Chapter 2 – Denali

It was sunrise. I was in Alaska. I had no idea where Denali was.

I heard the roaring of a near by highway, so I ran up to it and peered through the dark evergreen trees hoping to spot a road sign. There wasn't one nearby, so I ran along the road looking through the trees until I came to one. It was kind of fun running alongside the highway, I could easily keeps up with the cars and overtaken them if I really tried, but I couldn't appreciate it fully, the hole had been festering a lot recently.

Yes! I was on the right track. Only a few more miles to go and then I would be in Denali. Maybe they knew where the Cullens had gone – oops! I shouldn't have thought of that. I unsteadily picked myself up after a moment and then carried on running when I had recovered some stability.

I had to slow down once I got to Denali, despite the early hour, there were people about. I wondered down one street then the next, finally stopping at a crossroads and spinning round to look at all of the similar houses suddenly realizing that I didn't know where Tanya's family lived. I could feel the instinctive pull of the humans around me - further proof that I needed help - but I wasn't going to just pull Tanya's address from thin air. So I held my breath and tried asking round - only taking breath for my next sentence when there was at least a five meter radius of space around me - seeing if any of the locals knew. It took a while but I finally got directions from a sullen looking teenager who never really made eye contact, so I thanked him and followed his instructions.

It was a damp and misty day and that made the house that stood before me even more mysterious. It was truly humongous in size, and a slightly older style than the other houses in Denali. I was apprehensive as I warily walked up to the house, surely they wouldn't see me as a threat and attack me immediately. I had to stop a few times as my muscles tensed in anticipation of a possible fight. If I was human I would have been sweating and my heart pounding in my ears, but I was a vampire now.

As I approached the house I heard the snap of a phone being shut angrily. I hesitated only for a second before knocking on the large wooden door. Then I heard the hard clapping of hurried footsteps heading towards me. The door opened with the faintest of creaks and for the second time in two days I was frozen with shock, only this time the shock was a happy shock, it took me only a few seconds to get over it then, not caring that I always felt intimidated by her and that she hated me, I threw my self forward to hug Rosalie Hale.
Rosalie's phone rang and I immediately let go of her so she could answer her phone.

"Alice?" she answered

"Where's Carlisle? I need to speak with him" Alice's voice came quietly through the phone heightening my joy.

"He's hunting" so where was Alice then?

"Listen, have you spoken to Edward?" The joy of hearing Alice's voice again lessened the effect of Edward's name but my face still crumpled with pain.

"Yes, just now. Alice, what's go-" Rosalie suddenly broke off a look of pure horror washing across her face, a low snarl was coming from the phone "He hasn't gone to Italy?" the uncertainty in her suddenly weak voice made the statement a question.

"Yes" was all Alice said, but I could hear the judgement and condemnation in her voice. Something nagged at the back of my mind, what was so special about Italy?

"No! But he cant, he just... cant!"

"What exactly were you hoping to achieve Rosalie? Did you think he would just home and everything would just go back to normal? You can tell Carlisle and Esme what you did."

"But Alice... Bella's alive, she's standing right in front of me... and she's a vampire, I can prove it." Rosalie handed me the phone with a look of desperation in her eyes.

"Er... Hi Alice," I said uncertainly, "What's happened?"

There was a tense pause of about twenty seconds before Alice spoke " Charlie disappeared for a few days, It scared me half to death, then I panicked because I couldn't really see you either, so I decided to go to forks to see what was happening. I saw Charlie find your jacket shredded by a tree that had signs of a bear on it, he was going to give you a funeral, I went over to Charlie's to make things easier for him, see what I could do then Rosalie" Rosalie's name twisted into a snarl through her teeth, "told Edward that you were dead and now he's gone to Italy... to kill himself."

My reaction was instantaneous, "NO! He can't! How dare he!" I was so angry my vision became red-tinted, my hands were clenched into fists and I was snarling, a low menacing sound that shocked me out of my anger and made me realise that I had completely crushed the phone in my hand.

Within seconds the house phone rang, Rosalie darted inside and I followed her guessing that it was Alice calling. Rosalie picked the phone up and after a moments hesitation she handed it to me.

"What can I do?" I asked desperately.

"Well..." her voice trailed off.

"Tell me Alice!" I almost shouted down the phone, my emotions were running high, I tried to calm myself before I crushed this phone as well.

"It'll be very dangerous" she warned.

"Alice, I'm a vampire, I have nothing left in forks, I can't let Edward kill himself out of guilt over me!"

"OK," Alice finally conceded "do you have a passport?"

"Yes, Its in my room," I was filled with relief as I silently thanked god that Renee had wanted to marry Phill in Mexico, and that I had gotten a passport just in case she actually went through with it.

"You get a flight to New York from Denali and I'll meet you there, get Rosalie to arrange the flight for you, at least she will have done something useful then."

I detected the bitterness in Alice's voice when she mentioned Rosalie but I didn't care I was too panicky to feel anything else. I looked at Rosalie and she was already on the computer looking at flight details for the nearest airport.

I knew there wasn't much else to say, the rest was out of my hands but I couldn't bring myself to terminate the call. Neither could Alice, I heard the whoosh of her passage up the stairs and into my room. I heard her look through my things carefully, trying not to disturb my room, god knows what it would do to Charlie if he found that, the day after he had discovered his daughters death, someone had ransacked her room.

"I've got it" she informed me.

Two seconds later I heard Alice hiss, "what's happened?" I demanded, my nerves were stretched to their limit, I couldn't take any more surprises.

Alice started muttering so fast I had to concentrate to make sense of her speech "the door's just opened it's Charlie coming back with some guests they smell like dogs but I cant hear any, only humans I'm going to disconnect, call me back in exactly three and a half minutes saying there's an emergency with Carlisle or Esme and that I need to go back to LA now" only a second after she started her speech she hung up.

I started counting in my head; one Mississippi... two Mississippi... three Mississippi it was hard to make myself wait the full three and a half minutes that Alice had requested but I finally picked up the phone and started dialling.

The phone rang for so long that I thought it would go to voice mail, what was Alice doing? A deep, gravelly voice eventually answered, "hello, this is Alice Cullens phone can I pass on a message?"

I hesitated for a microsecond and racked my brains to try and remember a hospital in LA, then carried out Alice's orders, "Hello, this is the St. Francis Medical Centre, would you tell Alice that her mother has had an accident and that she must return to LA as soon as possible please?"

I felt a pang of sadness and guilt as I heard Charlie ask who was calling, his voice weary and cracked with grief . I heard the person who had answered the phone relay to Charlie roughly what I had said. Then I heard Alice's voice piping up as soon as her name was mentioned. The bogus message was reiterated once more and my jaw dropped at the performance I heard the just the right amount of worry and desperation. Finally I heard several deep voices, including Charlie's, encourage her to go to LA as soon as possible.

The phone was then passed back to Alice where she assured me that she was on her way and thanked me for telling her about the "accident". Alice hung up for the second time, I turned to Rosalie who was across the other side of the room and looking at me expectantly.

"Alice is on her way" I said in a voice that betrayed how dazed I was.

Rosalie came to stand in front of me and waited until she was sure she had my full attention before speaking, "Alice knows what she's doing. Your flight to New York leaves in half an hour and it will take us about twenty minutes to drive there, I'm going to call Carlisle and tell him what's going on."

Rosalie took the phone from my hand and called Carlisle while I just sank down on a nearby sofa and wrapped my knees up in my hands. I desperately wanted to be going now. Now that I knew I would be seeing him again – if only of a brief period, maybe a few hours at most – his name wasn't the jagged knife it used to be. His name didn't reopen the barely healing scar across my chest. His name didn't stab my heart and leave me bleeding.

I wanted to go now, but a small part of me wanted to stay, to see Carlisle, Esme and Emmett, but only a small part, the rest of me was itching to go so badly it was almost painful.

Eventually the longest ten minutes of my life were over and me and Rosalie were getting in her shiny, red convertible. I closed the car more forcefully than I intended. As I sat next to Rosalie I realised the novelty of seeing her, or any Cullen, had worn off and I was still intimidated by her and she still at least didn't like me. There was no hostility in her voice when she spoke.

"When did you... Y'know... become a vampire?" she asked hesitantly through the awkward tension in the car.

"I woke up yesterday."

"Oh" was all she said but I wasn't expecting a great deal more.

After a pause Rosalie asked another question, her voice having a note of curiosity in it this time; "How did you find us?"

"I tried to hunt, and It didn't really go very well, I didn't drink a human of course! I ran away so I wouldn't be tempted, but I decided that I needed help. I remembered that there was another vegetarian family in Denali, and that Laurent was meant to be staying with them when he found me."

"Laurent?"

"Yeah, he was going to drink me but then the werewolves came and chased him away and killed him."

"Werewolves? There aren't any werewolves in forks," Rosalie said sceptically.

"It's the la push kids, even my best friend Jacob, though he started avoiding me when he turned into one though, like I couldn't keep a secret! I managed to keeps yours," I ranted.

"Bella, werewolves are dangerous, if they lose control of their emotions the will explode into wolves, he was probably doing it for your own safety."

"Oh" was all I said, I had been hurt by Jacob, abandoned in my time of need – although I couldn't really blame him for not wanting to hang around with a zombie like me – I wasn't ready to stop being angry with him, to stop hating him, I just couldn't shake the resentment I felt. Jacob was definitely not in my good books. OK hate was I bit strong but I no longer cared enough to really feel any strong emotion towards him, he was just a life boat that had sped past and was now long gone.

The journey wouldn't pass quickly enough, yet as I looked out the window, the fields and trees flashed past. They didn't quite blur into a green haze, my new vampire eyes could still pick out each delicate vein on each leaf, still pick out every hair on the squirrels I saw. Oh why couldn't the car go any faster?

The tension and anxiety spread like a cold disease though my body, disabling all my muscles until I turned to ice. Rosalie could feel the tension too, apart from the small movements she made with her arms to steer the car, she was also a block of living ice.

I could see the airport now, and my muscles tightened even further in the long seconds it took for us to park there... in the drop-off bays. I tried to throw Rosalie a brief look of panic but she was already getting out of the car. I followed suit wanting to seek reassurance, not caring that Rosalie was the only one available to give it to me. My world had been turned upside down in just one day I felt shaky and unsure about everything.

Rosalie strode too quickly through the crowds at the terminals, I had no problem keeping up with her, but the speed wasn't in keeping with the human façade. I was glad we moved quickly through the crowds, even though we had time to spare. I liked also how my new body moved effortlessly through each gap, moving onto the next before the gap closed up. I was graceful.

Rosalie abruptly turned to face me, we were outside the metal detectors leading to my flight, she saw the look of panic that flashed across my face.

Rosalie held both of my hands in hers, "I'm staying here in Denali, I have to face Carlisle and the others and tell them what's happening... I have to own up for my mistake. Once you get off at New York your next flight is at terminal three so wait there, you will have a few minutes before the plane takes off and Alice will meet you on the plane, don't wait for her, if she misses the flight then its all down to you. I'm sorry I caused this mess and that your the only one who can fix it, I truly am."

I nodded mutely, severely thankful that vampires had the gift of perfect recall.

"Well, goodbye then," said Rosalie.

"Yeah goodbye."

"Take this in case Alice misses the flight, she's eighty percent sure she'll make it but just in case..."

"Thanks" I replied.

I turned and went through the metal detectors. It was a familiar action, I had been on plenty of flights before, but at the same time it was completely alien. I was alone, and I was racing to save the one thing that really mattered in the world: Edward.