I had exactly one nanosecond to throw Bella behind me with all my force, her body wheezing through the air like a bullet and taking down a line of trees in its flight. The werewolf already had me on the ground the next moment. Its sawdust stench was clear and powerful now, as it breathed heatedly a few inches away from my face.
I heard Bella calling out my name, but all I managed to get out was a frantic 'Run!'. I then turned away just in time, so that the beast bit the ground instead of my face. Dirt shot out from its teeth, along with another roar, and I used its fury as a shallow distraction to skid away from its grip.
"Run the other way!" I hollered towards Bella, before soaring through the wall of leaves on my right, looking behind to make sure the werewolf was following me. To my relief, it was.
There was no time to think things through more. The beast howled behind me, as it ran using all of its limbs, its claws barely touching the trail. Did I have a plan beyond outrunning it and leading it on a different route?
While darting between the trees, I forced myself to remember what I knew about this creature. A small part of my brain took me back to a particular autumn night, in 1956. Eisenhower had just got reelected as President of the United States. There were fireworks lighting up the street where my family and I lived. That night, we had had the strangest visitor: his name was Abraham, but Carlisle called him Abe. They were old friends, both of them having been part of the Volturi coven during the same time. Abe left Italy soon after Calisle, in search of a greater purpose that he never found.
Their discussions had stretched far into the night. As much as I tried to offer them the privacy of catching up by playing the piano downstairs, I still caught glimpses of their dialogue and their thoughts - a few in particular being of paramount importance.
"You will never guess what happened, old chap," Abe said at some point.
"I am sure you will surprise me, as usual."
"Remember those creatures we stumbled upon in Norway, back in the good old days?"
"I remember Caius refusing to go with us," Carlisle thought to himself. "They sure had been hard to kill."
"Quite unforgettable, I'm afraid. Children of the Moon, were they?"
"Damned demons, chap!"
"What about them?"
"I had one follow me over the ocean a few years ago."
Carlisle's mind flooded in an instant with distress - distress that was so out of character for him. I didn't even realize I had stopped playing at that moment.
"How are you here now, friend?," he murmured.
"I led it straight to Italian lands and the Volturi took care of it. After four almost-deaths, that's what saved me."
Four almost-deaths. Suddenly, I was back in the woods, with the beast grunting behind me, as if possessed. The distance between us grew smaller and I couldn't afford to dwell on its excessive speed, almost better than mine. I jumped into a fir, making it rain needles from the impact. In no time, the werewolf was up as well, inches away from my foot. I tried kicking its snout and it didn't take me long to understand why that had been a bad idea. Its mouth divided in half, revealing the glistening rows of teeth, and bit the first thing it encountered - which so happened to be my pants. The material ripped and fell to the ground, leaving my leg exposed up to the knee.
I jumped immediately to the tree that seemed to be the furthest, yet still reachable from where I was. If I could do this a dozen of times in a row before disappearing into the forest, it could be enough to distract the beast. But as I jumped to the next tree top, I felt the hot breath of the animal on the nape of my neck. How the hell was it so fast?
Maybe running wasn't the key with this creature. I was down on the ground before deciding what to do next. The werewolf followed me just a second too late - enough to allow me to pick up momentum and attack. I threw myself at it, knocking it down. Its muscles contracted under its thick fur, tougher than steel, and I lodged my hand deep in its throat. I felt its iron-hard ligaments breaking and blood began to pool over my hand. The werewolf barked painfully, deceiving me into believing that I got it. Next thing I knew, its claws were on my back, gripping me tighter and shredding my shirt to bits.
Then I smelled something I never should have smelled: Bella's scent, a few feet away. Lost in the rush of the chase, I hadn't sensed her following me here.
"Get the hell away!" I shouted, too agitated to care about being polite.
The werewolf didn't like my shouting. Its claws grinded against my bare back, making a screeching sound that could have awakened the dead. Looking down at the beast, I saw that the wound on its neck was already healing.
"You leave him alone!" Bella's voice was raw and adamant and a couple of curse words slipped through my lips when I saw her spring in front of me, inches away from the werewolf's head.
No, no, no! Was she completely suicidal?
In the worst turn of events imaginable, the monster got distracted by her. Everything happened too fast. Bella kicked the werewolf in its eye with the stumpy heel of her boot. I used my free hand to grab her ankle and throw her once again away from the danger. She was back immediately. The werewolf's wound was no longer there. I felt my body twisting at an unusual angle when the animal rolled in the grass, until I was underneath it.
I cursed again, before bawling towards Bella again:
"Run, for God's sake!"
But she didn't. Instead, she launched on the back of the beast before I could catch her and prevent her heroics. The werewolf erupted in another howl and I felt its hot saliva dripping on my face. I kicked it in its loins, trying to get back a small advantage by distracting it from Bella. It barely seemed to notice, too preoccupied with what was happening behind it: my wife trying to bite her way through its coarse fur.
No doubt about it: she was suicidal.
I couldn't hurt the werewolf without hurting Bella, as long as she was still standing on its back. Stuck between me and her, the creature didn't seem to feel overpowered - only annoyed. Its wriggling to get Bella off its back allowed me to slide to the side.
It didn't take me long at all to realize my colossal mistake. The werewolf stood up and threw my wife on the ground before I managed to snatch her away. Its eyes - so painfully human - glistened when it stormed to her. My roar overthrew all the other sounds when I pounced on the monster. I tugged hard on its fur, ripping portions of the skin underneath, dragging its body away from Bella.
The beast cried out a long, lamentable sound, but the gashes were already recovering before my eyes. Was there no stopping with this thing? My eyes locked with Bella for the shortest moment before the werewolf rolled over me, dragging me through the grass and drooling over me in its path.
Things were happening too fast to process again. I saw Bella rushing back to where I was. The werewolf's body felt almost heavy above mine. Its fur tasted bad, almost metallic, when I bit its shoulder. Its claws made horrific sounds on my skin. Then through the haze of the battle I heard a voice that was neither mine, nor Bella's:
"Hey, barf bag! How do you like this?"
I recognized the entitlement in the tone quickly. Just as I was trying to compose my next move, I saw flames lighting up the air above, right above the werewolf's head. I used all my force to break away from its grip, just in time to escape the burning fire. I was up and standing, amazed by what I saw. The werewolf was now kneeling and wailing, its claws grasping at the grass, as fireballs of various sizes landed on its fur and withered.
On the other side I saw Nell, holding a sachet in one hand and lighting up cotton balls dipped in gasoline with the other. And there it was again: her unnerving quietness - but there was no time to dwell on that.
Bella was right next to me, watching the scene with horrified eyes. I took her hand in mine and we took a step back, just as one fireball wheezed past us and landed on a piece of dry soil. It had no time to touch any of us, but it was a hauntingly close call. My mortified expression seemed to amuse Nell.
"This ugly dog hates fire!" she explained, as she continued her mission, driving the beast insane with her fire attack.
"We're not big fans of fire either!" my voice was scandalized.
She rolled her eyes.
"You can put it out before it does anything to you."
I stepped away, motioning Bella to follow me. Soon we found ourselves standing next to the strange girl. In front of us, the awful creature was writhing and groaning, trying to escape the flames. It moved painfully slowly on all fours, bending at unusual angles and crawling in search for a non-existent cover. It seemed like an eternity had passed when the beast finally reached a nook between the trees. As soon as it found it, it got up on its hind legs and started running, disappearing into the forest with one last howl.
Beside me, Nell sighed.
"I'm so over this," she mumbled, as if she had done this a million times - and for all I knew, she might have.
With the danger seemingly out of sight, I allowed myself to relax a bit, pulling Bella in for a tight embrace. Her arms surrounded my waist and I pressed my nose in her hair, inhaling the gorgeous scent deeply. She was safe. As long as I could hold her close to me, I didn't need anything else. This was the only thing that mattered.
It wasn't until Nell cleared her throat that I remembered we were not alone.
"Thank you," I said, slowly realizing that, as strange as it seemed, the kid had saved us.
"Ah, it's nothing, really. It's not the first time this mongrel causes trouble."
"You seemed to be familiar with it," I noticed.
"I have to be, since it is kind of… uhm, following me. It was doing so tonight as well, before it caught your scent."
"What even was that thing?" Bella asked. "A shapeshifter or something?"
I nodded a defeated 'no'.
Many months ago, I had explained to her everything I knew about the Quileute shapeshifters in La Push and the treaty that bound us to them. What I had forgotten to mention was the fact that they were not the only wolf-like creatures roaming around the Earth.
"Worse, love. It's called a Child of the Moon. It's a human who transforms into a werewolf when the moon is at its fullest phase. It's something that cannot be kept under control."
"You've never told me these things existed," her tone hid a small accusation within it.
Because I hadn't thought about their existence in decades. I knew they were mostly extinct, thanks to the Volturi's efforts to get rid of them. There had always been rumours that some of them were still roaming around in the northern parts of Asia and Europe, but that had always felt like a threat not serious enough to be worth considering - until now.
"I almost forgot they existed myself," I admitted. "Most of them had been eradicated by the Volturi."
"And you said this one was following you, Nell?" Bella queried, turning around to face the girl better.
"Yes, it's been like this for a few months. I tried to chase it away to the coast of the Bering Sea, but it keeps coming back."
She shrugged, as if she was talking about the weather.
"It only bothers me once a month, when it's full moon. Although from now on it might bother you too, since you pissed it off, so… yeah, there's that. That's what I wanted to tell you last night, when we met, before you so rudely ran away."
My eyebrows raised in suspicion. I had so many questions. And after what happened here tonight, I wasn't sure I could go without finding answers this time. The way Bella bit her lip, I knew that the curiosity was most likely mutual. Strangely enough, the kid might have had some of the answers we needed.
"I'll tell you what you want, but I have questions of my own," Nell said, reminding me in an instant that not only was I unable to read her mind, but also that she was somehow able to read mine.
"This seems like a fair exchange," I agreed through my teeth.
"We're stationed at the base of the White Mountain," Bella stepped in. "You could join us there to have a proper place to talk - if you want, of course."
The girl studied my wife with cautious eyes - in the end, whatever she had seen in Bella seemed to be enough to mellow her face into a smile.
"I know you two are standing there. I heard you."
This time, there was no need to know what she was thinking to understand what she had meant by that. Bella and I hadn't been exactly quiet throughout the day. It was nearly impossible to keep a lowered volume when we made love. This shouldn't have been a problem, since the humans were constantly away throughout the day.
"Don't worry, I tried to get as far away as possible. It was way too gross."
My whole body recoiled at the thought of being heard when I was at my most vulnerable, at the highest peak of pleasure, by some kid. It felt wrong on all possible levels.
"Ugh, let's forget about this, I hate hearing that," Nell pleaded. "And once again, I am 15, so stop with the 'kid' thing!"
So this was how everyone had been feeling around me for decades? Had it always been as hard for them to control their thoughts as it was for me in that moment? Had I always been… this annoying to them?
"Come with us," Bella interrupted my embarrassing mental show, as if she was aware of how bad it had got. "We'll lead the way."
Without another word, we left the forests of Abyy and headed back to our temporary home in Belaya Gora, with Nell following close behind us.
It was way past one A.M. when we arrived. The backpackers were fast asleep in their houses, not a trace of dreams within their thoughts. The silence was beautiful, if not completely frightening by how unusual it was.
I went to the bathroom to change: my ripped pants looked completely ridiculous, while the lack of a shirt had kept Bella's eyes too distracted throughout our run - and that was a problem, since it would've been impolite to let her enjoy the distraction further, with our guest so close nearby.
Back in the room, I saw Bella huddled in the bottom bed and Nell sitting directly on the desk by the window, her scarlet eyes studying the modest surroundings with interest. The only thing separating them was the long rocking chair. I joined my wife on the bed, encircling her with one arm. A few hours earlier, I never would have guessed what the night had in store for us. For the moment, I could only be grateful for how things turned out.
"So how do we do this?" Nell asked, breaking the silence.
"Let's start simple," I suggested. "Should we try for a new set of introductions?"
"Okay, I'm Nell Larson, I am 15 and this is basically my land."
There she went again with "her land". This nonsense had to be set straight before continuing.
"What do you mean by 'your land'?"
"I mean this is where I hunt, you know? Humans, animals, whatever I can find. I don't like people messing around with my food. Other vampires rarely come here anyway."
I tried to hide the surprise in my face, before remembering the effort was useless anyway, since my mind was technically free real estate.
Throughout the years I had been alive, I had never met a vampire who fed on both humans and animals. It was always one or the other, never both. I wondered what was the reasoning behind this chaotic diet. As outlandish as I found it to be, it explained her ginger-hued eyes.
"You said you were 15," Bella pointed out. "Since when?"
"Since 1988. I had just turned 15 and went out too much for my own good, I guess."
This last line of hers - it seemed as if she had told it many times before. It sounded perfectly rehearsed, almost crafted to contain enough aloofness to show that she had moved on and enough humour to prove that it wasn't a big deal to her.
I couldn't help but wonder about the deeper layers of her story.
"And you're alone here?" I pressed.
"Duh," she puffed, almost insulted by my question.
"And whoever created you?"
"Dead."
Her tone warned me that she probably didn't want to go in further detail about this.
"Your turn," she said.
"Would you like to do the honours, my love?" I asked Bella.
She nodded and began telling Nell about us. She offered the essential information, such as our names and ages, and I joined her by adding a few details about the circumstances surrounding each of our transformations - carefully omitting the unorthodox aspects, such as my feeding on Bella's blood while making love to her right before changing her.
Nell's frown reminded me that just because I was omitting to say certain things out loud didn't mean that those things remained unheard.
"That's just sickening," she complained.
This was slowly crossing the line between mildly annoying to seriously enraging.
"No, you know what is sickening, kid? The fact that you're roaming around in my mind and I can't do the same with you. So tell me now: what is this gift of yours?"
Her eyes widened with innocence.
"I thought you figured it out, since you're basically an old man who's seen everything."
"Obviously not everything," I corrected her, letting the 'old man' remark slide.
"Well… I steal gifts," she muttered. "And in turn, I paralyze a person's ability to use that gift."
The world stood still for a few minutes, as I let that information sink in. While my brain digested the news, I had a revelation: the unusual quietness around the camp wasn't necessarily a result of the people around us having a collectively dreamless night. I simply couldn't hear them either.
I was completely barren of my power.
"Every vampire's gift?" Bella was the first to talk.
"I guess that depends. I can't really do more than two gifts at once."
"Do you get to choose the gifts or anything?"
I was still silently grasping everything, but I listened carefully nonetheless.
"It's kind of an adaptive power. If I come across several vampires with gifts, my brain chooses before I do which powers to steal. Sometimes, if I concentrate hard enough, I get to choose."
With the corner of my eye I caught Bella's slight frown. It wasn't hard to tell that this didn't make much sense to her either.
"But I need to be in close proximity for that to happen," Nell added.
"How close?"
"No more than a few miles."
The newness of this gift was equal parts fascinating and bizarre.
"You know, it's strange, because… I cannot exactly hear you," the girl said and her eyes fixed on Bella. "Why?"
"I can't hear her either", I said immediately.
"But why?" she insisted.
That was the question I had been asking myself ever since I laid eyes on Bella for the first time. Out of all the people on the planet, why her? What was it about her mind that made it completely unreadable? Over time, I got to find out that part of it was the genetic mix-up of Charlie's low-frequency thoughts and Renée's loudness. Still, the rest of it enthralled me just as much as it did when I saw her for the first time in the cafeteria.
"We don't really know," Bella answered. "I've always been immune to Edward's power."
Her voice held a lovely smugness.
"Just his power? Or others' as well?"
"I haven't met enough vampires to know that."
"Huh!"
I watched as Bella's eyes shifted from Nell to me a couple of times.
"So for all you know, you might be a… an armor or a shield of some sort," Nell concluded.
"A shield," my wife repeated carefully.
The possibility of her being a shield had never been one that I ever considered. I had only met two shields throughout all the years I had been alive. Their gifts, however, were completely different: one could make himself invisible to attackers, while the other could repel physical attacks by convincing the enemy to run in the other direction. Yet I could easily read both of their minds.
"It's not out of the realm of possibilities," I whispered, feeling this new revelation encircling my entire being.
She pulled back from my arms and turned around, to look at my face directly. Her crimson irises sparked with unspoken excitement.
"The ones I'd met before were so different, love," I explained, still in awe. "I hadn't even thought that you might be one yourself."
"How can we know then?"
"There's a simple way to find out", Nell slipped inside our discussion. "Just find more vampires, right?"
My jaw clenched. The concept of finding more vampires on purpose went against our mission to remain under the radar.
"Oh!" the girl exclaimed, her eyes widening all of a sudden.
No, no, no! Get the hell out of my mind!
These were thoughts that needed to remain private. I had to find some way to hide them. I focused my attention on Bella's curls falling down on my wrists as I held her. This was an innocent enough thought. The juxtaposition of the chestnut of her hair on the snow-white of my skin made for a pleasing contrast. Just like the last time we had been in our meadow and her locks draped around my chest as we laid in the sun. Our meadow in Forks. The Forks that we had left behind after the accident. The accident that got the Volturi on our tails.
Goddamn!
"That's an interesting story you've got there," Nell noticed.
"It is none of your business," I growled, leaving my polite behaviour behind.
"Seems to be the Volturi's business, as far as I could tell..."
"Okay, it's time for you to get out," there was no trace of compromise in my voice.
"Make me," she snickered, showing her age.
I stood up, every muscle in my body aching to throw our guest out the door. Bella was by my side immediately, her hands on my shoulders, pulling me back.
"Wait, wait," she murmured and I had to look at her when she asked me to - those eyes could make me do anything. "She saved us, Edward. She's not our enemy, right?"
"We barely know her", I prattled.
"She barely knows us, yet she chased away that creature."
I heard the girl sigh in the background.
"Bella..."
"She can read your mind anyway."
"Bella..." my tone grew rougher.
"I still have some questions of my own I would like to ask."
This time I was the one sighing. She had a way of driving me crazy with her stubbornness when I least expected it.
"Listen," she whispered - a superfluous effort, since Nell was standing a few feet away from us. "I can tell her the outline, if you can wait outside, far enough away to not be heard. You decide."
If I would've had any blood in my veins, it would've begun to boil at this exact moment.
"That's just not cool," the kid said. "I thought we were exchanging answers equally here."
My lips clamped in a tight line while I watched Bella. As if I could leave her alone with a stranger - even a stranger who had saved us from a werewolf attack. Could she really not comprehend why it was better to be safe than sorry?
"I am staying," I articulated each word with care, trying to temper my irritation for her sake.
Bella nodded and thanked me with a kiss on the cheek. And just like that, I stayed, and Nell got to find out exactly why Bella and I were on the run. No detail escaped her notice - thanks to my stolen ability. I had expected her to capitalize on the fact that we were on the Volturi's 'wanted' list, but she didn't. Instead, the first thing she said after we were finished talking was this:
"I bet you miss that family of yours."
"More than you know," Bella said.
"And do you think you'll see them again soon?"
"We don't know", I admitted. "Unless the news story dies down and the Volturi make a definitive decision, probably not."
"Man, that sucks."
I couldn't decipher the sentiment that went beyond her empathy: was it longing? It wouldn't have surprised me. I had met solitary nomads in the past - and as soon as they discovered that it was still possible to have a family in the deviant afterlife that vampirism was, they felt curious, even if they never acted upon their curiosity. Maybe Nell felt that way too.
"I'm not curious," she clarified condescendingly. "I had a family of my own and it wasn't all that great. But yours doesn't seem to have a 'only assholes allowed' policy, so I reckon you miss them."
"What family?" Bella asked.
"Ah, it's been ages and I was still human. It's a boring trainwreck anyway."
There it was again: the perfectly rehearsed mix of aloofness with humour from earlier. Her human life must have not been the best. I couldn't help but ask myself why.
"So anyway, you can rest assured about this whole thing, because I am kind of on the run from the Volturi too - although not officially."
I wanted these small surprises to stop. I hated being startled. My very nature prevented me from ever being so and I liked it. It felt safe to be always one step ahead of those around me - with the very exception of my Bella, whose mind remained forever locked to me. But this kid was cheating the game, robbing me of my most powerful sense. It wasn't fair.
"What do you mean?" I managed to say, getting past my frustration.
"I've met accidentally with two of them - a girl and a boy - in the late '90s, when I was trying to find a new place to settle for a year or two and I was passing from Austria to Switzerland. They were younger than me, but damn, were they powerful! One could knock you out of your senses, while the other could throw you on your ass from the pain."
Alec and Jane. The unbeatable twins. I knew the stories.
"Of course I gave them a taste of their own medicine before they got to do anything."
Nell smiled, her marmalade eyes sparkling at the memory. I tried to imagine the scene: three vampire kids fighting, their powers too big for each one of them.
"The thing is they asked me to go to Italy with them, so they could present me to their leader or whatever. They told me my gift would offer me a powerful position in the guard. But that sounded too much like getting tied down without my will and obeying to some made-up rules, so I refused."
"They let you go, just like that?" Bella's question came in a quick breath and I could tell how enraptured by the story she was.
"Pretty much," she shrugged. "Although they did say something about keeping an eye on me. So I figured I might as well try to hide from them. That is part of why I prefer being on my own - no surprise blindsides."
"Yet you're here with us," I pointed out.
"Only because I can read your mind and I know you are not some shady spy."
Bella laughed - not the nervous laugh she had when she tried to diffuse the tension when there were people she was not accustomed to around. A real, actual laugh.
"It's kind of convenient then", she giggled, and the girl followed suit.
I tried not to look too flabbergasted.
"So tell me, Nellie" - Nellie? - "what's the story of that ugly dog?" my wife demanded to know.
"Oh, that's a short one: I was out hunting back in February, because there was this afflux of tourists in town, since it was peak ski season. Some boy accepted a dare his friends gave him or something and went into the woods alone."
I prayed that she would not go into further details about her killing - not for me, but for Bella. It was too soon.
"So I was almost… done," Nell explained, her eyes flickering towards me for a short second, letting me know that she had listened to my silent plea. "And all of a sudden, the werewolf came out of nowhere and tried to attack me."
"What did you do?"
"I ran as fast as I could and jumped right into a frozen river. It was the first thing that came to my mind then. And it so happens that the mongrel is no good swimmer."
"You were lucky," I indicated.
"Yeah, most likely. It has come back for me every month ever since. I tried to hunt it down, but I can only sense its scent when it transforms - and sometimes a day or two before that, but it is too faint to be trackable. After I tried to chase it away to the coast and it came back, I pretty much resigned myself to the fact that it will probably follow me until one of us dies."
I felt Bella shudder ever so slightly under my arm.
"Well, how do these things die anyway?" she asked.
"No idea. All I know is it hates fire, even though it doesn't hurt it."
"It hates fire because it is ultimately the only thing that could kill it," I said.
Their eyes raised up to me in unison. I gripped Bella tighter.
"Carlisle told me decades ago about these monsters," I explained. "You need to rip their hearts out, tear them to pieces and burn them - almost like you would do with one of our kind."
"So it's settled then! Since it's probably after you too now, we'll kill it next month!"
"We will not make any decisions, Nell. Bella and I won't be staying much longer here. You might want to try to get as far away as possible from this place as well."
She frowned.
"It is my territory, I can't just go."
I rolled my eyes.
"Newsflash, kid: you cannot claim territories just because you like hunting in a certain place. It doesn't work that way."
"Sure it does. Get with the times, old man!"
I stopped myself from engaging further. I was above such childishness. Besides, the sunrise was close and the last thing I wanted to do was to spend the rest of my day locked in a small cabin with a spirited teenager.
She rose up from the desk before I said anything.
"This was sure an interesting night," she muttered.
Bella and I stood up from our comfortable place as well. I gazed at the door in a way that would've made Esme - had she been here - scold me for behaving impolitely to our guest.
"Are you going to be okay, Nellie?" Bella asked.
"I'm always okay. So I guess… it was nice meeting you?"
"You too," my wife rushed to say.
"Now if you don't mind, I'll leave before it gets awkward."
And without further ado, just as Bella was in the middle of a 'goodbye', Nell left. She closed the door behind her without a sound, as if she was never even here. Outside the window, behind the sheets, the night was coming to a close, although it wasn't even four A.M. yet. There was the slightest hint of light, but it was milky and dirty, a sign that the day wasn't going to be as sunny as expected.
My phone rang loudly, breaking the sudden silence. Alice's name flashed on the screen.
"Did it go well?" she skipped the pleasantries when I answered.
"That's debatable, I suppose. How come you're only calling now?"
"I'd seen some weird unexplainable flashes hours ago, but that ended quickly. Then that girl appeared again and all of a sudden you were both fine. You needed to talk to her, and I could see that if I called you then, she would've got scared and run away."
Flashes. Did this mean there had been no werewolf in her visions? There was only one way to find out.
"We got attacked by a Child of the Moon and the kid had some aces up her sleeve," I explained.
Alice's gasp was so loud that it almost felt as if she was in the same room with us.
"That is completely insane, Edward! They're so rare, how could you even… With Bella's luck, I shouldn't be surprised, I guess. But still..."
I laughed bitterly.
"So that explains the flashes!" she wheezed. "I couldn't see past that mutt."
As if her overabundance of visions from last time hadn't been anxiety-inducing enough.
"Most likely. It only comes when there is a full moon, so we're safe for now."
A loud hiss reverberated on her end.
"Listen, Jazz and I are mid-hunt and I've got to go now. But the Volturi are still on hiatus regarding their decision, so that's one less worry for today, right?"
I didn't respond. Such good news could change any second.
"Please, please, please take care with that thing - promise?" she tried again.
These days, such promises would have simply tempted fate.
"Goodbye, Alice," was all I said before hanging up.
Things were slipping out of my control too fast for comfort and I didn't like this. The night that had passed felt close to what humans described as 'having a fever dream': wild, hazy, agonizing and unstoppable. It didn't exactly help having my gift stolen for hours on end and used against me. I felt whole again, now that I had it back. Not as powerless.
I heard a low murmur outside, as two early hikers - British, judging by their accents - were exiting their cabin, discussing whether to bring their raincoats with them or not - as it turned out, the forecast for that day wasn't favourable for humans. Deep in her subconscious, the woman was wondering what made the wolves howl so loudly that night and I winced when I realized that it wasn't the crying of the wolves that she had heard. It was the howling of the werewolf.
Bella disappeared into the bathroom to take a shower and change her clothes. In the end, the two early hikers decided to drop their plans for the day and go back to sleeping, when they heard a thunder purring in the distance. With the water of the shower running in the background, I listened as other humans around the camp woke up, dressed up and went outside, only to be met by the ominous, unfriendly weather. One by one, each of the hikers went back inside.
Every nerve in my body was a stretched chord. I laid on my back on the bed and closed my eyes, trying to find my composure. Instead, my brain filled up with a deluge of unwanted and all too recent memories. Tasting the blood of the lynxes. Watching Bella feed. Seeing the werewolf for the first time. Telling Bella to run away. Bella doing the exact opposite. The beast chasing me. Fighting it to the best of my abilities. Bella foolishly stepping in. Nell throwing fireballs. Bella inviting her over for discussions. Telling her everything. Being unable to do the one thing I did best. Bella carelessly suggesting that I could wait outside.
An animalistic growl ruptured from my chest and I forced my eyes open, in order to stop the cascading thoughts. I didn't realize I was standing up again, grabbing my wallet and heading out the door until I was already outside.
This was a safe morning. The clouds that had collected in large piles on the sky while we were inside were a blessing.
I found myself knocking on the door of the early hikers. I could hear they were not yet asleep, as they were still unpacking their backpacks. The man responded, his face full of confusion when he saw me.
"Hello," I said, trying my best to make my voice sound warm and human. "I am sorry to be bothering you so early. I am standing a few houses further and I was wondering if you could help me with something - for a decent charge, of course."
He cleared his throat before responding:
"Let's hear it, man."
I knew I had him already. His mind was imbued with anticipation after hearing the promise of money.
"I would like to borrow your thickest, strongest climbing rope. For half a grand. What do you say?"
"You've got it, man."
In the distance, I heard Bella stopping the shower and grabbing her towel.
I smiled. Just in time.
Any guesses as to what happens next? :)
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