"Where did you go?” Bella asked abruptly. She was lying on the couch with her feet in my lap. Her swollen belly between us.
“When you disappeared, at the wedding you said you went as far as Alaska. Tell me about it. Where did you go? What did you do?”
“Uh… It’s mostly a blur, Bells.”
“Come on. I had to listen to Charlie freak out about where you were for months. I wanna know what happened, even if it’s boring.”
“Give the pregnant lady what she wants, Dog.” Rosalie groaned.
“Fine. Uh.. like I said it was mostly a blur. At first it was weird, living like a wolf. I had to eat like him, sleep when he wanted.”
“What do you mean ‘eat like him’?” Bella asked.
I smirked, then bared my teeth. “I ate like him.”
Bella’s eyes widened. “Did you eat raw meat?”
“Mmmhmm.. Had to catch it myself too. It was really weird, but after a while he and I fell into a rhythm. We slept, we hunted, we ate, we ran. Just like that, in that order. Sleep, hunt, eat. run. Sleep, hunt, eat, run. After a while, it got comfortable and I kinda forgot.” I turned away as heat (not wolf heat), but human embarrassment flushed my cheeks. Bella tried to reach for me to comfort me, but she ended up just sticking her hand out and flapping it at me to take it. I did, smiling a little at her efforts. Her hands were so cold it bit me, but I held on. “It was easier at the time to forget myself than deal with my feelings.”
I shrugged. “People need me now. My feelings don’t matter right now.”
Bella’s face went from shocked to sad to angry in 3 seconds flat.
“No, don’t do that. I just mean it’s easier to focus on things I can control. Anyway, it was like that for a while. The wolf and I forgot a lot of things. Like time and distance and international boards, but when I got close to Alaska something interrupted the routine. The wolf started turning us. He was fully in control then, so I just let him take me where he wanted to go. It was like we were being drawn toward something, before I realized it the wolf wasn’t in control either. At some point it went from sleep, hunt, eat, run to hunt, eat, run then to eat, run and at some point we were just running. I felt trapped. I wanted to change back, to become human for the first time in months so this permanent state of running could end, but I couldn’t stop. We couldn’t stop.
“That’s when I saw her in the forest.” The memory of that first feel turned my body cold.
Bella squeezed my hand. “You don’t have to-”
“No, it’s okay. It’s fine. I’m fine.”
“What did she look like?” Rosalie asked cautiously. I looked up at the blonde vampire. She was watching me intently. I’ve never seen a vampire look spooked before. “If that’s okay.”
“No, it’s okay. She was in a white coat. She was pale, but not like you. She had been standing in the cold her whole life. There was pink at the edges of her face, like the warmth was being pushed away. Her hair was this shimmer white color. It was almost like it was made of snow. She was beautiful. Not inhumanly so like vampirely are. It was like she was made of living things. She hummed with it.”
“Hummed?” Rose again asked the question.
“So, living things tend to hum a little. My brothers and Leah hum with our power. Charlie and my Dad hum, but differently somehow. Vampires don’t hum at all. I think it’s because you’re an undead mosquito, but I can’t say that for sure.” Rose sighed and looked annoyed and turned back to the TV pretending to ignore me.
“Is it like a frequency? The different humming I mean.” Edward asked, seeming genuinely curious.
“I don’t know, Dude. Things hum.”
“Forgot the humming,” Bella asked frustrated. “What did she want?”
“I wasn’t sure at first. The closer the wolf and I got to her the easier it seemed to have control over my body again. I still couldn’t change back, but I could finally look around. I could see other living things coming to her. Some of them were living beings. Wolves like me though not as big and some dogs, some panthers and wild cats. Then the non-living things joined her ranks. Men on horses with spears and arrows. Even a few vampires took their place at her side. They weren’t all on race. Asian, white, native like me. I guess in a way we were all one race. Hunters. There seemed like hundreds of us. I was near the front. Near her. The wolf wanted to be as close to her as possible.
“She finally joined us herself. I watched as she turned to us and held out her hand. Little crystals came from the sky. They started at her hand and formed almost from it. It took a minute to understand what she was creating. It was a horse. Blue and crystal like a statue. She created her own steed to lead us with. Once it was fully formed, it pulled away from her hand as if startled by its creation. She mounted the creature and turned over her shoulder. She spotted me then.”
“She noticed you? Did she hurt you?”
“No, she looked sad to see me there. She turned back, urged her horse forward. That’s when it started. We ran through the forest and up a hill. We just kept running and running. This was different from the running I'd done before. I’m not sure how I’d describe it. It wasn’t like running with a pack. This wasn’t patrol or hunting vampires. We were hunting everything. I’m surprised we didn’t kill everything in our path. That’s what Wolf wanted, but we seemed to be looking for something specific.
“I saw it first. A deer in the distance, running from us. It could almost see the fear in its eyes, but Wolf and I knew from the second we saw it that this was the prey we were looking for. The woman in white sensed our notice and looked at me. She smiled and nodded, then screamed. The hunt responded to her with a scream of its own. We continued to chase the deer up the hill. At some point its antlers started to shimmer blue, its fur changed colors. It reminded me of the seasons. It ran to the top of the hill and leapt off the top. I expected it to drop down the cliff below, but it didn’t. It hopped again like it was jumping off the air itself. I looked at the woman, she showed no surprise nor any inclination to stop at the top of the hill. We went faster and faster until we leapt in the air. Then we were running on the air. It was incredible. I felt like, well I don't know what it felt like, but it was…” I shook my head.
“The deer was losing ground to us. It was so weird, now that I think about it. It seemed to be aging before our eyes. It was slowing. The leader of the hunt turned to me and seemed to communicate something. Wolf understood before I did. We shot out ahead of the hunt. I’m not as fast a Leah when it comes to running, but I’m no slow poke either. In seconds I was nipping the deer’s heels. I cried in pain and m y human felt sorry for the poor thing. Wolf and I finally got close enough that we were able to grab its hind leg. I heard a sickening snap and its scream. I’ve killed many deer, they don’t make that noise. I jerked it back and sunk my teeth into its neck. I was so squishy til I hit bone, not like normal deer flesh at all. I’d swing around so that I was facing the hunt. I held it there for the leader. It was her kill not mine.
“She pressed her hands together and pulled them apart. A spear formed in her hands. It looked more ceremonial now that I think about it. Lots of runes I think. She snatched it from the sky. In seconds, the hunt was on the deer. The leader stabbed her spear into the deer. It cried weakly between my teeth. It seemed to tense as she drove the spear deeper into the deer’s chest. Then it just went limp and it was gone.
“Next thing I knew we were falling. The horse was gone, the hunt seemed to be moving on without us through the sky. The leader, wolf and I were being left behind. I suddenly had total control again. I immediately became myself again. I remember who I was. I was Jacob Black grandson to Eferum Black and I was falling to my death. No, healing magic was gonna fix a fall that far. In that moment, I thought only of the thing I wished I could go back and do over. I just didn’t want to die. There was so much left to be done. I felt a cold hand grab my waist. The leader, the woman abandoned by the hunt like I was, extended her hand down below us, a mound of snow formed below us. I braced myself for impact and everything went black.
“I woke up a day later in a warm cabin in Alaska. There were clothes my size laid out for me and food down stairs with a note that said, ‘For the wolf kid.’ I got dressed, ate the food and left as fast as possible.”
Rosalie looked scared. Bella’s face was tear-stained. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
“No, it was a frightening experience.” Bella laughed and sniffed. “You are a really good story teller.”
Rosalie disappeared. Carlise stood thinking. “What Doc?”
“Have you ever heard of the Wild Hunt?”
“It’s a scary story my mother told me when I was a child. My father may have been zealously religious, but my mother still held stock with the old world religions. She told me that the Wild Hunt came to take naughty boys who stayed out in the night and didn’t lock the doors properly.”
“What was the Wild Hunt?”
“Basically what you described. A hoard of dead and undead who hunt and destroy everything in sight.”
“When did this happen?” Bella asked. She had a calendar Edward must have given her.
“When I finally figured out where I was I got a train ride home and they still had New Years stuff up so sometime around that.”
Bella’s eyes widened in realization. “Jacob. I think you helped bring in the new year. Specifically, I think you killed the old one.”
“The deer?” I wanted to reject it out right, but I’m also a werewolf in a house full of vampires while the love of my life is pregnant with a demon baby so anything is possible. “It did kinda feel that way. I was sad about the deer’s death, but that made no sense. I’ve killed plenty of deer.”
“You mourned the dying year. Poor deer.”
“It was just a weird experience, Bells. I’m just not gonna go to Alaska ever again.”
A blanket smelling vaguely of mothballs and vampire was placed on my shoulders. Rosalie sat back in her place in front of the TV. She said flatly. “You were cold. Bella needs to stay warm.”
I was noticeably colder than normal. I wrapped myself in the blanket despite the smell and gave a little to Bella. The corner of her mouth twitched up. I sighed. She does love it when we get along.
