Luminosity

by Alicorn

  Well, that meant I could probably activate her. "Sorry if it's bothering you. Did I keep you waiting long?"

  She shook her head. She had her hair just barely long enough to look fluffy, and it bounced with the motion. "I just got here. Let's go sit down."

  The restaurant wasn't crowded, which was good - I didn't have to attract attention by asking the hostess for a more private table at which to have this conversation. "You look tired," Rachel said. "Were you driving through the night?"

  "Yeah, I was," I said, not that this had to do with the darkness under my eyes. "I'm pretty good at pulling all-nighters, it's just not good for the looks."

  "No, don't get me wrong, you really do look great, just like you could use a nap," Rachel backpedaled. She scanned her menu with half her attention - the other half kept her glancing up at me repeatedly. She definitely sensed that something was off. And she kept sniffing the air uncomfortably. "And maybe you should take your nap on the beach on a nice day. So, uh, I could kind of go for lobster even though you haven't tried to sell me anything yet - is that...? Or I could get the halibut, that looks nice..."

  "It's completely fine," I promised her. "Go ahead and get anything you want. And if I try to get one penny out of your purse you can stab me with a fork."

  Rachel chuckled darkly and summoned the waiter. I ordered the halibut she'd mentioned, in case she wanted some, and a glass of water. When he'd gone to put in our orders, she asked, "So what's the crazy thing you wanted to tell me so bad that you're buying me lobster?"

  "You've probably heard most of it already," I said earnestly. "Do you remember any of the stories from your tribe about..." I paused dramatically, just for the hell of it. "Wolves?"

  "Yeah, there's a bunch," Rachel replied. "Wolves, and spirit warriors, and cold ones, and all that junk. Why, what about them?"

  "Can I see your hand for a sec?" I asked, holding out mine.

  "What, are you going to read my palm, or something?" she joked, but she held out her hand. I held it just as though fortune-telling were what I had in mind, but all I'd wanted was to let her notice my body temperature. Her own was unusually warm. No one would send her to the hospital if she popped a thermometer under her tongue, but she ran a bit hot.

  Rachel jerked her hand back, and I didn't try to stop her. Clutching at her chilled hand with the other, she stared at me, eyes round with shock. "Bella, I don't believe in cold ones," she said, with a vaguely didactic tone that didn't match the fear on her face.

  "You don't? Oh, okay, then," I said.

  She blinked at me, put her hands in her lap, blinked again, and said, "I really don't."

  "That's fine," I repeated.

  "Vampires don't exist," said Rachel.

  "So I've been told," I said agreeably.

  There was a silence. I smiled at her pleasantly, and she looked at me, at all the telltale features. The pale skin. The dark circles under my eyes; my eyes themselves, which were ringed with the faint lines of my contacts. She inhaled shallowly, deliberately, detecting the "perfume". Perhaps she was thinking about my voice, how clear and chiming I sounded.

  Our drinks came, my water and her iced tea. She clutched at her glass and had a sip, almost spilling. There was no protocol in her memory for what to do when a vampire took her out for lobster.

  I took a swallow of water. Although Rachel didn't smell tasty, that didn't shut down venom production - if anything, it had gone up a bit, perhaps in preparation for a fight. That, and there were the waiter and the other diners. The air had some kick to it.

  The food arrived.

  "If you want any of this, you can have it," I said, gesturing at the halibut and the sides accompanying it. "I'm not hungry."

  "Bella, those stories are all fictional," Rachel said. "Imaginary. Made up."

  "That may be," I acknowledged. "On an entirely unrelated topic, did you know that there are a lot of fictional stories in which the Earth is populated by creatures called "humans"? I understand it's a popular genre."

  Rachel gaped at me. She didn't even touch her lobster.

  * * *

  I waited patiently, and eventually the steam wafting up from her plate overrode her shock. She started dipping bites of crustacean into butter and mechanically chewing them. But except for the minimum attention to keep lobster juice from dribbling down her front, she was focused on me.

  "Your eyes," she observed, a quarter of the way through her plate, "are brown."

  "I'm wearing contact lenses," I told her, and fished the box out of my purse to show her.

  She looked at the box of cosmetic lenses like it was a horrible spider, and started eating faster. She finished all of the easily accessible lobster, although delicate work with the pick could have gotten more out of the shell. "You said Cullen, right?" she asked, starting on her asparagus.

  "That's my married name, yes," I replied. "My husband's name is Edward."

  "And how old is Edward?" asked Rachel, pronouncing the name with some distaste.

  "Older than I am. Looks remarkably well-preserved, though," I told her. She swiped one of my halibut fillets as I'd invited her to do and plunked it into the tartar sauce it had come with. "Did you have breakfast?" I asked.

  "Yeah, I did, I'm just... really hungry all of a sudden..." muttered Rachel, sounding as puzzled by her appetite as I was. She ate the fish and took another piece. From across the table, I thought the warmth emanating from her was getting hotter...

  I didn't have any information to the effect that activation came with enhanced appetite. Perhaps it had never seemed important to mention it next to the "turn into a giant wolf" part. Or she was just hungry for no particular reason. It seemed very fast.

  But better to err on the side of caution.

  I reached into my purse, peeled out a hundred dollar bill, and laid it on the table. "Rachel, we need to get out of here now."

  "Huh?"

  "We are in the middle of Spokane and you are exhibiting a peculiar symptom after having spent some time hanging out with... me," I said. "Let'sstop being in the middle of Spokane. Right now."

  Rachel looked at me like she'd been punched in the stomach. Like I had punched her in the stomach, maybe - shocked, hating that she believed but believing anyway, she couldn't have been more distraught if she'd learned that her father wasn't or that her twin was dead or something equally horrible.

  I failed to check one twist of guilt, but the need to get her someplace safe was stronger than the need to apologize for what I had already done, and it wouldn't kill her -

  "Rachel, we need to go," I said. And finally, she got to her feet, looking woozy. She managed to follow me to my car without my having to carry her, and sat in the passenger seat without even looking at the seatbelt. I didn't bring up her bad safety habit, just pulled out and wove through traffic as fast as I could. I ran four red lights, taking I-90 back the way I'd come at speeds even Edward would approve of. Rachel shook in her seat, sweating, but not transforming. Maybe the process took a while and she was only in the beginning stages.

  I crossed the state line into Idaho and drove into the national forest, where I pulled over and abandoned the car. I pulled Rachel by the hand into the trees, but she stumbled, and I was desperate to get her out of sight. Keeping my ears open for hikers or forest rangers, I picked her up and fled into the deep woods.

  * * *

  I found a place that didn't look or smell like humans had visited it much - at least since the last rain, which didn't mean much, but it was something. Rachel looked sick, but not deathly ill. Her heart was beating fast, but not faster than healthy ones beat under stress. She was breathing oddly, but not more oddly than she had when she'd only been trying to avoid my "perfume". She sat on the ground cross-legged and held onto her ankles, looking vacantly at a tree.

  "How do you feel?" I asked, after we'd been in the chosen spot for two minutes without speaking.

  "I had a class this afternoon," she said faintly.

  "You take the summ
er semester?"

  "Don't like going home," she said. "Reminds me of Mom..."

  I'd known that Billy's wife was dead, although for some reason I'd never processed the translation that his children were motherless. "How do you feel?" I asked again.

  "Wrong. Too - too something. Alone," Rachel said.

  "I'm right here."

  "I know you are," she snapped. "You asked me how I felt and I'm telling you, not about whether I knew you were there!"

  "Well, what do you mean, alone?"

  "It's - it's like - It's the way I always thought I'd feel if something happened to Becky," she whispered. "In stories, not the true stories, other ones, there are magical twins who know how each other are feeling, know if anything's gone wrong - and we don't have that, once Becky broke her arm falling down the stairs and I was out climbing trees and didn't know until an hour later. I didn't feel anything. But I pretended I did and this is how I pretended it would feel if shedied," Rachel whined. The words came out of her in an unfiltered rush.

  "If you tell me her number, I'll call her right now and make sure she's all right," I offered softly.

  "Are you going to do this to her too?" snarled Rachel. "What's wrong with you? You knew this would happen, didn't you? Bella, what the hell, I had a god damn class this afternoon."

  "There are other vampires," I said quietly. "The last time they found out about a species of werewolves, they wiped them out. I wanted you to be able to defend yourselves. As far as I know, Becky is alive. I want her to stay that way, and you, and your brother, and everyone else I can get to."

  "Your solution to the existence of vampires who don't like werewolves is to create werewolves?" Rachel demanded incredulously. The excess heat was really pouring out of her; I definitely wasn't imagining it. It was like being next to an open oven.

  I repeated my spiel about how little it would matter to the Volturi if she were active or not. Rachel listened, but didn't look impressed. She just glared stonily at me when I ran out of disparaging things to say about typical vampire ethics and the lack of protection being inactive would offer her. I tacked on, "I hear that when you shapeshift regularly, you won't age. You can live forever."

  "Like this?" she asked miserably. "You want me to live forever feeling like I've got a few big holes in me?"

  "Maybe it'll go away when you properly transform," I said encouragingly. "Or when there are more wolves. I think you're supposed to come in packs; that could be all it is, that you don't have a pack yet."

  She whined and slumped forward. "Leave me alone."

  "I don't think that's a good idea - you might be disoriented when you transform, or it might take a long time and I might have to bring you food, or -"

  "I said leave me alone!" howled Rachel, and then she exploded.

  * * *

  The transformation was insanely fast. Only vampiric visual processing let me catch any detail. Rachel disappeared in a cloud of cream-white fur, which whooshed outward for a radius of a couple yards in all directions. Shreds of cloth were forced away from her, leaving tatters of her clothes dangling from nearby twigs and strewn on the ground. The fur pulled in as though vacuumed, farther some places than others, and formed the shape of a wolf. But no ordinary wolf: she was at least six or seven times the size of the Eurasian one I'd eaten in Norway. She was the size of a bear - a large bear.

  Too fast for me react, she shot a paw forward and clobbered me across the face.

  Deep gashes opened across my cheeks; my right eye was put out of commission and my field of vision shrank by a third, losing depth. Pain sliced through astonishment -

  Rachel was snarling and pulling her foot back, and my mind was a war zone between the urge to kill her and the instinct to flee. Between the wounds and the shock and the fact that she smelled much more strongly than she had, smelled dangerous, like an enemy, there was no room for me to wonder if she could be calmed down. If she only planned to hit me once. If she'd actually intended to do it at all.

  I bolted.

  And Rachel gave chase, and she was faster than me - but even with one eye unresponsive, I was still smaller, nimbler, better able to get through the trees without running into them. I heard small branches snap off in her coat as she pursued me. They slowed her down enough that I was able to keep ahead of her.

  I hadn't even picked a direction when I'd taken off. Nine seconds into the chase I recovered a little presence of mind, added up all the clues about our location, veered right, and led her deeper into the woods - the last thing I needed was to encourage her towards downtown Spokane. She followed, crashing through brush and growling.

  Gradually, as the cuts in my face pulled themselves closed, my ability to think crept back to me. At first I only applied this to running away more effectively: I could turn on a dime even at top speed. She had a wider turn radius and more weight to add inertia, so I zigzagged and she fell behind a little at a time. I could afford to quit pumping one arm and prod my damaged eye. It was healing too, although the vision hadn't started to return. I reminded myself that vampire venom was supposedly the only thing that would leave a scar.

  I started yelling her name, over and over. "Rachel! Rachel!" I hollered at her. I thought I heard her slow a little, and though I didn't let up on my own pace, I added, "Calm down!"

  She slowed to - relatively speaking - a jog. I dared to look over my shoulder, and somehow she appeared puzzled, with liquidy black eyes standing out in confusion from her eggshell-colored fur.

  Indistinct light made it through my hurt eye as it glued some of its connections back together. I risked halting my run, and instead I scrabbled my way up a tree. Rachel didn't look like she'd be able to climb, and I could fling myself to another treetop without being too easy to follow, if she became hostile again or tried to knock over my perch.

  She slowed to a brisk trot, and approached my tree. She paced around it, sniffing, and finally sat.

  "Are you okay?" I asked her. She was very fluffy. If she'd been a lot smaller and less toothy, she'd have made a popular stuffed animal. I began to be able to see the edges of shapes with my right eye.

  She scratched a branch out of the fur on her neck with one hind leg and made a whining noise.

  "...Can you talk?" I asked her, adjusting my hold on the branch I clung to.

  Ponderously, she shook her head from side to side. She made a little grumbling sound.

  "Then I guess I can't very well ask you why you swatted me," I said. "Or much of anything. I suppose I could make guesses, and if I can't figure it out, we can go through the alphabet and you can spell it?" She made a laugh-like snorting sound, and her tail wagged once.

  "Okay, nod or shake your head for the usual reasons, and, uh, bark at me if it's close but partly wrong or incomplete?" I suggested. She nodded, and so I started guessing. "Do I smell revolting? Like something you've instinctively got to fight?"

  She nodded again, emphatically, then stuck out her tongue in a remarkably humanlike expression of disgust.

  "So it helps that I'm up a tree, I'm guessing? Harder to smell me from up here?" She nodded once more, repeated the laughing sound. "Is that the only reason you attacked me?" It wasn't. "Are you pissed off that I activated you?" She was, but that wasn't everything. "Still feel like you've got a few big holes in you?" She barked.

  My vision resolved to its normal acuity in the injured eye, and I blinked twice. My contact lens from that eye was completely gone, and the other was about halfway through dissolving; I plucked it out and flicked it away, not in Rachel's direction. "I really didn't expect you to transform that fast," I said apologetically. "I was told it was a gradual sort of thing - I figured I'd be able to drive you all the way to La Push before anything happened."

  Rachel sat back on her haunches and put one forepaw on top of the other in the air. Trying to mime something? "Do you think it's because I touched your hand?" I guessed. "That could be it, could speed things up." She nodded. The last of the pain in my face faded, everything having k
nitted to its proper smoothness.

  My phone rang.

  * * *

  I apologized to Rachel, and she waved a paw as though to graciously permit me to take the call. It was Alice. I held the phone to my ear.

  "Bella?" she asked, panicked. "Is that you? Are you okay?"

  "I'm fine, Alice. What is it?" I asked.

  "What the hell happened just now?" she asked. "I can't see you at all."

  "Really?" I asked. "I'm fine, I promise. You didn't panic Edward about this or anything, did you?"

  "No, I tried you first, I'm glad you're okay - whathappened?"

  Seventy years before, Alice hadn't been part of the Cullen family...

  "Maybe it's a new development of my power," I suggested. Blatant lie. I didn't think it was any such thing. The timing was too convenient for it to be anything but Rachel. "You can't see me atall?" I decided that after I hung up the phone, I'd ask Rachel to stay put and run a mile or so away, then back.

  "Not a bit - no, wait, I'm getting something now. You'll be in the woods, somewhere... It's just a flash, you're running and stopping and turning around and disappearing again."

  "I guess it doesn't work consistently, at least not yet," I said. "I'm not trying to be invisible to you too, Alice, promise. But I'm okay and you shouldn't panic or worry anyone else."

  "Okay," Alice said uncomfortably. "Wait, now even that flash has gone!"

  "I'm fine, Alice," I told her again. "I have to go." Reluctantly, she bade me goodbye and I put the phone back in my pocket.

  "Sorry about that,"I said to Rachel. "I think your species is invisible to my psychic sister."

  Rachel uttered another wolfy laugh. Then, abrubtly, her form contracted and she was human-shaped again, standing naked in the middle of the woods. "Ack!" she yelped.