Chapter 3

High atop the cliff, still staring at the rippling, blackened waves, Alice sat morose, her gaze fixed on the great, black pool. On the very edge of the cliff, so high above the open expanse of the sea, the wind whipped around her in great gusts, the chill seeping under her clothes. Her body felt like stone, hard, immovable, and rigid, and though the smell of their trail left a sweet, cloying sting in the back of her throat, the hunt was the furthest thing from her racing thoughts.

These rocks, so quiet and lonely, were tainted by tragedy. They felt black to her, filthy with a stain she could never lift, and ripe with the memory of her sister, her friend. Alice could almost hear her now in the sonorous cavern of her thoughts as the remembered the words that spilled from her memory like wine on white linen. The apologies. The declaration of love. The weeping— a terrified, wrenching staccato— that echoed through the trees. And then the fall, and the final, terrible crash.

She had not even screamed as her body had hurtled to its death. Alice, her feet placed precisely where Bella's had been not twenty four hours prior, could taste the terror here, as if it had leached out to stain the trees, and the sky. Her own terror, racing like quicksilver through her dead, unyielding veins. Her husband's terror of what he would find hovering in the deep. And Bella's terror, so heady and so fierce, in those last, final moments before the plunge, when her breath had left her, and the water had claimed her as its own.

Alice turned away, her eyes brimmed full of unshedable tears.

Beneath the waves, darting like a yellow fish through the rocks and weeds, Alice followed the progress of Jasper's hunt, impossibly fast and meticulously thorough. He had been in the water for over an hour, his speed and agility guiding him over each rock and stone with careful precision. He left no stone unturned— each pebble and boulder beneath the waves was disturbed, and shifted, and moved, yet there had been no sign of the one they sought— not a bloodstain on the cliff wall, not a scrap of fabric bobbing in the surf. The scent ended here, where Alice waited, and whatever had been left of it at the moment of impact had been dissolved into the sea, untraceable and lost.

The sky held a thin layer of clouds, just dim enough to dull the glitter and gloss of their skin in the daylight. They were heavier to the east, coagulating around the town, but there were hints of bright, blue sky out on the horizon, which stretched endlessly over the natural curve of the earth. Alice could see the great, white sun when the shield of clouds thinned and she soaked up the light, her eyes roving carefully over the wide expanse of land and sea that she surveyed.

Jasper had found nothing beneath the waves that would bring her back to them. Alice, her own scope a little wider, was likewise defeated.

They had no need for air, especially when there was no need for smell, and so Alice was not concerned when Jasper did not resurface. They were natural in the water, as competent beneath the sea as they were on land, and other than the deprivation of their sense of smell, their most reliable tracking tool, there was nothing in the water that they could not do on land. Their eyes, impermeable and unbothered by the murk of algae and dirt, could peer miles through the gloom to find their object or their prey. Their hypersensitive skin could feel the movement of the currents and every fluctuation in temperature. They could taste the world in the water— everything from tiny plankton to massive mammals, and they could hear, though muffled and slow, the many sounds of life chittering, rushing, and bubbling. They could not drown because they could not die, and so there was nothing that stopped Jasper's lean, strong body from diving again and again to the sand bars and valleys at the bottom of the bay.

When the clouds moved again, this time blowing slightly south along their eastern course, Alice saw a sudden break in the grey film and the face of the sun, still low in the early morning sky, shone openly and briefly over the wide, sweeping bay.

And when that sunbeam landed in one, long strip, on that lonely, barren island, Alice felt the air crackle around her.

The island, no bigger than a square acre, was one of those hazy, gloomy shapes she could only just make out through the morning mist. The inlet they searched was riddled with them— some sloping, others jutting like pillars out of the water, but all of them dark, and all of them bare. Alice could see, on those nearest her, the marks in the stone from centuries of tidal shifts, their bases eaten away by roaring, rushing water. Some had holes— tall, narrow tunnels eroded by eons of oceanic shift— and others, like the one she watched now, were nothing more than low humps, so far out and so deep in fog that they seemed to her little more than ghosts.

She stood in an instant, her eyes squinting in the gloom, as the sun broke through that gap of cloud. Where it hit the water, black transformed into brilliant, liquid azure and the dusky foam turned to purest white. On some of the islands between the mainland and the one that gripped her, Alice saw craggy bushes and low, stunted grass. The light lasted only a second, disappearing in the next behind a thick, grey cloud, but that second was all that Alice needed. Her eyes, moving faster than any human's ever could, took in everything the light touched in the instant that it touched it, and at the end, on the very edge of the sunbeam, her gaze froze.

Far out to sea, on that distant, hazy islet, was a flash of pure and brilliant gold.

"Jasper!"

Though he was still submerged in the writhing, rocky pool, Alice heard the shift in his movements as he began to rise towards the surface. Her gaze did not falter, squinting through the gloom until she found that shape again, duller and less pronounced in the overcast, but discernible and clear.

The relic, in the shape of a small heart, was one that Alice would have known anywhere— the golden pendant necklace from the night of the Incident that Alice had fastened around the warm, slender neck. She remembered its reception, how Bella had accepted it with surprising humility, given her total aversion to material wealth. Alice had seen this pleasing reaction in a vision, replacing its less gracious predecessor once she had written Rosalie's name on the tag alongside her own.

As she focused on that small spot, she heard Jasper cut through the surface of the water in response to her call. He peered up at her, fixing his gaze on what little he could see, and Alice, with a sudden terror that struck like lightning, leapt far over his head to plunge, headlong, into the dark, cold water.

He did not see what she did— he could not make out the soft, golden pendant, or the pale, unmoving body to which it was attached. He could not see the legs, bobbing dangerously in the rising surf, nor did he see it when that body was dislodged from the steep shore, slipping down, down, down, into the rising tide.

It took him only a fraction of a second, racing alongside her, for him to notice the body floating face-down in the shallows of the tiny island miles out from the cliff.

As always, Alice found herself outpaced as she forced her way through the currents and the rip. She could feel their pull on her, feel the riptide coaxing her further out to sea, but it had no more hold on her than the wind and she tore through it with only minimal delay. Jasper surged ahead of her, his body making waves on the surface of the water, and when he reached their goal, a full ten seconds before Alice, she felt his sudden distress like acid.

The pale, limp creature in her mate's arms made Alice's stomach drop like a boulder. He held her too tightly— Alice could see the budding bruises where fingers pressed into her wrists and the angry redness where his arm wrapped around her chest. Alice watched as he flipped her over, bringing her white, unseeing face out of the water, and he pressed a hand against her breastbone, then to her lips, feeling for breath.

When he found none, panic rose like a shot and he began to move with the spent, fragile body laid against him. Alice followed as quickly as she could, but even with the added weight of the girl in his arms, Jasper was still the faster swimmer.

They reached the shore in record time. Surging like bullets past the ragged cliff face, feet finding purchase on the soft, squishy sand of the deserted beach. They ran, stopping only when they were far enough from the water to lay her, gently, on the rough, pebbled ground.

At once, Alice began to tremble.

Single-minded in his determination, Alice could only watch as Jasper laid his hands on her, his fingers searching first her wrist, and then her throat, for the telltale thrum of her heart. Alice could hear nothing over the waves, over her own, sharp breathing, but Jasper acted for all of them when he batted his wife aside, his hands moving against Bella's chin.

Had Alice not known better, she might have thought that he was giving her a kiss. Her blue lips were parted, her eyes closed, and when he tilted her chin just a little higher to blow a breath of air into her lungs, Alice heard the answering crackle of water as it came rushing back up. It streamed from her as if she'd swallowed the whole of the ocean, and Jasper moved away just in time to avoid it, his fingers pressed again to the hollow beneath her jaw.

He waited only a second before he moved again.

Staring down at the blank, pale face, Alice saw the hesitation as Jasper leaned over her, braced against her chest. There was no movement there— no rise of breath, no thrum of a heartbeat— and so when he placed his the heel of his hand in perfect position over the center of her chest, it was all Alice could do not to look away.

He pushed down on her once, twice, three times, each compression bringing up another gush of cold seawater, before they heard the cracking of ribs. Alice, helpless with furious worry, rested her fingers on the artery at Bella's neck, feeling the returning movement of blood with each sharp blow. In her other hand, Alice squeezed the chalky, blue fingers, trying to rub away the dusky stains at their tips.

He breathed for her again and continued to push, each blow bringing up more water.

"Come on," Alice breathed, her heart squeezing as she willed life back into the still, pale corpse. The sluggish pound of blood through the girl's veins was not warm like it should be, but thick, and cold. Her colouring was all wrong— her face as white as bone, her lips and fingers sickly blue, and her chest, where Jasper continued to press with meticulous, unerring exactness, was a mottle of purple and black as bones cracked and vessels leaked beneath the skin.

Alice thought she had never seen anything so broken.

"Please…" Her face, pressed flush against the cold forehead, felt nothing but the wind. There was still no breath, no heartbeat…

"Please, Bella… please. Not yet, honey… please, not yet."

Not before we have the chance to hold you, and not before we can tell you, a thousand times over, how much we love you.

"Alice…" Jasper's voice was rough, rattling with a sudden, imposing dread. "Alice…"

She hissed, her coal-black eyes flashing in warning.

"Keep going."

His teeth clicked together as he snapped his mouth closed, his focus trained solely on the violent pump of his hand on her sternum. Alice watched the unchanging face— the lingering blueness, the pallor. Her hair, wet with sea water, and the line of salt that had dried on her cheek. There was a wound on the back of her head— Alice could smell it through her panic— and she could see the bruising around the edges, swollen and sore. Her body shifted with each compression, her back scraping against the rough, sharp rocks, and Alice pressed her lips against the cold, ashen cheek in a quick and gentle kiss.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, her fingers curling in the wet, tangled hair. "I'm so sorry, Bella. I'm sorry."

Jasper pulled away, his hands leaving her for just a moment to blow another breath into her body. Alice knew that he could hear her, that he could make out her whispered grief over the roaring waves and pattering drizzle, but his focus was not on his wife as he forced another rush of air into Bella's starved, drowned body. The fountain erupted again from her nose and her mouth, water spilling out onto the beach, but when he heard the sudden sound that made Alice's head jerk up, Jasper only hovered, unmoving.

Beneath his hands, so quiet and stuttering that Alice wasn't sure she'd really heard it at all, there was a quick and rhythmic thump. At once, Jasper pulled away, his eyes trained on Bella's face.

They waited for only a moment, listening for the next, dull noise. When it came, on the heels of the first, Alice felt a new urgency, a new hope. That hope warred with her panic, her relief with her overpowering fear, and when they heard the sound again for a third time, she saw Jasper deflate like a punctured balloon.

Another thump, and then a fifth, and beneath her hands, which cupped the pale, waxy cheeks with tender care, she felt a twitch and heard a gasp. Bella's lungs still crackled with water, the flood so deep that they could not drain it, and she choked, taking in a quick, sharp gasp.

There was a second breath to follow the first— just as shallow, just as laboured, but entirely on her own, without Jasper's interference. When she choked again a second time Jasper moved, rolling her carefully onto her side, and Alice saw a spasm of pain roll over her face before she let out a tiny, soft whimper. Jasper stroked her head, the contact increasing the influence of his gift, and when he spoke, it was soft and calm.

"You're alright, darlin'," he crooned, his cold hand brushing the angry, raised cut on the back of her scalp. "Thank God, honey… you're alright."

The sound of his voice, soothing and sweet, made Bella's eyelids flutter, and when she opened them, brimming with tears, he crouched to meet her gaze.

She did not focus for long. He had time only to smile, wan and shaken, and to touch his finger to her cheek, before Alice saw her eyes roll back into her head, her face falling limp against the sand.

The terror was quick to rise again.

"No, Bella!" She shook the girl by the shoulder, eliciting no response. "No, sweetheart. Come on…"

Jasper felt again for the pulse at her throat.

"Still going," he soothed, as calmly as he could. In an instant, they were standing, the girl cradled in his arms. "Too fast, and thready, but still beating, Alice."

When he moved, adjusting the broken body carefully so that her weight did not rest on her fractured ribs, Alice heard the popping crackle of her lungs. Her face had regained no colour— there was no pink flush to drive away the pallor, and her lips, still eerie blue, were caked with salt. To anyone but them, she would have seemed as dead as a corpse, as lifeless and as ruined as they'd fully expected her to be. Her head lolled against him, his arms strong and steady, and then they were running, sprinting on urgent feet towards the familiar scent of home.

The golden chain around Bella's neck, the only piece of warmth in the mire of grey cold, glittered like a beacon in the dark.

A/N: Thanks for reading! This is the last chapter I have finished, so I'm not sure when the next part will be up. For those of you who've been around here awhile, you might notice something a little different on my profile page. I decided to create some new covers for all of my posted stories (including this one). If you want to take a closer look, you can find larger versions on my Weebly site (link in my profile).

As always, I'd love to hear what you think!