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Another mind, and another. So many trivial thoughts.
??think the baby has another ear infection??
Was it six-four-oh or six-oh-four???
Late again. I ought to tell him??
Here she comes! Aha!
There, at last, was her face. Finally, someone had noticed her!
Both Bella and Jacob shivered uncontrollably.
The relief lasted for only a fraction of a second, and then I read more fully the thoughts of the man who was gloating over her face in the shadows.
His mind was a stranger to me, and yet, not totally unfamiliar. I had once hunted exactly such minds.
There was more shivering at that.
"Get over there!" Jacob shouted.
"NO!" I roared, and a volley of snarls erupted from my throat. My foot shoved the gas pedal to the floor, but where was I going?
"Dammit... how could you not know where she is at a time like this!" Jacob shouted again, angry at Edward for letting his guard down for even a second.
I knew the general location of his thoughts, but the knowledge was not specific enough. Something, there had to be something??a street sign, a store front, something in his sight that would give away his location. But Bella was deep in shadow, and his eyes were focused only on her frightened expression??enjoying the fear there.
Bella voice quivered when she read that.
Her face was blurred in his mind by the memory of other faces. Bella was not his first victim.
"Dammit," Jacob repeated, and was thinking fiercely for Edward to hurry up and get to Bella already.
The sound of my growls shook the frame of the car, but did not distract me.
There were no windows in the wall behind her. Somewhere industrial, away from the more populated shopping district. My car squealed around a corner, swerving past another vehicle, heading in what I hoped was the right direction. By the time the other driver honked, the sound was far behind me.
Look at her shaking! The man chuckled in anticipation. The fear was the draw for him??the part he enjoyed.
"Sick bastard," Jacob hissed, balling his fist.
"Stay away from me." Her voice was low and steady, not a scream.
"Why aren't you screaming?" Jacob asked but Bella couldn't answer that. All she could do was keep reading.
"Don't be like that, sugar."
He watched her flinch to a rowdy laugh that came from another direction. He was irritated with the noise??Shut up, Jeff! He thought??but he enjoyed the way she cringed.
It excited him. He began to imagine her pleas, the way she would beg??
Bella was reading this in a voice that seemed to be distant. She was terrified... she didn't like this one bit... she knew her book self would feel hopeless and wouldn't have any way out of this... However she herself, knew that Edward was going to save her. It gave her the courage to keep reading.
Jacob on the other hand just kept on getting angrier and more anxious the longer this guy was mentioned and Edward still hadn't shown up. Stupid freaking bloodsucker, he kept thinking in his head, get there already.
I hadn't realized that there were others with him until I'd heard the loud laughter.
I scanned out from him, desperate for something that I could use. He was taking the first step in her direction, flexing his hands.
The minds around him were not the cesspool that his was. They were all slightly intoxicated, not one of them realizing how far the man they called Lonnie planned to go with this. They were following Lonnie's lead blindly. He'd promised them a little fun??
"And that makes it okay!" Jacob shouted and Bella flinched. Jacob started taking deep breaths... it would be easier for him just to shout out, but he noticed how tense Bella was and knew that he had to try and control his anger. But really... harassing a girl like that! How is that freakin' fun?
One of them glanced down the street, nervous??he didn't want to get caught harassing the girl??and gave me what I needed. I recognized the cross street he stared toward.
"Good," Jacob said gritting his teeth. "Hurry."
I flew under a red light, sliding through a space just wide enough between two cars in the moving traffic. Horns blared behind me.
"Don't crash," Bella was able to mumble her voice was weak compared to when she was reading. It seem like she was able to detach her emotions as she read.
My phone vibrated in my pocket. I ignored it.
Lonnie moved slowly toward the girl, drawing out the suspense??the moment of terror that aroused him.
Sick perverted bastard, Jacob thought to himself, anger welling up in him.
He waited for her scream, preparing to savor it.
But Bella locked her jaw and braced herself. He was surprised??he'd expected her to try to run.
Bella let out a groan there, showing a bit of the terror she was trying to keep under control... which was made easier with her belief that Edward would save her. However, knowing that the fact that she couldn't run without falling made her curse her own clumsiness.
Surprised and slightly disappointed. He liked to chase his prey down, the adrenaline of the hunt.
Brave, this one. Maybe better, I guess??more fight in her.
Jacob growled at that.
I was a block away. The monster could hear the roar of my engine now, but he paid it no attention, too intent on his victim.
I would see how he enjoyed the hunt when he was the prey. I would see what he thought of my style of hunting.
Jacob didn't think about that comment at all... he didn't care what Edward had just thought because at the moment he was thinking something similar (though perhaps not how Edward had meant it).
In another compartment of my head, I was already sorting through the range of tortures I'd born witness to in my vigilante days, searching for the most painful of them.
He would suffer for this. He would writhe in agony. The others would merely die for their part, but the monster named Lonnie would beg for death long before I would give him that gift.
Bella frowned at that... she didn't want that. Jail, a life time imprisonment, something along those lines... but she didn't want Edward to kill them... because of her.
He was in the road, crossing toward her.
I spun sharply around the corner, my headlights washing across the scene and freezing the rest of them in place. I could have run down the leader, who leapt out of the way, but that was too easy a death for him.
I let the car spin out, swinging all the way around so that I was facing back the way I'd come and the passenger door was closest to Bella. I threw that open, and she was already running toward the car.
"Get in," I snarled.
What the hell?
Knew this was a bad idea! She's not alone.
Should I run?
Think I'm going to throw up??
Bella grimaced at these thoughts, wondering if Edward was really going to kill them. They had seemed so normal... and yet what they would have done to her... She shivered at that thought.
"Are you okay?" Jacob asked, his face was stony at the moment, but it was clear that he was relieved that Bella, book Bella that is, was safe now.
"It's hard reading this," Bella said.
"Do you wa...?" Jacob started to ask.
Bella shook her head, "I'll read... anyway, it's thinking about it..."
"Yeah," Jacob agreed as the both shuddered.
Bella jumped through the open door without hesitating, pulling the door shut behind her.
And then she looked up at me with the most trustful expression I had ever seen on a human face, and all my violent plans crumbled.
Bella was a little relieved by that.
It took much, much less than a second for me to see that I could not leave her in the car in order to deal with the four men in the street.
"Argh... obviously you can't do that," Jacob said thinking about what that would look like and cringing at the idea. Then he cringed inwardly at the fact that he didn't really care at the moment if Edward did rip these guys... not just the sick bastard... apart limb from limb. Then he thought of what the bloodlust might do to Edward if that did happen... and how much more dangerous he would be to Bella then... No, Edward had to leave those guys alone.
What would I tell her, not to watch? Ha! When did she ever do what I asked? When did she ever do the safe thing? Would I drag them away, out of her sight, and leave her alone here? It was a long shot that another dangerous human would be prowling the streets of Port Angeles tonight, but it was a long shot that there was even the first! Like a magnet, she drew all things dangerous toward herself.
Bella felt a pang of annoyance at that sentence, but with all the other emotions she was feeling it barely registered to her.
I could not let her out of my sight.
It would feel like part of the same motion to her as I accelerated, taking her away from her pursuers so quickly that they gaped after my car with uncomprehending expressions. She would not recognize my instant of hesitation. She would assume the plan was escape from the beginning.
I couldn't even hit him with my car. That would frighten her.
I wanted his death so savagely that the need for it rang in my ears and clouded my sight and was a flavor on my tongue. My muscles were coiled with the urgency, the craving, the necessity of it. I had to kill him. I would peel him slowly apart, piece by piece, skin from muscle, muscle from bone??
Bella shuddered at that image and Jacob looked a little sick by it, too.
Except that the girl??the only girl in the world??was clinging to her seat with both hands, staring at me, her eyes still wide and utterly trusting. Vengeance would have to wait.
"Put on your seatbelt," I ordered. My voice was rough with the hate and bloodlust. Not the usual bloodlust. I would not sully myself by taking any part of that man inside me.
She locked the seatbelt into place, jumping slightly at the sound it made. That little sound made her jump, yet she did not flinch as I tore through the town, ignoring all traffic guides.
Bella found that sentence odd, or at least the part of her brain that was listening to her own reading, found it odd. She hated it when he'd mentioned driving fast, but of course at the moment she must have had more important things on her mind.
I could feel her eyes on me. She seemed oddly relaxed. It didn't make sense to me??not with what she'd just been through.
"Why are you so relaxed?" Jacob asked, and he noticed that she seemed that way now too. If he had been reading that about himself, he would have been panicking by now.
"I'm good with compartmentalizing things like this," Bella said.
"How many times have you been through something like this?" Jacob exclaimed.
"Relax, Jake," Bella said, "I just meant bad situations... nothing like this has ever happened to me before. Plus... Edward is there... I think that must be making me feel safer."
"Are you okay?" she asked, her voice rough with stress and fear.
"Shouldn't he be asking you that?" Jacob said, trying to force himself to regain his calm.
"I suppose," Bella shrugged. "But you have to admit that Edward at this moment wouldn't look okay."
She wanted to know if I was okay?
I thought about her question for a fraction of a second. Not long enough for her to notice the hesitation. Was I okay?
"No," I realized, and my tone seethed with rage.
I took her to the same unused drive where I'd spent the afternoon engaged in the poorest surveillance ever kept. It was black now under the trees.
I was so furious that my body froze in place there, utterly motionless. My icelocked hands ached to crush her attacker, to grind him into pieces so mangled that his body could never be identified??.
But that would entail leaving her here alone, unprotected in the dark night.
"Don't go," Bella said, she wanted him to stay and she didn't what him to kill that guy.
"Bella?" I asked through my teeth.
"Yes?" she responded huskily. She cleared her throat.
"Are you all right?" That was really the most important thing, the first priority.
Retribution was secondary. I knew that, but my body was so filled with rage that it was hard to think.
"Yes." Her voice was still thick??with fear, no doubt.
And so I could not leave her.
Even if she wasn't at constant risk for some infuriating reason??some joke the universe was playing on me??even if I could be sure that she would be perfectly safe in my absence, I could not leave her alone in the dark.
She must be so frightened.
"Well, of course she is... she was nearly attacked and..." Jacob started hissing and trailed off at the end with a shudder.
Yet I was in no condition to comfort her??even if I knew exactly how that was to be accomplished, which I did not.
"You are comforting me," Bella said. "Just by being there."
"Wow, that was cheesy," Jacob teased her and Bella rolled her eyes.
