Twilight Fan Fiction / Twilight Fan Fiction ❯ I Know My Duty ❯ Loner ( Chapter 62 )

Twilight and its three and two half sequels are the creation of Stephenie Meyer. This story is fanfiction based on characters, settings and concepts from Twilight, its four sequels and the first half of Midnight Sun, 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.

Regarding Life and Death... I haven't read it and can't speak to its quality directly. However, I wish she'd done something else. Specifically, I wish she'd done Midnight Sun. The sample chapters were the first part of her work that I read and the reason I was willing to slog through the 300-odd pages of Twilight before Twilight gets good. I've heard rumors that Meyer was angry about E.L. James publishing Grey, as if James were trying to steal the thunder from Midnight Sun, but Meyer has been sitting on this idea for literally years with no movement, so James couldn't have let Meyer to go first if she'd wanted to. (I also can't blame James for 50 Shades per my own read-it-before-you-bleed-it rule.)

The Host made it look like Meyer had matured as an author, and what I've heard of Life and Death makes it look like she hasn't. Mostly, I'm holding out for a New Coke scenario. For the whippersnappers among you, in the 1980s, Coca-cola noticed that it was losing market share to Pepsi, so it redid its own recipe, making it sweeter and less acidic, like Pepsi. Everyone hated New Coke. When they brought back the old formula, customers rushed in and they made more money than ever—and that is why it's called "Coca-cola Classic."

So I'm hoping Meyer and her publishers are thinking, "Here, enjoy some New and Improved Twili-cola! Oh, you all hate it? ...well, better bring back the original flavor: Here's the genderswap that you all actually wanted to read!" and then we all line up for Edward Cullen fantasizing about cracking skulls and busting tibias, the glorious prissy violence that won my heart.

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"One lone vampire isn't much of a problem for a pack as big as ours. It was so easy." —Jacob, New Moon

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"I don't like it," he said.

"They're not going to hurt me, Edward," I told him.

Edward took a sidelong look at Jake, still bipedal, where he was peering up the ridge with Quil.

"And he's not going to sweep me off my feet and seduce me away from you," I added.

Edward's eyes bugged out. "I didn't— I wasn't worried about—" he clamped his mouth shut, exhaling through his nose.

I tapped his lower lip with a finger. "You have a tell."

He composed himself. "I remember telling you a long time ago that I was going to be jealous of any man you so much as smiled at," he said, raising an eyebrow. "That was not a lie."

"I've smiled at a lot of guys since then."

"And they all still have their intestines on the inside," Edward pointed out. "Or if they lost them it wasn't my doing." His eyes swung up as he frowned. "Well not for that reason at least."

"Yes, you've been good," I said softly. "Only deintestinizing within the law." I slipped my arms around his neck, tilting my head back to look at his face. "You're stuck with me, Edward."

"Could I persuade you to be a little more stuck with me?" he asked in a low voice. "I know you were close with the wolves long ago, but splitting up isn't always a good idea."

"Do you have a better strategy than the one Seth and Jake came up with?"

Edward looked away, and I was sorry I'd asked.

"Hey," I said, taking his face in my hands. "I miss Demetri too," kind of. "It's okay to miss him."

He met my eyes, "Be careful today," he said.

"I will," and it wasn't just talk this time. I wasn't some callow human sneaking away from the airport because she thought she knew how to fight vampires. "Now tell me that you aren't going to piggyback Seth and Quil's brains into your own personal Bellacam when you're supposed to be watching out for yourself and Jake."

He lifted his chin in the prissiest way possible. "There's a homicidal maniac on the loose. I will do both."

I faked a sigh. "We'll get this job done, and then you can be stuck with me all night."

"Bella," he chided. One thing about being brain-frozen at eighteen: I had never got tired of shocking him, and he'd never gotten unshockable.

There was a loud fweeeep! and I turned to see Seth tapping one foot against the ground. "You gonna be saying goodbye all day? There's a vampire that needs more killing than usual and I'm freezing my considerable assets off."

Edward didn't so much as lean away from me. "Have you considered trousers?" he called back

"Oho no you didn't," answered Seth, marching down the hill toward us. "You think I want to be a stereotype? 'Hey, check out the naked Indian dude; Columbus may have brought smallpox but he also personally imported skinny jeans, so it balances out.' Well unfortunately for me, unlike the fella in that Mark of Athena book that Quil pretends he hasn't read fifty times—" Quil looked up with something between a yip and a bark "—my clothes don't magically disappear when I get my fuzz on, and anything loose enough not to cut off my circulation in wolf form isn't going to stay up on its own without some kind of pulley system." He shrugged. "We've got stashes of sweats in a few spots in the woods in case we need to call the cops or talk to hikers or anything, but paperclipping them to our fur just wasn't practical."

"Well if your problem is clothes you could just ask—" Edward's neck and shoulders went rigid. I felt my hands go tight on his arms. He shook his head, "Sorry," he said. "I haven't seen Rosalie in a while, but I think she'd be up to the challenge. It would be a change from designing prom dresses in any case."

Seth rubbed his chin, "Do you think periwinkle blue chiffon would look good on me?"

"It certainly presents an interesting mental picture."

"Hey," Jacob's voice cut down the ridge with an authority that any team leader in the guard would have envied. "Are you about done?"

I hid my smile. Had they actually been bantering? Vampiricidal or not, the wolves were the closest thing I had to old friends. With all the weirdness of the past six weeks, I was going to let myself be glad that they and my boyfriend were getting along.

"Yeah, they're done, Jake," I said. "Edward knows not to make me jealous." I leaned in and gave Edward a short peck on the lips. "Be careful."

He turned his head to the side with that lopsided smile that I hadn't seen in too long. "If you kiss me because a werewolf is making you jealous, do I get to slug you?"

"We both know I could take you."

He whispered in my ear, "Any time you want, Mrs. Cullen." By the time I could blink, he'd danced backward, shooting me one last smug look before loping off after Jacob—who managed to look exasperated even through four inches of deep brown pelt.

Always leave me wanting more. Goddamn the man.

Seth gave me an upnod, transforming as he ran off in the other direction. I picked up the pace and followed.

The groups weren't an accident. I hadn't kept my position as the newborn master without knowing how to put people together in groups. And I hadn't survived in Volterra without learning how to plant an idea in a guy's head and make him think it'd been his the whole time (and resist the urge to murder him when he got all the credit).

Technically, Edward had outranked me in the guard, but he'd been on the same team as Demetri, who'd always been the senior partner. When I'd been sent out, it had either been as another pair of hands or with a bunch of newborns to keep an eye on. Edward was used to being second banana to an established leader. I was used to wrangling grunts and making them forget they could rip me apart.

I also had an ulterior motive.

I needed to know about Charlie.

There had been a picture of Seth in my dad's house. More than one. That made sense because it was my dad and Susan Clearwater's house now. Judging by the laundry, I didn't think Seth was living with Charlie and Sue, but judging by pic number four, Charlie'd taken Seth fishing and he'd let him use the custom pole. That was big. I'd only ever seen him let Billy Black touch that thing, and even then he'd only let him look at it.

Seth could tell me if Sue hadn't tried to get Charlie to eat better or if she had tried and he'd snuck cheeseburgers in the garage. I wanted to hear that Charlie had never given up on me. I wanted to hear that he'd moved on and been happy. I didn't know how to ask any of these things, but Seth knew the answers. I'd figure out what I wanted to ask eventually. Until then, I could focus on getting Seth to trust me and right now that meant following him up a mountain.

And if doing that wasn't a whole can of worms.

Okay, so maybe some of my human memories had faded. Maybe a lot of my human memories had faded, but I distinctly remembered Jake telling me that the werewolves were fast, fast enough to run down a vampire. So that was why I'd sent Edward—who left most other vampires in the dust—off with Jake to circle around through what passed for open country around here while took the straight path up the ridge with Seth and Quil.

Because, with all the trees and rocks in the way, my enhanced dodging was sure to allow me to keep up with a couple of schlubby middle-aged mostly mortal dudes, right?

Wrong.

So wrong.

Nothing that big should be able to zip through the underbrush that easily. Seriously, I thought I saw Quil actually go through a giant evergreen, Shadowcat-style. (Or else he was mostly fur like a Pomeranian, but I doubted it.) I had to keep slowing down for obstacles. At this time of day, the ridge blocked most of the direct sunlight, so the top made a pretty clear target as I plowed as directly as I could through the spruces. Seth threw his head over his shoulder again and pawed at the ground in a way I knew meant either "hurry up" or "goddammit, Bella," though right now I didn't see why it couldn't be both.

I hadn't been this frustrated with my body since I'd been human, not even right before Edward and I had finally gotten together (then I'd been frustrated with Aro's brain, not my body). I was moving so fast that I was pretty sure a human would have a hard time seeing me, and I hadn't tripped over my own feet or walked into a branch even once. These guys should be eating my slush!

Quil flicked his tail and started pulling a circle, snuffling at the ground while looking at me out of the corner of his eye, like, "Noooo, I'm not waiting for your lame ass; just checking for scents five times as often as I need to." Well he could kiss my sparkly butt. I'd kept up with Jane and Heidi. I'd wrangled newborns into shape. I was not getting outclassed by the same guy who used to think that wi-fi came before Z-fi back in the day.

It was a pretty good plan. No matter how well Edward had known these woods once upon a time, Jake and the others knew them better. Even if Edward's memory was perfect—and mine was limited to huffing and puffing up one hiking trail—trees had grown and died since he'd last been here. The earth had shifted. New roads and tracks had been cut or allowed to fade. So we split into two groups, both with wolves.

Ordinarily, a vampire would be able to run clear of the greater Forks area after making a kill, hole up as far away as Seattle without needing to risk the light. But we were betting that this one stayed closer to see if anything had sprung its traps.

You either had to be close enough for the local werewolves to smell your vampire heinie and come kill you or you need to watch from a place that was far away but had a clear view.

"All along here," Seth said quickly, pointing along the ridge. I saw a shiver ripple down his skin. I guess the wind made it pretty cold up here. All I could feel was that it was messing up my hair, which was fine, and not swishing on my Volturi cloak, which was way beyond more than fine.

I nodded, mentally pulling out my bag of tricks from my years in the guard. Not everyone was Demetri. Pretty much only Demetri was Demetri. Depending on how he'd recovered, Demetri might not even be Demetri any more and even in his prime there had only been one of him, but every team needed a tracker. That meant that a lot of the rest of us had to learn at least one form of tracking. Marjane worked electronically. I knew a little of the old-fashioned method.

We slowed to a walk, Quil and Seth with their noses low to the ground as they circled outward. I kept sniffing the air. If any vampire was here, that scent was long gone. Becoming a vampire had made my spatial reasoning a little better than before (there was a reason I'd kept bumping into things), and I had a very clear memory of the map of the area that I'd seen on the way into town. The last corpse had been left in the gully to the southeast. I walked north, looking off to my right until I thought I had a line of sight on the site. I kneeled down, trying to focus.

While I was at it, I stretched out my gift, reaching outward until it covered Seth and Quil. Over the past twenty years, I'd learned to protect Edward when I was moving, but for anyone else, even Caroly, I usually had to be pretty still. I stretched my mind across the rocks until I could feel the two of them, dark like polished wood and humming with an earthy, living power that not even the youngest vampire could fake. Something about it felt different from when I'd tried it out down in the valley, but I couldn't put my finger on it now. Maybe we'd never be friends like when we were young, but I could still help to keep them safe from enemies with supernatural power.

Of course, it wouldn't do shit if that enemy used old-fashioned biting-and-ripping power and tore them limb from limb, but at least the humanstabbing little douche wouldn't be able to Jane-zap or Chelsea-fy them into thinking they were accountants or something. I also couldn't keep it up too long or Edward would get all twitchy about not being check in through their thoughts.

I felt my lips turn down as I ran my hand down the rock and squinted down the rise. Maybe with an old-school smartphone with a really good telescope feature. Still. I looked around, right where I was standing. Maybe we'd gotten lucky and the person's handwritten notes of their evil plan had fallen out of their pocket right here.

Seth padded up beside me, claws making dull clicking sounds against the bare rock.

I pointed to the rocks, mimed looking through binoculars. Seth nodded, but whether he understood what I meant or was just trying to pat me on the head for remembering his earlier explanation.

He moved off, stiffening into a pose that left his whole body pointing in another direction. I followed as he sat down next to a small depression in the rock, facing northwest.

"Was there another body there?" I asked. He nodded.

I crouched down, not sure what I was looking for. Deep in a crack between two rocks, I saw something gleam faintly. I leaned down and pulled up a hair, pale yellow. I sniffed it. It didn't smell like anything but rainwater to me, but Seth had started growling pretty loud.

I flipped the hair left and right in my hand. Not too long, not too short. I'd have assumed a men's haircut but Caroly wore her hair like this, so I couldn't rule out a woman.

"I think it's been here a while," I said.

Quil had regrouped with us by now. Seth nodded again, then tossed his head sideways in a motion that I read as, "Move on."

"Next stop," I agreed.

We went more slowly this time. The wolves moved at a light, loose trot that made surprisingly little noise against the snow, just a steady thud-thud of feet that knew the ground too well. It wasn't like being with a Volterra team, but if I'd been an elk, they'd have been able to get pretty close before I heard them.

I wondered if I'd ever be as at home anywhere as they were here. I'd known every twist of our compound the way a sparrow knows every knot in a gold-wire cage. Everywhere else had just blurred together, even with my memory. Paris, Kenya, rural Ukraine. I hadn't stayed anywhere long enough to get to know it. Travel the world, meet interesting vampires and kill them. Then get the hell back to Volterra and put more poop on those goddamned flowers.

I wondered if I'd be ever be able to look at a plant again without remembering the stink of those all-natural fertilizers. With my luck, when we caught up with the Cullens, Esme would be running a landscaping business and Alice would be obsessed with floral prints.

Jake had described the next vantage point to us before we left. It was halfway up a ridge. You could see the first and third body dumps from there. There probably wasn't anything left, but it was on the way to—

All three of us stopped at the same time. I could suddenly feel the creak of the empty branches above me, the incremental sloughing of the snow as it melted. I listened. There weren't many birds out this early in the season, but they'd stopped darting out of our way as we came near.

Something had already been here, and it probably still was.

Seth turned his sandy head over his shoulder. I nodded.

I held as still as I could and listened for heartbeats. There were two, strong as iron, in Seth and Quil and there were the tiny pulses of birds and rodents, thin as the veins in the white of an eye. Nothing else. Then I heard Quil breathing in, first long and slow, then with the regular sniff-sniff-sniff of an animal looking for something by scent. His eyes went to a tight grove of spruces partway up the hill.

Something was up there, and it didn't have a pulse.

I checked the clock in my head. By now, Edward and Jacob would be on the other side of the hill, heading northwest. Except they both would have heard what was going on in Seth's brain and be high-tailing it here in T-minus whatever Jake's top speed was.

"I'll go," I said out loud. "You two wait here and try not to look completely scary." After all, talking to the damned thing was plan A.

I turned ninety degrees and started walking up toward the grove. "Hello," I called in my best voice. Edward had said it was musical when he was in the mood to wax poetic. The snow was dense enough to make neat compressing noises under my feet. "We just want to talk," I said. There was no better acting school than Volterra. Twenty years of lying to Aro had paid off. I sounded crazy sincere.

I could hear Seth's feet shift against the ground, the air in his fur as he moved. Maybe they were hiding. I focused for a moment on my gift. Damn, there was a lot of wildlife down here. Bird. Bird. Bird. Seth. Bird. Bird. Squirrel. Quil. Good.

"How about you tell me your name?" I called as I reached the treeline. I peered upward. Whoever it was was darn good at hiding. I couldn't see a thing. Or it was the wrong tree.

I moved from one and of the grove to the other.

"I used to live around here. If you're lost, maybe I can help?" I still couldn't see the vamp. Maybe he wasn't really here. Maybe Quil made a mistake.

I had a funny idea right then. My gift didn't have anything like Edward's range, but if the new vampire was right here, I might be able to find it. Of course, if the boys wolf-chomped the darn thing while I was still shielding it, I probably wasn't going to have a fun time.

I gathered my mental strength and pushed outward. Fizzled. I tried again. Damn but those were some alive fir trees, but there were no vampires there.

Well now I felt stupid. Unless... The wind shifted. I cracked a smile. We'd just been looking in the wrong place.

I turned, looking off at a copse of firs to my right. "My name is Bella. I think we can—"

The attack came from behind, knocking me off my feet and clear into an oak trunk, coming not from the grove but out of the snow to my left. It'd attacked from the side like a goddamned velociraptor. Suddenly the world was a mess of arms and fangs and growling voices that only got louder. I braced my leg against part of the trunk and flipped backward, but it only followed me. From the corner of my eye, I saw Quil's jaws snap on empty air where its leg had been—his leg.

As I fought—getting the jump on him was a laugh, but getting away intact was a reasonable goal—I registered a face shapeless in rage.

Dark leather jacket.

Male, medium height.

Eyes like an angry explosion.

Iron arms like a newborn—which was what he was. No more than two months, maybe younger.

Quil lunged again, getting purchase this time. The newborn turned and snarled, wheeling a kick that would have crushed Quil's skull. I grabbed him in an elbow lock and wrenched until the joint cracked. The vampire snarled, but by then Seth had its other arm.

So much for talking this out. I'd have felt cheated if it hadn't all been a sting to let the local vampire werewolf law enforcement dismember the dude. I think it might have actually tried to run at some point.

Seven pieces lay scattered in the snow.

"That was fast," I said.

"It usually is," came a sober voice. Quil had already changed back, kneeling in on the ground. No venom beaded on his skin. I guess it had disappeared with his fur. "Give me your lighter."

"Wait," I said. The head was facedown in the snow—which was fine with me. I picked up the man's wrist and turned it. The fingers flexed open and shut rapidly. I flipped it palm-down against the ground and broke them one by one. They twitched uselessly as I went over the skin.

He hadn't fought that well. Even with three of us, he should have held out longer. But he'd also waited to attack until I was walking away from him. Most normal newborns freaked out if you got too close.

"What are you looking for?"

Injection marks. I looked from Quil to the hand and back. How much did the wolves really need to know? Sure, if Aro ever found out what I'd done to Jane I was dead anyway but what if he found a wolf one day and heard that Bella Cullen had been the one to yap out all the Volturi secrets?

Or what if the wolves were trying to protect Forks one day and this could make a difference? Okay, yapping it was. I breathed in—

"We have a problem," Seth jumped in.

"Not enough dry wood?" I asked. Half the mountain was waterlogged with snowmelt, and I hadn't brought any accelerant. This thing was going to give off more smoke than a Guns N' Roses revival.

Seth shook his head. "That is not the vamp I saw," he said. "The one I saw was taller and definitely blond like that hair we found."

I sat forward, "Why didn't you say anything?" I demanded. What if this vampire hadn't really—okay red eyes so it probably had killed humans sometimes but still. This could have been a vampire that wasn't any worse than the law-abiding witnesses that we used to let go every day.

"Well it'd already attacked you so we knew it wasn't here to deliver takeout!!"

My finger froze in mid-shake. "Don't try to confuse me by being right."

Seth shook his head. "Can't help it. It's my nature."

I eyed the head. It was half buried in the mud but I could tell the jaw was still moving. These were the moments I didn't envy Edward. He said they screamed.

"Time to go," said Quil. Seth nodded.

When the equation was obvious enough, three people could come to the same answer:

If there were two, why not three? Why not more?

And Edward and Jake weren't back yet.

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The quote that I chose for the previous chapter is from a Springsteen song called "For You," but it's better known as "One Long Emergency." Apart from being a personal favorite of mine and the fact that it's about a man interested in a self-destructive woman, it is suitable here because it was recorded it more than once. It was originally released in the late 1970s, when Springsteen was a young man. That version is very energetic and upbeat, like a person running. The second was recorded when Springsteen was a middle-aged man. It is much slower, much sadder, even though it discusses the exact same things. The memories are further away, and it's easier for the narrator to tell what they mean.

It's pretty weird. I started this story when I was in my late twenties, and being a teenager didn't seem that young. Now I'm well into my thirties and close enough to middle aged to see what it would look like for Jacob looking back.

And again, for the benefit of you whippersnappers, after thirty, it's not what you can and can't do; it's what you can and can't do again the next day. You can still climb that mountain. You can still run or bike for that many miles. You just need more time to heal up before you do it again. So thru-hike the AT when you're young; that's when you can do it.

drf24 (at) columbia (dot) edu