"Call Paul and tell him we found something belonging to him on the side of the road." A voice gruffed out with little amusement, the familiar tone immediately sent a tremble throughout Bella's inert body. She would happily admit to herself that she was afraid to stand up, that her bloodied hands were actually shaking a little beneath her, but there was absolutely no way she wanted him to know that. Slowly she rose to her petite height, and with her eyes only making it to the center of his chest, she tilted her head back, the sheer size of him pressing down on her, even though he was doing nothing but standing still.
"Didn't your daddy tell you it's not safe for little girls to go wandering around on their own?" He asked with a leering smile, the kind that she knew would haunt her dreams for nights to come.
She didn't think that speaking would be wise in the moment, so instead she turned to his companion, her eyes following the smooth easy nonchalance on his face with envy. He didn't give off any intimidating vibes, but when he put his cell phone away, he noticed her with a slight frown.
"He's on his way…" The man said to Sam, leaving his words unfinished.
"And?" Sam growled and Bella kept her eyes away from his face, certain she would find nothing kind there.
"And he was with someone, so I don't know if they overheard."
Bella took a deep breath in their moment of distraction, pulling her hands upwards to see the damage she'd done. It wasn't unknown for her to tumble with ease, so the thick lines of blood didn't immediately give her any cause for concern. Leaving stains of red behind on her worn jeans, she surveyed the damage once again, glad to see that nothing seemed be worthy of stitches this time.
"You should be more careful when you walk. You never know who'll be around the next time you fall." Sam said angrily, the cutting slice of his words so sharp that she couldn't help looking his way. The anger behind his eyes was strong enough that she knew she wasn't enough in herself to be the true cause. Nodding her head to appease him, she stepped back slightly, thinking of ways to excuse herself from whatever this was.
"Umm, do you think maybe I could use your phone? I was on my way to see Embry and my truck kinda broke down." She left out the part where it was simply a case of running out of gas, but she knew it was a long shot, so it was hardly like the circumstances mattered.
He didn't answer her initially and when she looked at the man whose name she still didn't know, he was already looking to Sam for what she deduced was his permission.
"You don't need to call him, Paul's on his way."
Bella didn't know what to do. Suddenly her heart started to beat irrationally in her chest, the conversation she'd had the night before flooding her mind as she thought about what was inevitably going to happen. She'd lied to him, lied straight to his face, and now he was going to find out. Her mind was too fraught, caught up in what was about to happen to think of a way out, so she stood, her bloodied palms clasped together, staring blindly down the open road.
The sound of a dull engine broke through her trance and without realizing what she was doing, her feet stepped backwards, pushing a little more distance between herself and the two intimidating men who seemed to be standing guard over her. She looked back over her shoulder, wondering what they would do if she simply ran the other way. But the engine droned ever nearer and her feet remained planted in the earth, waiting.
"What's she doing out here?" Called Paul from her right, and she whipped her head around just as the blue car spun around the corner into view, announcing its arrival with a little fishtail.
The question was lost in the air as the three men turned to watch the approaching vehicle, their eyes drawn down in similar looks of distaste and anger. She almost forgot to wonder why Paul wasn't in the car, why he'd stepped into sight from the trees, as people seemed to be doing more and more these days. She was about to open her mouth and pose the question when the car screeched to a stop, two dark bodies pouring from the small interior and into her path.
She immediately recognized one as the new Embry, but it took longer to see her old friend Jacob Black in the other. His long hair had been cropped short, a hair-cut she was almost convinced had been self-inflicted by its uneven nature. That wasn't the most important thing, it was simply the easiest for her to mentally manage. If she thought about how her two dearest friends now looked remarkably like the three men standing in front of her, if she thought about how their bodies had grown and twisted in something actually quite magnificent, it was possible she might just keel over in a puddle of unkempt bones.
"Embry, put her in the car." Jake commanded and Bella caught a low tremor, a warning she thought, as he pulled her away, her body so numb underneath her that he almost had to carry her the short distance.
The door was shut firmly behind her and after a pointed look that blatantly told her to remain in place, she watched Embry stalk back over to Jacob's side, wondering just how much trouble would come her way if she decided not to obey.
Their voices were too muffled for her to hear, their words far too soft beyond the panes of glass. She didn't need to hear the conversation to know that Paul was displeased with her friends, his huge frame bearing down on Jacob with fire in his eyes. She decided that he actually looked quite handsome when he was angry, and so she forced herself to look away, a punishment for her own mental inanity.
When her self-control gave out only seconds later, it was to watch Sam, Paul and their friend walk away, leaving Jacob and Embry in a heated roadside discussion. She thought perhaps they'd forgotten about her, and she was just about to rap on the glass and remind them she was still there, when they turned around in unison, the movement so fluid with synchronicity it almost looked rehearsed.
They didn't speak the whole remaining ten minutes it took to get to La Push and when they drove past Embry's home and then Jake's, she watched the houses thin away to nothing. The open land embraced the trees as they drove on and through the reservation.
"Where're we going?" Bella asked when she could stand it no more.
Turning around in the passenger seat, Embry grinned at her, the smile in his eyes bringing her a sense of peaceful familiarity as he spoke. "We're nearly there, just a couple more minutes, okay?" She nodded instead of answering and he turned away, leaving her once again to watch the green world flash by.
They finally pulled to a stop outside a little cabin in the middle of nowhere. As each boy extricated his long limbs from the car, Bella took note of the fact that they were very obviously in the middle of nowhere, a place she would never be able to find again, no matter how hard she tried.
"C'mon Bells, let's get you inside." Embry opened her door and stood waiting, not commenting when she took a moment to gather herself.
The interior of the cabin smelt a little like wet wood, an earthy musk that reminded her a little of Sam, a thought she tried to squash almost as quickly as it arrived. The decorating had clearly been left to an unobservant male as not a single personalized possession lay anywhere.
The boys seemed quite at home as they strode from her towards the living room and Embry threw himself down on a large sofa that squeaked with either his weight, or lack of use, she wasn't sure which.
"Come sit down, Bells. We have a story to tell you." Embry smiled and as she strode towards him full of an eager trepidation, she noticed Jacob frowning slightly as he looked through the window out into the wild.
"Are you really going to tell me what's been going on?" Bella asked, her nerve slipping away now that she was on the cusp of being included.
Embry remained silent by her side and it took Jake to sigh loudly, his body still turned from hers, to know this was actually happening. "You're going to find out anyway, Bells, and it's better if you find out from us."
"So how does this work? Can I ask questions? I mean what…" She trailed off as she tried to think of what she wanted to know first, whether it was their overnight transformation, the thing she couldn't quite capture that they all kept alluding to, or Paul, everything and anything about Paul.
"I think maybe we should tell you what we know, then if you have any questions, you should ask them when we're done." Jake concluded and the firmness of his tone, the confidence that was oozing from across the small room, made Bella raise her eyes in cognizance that it wasn't just his body that had been transformed.
"There are legends, Bells, that pass down through each tribe, a history of the people and how they came to the land, how the land came to them. Most of them seem pretty crazy now, but there was a time when they weren't just stories to our people."
Bella was sitting on the edge of her seat, intoxicated by the drawl of Jacob's winsome voice.
"When we were little we used to have bonfires on the beach and my Dad used to tell us the stories of how Dokibatt created everything; from the insect, who was small enough to cause no harm, to the rocks that lined the beds of the salmon rich rivers. It was also Dokibatt that gave life to the Quileutes, transforming a lone wolf into the first man of our tribe."
Bella nodded along, trying to keep her body language respectful, because although she thought many of the tribe's legends were interesting, she also couldn't see why Jacob was bothering with them now.
"In generations long forgotten, when boys reached their adolescence, they used to send them out into the wild on a spirit walk in search of their supernatural side."
"Jake?" Embry interrupted and when Jacob turned, Bella noticed the glazed over look in his eyes, his mind far away from this moment.
"Uh, you might want to just stick with the basics." Embry suggested, his nose wrinkled up as he shrugged his shoulders, clearly not looking to offend.
"Oh, yeah… sorry, Bells. It just all means a lot more than it used to. Anyway… blahdeeblahdeeblah… we're wolves." Jake grinned, raising an eyebrow at Embry, who only groaned in response.
"Seriously dude, that's the best you've got? Either boring legends or bam, we explode into big fur balls? Couldn't you do something in the mid-range?" Embry teased, but Bella could also tell from the hold of his shoulders that it was something of a pretence.
"Umm, what was that about exploding?" Bella asked, not sure where exactly they were going with this at all.
Her voice seemed to bring a thick silence to the bantering pair and a serious look quickly overtook Jake's face. He paused for just a moment and then strode over to stand in front of her, his thick legs encroaching on the sofa and her personal space as he perched himself on the coffee table.
"Damn it, Bells. I guess I'm not very good at this shit yet. The legends thing, the whole 'we come from wolves stuff', well it's true. Embry and me, we can change into wolves." She knew him well enough to know that Jake was deadly serious, but it didn't stop a little nervous bubble of laughter trilling from her mouth, something she clamped down on very quickly.
"I don't get it." She responded finally, the words he was saying and the truth in his eyes misfiring somewhere along the way.
"We change into big wolves, Bells, the kind that kill vampires."
"Subtle" Embry hissed under his breath, but Bella was too focused on what Jacob had just said to notice.
"As in?" Bella asked, the two words forming a complete, yet very awkward, question.
"As in, the things you see in movies and read about in books, the things that you think don't really exist, the things that drink blood and live forever." Jacob responded very calmly, trying to put it into terms she could easily connect with.
"Like Dracula?" She threw out, clinging onto something that was familiar and safe.
"Yeah, just a little less booky and more real." Jake grinned, nodding at Embry that he thought it was going well. Embry just rolled his eyes, deciding he knew Bella far better than the naïve boy in front of him.
"So you guys are like werewolves? Like Michael J Fox in that movie?" Bella queried, thinking of Jake exploding out of his shirt with terrible old school movie special effects.
"No, we're shape shifters, Bells, not werewolves." He tried to keep his voice calm, but the simple mistake was important in his mind and something she needed to understand quickly.
"We don't need a moon or anything like that to change. We can just do it when we feel like it. Or at least that's the idea." Jake said proudly, dismissing the notion of some jumped up Hollywood movie with a little mental derision.
The whole room paused while Bella thought about what she'd heard, about the straight eyes both were managing to maintain, Jake a little more successfully than Embry she decided.
It took approximately one hundred and ninety seven seconds of silence until she exploded, and when she did the words that flew from her mouth came with no warning whatsoever. "If you wanted to fuck with me, you could have done it over the phone, you know. You didn't need to waste my time by driving me all the way out to who-fucking-knows-where just to play some bullshit game. Now either you tell me the truth, or I'm never talking to either one of you ever again… No. Fuck that. I'll make it my point to do exactly what you don't want me to do. If you don't tell me exactly what's going on around here, right this second, I'm leaving and I'm not kidding when I tell you the first person I'll be looking for is Paul."
Embry's hand shot to her arm as she started to rise from the sofa, her blood was boiling as she pictured them both coming up with this stupid story.
"Bells, it's the truth, I promise you." Embry pleaded, his wide eyes boring into hers and with no hesitation at all, she shrugged from his grip.
"Show me then!" She challenged easily knowing they would have to give up their stupid rouse. It was something that both of the boys should have been prepared for. Unfortunately they weren't, so when both answered her at the same time, it led to a few moments of confusion.
"Sure."…. "Absolutely not!"
After a few muttered words between them that she couldn't make out, she noticed Embry's frown turn to an all-out scowl, so she turned her attention to Jacob, the one who was clearly running this sideshow.
"We need to tell her some things first." Embry threw out, a Hail Mary pass if ever there was one.
"No. She doesn't believe us, so do you really think it will mean anything to her yet? We'll just end up having to tell her all over again anyway." Jacob said seriously and she couldn't help the little smug grin she sent Embry's way when he found the look in her eye which verified his suspicions.
Of course she didn't believe him; she wasn't that gullible.
Holding out his hand for her to take, Jacob led her outside of the cabin, leaving her on the bottom step with a firm, "stay put!"
She watched with skepticism as he stepped out into the forest and when a few moments later she was still staring at nothing, she turned to Embry with a smirk on her face. He wasn't looking her way though, and when he turned his eyes down to hers and inclined his eyes towards the trees, she followed them.
It wasn't right to call what she saw a wolf, she decided. It was simply too big and too, well… big. Her mouth dropped open for the smallest of seconds and then a smile drew up the corners of her lips, lapsing quickly into a grin and then a deep chuckle.
"Why're you laughing?" Embry asked, and as the wolf sat down on its haunches, her chuckle became an outright laugh. Her eyes watered up, blurring the world in front of her.
"She thinks it's a trick." Jake growled and she blinked through the blur, rubbing her eyes with the back of her hands to remove the tears and really see for herself. Right in the spot where the wolf had sat just a moment ago, sat a very naked, and very angry Jacob.
"Oh." Was all she managed to force from her mouth, the humor gone from her body as she tried to realign her mind with everything she was being shown. It wasn't a joke, she thought, it wasn't a lie. They really were wolves.
Jacob broke her mental whirlpool with his deep timbre, her eyes balancing on the upper part of his body with a huge amount of effort on her part. "Now, Bells you need to go inside, and I need to get dressed. We have a lot more we need to tell you, but first I want a word with Embry."
a/n: I can't believe it's Wednesday again! A wonderful thank you to my lovely beta, Twiticulate. I also want to say that I mean no harm in how I've expressed the Quileute legends. I didn't want to go down the route the Meyer took and thus I tried to stay as close to what I researched without actually being too specific. Anyway, next chapter will continue where this one left off and for that, I'll see you again on Sunday. Until then...x