BAM! 3 Chapters in as many days! I couldn't leave you guys hanging like that.

I had never run faster in my life. It was now my only goal to follow the nomad's scent - but I was no tracker. They would soon be crossing paths with Bella on a road to the north, so I headed in that direction. While I sat in my house thanking people for keeping her safe, she had driven straight into a danger we had sent her way. Alice was not on my good side right now. She had been casually watching Bella's decisions, but very focused on our visitors. She had missed Bella's decision to go this morning into Port Angeles to fix her damn phone, and we had just sent the new coven in exactly that direction. The odds of their paths crossing were small, but James had been so fixated on our dismissal of the scent, so fixated on the sweet and intoxicating bouquet that Bella emitted, that he had committed it to memory. He had planned to return later, to find that scent. But apparently, he had just enough fortune to run straight into it.

I ran up the side of the highway, listening for their thoughts, or Bella's truck. I could her the worry of my family behind me, running, planning, hoping. I could hear Alice focused on something, and saw only Laurent, and Victoria running through trees. Where was James?

Suddenly I could hear it. The roar of Bella's truck was audible over all of the noises of the forest. I darted forward, stopping in the trees behind it. She was not there. And it did not smell like blood. She was alive then, whole, unbitten, and undrained, at least for now.

I caught a distant argument being replayed in thought to the West, and a general sense of pain. I headed towards it, knowing my family could not possibly catch up to me, but would try. Emmett would be a close second, because he could physically bound further, but not close enough if I got into a dispute.

I arrived at a tree where Laurent lay, cursing at the sky. His torso had been ripped from his legs, and he was working on reattaching the two. I slowed for a moment, placing my foot on his leg to stop him from pulling them back towards himself. He scowled up at me.

"What happened?" I asked bitterly.

"This happened." He said.

"With James and Victoria." I specified angrily, pressing my foot into the severed section of his torso. It cracked under my weight.

"James caught the scent of the human who'd been in your house earlier. They began hunting. I tried to stop them, but…" he looked down at himself and cursed again. He would be fine. We healed very well from incidences like that.

"Direction?"

"I was busy being ripped apart," he scoffed, but I caught a glimpse of red hair in his memory, heading further west. I took off again, following the direction Laurent had unintentionally indicated. Alice was suddenly running beside me.

I saw the conversation, and changed course. Jasp- before she had finished her thought Jasper appeared beside her.

"Where are they going?" I asked, refraining from adding the insults that I had wanted to, searching for the female's scent. Jasper picked it up almost instantly.

I smell her, but not him, or Bella. He thought. They've undoubtedly split up.

In Alice's head I saw trees blurring by, as James haphazardly leaped with Bella tucked under his arm like a piece of luggage. He dropped her in a clearing and I heard the sickening crunch of bones breaking. Bella rolled away from the pain, and vomited beside her. Speckles of frost clung to her hair.

"East." We both said, and began running. Into the mountains, where the frost clung to the ground.

"Rosalie and Esme will deal with her pickup. I'm not sure what story they'll go with, but for right now they've turned it off, and are hiding it in the forest. Later we'll probably stage something when Bella gets out of this." Alice yelled conversationally as we ran. I was keeping pace with her now, as I needed her foresight to stop my misdirections. Time was essential now. Her optimism was grand, but not helpful. Optimism did nothing. She jumped onto Jasper's back and he kept up with me as best he could. The Alice backpack he now donned was not what slowed him down. I was just that fast. Alice needed to focus on seeing rather than running, and she trusted Jasper to keep me within mental hearing distance of what she could see.

"You were in the Cullen house. He smelled like you. They all did. But he got all worked up when I noticed and focused on your smell. I haven't seen a pet this loved since the twenties. She was even there." He had switched to whispering. "A pet so loved by a creator that he refused to change her or let her out of the mental institution he worked in. I stole her away, changed her, and killed him. Best fun I've had in almost a century. But now….." He looked back at Bella, who's eyes were fuzzy with pain and confusion. "And to think, extra vulnerable, weaker than most. Unable to hear." He whispered again. "So heavily defended. And you smell so good." He smiled at her and leaped.

I nearly ran into a tree I was so distracted by the sight of such a predatory leap. I pulled out of Alice's mind and kept running. Bella's scent was stronger here, but still at least twenty minutes old.

Within ten minutes I had reached the clearing we had seen. They were gone again, but freshly so. Bella's scent was now permeated with stomach acid, and I didn't need to wait for Alice to follow it. When Alice caught up to me again I could see Bella in her head.

She was lying sideways in the snow. I angled my run towards the snow-peaked caps. Victoria had met up with James in the snow.

"Why did you start another game? Do you realise how strong this coven is?" she demanded of James.

"Don't you understand? It's the same game. Mary, or Alice, or whatever she goes by now. It's the same game. Full circle. She was his pet, and I destroyed him and saved her. Now it's time for me to destroy her pet. The entire coven trying to protect one little, deaf, human. It's enthralling. Excitement we haven't had in over 80 years, Victoria. My best game, ever." Bella was breathing heavily, and it attracted the attention of the others.

"We need to move now. They're on your tail."

"Oh I know."

To Alice's credit, her surprise of his knowledge of her past – an asylum had he mentioned before, and another name to search under – was kept in check by her focus on Bella. She was earning back points from me that was for sure. She was already guilt ridden at missing the critical decision of Bella's morning.

As we ran I began to smell something more distressing and attractive than anything I had ever smelled. Blood. Speckles of it, scattered on sharp rocks, splattered on the ground in random arrays. Two halves of me lit in a combined fire. Mine. My mate, my blood, my Bella. Injured.

"ALICE!" I yelled. She would undoubtedly smell it too.

"I can't see it. He didn't plan it, and in the future she's lying on whatever is injured. I think it's her leg." She cried as Jasper fought down his own instincts to hunt.

Hold your breath Jazz. Alice whispered and thought. Jasper re-focused on the goal, he would find the threat first.

We came across the snow that was stained bright red. It didn't look like a lot of blood, but it was still there. Still a complication. Something to distract. Something to track. I rounded the snow, following the scents of the blood. I was so attuned to her scent that I didn't need Jasper either at this point. Again I took off running, closer to my full speed. My family would follow.

James, Bella tucked like a sickening ragdoll under his arm, jumped into the shallow bed of a river, and through a waterfall, to take rest in a cave. He had no end goal, just the chase. See how long the little girl could survive while her guardians scrambled to catch her. The game would not be won until they did, or until she died.

It took me a moment to realise that the vision I had been having of Alice's had merged into my detection of James' actual thoughts. I was close. Close enough to catch him in time. But to ensure Bella's safety, I needed to make sure he couldn't crush her as I sprang. I needed to wait for him to drop her again. He didn't know how fast I was, he couldn't imagine I could hear him plotting. I slowed as I reached hearing distance of the river and waited for my siblings. To their credit – they had run as hard as they could. No clothing had been spared as they ran – if it was faster to go through the tree, they had. Normally we weaved around such trifles to save clothing, but today was not that day. My family's clothing was equally as torn as mine. Emmett and Carlisle were entering my mental range – they weren't far behind Alice and Jasper. They hadn't had to pause and watch Alice's visions, they had just followed our scents without hesitation. I was watching him in Alice's head about thirty seconds before I could see his thoughts in my own head. We were at the moment, the breaking point where we could attack.

He was on the move again, running with Bella, towards a nearby escarpment. He stooped, dropping her limp body on the edge of a steep cliff.

Bella had regained consciousness again, she was now staring up at him. He crouched over her – don't push her, I begged mentally – and said very clearly: "I want this to hurt."

He reached down to her shoulder, and her arm. He began lifting the arm, as if to roll her over the cliff and pulled sharply. He dropped the arm and stood again.

I flinched, and held myself still as Alice and Jasper closed in. Bella broke my resolve however, her scream of agony pierced the forest, and I leapt forward to close the short remaining distance between James and myself, without waiting for my siblings. However dangerous this was I could not leave her in the hands of him. Better to be ripped apart than have him hurt her again.

James whipped around with a manic glee on his face, ready for attack, as I jumped nimbly toward him, attacking with obvious unsubtlety. He braced himself for an upward based attack and I felt Alice's fury as she hurled in at his stomach. Jasper had thrown her like a javelin. While James was bracing himself from my sky-based attack, Alice had appeared out of the trees, horizontally like a bullet, crashing into his hips. They shot over the cliff in a thunderous crash that echoed through my chest. Mid leap I caught the edge of the cliff and righted myself protectively over Bella. Jasper pounced towards me, and all of my instincts buzzed. He was here for my prey, for my blood. I snarled with ferocity as he flew, until I realised that his eyes and thoughts were purely those of hate and victory, rather than bloodlust. His mate was in danger now.

Jasper's jump took him solidly over the cliff, to ensure that his Alice, who was currently fighting a skilled individual much larger than herself, would be safe. She was fast, seeing James' approaches before he made them and she was an expert at avoidance, but she was less skilled at attack. That would be where Jasper would finish him.

I closed my eyes and halted my breathing as I listened. I took in everything in a matter of seconds. Emmett was no longer with Carlisle, but Carlisle was approximately thirty seconds away. I could not hear Emmett at all, so he had dropped back out of my mental radar somewhere. Rosalie and Esme were not in my mental range either. Alice was flickering through a strobe light of visions to keep herself moving and away from harm as Jasper whipped lethargy and fear at James, taking advantage of his confused and sluggish state to rip off his arm. The three of them were dancing their battle at the base of the escarpment, and if I wasn't so anxious about protecting Bella I would have undoubtedly joined them. As of right now, I would leave my family to deal with him, while I dealt with Bella.

Bella.

I opened my eyes to survey the damage. She had a gentle trickle of blood staining her lips, and scraped up the side of her thigh – the one she normally rubbed when she was thinking. Her left wrist was purple and swollen, and her right arm looked sickly. I tore a seam into her jacket to expose the flesh of her arm and shoulder. There was a sharp spike where her clavicle met empty skin, instead of supporting muscle, and a purple bruise blossoming with a lump on the inside of her arm. She was breathing, but harshly.

Carlisle swept down onto our position, sparing only a glimpse for the battle waging below.

Are you going to help them while I tend her?

I snarled in response.

I thought not.