claimed to love me more. It could have been enough if she had let it. She could have stayed human and had the child she now wanted so desperately.
...should have thought about that before he knocked her up with the life-sucking monster...
If I'd had any idea that it had been possible, didn't he think I would have taken action to prevent it? Probably not, I realized. He had never understood how much I loved her. He thought me a selfish creature - and, again, I was - and wanted Bella only for my own pleasures with no consideration of hers, but it was her pleasure I'd enjoyed as much as my own. For a moment, my mind was overwhelmed with the memory of the pleasure we'd shared on the island together. How desperately I wanted to make love with her again, even now!
"We didn't know," I tried to explain. "I never dreamed. There's never been anything like Bella and I before. How could we know that a human was able to conceive a child with one of us - "
"When the human should get ripped to shreds in the process?" he interrupted me.
That had been what he'd believed would happen our wedding night, and with good reason. "Yes. They're out there, the sadistic ones, the incubus, the succubus. They exist. But the seduction is merely a prelude to the feast. No one survives." I shook my head in horror at the memory of just how close his belief had come to being reality.
...like he's any different... The revulsion was plain in his voice when he spoke again. "I didn't realize they had a special name for what you are."
"Even you, Jacob Black, cannot hate me as much as I hate myself."
Wrong! He imagined, vividly, himself as a wolf, ripping my head off and throwing it into a fire.
"Killing me now doesn't save her."
"So what does?"
There was only one thing. Him. He could save her. "Jacob, you have to do something for me."
"The hell I do, parasite!"
"For her?"
That set him back slightly, but seemed to anger him further. His teeth clenched together and he growled, "I did everything I could to keep her away from you. Every single thing. It's too late."
"You know her, Jacob. You connect to her on a level that I don't even understand. You are a part of her, and she is part of you. She won't listen to me, because she thinks I'm underestimating her. She thinks she's strong enough for this..." My throat closed as the memory of Bella caressing her bruised stomach with a proud smile filled my mind. She, the most frail and fragile human I'd ever met, believed herself to be strong enough to mother a monster. And why not? She had married one! She didn't see it, but Jacob did. I insisted, "She might listen to you."
"Why would she?" ...never has before...
I lurched to my feet, determined to make him save her. I had to convince him that he could convince her! She wanted a monster's baby, well, he could give her one!
...can vampires lose their minds?
I saw the way I looked to him, the way I'd looked in Alice's visions. My eyes were black and wild, and my expression deranged. I looked like a crazy person. "Maybe. I don't know. It feels like it."
I'd never met an insane vampire before, but if I wasn't, then surely I was about as close to madness as it was possible to come. Watching Bella happily starve to death had me more frantic than I'd been when James had had her. Bella's impending death while I stood by and did nothing felt worse than when I'd believed her already to have committed suicide because I'd left. At least then, I'd had an end to my pain in sight: my own death. This pain, coupled with what I was about to ask, was just growing, getting worse with each passing second.
"I have to try to hide this in front of her, because stress makes her more ill. She can't keep anything down as it is. I have to be composed; I can't make it harder." I shook my head, since I was failing that, too. "But that doesn't matter now. She has to listen to you!"
He eyed me skeptically. "I can't tell her anything you haven't. What do you want me to do? Tell her she's stupid? She probably already knows that. Tell her she's going to die? I bet she knows that, too."
"You can offer her what she wants."
A hint of confusion crossed his face. ...part of the crazy?
"I don't care about anything but keeping her alive," I insisted to us both. Bella was mine! But what good would keeping her from him do me when she was dead? "If it's a child she wants, she can have it. She can have half a dozen babies. Anything she wants."
His eyebrows drew together, and I knew he didn't understand what I was trying to tell him. If I had to spell it out for him, so be it.
"She can have puppies, if that's what it takes."
It took a second for my words to sink in, but when they did, his mouth dropped open in shock.
As soon as I knew he understood, I pressed him, "But not this way! Not this thing that's sucking the life from her while I stand there helpless! Watching her sicken and waste away. Seeing it hurting her."
I gasped at the memory of her pain-filled face while the demon I'd planted bruised her from within. But just like when I'd bruised her, she dismissed her own safety. I had learned from my mistake, but the demon within her just kept adding to the bruises, and as its strength grew, it would continue to hurt her worse and worse.
"You have to make her see reason, Jacob. She won't listen to me anymore. Rosalie's always there, feeding her insanity - encouraging her. Protecting her. No, protecting it. Bella's life means nothing to her."
A garbled sound came from him and his eyes were bugging out. ...What?! Have a baby with me?! How? ...giving her up? Or think she won't mind being shared?
I could hear the revulsion in his mental tone, but also the longing. If she were willing, so would he be, I was certain. "Whichever. Whatever keeps her alive."
"That's the craziest thing you've said, yet."
"She loves you," I insisted. Though the words tore at me as they always had, the pain they caused was nothing compared with the knowledge that I was killing her.
"Not enough."
"She's ready to die to have a child. Maybe she'd accept something less extreme."
His lips curled in disgust. "Don't you know her at all?"
He was right. He connected with her and understood her so well, while I had always been left floundering. I'd considered myself a fairly insightful person before meeting the one person who's mind I couldn't hear. I wondered if, without my gift, I'd have been as clueless about everyone I met, or if it was just her.
"I know, I know. It's going to take a lot of convincing. That's why I need you. You know how she thinks. Make her see sense," I begged.
...No. This is impossible. Wrong. Sick. What's he planning? For me to borrow her on the weekends and return her Monday like some movie rental? That is so messed up.
...and so tempting...
I didn't want to see the images I'd planted in his mind, but if it worked, I knew that the imagined pictures would hold none of the power his memories of the two of them as lovers would have. He imagined her wrapped in his embrace the way she'd been wrapped in mine, and I could hear his mind conjuring the sound of her voice whispering his name in his ear.
The fire within me felt hot enough that I should burst into flames where I stood, but I didn't let any of what I was feeling show. Bella's condition was my fault and I would pay any cost to undo my mistake.
The image of the two of them together changed into one that was similar to the one of her which tormented me now: Bella's body swollen with child. Only, with his baby, the change would be natural and gradual. She would glow with the life that grew inside of her, rather waste away because of the one that was sucking her life from her. Her body's changes would be healthy, and she would blossom and grow rounded, her small breasts would swell in preparation of feeding the infant.
How often had I imagined her body rounded with my child? If I had been a normal man, I doubted I would ever have seen a more beautiful sight. That one was growing in her now was all the more horrifying because I had wanted it! But the creature was like a disease, and her body knew it, even if she didn't. Her body's immune system was trying to fight it off, reacting to the foreign thing as it would to any parasite, but it wasn't strong enough to kill it, just like she wasn't strong enough to survive it.
Jacob's child though, would have been a beautiful thing, I was sure, and not a monster like mine - like me. It would have had his strength and resilience, with her chocolate eyes and chestnut hair, and his dark skin tone. Unlike the unnatural pale and dead coloring of a vampire, the wolf's child would have been a deep, rich brown, the color Bella had once told me was her favorite because it was so warm.
I felt a new pain twisting inside of me. If she loved the brown and the warmth so much, why had she chosen the pale and the cold?
"Make Bella see sense?" His voice cut through the painful images in our minds. "What universe do you live in?"
I almost smiled to hear my words repeated back to me. "At least try."
He shook his head in negation, but I could see his desire in the images that were still in his mind. "Where is this psycho crap coming from? Are you making this up as you go?"
"I've been thinking of nothing but ways to save her since I realized what she was planning to do. What she would die to do. But I didn't know how to contact you. I knew you wouldn't listen if I called. I would have come to find you soon, if you hadn't come today. But it's hard to leave her, even for a few minutes. Her condition... it changes so fast. The thing is... growing. Swiftly. I can't be away from her now."
His lips curled with revulsion. "What is it?"
"None of us have any idea. But it is stronger than she is. Already."
The image in his mind changed from Bella's glowing rounded body to an imagined picture of the demon creature within her. It had fangs and claws and red eyes, and with its every movement, he imagined that it was tearing and breaking her from the inside.
I held back a shudder at how close to reality this image surely was. "Help me stop it. Help me stop this from happening."
"How? By offering my stud services?" He flinched at the words, and I saw the pain on his face.
I gazed back at him evenly, not letting the pain that the thought caused me to show. If he was successful in convincing Bella to allow Carlisle to remove the demon, and she and Jacob did have sex, I would be fighting the need to rip him to shreds the entire time. And worse, most men didn't get a woman pregnant their first time together. How often would I have to allow it?
And then, I would also have to take the chance that in being with him, she'd realize that he was the one she should be with. He'd made her realize that she loved him with a single kiss. What would sex with him do?
Only the knowledge that it would save Bella's life made the thought remotely bearable.
"You're really sick. She'll never listen to this."
"Try," I insisted. "There's nothing to lose now. How will it hurt?"
...it would hurt me. Hasn't Bella rejected me often enough?
"A little pain to save her? Is it such a high cost?" I addressed the question to both of us. Did he think that her rejection could hurt him half as much as her acceptance of what I proposed would hurt me?
"But it won't work."
"Maybe not," I acknowledged. "Maybe it will confuse her, though. Maybe she'll falter in her resolve. One moment of doubt is all I need."
"And then you pull the rug out from under the offer? 'Just kidding, Bella'?" His tone was derisive. I could imagine he thought I would be capable of such a thing, and why not? Hadn't I lied to Bella often enough already?
"If she wants a child, that's what she gets. I won't rescind," I assured him.
...Bella'll break her hand punching me again... can't believe I'm even considering this... should just kill him now!
"Not now," I said in a whisper. "Not yet. Right or wrong, it would destroy her, and you know it. No need to be hasty. If she won't listen to you, you'll get your chance. The moment Bella's heart stops beating, I will be begging for you to kill me."
He flashed all of his bright, white teeth at me. "You won't have to beg long."
The threat was reassuring. "I'm very much counting on that."
"Then we have a deal." ...when she dies, so do you.
I nodded and offered him my hand, unsure if he would actually shake it or not.
Jacob pressed his lips together and wrinkled his nose, but gripped my hand in his.
