Book three: Bella 20 страница

I frowned. Of course I must not want that.

Was I out of control? Confused, yes. Easily unfocused, yes. But dangerous? To her? My daughter?

I couldn’t be positive that the answer was no. So I would have to be patient. That sounded difficult. Because until I saw her again, she wouldn’t be real. Just a fading dream… of a stranger…

“Where is she?” I listened hard, and then I could hear the beating heart on the floor below me. I could hear more than one person breathing—quietly, like they were listening, too. There was also a fluttering sound, a thrumming, that I couldn’t place....

And the sound of the heartbeat was so moist and appealing, that my mouth started watering.

So I would definitely have to learn how to hunt before I saw her. My stranger baby.

“Is Rosalie with her?”

“Yes,” Edward answered in a clipped tone, and I could see that something he’d thought of upset him. I’d thought he and Rose were over their differences. Had the animosity erupted again? Before I could ask, he pulled my hands away from my flat stomach, tugging gently again.

“Wait,” I protested again, trying to focus. “What about Jacob? And Charlie? Tell me everything that I missed. How long was I… unconscious?”

Edward didn’t seem to notice my hesitation over the last word. Instead, he was exchanging another wary glance with Carlisle.

“What’s wrong?” I whispered.

“Nothing is wrong,” Carlisle told me, emphasizing the last word in a strange way. “Nothing has changed much, actually—you were only unaware for just over two days. It was very fast, as these things go. Edward did an excellent job. Quite innovative—the venom injection straight to your heart was his idea.” He paused to smile proudly at his son and then sighed. “Jacob is still here, and Charlie still believes that you are sick. He thinks you’re in Atlanta right now, undergoing tests at the CDC. We gave him a bad number, and he’s frustrated. He’s been speaking to Esme.”

“I should call him…,” I murmured to myself, but, listening to my own voice, I understood the new difficulties. He wouldn’t recognize this voice. It wouldn’t reassure him. And then the earlier surprise intruded. “Hold on—Jacob is still here?”

Another glance between them.

“Bella,” Edward said quickly. “There’s much to discuss, but we should take care of you first. You have to be in pain....”

When he pointed that out, I remembered the burn in my throat and swallowed convulsively. “But Jacob—”

“We have all the time in the world for explanations, love,” he reminded me gently.

Of course. I could wait a little longer for the answer; it would be easier to listen when the fierce pain of the fiery thirst was no longer scattering my concentration. “Okay.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Alice trilled from the doorway. She danced across the room, dreamily graceful. As with Edward and Carlisle, I felt some shock as I really looked at her face for the first time. So lovely. “You promised I could be there the first time! What if you two run past something reflective?”

“Alice—,” Edward protested.

“It will only take a second!” And with that, Alice darted from the room.

Edward sighed.

“What is she talking about?”

But Alice was already back, carrying the huge, gilt-framed mirror from Rosalie’s room, which was nearly twice as tall as she was, and several times as wide.

Jasper had been so still and silent that I’d taken no notice of him since he’d followed behind Carlisle. Now he moved again, to hover over Alice, his eyes locked on my expression. Because I was the danger here.

I knew he would be tasting the mood around me, too, and so he must have felt my jolt of shock as I studied his face, looking at it closely for the first time.

Through my sightless human eyes, the scars left from his former life with the newborn armies in the South had been mostly invisible. Only with a bright light to throw their slightly raised shapes into definition could I even make out their existence.

Now that I could see, the scars were Jasper’s most dominant feature. It was hard to take my eyes off his ravaged neck and jaw—hard to believe that even a vampire could have survived so many sets of teeth ripping into his throat.

Instinctively, I tensed to defend myself. Any vampire who saw Jasper would have had the same reaction. The scars were like a lighted billboard. Dangerous, they screamed. How many vampires had tried to kill Jasper? Hundreds? Thousands? The same number that had died in the attempt.

Jasper both saw and felt my assessment, my caution, and he smiled wryly.

“Edward gave me grief for not getting you to a mirror before the wedding,” Alice said, pulling my attention away from her frightening lover. “I’m not going to be chewed out again.”

“Chewed out?” Edward asked skeptically, one eyebrow curving upward.

“Maybe I’m overstating things,” she murmured absently as she turned the mirror to face me.

“And maybe this has solely to do with your own voyeuristic gratification,” he countered.

Alice winked at him.

I was only aware of this exchange with the lesser part of my concentration. The greater part was riveted on the person in the mirror.

My first reaction was an unthinking pleasure. The alien creature in the glass was indisputably beautiful, every bit as beautiful as Alice or Esme. She was fluid even in stillness, and her flawless face was pale as the moon against the frame of her dark, heavy hair. Her limbs were smooth and strong, skin glistening subtly, luminous as a pearl.

My second reaction was horror.

Who was she? At first glance, I couldn’t find my face anywhere in the smooth, perfect planes of her features.

And her eyes! Though I’d known to expect them, her eyes still sent a thrill of terror through me.

All the while I studied and reacted, her face was perfectly composed, a carving of a goddess, showing nothing of the turmoil roiling inside me. And then her full lips moved.

“The eyes?” I whispered, unwilling to say my eyes. “How long?

“They’ll darken up in a few months,” Edward said in a soft, comforting voice. “Animal blood dilutes the color more quickly than a diet of human blood. They’ll turn amber first, then gold.”

My eyes would blaze like vicious red flames for months?

“Months?” My voice was higher now, stressed. In the mirror, the perfect eyebrows lifted incredulously above her glowing crimson eyes—brighter than any I’d ever seen before.

Jasper took a step forward, alarmed by the intensity of my sudden anxiety. He knew young vampires only too well; did this emotion presage some misstep on my part?

No one answered my question. I looked away, to Edward and Alice. Both their eyes were slightly unfocused—reacting to Jasper’s unease. Listening to its cause, looking ahead to the immediate future.

I took another deep, unnecessary breath.

“No, I’m fine,” I promised them. My eyes flickered to the stranger in the mirror and back. “It’s just… a lot to take in.”

Jasper’s brow furrowed, highlighting the two scars over his left eye.

“I don’t know,” Edward murmured.

The woman in the mirror frowned. “What question did I miss?”

Edward grinned. “Jasper wonders how you’re doing it.”

“Doing what?”

“Controlling your emotions, Bella,” Jasper answered. “I’ve never seen a newborn do that—stop an emotion in its tracks that way. You were upset, but when you saw our concern, you reined it in, regained power over yourself. I was prepared to help, but you didn’t need it.”

“Is that wrong?” I asked. My body automatically froze as I waited for his verdict.

“No,” he said, but his voice was unsure.

Edward stroked his hand down my arm, as if encouraging me to thaw. “It’s very impressive, Bella, but we don’t understand it. We don’t know how long it can hold.”

I considered that for a portion of a second. At any moment, would I snap? Turn into a monster?

I couldn’t feel it coming on.… Maybe there was no way to anticipate such a thing.

“But what do you think?” Alice asked, a little impatient now, pointing to the mirror.

“I’m not sure,” I hedged, not wanting to admit how frightened I really was.

I stared at the beautiful woman with the terrifying eyes, looking for pieces of me. There was something there in the shape of her lips—if you looked past the dizzying beauty, it was true that her upper lip was slightly out of balance, a bit too full to match the lower. Finding this familiar little flaw made me feel a tiny bit better. Maybe the rest of me was in there, too.

I raised my hand experimentally, and the woman in the mirror copied the movement, touching her face, too. Her crimson eyes watched me warily.

Edward sighed.

I turned away from her to look at him, raising one eyebrow.

“Disappointed?” I asked, my ringing voice impassive.

He laughed. “Yes,” he admitted.

I felt the shock break through the composed mask on my face, followed instantly by the hurt.

Alice snarled. Jasper leaned forward again, waiting for me to snap.

But Edward ignored them and wrapped his arms tightly around my newly frozen form, pressing his lips against my cheek. “I was rather hoping that I’d be able to hear your mind, now that it is more similar to my own,” he murmured. “And here I am, as frustrated as ever, wondering what could possibly be going on inside your head.”

I felt better at once.

“Oh well,” I said lightly, relieved that my thoughts were still my own. “I guess my brain will never work right. At least I’m pretty.”

It was becoming easier to joke with him as I adjusted, to think in straight lines. To be myself.

Edward growled in my ear. “Bella, you have never been merely pretty.”

Then his face pulled away from mine, and he sighed. “All right, all right,” he said to someone.

“What?” I asked.

“You’re making Jasper more edgy by the second. He may relax a little when you’ve hunted.”

I looked at Jasper’s worried expression and nodded. I didn’t want to snap here, if that was coming. Better to be surrounded by trees than family.

“Okay. Let’s hunt,” I agreed, a thrill of nerves and anticipation making my stomach quiver. I unwrapped Edward’s arms from around me, keeping one of his hands, and turned my back on the strange and beautiful woman in the mirror.

21. FIRST HUNT

“The window?” I asked, staring two stories down.

I’d never really been afraid of heights per se, but being able to see all the details with such clarity made the prospect less appealing. The angles of the rocks below were sharper than I would have imagined them.

Edward smiled. “It’s the most convenient exit. If you’re frightened, I can carry you.”

“We have all eternity, and you’re worried about the time it would take to walk to the back door?”

He frowned slightly. “Renesmee and Jacob are downstairs....”

“Oh.”

Right. I was the monster now. I had to keep away from scents that might trigger my wild side. From the people that I loved in particular. Even the ones I didn’t really know yet.

“Is Renesmee… okay… with Jacob there?” I whispered. I realized belatedly that it must have been Jacob’s heart I’d heard below. I listened hard again, but I could only hear the one steady pulse. “He doesn’t like her much.”

Edward’s lips tightened in an odd way. “Trust me, she is perfectly safe. I know exactly what Jacob is thinking.”

“Of course,” I murmured, and looked at the ground again.

“Stalling?” he challenged.

“A little. I don’t know how....”

And I was very conscious of my family behind me, watching silently. Mostly silently. Emmett had already chuckled under his breath once. One mistake, and he’d be rolling on the floor. Then the jokes about the world’s only clumsy vampire would start.…

Also, this dress—that Alice must have put me in sometime when I was too lost in the burning to notice—was not what I would have picked out for either jumping or hunting. Tightly fitted ice-blue silk? What did she think I would need it for? Was there a cocktail party later?

“Watch me,” Edward said. And then, very casually, he stepped out of the tall, open window and fell.

I watched carefully, analyzing the angle at which he bent his knees to absorb the impact. The sound of his landing was very low—a muted thud that could have been a door softly closed, or a book gently laid on a table.

It didn’t look hard.

Clenching my teeth as I concentrated, I tried to copy his casual step into empty air.

Ha! The ground seemed to move toward me so slowly that it was nothing at all to place my feet—what shoes had Alice put me in? Stilettos? She’d lost her mind—to place my silly shoes exactly right so that landing was no different than stepping one foot forward on a flat surface.

I absorbed the impact in the balls of my feet, not wanting to snap off the thin heels. My landing seemed just as quiet as his. I grinned at him.

“Right. Easy.”

He smiled back. “Bella?”

“Yes?”

“That was quite graceful—even for a vampire.”

I considered that for a moment, and then I beamed. If he’d just been saying that, then Emmett would have laughed. No one found his remark humorous, so it must have been true. It was the first time anyone had ever applied the word graceful to me in my entire life… or, well, existence anyway.

“ Thank you,” I told him.

And then I hooked the silver satin shoes off my feet one by one and lobbed them together back through the open window. A little too hard, maybe, but I heard someone catch them before they could damage the paneling.

Alice grumbled, “Her fashion sense hasn’t improved as much as her balance.”

Edward took my hand—I couldn’t stop marveling at the smoothness, the comfortable temperature of his skin—and darted through the backyard to the edge of the river. I went along with him effortlessly.

Everything physical seemed very simple.

“Are we swimming?” I asked him when we stopped beside the water.

“And ruin your pretty dress? No. We’re jumping.”

I pursed my lips, considering. The river was about fifty yards wide here.

“You first,” I said.

He touched my cheek, took two quick backward strides, and then ran back those two steps, launching himself from a flat stone firmly embedded in the riverbank. I studied the flash of movement as he arced over the water, finally turning a somersault just before he disappeared into the thick trees on the other side of the river.

“Show-off,” I muttered, and heard his invisible laugh.

I backed up five paces, just in case, and took a deep breath.

Suddenly, I was anxious again. Not about falling or getting hurt—I was more worried about the forest getting hurt.

It had come on slowly, but I could feel it now—the raw, massive strength thrilling in my limbs. I was suddenly sure that if I wanted to tunnel under the river, to claw or beat my way straight through the bedrock, it wouldn’t take me very long. The objects around me—the trees, the shrubs, the rocks… the house—had all begun to look very fragile.

Hoping very much that Esme was not particularly fond of any specific trees across the river, I began my first stride. And then stopped when the tight satin split six inches up my thigh. Alice!

Well, Alice always seemed to treat clothes as if they were disposable and meant for one-time usage, so she shouldn’t mind this. I bent to carefully grasp the hem at the undamaged right seam between my fingers and, exerting the tiniest amount of pressure possible, I ripped the dress open to the top of my thigh. Then I fixed the other side to match.

Much better.

I could hear the muffled laughter in the house, and even the sound of someone gritting her teeth. The laughter came from upstairs and down, and I very easily recognized the much different, rough, throaty chuckle from the first floor.

So Jacob was watching, too? I couldn’t imagine what he was thinking now, or what he was still doing here. I’d envisioned our reunion—if he could ever forgive me—taking place far in the future, when I was more stable, and time had healed the wounds I’d inflicted in his heart.

I didn’t turn to look at him now, wary of my mood swings. It wouldn’t be good to let any emotion take too strong a hold on my frame of mind. Jasper’s fears had me on edge, too. I had to hunt before I dealt with anything else. I tried to forget everything else so I could concentrate.

“Bella?” Edward called from the woods, his voice moving closer. “Do you want to watch again?”

But I remembered everything perfectly, of course, and I didn’t want to give Emmett a reason to find more humor in my education. This was physical—it should be instinctive. So I took a deep breath and ran for the river.

Unhindered by my skirt, it took only one long bound to reach the water’s edge. Just an eighty-fourth of a second, and yet it was plenty of time—my eyes and my mind moved so quickly that one step was enough. It was simple to position my right foot just so against the flat stone and exert the adequate pressure to send my body wheeling up into the air. I was paying more attention to aim than force, and I erred on the amount of power necessary—but at least I didn’t err on the side that would have gotten me wet. The fifty yard width was slightly too easy a distance....

It was a strange, giddy, electrifying thing, but a short thing. An entire second had yet to pass, and I was across.

I was expecting the close-packed trees to be a problem, but they were surprisingly helpful. It was a simple matter to reach out with one sure hand as I fell back toward the earth again deep inside the forest and catch myself on a convenient branch; I swung lightly from the limb and landed on my toes, still fifteen feet from the ground on the wide bough of a Sitka spruce.

It was fabulous.

Over the sound of my peals of delighted laughter, I could hear Edward racing to find me. My jump had been twice as long as his. When he reached my tree, his eyes were wide. I leaped nimbly from the branch to his side, soundlessly landing again on the balls of my feet.

“Was that good?” I wondered, my breathing accelerated with excitement.

“Very good.” He smiled approvingly, but his casual tone didn’t match the surprised expression in his eyes.

“Can we do it again?”

“Focus, Bella—we’re on a hunting trip.”

“Oh, right.” I nodded. “Hunting.”

“Follow me… if you can.” He grinned, his expression suddenly taunting, and broke into a run.

He was faster than me. I couldn’t imagine how he moved his legs with such blinding speed, but it was beyond me. However, I was stronger, and every stride of mine matched the length of three of his. And so I flew with him through the living green web, by his side, not following at all. As I ran, I couldn’t help laughing quietly at the thrill of it; the laughter neither slowed me nor upset my focus.

I could finally understand why Edward never hit the trees when he ran—a question that had always been a mystery to me. It was a peculiar sensation, the balance between the speed and the clarity. For, while I rocketed over, under, and through the thick jade maze at a rate that should have reduced everything around me to a streaky green blur, I could plainly see each tiny leaf on all the small branches of every insignificant shrub that I passed.

The wind of my speed blew my hair and my torn dress out behind me, and, though I knew it shouldn’t, it felt warm against my skin. Just as the rough forest floor shouldn’t feel like velvet beneath my bare soles, and the limbs that whipped against my skin shouldn’t feel like caressing feathers.

The forest was much more alive than I’d ever known—small creatures whose existence I’d never guessed at teemed in the leaves around me. They all grew silent after we passed, their breath quickening in fear. The animals had a much wiser reaction to our scent than humans seemed to. Certainly, it’d had the opposite effect on me.

I kept waiting to feel winded, but my breath came effortlessly. I waited for the burn to begin in my muscles, but my strength only seemed to increase as I grew accustomed to my stride. My leaping bounds stretched longer, and soon he was trying to keep up with me. I laughed again, exultant, when I heard him falling behind. My naked feet touched the ground so infrequently now it felt more like flying than running.

“Bella,” he called dryly, his voice even, lazy. I could hear nothing else; he had stopped.

I briefly considered mutiny.

But, with a sigh, I whirled and skipped lightly to his side, some hundred yards back. I looked at him expectantly. He was smiling, with one eyebrow raised. He was so beautiful that I could only stare.

“Did you want to stay in the country?” he asked, amused. “Or were you planning to continue on to Canada this afternoon?”

“This is fine,” I agreed, concentrating less on what he was saying and more on the mesmerizing way his lips moved when he spoke. It was hard not to become sidetracked with everything fresh in my strong new eyes. “What are we hunting?”

“Elk. I thought something easy for your first time...” He trailed off when my eyes narrowed at the word easy.

But I wasn’t going to argue; I was too thirsty. As soon as I’d started to think about the dry burn in my throat, it was all I could think about. Definitely getting worse. My mouth felt like four o’clock on a June afternoon in Death Valley.

“Where?” I asked, scanning the trees impatiently. Now that I had given the thirst my attention, it seemed to taint every other thought in my head, leaking into the more pleasant thoughts of running and Edward’s lips and kissing and… scorching thirst. I couldn’t get away from it.

“Hold still for a minute,” he said, putting his hands lightly on my shoulders. The urgency of my thirst receded momentarily at his touch.

“Now close your eyes,” he murmured. When I obeyed, he raised his hands to my face, stroking my cheekbones. I felt my breathing speed and waited briefly again for the blush that wouldn’t come.

“Listen,” Edward instructed. “What do you hear?”

Everything, I could have said; his perfect voice, his breath, his lips brushing together as he spoke, the whisper of birds preening their feathers in the treetops, their fluttering heartbeats, the maple leaves scraping together, the faint clicking of ants following each other in a long line up the bark of the nearest tree. But I knew he meant something specific, so I let my ears range outward, seeking something different than the small hum of life that surrounded me. There was an open space near us—the wind had a different sound across the exposed grass—and a small creek, with a rocky bed. And there, near the noise of the water, was the splash of lapping tongues, the loud thudding of heavy hearts, pumping thick streams of blood....

It felt like the sides of my throat had sucked closed.

“By the creek, to the northeast?” I asked, my eyes still shut.

“Yes.” His tone was approving. “Now… wait for the breeze again and… what do you smell?”

Mostly him—his strange honey-lilac-and-sun perfume. But also the rich, earthy smell of rot and moss, the resin in the evergreens, the warm, almost nutty aroma of the small rodents cowering beneath the tree roots. And then, reaching out again, the clean smell of the water, which was surprisingly unappealing despite my thirst. I focused toward the water and found the scent that must have gone with the lapping noise and the pounding heart. Another warm smell, rich and tangy, stronger than the others. And yet nearly as unappealing as the brook. I wrinkled my nose.

He chuckled. “I know—it takes some getting used to.”

“Three?” I guessed.

“Five. There are two more in the trees behind them.”

“What do I do now?”

His voice sounded like he was smiling. “What do you feel like doing?”

I thought about that, my eyes still shut as I listened and breathed in the scent. Another bout of baking thirst intruded on my awareness, and suddenly the warm, tangy odor wasn’t quite so objectionable. At least it would be something hot and wet in my desiccated mouth. My eyes snapped open.

“Don’t think about it,” he suggested as he lifted his hands off my face and took a step back. “Just follow your instincts.”

I let myself drift with the scent, barely aware of my movement as I ghosted down the incline to the narrow meadow where the stream flowed. My body shifted forward automatically into a low crouch as I hesitated at the fern-fringed edge of the trees. I could see a big buck, two dozen antler points crowning his head, at the stream’s edge, and the shadow-spotted shapes of the four others heading eastward into forest at a leisurely pace.

I centered myself around the scent of the male, the hot spot in his shaggy neck where the warmth pulsed strongest. Only thirty yards—two or three bounds—between us. I tensed myself for the first leap.

But as my muscles bunched in preparation, the wind shifted, blowing stronger now, and from the south. I didn’t stop to think, hurtling out of the trees in a path perpendicular to my original plan, scaring the elk into the forest, racing after a new fragrance so attractive that there wasn’t a choice. It was compulsory.

The scent ruled completely. I was single-minded as I traced it, aware only of the thirst and the smell that promised to quench it. The thirst got worse, so painful now that it confused all my other thoughts and began to remind me of the burn of venom in my veins.

There was only one thing that had any chance of penetrating my focus now, an instinct more powerful, more basic than the need to quench the fire—it was the instinct to protect myself from danger. Self-preservation.

I was suddenly alert to the fact that I was being followed. The pull of the irresistible scent warred with the impulse to turn and defend my hunt. A bubble of sound built in my chest, my lips pulled back of their own accord to expose my teeth in warning. My feet slowed, the need to protect my back struggling against the desire to quench my thirst.

And then I could hear my pursuer gaining, and defense won. As I spun, the rising sound ripped its way up my throat and out.

The feral snarl, coming from my own mouth, was so unexpected that it brought me up short. It unsettled me, and it cleared my head for a second—the thirst-driven haze receded, though the thirst burned on.

The wind shifted, blowing the smell of wet earth and coming rain across my face, further freeing me from the other scent’s fiery grip—a scent so delicious it could only be human.

Edward hesitated a few feet away, his arms raised as if to embrace me—or restrain me. His face was intent and cautious as I froze, horrified.

I realized that I had been about to attack him. With a hard jerk, I straightened out of my defensive crouch. I held my breath as I refocused, fearing the power of the fragrance swirling up from the south.

He could see reason return to my face, and he took a step toward me, lowering his arms.

“I have to get away from here,” I spit through my teeth, using the breath I had.

Shock crossed his face. “ Can you leave?”

I didn’t have time to ask him what he meant by that. I knew the ability to think clearly would last only as long as I could stop myself from thinking of—

I burst into a run again, a flat-out sprint straight north, concentrating solely on the uncomfortable feeling of sensory deprivation that seemed to be my body’s only response to the lack of air. My one goal was to run far enough away that the scent behind me would be completely lost. Impossible to find, even if I changed my mind…

Once again, I was aware of being followed, but I was sane this time. I fought the instinct to breathe—to use the flavors in the air to be sure it was Edward. I didn’t have to fight long; though I was running faster than I ever had before, shooting like a comet through the straightest path I could find in the trees; Edward caught up with me after a short minute.

A new thought occurred to me, and I stopped dead, my feet planted. I was sure it must be safe here, but I held my breath just in case.

Edward blew past me, surprised by my sudden freeze. He wheeled around and was at my side in a second. He put his hands on my shoulders and stared into my eyes, shock still the dominant emotion on his face.

“How did you do that?” he demanded.

“You let me beat you before, didn’t you?” I demanded back, ignoring his question. And I’d thought I’d been doing so well!

When I opened my mouth, I could taste the air—it was unpolluted now, with no trace of the compelling perfume to torment my thirst. I took a cautious breath.

He shrugged and shook his head, refusing to be deflected. “Bella, how did you do it?”

“Run away? I held my breath.”

“But how did you stop hunting?”

“When you came up behind me… I’m so sorry about that.”

“Why are you apologizing to me? I’m the one who was horribly careless. I assumed no one would be so far from the trails, but I should have checked first. Such a stupid mistake! You have nothing to apologize for.”

Дата добавления: 2015-10-30