A/N-Lies! All lies! No female knows of the 41st Millennium! The Inquisition will know of your heresy! Anyway, my computers been trashed, just got it back from the shop, minus all of my data, so this one took a while. Getting a laptop soon, maybe that'll speed things up…
Also finishing this story with no beta after not writing anything for three or four months.
Hurrah for living on the edge.
Bella wrapped her ice cold arms around Seths shoulders and tried to prop him back up; the young wolf was surprisingly heavy, and she grunted with effort as she gently guided him back up against the side of the crashed pickup truck.
"Seth…shouldn't this be healing faster?" Bella asked, as she looked around for something to bind Seth's gunshot wound. She glanced down, hoping to tear some cloth from the short pants Seth and most of the Quileute's wore when in human form.
She looked up quickly; Seth was naked.
"Sorry to embarrass you…" he said, grinning weakly and trying to cover himself, "Didn't have time to get changed."
"Don't worry about it," Bella answered, automatically reassuring the wounded Quileute. She reached a hand into the broken open cab of the truck, and with one pass of razor sharp vampire nails, tore off a large scrap of fabric from the trucks front seat, "But why hasn't that healed?"
"Only happened a few minutes ago…'sides, the other ones have already closed up."
Seth pointed to a few puckered scars on his leg.
"Not fun. Machine guns suck." He whispered.
Bella smiled weakly as she pressed the fabric against the wound on Seth's flank,
"Seth, why did Jake call me?" she asked.
"Wanted you to try and talk to the vamp. Maybe calm 'em down. He wanted to stop things from getting worse before someone…got killed."
"But how did this even start? Was the vampire in this truck?"
"Yeah. Paul and Embry caught the scent, gathered some of the others…tried to ambush it when it crossed the line. Sucker fought back, hard."
As if to underscore Seth's words, a loud burst of automatic gunfire echoed from the forest, followed by a resounding crash.
"Was that an explosion?" Seth asked, eye wide in surprise despite the pain.
Bella knew her face bore a similar look,
"I think so."
There was another explosion, and then silence.
Bella cautiously slipped her arm from around Seth's shoulder and peered into the green wall of the forest on the other side.
The forest suddenly erupted in movement, as a pair of dark skinned young men emerged into the roadway, half carrying-half dragging a third between them.
In one movement, Bella leapt over the truck, landing feet from the startled wolves.
"Quil! Who…" she trailed off, as the bloodied face of Sam Ulay looked up at her.
Relief and shame flooded through her; relieved that it wasn't Jacob, shame that she was happy to see someone else hurt instead of him.
"Bella,"Quil Atreyu grunted, turning to regard the Cullen with a hollow expression, "Jacob wanted to see you. Did you find him?"
"Quil…I just got here."
"Oh."
The young wolf carrying Sams other arm was new, and Bella didn't recognize him, but he explained,
"Grenade went off close by to him. I think it shook him up."
Quil vommitted and passed out.
"Yeah. Definitely." The young wolf growled, sagging under Sam's full weight.
Bella had snapped forward and caught Quil as he fell to the ground, and she gently carried him around the pickup and sat him next to Seth before helping the youngster carry Sam,
"And Sam?"
"Got shot in the legs. A few times actually. More than a few, even." The Quileute explained, dully.
"And you?" Bella asked, wondering what might be amiss with the new wolf.
He shrugged and brushed the side of his head; clotted blood matted his mane of long black hair.
"Kicked me in the head when I tried to sneak up. Hurt a lot."
Bella looked aghast,
"I bet…"
"Jacob said to have you head in if you were here." The youngster kept talking, eyes fixed on the middle distance behind Bella, "So you should go find him."
"I will. After we make sure you guys are going to be alright."
The youngest Cullen pulled out her cell phone and flipped it open. She was flipping through the list of contact for her father in law's number when abruptly stopped and let out a low voiced curse. Carlisle, like the rest of her family had scattered across the whole state to gather the supplies Dr. House needed to help Alice, and Bella had no idea how long it would take him to get back.
"Seth," Bella turned to the wounded werewolf, who was looking visibly healthier,
"Who do you guys call when someone in the pack gets hurt?"
"Uh…Carlisle?" He answered, a bit sarcastically; that was definitely something Bella should know already.
"Anyone else?"
"Carlisle's not here?"
"Nope. He's out, along with most of the rest of the coven."
"So, not only do we not have a doc, we don't have anymore reinforcements?"
Bella thought for a moment; Edward and Jasper were both at the house, but Jasper wouldn't be leaving Alice side, period. While Edward...another long burst of automatic weapons fire ripped the quiet, followed by a booming explosion that echoed through the tall pines. Edward was not getting involved in whatever was going on in those woods. Vampire or no, Bella wouldn't risk him.
"No. No we don't." Bella answered, looking down at Seth as he started to pull himself to his feet, "Can you watch them Seth?"
The werewolf hesitated for moment, and then nodded.
"Good. I'm going to find Jacob, and put a stop to this."
With that, Bella darted into the woods, with only a quick breeze to note her passing.
Close, but not close enough, at the Cullen Mansion
Sprawled out on an overly cushioned white recliner, Dr. Gregory House sifted through a file of hand written notes, looking for any clue that may crack the puzzle of The Living Dead Girl, as he had begun to think of his current predicament, complete with accompanying dramatic flourishes and thunder claps.
Being kidnapped by a family of deeply annoying and overly dramatic vampires tended to put the zap on ones thought process, it seemed.
House sighed and looked at the steel shuttered window.
Being held hostage sucked.
He shuffled the notes again, glancing up at the young half vampire who sat perched on the couch, staring intently at the scrawled list of symptoms and possible cause's house had drawn on the walls of the Cullen's mansion.
The human glowered at the Demon Spawn, as he had not so affectionately dubbed the young hafling. Although appearing to be barely out of her tweens, Renesmee had outsmarted him twice already, foiling both his escape attempt and his carefully cultivated psychological dominance of the Cullen Vampires and their werewolf allies, by virtue of being slightly less temperamental and twice as observant as her elders. The young lady was, in Houses estimation, the most dangerous creature he'd ever run into, counting the death row inmates and psychotic fathers he'd had to deal with. She truned to flash him a quick glare and demanded,
"Any progress?"
"You'll be the first to know."
"Good."
After the pithy exchange, House glared for a few extra moments, enough to satisfy his ego, and then returned to the handwritten page he'd been reading. Jasper Cullen's description of his talents and life was interesting, sort of, if one had any interest in the reason that one person would choose to fight for the right to two own another and treat him like cattle (and that was before he'd been turned into a vampire) , but it read like boring fiction otherwise. Enough to fire the loins of a bored housewife who set a bit to much stock in the stereotypical handsome Southern gentleman, maybe, but pretty much useless forma medical standpoint.
House sighed again, and rubbed his temples in frustration. From out of nowhere he remembered a line from the dream held been having, spoken top him by the Vietnam grunt version of Edward Cullen;
The drama is important
House dismissed it as nonsense, dream fluff. Pointless.
But still…
"Maybe if…" he spoke aloud, unintentionally gaining Renesmee's attention,
"Yes?' she prompted, shifting around on the couch to give house her full attention,
House gave her none of his, his eyes gazing on some distant point and ignoring his current surroundings, face blank in realization.
"If somehow they found a way past her sight, if they could…if they snuck through She-Hulks defenses…"
"Yes?" Renesmee prompted again, more urgently than before, but again , House ignored her. He looked down at the note3s one last time before discarding them to the floor.
He stood and turned slowly, eyeing the Cullen's home in its current fortified state. He thought of the scattered coven of vampires he'd dispatched to gather the now superfluous medicines he thought he'd needed to treat Alice Cullen.
He thought of just how monumentally screwed he was at the moment.
"House, what is it?" Renesmee demanded.
He fixed the little girl with his cold blues eyes.
"We're gonna need a bigger boat." He stated, enigmatically.
"What?"
"Pretty boy number two's ex has come calling."
Back at the forest firefight
Bella moved cautiously through the wood, peering intensely at the ground and the trees around her. The acrid reek of burnt gunpowder and explosives filled her nostrils, along with the sickly wet dog smell of werewolf blood. Besides the horrid smells of combat, there was physical evidence of a titanic fight aplenty in the green Washington woods; claw marks, paw prints and bloods spatters marked the wolves advances while the unknown vampire had left a trail of bullets holes, explosive craters, shell casing and footprints all over the forest floor, insane patterns combing the supernatural speed of the vampire and her werewolf opponents like a sick puzzle. Like a twisted dance step program; the paw prints chased the shell casing in a steady line, until the vampire found a suitable place to mount a stand; a fallen tree, a rock shelf, a stand of dense ferns. Bella recognized the pattern, but didn't understand the reasons; why would a vampire, a creature of immense physical power carry mundane human weapons like guns and explosives? She thought of Laurence the first vampire she'd seen the Quileute wolf packs exterminate. And then she guessed. Vampire or no, the person who was fighting the wolves sought an advantage beyond her supernatural strength and speed. They'd known what they were getting into, and planned ahead.
"But who would have known?" Bella mused aloud; so few vampires knew of the wolves; even the mob brought by the Volturi had been almost wiped by the Italian vampire coven, who were terrified that they'd have brought word of the Cullen's successful defiance to others.
Who then?
The sounds of combat drew close; machine gun fire, explosions, and the cries of the wolf pack. Bella sucked in an unnecessary breath and picked up her pace.
She quickly came upon the wolf pack, or what was left of it. Only a few of the Quileute's were in their wolf form; most of the others either sheltered behind trees, rocks, depressions or whatever other cover they could find, or tended the wounded, of which their was an unfortunately high amount.
"Jake?" Bella asked, unable to find her old friend among the crowd of mud and filth covered wolves,
"Bella!" Jacob Black exclaimed, from behind a boulder; he was cradling one of the younger Quileute's in his lap and pressing a clump of torn cloth and tree moss to a wound in her thigh, "You came!"
Bella darted forward, fast as lightning.
But not so fast that she didn't feel something buzz by her head like an angry hornet, before a resounding crack split the forest air.
Getting shot at was a new experience for her. She did not find it pleasant.
Throwing herself down beside Jacob with enough force to crack the boulder he was using for cover, Bella's let loose with a string of curses as the gunfire suddenly intensified.
"Jeez Bells…" Jacob said, grinning slightly.
"Jacob…what the hell is going on."
"Dunno. You should ask gun lady." Jacob carefully lifted the makeshift dressing and breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that the young girls wound had almost completely healed.
"Gun Lady? Who's Gun Lady?"
Jacob sighed, before shouting,
"Hey, Gun Lady! Truce?"
Silence before the melodious voice of a vampire rang out;
"Yiff in hell, Furfag!"
Jacob ground his jaw together,
"We got a nice vampire for you too talk to. Is that up to your standards?"
"That the moron I just took a shot at?"
"Yeah."
"Fine. Send her over, nice and slow, arms to her sides, palms open."
Bella glowered at Jacob,
"At what point did I agree to that?"
"Well, you want to end this before further blood is shed don't you? Someone might get killed…"
Bella sighed.
"Fine."
She got to her feet before cautiously, ready at any moment to leap for cover, wondering if vampires could move faster than bullets.
She took a step, and when nothing happened, slowly took another.
Growing more confidant with each step, she walked forward across a small clearing in the wall of green. When she got to the other side, she found herself in the midst of an overgrown thicket of trees. She looked around, searching for the vampire who'd held off the Quileute wolves for three hours.
She saw nothing.
And then a clump of moss and bracken erupted outward, spattering her clothes with filth, before something smashed into her and sent her sprawling to the ground, pinning her.
Bella found herself staring up into the bright red eyes of a new born vampire.
"You a Cullen?" the sickly sweet voice seemed to ooze out from her lips. Bella hesitated, mesmerized by the absolute focus that had no business existing in a newborn vampires eyes.
Bella felt something cold and metal press into her forehead.
"Cullen?"
"Yes."
The new born's dark green painted face split with a wide grin.
"Good."