Twilight Fan Fiction ❯ The Fragrance of the Perfect Lie ❯ Red Moon ( Chapter 6 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

The next day, Mike and the rest of Bella’s friends finally selected a date for their trip to the La Push reservation. They would meet at Newtons’ Olympic Outfitters store next weekend on Saturday. Although Bella was a little nervous about meeting the real Jacob, she was pleased to finally have a chance to form a friendship with him. As her excitement grew, the week ahead of her seemed to stretch out longer than usual. Her dreams and the Cullens’ warnings became more and more ominous as Saturday approached.

Saturday

Bella’s impatience for the following trip to La Push only seemed to make her morning pass by much more slowly than usual. After taking a quick shower and dressing into something light, she impulsively checked the clock from the corners of her eyes every few minutes. They were supposed to arrive by noon, and although it was only 11:00, she contemplated whether if she should leave an hour early or not. It felt as if she were leading two separate lives; one filled with mysterious warnings and magic, and one where her biggest worry of life was to pass her next exams.

She was careful to not blend these two lives together and make her friends suspicious of her actions. Call it paranoia, but her intuition had been warning her lately that something awful was going to happen. The last thing she needed was for unknown monsters to haunt her new friends and Charlie when things just started to seem normal. She let out a sigh of exasperation, grabbed her keys, and locked the house behind her before she could change her mind and turn back around. Since it was only 11:28 by the time she arrived, she decided to grab lunch at a nearby fast food restaurant.

When it was exactly noon, she left and quickly paced towards Newtons’ Olympic Outfitters store. Everyone, including the Cullens, Ben, Angela, Jessica, Mike, and a few other people had arrived by then. There wasn’t enough room in Mike’s car for everyone there, so Bella offered to give Alice and Rosalie a ride. For some reason, they both looked a little reluctant to accept her ride and she found out the reason fairly quickly.

“So, what’s La Push like?” The uncomfortable silence had started to make Bella nervous so she decided to make small talk with Alice.

“Bella, why didn’t you offer Edward and one of us a ride instead?” Rosalie asked with a frown.

Bella’s mouth opened in surprise as she wondered how Rosalie knew about her infatuation with Edward. Is it that obvious? She thought as her face started to burn in embarrassment, ruining the lie that hovered on her lips.

“We know that you like him,” Alice said in a calm tone. “He likes you too and it is very obvious that things haven’t been working out between him and Jessica lately.”

She mentally counted to thirty seconds as she waited for the blush in her cheeks to fade a little before she would give them an answer.

“I don’t know what you mean. It looks like Edward,” Her voice went up in a few octaves. “And Jessica are doing fine. I don’t like him as anything more than a friend.” She desperately hoped the waver in her voice wasn’t too noticeable.

“Whatever you say, but I really think you should make the first move.” Alice replied as a slightly sympathetic smile formed on the edge of her lips.

By the time they arrived at La Push, Bella already felt like turning right back around to her house. Of course she wanted to get to know Edward, and of course she knew about his rocky love life, but she didn’t want to make any moves while he was still dating Jessica. Dream-Jessica hadn’t been very nice to her “months” after dream-Edward had left, and it wouldn’t do Bella any good to make enemies with Jessica. If Edward likes me so much, why couldn’t he break up with Jessica first? She pressed her lips together as she stomped through the hot sands of the First Beach.

Bella and the others gathered at the same bone-bleached benches from before and chatted about various things. She was talking to Angela about a homework assignment when she felt a heavy tap to her shoulder. She could feel her heartbeat accelerate in response and she whipped around to meet Jacob’s gaze. Her eyes widened in alarm and she could feel her mouth go dry as her worst fears were confirmed right in front of her. This wasn’t the first carefree, happy Jacob she had met in her dreams. His burning touch and dark brooding eyes could only signify one thing – the werewolves and vampires from her dreams did exist! A nauseous feeling made her lightheaded as she tried to organize her jumbled thoughts.

Oh no, she thought as her mind raced through panic-riddled thoughts. How could it be true? But the undeniable proof was right in front of her disbelieving eyes. Her Jacob – just Jacob, her mind stubbornly reminded her – and the rest of the Quileute teenagers were no longer human, but a pack of werewolves!

“Hi, my name is Bella Swan,” she managed to say clearly as she offered Jacob a handshake.

“Jacob Black,” Jacob greeted and roughly returned her handshake.

It was now or never – she had to either find alone time with Jacob and tell him what she knew about werewolves, or cut off their brief chat and never speak to him again.

“I’ve met your sisters before,” Bella’s hands started to shake a little and she had to curl them behind her back. “How are Rachel and Rebecca doing?”

“Rachel got a scholarship to Washington State, and Rebecca married a Samoan surfer – she lives in Hawaii now.” Jacob replied gruffly.

“That’s pretty cool,” She gave a nervous sigh and batted her eyelids. “Would you like to take a walk with me?”

“Sure.” Jacob looked a little surprised and jumped from the bench.

The soft, salty breeze that whipped through Bella’s hair somehow managed to soothe her frazzled nerves. She imagined the previous times she had been here with dream-Jacob, and how much laughter they had shared together. The distant caws of seagulls and the never-ending waves against the shore were all too familiar to her. Once they had reached the edge of the forest, Bella stopped to a halt in front of Jacob.

“Now, I know that you don’t know me very well…” She hesitated, searching for the right words to say. “But I’ve had dreams of you and the rest of the Quileute tribe, and I know that you’re all werewolves.” She regretted the words instantly as Jacob’s enormous fists started to quiver.

“What? Nobody is supposed to know about us…crap, I need to get Sam,” He spoke mostly to himself with an iron-clad determination on his face. He raced past Bella – even in his human form he was fast – and returned with Sam, and Seth by his side.

“Bella, if you really know about our werewolf customs,” Sam began with a troubled frown. “You would know that nobody besides the werewolves and their mates are supposed to know about our conditions. Did you have a reason in the first place to be telling us this?”

“Y-yes, I watched the news last night and a pack of wolves escaped from Canada,” A light sheen of sweat covered Bella’s forehead. “Who are they? Are they a part of your pack?”

Shock and alarm twisted all of their facial features and for a few minutes, a silence filled the air until Seth spoke up.

“Err, no, they’re not a part of our pack. They’re the strongest werewolf pack we know of, and they call themselves Sustantivo prevalence (Power prevails). We’ve heard rumors that they would be traveling here to help us ward of –” A loud rustle from the bushes behind caught their attention.

Two tall and dark, muscular figures stood before them with a brooding expression that matched the small crowd behind them. Bella could immediately tell that the male and female were both twins – they shared the same wavy dark hair and chestnut-colored eyes. The male cautiously took a few steps towards Sam.

“Hello, we didn’t mean to frighten you. We are the Sustantivo prevalence, my name is Chimo and my sister here is Chita,” His introduction was masked by a strong Spanish accent. “This is my pack behind me, in the bushes. Benjamin, Valerio,” He pointed to the two males. “Adora and Spring.” He pointed to the females in the far corner of the forest.

“Welcome to the La Push reservation,” Sam gave a slight bow. “My name is Sam, and this is Jacob, Seth, and Bella.” Bella swore she saw Sam’s head slightly tilt towards her and in response, Jacob and Seth quickly moved in front of her, hiding her from plain view.

“We do not mean to intrude, but we are currently in a difficult situation. There is a vampire coven that we’ve been fighting for centuries and now, they’ve decided to stay here. May I have permission to set up camp here with my pack until we have hunted them down?” Chimo pretended to ignore Bella, but she knew that her human scent had already given her away.

“Your pack can stay in the deep bowels of our forests. We can’t afford to have the local residents be suspicious of your activities,” Sam replied in a cool, calm voice. “If you don’t mind, we would like a little more information about this vampire coven. If we are to fight them, we need to know as much as we can.”

“Their numbers have dwindled down to two vampires – the leader and his mate. Back in time, they had started a newborn army and fed upon our cities in South America. The so-called Volturi – ” Chimo gave a sneer of disgust. “Had arrived too late and our cousins and their human kin were slaughtered by then. We decided to take charge and hunt these demons down to their graves. Unfortunately, we had become busy with other matters, and we have recently followed their scents from Canada to this little town.”

“Thank you. You can stay here for now, and if you need any assistance, we have a number of battle strategies already planned out.” Sam’s calm expression hadn’t wavered at all during Chimo’s speech.

Chimo gave a nod of gratitude and after repeating this information to his pack in Spanish – atleast, it sounded like Spanish – a multiple chain of booms filled the air and they disappeared in their wolf forms.

“Well,” Sam gave a huge sigh, turning his gaze to Bella’s. “It looks like you know too much already, so I will have to report you to the council and wait for their final decision of what to do with you.”

“I promise I won’t be telling anyone else about this,” Bella’s solemn expression peered between Seth and Jacob’s arms.

“You and your friends will have to leave now.” Jacob escorted Bella back to the bleached benches. He tried to avoid Bella’s curious gaze, but shyly took a few peeks of her face. As if on cue, thunder rumbled from the distance and the angry clouds from above threatened to burst.

“I’ll see you later, then?” Bella murmured, feeling disappointed with herself for not attempting to start any real conversations with Jacob.

“Of course. Maybe my father, Billy, and I will stop by at your house sometime,” Jacob promised with a light grin. “Bye.”

Jessica grabbed her arm and steered her towards the cars before Bella could call a good-bye to Jacob.

“Where were you, Bella? You missed out on the bonfire we started earlier.” Jessica asked impatiently.

“Oh, a few locals were showing me around First Beach.” Bella replied indifferently.

Bella’s ride back home had been a silent one as she quietly mulled over her discovery of the two packs of werewolves. She could still hardly believe that mythical creatures did exist, much less that she was stuck in a dangerous, magic-filled situation. She finally understood the dream-Cullens’ warnings from before, but she didn’t know what to do about it. She felt a few tears slide down her cheek as she fearfully thought about the strange, new pack that had arrived during her visit to the La Push reservation.