The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner (14 page)

I turned and really ran for the trees, suddenly positive that Diego’s presence here was just another of Riley’s lies.

And if Diego wasn’t here, then he was already dead. This fell into place for me so easily that I thought I must have known
the truth for a while. Since the moment that Diego had not followed Riley through the basement door. He’d already been gone.

I was a few feet into the trees when a force like a wrecking ball hit me from behind and threw me to the ground. An arm slipped
under my chin.

“Please!” I sobbed. And I meant
please kill me fast
.

The arm hesitated. I didn’t fight back, though my instincts were urging me to bite and claw and rip the enemy apart. The saner
part of me knew that wasn’t going to work. Riley had lied about these weak, older vampires, too, and we’d never had a chance.
But even if I’d had a way to beat this one, I wouldn’t have been able to move. Diego was
gone, and that glaring fact killed the fight in me.

Suddenly I was airborne. I crashed into a tree and crumpled to the ground. I should have tried to run, but Diego was dead.
I couldn’t get around that.

The blond vampire from the clearing was staring intently at me, his body ready to spring. He looked very capable, much more
experienced than Riley. But he wasn’t lunging at me. He wasn’t crazed like Raoul or Kristie. He was totally in control.

“Please,” I said again, wanting him to get this over with. “I don’t want to fight.”

Though he still held himself ready, his face changed. He looked at me in a way I didn’t totally get. There was a lot of knowledge
in that face, and something else. Empathy? Pity, at least.

“Neither do I, child,” he said in a calm, kind voice. “We are only defending ourselves.”

There was such honesty in his odd yellow eyes that it made me wonder how I had ever believed any of Riley’s stories. I felt…
guilty. Maybe this coven had never planned to attack us in Seattle. How could I trust any part of what I’d been told?

“We didn’t know,” I explained, somehow ashamed. “Riley lied. I’m sorry.”

He listened for a moment, and I realized that the battlefield was quiet. It was over.

If I’d been in any doubt over who the winner was,
that doubt was gone when, a second later, a female vampire with wavy brown hair and yellow eyes hurried to his side.

“Carlisle?” she asked in a confused voice, staring at me.

“She doesn’t want to fight,” he told her.

The woman touched his arm. He was still tensed to spring. “She’s so frightened, Carlisle. Couldn’t we…”

The blond, Carlisle, glanced back at her, and then he straightened up a little, though I could see he was still wary.

“We have no wish to harm you,” the woman said to me. She had a soft, soothing voice. “We didn’t want to fight any of you.”

“I’m sorry,” I whispered again.

I couldn’t make sense of the mess in my head. Diego was dead, and that was the main thing, the devastating thing. Other than
that, the fight was over, my coven had lost and my enemies had won. But my dead coven was full of people who would have loved
to watch me burn, and my enemies were speaking to me kindly when they had no reason to. Moreover, I felt safer with these
two strangers than I’d ever felt with Raoul and Kristie. I was
relieved
that Raoul and Kristie were dead. It was so confusing.

“Child,” Carlisle said, “will you surrender to us?
If you do not try to harm us, we promise we will not harm you.”

And I believed him.

“Yes,” I whispered. “Yes, I surrender. I don’t want to hurt anybody.”

He held out his hand encouragingly. “Come, child. Let our family regroup for a moment, then we’ll have some questions for
you. If you answer honestly, you have nothing to fear.”

I got up slowly, making no movements that could be considered threatening.

“Carlisle?” a male voice called.

And then another yellow-eyed vampire joined us. Any sort of safety I’d felt with these strangers vanished as soon as I saw
him.

He was blond, like the first, but taller and leaner. His skin was absolutely covered in scars, spaced most thickly together
on his neck and jaw. A few small marks on his arm were fresh, but the rest were not from the brawl today. He had been in more
fights than I could have imagined, and he’d never lost. His tawny eyes blazed and his stance exuded the barely contained violence
of an angry lion.

As soon as he saw me he coiled to spring.

“Jasper!” Carlisle warned.

Jasper pulled up short and stared at Carlisle with wide eyes. “What’s going on?”

“She doesn’t want to fight. She’s surrendered.”

The scarred vampire’s brow clouded, and suddenly I felt an unexpected surge of frustration, though I had no idea what I was
frustrated with.

“Carlisle, I…” He hesitated, then continued, “I’m sorry, but that’s not possible. We can’t have any of these newborns associated
with us when the Volturi come. Do you realize the danger that would put us in?”

I didn’t understand exactly what he was saying, but I got enough. He wanted to kill me.

“Jasper, she’s only a child,” the woman protested. “We can’t just murder her in cold blood!”

It was strange to hear her speak like we both were people, like murder was a bad thing. An avoidable thing.

“It’s our family on the line here, Esme. We can’t afford to have them think we broke this rule.”

The woman, Esme, walked between me and the one who wanted to kill me. Incomprehensibly, she turned her back to me.

“No. I won’t stand for it.”

Carlisle shot me an anxious glance. I could see that he cared a lot for this woman. I would have looked the same way at anyone
behind Diego’s back. I tried to appear as docile as I felt.

“Jasper, I think we have to take the chance,” he
said slowly. “We are not the Volturi. We follow their rules, but we do not take lives lightly. We will explain.”

“They might think we created our own newborns in defense.”

“But we didn’t. And even had we, there was no indiscretion here, only in Seattle. There is no law against creating vampires
if you control them.”

“This is too dangerous.”

Carlisle touched Jasper’s shoulder tentatively. “Jasper. We cannot kill this child.”

Jasper glowered at the man with the kind eyes, and I was suddenly angry. Surely he wouldn’t hurt this gentle vampire or the
woman he loved. Then Jasper sighed, and I knew it was okay. My anger evaporated.

“I don’t like this,” he said, but he was calmer. “At least let me take charge of her. You two don’t know how to deal with
someone who’s been running wild so long.”

“Of course, Jasper,” the woman said. “But be kind.”

Jasper rolled his eyes. “We need to be with the others. Alice said we don’t have long.”

Carlisle nodded. He held his hand out to Esme, and they headed past Jasper back toward the open field.

“You there,” Jasper said to me, his face a glower
again. “Come with us. Don’t make one rash move or I
will
take you down.”

I felt angry again as he glared at me, and a small part of me wanted to snarl and show my teeth, but I had a feeling he was
looking for just that kind of excuse.

Jasper paused as if he’d just thought of something. “Close your eyes,” he commanded.

I hesitated. Had he decided to kill me after all?

“Do it!”

I gritted my teeth and shut my eyes. I felt twice as helpless as I had before.

“Follow the sound of my voice and don’t open your eyes. You look, you lose, got it?”

I nodded, wondering what he didn’t want me to see. I felt some relief that he was bothering to protect a secret. There was
no reason to do so if he was just going to kill me.

“This way.”

I walked slowly after him, careful to give him no excuses. He was considerate in the way he led, not walking me into any trees,
at least. I could hear the way the sound changed when we were in the open; the feel of the wind was different, too, and the
smell of my coven burning was stronger. I could feel the warmth of the sun on my face, and the insides of my eyelids were
brighter as I sparkled.

He led me closer and closer to the muffled crackle of the flames, so close that I could feel the smoke brush my skin. I knew
he could have killed me at any time, but the nearness of the fire still made me nervous.

“Sit here. Eyes closed.”

The ground was warm from the sun and the fire. I kept very still and tried to concentrate on looking harmless, but I could
feel his glare on me, and it made me agitated. Though I was not mad at these vampires, who I truly believed had only been
defending themselves, I felt the oddest stirrings of fury. It was almost outside myself, as if it were some leftover echo
from the battle that had just taken place.

The anger didn’t make me stupid, though, because I was too sad—miserable to my core. Diego was aways in my mind, and I couldn’t
help thinking about how he must have died.

I was sure there was no way he would have voluntarily told Riley our secrets—secrets that had given me a reason to trust Riley
just enough until it was too late. In my head, I saw Riley’s face again—that cold, smooth expression that had formed as he’d
threatened to punish any of us who wouldn’t behave. I heard again his macabre and oddly detailed description—
when I take you to her and hold you as she tears off your legs and then slowly, slowly burns off
your fingers, ears, lips, tongue, and every other superfluous appendage one by one
.

I realized now that I’d been hearing the description of Diego’s death.

That night, I’d been sure that something had changed in Riley. Killing Diego was what had changed Riley, had hardened him.
I believed only one thing that Riley had ever told me: he had valued Diego more than any of the rest of us. Had even been
fond of him. And yet he’d watched our creator hurt him. No doubt he’d helped her. Killed Diego with her.

I wondered how much pain it would have taken to make me betray Diego. I imagined it would have taken quite a lot. And I was
sure it had taken at least that much to make Diego betray me.

I felt sick. I wanted the image of Diego screaming in agony out of my head, but it wouldn’t leave.

And then there was screaming there in the field.

My eyelids fluttered, but Jasper snarled furiously and I clenched them together at once. I’d seen nothing but heavy lavender
smoke.

I heard shouting and a strange, savage howling. It was loud, and there was a lot of it. I couldn’t imagine how a face would
have to contort to create such a noise, and the not knowing made the sound more frightening. These yellow-eyed vampires were
so different from the rest of us. Or different from
me
, I guess, since I was the only one left. Riley and our creator were long gone by now.

I heard names called,
Jacob, Leah, Sam
. There were lots of distinct voices, though the howls continued. Of course Riley had lied to us about the number of vampires
here, too.

The sound of the howling tapered off until it was just one voice, one agonized, inhuman yowling that made me grit my teeth.
I could see Diego’s face so clearly in my mind, and the sound was like him screaming.

I heard Carlisle talking over the other voices and the howling. He was begging to look at something. “Please let me take a
look. Please let me help.” I didn’t hear anyone arguing with him, but for some reason his tone made it sound like he was losing
the dispute.

And then the yowling reached a strident new pitch, and suddenly Carlisle was saying “thank you” in a fervent voice, and under
the yowl there was the sound of a lot of movement by a lot of bodies. Many heavy footsteps coming closer.

I listened harder and heard something unexpected and impossible. Along with some heavy breathing—and I’ve never heard anyone
in my coven breathe like that—there were dozens of deep thumping noises.
Almost like… heartbeats. But definitely not human hearts. I knew that particular sound well. I sniffed hard, but the wind
was blowing from the other direction, and I could only smell the smoke.

Without a warning sound, something touched me, clapped down firmly on either side of my head.

My eyes started open in panic as I lurched up, straining to jerk free of this hold, and instantly met Jasper’s warning gaze
about two inches from my face.

“Stop it,” he snapped, yanking me back down on my butt. I could only just hear him, and I realized that his hands were sealed
tight against my head, covering my ears entirely.

“Close your eyes,” he instructed again, probably at a normal volume, but it was hushed for me.

I struggled to calm myself and shut my eyes again. There were things they didn’t want me to hear, either. I could live with
that—if it meant I could live.

For a second I saw Fred’s face behind my eyelids. He had said he would wait for one day. I wondered if he would keep his word.
I wished I could tell him the truth about the yellow-eyes, and how much more there seemed to be that we didn’t know. This
whole world that we really knew nothing about.

It would be interesting to explore that world. Particularly with someone who could make me invisible and safe.

But Diego was gone. He wouldn’t be coming to find Fred with me. That made imagining the future faintly repugnant.

I could still hear some of what was going on, but just the howling and a few voices. Whatever those weird thumping sounds
had been, they were too muted now for me to examine them.

I did make out the words when, a few minutes later, Carlisle said, “You have to…”—his voice was too low for a second, and
then—“… from here now. If we could help we would, but we cannot leave.”

There was a growl, but it was oddly unmenacing. The yowling became a low whine that disappeared slowly, as if it was moving
away from me.

It was quiet for a few minutes. I heard some low voices, Carlisle and Esme among them, but also some I didn’t know. I wished
I could smell something—the blindness combined with the muted sound left me straining for some source of sensory information.
But all I could smell was the horribly sweet smoke.