The Twilight Saga Collection part 1(235)

“You’re not mad? He wasn’t one of your friends or anything, was he?”

“My friend?” I stared up at him, confused and dizzy with relief. I started babbling, my eyes getting moist. “No, Jake. I’m so...so relieved. I thought he was going to find me—I’ve been waiting for him every night, just hoping that he’d stop with me and leave Charlie alone. I’ve been so frightened, Jacob....But how? He was a vampire! How did you kill him? He was so strong, so hard, like marble....”

He sat down next to me and put one big arm around me comfortingly. “It’s what we’re made for, Bells. We’re strong, too. I wish you would have told me that you were so afraid. You didn’t need to be.”

“You weren’t around,” I mumbled, lost in thought.

“Oh, right.”

“Wait, Jake—I thought you knew, though. Last night, you said it wasn’t safe for you to be in my room. I thought you knew that a vampire might be coming. Isn’t that what you were talking about?”

He looked confused for a minute, and then he ducked his head. “No, that’s not what I meant.”

“Then why didn’t you think it was safe for you there?”

He looked at me with guilt-ridden eyes. “I didn’t say it wasn’t safe for me. I was thinking of you.”

“What do you mean?”

He looked down and kicked a rock. “There’s more than one reason I’m not supposed to be around you, Bella. I wasn’t supposed to tell you our secret, for one thing, but the other part is that it’s not safe for you. If I get too mad...too upset...you might get hurt.”

I thought about that carefully. “When you were mad before...when I was yelling at you...and you were shaking...?”

“Yeah.” His face dropped even lower. “That was pretty stupid of me. I have to keep a better hold on myself. I swore I wasn’t going to get mad, no matter what you said to me. But...I just got so upset that I was going to lose you...that you couldn’t deal with what I am....”

“What would happen...if you got too mad?” I whispered.

“I’d turn into a wolf,” he whispered back.

“You don’t need a full moon?”

He rolled his eyes. “Hollywood’s version doesn’t get much right.” Then he sighed, and was serious again. “You don’t need to be so stressed out, Bells. We’re going to take care of this. And we’re keeping a special eye on Charlie and the others—we won’t let anything happen to him. Trust me on that.”

Something very, very obvious, something I should have grasped at once—but I’d been so distracted by the idea of Jacob and his friends fighting with Laurent, that I’d completely missed it at the time—occurred to me only then, when Jacob used the present tense again.

We’re going to take care of this.

It wasn’t over.

“Laurent is dead,” I gasped, and my entire body went ice cold.

“Bella?” Jacob asked anxiously, touching my ashen cheek.

“If Laurent died...a week ago...then someone else is killing people now.”

Jacob nodded; his teeth clenched together, and he spoke through them. “There were two of them. We thought his mate would want to fight us—in our stories, they usually get pretty pissed off if you kill their mate—but she just keeps running away, and then coming back again. If we could figure out what she was after, it would be easier to take her down. But she makes no sense. She keeps dancing around the edges, like she’s testing our defenses, looking for a way in—but in where? Where does she want to go? Sam thinks she’s trying to separate us, so she’ll have a better chance....”

His voice faded until it sounded like it was coming through a long tunnel; I couldn’t make out the individual words anymore. My forehead dewed with sweat and my stomach rolled like I had the stomach flu again. Exactly like I had the flu.

I turned away from him quickly, and leaned over the tree trunk. My body convulsed with useless heaves, my empty stomach contracting with horrified nausea, though there was nothing in it to expel.

Victoria was here. Looking for me. Killing strangers in the woods. The woods where Charlie was searching....

My head spun sickeningly.

Jacob’s hands caught my shoulders—kept me from sliding forward onto the rocks. I could feel his hot breath on my cheek. “Bella! What’s wrong?”

“Victoria,” I gasped as soon as I could catch my breath around the nauseous spasms.

In my head, Edward snarled in fury at the name.

I felt Jacob pull me up from my slump. He draped me awkwardly across his lap, laying my limp head against his shoulder. He struggled to balance me, to keep me from sagging over, one way or the other. He brushed the sweaty hair back from my face.