Content Advisory: This chapter will contain brief but intense and disturbing images. PM me if you have questions.
"I have never been so happy as I am right now. This is the summer that was denied me. Lying in a sun-warmed field with a young lady, bantering gently like this. Even if it is only the lamb's tail of March."
Flight
"Well, well, what have we here?"
I am brought bolt upright by the thoughts carried on the voices of the crows.
One finger to Bella's lips, and another over my own. They cannot hear us yet, but they will, if they turn up our trail.
How did this happen? What are they doing here? Why didn't Alice see?
Perhaps she did. The cell phone in my hand shows not even the barest sliver of a bar.
I hadn't planned to bring Bella here. It had just … happened. When her eyes met mine. All the moments along the way when Alice could have stopped me – with a thought, a phone call, a text – she hadn't. And I hadn't stopped myself.
I glance at the time. Esme is home, Carlisle at the hospital. Emmett and Rosalie must be boarding the ferry to Edmonds right now – on their way to "Midnight Drift" at Evergreen Speedway. If Alice is where I saw her headed in her mind, she is at the library with Jasper, reading to preschoolers – his vacation from the murk of adults' emotions.
I wouldn't have hunted you down, boy, but you've crossed my path. You and your little pet.
We should have killed these animals when we had the chance! When we were all together, and had them outnumbered. But Carlisle refused.
In the coven leader's mind I can see that he feels exactly where I am. This is his talent, which I already sensed in his thoughts the night we ran them down. He can't feel Bella – yet – because he has never been in her presence; but her scent was on my jacket that night, and it lies thick with mine on the trail he is sniffing.
My finger still on her lips, Bella is barely breathing, pupils dilated, holding as still as a startled fawn.
"James."
His lieutenant is not interested in a side trip for one measly girl. Maybe they'll decide that it's not worth the exertion, not worth the vendetta.
A cloud passes over the sun. My skin is dead white again, and Bella's is risen in goose bumps. The crows are silent.
The minute I run, James will feel it, and nothing will launch him after us faster than that. So long as there is the chance that we may be passed over –
He replays in his mind every ignominious detail of the scene outside of Port Angeles. "The way they treated us was disgraceful. You said so yourself."
I wonder if Alice sees this – this dream of an idyllic afternoon, turning into a nightmare.
The one called Laurent shakes his head. "We were supposed to just get across their land and go on."
She must be seeing it. She has to. But what good can it do?
James is dreaming of a breakneck chase; and the revenge he intends to have at its end.
It's impossible. A chase like that will make a burst of new futures with every twist and turn. Even if Alice can call the family together, even if she can somehow track our course, there will be too many possibilities. They'll never find us in time.
With shaking hands I take off my jacket and motion Bella onto my back, then pull it over her and put my arms through the sleeves. She is slight enough that I can just manage to wear the jacket with her inside. I pull the collar up, to protect her head. Her face is pale, but she obeys me without a murmur.
I want to run right now, before it's too late. Or else charge down there and throw myself against these attackers ... Memory of Jasper's thoughts whispers in my ear, his iron grip on me while Carlisle parlayed: Hold steady. I've lived in my brother's head, cheated shamelessly when we've played chess, and every other contest as well. But I never bothered to learn from him. Now I wish I had paid more attention.
"I wonder what you keep her for?"
Wrapped tight to my back, Bella locks her slender arms across my chest, as her heart echoes through my body like thunder, the heat and scent of her all trapped against me like a summer storm.
"Bringing her out here to the middle of nowhere so you don't have to share? Maybe you cheat on your diet with her, too …"
James sees and tastes pure red. Tuned to his and his coven's every thought, so do I. I shut down my lungs, as his mate inhales Bella's scent. Through his eyes I see her lick her lips.
I see much more than that.
A terrified young girl on a snowboard, fleeing desperately, dangerously, down a slope that is much too steep. The three vampires chase leisurely in waning daylight under a pale half moon. The images jump. The girl is on her back in the snow. The two men have her shoulders pinned, one to each, her sleeves ripped away, and her wrists in their mouths. The girl's lower body is naked, and the red-haired woman is kneeling on her legs. She lets the girl buck her hips a little, but nothing more. Screams fill the air. The redhead is fingering at the girl's crotch. Then fisting, then pushing with her knee, splitting the girl's pelvis in half. She drinks from the pool of ruined abdomen. The mountainside is silent except for the sound of her lapping.
The three of them turn, and start questing up our trail.
Run! But I can't. If I move before they come within earshot and direct scent, they will know that I have an extrasensory gift. It won't deter them; only bring them on me in a swift and savage attack. Without my family, and with Bella in the way – it will be a slaughter.
Keeping his tracker's fix on my exact location, James abandons our path and leads his coven in a slow, silent circle to come from downwind. In his memory, human and hazy, a forest like this one shades him. There is a gun in his hand, deer spoor on the ground. Been a long time since I had game that stood a chance against me.
Bella's heart and blood and breath are a metronome against my back.
I need to turn the tables. I need to lead instead of being driven. But if I give James his hunt, will he take it? Will he chose a winding chase on my scent trail, instead of a straight rush to the kill? And can I make Alice see what I'm doing? Can I show her, just by my decisions, where I need her and the family to wait for us?
I hear the first echo of Bella's heartbeat reach James' and his coven's ears. My muscles scream again to run, but my enemy's stealth and silence are too perfect. If not for my gift I would never know they were there. So I must play sitting duck, while James waves his companions into formation – himself and Laurent in front, Victoria, their fastest, hanging back and to the side, inconspicuous and deadly.
Bella can't be anywhere near when our covens meet. The cliff where she fell. It's not far from Quileute land. If I can get her there, leave her there ... Everything depends on James thinking she is still with me when she isn't. If he doesn't see her he can't form his link, he can only follow by scent. I wish Jasper were here. Surely he'd think of something better than just bait and switch.
There's no more time. I have to commit.
Alice, if you weren't watching me before, you better be watching me now. See me. See what I have decided.
I hold it clear and hard in my mind: I won't know the route until I run it, but the goal, the cliff. I close my eyes, to see nothing but that promontory, and me, sprinting across the final miles, buying the extra seconds to separate Bella from her clothing, hurl her out across the water, and then run on, leading James and his coven with my signature and Bella's fragrant clothes. I visualize Alice: rising out of the water to catch Bella, pulling her under the waves before my pursuers arrive, and then thinking to me the destination where the rest of us will be waiting, to tear these marauders apart. Alice will have to get out of there fast, take Bella deep, so as not herself to be detected by James' gift. Maybe he won't follow me all the way to that point of land. Maybe he'll hold off and wait to see where I run from there ...
Suddenly the wind shifts, carrying the nomads' scent to me. James curses in his mind, but I am freed! Anchoring Bella's arms and legs around me I leap the entire breadth of the meadow in a single bound to land only for a moment in a tree, before skimming forward to the next and the next.
The few extra seconds that the wind has given me are distance, and I use it to leave as long and bewildering a trail as I can through the treetops before these animals can get close enough to see the branches waving in my wake.
This will only work if James decides to ignore where his gift tells him I am, and hunt us by scent alone.
Bella clings to me with all her human strength. The branches rake us as I leap like some crazed kung fu hero from one pine to the next. Even through my jacket, Bella cannot help but be lashed and bruised; and yet, except for her heartbeat and ragged breathing, she has not made a sound. My chest breaks open for her, there where she had put her sweet, warm hand, and then her cheek and ear, listening for a thing that has not moved in eighty-nine years.
See me Alice. See me! We've never done this before - talking with our gifts - not at this distance, without contact or context, and me unable to hear her thoughts in reply.
I return to the earth and tear a zigzag trail down the forested slope for as long as I dare before doubling back on it and leaping upward again and away. Bella's stomach heaves against my back at the speed and the changes in direction. I fear she may faint. Or vomit.
The meadow bursts bright to me through the trio's eyes. And there is the scent trail, vanishing in our lain-upon grass. Through the eyes of his mate, I see James grin.
"Good boy! You're going to give me so much fun. I should almost let you live for this."
He stills, feeling, following my trace with his eyes closed.
As if you could outrun me, with that fragile bag of blood in your arms. Or is she on your back?
"We will make enemies with this," Laurent sighs.
The other two look at him with scorn. "They were never our friends."
Victoria wants to play. James wants to make me watch. Memory flares, of indignities he had suffered at the hands of the coven that had turned him. He is long ago quit of them. One by one he sent them to their final hell. I see plans for a similar campaign against my family, as he contemplates leaving me limbless, but alive – a warning – beside a small pile of ash and Bella's unrecognizable corpse.
With a soft laugh, he tracks my every move. Oh, you're a city boy, aren't you? Don't know the first thing about hunting. Or being hunted.
Good! Think that, you bastard! Think of me as nothing but a rabbit running from you!
Before the chambers of Bella's heart can fill for another pulse, they are after us, following every twist and turn of the trail I've left behind.
Green and black and sudden slopes.
Holding my plan tight, willing Alice to see.
Locking into James' thoughts, because he could change his mind at any moment and slice across the labyrinth straight for us.
Looking ahead through the zooming trees, finding the zig-zag path that will leave the lightest trace, leaping across spaces to make gaps in our scent, circling and looping, buying time for Alice to gather our forces, using every dodge to push closer to the edge of the park and the final dash.
I feel spasms in Bella's muscles. Is it terror? Or is she weakening? Don't let go. I need to keep one arm free to grab at branches in our mad caroms from tree to tree. Hold you forever. That's what she whispered against my neck. That swim, that climb. Hold me, Isabella, one more time. Don't let go.
As Alice did when Jasper left, I build again and again the future that I am running toward. And if she isn't there when we arrive? What then? Run for the border? Give Bella to the wolves? Make a stand?
Three. Only three. Is all that it took to pin me, render me helpless. I feel the harsh snow again against my cheek. These three will not take care for me, as my siblings did. Already their thoughts are rehearsing how best and swiftest to incapacitate me. Where to hold and who will rip. They have done this before. Many times. Against newborns and seasoned fighters alike. I see a hundred variations in their minds, of a Bella-scented girl cowering in terror as they unmake me.
We've reached the south fork of the Calawah; thirty miles as the crow flies; almost a hundred as I have run. The sun is dipping below the horizon, and Bella's strength is almost gone. There's no point running in the water to hide scent – the enemy can hear me splashing through it.
If Alice has seen me, if she has reached all our family … they will have to abandon human transportation to assemble in time. If Rose and Emmett were already on the ferry when she called them … will Carlisle, Esme, Jasper and I be enough to prevail against this hardened coven? The thought of casualties shivers through me.
James' thoughts chase me, as all three of them steadily gain against my path.
We'll see how holier than thou you are when her blood is in your mouth, boy. It'd be worth going without, just to see you drain her.
He conjures again the scene of me reduced to nothing but head and torso, and in it forces a bared and bitten breast to my helpless lips. Thirst and lust blaze together as he imagines the fragrance of her blood from what he had smelled on my jacket, and now on our trail.
It's too much. More than I can endure. Bella's real scent is hot in my nostrils, driven hard by the frantic pumping of her heart. Her pulse is everywhere – in my ears and at every point that our bodies touch. Her blood scent pours into me through our clothing and my skin. I want her. I want her. Every greedy inhalation our pursuers take of her, every lurid anticipation in their minds, only resurrects my own darkest and most horrid fantasies. I have held Bella only briefly, in an ocean of frigid water. But it is enough that I know, oh, how I know, exactly the heat of her flesh, and the temper of her bones. I can feel her, in my arms, under me, parting so sweetly under my teeth, gushing heaven's red fount all over my tongue and into my mouth; her cries, her struggle –
I run and leap and dodge, confounding our trail with every trick I can think of, but I can't get away from my own muscles that want nothing more than to pull Isabella from my back and take her right here and now, before the three behind us can catch up. They will find such a demon when they do.
Help me, Alice, help me! Please be there.
I can't shut out the evil that follows me, because I have to track its exact location. Hunger and rage and pain and desire - use it then, use it, turn it all into speed. Another five-mile circle. Leap away from the closed loop of scent.
And James is done. I'm not going to waste that much time with you.
No more game. They are racing flat out for me.
I leave the forest behind, picking a path where houses and cars are fewest, parting the air in a blur. I don't even know if Bella can breathe at this speed. It doesn't matter. I'll be there before she has time to lose consciousness.
Forks is behind us. Racing straight for the coast, now, leaving those murderers in my dust. I don't care who sees or doesn't. I'm nothing but a gust of dark wind.
If Alice isn't there, hasn't positioned the ambush by now, it's too late.
I see the bluff. See the ghost of Bella standing at the edge with her arms stretched wide.
Alice's thoughts are in my ear. You can't lead them to us, Edward! James will feel us and run away. I glimpse a relentless war of attrition – over years – that would follow. The humans killed to bait and drive us. You have to make a stand.
She floods me with a different vision, wavering and changing, born of her Sight and Jasper's plan. I'm running with Bella's clothing clutched to my chest, leading the nomads to our house. James is gloating because he can feel that Esme is the only one at home.
We have to do it this way, Edward.
Inferior force. The only way to lure them into a closed space, then distract them enough for the rest to swoop in, and catch them before they scatter. No prisoners.
The ragged last edge of Alice's Sight shows James and his coven bursting into the house on my heels, tearing into Esme and me, livid because they see that Bella isn't there. Esme's cell phone is in her pocket on speed-dial. The plan is for her to touch the key through her blouse once all three are inside. Jasper will lead the charge from four directions. It will take time for him to arrive from beyond James' range.
There's no more time. I'm at the cliff. My speed has bought me seconds. Seconds to haul Bella from my back. To tear off her clothes. Every stitch. Because the innermost garments carry the strongest scent.
She lies in my arms, trembling, barely comprehending. I curl her knees to her chest, wrap her arms around her shins, hold her in a ball. "Don't let go."
She gazes up at me, and so help me God, I kiss her mouth. One moment. One eternity.
And then I throw her – out, out, over the waves.
A/N: Thank you, averysubtlegift, for your gift of beta. Thank you, WoodLily and punz, for pre-reading and courage. (I tweaked, tweaked, tweaked afterwards. ALL errors and awkwardness are my own!) Thank you, dear readers, for your wonderful company on this journey.
I owe great literary debt to silveraure's Wild at Heart. Hers is the canon that I draw from in my characterization of James and Victoria and Laurent. This brilliant little story last updated on 6-26-2011, and remains, oh alas, unfinished; but a gem nevertheless. If you want to know what drives the tiny little glimpses of these three nomads as they've appeared in this brief passage of Garment, I invite you to read their gloriously told back-stories in Wild at Heart. s/5826692/1/Wild_At_Heart