Chapter 16 – Getting Close

JPOV

After I found Bella's letter my hopes were flying pretty damn high. She was alive and well, something I didn't dare hope for despite Alice's visions, and she had faith. Faith in me. That first day, I was nothing but giddy. My rep as a badass motherfucker would have gone completely down the drain if any of my enemies could have seen me then. There was a constant smirk plastered on Peter's face and Charlotte was mirroring my own feelings. Of course she did, Bella said she loved them.

The only one that wasn't sharing in the joy was Alice. As always, it was hard to get a good read on her emotions, but this time I was very curious so I decided to dig deeper. The predominant emotion coming from her was concern for me, followed by an astounding enthusiasm for everything she did. Those two were drowning out almost everything else. But then I started noticing the little things. Tiny spikes of fear, when Peter looked at her; a hint of disgust when Charlotte talked and the most obvious, love, when she turned my way. How I could have missed that, I didn't know. It freaked me out to be honest.

The more I paid attention, the clearer it became that Alice was very good at clouding her emotions. Her enthusiasm was the perfect filter. Even absolute focus from my side gave me only little clues to what she was really feeling and I started to understand better why I hadn't noticed her love for me earlier. It was a potentially dangerous situation, because for the first time I realized that she might not have been honest about everything she said.

I wasn't really sure for the moment how to handle this situation. Had I not needed her to find Bella, I would have made two things perfectly clear. One, that I absolutely wasn't into her, no matter how much love she felt. She was way too hyper and accommodating for my taste. And by the way, who could be into a woman that had the outward appearance of a child? Being around her only made me miss Bella more. But I couldn't say that now, could I? Second, I didn't trust her for a dime anymore. It was possible that she had been genuine all along, but I couldn't be sure. On the other hand, she could have been playing me the whole time and I fell for it like a halfwit for a pretty face.

In the end, I decided to take advantage of her fondness for me and hear her out about why she wasn't happy with our newly made progress. Meanwhile I was going to keep a very close eye on her and at the first sign of malice from her side, her limbs would be flying all over the place. Truthfully, I could use a good limb-tearing for the moment. Get rid of some pent up frustrations. But that had to wait until I got my hands on the mate-stealing fuckface bastard.

Back to matters at hand, using my charm on Alice. Peter and Charlotte were off hunting right now and would join us a hundred miles down the road, where we wanted to check out another motel. That left Alice and me alone in the car and it seemed like just the ideal moment to have a little one-on-one with our psychic.

"So Alice…"

Very smooth start Jasper, she'll probably be swooning over you already.

"Yes, Jasper?"

"I got the feeling you're not very happy with the progress we're making, honey."

I wanted to call her darling, but the word got stuck in my throat. That one was for Bella alone. I just hoped she didn't notice my pause.

There was a twang of guilt from her, quelled quickly with sadness. She looked up at me with big amber eyes and sighed. The gesture looked both studied and sincere, if that was even possible.

"I've had some disturbing visions and I didn't want to burden you with them, not while you were so happy," she admitted and I couldn't detect a single lie. That made my heart constrict in my chest and I pulled the car over to the side of the road. The sense of dread that washed over me was almost tangible.

"Is she hurt?" as nearly yelled as I grabbed Alice by the arms and dragged her close.

"No, no, it's nothing like that," she quickly assured me as she tried to calm me down by putting her hands on my arms.

"Don't lie about having a vision to spare my feelings, Alice. When it comes to Bella, I need to know. I just need to know. We've been over this before."

I had a déjà-vue with the whole vision of Bella having dinner with Dickward situation and it made me even angrier.

"Whatever it is, Alice, I can handle it."

She hesitated for a couple of moments, but saw the building rage in my eyes. And could probably feel it too.

"It's bad, Jasper," she started. "They're just flashes, but I can see them getting more and more… intimate."

"Intimate how?" I growled, gripping her even more firmly. She winced, but I wasn't going to let her go before she told everything.

"I've seen his hand up her skirt, he licks her neck, she kisses him on the mouth, he –"

"Stop! I get the picture."

As hard as it was for me to hear Alice say it, I finally understood Bella's letter. I knew what her plan was and I didn't like it a single bit. She was going to seduce Edward, or play along with his filthy little game. It was so much like her I should have realized it sooner.

"Fuuuuuck!" I roared. I had to get out of the car before I broke something.

"Don't follow me," I hissed at Alice and took off into the countryside. I had the urge to destroy some trees, but there was nothing but sloping prairie all around me. I screamed out all my agony and frustration in one long 'motherfucker' and took out of couple of cows to regain my composure.

I didn't want to make the same mistake as last time Alice had a vision I didn't like. Bella asked me to trust her and her plan and I would do just that. I loved her and she loved me and that was all that mattered. If anything, it was my fault that she had to resort to such drastic measures. She had even told me in her letter. She had been waiting for me and I didn't show. Cue the self-hatred. I was going to kill the motherfucker a thousand times over for each involuntary touch my Bella had to endure.

By the time I made it back to the car, I was completely calm. Bella did what she needed to do in order to survive and I would do nothing less to find her. Starting with Alice Brandon.

"I'm sorry, Alice," I said climbing in the driver's seat. "I didn't mean to hurt or scare you. Can you accept my apologies?"

Her surprise made way for love and concern and she nodded. I'm pretty sure she would have blushed if she could. I could be a suave motherfucker when I needed to.

"You don't need to apologize, Jasper," she said, her voice laced in concern. "It's just very hard for me to hurt you."

Her feelings were genuine when she said that, but I couldn't escape the feeling that there was more to it. I wasn't going to push it now, but I was certainly going to keep a closer eye on her emotions.

With my knowledge of Alice's vision, my mood was down below zero, as were Peter and Charlotte's. Charlotte immediately agreed with my assessment of the situation; that Bella was trying to seduce him. What we didn't know, was what her ultimate goal was; how she thought she was going to escape. That's where we needed to come along. In the end, it was up to me to save her, no one else.

The second day after we found her letter, we realized we weren't getting any closer. Alice saw a massacre caused by Fuckward in a town nearby and even though we split up, it effectively slowed us down. It was all so frustrating and draining, we all needed to hunt constantly. And that was slowing us down even more.

In the middle of the night, 70 hours and two minutes after the letter, we discovered something that chilled me to the bone. Interspersed with Bella's scent there was the distinct sweetness of another vampire, not Assward. Judging by its potency, the other vampire had come into contact with my girl for at least a couple of minutes. From then on Bella's scent disappeared again, as they most likely got back into their vehicle, but the unknown vampire was clearly on foot.

"He's a tracker," Peter stated almost at once.

As soon as he said that, I knew it was true. Somehow, Bella and Jerkward had come into contact with a tracker, pissed him off and now he was on their tail. As if one crazy vampire wasn't enough to deal with.

"This isn't necessarily a bad thing, Jasper," Charlotte suddenly spoke. We all looked at her like she was crazy, but she stared back defiantly.

"Listen, we're getting nowhere with our Merlin/psychic quest here. We're not one but five steps behind on the bastard. Once they get in their car, we're fucked. But this tracker doesn't have the same issues, he's following them on foot."

"And all we need to do is follow the tracker," I added. "Charlotte, I love you."

We both had shit-eating grins on our faces, making plans to ditch the car and continue the chase on foot. I could feel Peter's eagerness as well, but his ego was slightly bruised so I sent him a wave of my gratitude. The only one who wasn't happy with the whole situation again, was Alice. I was getting extremely suspicious by now, but I couldn't catch her with a single lie just yet. And when I asked her why she was feeling unhappy, she whined about not having the right footwear for a chase on foot. I couldn't believe I had ever found her presence soothing at that point and I dismissed her objections with a shrug.

Continuing the chase on foot turned out to be liberating. We were animals after all, predators on a hunt, doing what we were made for. We treaded lightly through unchanging prairieland jumping small streams and ducking through scattered bushes, never losing the scent and our goal. This is how it should have gone from the start and Peter and Charlotte shared my exhilaration.

After running a couple of hours Peter noticed a female vampire in the distance. Her hair was flaming red and it seemed like she was wearing a fur coat. She was running almost as fast as we were in the same general direction and in another few miles she was bound to hit the trail we were on. So far she hadn't seen us yet and I wanted to keep it that way. It was always better to have the element of surprise on your side.

She did notice us when we converged on the trail, but we were already too close for her to get away. Right away she crouched down defensively and I motioned the others to stay back as I approached her. It was very obvious that she was a nomad on a closer look. Her clothes were shabby cast-offs, she wasn't wearing shoes and there was a layer of grime covering her face like she hadn't seen water in weeks.

I kept a respectable distance of ten yards between the two of us to show I harbored no ill will, but close enough for her to see my scars. The sight of that alone usually put the fear of god in any vampire; it was instinctual. Her fear did indeed spike, but there was no sign of it in her face or posture. She was a tough one.

"Why are you following my mate?" she hissed at me.

"We have no business with your mate," I tried to assure her as I pushed some calming vibes towards her. Her emotions were on the edge of being crazed and it didn't have much effect.

"He's tracking my mate who has been abducted. I'm simply using his trail to get to her," I explained.

She looked at me in stunned silence for a couple of seconds. Next she started laughing hysterically which stunned me in turn. And creeped me out. She sounded very much like a hyena. All the while her emotions were such a cesspool of hate and rage mixed with an insane amount of jealousy, I couldn't make sense of it. Come to think of it, she was probably just crazy.

"If James is tracking your mate, she's as good as dead," she spoke as her laughing fit had died. "He's the best and he won't ever let go once he's on a hunt. He lives for the kill."

There was so much smugness in her words, I almost ripped her head off right there. Instead, I took a deep, unnecessary breath and smiled at her.

"Well, then I'm going to have to kill him first," I told her, my own smug smirk in place.

That was enough to send her over the edge, the crazy ass bitch, and she came at me nails first, a high pitched shriek coming from her throat. The noise stopped abruptly as I tore her head off. I never promised I wouldn't kill her. I just wanted her to make the first move.

I made quick work of removing her limbs, while Peter had already started building a pyre. I guess I did get the limb-tearing I had been craving after all. And I deserved it with all the shit I had been dealing with in any case.

Not five minutes after I met the redhead, we were already on our way. Peter, Charlotte and I made a great team when it came to disposing vampires even though we were a bit rusty. Alice on the other hand was freaked out. She probably had never witnessed the killing of a vampire. It wasn't nasty, like a human's with all the blood, but that made it somehow more disturbing. That an immortal life could be finished so quickly. Or, and that was a valid possibility, she was merely fearing for her own life.

We continued our pursuit even faster now we knew what this James character was up to. The trail went on and on and on for days. He wasn't stopping, but neither were Shitward and Bella. Convenient for us, because there was no cleanup to be done. And soon we were very hot on their tail. But so was James.

The scent of the tracker was growing steadily stronger in the last thirty minutes; it seemed like he was slowing down. Charlotte came running next to me as I slowed my pace a little. Our hunt would be of no use if he saw us coming. I had my senses cast out to pick up on his emotions, but we weren't close enough as of yet. What I did feel clearly, was Charlotte. She was nervous and wanted to ask me something, but was too scared to interrupt.

"What is it, Charlotte?" I asked, harsher than I intended. I knew as well as she did, that I was a different man when I took charge and she took no offense by my tone.

"We need a plan, Jasper. This isn't going to be as easy as taking care of the female. The tracker is experienced, that's obvious."

"I can handle it."

"True. But time is of the essence here. And how are we going to find Bella once you kill the tracker?"

Fuck. She was right. I had been so focused on getting to him, I hadn't thought about what was next. And this was exactly why Charlotte was an essential part of our team and not just Peter's mate. She always kept an overview when we men got carried away.

Peter joined us and we started making up a strategy while running. As much as it pained me, we had to wait to take James out until we were on Bella's trail ourselves. But we needed to be close enough to be able to intervene if he found her before we got him. It was a thin line to walk.

We decided to split up. Once we got close enough, Peter would make a sweeping motion to the right and Charlotte would go to the left. The objective was to get ahead of him and find Bella, but stay far enough away to not alert Crapward. Alice and I would stay on the tracker and take him out. It all came down to timing. I could only kill him once either Peter or Charlotte located Bella and then it had to be fast. Next we could regroup and get to Bella together.

It was a good plan and it worked better than I imagined. One of the first things you learn during combat is that the plan almost always needs redirecting. But not this time. Once I got a read on him, I sent the other two to find my mate. Not fifteen minutes later, Charlotte called me on my cell to tell that she had located Bella. They apparently had stopped running and hid out in an abandoned farm building two miles from where I was standing. Then I got into action.

I sent waves of crippling fear and despair the tracker's way, slowing him down. I reached him within the minute as he lay curled up in a ball in the middle of a field. It was strange, I had been fantasizing about making a great, theatrical appearance, but once I saw him, I felt nothing but disgust. The vampire in front of me was a scrawny, dirty, blond man, changed in his late twenties. Tracking probably was the only ability he had. The redhead had been so blinded by love, she couldn't even see how tiny and insignificant he was. He recoiled and tried to crawl away from me even when I stopped feeding him fear.

I grabbed him by his dirty shirt and jerked him upright. The last sound that came from him when I put my teeth at his throat wasn't a wail as I expected. He laughed hysterically just like the female had done. I hesitated for a second, but then bit down into his neck to rip his head off. He only had the chance to say one thing.

"You're too late…"

AN: I was torn between my love for cliffies and giving you readers what you want. But as you've notived, the cliffie won. I'm evil, I know.

Thanks to Jasper's Destiny who taught me how to write an interruption on the wordybitches blog. I just had to use it :).

Like last chapter, this is unbeta'd. My apologies for any mistakes still left.