Billy and Sam owe me an explanation. Yes, I am Ephraim Black's heir, but that hasn't meant anything until now. Neither of them told me that my great-grandfather was the alpha of the original pack that made the pact with the Cold Ones. The leech that led them today, who clearly wasn't the Carlisle Cullen that Billy had spoken about, told me to meet him at the border of Forks in a few minutes to go hunting for the rogue Cold Ones in Seattle and kick off our new pact. I can barely wrap my head around working with the leeches, never mind this. I don't even know what to say to Sam.
Jake, Embry says, you don't have to go alone.
Get out of my head, I answer, still furious. At first, I was just confused, but now, now I'm pissed. Last month none of this mattered and now I'm a wolf who is supposed to be leading a pack and the two people I trusted with this conveniently left that part out.
I didn't leave it out. First turned is pack leader. Back then it was Ephraim. This cycle it was me, Sam says. He's only a mile behind me, but I'm bigger and faster than he is. Good. I don't want to see him.
Stop being childish , Sam growls in my head, loud enough that it drowns out the thoughts of the rest of them. We can talk about this at Billy's later tonight. Shift if you need to talk to us.
You lied to me.
I didn't want to dump all of this on you at once.
I'm so stupid. I should have put it together myself, but I got too caught up in it, too caught up in having a family that was always with me. For once, even though the pack is running, all of them are silent.
I don't even want to be alpha, Sam. Keep your stupid title and your excuses and get out of my head.
Jake-
My muscles ripple and burn in a way that I'm not quite sure I'll ever get used to and I'm human again, running naked through the woods until I throw on the pair of pants I had tied to my back leg before slowing at our assigned meeting spot behind the abandoned strip mall just outside of town.
At first, all I see is a shiny car parked behind the building-surely a vehicle for something unsavory like a drug deal-but then the leech steps out of the car, filling my sensitive nose with his sickening scent.
"Hello," he says. I disliked him on site this morning and now, with the truth of the fact that Sam didn't even give me a choice before taking the title of alpha and the knowledge that this leech is the one that brought all of this on, it's even worse. I hate the way he looks at me like he can read my mind or something. "Need a ride?"
"I'd rather run," I say. His car is really nice, but I bet it reeks to high heaven in there.
"We can drive with the windows down if you'd like. I promise I won't bite," he says, flashing his fangs as if that's funny when it's just disgusting. Truth is, I'm exhausted from this morning's run and if I phase again, I'll have to deal with Sam and the emotions of seven other people. For once, the leech is the lesser of two evils.
I hold my breath and climb into the passenger side of his Volvo, suddenly aware that I dwarf him in size. My head practically touches the ceiling and I have to shift the seat all the way back. The leech wrinkles his nose and rolls down the windows.
"You don't smell particularly pleasant either," I say, thankful for the fresh air.
"Are you going to stick your head out the door on the way there?" he asks, pulling out onto the main road.
"How did you know who I was?" I asked, ignoring his stupid insult.
He pauses to think for a moment as if he's formulating his lie. "You look like a Black." It wasn't what I was expecting. "Actually, you and your great-grandfather look almost identical." My skin crawls at the thought that he was alive when Billy was still an infant. I can't help it, my lip curls up in a snarl. "Look at you," he says with a cocky smile. "You hate me on sight, don't you?"
"And you don't?" I ask, thinking of the way he instigated a crack in the pack within minutes of meeting him."
"No, I do. I'm just glad that the feeling is mutual. Edward Cullen by the way."
"I don't care," I say and mean it. Billy has never liked this family. He's only brought them up once when he and his cop friend Charlie were slightly buzzed after a successful game, just after the Cullens had moved back to town, but I know my dad well enough to know that he so rarely dislikes anyone. What had he said about them? That all but Carlisle were not to be trusted. Charlie had laughed it off, but Billy had been serious. It was only after Charlie had left that he had muttered something about leeches when he was getting ready for bed.
"Some manners you have."
"Not all of us have the etiquette of 18th century England, bloodsucker."
"20th century Spain, actually."
"Like I said, I don't care." I turn on the radio and am with an influx of classical music. "Really?" I ask him.
"I have refined taste. Plus, I heard that Chopin's Nocturne No.2 is supposed to calm dogs."
I roll my eyes. The sooner we kill the bloodsuckers in Seattle, the sooner I never have to see this guy again. Why couldn't I have been paired up with one of the girls? The blonde one must have been something incredible back when she wasn't a monster-in ancient France or whenever. Even as a bloodsucker, she's wildly hot. There's something to be said about a woman who can look like that and still rip my throat out.
Edward's frowning as he looks at the smooth expanse of road in front of him.
"What?" I ask, finally.
"You know it's so easy to see exactly what you're thinking from your face," he says after a moment.
"Really?" I mocked. "And what exactly was I thinking?"
"You were thinking, much like I was, that it'll be better when we never have to see each other again. Unlike me, you were wishing you had been paired with Rosalie because every dog in your pack was salivating at the sight of her, even if she is a so-called monster like the rest of us." I sit there, dumbfounded. There's no way he could've read that from my face. I try and fail to keep a neutral expression. "Just the kind of base thoughts I'd expect from an animal," he says without taking his eyes off the road like he's reading it from a textbook.
Not only is his kind an abomination, but this particular bloodsucker is also a pain in my ass. I wonder how mad Sam would be if I killed him after we took out the other coven.
It's almost sunset when we pull over.
"Carlisle said Albion's coven is hunting on the southside of the city today. We should split up."
"Finally," I respond, already halfway out of the car.
"Don't engage. We're just trying to prevent them from hunting. If we starve them out long enough, they'll go away," Edward says, though he doesn't look too happy with the prospect. I'm guessing this was one of Carlisle's orders, but I'm not a leech and I'm certainly not a Cullen so Carlise can screw off.
If I've never shifted in front of anyone who isn't part of the pack, but Edward barely looks my way, already focused on something else. I can still feel the pack at this range, but I can't exactly hear their individual thoughts. A small mercy. Edward is looking at me with a raised eyebrow, but I ignore him, already smelling the faint smell of leech in the air. This scent is different from what I've been surrounded by for the last hour. It's stronger, more metallic.
Oh yuck. Am I getting used to that bloodsucker's scent? The thought makes me want to shower.
I trace the scent to a quiet patch of wood and crouch in the tall grass there. I hear a rustling noise-faint, but definitely present and the smell of old blood is thick in the air. I see the campers before I smell them. It's an older couple. They're laughing and feeding the small fire by their tent. The smell of blood intensifies.
Then I spot them. There's a pair of leeches crouched in the trees above them. They barely look human. In place of the cold white skin of the Cullens that almost resembles rock, this pair looks slippery like a couple of albino eels. Their eyes are massive and red, so much so that I can barely see their pupils, and their fangs are hanging out of their mouths like tongues. The image is so disturbing that grouping the Cullens and these beasts as the same species almost feels wrong. Almost.
The campers haven't noticed death hanging in the air above them yet. As silently as possible, I sneak up behind the tree. I'm so close to the base that my eyes water from their stench.
That's when they turn to look at me. Dammit. My own smell must have given me away. The one to the left slams into me so hard that I fly back and right through a tree. Someone screams. The campers have noticed us and fled. I expect the bloodsuckers to go after their dinner, but both are fixated on me.
"Well," rasps the one that knocked into me. "What do we have here, Cynric?" Somewhere in the back of my mind, I recognize her as a woman. Or what used to be a woman and is now more of a shambling corpse.
"Never seen one like this before. Usually, the moonwalkers are weaker than this fellow, Daralis," the one called Cynric says to the other. He's pinned on top of me now and a temporary pain is spreading through my ribs. I get a vague sense of alarm from the pack, but I'm too busy trying to prevent this creature's arm from going straight through my rib cage to care.
Instead, I whip my head down and latch onto his arm, with a sickening crunch. Something hot and liquid sprays into my mouth and I do everything in my power not to think about the fact that it's probably human blood. Cynric cries out in pain and flails, his claws digging into my chest as I flip over, unwilling to let go of his arm. My chest burns, but there's no one I'm letting this one getaway. Something lands with a thud on my back and rakes something sharp across my hide. It's the other one, the female called Daralis.
Vaguely, I remember Edward's warning about not engaging as Cynric tears off his own arm to free himself of my grasp. I spin, trying to knock Daralis off, but she's hanging on. That's when I feel something sharp and painful where my neck meets my shoulder.
She goddamn bit me. It's like no other pain I've ever felt and my body strains to fight back the venom. But the wolf in me gives as much as it gets since one bite is enough for Daralis to be coughing, spitting, and screaming as she slides off my back. Ignoring the blistering pain in my shoulder, I land atop her baring my fangs and taking her head off in one, clean swoop.
Distracted by Daralis's screaming, I forgot about the other one. He slammed into me like a truck, his remaining arm driving me into the ground and driving into the spot where Daralis bit me. I howl in pain, unable to contain myself any longer. In my head, the pack howls back.
And just like that, the pain is gone and Cynric's head falls at my feet.
Without intending to, the burning in my shoulder is enough to cause me to shift back.
Through the fog of pain, I turn around to see Edward Cullen standing there with war in his yellow eyes, his pristine, ironed white shirt torn and soaked in blood. There are bite marks up and down his arm and one on his neck. At his feet lay two bodies. One is Cynric's and there's another, decapitated one. I had taken out Daralis which means…
"The third was not far off. I got to him before you could," Edward says, gazing down at the blood on the ground. He wipes his mouth with the sleeve of his shirt and spits on the ground. "Filthy," he muttered. "I thought I told you not to engage."
"We just took out half of Albion's coven," I say through gritted teeth, reaching for my pants. The pain in my shoulder is spreading to my neck and down my back, but I suck it up while I cover up.
Edward holds my gaze steady for a moment after I'm done and then winces as he reaches for something in his pocket. Looks like I'm not the only one that's injured. "How bad is it?" I ask, my own injury throbbing.
"Better than-" His eyebrows wrinkle when he pauses, and somehow that oddly innocent expression doesn't look right on him in his current state. "One of them bit you. Where?"
I turn to show the bite mark on my neck.
"We have to take care of that. The venom is already spreading."
"My body heals unnaturally fast," I say, but my head is spinning already. This would be a shitty exception to that rule given the story of why we were created.
"That may be true, but it can only fight venom for so long. I can help," Edward says, closing his eyes. With a sudden lurch, he pops his arm back into place and sighs in relief, flexing his fingers. Suddenly, he's right next to me.
"Back off, leech," I say through gritted teeth, but the coolness of his hands on my shoulder provides instant relief to the burning. My head is throbbing now. I'm going to be sick.
"With how powerful their venom must be, it's a miracle you've lasted this long. This will only take a second," he says. At this point, my vision is blacking out.
"Whatever it takes," I manage to spit out. Suddenly, I feel something cold and soft on my shoulder, but before I can protest, I've fallen to my knees, the content of my stomach threatening to come up. The pressure on my shoulder decreases for a second, and I hear Edward spit before placing his lips to the wound once again.
As he works, the burning slowly retracts until it's barely noticeable. Finally, Edward spits out the last bit of venom and sinks to the ground next to me, exhausted. My blood coats his mouth, but the sight seems to bother me more than it does him.
I shove him away after he's done. "If you ever touch me again-"
"It wasn't exactly pleasant for me either, dog," Edward snarls, looking up at the night sky. In the moonlight, he almost looks like a beautifully carved statue, so unlike the ones we killed tonight. "Try not to get bit next time so neither of us has to relive that," he says, wiping his mouth with his sleeve again before standing. "Will you help me?" he asks, throwing me a small matchbook. "We don't have long-they're much stronger than any coven I've ever met before. They'll be standing again before we know it."
It becomes almost mechanical-ripping apart the bodies and dousing them with kerosene from Edward's car. Finally, just as the grotesque pieces start moving again, I light a match and throw it into the pile. Disgusting. It's like watching a cockroach burn.
"We should get back before Collin and Alice have to head out," I say. Edward is silently fingering the bite mark on his neck, but nods.
He says, "The rest of Albion's coven will be out with a vengeance."
"It's four against like fourteen, what're they going to do?"
"That's exactly the question, isn't it?"
The ride back to La Push is quiet, the both of us lost in our own heads.