The freeway cleared up a little, and I pushed the bike to eighty. I didn’t touch the brake until I was close to the narrow drive; I figured I was in the clear then. Sam wouldn’t come this far to stop me. It was too late.
It wasn’t until that moment—when I was sure that I’d made it—that I started to think about what exactly I was going to do now. I slowed down to twenty, taking the twists through the trees more carefully than I needed to.
I knew they would hear me coming, bike or no bike, so surprise was out. There was no way to disguise my intentions. Edward would hear my plan as soon as I was close enough. Maybe he already could. But I thought this would still work out, because I had his ego on my side. He’d
want
to fight me alone.
So I’d just walk in, see Sam’s precious evidence for myself, and then challenge Edward to a duel.
I snorted. The parasite’d probably get a kick out of the theatrics of it. When I finished with him, I’d take as many of the rest of them as I could before they got me. Huh—I wondered if Sam would consider my death
provocation
. Probably say I got what I deserved. Wouldn’t want to offend his bloodsucker BFFs.
The drive opened up into the meadow, and the smell hit me like a rotten tomato to the face. Ugh. Reeking vampires. My stomach started churning. The stench would be hard to take this way—undiluted by the scent of humans as it had been the other time I’d come here—though not as bad as smelling it through my wolf nose.
I wasn’t sure what to expect, but there was no sign of life around the big white crypt. Of course they knew I was here.
I cut the engine and listened to the quiet. Now I could hear tense, angry murmurs from just the other side of the wide double doors. Someone was home. I heard my name and I smiled, happy to think I was causing them a little stress.
I took one big gulp of air—it would only be worse inside—and leaped up the porch stairs in one bound.
The door opened before my fist touched it, and the doctor stood in the frame, his eyes grave.
“Hello, Jacob,” he said, calmer than I would have expected. “How are you?”
I took a deep breath through my mouth. The reek pouring through the door was overpowering.
I was disappointed that it was Carlisle who answered. I’d rather Edward had come through the door, fangs out. Carlisle was so… just
human
or something. Maybe it was the house calls he made last spring when I got busted up. But it made me uncomfortable to look into his face and know that I was planning to kill him if I could.
“I heard Bella made it back alive,” I said.
“Er, Jacob, it’s not really the best time.” The doctor seemed uncomfortable, too, but not in the way I expected. “Could we do this later?”
I stared at him, dumbfounded. Was he asking to post-pone the death match for a more convenient time?
And then I heard Bella’s voice, cracked and rough, and I couldn’t think about anything else.
“Why not?” she asked someone. “Are we keeping secrets from Jacob, too? What’s the point?”
Her voice was not what I was expecting. I tried to remember the voices of the young vampires we’d fought in the spring, but all I’d registered was snarling. Maybe those newborns hadn’t had the piercing, ringing sound of the older ones, either. Maybe all new vampires sounded hoarse.
“Come in, please, Jacob,” Bella croaked more loudly.
Carlisle’s eyes tightened.
I wondered if Bella was thirsty. My eyes narrowed, too.
“Excuse me,” I said to the doctor as I stepped around him. It was hard—it went against all my instincts to turn my back to one of them. Not impossible, though. If there was such a thing as a safe vampire, it was the strangely gentle leader.
I would stay away from Carlisle when the fight started. There were enough of them to kill without including him.
I sidestepped into the house, keeping my back to the wall. My eyes swept the room—it was unfamiliar. The last time I’d been in here it had been all done up for a party. Everything was bright and pale now. Including the six vampires standing in a group by the white sofa.
They were all here, all together, but that was not what froze me where I stood and had my jaw dropping to the floor.
It was Edward. It was the expression on his face.
I’d seen him angry, and I’d seen him arrogant, and once I’d seen him in pain. But this— this was beyond agony. His eyes were half-crazed. He didn’t look up to glare at me. He stared down at the couch beside him with an expression like someone had lit him on fire. His hands were rigid claws at his side.
I couldn’t even enjoy his anguish. I could only think of one thing that would make him look like that, and my eyes followed his.
I saw her at the same moment that I caught her scent.
Her warm, clean, human scent.
Bella was half-hidden behind the arm of the sofa, curled up in a loose fetal position, her arms wrapped around her knees. For a long second I could see nothing except that she was still the Bella that I loved, her skin still a soft, pale peach, her eyes still the same chocolate brown. My heart thudded a strange, broken meter, and I wondered if this was just some lying dream that I was about to wake up from.
Then I really saw her.
There were deep circles under her eyes, dark circles that jumped out because her face was all haggard. Was she thinner? Her skin seemed tight—like her cheekbones might break right through it. Most of her dark hair was pulled away from her face into a messy knot, but a few strands stuck limply to her forehead and neck, to the sheen of sweat that covered her skin. There was something about her fingers and wrists that looked so fragile it was scary.
She
was
sick. Very sick.
Not a lie. The story Charlie’d told Billy was not a story. While I stared, eyes bugging, her skin turned light green.
The blond bloodsucker—the showy one, Rosalie—bent over her, cutting into my view, hovering in a strange, protective way.
This was wrong. I knew how Bella felt about almost everything—her thoughts were so obvious; sometimes it was like they were printed on her forehead. So she didn’t have to tell me every detail of a situation for me to get it. I knew that Bella didn’t like Rosalie. I’d seen it in the set of her lips when she talked about her. Not just that she didn’t like her. She was
afraid
of Rosalie. Or she had been.
There was no fear as Bella glanced up at her now. Her expression was… apologetic or something. Then Rosalie snatched a basin from the floor and held it under Bella’s chin just in time for Bella to throw up noisily into it.
Edward fell to his knees by Bella’s side—his eyes all tortured-looking—and Rosalie held out her hand, warning him to keep back.
None of it made sense.
When she could raise her head, Bella smiled weakly at me, sort of embarrassed. “Sorry about that,” she whispered to me.
Edward moaned real quiet. His head slumped against Bella’s knees. She put one of her hands against his cheek. Like she was comforting
him
.
I didn’t realize my legs had carried me forward until Rosalie hissed at me, suddenly appearing between me and the couch. She was like a person on a TV screen. I didn’t care she was there. She didn’t seem real.
“Rose, don’t,” Bella whispered. “It’s fine.”
Blondie moved out of my way, though I could tell she hated to do it. Scowling at me, she crouched by Bella’s head, tensed to spring. She was easier to ignore than I ever would have dreamed.
“Bella, what’s wrong?” I whispered. Without thinking about it, I found myself on my knees, too, leaning over the back of the couch across from her… husband. He didn’t seem to notice me, and I barely glanced at him. I reached out for her free hand, taking it in both of mine. Her skin was icy. “Are you all right?”
It was a stupid question. She didn’t answer it.
“I’m so glad you came to see me today, Jacob,” she said. Even though I knew Edward couldn’t hear her thoughts, he seemed to hear some meaning I didn’t. He moaned again, into the blanket that covered her, and she stroked his cheek.
“What is it, Bella?” I insisted, wrapping my hands tight around her cold, fragile fingers.
Instead of answering, she glanced around the room like she was searching for something, both a plea and a warning in her look. Six pairs of anxious yellow eyes stared back at her. Finally, she turned to Rosalie.
“Help me up, Rose?” she asked.
Rosalie’s lips pulled back over her teeth, and she glared up at me like she wanted to rip my throat out. I was sure that was exactly the case.
“Please, Rose.”
The blonde made a face, but leaned over her again, next to Edward, who didn’t move an inch. She put her arm carefully behind Bella’s shoulders.
“No,” I whispered. “Don’t get up. . . .” She looked so weak.
“I’m answering your question,” she snapped, sounding a little bit more like the way she usually talked to me.
Rosalie pulled Bella off the couch. Edward stayed where he was, sagging forward till his face was buried in the cushions. The blanket fell to the ground at Bella’s feet.
Bella’s body was swollen, her torso ballooning out in a strange, sick way. It strained against the faded gray sweatshirt that was way too big for her shoulders and arms. The rest of her seemed thinner, like the big bulge had grown out of what it had sucked from her. It took me a second to realize what the deformed part was—I didn’t understand until she folded her hands tenderly around her bloated stomach, one above and one below. Like she was cradling it.
I saw it then, but I still couldn’t believe it. I’d seen her just a month ago. There was no way she could be pregnant. Not
that
pregnant.
Except that she was.
I didn’t want to see this, didn’t want to think about this. I didn’t want to imagine him inside her. I didn’t want to know that something I hated so much had taken root in the body I loved. My stomach heaved, and I had to swallow back vomit.
But it was worse than that, so much worse. Her distorted body, the bones jabbing against the skin of her face. I could only guess that she looked like this—so pregnant, so sick—because whatever was inside her was taking her life to feed its own.…
Because it was a monster. Just like its father. I always knew he would kill her.
His head snapped up as he heard the words inside mine. One second we were both on our knees, and then he was on his feet, towering over me. His eyes were flat black, the circles under them dark purple.
“Outside, Jacob,” he snarled.
I was on my feet, too. Looking down on him now. This was why I was here.
“Let’s do this,” I agreed.
The big one, Emmett, pushed forward on Edward’s other side, with the hungry-looking one, Jasper, right behind him. I really didn’t care. Maybe my pack would clean up the scraps when they finished me off. Maybe not. It didn’t matter.
For the tiniest part of a second my eyes touched on the two standing in the back. Esme. Alice. Small and distractingly feminine. Well, I was sure the others would kill me before I had to do anything about them. I didn’t want to kill girls… even vampire girls.
Though I might make an exception for that blonde.
“No,” Bella gasped, and she stumbled forward, out of balance, to clutch at Edward’s arm. Rosalie moved with her, like there was a chain locking them to each other.
“I just need to talk to him, Bella,” Edward said in a low voice, talking only to her. He reached up to touch her face, to stroke it. This made the room turn red, made me see fire —that, after all he’d done to her, he was still allowed to touch her that way. “Don’t strain yourself,” he went on, pleading. “Please rest. We’ll both be back in just a few minutes.”
She stared at his face, reading it carefully. Then she nodded and drooped toward the couch. Rosalie helped lower her back onto the cushions. Bella stared at me, trying to hold my eyes.
“Behave,” she insisted. “And then come back.”
I didn’t answer. I wasn’t making any promises today. I looked away and then followed Edward out the front door.
A random, disjointed voice in my head noted that separating him from the coven hadn’t been so difficult, had it?
He kept walking, never checking to see if I was about to spring at his unprotected back. I supposed he didn’t need to check. He would know when I decided to attack. Which meant I’d have to make that decision very quickly.
“I’m not ready for you to kill me yet, Jacob Black,” he whispered as he paced quickly away from the house. “You’ll have to have a little patience.”
Like I cared about his schedule. I growled under my breath. “Patience isn’t my specialty.”
He kept walking, maybe a couple hundred yards down the drive away from the house, with me right on his heels. I was all hot, my fingers trembling. On the edge, ready and waiting.
He stopped without warning and pivoted to face me. His expression froze me again.
For a second I was just a kid—a kid who had lived all of his life in the same tiny town. Just a child. Because I knew I would have to live a lot more, suffer a lot more, to ever understand the searing agony in Edward’s eyes.
He raised a hand as if to wipe sweat from his forehead, but his fingers scraped against his face like they were going to rip his granite skin right off. His black eyes burned in their sockets, out of focus, or seeing things that weren’t there. His mouth opened like he was going to scream, but nothing came out.
This was the face a man would have if he were burning at the stake.
For a moment I couldn’t speak. It was too real, this face—I’d seen a shadow of it in the house, seen it in her eyes and his, but this made it final. The last nail in her coffin.
“It’s killing her, right? She’s dying.” And I knew when I said it that my face was a watered-down echo of his. Weaker, different, because I was still in shock. I hadn’t wrapped my head around it yet—it was happening too fast. He’d had time to get to this point. And it was different because I’d already lost her so many times, so many ways, in my head. And different because she was never really mine to lose.
And different because this wasn’t my fault.
“My fault,” Edward whispered, and his knees gave out. He crumpled in front of me, vulnerable, the easiest target you could imagine.
But I felt cold as snow—there was no fire in me.
“Yes,” he groaned into the dirt, like he was confessing to the ground. “Yes, it’s killing her.”
His broken helplessness irritated me. I wanted a fight, not an execution. Where was his smug superiority now?
“So why hasn’t Carlisle done anything?” I growled. “He’s a doctor, right? Get it out of her.”
He looked up then and answered me in a tired voice. Like he was explaining this to a kindergartener for the tenth time. “She won’t let us.”