Chapter Eleven: Runaway
Bella's POV:
He never seemed to move. Nothing about this man in front of me seemed to stay the same at any given moment. Several times, his wings would suddenly shoot out of his back, and each time I would gently lift him and let his wings hand to the floor.
I didn't dare to turn him around on his stomach, because I was afraid that if his wings shot out, the IVs that Carlisle had put in him would be rather rudely ripped out, which couldn't be a nice wake-up call. Not to mention that I was afraid the wings would smash Carlisle's equipment, if they were able to spring into their full wingspan.
As I watched over him, Edward occasionally coming in to sit with me and just watch him with me, I studied him, having nothing else really to do. When and where he was human, his body seemed to radiate all signs of hurt and grief from a past that did not seem to favor him. Scars were heavily laden across his back, especially, as though someone had actually whipped him. Several scars were criss-crossed on the front of his chest as well.
But when and where he was something… other, his body radiated strength and power — and heat; waves of pure, unblemished heat.
I studied his magnificent wings. They were like nothing I had seen before. On close inspection, what appeared to be a leathery substance was actually skin, swathed in so many close-fitting, ruby-red scales that it was almost microscopic. My hand lightly trailed over the webbing of his wing, before it suddenly vanished in my hands.
I studied his horns, which seemed to be fused to his skull, as was expected of a shapeshifter. They were sharp, short, curved, and black. They also felt very strong. His horns never disappeared for more than a few seconds at most.
Aside from studying, I also tried to keep our guest as comfortable as possible in his state. I wasn't sure if the extreme heat he was radiating was normal. I wet a warm washcloth that still felt cold in comparison to his skin, and applied it as I felt was natural for shapeshifters, under Carlisle's careful supervision.
It was several hours before I began to worry about someone else, however. Leah had been gone much longer than I would have thought a run would take. I heard the rain pouring outside, and wondered if she had simply decided to go home.
Having struck upon this thought, I calmed my rogue thoughts. She was probably just back with Sue, waiting out the storm if nothing else. When it passed, she might come back to talk with Renee some more, she might not… it really wasn't any of my business.
Edward came in softly, and kissed the top of my head as he sat down next to me. I traded my seat for Edward's lap, and he wrapped his arms around me as we both watched the stranger on the hospital bed in front of us, his body constantly morphing between human and something other unknown creature.
"What do you think is his other form?" I wondered aloud to Edward. Edward glanced up from me at the man.
"Well, I really can't say. I've never really seen any creature with the features he has," Edward said. "And I've never seen a shapeshifter halfway through the transformations between human and, well in the case of the Quileutes, wolf."
I nodded. Another thought struck me.
"Has Carlisle discovered anything about my DNA yet?" I asked eagerly. Edward laughed.
"It's hard to distinguish certain genes from another. For all any of us know, you're an entirely new species, what with your possible shapeshifter gene and your vampire gene. These things take plenty of time, Bella," Edward said. "But you'll be the first to know, as soon as I do."
I cuddled into his shoulder as he held me, and watched over the scar-ridden man before me as he slumbered on. Curiosity about him consumed my thoughts, and pity and empathy radiating from me for the pain this man had obviously endured.
Leah's POV:
I didn't move. There wasn't a reason to anymore. He was gone, and I had no way of finding him. The bloodsuckers took him away, and for that they would pay, eventually. But now, all I knew was horrible emotional pain, which ripped through me like somebody was stabbing me with a chainsaw. Thirty chainsaws. Five thousand. It didn't matter, it couldn't hurt worse than this.
And the quiet, small voice in my head, just mocking me at this point.
He's not here.
You need to move.
He needs you.
Get up.
Begin again.
That last one shocked me a little. 'Begin again'? 'Begin again' on what? Tracking him? There was no way. His scent had been washed away.
Find him. He needs you. The voice seemed to prompt.
"I can't!" I shouted, to nobody in particular. I realized that at some point during my intense pain, I had phased back as a human. The word 'pain' didn't really even begin to cover what I was feeling. It was not like anything I had felt before. Not when Sam fell for Emily and left me broken. That was a walk in the park. I could relate to that now. I knew how he had felt, and I held him in no way accountable any longer. I imagined jumping into the core of the sun might feel the same as this. "I can't 'find him'! He's gone!"
These last words I wailed, writhing on the ground. It was all I could do. I was barely coherent anymore from the pain in me.
Not gone. Not yet. The voice urged. Find him.
I needed a way to vent this pain, and this anger. Such a raw anger. I felt it flowing in my veins, and through every muscle in my body.
In a rage, I leapt up, shimmering and exploding into my wolf form involuntarily. I snarled like I never had before, leaping at a tree. I tore it in two with my teeth, and the six-inch thick trunk snapped like a twig between my jaws. I rammed into another tree or two, toppling it like a stack of cards in the wind.
I howled in agony. The world could have split in two under my feet, and swallowed me whole. I wouldn't care. I was too hurt and pained to care anymore. Though the anger I had felt was nothing in comparison to the pain, it was spent up in my little fit, and now I just laid down, large, baseball-sized tears flowing out of my wolfish eyes as I slumped to the ground in defeat.
Rye's POV:
In the very background of my subconscious, I could hear a piercing howl rip through the air. It was faint, but the pain I heard in it was so severe that I felt the sound wash over me like a wave of pure fire. I was used to heat, but this was a different kind of fire altogether; a cold one. A cutting one. A ruthless one.
I paled suddenly, or I would have, if I could even feel my face. I recognized that sound, that howl. It was hers. Every cell in my body mirrored her howl as I tried vainly in a mad desperation to wake up, to move, to blink, to speak… anything. She was hurting. She needed help. The voice was almost screaming at me, and it had even begun to sound to me like her own voice.
She is in so much pain!
Run to her, quickly!
GO!
The mental strain I went through to move anything was so great, I thought I would break my skull with the effort I put into moving. And yet, my arms felt heavier than ever. I could only just feel my hands twitching, and my forearm rising ever so slightly.
And then the Touch was back, lowering my arm back in place. For the first time, I hated this Touch.
'SHE'S IN TROUBLE!' my thoughts screamed, as I tried to get my mouth to speak the words. 'LET ME GO TO HER!'
And yet in the back of my mind I knew that there was no way I would be able to move even two steps towards her in my current condition. I could only scream in agony along with her, mirroring her cries in my own mind.
"Jacob," I heard a feminine voice hiss. The Touch lingered softly on my arms. "What's going on with—"
"I don't know. Be back in a few, Bells," I heard a husky sort of voice reply.
I heard heavy footsteps thunder out of the house. As I listened to them recede, it connected in my mind.
'He's going to go to her. He's going to find her.'
My protective instinct suddenly flared to life. I didn't want this vampire, this Jacob, to find her before I did. My efforts redoubled, and I felt the muscles in my arm swell with effort. This time, the Touch did not seem to stop me.
"Is he waking?" the feminine voice said again, and I realized that the voice belonged to the Touch.
Several things happened at once.
There was another agonized howling, this time much, much closer. It sounded like another wolf's right outside the structure I was in, which I assumed was a house. A growl erupted right next to me, but it wasn't a threatening one. It was a pained one. The howling cut off, and I heard the same husky voice as before suddenly bloom from the closer wolf howls, cursing heavily. The growl next to me spoke, in a pain-filled voice.
"He's—He's hurting so… so much, Bella," a male voice said, near to me. "I've only once felt this pain before… when I—I left you before…"
The way he spoke, and his proximity… whoever the male's voice belonged to was seemingly talking about me.
"He's in a rage, too," a new voice said, a slight Southern accent coloring it lightly. It sounded pained too, like it was trying to breathe but couldn't remember how. "Edward, you've never thrown that bad of a fit of rage over Bella, not that I've ever felt."
That was true enough. I was in a rage. I could feel the heat in my body magnify with my fury, increasing in power the longer I tried anything to move. I strained against the lead weights that seemed to be my arms and legs…
… and suddenly opened my eyes.
Jacob's POV:
Bella's head whipped around as soon as she heard the howl, her eyes boring into mine. I paled. That sounded an awful lot like Leah's howl.
Bella glanced back at the man as she heard a slight sound. The man's hand had twitched with the howling, and his arm was trying to move upwards. The IV was about to be strained, and it would surely be painful if it were ripped out. Bella gently pressed the arm back down. Then she looked back at me.
"Jacob," she hissed. "What's going on with—"
I felt my limbs thaw again. Leah was in trouble. I had to go help her. "I don't know, be back in a few, Bells."
I dashed as fast as I could for the door, my form rippling as I ran.
I burst out the door, and started shedding clothes as soon as I was sure none of the vampires in the house would glance at me. Blondie would never let me hear the end of it.
And then I phased.
The instant I phased, all I could focus on was the mind-wrenching, soul-crawling, heart-numbing pain that I felt flowing off of Leah. I couldn't even hear anything else from her mind, just pain.
Like a reflex, I phased back to human. The pain… I had never known anything like that. There was no way that that pain was caused by any physical person. There weren't words strong enough for that sort of pain.
I just laid there for a few minutes, curled up on the ground as I tried to sort the pain from my body. Leah was hurting, but there wasn't possibly a way that she was actually in danger of anybody except herself.
Next thing, I needed to put my clothes back on. Then I needed to find Leah, in human form. She needed help.
I threw on my clothes as fast as I could. I growled as I glared at the river. How was I going to get over that without phasing? And if I phased, I would only manage to fall into the water, limp and gasping with pain before I phased back to human again.
"Edward, I need your help!" I shouted back at the house. "Leah needs me!"
Edward suddenly appeared at my side, reading my plan to get across the river. A smile bloomed.
"I've been wanting to throw you away since I met you, Jacob," he said jokingly.
"Just do it," I growled. I was in a hurry, and I wasn't about to start joking with him.
Edward shrugged, and suddenly he lifted me in the air, and hurled me forward. I flew over the river, and into the forest. I was already running when I hit the ground. I knew roughly where Leah was based on the howling from a few moments ago.
It took me quite a few more minutes than it would if I could shift, but Leah didn't seem to be going anywhere.
I had to step back, though, when a pair of jaws suddenly snapped three inches from my nose.
"Leah, what's the matter?" I asked, ignoring the threat and scanning the surroundings as quickly as I could. All I saw was fallen trees, mussed up ground, and logs riddled with marks that looked suspiciously like teeth-marks.
Leah didn't seem to have any patience for anything right now. She growled loudly at me, before whimpering and whining as she hobbled back to the center of the clearing. Her tail was drooping low, as was her whole demeanor. The way she looked at me looked like she was the most tortured soul on the planet.
I didn't have to read minds like Edward to know what had happened. My jaw dropped.
"You found your imprint?" I asked in wonder. "That was fast."
Leah just slumped to the ground, facing away from me with her form rippling. She just sat there, whimpering in pain. She looked tired.
"There's more, though," I realized, reading her body language. I looked around again. "And since there's nobody else here, I'm going to guess that he's not here with you? You don't know where he is?"
Leah's head just shook once, confirming this theory.
I immediately felt a bewildered sort of pity. This was an unheard of incident. Nobody lost their imprint. It just wasn't possible, with how close you stuck by someone once you imprinted.
I gulped. I knew that I had to do whatever I could to help Leah find her imprint again.
"Leah, do you think you can you phase back?" I asked slowly. "If we can talk, I can help. Let me help you find him."
Leah just turned, staring at me out of the corner of her eye as she lay on the forest floor, motionless except for breathing sporadically and whimpering. She stared at me for a few more moments, her form quivering erratically.
Finally, with a faint shimmer, she was a human again. To give her some sense of decency and calm, I shielded my eyes as I slowly made my way over to her. As I neared, I could sense that her alertness was on the brink of fading into unconsciousness. She was emotionally and physically drained from the powerful pain sweeping through her, and all she was weakly muttering was, "he's gone, it doesn't matter, he's gone."
Bella walked next to her mother in a sort of haze in the mall. She felt something strange crawling down her spine. But it was a familiar feeling, somehow. She kept looking around her for any reason she was feeling this way. Nobody seemed to be staring at her, nobody seemed to even be paying any attention to her, but she couldn't get rid of the feeling that she was being watched.
Renee noticed her absentness.
"Bella, are you okay?" she asked, suddenly looking around as well.
"Just… feel weird," a twelve-year-old Bella muttered.
Renee nodded, like she was feeling the same way. She was now also looking around occasionally.
Bella walked into a shop with her mom, who smiled and began chatting lively with the cashier in there. While she talked, Bella browsed through the shop's music CDs. She still couldn't shake the feeling. It felt familiar, and for some strange reason comforting to her mind. Like a memory of a dream from long ago… She just felt like there was a presence hovering nearby, ready to either greet her, or try to cause harm to her. She wasn't sure if she felt like she was in danger, or like she was even safer because of this presence she felt.
Renee finally stopped talking to the cashier after a while and the two of them walked out of the shop. Bella and Renee slipped into the bustling flow of people, heading into the upstream-lane of foot-traffic. The mall was pretty crowded today, wasn't it?
Bella sniffed a little. The floral scent on the air was pleasing and soothing to her mind, though she had no idea where she might have smelled the scent before. Renee seemed even more jittery than normal.
"Mom, is everything fine?" Bella asked. She hadn't seen her mom look so jittery before, that she could remember.
Renee nodded, but Bella could've sworn she heard her mother mutter something about "familiar scent."
Renee didn't stop acting like a startled deer until they were out of the mall. Renee strode forward towards the car. Bella followed on her heels, jogging to keep up.
"Mom, something's the matter," Bella said. It wasn't hard to notice the way Renee kept glancing behind them.
"It's alright, sweetheart," Renee said, although she halfway sounded like she was trying to coax herself into believing that. "They can't come outside."
"Who can't come outside?" Bella asked, wondering if her mother had recognized a criminal of some sort. She began cataloguing faces in her peripheral as she began to get upset. "Mom, do we need to call the police?"
Renee glanced down at Bella, and smiled. Suddenly all the jittery feelings that had been flowing off of her vanished, and she looked perfectly normal. "No, I don't think they'll be necessary. Did you see that T-shirt in that one store? It looked like something you might like to wear sometime."
Renee slid into the driver's seat and turned on the car. Bella buckled in her seatbelt, still worried about what had been able to make her mother so jittery so fast, and then so calm as soon as we were outside again. She asked Renee as much.
"Oh it was probably nothing, dear," Renee said. "I just… had a feeling that there was some sort of trouble inside there. Got me feeling kinda claustrophobic. Once we were out in the sun, the feeling faded. We're safe."
Bella nodded slowly. "Okay, if you're sure…"
Renee nodded, and began prattling about something or other. Bella listened to her voice, deeming that Renee sounded completely calm once again, and thought nothing more of the strange disposition that had come over her mother. It wasn't until later that night as Renee was watching the news that Bella learned there had been someone attacked at the mall. A man seemed to have snapped, from something or another, and had jumped at a woman who looked suspiciously like the cashier Renee had been talking to. But she hadn't been damaged before the man's two companions had restrained him, and directed him out of the mall under careful supervision.
"Huh, you've got a superpower, mom!" Bella said, looking at the screen with wide eyes. "Glad you got us out of there in time, huh?"
Renee smiled and nodded, but her eyes were glued to the screen, and they did not shine with her relief as Bella expected. They looked like they were trying to drink as much information from the television as possible. She shook her head and went into her bedroom, closing the door to go to sleep and read in her bed for a little while.
Renee broke away from the screen when the sound of a door shutting brought her out of her train of thought. That had been much too close in the mall today. Those three were getting more and more daring against her. Luckliy Laurent and Victoria seemed to have been able to hold James back from the cashier in the video. Renee would've felt horribly guilty if the woman had been harmed because she hadn't taken care of the vampires ahead of time, but what could she have realistically done? It was the middle of the day, in a crowded mall. People would definitely be more wary of the woman who exploded into a wolf than the three pale "humans".
Renee decided that it was probably time for Bella to go visit her father, soon. Renee would have to try and hunt those three down before they could do any serious damage. And Bella couldn't be here for that.
The phone rang, and Renee wasted no time in picking it up. Her thoughts were too snarled up with her plans to hold a real phone conversation at the moment, but she would try to play along.
That is, until the person on the other end of the phone spoke.
"You're about to get a call from a number you probably don't know," a trilling voice said. "Don't worry, he's bluffing. But play along, and go through with your plan to send Bella to Forks. She'll be safe there."
"Alice?" Renee gasped. "How are you? Where are you? I miss you guys so much!"
"I can't really say where we are, at the moment…" Alice began, "but I miss you too, and I know I'm looking forward to meeting Bella again, and seeing you. We're all fine. Edward is in a mope, just as much as ever. I tried to get him interested in some of these females in this country-that-you-can't-know-yet, but he's shown no interest as of yet for any of them."
"Poor girls," Renee said, smiling as she imagined the female vampires' reactions to Edward. She imagined there would've been a lot of jaw-drops, tongue lolling, eyes widening, and possibly drooling some venom. "how heartbroken are most of them?"
"Pretty bad, but he was a gentleman, so they had to take it well," Alice said. "I didn't mean to talk so long, I just wanted to warn you that this next call is bluffing. I miss you. I'm going to leave you to it now. Bye!"
"By—" Renee began, but Alice had already hung up. Renee sighed. She missed her pixie friend.
The phone rang again. Alice was pretty good at timing, wasn't she? Renee picked up the phone again.
"Hello, Mrs. Dwyer," the smooth voice on the other end of the line said. Renee snarled on her end. "So you remember me."
"I do, James. What do you want? I can come outside and tear you apart now, or would you rather wait until daylight to prove how 'weak' I am?" Renee growled.
"I know that you're thinking about sending Bella away. I must admit, it was a nice touch to throw the scent off, to cloud that woman in her scent. Nice escape tactic."
"It wasn't an escape tactic, you bloodsucking mosquito," Renee growled. "It was me being a human being."
"Ah, yes, and you would know all about that, wouldn't you? I mean, during the daylight hours, of course," the voice growled at the end of the line. "But throwing insults over a telephone is not why I called. I wonder how you'll react when I steal Bella from her father's home?"
Renee laughed. "Go ahead, just try. I'm sure my pack will love to hear from you, in the reservation."
The other voice hissed in alarm. It had obviously not counted on more than one giant werewolf roaming about, not to mention a whole pack.
"Then what's to stop me from just taking your former husband?" the voice sneered, but Renee knew that it had already given itself away. It wouldn't do anything.
Renee shrugged. "I mean, you can try. He's best friends with my Alpha, sooo… Good luck with escaping the wrath of our pack's Alpha. Oh, and I'll be sure to tell him that you're also planning on abducting and draining his son's best friend."
The voice hissed again, ever so subtly. It had not counted on the wrath of an Alpha, either. Renee knew that this new information would waver him from doing anything rash in Forks for a long, long while.
"This isn't over," it warned.
"I disagree. This is over, now," Renee said, slamming the phone down into the phone jack. A door creaked open again. Bella walked out, sleepily.
"Mom?" she asked, sounding tired. "Who were you yelling to on the phone?"
"Oh, somebody who wanted to scam me," Renee shrugged. "He just made me so mad, but it's nothing, sweetheart. Go back to bed, have sweet dreams. I want to talk to you in the morning about when you should go see Charlie again."
Bella just nodded, before turning around and heading back to bed. Renee sighed. That had been another close call. Glad that Alice had told her James was bluffing.
Renee turned out the lights, and walked to her room. She was tired, and the wolf in her was getting more and more dormant as she used it less and less often. She wondered how long she could keep up the charade of being a Child of the Moon, if her wolf disappeared.
But these thoughts were dispelled for the moment, the moment her head hit the pillow. She slept soundly, knowing that tonight her daughter was safe, at least.
AN: OKAY EVERYBODY! I NEED YOUR HELP!
So, as everyone knows so far, Rye and Leah have been having a pretty bad time so far. It definitely hasn't gone well for either of them. But I want to know what y'all think! So, they've both been about two chapters from having a normal moment. Leah is in alot of pain. Rye can't move yet.
What I want to know is if I should throw in the towel on drawing out the suspense, or if I should just let them meet each other again much sooner? PM me or review one of the options below to tell me how much longer you think I should wait before they face each other again! Thank you all so much for being a wonderful audience of readers! :D
1 = JUST LET THEM BE ALREADY! WE'RE SICK OF WAITING! (Let them find each other in pretty much the next chapter or two)
2 = Draw it out a little while longer for about three chapters, and try to find an interesting twist that blocks them from knowing where the other is.
3 = Draw it out a lot longer, and have them meet like four chapters later.
-DragonHighElder