Twilight Fan Fiction / Twilight Fan Fiction ❯ I Know My Duty ❯ Jacob ( Chapter 61 )

<i>Twilight</i> and its three and two half sequels are the creation of Stephenie Meyer. This story is fanfiction based on characters, settings and concepts from <i>Twilight</i>, its four sequels and the first half of <i>Midnight Sun</i>, all of which are the creation of Stephenie Meyer. No party other than the submitting author may alter this work in any way other than font size and other reasonable accommodations to formatting.

So... having my computer crash a few months before I thought it would? Not fun. Working from my backup, which can't process .docx? Less not fun but still not fun.

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“We were both hitchhikers, had our ears tuned to the roar,

Of some metal-tempered engine on an alien, distant shore,

And you left to find a better reason than the one we were living for.” —E. Street Band, “For You”

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“I'm trying to say that I'm sorry.”

“And I'm saying you don't have to.”

Soon, probably five days after she left, I'd finally process the idea that I'd been standing her talking to Bella Swan, a yellow-eyed, supermodel caricature of the girl who broke my heart in high school.

I still got that rush, that little is-this-that-one switch that flipped up in the back of my head every time I'd stared down a bloodsucker since the Night in Question. But Bella wasn't that vampire. I'd have known if she were.

“It was a long time ago,” I said. Life had gone so many places that I never thought it would when I'd been some kid who'd lived every day in the same small town. It sounded like she'd spent twenty years haunted over something that I'd gotten over in four. …maybe five. …well, it hadn't taken me twenty. I had two sets of instincts screaming at me. Even in human form, the vampire scent was screaming at me to wolf out and rip her apart. The other one...

There was something she wasn't telling me.

“Thank you for saving my life, Jake,” she said, and I almost wished I could believe she didn't mean it. “I know you don't think I'm really alive, but I do, and—"

“I know,” I cut her off. “I got your letter.”

Dear Jake,

We made it in time. They let us live, but they didn't let us go. Edward managed to help Alice get away but he and I are stuck here. These vampires are different from the others. They're organized. They go on missions like James Bond—punishing other vampires who break their laws. Some of them have powers like Edward and Alice do.

Their leader knows about you—Aro stole the memories from Edward's head—but he doesn't want to tell the rest of them. He wants to rule the vampire world and thinks you'd distract his partners. I'll do everything I can to keep him from changing his mind. I promise. If the others find out about you, they'll probably want to kill you.

The Volturi wear cloaks, like Renaissance Fair cloaks. They keep off the light. If you see a vampire dressed like that, walk away. They're probably there to kill another vampire anyway. Just steer clear and let them fight it out.

I owe you more than I can say, Jake. You might not think vampires are really alive, but I do, and I know I owe you every day I'm still around. You might not think Edward and Alice are good people, but they are, and in a way you saved them too. I know I can't ask for more, but if you can do anything for Charlie, I'd be grateful. Never doubt that you deserve—[and the handwriting had been smeared here]—for someone to look at you like you're the only sun in the sky.

Burn this letter.

Love,

Bella

I remembered crumpling the paper up in my hand and wolfing out for three days straight. By the time I got back, Sam had read the letter. Way before those glowing-eyed supervamps came to Forks, he'd had everyone rip apart every line, even Emily, Sue, Old Quil and my dad. So vamps had laws. So vamps had powers. I was too busy racking my brain with the fact that Bella hadn't said whether they'd made her become a vampire or not to care about the things that would actually help. Signed with her love.

I'd joked once about Bella being our spy, and her last intel from behind enemy lines had been good. When vampires in cloaks showed up, we knew they weren't just joining their friends. We stayed out of the way and watched—most of us—and sure enough, they ripped each other apart. All we had to do was run down the stragglers. Sam said that if he hadn't known about the Volturi, he never would have held us back and we probably would have lost more of our brothers. He said we owed Bella our thanks if we ever saw her again. That'd felt like hot pepper against raw skin. Back then, I'd still been pretty goddamned mad.

At first, some of the pack had said I just needed a new girl. Bad luck for them, the first girl I'd liked after Bells left had been Leah. I know, it made things weird for Seth. It made things weird for everyone. I guess I was a glutton for punishment. She told me that she was still moving to the Maha reservation in the spring. She told me that it didn't mean she'd changed her mind. I wasn't stupid, and I'd been involuntarily reading her mind whenever we were both wolfed out. I knew I'd never been her first choice, but I guess I'd thought, when the time came, she'd at least ask if I wanted to come too. I'd thought I meant that to her, at least.

I shouldn't have blamed her for going, and I didn't, not now. I could hear what the others were thinking as well as she could. Sam never said a word out loud, always tried to treat her like any other wolf, but he couldn't help his thoughts slipping out. He wanted her to be over being dumped already, and she wasn't. Maybe that was what she saw in me. I had zero problem understanding that it was going to take her as long as it took her. The others were assholes, though, the imprinted ones. Leah was a big fat reminder that their awesome new lives weren't fairy-tale endings for everyone. The same guys who'd make a million excuses for what Sam did to Emily didn't blink at calling Leah a bitch behind her back. That was the year Seth really learned how to fight.

Everyone but Seth and me wished she'd just disappear, so that's what she did. I'd known in my gut that there was some other thing we could have done, something where Leah could have stayed without dragging everyone down, but I never figured it out. Maybe I was too far into my own problems to see it. Leah did the best she could do, which was tuck tail and leave as if she'd been the one to break her promises. I knew her well enough by then to tell how that it must've galled her. But Seth said that the minute she quit phasing and didn't have to hear Sam in her head, half the anger drained right out of her. Seth said she was happy. And I was happy for her, after a while.

After Leah left, I swore I'd just go out and find someone solely because I liked her and just see where it went and maybe have some fun like a twenty-year-old guy was supposed to but every time I'd be looking for someone whose cheekbones cut across her face just right or whose hair was hacked short like she didn't give a damn or whose eyes were just the right shade of brown like chocolate milk or the woods on a cloudy night.

Here I was, not chasing down a murderous psychovamp because the girl who'd started it all was standing in front of me. And she still hadn't told me what the hell was really going on.

"So what was that a minute ago?" I asked. "Cullen said you were just passing through and you made a face."

She breathed out. "I couldn't say in front of him, Jake. “We're not just passing through. We need to stay longer,” she said.

“It's Cullen land,” I answered. “You can do what you want so long as you follow the rules.” I wanted that to be it, but I had to run my mouth. “Why, though?” I asked. “Are you expecting guests?”

“No,” she said. “He needs to be here for a while. He's …it's like he's sick.”

“I thought you people couldn't get sick.”

“It's not that kind of sick. You see they—” she exhaled, looking away. "I'm not sure I should tell you, but being someplace familiar for a while would be good for him. Let's just say they did something to his memory. We," she corrected herself, “did something to his memory. It's like someone with amnesia; you take them someplace familiar and the new memories help the old ones come back. Volterra messed up his head.”

I had a sudden mental image of Edward Cullen headbutting other vampires to death. I shook it off. If that'd worked, Paul would have been our MVP. I couldn't believe that guy was the father of two of my nephews. Sure, Paul didn't have a choice in the imprinting, but I'd really thought my sister had better taste.

But as for Bella ...no way was it that easy.

"Then why here?" I asked.

"Huh?"

“Strictly speaking, the Cullens weren't here that long. It wasn't even three years.”

Bella's shoulders loosened and the breath left her mouth like a cold breeze. She actually hadn't thought of that.

Maybe she really hadn't realized what she'd been doing. She'd come here because she wanted to, maybe because of Charlie, maybe because she wanted to have this whole messed-up conversation and make herself feel better about leaving me in the lurch, and she'd convinced herself she was only doing it for someone else. It was a teenager's mistake. Maybe this was what it looked like.

She was staring into the snow.

It'd taken until now for me to see it, but they really didn't age. Her whole manner, when it wasn't shrieking “vampire,” was calling out “kid.” She was an eighteen-year-old girl who'd been eighteen for a long time; I was a south-of-forty guy who didn't look it.

I'd been almost thirty before I'd really understood the difference between being a mature-for-your-age teenager with an adult's responsibilities—which is what Bella and I both were, no contest—and being an actual adult. You hit twenty-four or so and your brain just levels off. Things that used to drive you nuts seem workable. Back at CC, I'd heard about some studies showing that that really was how it worked, your stress response system switches from revving up to cooling down. Which was one reason I'd put so much effort into keeping any more of our young boys from wolfing out. You didn't need to deal with being a super-strong clawed death machine and a teenager at the same time.

"Then where?" she said it so quietly that I didn't know if she knew she'd said it.

“Why are you really here?” I asked.

She leaned back. "This is the only place I remember seeing..." she swallowed.

Seeing what? Some weird vamp thing.

She just shook her head. Was this what she didn't want to tell me?

“Look,” she said, “could we take two minutes and forget about the murdervamps and the evil overlords for a second?” she asked.

“Well is it minutes or seconds?” I asked. She glared at me. “Sure, sure,” I said. “What did you want to talk about?”

She smiled and for a second the eyes seemed less like rocks and more like sunlight. “How have you been?”

My eyebrows must have shot up off my head. “How have I... Okay, I'll play along. `Fine. How about you?'”

“My dad's in the hospital,” she said, “my mom didn't know me when she saw me, I'm worried Edward has brain damage and it could be my fault, and the Cullens should have found us three weeks ago, but I finally got away from a vindictive evil overlord who was making Edward and me work as his personal killing machines, so I guess it evens out.”

It was the same light, scampering tone that we'd used on each other years ago, comparing our "real" ages in the way only teenagers did.

I exhaled, "Well my dad died a few years back—"

"Oh God, Billy? I'm so sorry," she said.

"—but not before he saw my nieces and nephews running around and his son become an alpha wolf. I helped figure out how to let werewolves go back to leading normal human-guy lives without putting the tribe in danger, led an almost normal human-guy life in the service, and built up a day job that I don't hate, all without strangling either of my brothers-in-law, but hey there's a murdering vampire out knocking off backpackers for heck knows what reason, and another vampire would rather make mall talk than wait while I kill it, so I guess I can't not complain."

I hadn't expected her to smile at that. “Is the whole pack going after the criminal—the vampire?”

Five minutes ago, I never would have said it: "It's just the three of us now."

I saw her hand go to her mouth and wondered for a second if she'd wanted there to be more of us. Then I realized my mistake. "They retired,” I jumped in. “Sam and the others. They don't go wolf any more. They're not dead.”

She exhaled, nodding. “I didn't know you could retire.”

I shrugged. “Yeah, you can quit. I quit for a few years there. Sam's idea.”

“Sam's?”

“Thought I should get out on my own for a while. Get away from …this.” I could still remember how the whole thing had grated on me. “So I did. Played it human. Then I came back.” She didn't need to know the rest.

“Sorry,” she said, a little smile pulling at her mouth. “I just can't imagine getting to do something like that. The mas—The leaders of the Volturi kept us on a short leash.”

“Yeah, spent the whole time in some castle in Italy, right?”

“They let us out for work, but we were supervised. Edward went on more missions than I did. He actually got a reputation, him and— He got a reputation. But we never got to pick out where we were going to go." Her hands twitched, "And the prep work you would not believe."

"Yeah, there's usually a catch in any gig that says you get to travel the world and meet interesting people."

She opened her mouth and closed it again. Didn't have a joke for that, I guess.

I leaned back. She'd talked about getting away from Volterra. She'd talked about hating her boss. She hadn't said much about what it was actually like.

"Bella," I asked carefully, the words "How have you really been?" ready to come out of my mouth.

"I want to help," she said.

"Help with what?"

"With your vampire murderer. Edward and I, we used to hunt down vampire criminals. It was our job. One of our jobs. We can help."

Sam would've wanted me to push for more information, and maybe I would, if she ever spoke to me again. Right now, there was only one thing I needed to know.

"No," I said.

"Jacob, I think if you let me explain a little more—"

"No," I repeated. "We don't need your help."

"Edward's sort of famous, and I am a little too. If this rogue vamp understands who's after him, he might just leave."

"Bella, stop asking," I said. "We have our own way of doing things, and we've been doing it for a long time."

"Jacob, you've said yourself that this one's acting strangely, and Edward can hear his opponents thinking. I can ...well, I can do a lot more than I could the last time we talked about this, that's for sure."

I rounded on her, "Bella, if you actually think you're better off without a pulse, good for you. Really. I'm—"

There was a sound of claws on the ground and Quil scrambled into the clearing in front of us. I didn't wait to ask anything, reading his posture. I took off after him, back toward the clearing.

"What is it?" asked Bella.

"Come on," I muttered. I didn't bother to change back for the run; it was only a couple hundred yards to the Cullen kid saying he was sorry about something while Seth jumped in with, "We figured something out: deadguy was a trap."

Seth babbled out his theory, aided by the Cullen kid.

"A trap?" I asked. Did Seth have his suspicions too? But no, Cullen was standing right next to him, looking as concerned as he did.

"Someone figured out that Forks is a vampire hotspot and is setting up snares," repeated Seth.

Edward Cullen shook his head, "Not how this works. Forks isn't any kind of crossroads for nomads. Vampires who don't mind feeding on humans tend to establish themselves in cities."

Cullen looked at Seth, "And because the smell of blood only stays potent for a short while, they can't set them in advance, only when they believe their quarry is near."

"Wait, so you think someone's looking for you?" I asked.

Cullen shook his head again. "Not us. We haven't been here in two decades and we don't prefer human blood. It's more likely someone is trying to draw in vampires in general for some reason."

Bella lifted her chin, "Aro could have figured out we were coming here."

Cullen stared straight ahead. This was the third time she'd mentioned this in my presence and couldn't have been a new topic for him. "Aro would have sent Felix, Corin and Ichiro to drag us back by our ankles," Cullen answered her. "It's been three weeks since our escape and we haven't seen one thread of a Volturi cloak. It's possible he's not sent anyone." He looked off into the woods, as if sizing up the body dump, "Besides, this is too inelegant for him."

According to Bella, this Aro nutjob had been holding him prisoner for so long, so why did he sound like he admired the guy? Oh heck, I didn't need to know. I hadn't hated Sam. Seth and Quil didn't hate me. But then I didn't give them Alpha orders except when people were dying.

"Would a few extra hands really be so bad, Jake?" Seth had that look on his face again, that "you know I'm right; just give in and do what I want" look that only a true Omega dog could pull off. Come to think of it, Bella hadn't been so bad at it either. Well fuck, I might be screwed in the romance department, but when it came to suck-ass friends, I had a type.

"The vampire who set the trap didn't stay to kill the prey because it was counting on you to kill us for them," Cullen repeated. "You're the jaws of the trap. The human was the bait."

"Aro knows about the wolves," Bella deadpanned.

"But he can't risk Caius finding out about them."

"He can if he's pissed off enough."

Quil watched the two of them go back and forth like a tennis match.

"There are plenty of vampires who could have figured out that something in the greater Forks-La Push area was killing our kind."

"But only one who has a big enough beef with Carlisle to try to burn down his alliance."

Seth blinked, "I wouldn't exactly call it a—"

"Carlisle hasn't lived here for years," said Cullen.

"But he's planning on coming back some day. You said yourself Esme loves the house."

"I doubt Aro bases his tactical plans on Esme's gardening preferences."

"Ha!" Bella tossed her hands in the air. "You didn't spend sixty hours a week fertilizing Sulpicia's damned zinnias."

Cullen gave her a withering look. "Are you ever going to let that go? I agree; the work assignments were sexist, but I didn't draw up the schedule."

Bella turned back to me, "The leaders' wives had this roof garden and this pre-medieval thing about having men anywhere near—"

Cullen put a hand on Bella's arm, "Don't talk about the tower," he hissed in a low-pitched voice that I probably hadn't been meant to hear.

"Oh come on. It's not like I'm telling him the combination lock to the entrance on the detention level."

Seth blinked, "You had a detention level?"

"No, she stole that from Star Wars," said Cullen, just as Bella jumped in with, "Yes."

Cullen looked at Bella. "Well we did," she said.

Quil was lying with his head on his front paws, visibly enjoying the show. Did nobody but me care that our new vampire needed killing?

"So either this Aro guy sent someone to set a trap for you two in particular," Seth cut in, "or it's just some random vamp looking for anyone?"

"Yes one of those two things," said Cullen just as Bella said, "Probably."

"So..." Seth trailed off turning to look at me, "Edward here says they want to help us catch the—"

"No," I said.

"Okay," he clipped, leaning back and raising his hands palm-out. In his best, most passive-aggressive omega tone.

Quil didn't look too keen on it either. Was I the only werewolf in the state of Washington who did feel like killing vamps today? But I could see it in their faces, mostly Quil. He'd been like this ever since Claire had gotten pregnant the first time. If I still had people depending on me, I'd be more careful too. We'd all known that a lot of us would stay on the Res, but for Quil, being a dad was it. He stopped asking for transfers from work and started looking ....well, looking like he had an intensely dangerous unpaid second job and didn't want to die from it.

I didn't want Bella's help. But my wolves did.

Well then, for once, it was good to be the king. I didn't Alpha order them but they both knew I could if I wanted to.

"Thanks but no thanks," I said, "The last time we had vampires fighting vampires around here, it made the Battle of Hsinchu City look like a game of laser tag."

The Cullen actually rolled his eyes at me. "I was at the Battle of Hsinchu City."

I think my mouth actually fell open. The sound of melting snow hitting the ground suddenly got very loud. Seth took a very small step away from the vamp.

I fucking knew it, I thought.

"So was I," I told him.

Cullen didn't move. I think maybe I saw his eyes get bigger and then narrow again. Well if he was reading my mind, he was in for one heck of a thriller.

It'd been a few years after Bella had run away to Italy, a while after Leah left for Maha. That was probably what gave Sam the idea. The key was that Leah also stopped phasing. Cold turkey. By then, she'd had iron control, so she did what Taka Aki did in the stories, except she did it for herself instead of for an imprinted mortal: She started getting old again, picked up where she left off.

The Res didn't provide a lot of distractions. Or job opportunities, even though a guy who was good with engines would always have at least some work. So when Sam came to me with his idea, he hadn't even had to make it an order. I'd needed to get away.

If I'd been some rich kid with no wolfification issues, I'd have had three colleges lined up, but I wasn't. So, at Sam's suggestion, I did what a lot of our young men had done over the past hundred years: I joined the military. My sister came back from Hawaii to take care of Billy (and marry Paul, which turned my stomach). I walked into a recruiting center with my GED in hand. I didn't even have to lie about my age by then.

This was a while before ISIS started moving through Syria. I figured I'd get shipped out to Iraq or Afghanistan, which had both still been pretty unstable, but instead I was sent to Taiwan.

I phased maybe twice the whole time. My body temp and appetite went down to almost normal, which was fine with me. My superhealing dried up, which was less fine but still not a huge problem. I almost felt like the old me again, except older and fixing engines for the navy. (I know; the army would have made more sense.)

During the last year of my term of service, with the hostilities intensifying between China and Taiwan, a lot of our ships went across the Pacific. Taiwan still wasn't officially recognized by the U.N., so the issue of whether it was an ally to defend or not was slightly gray. All I knew was that the Chinese government wasn't cool with Americans setting up bases on Taiwan, not even with the permission of the Taiwanese government (probably especially not then). It didn't help when locals started turning up dead.

The first one sent a cold tingle down my spine, worse than snow down your jacket. I knew in my gut it was vampires. I tried to tell myself my gut was kidding me, but I couldn't help myself. I listened to every news report that they had in English or Spanish. I hunted clips when I wasn't on duty, and thought about it when I was. Practically built myself a corkboard in my head.

I told myself that my gut was kidding me. I told myself that I wasn't there right now, and that doing my duty didn't mean running on four feet any more.

And then, one night, it was Matthew. He was a guy from the motor pool, did his work without bitching. And they brought him in, pale and dead. He might as well have been a hiker on the forest floor.

I'd crouched down next to him, and the impulse to reach down and catch the scent had been so strong I'd practically felt my fur grow. My old nose, my old wolf body, had been buzzing under my skin like an itch.

I knew where they'd found the body. I could have gone out there, picked up the trail and seen which way the vamp went. It would have been easy. But then my CO had started talking, taking control of the situation, shunting all of us back into the tracks and chutes of behavior that we'd learned in training and after, yelled at us to do our jobs. I felt like I'd just woken up, the way you go through the motions of brushing your teeth even when you're still thinking about what you were dreaming about and haven't realized just yet that it wasn't real.

I'd kept my eyes open. I had another gut feeling that the vampire wouldn't come back here—it didn't tend to stay in the same place. I volunteered for night shifts, spent as much time outside as I could. I don't know what I was planning—make the vamp go for me and then kill it, maybe.

Thing was, during those years, I figured out that I liked being a regular human. I didn't want to admit it, but I also liked not having all that responsibility, not even of deciding what to do next. Problem was that this time I knew the right thing to do any my COs didn't. But I hated having the solution to a problem right in front of me and not being able to use it. I knew what would happen if I told anyone it was vampires: they'd assume I'd had some kind of psychotic break and I'd be discharged for psychiatric reasons. That would follow me for the rest of my life, and, at the time, it also meant a cut in my benefits. Best case scenario, they'd think the Indian guy was being superstitious and wave it off to prove to themselves how open-minded they were. Dicks.

Then, three days after they found the body, I laid eyes on my first vampire since leaving home.

At least sixty yards away through the mist on a foggy night. I could barely see it. I shouldn't have even been able to tell it was a vampire and not a smooth rock, but there it was. It was like seeing a mountain lion when it doesn't want you to. It's crouched still with all the woods and earth around it, and your eyes peel out its silhouette like carving an outline into a length of wood. It might as well not have been there. You might as well have created it out of your mind. One second, I was looking out into the shapes of the access road and the trees and buildings and the next my eyes adjusted, and there it was in the corner of a rooftop. I stared until time seemed to dissolve. I wanted to jump over the fence, kill the space between us and do what I'd been born to do, but I didn't. It wasn't moving, but I could tell it had been a minute before, one hand lying flat against the wall. I couldn't see the face, just the outline, but I knew it was looking at me. It knew I was there, and it knew that I knew.

I don't know how long I stood there, predator to ex-predator. But it turned inward on itself like a snake that's decided not to bite and flowed away into the dark.

The next day, I felt completely ...I don't know, realigned. I knew what I wanted. I wanted to never have a problem that I wasn't free to solve ever again. I wanted to live in a place where I could be both parts of myself. And I wanted to kill vampires. I never knew if the bloodsucker I'd seen was the same vamp that got my friend. I wasn't sure if it mattered. But every time I saw one, I'd check the height, the size of the hands, against what little I remembered. Not this one, and not the next.

The vamps didn't get old and neither did I. Odds were that if I hung in there long enough, the Taiwan vampire would come this way.

Then Battle of Hsinchu City came like a signature at the bottom of the page. So much damage. Dozens of people dead. Increased tension in an already tense area. The Chinese had threatened war if Taiwan became officially acknowledged as its own country and they hadn't taken it back yet. No one wanted to go and fight a billion people.

It wasn't until the next day that I'd remembered Bella's letter about weirdoes in cloaks. I remembered thinking that if vampires were supposed to police their own, they were doing a shit job of it.

When my term was complete, I didn't re-up. I came home. Only this time, being a wolf was my choice. I couldn't control my destiny, but it and I were on the same page, at least for now. And did I ever have some big ideas. I told Sam that with a pack our size, we should take some of the guys and expand; maybe not to Taiwan but somewhere we were needed. He didn't say anything, leaning back, said I was out of my mind, said that it'd take a thousand years to protect the whole world. Said I should just focus on our land first, see how things had changed while I was away. Turned out he'd had his own plans, and they weren't exactly compatible with mine

There was some question as to whether I could wolf out again without a vengeful bloodsucker diva having shredded my firstborn, but it turned out Jacob Black was one up on Taka Aki. I guess phasing could be like riding a bike.

Then, practically my first week back in the pack and still growing out the crew cut (thank God it was summer; there had still been more naked wolf jokes than I cared for and you wouldn't believe how wet your underfur can get without those long hairs that shed rain). Right then, Sam announces the deal: Your true spirit wife turns thirty and you can quit if you want to, go on reserve. The pack didn't need to be that big, and everyone was eating way more than normal. Paul and two others took him up on it right away. In a few years, the tribe had a bunch of guys who only needed as much to eat as normal people but could phase into wolves on short notice if there were ever another large-scale attack. Which there hadn't been.

It was such a great situation that it took me a while to figure out why he hadn't set it in motion while I'd been gone.

They were scared. Well not scared scared, like when the vamp has a grip on your neck and you're seeing your life flash before your eyes. They were scared that if they quit, they'd never phase again. No one wanted to be like Superman in that one movie where he gives up his powers to be with Lois Lane and gets his ass kicked in a diner like four minutes later. They didn't want to be where I'd been in Taiwan, looking at a problem that they used to be able to solve. Plus—and I could finally admit it by then—being a werewolf was awesome. They had to know it was possible to quit and then come back.

Sam's real genius was that he knew the value of a trailblazer. He knew that a leader couldn't be afraid to make the big mistakes and take big risks so that the rest of us wouldn't have to. Like the alpha wolf who jumps into the raging river and emerges unscathed so that the others will know it's safe to follow. With Emily's birthday less than a year away, there wasn't any clearer way he could have set me up to take his place.

But then, he could've just grown the guts to ask Leah to try to phase back. She'd been married to a guy from Maha with like two kids by then, so maybe he had asked and she'd told him to go lick his own balls. Atta girl.

The bloodsucker got really still the way they did when their thoughts distracted them from faking human. Unfortunately, Seth hadn't done the same.

"Holy Pikachu crap, I knew it had to be vampires," Seth started running his mouth. "I know the news said it was pirates but what Jake said—wait, shit!" he leaned in. "Are there vampire pirates?!"

I tried not to smack myself in the forehead. Was he still fourteen?

"The vampire was hiding on the pirate boat," said Bella.

Seth nodded appreciatively. "That's kind of badass."

"Dead badass, I'm afraid."

"No offense, but the way I see it, that's actually better," said Seth.

"None taken."

"Bella," Edward protested. "Don't tell them—"

"What? It's not a secret," said Bella. "The Volturi swooped in from on high and nobly charbroiled the evil lawbreaker. We're supposed to spread that around. Even if we weren't, I officially don't give a fuck what Aro wants."

"Bella!"

"What, you think Jake, Seth and Quil here are gonna sneak off to HR and rat me out to the guy who's not our boss any more? Or do we need him for a reference?" She threw her head back, "Aro's a power-hungry psychopath who can bite my ass!" her voice echoed.

"It might not be up to them. Aro can still read people against their will."

"Yeah, if he's close enough to get his mitts on them, and something tells me that's not too likely."

I activated my mental note-taking and scribbled down Aro reads minds. Has to do it from close range. Now that I wouldn't mind the whole pack plus girlfriends chewing on.

"Eternity is a long time," said Cullen. "Why do you have to be so reckless?"

"Why do you have to act like he's still your—" she flinched, lips pursed together like a humm. "—you know."

Cullen looked at me like he didn't want to say in front of me either. He turned toward me. "The Taiwan incident," he recovered, "was attributable to one nomad behaving erratically—"

"And to the fact that there were like three different militaries piled up in the area," added Bella.

"—much like the current case," he finished. "I'm sure Bella told you that we're willing to h—"

"No," I said, not loud, not soft. Just no.

"Well then let me tell you some things," said Bella. "Things you don't know about vampires." She looked at Cullen, as if to forestall any complaints. "Nothing that's not common knowledge in our world but still stuff they wouldn't know."

Quil tipped his head to the side. Seth raised an eyebrow.

On the one hand ...it sucked to admit it, but I wanted Bella to leave. Every single vampire I'd met since the Cullens had blown town had been an enemy, and my nose was screaming at me to phase out and take her down already. I didn't want to deal with this. I guess it was also theoretically possible that she'd been lying to me about yellow-eyed vamps not eating humans, but on the other hand...

Leah had moved on. Embry had moved on. Sam had moved on. Quil was still in it but couldn't wait to leave. Of all my friends who'd known me when I was young, Bella was the only one who'd come back, even if she had brought her vampire boy-toy along for the ride. I guess it was touching to think that someone cared about me long enough to even want to say hi after twenty years.

But when it came to my job, that didn't change a damned thing.

Kill vampires. Keep your guys in one piece.

I looked back at Bella. Whatever else, she'd managed Cullen this whole time, and there had probably been a lot else. I started to think maybe she had grown over the past twenty years.

"All right," I said. "Let's go hunt bloodsucker."

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