53 – Her Relations
I'm flying. Flying. Defying the laws of physics.
Edward kissed me.
He kissed me. His beautiful mouth on mine.
It felt like a promise.
It felt like farewell.
Right before he skipped me out over the ocean.
To play with the orcas. To sleep with the fishes.
There's no sunlight. Only grey sky above and dark, dark water below.
And I'm falling. Even though he threw me from way up high on the cliff. Even though he threw me so fast and so hard. It's still a parabola, and I'm falling down the slope of it. The water is rushing up. God only knows how deep it is, how far out from shore.
Bursting up through the crest of a wave. White and black. How big will its jaws be? I expect an impact. With teeth. Instead, something hard and cold and wet wraps around me and falls backward in the same direction of my fall. Slippery. We're all slippery when wet.
I gasp in hard and a hand clamps over my nose and mouth.
"Bella!"
Alice.
She's naked like me.
The water swallows us whole.
She has me. Tight. One hand on my face, the other arm around my arms and body. Her flesh is hard, like Edward's, and so I really feel her breasts against my back. And the movement of her legs. She's beating them in a very small arc but really fast – it makes almost a humming vibration up the bottom of my spine. We're moving fast – like a torpedo through the water, maybe faster. Away.
And down.
I feel the pressure in my ears, pushing in.
Don't take me too deep. I'm going to need to breathe.
My eyes are open but I can't see anything; we're too deep for light.
Alice, take me up. It's time to take me up.
Her hand is like a seal over my nose and mouth. Nothing can get in or out.
Alice, I'm not like you. I can't hold my breath forever.
She has to know, she has to know, that humans need air to live.
Take me up! Alice!
We're just speeding through the water, though I can only tell by the feeling of it slipping past my skin, by the resistance against my head as Alice ploughs me through. My lungs are burning and I'm panicking, which only makes it ten times worse.
Alice!
I can't help myself; I start to struggle, even though it will only use up my air faster. Alice holds me tighter. Her hand on my face hurts. Everything hurts. Why won't she take me up? I can't tell which is up or down any more. I see black spots and bright flashes inside my eyes. My chest feels like it's on fire and going to burst at the same time, even with Alice's arm around me like an iron band.
I'm going to black out.
And then I'm going to die.
I would give my life. For one kiss. Just one. That's what I said. But it's not true. Not any more. I want more. I want to live. I want to see Edward again. I want to kiss him again, too.
Too late.
The blackness closes in behind my eyelids. No more sparks. No more light.
Suddenly my face is in air.
"Breathe, Bella!"
I almost can't remember how.
She makes me, squeezing with her arms, holding my head above the water so I can suck in a breath that burns as much as the one she forced out.
And then she has me again, and we're underwater again. I let go this time. Just let go. Until I can't, until I'm burning again, struggling again, because my body won't go down without a fight. But we're at the surface again, in time again, and this time she lets me gasp and choke and breathe as long as I want.
She's holding me softly now, just gently treading water, as the waves carry us up and down, up and down. Her voice sounds like she's crying.
"Oh, Bella, oh, Bella," she says, over and over. And, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry."
She's holding me and rubbing my arms. "Are you okay? I had to get us away from there fast. It was the only way. Are you okay?"
Only now do I realize how frozen I am. Alice's body is as frigid as the water, and there's no warmth for me anywhere. I'm shaking so hard I think I may fall apart, and all I can do is cry.
Alice is swimming with me again – on the surface now, slowly now – keeping my face above water. I can't do anything but let her tow me.
She's talking to me, but I only hear half of it. "Sorry," and "Okay," and "Safe."
We swim forever.
Her feet touch bottom, and before I can get upright she has me in her arms and she's carrying me out of the thin surf onto a beach. It's full dark, and I really can't see anything but shapes. Rocks? Trees? All I really know is that there is wind soughing high above. And I'm even colder in the air than I was in the water. My arms and legs feel all heavy and numb.
Alice puts me down on something soft. Ferns, maybe? On the knees of a very big tree. And then she's gone. Not far: I hear movement, feel it like a corporeal wind. Brittle things are being dragged, broken, and then there is one really big, really scary ripping sound.
"I'm here, Bella, I'm here."
She's a slightly paler shape in front of me, fussing with the things she's gathered, her hands a blur. I smell smoke, then there is a glow, and I see that she is making fire. With a blunt stick between her hands, turning it back and forth too fast to really see, the end of it already boring a pit in the flat inside of a small log that she has split in half. My Dad taught me about this once – how the inside of the wood will be dry, even if the outside is soaking wet. You have to get an old log, though, not a green one.
I watch her build the fire, from a pile of the tiniest shreds of the inner part of the log, to larger slivers of it, to twigs, to split sticks that catch on their dry insides until the water is driven out and they burn. And it's a fire, and I can see and I'm even getting warmed by it. A drizzling rain is coming and in another blur Alice has made a lean-to of pine boughs against the tree, big enough to shelter us and the fire.
I haven't said a word this whole time, and Alice crouches in close to me again.
"Bella," she whispers.
I lean toward her and she has her arms around me at once. Even with the fire, her body stays colder than mine. I don't care.
"What happened?" I ask. It's so weird, the two of us, sitting here in the woods, naked as a pair of jay-birds.
"There were others. They wanted to hurt you."
"Vampires?" Is that what Edward and I were running from? I start to feel dizzy and nauseous.
"Yes. But you're safe, now, Bella; you're safe here."
It's way past dark now. My truck is still at the school. But I'm not. My Dad …
"What about Edward?" How many of them were there? Where is he now? What if they've caught up to him? I think of how strong Edward is. But they would be just as strong. Bad pictures are in my head and I can't stop the whimpering that comes up my throat. I can't imagine a world without Edward in it. I don't want to.
Alice holds me tighter. "It's going to be okay. I promise. I promise."
How would she know?
"Where did they come from?" Even though I've known for a long time that the Cullens are … different … it never really occurred to me that there might be others like them. Even now that Edward has told me that he and his family are vampires, I never thought …
"They had passed through before. Hunting. We ran them off. They weren't supposed to come back. I never saw them coming back."
"Hunting?"
"Edward told you it was a bear, didn't he?"
He lied. Still lying. All the victims, the way their bodies were left – not by Edward's family, but not by a bear, either.
I imagine velociraptors as smart as humans – smarter – hunting in packs. Stronger than King Kong. Stronger than T- Rex. Too fast even to see. Able to pass as human wherever they go. Just like Edward and his family.
I remember how I felt, thinking of Edward biting me, killing me, leaving me like the others had been left. It didn't seem evil or wrong to me. I would have given him my life that way, if he needed it, or couldn't help himself. I still would. Even Alice, I think I would. Because of love. But without that … I shiver. "I guess he didn't want to scare me."
Alice sighs. "They weren't supposed to come back. The last I saw they were heading east: for Seattle, and then Boise …"
I don't really understand what she's saying. About seeing.
"Victoria is slippery. They follow her."
I'm still stuck on the fact that 'they' means more than one. How can Edward be safe if they catch him? And my Dad. My Dad could be anywhere, right now, looking for me.
"Alice!" I feel my heart beating out of my chest again, climbing up my throat again. I clutch at her arm. "What's going to happen now?"
"We have to kill them. We have no choice any more. Even Carlisle sees it – "
There's something else in the woods with us.
I can feel it, hear it, moving fast in the dark, coming toward us.
Not something … some things. Big things. Alice shouldn't have made the fire! It's like a beacon showing exactly where we are!
"Alice!"
"Shhh, Bella, it's okay."
It's not okay. I see reflections of the firelight from what can only be eyes out in the dark. Way too high off the ground to be any dog or cat I ever saw. And bear don't travel in packs.
Alice wraps me up in her thin arms and holds me close, her nose next to my ear. I hear a horrendous growling from the dark. I'm too scared to look, and just hope it will be over quickly.
"You're safe, Bella; the cavalry is here." Safe? Is she crazy?
"Alice."
My eyes fly open. That was Uncle Billy's voice!
I see more than reflecting eyes, now. I see big shapes in the dark at the rim of the fire's glow. Shadow wolves. But they're not shadows. They are real, and big; bigger than grizzly bears. The firelight flickers over them, making it hard to see exactly where they are, making them seem to move even though they are standing still.
Uncle Billy is riding on the back of one of them. He looks like a wolf himself, except that I can see that actually he's wearing a pelt. The wolf head is over his own head, so that his face is under the shadow of the upper jaw. The forelegs drape down over his arms and the rest of the pelt covers his back. It's eerie and scary to see him like this, especially the way that his stump is hidden by one hind leg of the pelt, while his other leg sticks out past the paw. It makes him look like he has one wolf leg and one human leg.
"You broke the treaty."
Alice stands up, and the way that she faces him, without a stitch on, completely revealed in the firelight, reminds me that I'm buck naked, too. It's not like Uncle Billy hasn't seen me bare, but I was three then, running around in the rain and mud outside his house. It's not the same. I'm not as brave as Alice, and so I stay hunched in a ball on the ground, trying to hide myself.
"I had to," Alice answers. "To keep Bella safe."
A rumbling growl from the shadows vibrates my breastbone. Uncle Billy says something in Quileute, and it stops. He stares straight at Alice without even blinking.
"She's not your people."
"I brought her to you."
The way they're facing off is scary. And the way the giant wolves are surrounding our lean-to isn't helping. Uncle Billy's voice barks through the air.
"You didn't protect the land. Those men, and that girl, their blood is on your hands, on your heads."
"The treaty never – "
He cuts her off with one hand.
"It's understood! You all were too busy sniffing around what isn't yours. People died ugly because you couldn't hold your borders. And still we gave you grace. You let the killers go. And still, we gave you grace. Now it's Bella. Almost walked the spirit road for your arrogance: and here you stand on our land, telling not asking. There is no more grace. The treaty is broken. You are strangers to us now."
This is what all the bad blood is about? Some kind of treaty between the Cullens and the Quileutes? What the Cullens are. What the Quileutes are. The bogeyman. Sasquatch.
What Jacob was keeping me in the dark about.
Maybe it's the chilling wet air. Maybe it's being naked here in front of a fire and my father's friend. Maybe it's seeing with my own eyes that every scary story ever told to make children behave is actually terribly, terribly real. Maybe it's all of this and worrying about Edward, and my Dad, but I'm shaking and covered in chicken skin, and I can barely breathe.
"Take care of Bella," Alice says, laying her hand softly on my head.
"She's not your concern."
There's a rumbling sound coming from the shadows again. The wolves are growling, showing their teeth. Big, long, gleaming teeth. And everyone's talking about me like I'm not even here.
"Alice, what's happening?"
"I have to go. You have to stay."
"What's going on? What about Edward? What – ?"
Alice goes a little slack. Can a vampire have a seizure? The thought that she, maybe other Cullens too, could have weaknesses scares me. Before I have time to think too much, she recovers, and looks at me sadly.
"I can't stay, Bella. My family needs me. I have to go. You stay. Stay here. Stay."
She turns her head. "Goodbye, Chief Black."
And then she's running. The edges of the firelight glint from her white form as she weaves among the trees at almost human speed. I wonder if she is giving me a sight to remember her by. And then she's gone.
I feel a shadow behind me and turn. I see Sam's face under the hood of a wolf head and pelt. He's holding some kind of short reed to his mouth. I see his cheeks puff and then some kind of powder or smoke blows in my face.
The waters of oblivion close over my head.
Thank you WoodLily, for your nick of time beta.