"It's a miracle," breathed Sam. "It's impossible."
It wasn't impossible; Edward was able to tell when all the venom was gone with his delicate sense of smell, and he primly handed a wound to me once he had gotten the majority of the other vampire's venom out. My job was to clean Edward's out of the wound. Jacob was bitten seven times, never deeply; none of the poison was able to get to his heart before we were.
Now the problem was different: so much blood was lost from his body that Jacob could not walk or talk. He panted weakly; he tried to drink from a puddle in human form. Edward gently picked his weighty mass off of the gritty earth, arranging him over his shoulder so that the long black hair dragged on the ground, and carried him to the cabin we had been planning to use. He disappeared through the trees, covering the long distance in a fraction of the time a vehicle would have taken. Alice promised to let me follow as soon as she covered the cleaning detail with Sam.
"Nice job, guys, jeeeez. You could smell the explosion all the way in La Push," sneered Quil, but his eyes scoured the damage with something more resembling envy than disdain. The bodies needed proper piling, proper burning. The truck needed to disappear. The craters where Victoria's body had ploughed through the asphalt would just have to stay where they were.
Wait…"My truck," I groaned to Alice. My beloved truck, my home away from home, demolished.
"I know, sweetie," she said, and immediately turned back to Sam. Alice's interest in vintage had never extended to vehicles.
"You could at least pretend to be sorry," I called, and hugged myself. My fingers explored the bruises along my arms, and my eyes wandered across the wreckage before returning to Sam and Alice. The careful distance between them grew smaller as their words grew more intense. The young wolves I'd seen at Emily's stood surveying the damage in a tight group nearby. I heard them whispering as we watched the fire.
"There's another one," a thin boy murmured and pointed.
"Gross," responded another reed-like boy, but a third, taller and wider than the other two, began to move forward. He grabbed something just beyond my vision and threw it in the bed of the truck. An arm. Dainty and diamond white, it landed with a sound like clanging iron.
"We should probably just move them all in there," he said, and reached for another one. The second boy stayed where he was, but the first began to walk hesitantly forward, his nose wrinkling. Three more boys, smaller than any of the others, chased each other with broken, vaguely human pieces until Sam saw them and gruffly commanded they begin the pile. They would transport the entire truck and all of the vampire remains. They would destroy everything before the inevitable police presence arrived.
"Charlie—" I began, but Alice flew to my side and hushed me.
"Don't worry honey, that is why they are moving the truck." She winked at me and then turned to survey the damage around us. It wiped the smile from her lips. "There's nothing we can do about the road, Bella. We'll have to find you a phone so you can let him know you're okay." She checked her pockets and looked at me apologetically. "Edward probably has his cell," she said, and then looked over at Sam.
"I think there's one in the cabin," Sam said, and then nodded to her, as if he had heard a question spoken too low for my hearing.
"Are you ready to go?" She was looking at me again, one of her thin arms already finding its way around my shoulders.
"Yes," I said. As she moved to take me fully in her arms Embry stepped forward, his head down.
"Is he really alright?" His eyebrows were pulled low, his hands stuck in his pockets.
"I promise," I said, and I walked over to him. "It would probably mean a lot to him if you guys still came out—you're going to, right?"
Embry looked down at me and then back to Sam, who nodded. "We're going to clean up here," Sam said, "and then maybe Quil and Embry can come out and check on you guys. You're going to have to get back to Forks somehow."
I groaned again, and this time Embry actually smiled. Quil punched his shoulder.
"Let's show these whippersnappers how to build a bonfire," he said, and they both glanced at me with a hesitant smile in their eyes before running over to the three littlest ones and picking them up as if they weighed nothing. "We're using you as kindling," Quil began, and then I heard Alice speaking softly to the second tall, thin boy in a sweet voice. I hadn't even realized she'd left my side.
"Be careful with the heads," she said, and picked a singed, round object up between her tiny hands. "The teeth are still quite dangerous." She handed it to him just as she realized I was watching, and her beautifully flawless smile was also hesitant as she flashed it at him and approached me. "You look like you've seen enough carnage for one day," she said, and I nodded and felt the delicious chill of her arms finally encircle me, cooling my bruised skin. "Let's go," she said softly, and we moved away from the flames as quietly and swiftly as if the wind carried us.
Charlie had asked me about my truck as soon as I confirmed that I was, in fact, alive, and I stumbled through some nonsense before he started in on the news story he'd just seen, big holes in the road, the locals were talking UFOs, but still… "Just glad to hear your voice, Bella," he finished, and I knew we would be okay until I got back. I managed to wrangle another day out of our trip, saying the first had really been too rainy to do much besides sit around in the cabin. Billy's voice was majestically removed over the phone; in person I'm sure his raised eyebrows would've caught me, but as it stood all my absurd sounding half-truths were benignly accepted.
Edward was so gracious it ached. Alice had gently laid her hand on his shoulder, her lips pressed tightly together, and lead him away, our fingers parting last and my hands still reaching out while he walked away. I stood in the doorway to the cabin for a long time after their retreat. The raw pulp in my chest burned, but I found I had no tears left. After horror upon horror, and the desperately strange and terrible end to the day, I was nothing; after having my mended, tender peace handed back to me in the night, I was nothing. There were no tears.
My feet pushed my body back indoors, and I found my eyes had adjusted to the ghostly light from the stars; the rain had stopped once it had turned the nightmare on the highway into a smoking rubble, instead of the flaming disaster it had been for the few moments after the explosion—my explosion. "You were incredible, Bella," Edward had said, and I knew I had finally done something right, something to help the cause, instead of simply instigating more conflicts. I thought dully of the truck again, and realized even that wistfulness could wait until tomorrow. For now, it was all I could do to turn the key in the lock and stumble to the narrow bed where Jake was sprawled.
He looked human; in fact, he looked very much like a boy I once knew. The bed was much too small for him, and his long brown limbs hung over the edge. My fingers disobeyed me and reached for him, lightly tracing over the skin knitting itself back together; new scars for the new Jacob. My body continued to prove unruly and moved to the window, pulling the blinds wide open and letting the gentle, clinging starlight sweep across him. The blankets were tossed on the floor, his tangled hair was everywhere—across his face, striping the pillow and his chest, which rose and fell lightly. Edward had brought him glass after glass of water until Jake smashed it against the wall and asked for a bucket. The outburst seemed to calm him, but not as much as the bucket did. His blood pressure was still too low; I'd been instructed to bring more water as needed, but now I worried about falling asleep myself. I swayed on my feet.
After I found, filled and dragged a colander across the floor, swearing all the way, I pulled the blanket from the floor and wrapped it around myself. I lay down, knowing the knotted pine floor wouldn't keep me from sleep. As I felt myself beginning to drift, I heard the springs shift and creak as Jake rolled over on the mattress.