Nightfall
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FIGHT OR FLIGHT
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I let out a shaky breath against him and he stiffened.
"Wha..."
Edward threw himself at me, forgetting all about the steering wheel. As I flew backwards, confused as hell, I saw the immense animal jumping in front of our car.
The beast landed on the hood with such force it sent the car flying in the air. I cringed against Edward's chest, so scared that I couldn't even conjure up a descent scream.
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The car landed on its back, bounced twice and then crashed loudly against a tree before finally settling, rubber side up. Edward stared down at me, his amber eyes alarmed and weary. He gave me a onceover, checking for injuries. An old habit, I guess. My shirt was ripped from the bottom and I had lost my shoes at some point, but other than that I was perfectly fine.
"Edward, what..."
"Stay in the car!" He barked and then crawled his way out the side window. I saw his legs as he stood up, and then I saw nothing. I frowned, he wasn't running, my vampire eyes would've seen him take off, so where...
My question was answered with a loud crash over my head and a deep growl. I screamed, cowering against the door. The windows had exploded on impact, so I could hear the battle going on right outside. I tried to locate the silver cell phone, but there were too many pieces of glass. Too big a mess.
Then I heard it, a sickening thud and the creaking that could only mean a tree had been knocked over. But the sound that made me race out of the car was the terrifying moan emanating from Edward's chest.
I crawled out, the cell phone instantly forgotten. The wolf had Edward against the fallen tree, his jaw clenched around my lover's middle. I screamed and launched myself at the beast.
"Bella! Stay back!" Edward yelled before I could reach them and with great effort, he lifted his foot and kicked the animal away from him. The beast stood there for a moment, growling at Edward, but it suddenly froze and then turned around to stare at me. Its eyes widened, as if it could recognize me, and then it launched itself in my direction.
It happened so fast I didn't even have time to fear for my life. Edward threw himself on top of the wolf and did something I'd never seen him do before. He bit it, tearing the beast's neck with his razor sharp teeth.
The wolf fell on its side, blood spilling all over the place. Edward didn't drink the blood, like I expected him to, instead he left the animal on the ground, stood up and spat before kicking the wolf's neck and snapping it in two. It was then that I smelled the hot liquid. It smelled weird, like sour milk almost.
I stared at the immense animal as it slowly started to shrink, turning back into a russet skinned, naked young man. My eyes were still transfixed on the man when Edward reached me. He pressed my face against his chest and sighed. "I'm sorry Bella, I'm so sorry" He whispered over and over again against my hair.
I looked up at his dishevelled appearance and quickly ran my hands all over his chest and back, looking for bite marks. Edward shook his head. "I'm fine, I need to get you out of here." He started pulling me towards the road.
"Edward, the man..." I shook on the spot.
"He was dead the moment I bit him. Our venom is lethal to them. Bella we have to go." He lifted me into his arms and walked away quickly, but before we could even reach the road he swore under his breath. He placed me on the wet grass and took my face between his hands "Run, Bella."
I looked up behind him and gasped, the rest of the pack had arrived.
"Edward..." I whispered.
"Go, find Alice." He shoved me gently away from the wolves before turning around to face them.
I stood there, frozen. I knew he was right, Alice had probably seen this coming and she was probably on her way back. I saw the wolves emerging from the woods, I counted at least six. We were going to need the whole family; I had to guide them to Edward. And yet, I couldn't make my legs move. I couldn't even close my eyes when the animals attacked. I watched them as they overpowered Edward, watched helplessly as he struggled to get them off of him. They didn't even seem to notice me there, watching by the side of the road, a silent scream stuck in my throat.
His unbelievable strength helped him; he threw the beasts away from him, using his arms and teeth to injure them. He didn't see the biggest wolf coming behind him, and I was too terrified to even yell a warning. It got him on the side, lifting him in the air. Edward groaned in pain. My own head felt like it was going to explode from the pain of watching his.
Then I remembered my gift, my power. I closed my eyes and concentrated hard, bending down, folding into myself. Let him go! Let him go! I thought over and over again but the beast was huge, it didn't seem all that affected by me. Or maybe it was watching Edward struggle that kept me from truly focusing.
RELEASE HIM! I yelled in my mind, concentrating so hard my head hurt.
"Bella! No!" Edward yelled. The wolf dropped him, cowering away from me. I wondered if he knew it had been me.
I used my mind to make him step away from Edward. "Isabella! Stop it!" He yelled again. The sound of my full name made me lose focus. Then I noticed all the wolves were retreating. I had only a second to frown before something incredible happened.
The biggest wolf burst into flames.
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I stared in muted horror as the stench of burnt hair and the horrific yelps of pain filled me to the core. Edward was by my side in an instant, hiding me against his chest to once again shield me from the horrors.
"Stop!" He yelled to no one in particular it seemed.
"What? I thought you would like some roasted wolf as your last meal." A deep, yet childlike voice answered behind us, making me jump. I turned around to face the beautiful boy who slowly walked towards us, followed by five other men.
"Leave the beast alone. It will take us weeks to get off of us as it is." One of the men protested. The boy glared at him and he instantly became quiet. It was easy to see who had the upper hand in that group.
I looked up at Edward, searching for answers in his stone cold face.
"Alec." Edward greeted the boy with a sneer.
"Edward. Bella. Nice night for a funeral eh?" Alec smiled wickedly. Edward just growled.
I understood then. They were the guard, they were there to finish Edward off.
"Bella, go wait by the side of the road." Edward instructed me.
I stared at him, shocked at what he was asking from me. I threw my arms around his waist in an unbreakable grasp "I'm not leaving you!" I mumbled against his chest.
"Awww, how sweet! Not a problem, I can kill you both if you'd like." Alec gave us a sympathetic fake smile that made me want to knock his teeth out.
"Isabella, go find Alice." Edward told me for the second time that night. He tried to break away from me, pulling on my arms. I silently thanked my vampire strength as the hysteria started to take over.
"No, Edward no. I won't go." I whispered.
"Bella, please." I made the mistake of looking into his eyes. He was pleading, begging me to leave him there. There was so much pain, so much worry for me written all over his face that I almost agreed. I shook my head to clear it.
"I'll go with you quietly if you spare her." Edward told Alec. The boy laughed.
"Oh Edward, I don't need you to 'come quietly'. I'm not taking you anywhere! I've been told to finish you off, not take you back!"
I was still shaking my head. I wasn't going to let them take Edward. I still didn't quite understand how that wolf had spontaneously combusted, but something told me it had a lot to do with the vampire child in front of us. I could stop him, I knew I could.
As if he could read my mind, Edward said, "Isabella, you promised." He whispered so gently in my ear that even I had a hard time hearing him. Yes, I had promised to him that I wouldn't use my powers in front of the Volturi. It was a promise I intended to break if it meant keeping him alive.
"Look, I don't have a lot of time and I'm not really into drama, so I'm going to get this over with." Alec shrugged.
Edward shoved me away from him. I was so shocked I fell, landing in slippery mud. I turned to look at him and his eyes locked into mine. "Bella" He mouthed, before his body was engulfed by flames.
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"Edward!" I screamed hysterically. He closed his eyes and clenched his mouth to keep from yelling. I couldn't believe that was going to be the end. I couldn't conceive the idea of him leaving me so suddenly, so permanently, not after I finally had him for eternity. I was so desperate, so mad and irrational, that I threw myself at Alec.
I ran towards the small vampire so fast his guard didn't even have time to react. I wanted him to stop torturing Edward. To stop the fire before it consumed him, but I also wanted revenge.
My hands reached out to tackle the boy. When my skin made contact with his I felt a surge of heat going through me. For a moment I thought I was burning too, which suited me fine. If Edward was going to die I might as well go with him. But then I realized that the heat wasn't coming from me.
I opened my eyes and was so taken aback I yelped. Alec's whole body was bubbling, melting with his own heat. It was then that the fog of despair cleared. I suddenly noticed the sounds around me. Screams of pain, trashing, running and crackling of burning wood.
I looked around, stunned and confused. The five vampires that had been standing behind Alec were on the ground, almost completely consumed by the fire that seemed to emanate from their bodies. I stared at my hands, still holding on to Alec's charred body, and let go.
As soon as I stopped touching him, the flames died.
"Edward!" I turned to where I'd last seen him. He was lying on the ground, curled on his side. He seemed to be mostly unscratched. The remains of his charred clothes still burned a few feet away. I was at his side in an instant.
"Edward!" I rolled him on his back and he groaned. I searched his body for injuries but the few I found were already disappearing. He opened his eyes wearily, still in obvious pain.
"Edward, are you okay? Please talk to me!" I dropped to my knees next to him and touched his face with my cold hands.
"You promised." He whispered.
I was so relieved at hearing him speak that I ignored his anger and threw my arms around his neck. He pulled me into his lap, crushing me to his chest. I sobbed tearlessly against his shoulder.
"It's over, it's all over." He whispered over and over again.
"Over? How exactly is this over? I really don't think this was their last attempt at taking your life." I mumbled against his skin. Someone threw a coat over Edward's shoulders. I looked up to see Carlisle looking around at the remains of the battle. The rest of the family was close behind.
"Come on, we need to move." Alice tried to pull me off Edward but I held on for dear life. I couldn't let go of him, not yet.
Edward lifted an arm to stop her. He stood up, accepting Carlisle's help, with me still in his arms. He carried me to the car silently, the only sound was the fabric of the trench coat he was wearing as it flapped around us.
I settled in his lap while Carlisle drove us away from the horrific scene. I heard him apologizing to Edward for something, but I was still too stunned to pay any attention to the words being said.
We drove for hours, until the sun appeared, and then Carlisle parked in front of an old motel. I heard the gist of that conversation. Carlisle wanted us to get together in one room, Edward however, wanted to be alone with me.
Edward won. He carried me to an empty room and immediately headed for the bathroom. He sat me down next to the sink and ran his hands up my legs. Lifting me up by the waist, he pulled down the fishnet stockings I'd been wearing and threw them in the trash can. I looked down at the tiny skirt as he pulled that off as well. I was brown and green all over, covered in mud and grass stains. I lifted my arms so he could slip off my shirt and then watched as he turned on the water and finished undressing us both.
The pain and shock of almost losing him was still so fresh that I didn't even protest when he pulled me into the shower. He used the hotel shampoo to clean my hair and body. I stared at the floor and watched the brown water fall.
His fingers lifted my chin so I could look into his eyes. "Bella?" He whispered. The water cascading down my face made it hard to see, almost as if I were crying.
"I almost lost you tonight." I spoke for the first time in hours.
"And I, you. You shouldn't have done that Bella, it was so stupid of you." His dark eyes were infuriated and soft at the same time. Only his complex eyes could ever accomplish such a thing.
"I couldn't just stand there and watch you get yourself killed." I shuddered.
"You should have. At least you would've been safe then." His tortured voice made me take his face between my hands. "Don't say that, don't ever say that! I would never be safe without you."
Edward rolled his eyes "There's not much that can hurt you now. Not much that I can protect you from anyway." He said with self loathing.
"I can be quite a danger to myself if you're not around." I threatened.
It was Edward's turn to take my face in his hands. "Don't be ridiculous."
"Then don't leave me." I challenged.
He sighed and pulled me against his body, pressing my cold skin against his. "I wish we could go back to our old life, to when things were normal." He whispered against my hair.
"Things with us have never been normal." I teased lightly and he smiled.
"Yes, well, I never thought I'd say this but everything was a lot easier when you were human."
I sighed. "I'm starting to miss sleep right about now. That was my favorite time of day."
"When you were asleep? I thought that was my favorite time." Edward smiled again.
"Well, no. I guess it's not the actual sleep I miss, but the time we had together every night. Those uninterrupted, unsupervised hours of alone time."
"We're not being supervised now." Edward winked at me and reached behind me to turn off the water. He wrapped us both in towels and then carried me to the bed. Pulling back the covers, he laid me down and got in behind me, pulling me close against his body. The delicious contact made me shiver.
Edward rolled me on my stomach and ran his hands through my hair, from the top of my head to my waist.
"Edward?" I murmured.
"Mmmh?" He mumbled.
"You do know I don't regret you making me like you? Not for a second."
"Not even when I made you a killer? When you bit Jacob? When you watched me kill those other boys? When you saw a man burning to death?" Edward's intense whisper made my stomach tighten.
"No. I feel bad about that, excruciatingly so, but I don't regret what I am. It brought me closer to you."
"It brought you closer to death. You already had me close, as close as I could ever possibly be."
I turned around and pulled him on top of me. "No, you weren't." I whispered.
"So it was all about sex for you?" He smiled to let me know he was teasing.
"No." I smiled back, "It's about eternity. And I will spend eternity with you, Edward. I will not let them take you away."
I pressed my lips against his before he could respond. The fighting, the explanations, the decisions, they could all wait until nightfall. Thanks to the sun, we had the whole day for ourselves and I fully intended to take advantage of those uninterrupted, unsupervised hours.
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We all sat in absolute silence for what seemed like an eternity to me. Alice had her eyes closed and we were all watching her, waiting for some kind of news. She shook her head and opened her eyes almost unwillingly.
"I just can't see it. There's too much going on. The Volturi know what happened to Alec though. That can't be good."
"What did happen to Alec anyway, Bella?" Emmett asked me.
"I don't know, I just... I grabbed him..." I'd been wondering about that too.
"I have a theory." Carlisle spoke up. "I think that maybe you can amplify other vampires' gifts and redirect them at will."
I shook my head "I thought we'd already found my gift. The whole getting-people-to-do-what-I-want thing seemed right on target."
"Well maybe this is part of that too. Maybe you're just more powerful than we originally thought."
Edward groaned. "And the Volturi know this now."
"How do they know?" I asked.
"Just because a vampire is on fire doesn't necessarily means he's dead." Alice explained.
"We should've finished them off." Emmet growled.
"Bad timing, more of them were coming. We had to get out of there." Alice sighed.
"It seems to me like Bella can take them all out by herself. I say let her try." Rosalie snapped.
Edward glared at her. I held up my hand to stop him from yelling at her.
"I think Rosalie is right." I whispered. Seven pairs of eyes snapped around to stare at me.
"Are you insane?" Edward roared. I took his hand in mine and begged him with my eyes to listen.
"I can obviously take care of myself. If I can redirect any of their powers I could just go to the Volturi and..."
"No!" He took my face in his hands and forced me to look at him. "If you keep talking like that I'll turn myself over to them. It ends with me."
"This is not a contest of who can be the biggest martyr. Let's try to be reasonable here." Alice glared at us.
"Well I just don't see another way out of this. Do you?" I asked her.
She opened her mouth then closed it again. She glanced apologetically at Edward before answering. "No, not really. There are just too many of them."
Edward growled so loudly that his chest vibrated against my back.
"We don't even know how your gift really works, Bella." Esme's soft voice calmed us all down.
"I agree, it's too risky for you to go alone." Carlisle nodded.
"But now that the Volturi know about you, you are just as much a target as Edward is." Jasper pointed out.
"We need to hide you, get you away from all of this as quickly as we can." Edward said matter of factly.
"I doubt there's a place on earth where they won't find us. Besides, it's not me I'm worried about." My mind was running a mile a minute. I needed to come up with a plan to keep everyone safe. That night had been a really close call. I had to keep Edward away from the whole mess, solve it on my own somehow.
I had a feeling that no one was saying exactly what they were thinking. I needed every fact, every opinion to form a reasonable plan. I decided to test my gift, so I reached for Edward's hand. He took my smaller hand in his without a second thought and I closed my eyes, willing his thoughts into my head.
The flood of thoughts was so loud and intense it made me flinch. Every voice of every person inside the cheap hotel rushed into my mind. Edward glanced worriedly at me, blissfully unaware of what I was taking from him. The look on my face probably seemed like anxiety to him, because he wrapped his arms around my shoulders.
I sorted through the voices, there were so many. I didn't have the decades of practice that Edward had in tuning thoughts. I tried blocking everything first, concentrating until the voices became a dull roar. Eventually I tried focusing on the vampires in the room.
I tuned Alice first. Her mind was chaotic. Images of people, places and different scenarios came and went in irregular intervals. It was too much for me and I secretly thanked a higher power for a gift that didn't invade my mind. I could tell Alice was worried, no scenario seemed to change the outcome and she kept seeing us all dead. When an image of Edward being torn to pieces flashed through her mind I tuned her out.
Emmett had murder in his mind, no surprise there. Esme was deeply worried about us all. Carlisle was complicated. He knew I had a better chance of getting the Volturi off our backs than the rest of them put together and yet he didn't even conceive the idea of letting me go alone. It simply didn't cross his mind.
I focused on Jasper then. He could sense the tension in the room, and probably the stress coming from me too. He was thinking about me, wondering about the sudden spike of panic. His thoughts shifted suddenly and the direction that they turned surprised me. He was thinking about how to help us, how to fight the other vampires off, but he was also making contingency plans, not for himself, but for Alice. He was trying to figure out a way of taking her out of the fight and wondering if his gift was strong enough to induce some sort of comma so he could keep her hidden. He knew she'd never leave us willingly. I understood how he felt; I wanted the same thing for Edward after all.
I turned around to stare at my lover. He was deep in thought. His thoughts scared me, I had to work very hard on keeping my breathing under control and the panic below the surface when I realized what he was planning. He was going to turn himself over to the Volturi. He had already decided, his mind was completely made up. The next time we left the hotel he was going to lose me somehow and go to Italy by himself.
"I know what you're doing" I heard Rosalie's voice so clearly I thought she'd spoken out loud. I turned to face her. Her eyes bore holes into mine and her mind was completely blank. I frowned at her and her eyes flickered to Edward. I understood, if she thought about what I was doing, Edward would surely find out. She was being careful.
"You have to do it" She thought. "We're all going to die" I nodded, I knew she was right. "Help me, please. I'm begging you, spare Emmett." Her cry for help was so desperate, so filled with emotions, that it made both Jasper and Edward aware of the situation. Alice gasped and Edward released me at once.
He stared at me, now completely aware of what I'd been doing. At once he understood Rosalie was not talking to him, but to me. Knowing that I knew his plans. Alice was staring at me too, her eyes panicked. Her visions had probably shifted; I'd already made up my mind. It was time to put Jasper's theory to the test. I crossed the room in a millisecond. I turned to Edward, my eyes filled with love and determination.
"I love you." I whispered and then grabbed Jasper's arm.
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This is probably my shortest chapter ever, sorry about tha guys! And sorry about the huge wait! Life keeps getting in the way…
Well this is the second to last chapter (yup, only one left!) And summer break is coming up soon, so I should be able to post faster.
Ah! For the first time in my life I have a beta! You can thank ECABS for making this thing readable ;) I luv you hun, thanks a bunch!
Oh and thank you to everyone who's still reading this story, even thought I've been writing it for OVER A YEAR. I wish you all crazy moments and good lovers ;)