[Jess Arc]
"The Vampire and the Wolf"
"No quote because my gosh the movie doesn't have too many quotable lines at a certain point. Guess I should have made this short story have less chapters."
-Lalaland972
Chapter 8
My feet blazed a trail in the soil while a rain of ash and fire descended on my world. Rage bubbled in my chest, festering as I pumped my arms to keep pace with my feet. Jacob was following me. For once, he couldn't catch me. We both knew it. For some reason, my fury triggered my untapped potential to run my body at a speed I had never built up to before.
What overtopped my anger was the longing to see them. My family. Mom. Dad. Daniel. I was starting to remember their faces without thinking back on that graduation picture. I could hear their voices. They were calling to me. Asking me to come home.
My mind traced my last images of them I could resurface. All semblance of them being rebuilt in my memory allowed me to remember one important aspect I had neglected to confront.
I dug my heels on the ground to break.
They were human.
I was not.
The earth that crumbled beneath my feet to stop my motion forward was nothing compared to how my own world was devolving until nothing.
My knees buckled to the disturbed ground beneath me and I raked my fingers through my hair.
I had accepted my life after I changed into a vampire when my past was a mystery to me. I had Edward and the rest of the Cullens. I was a vampire with a promise of forever with those that I loved.
It was an illusion.
Built on lies.
Why would they lie? Why would Alice pretend to be my sister? I was Jessica Stanley. What sick, cruel and twisted game they played with me because I chose to die versus become a vampire.
They stole my remaining time with my family. They stole my choice. I couldn't even bare to bring myself to return to my family anymore. I could potentially entwine them into the same fate I ended up with.
Die or become a vampire.
"I can't entangle them in my world," I whispered to Jacob. I sensed his presence in the distance behind me. He phased at some point after he caught up to me. He was allowing me space to process before he approached.
I turned around while still on my knees.
"Jacob," I croaked while tilting my head up to meet his face. "Please kill me. I can't do this. It was supposed to be my fate anyways."
"What?" Jacob asked in a sharp tone as his posture straightened, his muscles visibly tightening on his nude body.
I braced my hands on the ground before pushing myself up to match his strong presence. "I made my choice. I didn't want this life. Edward and the rest of the Cullen's won't do it. I can't go back to my family. I won't risk dooming them like when I was pulled into this world. You told me I was registered as dead in Forks. I am just asking you to make that the truth now. Please."
Jacob's dark eyes were so clear and unflinching that it caused me to take a step back from him.
"I spent years looking for you and you just want to die?!"
"You got your answer, Jacob! I didn't want this!"
"Who turned you?" Jacob's dark tone unnerved me. Its hidden agenda was to seek revenge. I wasn't going to let him be disillusioned into thinking I needed that from him.
"I am your natural enemy! Reduce that in this world by one!" I demanded while I shoved my hands into his bare chest. We were on an equal playing field as his hands snatched my wrists as I began to pull them away.
"I am not killing you, Jessica! We can figure this out!"
"My god Jacob, there is nothing to figure out. You cannot reverse this. What am I supposed to do? Go back to them and act like I don't know? Go back to Forks where people and my FAMILY think I am dead. I have no options aside from wondering this world alone. And god I don't want to do that. I don't want to be alone forever, Jake! I wanted to see my family in heaven or whatever afterlife there is. I don't know if I get that anymore because Edward always droned on about how vampires don't have souls. So just let me fade into the f**king black. Spread my burnt ashes into the earth and let the world move on. It will still turn on its axis without me here, Jacob. Please. If you are my friend. Please do this for me. Or take me back to your pack and let one of them do it for you."
I tried to step back, but with a sudden abrupt pull, Jacob brought me into his chest. "Never. You don't get to die! I don't care how you feel right now. Who gives a shit if you're a vampire now?" Jacob raised his large hands from behind my back and brought them to engulf my cheeks. I darted my eyes away from his penetrating gaze, but his plea for me to look at him convinced my eyes to give in to his wishes.
"I was wrong. So wrong, Jessica. You're not dead. You are alive. I have seen that over the weeks and you're every bit the girl I remember. At your core, you're Jessica. Your heart doesn't beat; but mine can beat for us both. Your eyes are gold; you keep alive off of animal's blood. You still have big dreams and long for adventure; that doesn't matter if you are a human or vampire."
My eyes were locked on Jacob's. I was hooked. I was reading the truth in his words as he spoke.
"We will figure out a way for you to be with your family again and not endanger them. I won't let you give up. I found you. I finally found you, and I don't want to let you go."
My throat ached as a raw, unrecognizable vulnerable voice responded to Jacob. "What are you saying, Jacob?"
"Jessica, I chose wrong when I had a choice. I was blind to what you meant to me until it was too late. Or so I thought. We shouldn't have been anyone's second choice. We should have been each other's first choice."
"The odds are stacked against us." Jacob offered me a weird look that indicated what I said had went over his head.
"Says who?"
"You could imprint," I countered in a hushed voice.
"And you said vampires only get one mate." I swallowed the lump rising in my throat as I grasped what Jacob was insinuating.
Recalling my Jessica memories and the humanity I once had, a philosophy I once shared resurfaced. A deep-rooted, core belief that someone didn't just get one great love in a lifetime. People were capable of many loves if their heart was open to it. Was my heart open to Jacob? How did I feel about him? And Edward...?
"What do you suggest?" Jacob's dark eyes glinted with hope when I finished speaking.
"We go to La Push first. I need to give the pack a heads up."
"Jake," I twisted my hands together in regret in what I had to remind him of. "If I stay around Forks or La Push, your people will be triggered to phase still. Vampire proximity ignites the dormant shapeshifting genes, right?" Surprise and then disappointment carved into Jacob's strong, chiseled face as my truths were sinking in for him. I myself felt surprised in wondering where I pulled that tidbit of wolf knowledge from. I hadn't remembered Edward or Jacob sharing it with me.
"F**k," he cursed while kicking a stone on the ground across an unfathomable distance.
"There is no winning. I won't put your people through that. Not when the Cullen's are gone as well."
"No. We are going. It can be a temporary stop while we figure this out. But we should-" Jacob cut himself off with emitting a powerful growl that reverberated the trees and ground around us.
My skin began to tingle with discomfort while I combatted the dizziness beginning to overtake my senses with their arrival.
I wanted to be furious and see the world in red before my eyes landed upon them, him and her.
"Jess…" Alice's melodic voice sounded broken and higher pitched.
When my eyes landed on her face, my heart tore like a piece of paper. Edward, Jasper, Carlisle, and Esme were faded out blurs with my vision concentrated on her. I knew if I looked over my shoulder at Jacob, he would have been a faded image too as I looked at the woman who betrayed me and pretended to be my sister for her sick enjoyment.
AN: Almost at the end of this ride, peeps! 1. Jess only remembers some parts of Jessica's past and not anything of Katie's. Either forever or just for now. To be determined. And… 2. If I go this route, this should be clued in by the end, but Jessica remembers some/most that happened in prequels but not the Katie drive of why she did things. I will work on figuring that out later. So, there ya go! Hope you've been enjoying this little short story. I certainly have been. To be honest, it is nice not being on a rigorous updating schedule and writing how I want to write it without worry about what the readers will or will not like.
LalaLand972's response to reviews:
WPear: More is here! I wasn't sure where I was going but thought more on your review and was like sure, let's have Alice catch up to them with the distance she got from Jacob! It was either that or Jessica confronts them on her own. I like it better this way though!