I looked into Alice’s view of the future—a little more difficult at the moment, as I had to ignore Jasper’s potent veil of tedium, which tried, with energy, to convince me that there must be something more interesting to do.
Alice was focused on the closest possible futures. It surprised me that they all ended in a standoff now. A few of the possible fights were clearer than before.
So it would not be that easy.
In Laurent’s mind, I heard nothing but interest and the coming assent; James was in agreement. Victoria looked for a trap, rigid with dread.
None of them had any intention to cause trouble or even examine our numbers more closely. What would change their minds?
I could think of only one factor that was so sure, so unaffected by any decision or whim.
The weather.
I braced myself, knowing there was nothing I could do. Jasper’s eyes flickered to me. He felt my new anguish.
“That sounds very interesting, and welcome,” Laurent was saying. “We’ve been on the hunt all the way down from Ontario, and we haven’t had the chance to clean up in a while.”
Victoria shuddered, trying to subtly catch James’s attention, but he ignored her.
“Please don’t take offense, but we’d appreciate it if you’d refrain from hunting in this immediate area,” Carlisle cautioned them. “We have to stay inconspicuous, you understand.”
Carlisle’s voice was perfectly assured. I envied him his hopefulness.
“Of course,” Laurent agreed. “We certainly won’t encroach on your territory. We just ate outside of Seattle, anyway.”
Laurent laughed, and Bella’s heartbeat stuttered for the first time. The movement of my foot faltered quickly, trying to disguise the variation. None of the strangers seemed to notice.
“We’ll show you the way if you’d like to run with us,” Carlisle offered, and only Alice and I knew that it was too late for his plan to succeed. It was so close now—her visions were racing to collide with the present. “Emmett and Alice, you can go with Edward and Bella to get the Jeep.”
It happened exactly as he said Bella’s name.
Just a gentle breeze, a mild flutter from a new direction, an aberration caused by the tail end of the storm swirling westward. So mild. So inescapable.
Bella’s scent, fresh and immediate, wafted directly into the strangers’ faces.
All of them were affected, but while Laurent and Victoria were predominantly confused by the delicious smell coming out of nowhere, James shifted instantaneously into hunting mode. Jasper’s camouflage wasn’t strong enough to deter that kind of focus.
There was no point in pretending any longer. As if he were reading my thoughts, Jasper pulled his concealment back in that second, leaving only himself and Alice still hidden. I realized it was better that he do this, that it would only alert these nomads to his extra talents if he tried to keep Bella obscured now. Yet I still felt a weak prick of betrayal.
But that was only the smallest part of my awareness. Most of my faculties were overwhelmed with fury.
James thrust forward into a crouch. His mind was empty of thought besides the hunt, intent on immediate gratification.
I gave him something else to think about.
I crouched in front of Bella, ready to launch myself into the hunter before he could get any closer to her, all my abilities concentrated on his thoughts. I roared a warning at him, knowing only self-preservation had any hope of distracting him at this point.
My rage was strong enough that I half wanted him to ignore my threat.
The pinpoint focus of his eyes widened out, away from Bella, as he appraised me. A strange flicker of surprise wove through his mind. He was almost… incredulous that I had moved to block him. I could only guess that he was used to acting unopposed. He hesitated, wavering between prudence and desire. It would be foolish to ignore the others—this was not a contest between just the two of us. But he could barely resist my challenge. He wasn’t sure he wanted to resist.
“What’s this?” Laurent cried. I didn’t waste any attention for his reaction.
I saw the ploy in James’s thoughts before he moved. I was in place to block his new angle before the movement was finished. His eyes narrowed, and he adjusted his evaluation of the danger I posed.
Faster than I thought. Too fast?
He was suspicious of me now. Of all of us. Why hadn’t he noticed the girl before? She was so obvious, her apricot skin soft and matte in contrast with the shine of the rest.
“She’s with us,” I heard Carlisle warn in a new voice, friendliness gone.
James flashed a glance at him and was aware again of Emmett looming, massive and eager, beside Carlisle.
I was surprised at his frustration. James didn’t want to be careful. He was anxious for a fight. However—still poised to strike—he spared part of his focus to tune in for some movement from Victoria, but she was frozen with fear.
My own attention was compromised as Laurent finally reacted.
“You brought a snack?” he asked, disbelieving.
Like James, he moved a step closer to Bella, though his move was more instinctual than aggressive.
That didn’t matter to me. I twisted slightly, my eyes never leaving the greater threat, and snarled my rage in Laurent’s direction, baring my teeth at him. Unlike James, Laurent immediately retreated.
James shifted again, testing my concentration. I was in place to answer his maneuver before the motion was complete. His lips pulled back over his teeth.
“I said she’s with us,” Carlisle repeated, his voice closer to a growl than I’d ever heard it before.
“But she’s human,” Laurent pointed out. There was still no aggression in his mind. He was only baffled and frightened. He couldn’t make sense of this situation, but he realized that James’s ill-considered offensive might get them all killed. He glanced toward Victoria, checking her reaction much as James had. As if she were some kind of weathervane.
Emmett was the one to respond to Laurent. I didn’t know if it was Jasper who made it feel as though the ground shook as he took one step closer to the conflict, or if it was just Emmett being Emmett.
“Yes,” he rumbled, his tone absent of all emotion and inflection. The steel of his voice seemed to cut straight through the center of the confrontation, evoking a sudden chill in the air.
I was pretty sure that was Jasper’s work, but I didn’t split my concentration to be sure.
It was effective. The hunter straightened out of his crouch.
I read his reactions minutely, holding my defensive position against the possibility of a trick. I expected anger, frustration. I’d seen before that he was arrogant, not used to being obstructed. Having to concede to a larger force than his own would surely infuriate him.
But instead, a sudden excitement jolted through his thoughts. Though his eyes never entirely left Bella or me, he was cataloguing in his peripheral vision the threats facing him. Not with fear or annoyance, but with a strange, wild pleasure. His eyes still skipped over Jasper and Alice, seeing them only as numbers in a census. Emmett’s threatening mass seemed abruptly exhilarating to him.
“It appears we have a lot to learn about each other,” Laurent observed in a mollifying tone.
And then James’s inexplicable elation gave way to planning. To strategy. To memories of past victories. And for the first time, I realized—with dread and panic—that he was no mere hunter.
“Indeed,” Carlisle agreed, his voice hard.
I desperately wanted to know what Alice was seeing now, but I couldn’t afford to miss any detail in my adversary’s thoughts.
I listened as he remembered cornering target after target, as he relived the lengths of his more exhaustive pursuits, as he catalogued the opposition he’d overcome to get to his prey. None of the previous challenges were greater than what he was looking at now. Eight—no, seven, he corrected. A coven of seven—certainly with some talents among them—and one helpless human girl who smelled better than any meal he’d had in the last century.
Thrilling.
He couldn’t start here, with so many protecting her.
Wait until they separate. Use the time for reconnaissance.
“But we’d like to accept your invitation,” Laurent was saying to Carlisle. James was only superficially aware of the conversation; he was absorbed in his planning.
Until Laurent added, “And, of course, we will not harm the human girl. We won’t hunt in your range, as I said.”
This broke through both James’s new exhilaration and his vigilant focus. He turned away from me to stare at Laurent with amazement, but Laurent was facing Carlisle, and he didn’t see as the shock turned to loathing.
You dare speak for me?
The heat of his reaction made it clear that the coven would not stay intact. I heard James’s resolution to use Laurent as long as he was convenient, but he would rather kill him than leave him behind when that usefulness was over. It appeared that his desire to destroy Laurent was based entirely on this one comment; I couldn’t find another source of resentment. James was easily provoked, I decided, and unforgiving. Perhaps I could use that.
James had no thought of Victoria choosing Laurent. I wondered whether they were a mated pair, but his thoughts didn’t give away any special feeling for her. They must have been together longer than the alliance with Laurent. They were the original coven, and he the interloper. It fit with how easily James contemplated disposing of the newcomer.
“We’ll show you the way,” Carlisle said, less like an offer and more like a command. “Jasper, Rosalie, Esme?”
Jasper didn’t like this—separating from Alice, especially when things were going poorly. But he couldn’t argue with Carlisle now. We needed to present a united front, and he didn’t want to draw attention to himself. Carlisle had no idea of the cover Jasper was generating. Jasper resigned himself to keeping up the concealment as long as necessary; if a fight was coming, he intended it to be an ambush.
He looked at Alice, who nodded at him. She was confident she wasn’t in danger. He accepted that but was still unhappy. She darted to Bella’s side.
Without needing to discuss, Jasper, Esme, and Rose moved together to obstruct James’s view of Bella as they joined Carlisle.
James was not perturbed. His desire to attack had vanished. He was plotting now.
Emmett retreated last, his eyes on James as he moved backward into position beside me.
Carlisle gestured for Laurent and his coven to lead the way out of the clearing. Laurent complied quickly, with Victoria right behind. Her mind was still full of escape routes.
James hesitated for a fraction of a second, and his eyes returned to us. I knew Bella was invisible behind Emmett, but he wasn’t looking for her this time. He stared directly into my eyes and smiled.
Something caught his attention—Alice, uncloaked as Jasper moved away from her. There was a flicker of surprise as he took in her face for the first time, perhaps wondering why he hadn’t thought to appraise her before, but that surprise did not resolve into words before he turned and dashed after the others. Carlisle and Jasper ran close on his heels, Rose and Esme following.
I had to work to keep my voice from coming out as a snarl or a shriek. “Let’s go, Bella.”
She seemed paralyzed. Her wide eyes were so blank that I wondered whether she even understood what I was saying. But I didn’t have time to soothe her, or treat her if she were in shock. Right now the only priority was escape.
I took her elbow and pulled her in the opposite direction from where the others had just disappeared. After one staggering step, she found her footing and half ran to keep up with me. Emmett and Alice moved behind us, hiding her, just in case.
I was positive James would not follow Laurent back to our house. When he found an opportunity, he would break off and circle back to catch Bella’s trail. I couldn’t know how long it would take him to find that opportunity, but I had to act as if he were already watching. If he were, it would be better to let him think that we would move at Bella’s speed. I doubted he would be surprised for long when her scent became suddenly tenuous in the trees, but if we could obscure how we were traveling, he would have to pause to reassess.
His thoughts were too far away for me to pinpoint him now, though I had a sense of where the larger group was. I couldn’t be positive he was still with them. If he ran up the side of one of these peaks, he’d have a good view of our movements. Still, I chafed at our velocity—or lack thereof.
Emmett and Alice didn’t comment on our pace. They were both aware that we might have an audience, though Alice couldn’t see clearly what James was doing. His path wasn’t going to cross ours here, nor in the near future. She’d only seen the strangers in the clearing in the first place because they had decided to interact with us. It wasn’t easy for her to see outsiders unless they were with a member of her family. James would be mostly invisible until he decided to accost one of us.
It seemed hours till we reached the edge of the clearing, but I knew it was really just minutes. As soon as we were deep enough into the trees to be invisible to any watcher, I lifted Bella and settled her against my back. She understood, not too far gone into shock, then. She wrapped her legs tightly around my waist and locked her arms around my neck. Her face was tucked down against my shoulder blade again.
I thought it would feel better, safer, when I was running, when we were racing away from the danger at an acceptable speed, but the momentum did nothing to dissolve the solid block of panic that seemed to weigh me down. I knew this was an illusion—I was flying through the trees as fast as I could go without hurting her—but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was making no progress at all.
Even when the Jeep appeared, and in less than a second I had Bella in the backseat, it felt like I was lagging behind.
“Strap her in,” I hissed to Emmett. He’d chosen the back with Bella, recognizing that he would be her bodyguard as long as I needed to drive. He was willing, even eager.
For once, Emmett’s disposition toward humor was quelled—a mercy, as I would not have been able to bear it now. His temper was roused, and his thoughts were all directed toward violence.
Alice sat by me, and without my asking, she was sprinting through all the futures we could face now. Mostly there was a dark road ahead of us, flying away under the tires, with no clear destination in mind. But there were other futures going in the wrong direction, back in Forks, inside Bella’s home and our own, though I couldn’t imagine what would turn me around.
We lurched and careened across the rough road as fast as I dared go without chancing flipping the Jeep, but it continued to feel like I was losing a race.
While Alice kept searching—there was the blistering sunlight again, why would we choose that kind of location when it would trap us indoors?—I focused on the road. Finally we were back to the highway, and I wished fervently we were in another car, any other—mine, Rose’s, Carlisle’s. The Jeep wasn’t modified for racing. But there was nothing for it.
I was vaguely aware of the sound of my own voice, snarling out half-articulated obscenities, but it felt distant from me, as though not under my control.
That was the only sound besides the roar of the engine, the tires moving against the wet road, Bella’s uneven breathing in the back, and her thudding heart.
Alice was seeing a hotel room now, but it could be anywhere. The curtains were closed.
“Where are we going?”
Bella’s question sounded like it was coming from a distance, too. My thoughts were too wound up inside Alice’s visions or frozen with dread for me to compose an answer. It was almost as if the question didn’t apply to me.
Her voice had quavered, little more than a whisper. But now it turned hard.
“Dammit, Edward! Where are you taking me?”
I pulled away from the confusing swirl of Alice’s futures so that I could be present. Bella must be terrified.
“We have to get you away from here—far away—now,” I explained.
I would have thought the idea of being far away would be a welcome one, but she was suddenly shouting, her hands fighting with the harness as she tried to loose herself.
“Turn around! You have to take me home!”
How did I explain to her that she’d lost her home for now, that the loathsome hunter had stolen more than that from her tonight?
The priority for the moment, though, was keeping her from throwing herself out of the Jeep.
Emmett was already wondering if he should restrain her. I spoke his name, low and hard, so he would know that I wanted him to do this. He caught her wrists carefully in his huge hands and immobilized them.
“No! Edward! No,” she howled at me. “You can’t do this!”
I didn’t know what she thought I was doing. Did she think I had a choice? The sound of her anger, her desperation, made it hard to concentrate. It felt like I was the one hurting her, rather than the danger of the tracker.
“I have to, Bella,” I hissed. “Now please be quiet.” I needed to see what Alice was seeing.
“I won’t!” she shouted at me. “You have to take me back—Charlie will call the FBI! They’ll be all over your family—Carlisle and Esme! They’ll have to leave, to hide forever!”
This was what she was worried about? I supposed it shouldn’t surprise me that she was going to pieces over the wrong menace.
“Calm down, Bella. We’ve been there before.” So we had to start over. It seemed a meaningless thing at the moment.
“Not over me, you don’t!” she shrieked. “You’re not ruining everything over me!”
She thrashed against Emmett’s hold. The only part of her that was still was her trapped hands. Emmett stared at her, confused.
What am I supposed to do?
Before I could tell Bella why she had it wrong or tell Emmett that he was doing fine, Alice decided to join me in the present.
“Edward, pull over.”
The calmness in her voice irritated me. She was thinking about what Bella was saying, though—clearly—none of those concerns meant anything. Alice should have known better. Bella didn’t grasp what had happened. How could she? She had no context for any of this.
I gunned the engine automatically, suddenly realizing that Alice didn’t have all the context, either. For all her prescience, there were things she couldn’t see.
“Edward.” Alice was still calm, her tone so reasonable. “Let’s just talk this through.”
“You don’t understand,” I exploded. “He’s a tracker, Alice, did you see that? He’s a tracker!”
Emmett reacted more powerfully to the word than Alice did. Because of course she had seen that—the moment I’d decided to shout it at her.
We’d not had a great deal of exposure to trackers, aside from stories. The most powerful of them were far away, serving in Italy. Carlisle knew one, but as he was the furthest thing from sociable, none of us had ever met Alistair. Emmett and Alice only knew trackers as those with a talent for finding things, finding people. They didn’t understand the concept in the more dynamic sense. James didn’t just have a talent for finding people. Tracking was everything to him.
“Pull over, Edward,” Alice said, as if I hadn’t spoken.
I glowered at her while urging the engine faster.
That’s not how tonight goes, she thought with perfect assurance. “Do it, Edward.”
“Listen to me, Alice,” I seethed, wishing I could put everything I knew directly into her head for once instead of the other way around. She didn’t get it. “I saw his mind. Tracking is his passion, his obsession—and he wants her, Alice—her, specifically. He begins the hunt tonight.”
She was unmoved by my outburst. “He doesn’t know where—”
I cut her off, impatient with her refusal to see. “How long do you think it will take him to cross her scent in town? His plan was already set before the words were out of Laurent’s mouth.”
Bella gasped, and then she was shrieking again. “Charlie! You can’t leave him there! You can’t leave him!”
“She’s right,” Alice said. Still too calm.
My foot eased off the accelerator without my giving it that order. Obviously, I couldn’t have Charlie in danger, either. But how could I be in two places at once?
“Let’s just look at our options for a minute,” Alice coaxed.
I was shocked by the image suddenly in her head. I’d not seen her tracing this future—I would have interrupted, and violently, if I had—but she somehow had it all laid out. Complete.
Alice saw one version of the future in which the tracker lost interest and abandoned the chase.
It’s meaningless to him without the prize, she explained.
It looked just like the old vision, but I could tell it was new. Freshly generated. Bella, her eyes blazing a red so bright it nearly glowed, her features as sharp as though they had been chiseled from diamond, her skin whiter than ice.
Sure enough, the tracker disappeared from this version of destiny.
And Bella’s brilliant eyes stared at me coldly… accusingly.
I wrenched the Jeep onto the shoulder and braked hard. We jerked to a stop.
“There are no options,” I snarled at Alice.
“I’m not leaving Charlie!” Bella yelled at me.
“We have to take her back,” Emmett interjected.
“No.”
Emmett looked at me in the rearview mirror. “He’s no match for us, Edward. He won’t be able to touch her.”
“He’ll wait.” He enjoyed the waiting.
Emmett smiled without amusement. “I can wait, too.”