17
The closer they got to La Push, the thicker, more intense the air became. Bella could feel the wolves, sense them. It was odd to her, how she could feel them, yet not hear the vampires around her until they were right on top of her, so to speak. What did it mean? Was this part of her powers?
They had just reached a clearing on edge of the reservation, when Carlisle stopped them by putting his hand up. He closed his eyes, his nostrils flaring. He was trying to get her parents' scent, she knew. But the unbearable stank of dog was overwhelming, and he growled in frustration. It was almost amusing to Bella, would have been had her parents' lives not have been on the line.
"Can you see them, Alice?" Carlisle asked, looking past everyone to the pixie vampire in the back of the group.
As everyone turned their attention to her, Alice's eyes shifted to Bella for a split second before she shook her head and said, "No. I'm not getting anything new. Just them in a large room, darkness, and death."
Bella closed her eyes, blowing out a heavy breath as she tried to push the smell of the dogs out of her nose, hear the sound of her parents' heartbeats, but there was nothing. And that scared her. Were they too late?
"Bella," Alice said, and when she opened her eyes, she found her staring at her. "Take my hands, Bella."
Though it scared her, to see inside her head again, she found herself walking over to her, placing her palms on top of Alice's. Just like before, her eyes rolled back inside her head, her entire body turned rigid, and her vision turned black. Then, just as before, she was suddenly hit by a flurry of images: Renee still tied to a chair, only this time her eyes were open and filled with fear; Charlie hanging from a rafter, his shirt off, whip marks cut deeply into his back and chest; someone — a male from this silhouette — was brandishing a large, steel hunting knife.
Bella was about to pull her hands away from hers, when the vision, the picture inside her head changed, and she found herself standing outside of a large, metal bunker that was built into the side of a cliff. She could almost feel the spray of the ocean on her face.
"I know where they are," she whispered, snapping her eyes open and pulling her hands away from Alice. When everyone looked at her, she knew her eyes would be glowing again. "I know exactly where they are being kept."
"Lead us," Edward said, bringing his hand up to the side of her face. "Just lead the way, sweetheart."
Closing her eyes once more, she inhaled a sharp, unneeded breath, before her eyes opened and she started the charge around the small town of La Push. The closer they got to the other side of the mountain, the more electric the air became, until she could almost feel the hair on the back of her neck to stand on its own.
They stopped when they reached the edge of a cliff, and Bella turned and looked at Edward before she smiled and leapt off the edge, hearing him call out, "Bella!" as she dropped until she hit the ground, placing her hands on the sandy beach, her fingers curling into a fist. One by one, starting with Edward, then Emmett, Carlisle, Garrett, Esme, Kate, Rosalie, Alice, and finally Jasper, giving her a wicked grin that she hadn't been expecting, the rest joined her. She didn't say a word as she pointed to the front of the large metal bunker that had been built into the side of the cliff under Trail Beach Trailhead.
"I don't know how many are inside," she said, shaking her head. "I can sense one, maybe more. There have to be more, right? I mean, one just doesn't make sense. I don't know, but if you're not prepared to fight to the death, then you should stay out here."
She looked at each and every one of them, all of them tilting their heads toward her, including Rosalie who always seemed to be the naysayer of the group. Trying to be braver, more confident than she felt, Bella led the way to the door of the bunker. Edward placed his hand on the middle of her back, drawing her attention to him as she reached out and pulled the door off it's hinges, causing him to smile.
The air inside the bunker was thick with rot and death, the sense of power was intoxicating, yet she knew she couldn't not go forward, not try to save them, even if she was terrified she was too late. Had they paid the price for wanting her to live? How could anyone blame them for wanting her to live? She was their daughter, and all they had asked was for her to live.
—Stay—
Something was wrong. Bella knew it the minute they walked into the bunker. There was an emptiness in the air, a sense of hollowness that she'd never felt before. She shifted her eyes to Edward before they started to advance into the bunker.
She should have been able to sense her parents, smell the wolves, but there was no dog smell, or sense of her parents inside the bunker. Clearly, this wasn't where they were being kept, but she couldn't understand why Alice's vision showed her the large, metal bunker. Why she had sensed someone while she was standing outside, yet the moment they stepped into the large metal tomb, that feeling went away.
"There's nobody here," Garrett said, and she felt the way he watched her, doubting her decision to charge in the way they had.
Bella inhaled a sharp, needless breath and closed her eyes, trying to get a sense of something, anything inside the bunker. "They're here. I don't know where, but they are here."
Shifting her eyes between Garrett and Carlisle, to Emmett and Rosalie, Esme, Kate, and Alice before landing on Edward, she took off running through the bunker, letting her instincts take over, trusting her gut, so to speak. Down one corridor to another, back and forth, she ran and ran, until she found herself at a dead end. Or so she thought. It wasn't until she saw the small, minute crack in the corner that she realized there was something behind the dead end.
Bella reached up, running her fingers along the crack, until she felt a notch in the wall. She pried it upward, turning it in a full three hundred and sixty degree turn, which caused the crack to widen. Bella stood up and pushed the wall backward, expecting to find her parents inside the hidden room, but she didn't.
Instead, she found hundreds, if not thousands of pictures of her spread all over the walls. Pictures of her from when she was a baby, a toddler, a child, a teenager. Being pushed out of the hospital in Phoenix after the first attempt to remove Fred, slumped in a wheelchair with pain and agony etched on her face. Pictures of her in chemotherapy and radiation, sitting in the backyard, alone, bald, frail. The best and worst moments of her life choreographed on four by six inch photographs.
"What the hell?"
She couldn't look at Edward, even when he placed his hands on her hips. No, she couldn't turn away from the collage of pictures that documented her entire life — her short, painful life. Someone had been watching her, watching her long before Fred invaded her brain.
"We have a body."
Bella turned, looking past Edward at Jasper, who stood in the doorway of the small, hidden chamber.
His eyes shifted from her to the pictures and back in the span of a second. "This way."
Bella simply nodded before she walked past Edward and followed Jasper back down the hallway, around a corner, down another corridor, and into a large room, where a body did indeed lay on the floor. She knew immediately that it wasn't either of her parents. Even in the dim lighting, she could tell they were from the reservation. A young, female, and covered in thick, dried blood. She'd been dead for several days, at least a week's worth.
Bella walked over, past Rosalie, Emmett, Esme, Carlisle, and Garrett and knelt next to the lifeless female body. She shifted her eyes to Edward before she reached out and turned the body, inhaling a sharp breath. Her skin was dark from bruising, swollen from a beating, or several beatings. There were three long, barely healed scares on the left side of her face, from her hairline down her neck disappearing into her shirt, which was covered in blood. Old, dried blood.
"Her name is Emily Young," Bella whispered, and had she still been human, she would have wept for the girl.
They were the same age, they'd played together when they were little, before she was sick, before she was dying and coming to Forks was too hard, too dangerous.
"She went missing a year ago. I remember hearing . . . hearing my mom and dad talking about her, about how nobody knew where she'd gone. They said she'd gone hiking and just disappeared." Bella looked back at everyone, her eyes landing on Edward last. "They thought she'd gotten lost, attacked by bear, or a wolf," she quipped. "Might have been closer than they thought, huh?"
"You think the wolves did this?" Esme asked, and she looked at her as she nodded. "Why would they kill one of their own?"
"I don't know," she murmured, standing up. "But they aren't here. They left her here to die. Alone."
"They have pictures of you, Bella. A lot of pictures of you," Edward said, drawing everyone's attention back to him. He stood with his arms folded in front of him. "Why would they have them?"
She shook her head, wrapping her arms around herself. "I don't know. I don't understand any of this."
"Well," Jasper said, placing his hands on his hips, "maybe we should ask someone who will know?"
"You mean Billy Black," Carlisle scoffed, crossing his arms in front of him.
Jasper shrugged his shoulders.
"We can't just waltz onto the reservation and ask him," Rosalie argued.
"Why not?" Bella asked, and when they looked at her. "They have my parents and we are running out of time."
"She's right," Emmett said, and when she shifted her eyes toward him, he added, "They started it. We should finish it."
Though Bella could tell they were reluctant, everyone agreed, and they soon found themselves walking out of the bunker, carrying Emily Young out. Bella refused to leave her behind, knowing she had family who had been worried about her. The memory, though fuzzy, of Charlie and Renee talking about Emily's mother grieving the loss of her daughter floated through Bella's head, and she wondered if it had been Emily's disappearance that prompted Charlie's inquiry toward the truth behind the Cullen family. Had Charlie suspected the Cullen family of being responsible for Emily's disappearance? If so, why would he have wanted her to allow them to save her? To give her a second life?
As they approached the edge of La Push, Bella and Edward shared a look. There was something wrong, something off. Like inside the bunker, there was a void of life. There should have been people roaming the street, children playing, people working, but there weren't any. La Push seemed to be all but abandoned.
Thank you for all the AMAZING reviews. Sorry for the delay. This chapter was tricky to get right, so please have patience if chapters are slower than they are with my other two stories.