I had my mind made up. I was done letting the hybrid run the show. She could've had a whole army full of monsters hiding out in the woods for all I cared, that, after witnessing what she'd done to Blondie and Sam, I knew I'd seen enough. That was the last straw for me. Now I could clearly see what the leech was up to.
She was taking us out one by one.
First came Nessie, then Edward, after that it was Sam, and now Blondie. Still, I knew she wasn't going to stop there. If her pattern of attacks had taught me anything, I'd say she was only getting started. Her mission was to hunt us down until she killed every last one of us. No question in my mind about that.
There was only one little obstacle she'd underestimated. Me. I, Jacob Black, was going to stop her. I solemnly vowed to annihilate that freak of nature for good, even if I had to sacrifice my own life to do so.
Every titan had its weakness. I was by no means an expert in mythology, but I'd read just enough to know this much and I intended to use it to my full advantage. It didn't matter how powerful a shapeshifter she may be, or even how many bloodsuckers she had under her command.
The wolf within me had foretold my destiny, and now there was no turning back. I would be the David to her Goliath, the Perseus to her Medusa, the slayer to her dragon. You get the point.
Bottom line is I was certain that using the talisman against the hybrid would be my only chance at defeating her. But I had yet to find out how. Surely, there had to be a secret to it, and, so far, everything seemed to indicate that the answer I sought awaited me in the Spirit World.
I sharply turned on my heels and was about to go back in the house, when I realized that Sam was languishing on and off behind me, stumbling between steps like he was about to faint. It was then that I became aware of the inflammation around the claw marks on his shoulder.
The wounds didn't seem to be healing as fast as they were supposed to. In fact, I even doubted they were healing at all. They appeared swollen and infected, with some kind of watery fluid oozing out from them.
Doing my best not to cringe at its sight, I could only hope the discharge was nothing more than harmless pus, something that could be treated at home with any over-the-counter antibiotic. I didn't even want to consider the possibility that it might be vampire venom, because, if that were the case, Sam would drop dead in less than an hour. Vampire venom was the one thing in this world that could kill a werewolf.
Tucking my shoulder under Sam's good arm, I took long strides towards the house as I hauled him along. "Where are the other wolves?" I urged him on, having to shake him over and over so he would open his droopy eyelids.
"I lost them." His voice sounded so feeble, I could barely understand what he'd just said. "We got separated."
As if I didn't have way more than my share of worries to deal with already! Yet, even then, I forged ahead, trying with all my might to fend off the visions of carnage that kept invading my mind.
I scrambled up the front steps in a panic, wondering what the hell I was supposed to tell Doctor Cullen about Blondie. That I let some winged gargoyle fly away with his daughter? Just the mere thought of it plagued me with so much shame, that the blood rushed up to my face, flushing my cheeks red hot.
But I knew Dr. Cullen would be the only one who could tell me if Sam had been infected with vampire venom or not, so I mustered up the courage to open the door and quickly dragged Sam inside.
"What happened to him?" Emily shrieked, bolting towards her wounded fiancé.
Too dumbfounded to be able to speak, I gaped in shock at my surroundings. The protective circle had been broken, and Esme was helping Alice gather their things. The Cullens were obviously getting ready to leave, but where were they going? Nessie was still missing, Emmett and Jasper hadn't come back from the woods, Edward's eyes had the same vacant expression as before, and I had yet to break the news about Blondie.
I froze in place as I caught sight of Bella who sat at the dining table, her eyes having changed from pitch black to a bright crimson red. This meant she'd been drinking human blood. Avoiding my glare, she lifted a wine glass to her lips and, in a single gulp, drank the burgundy liquid in it. I wondered whose blood she might be drinking but was afraid to ask.
As it turned out, I didn't have to ask anyone, because the answer lay right in front of me. Sitting across from Bella at the table was the hermit, his sleeve rolled up to make room for the intravenous tube connected to his arm. The other end of the tube was hooked up to a clear plastic bag full of blood, same as the ones we'd used to collect the blood I'd donated to Edward.
"What's going on here?" I finally managed, swallowing hard.
"Jacob," Dr. Cullen replied as he removed the tube from the hermit's arm and pressed a cotton ball against the tiny puncture wound left by the needle. "Come with me, son, I'll explain everything."
"You're not leaving, are you?" I looked at Bella, hoping she'd side with me, but I could see in her eyes that her only concern right now was to get her empty glass refilled.
Gently nodding his head, Dr. Cullen emptied the blood from the bag into the glass and handed it to Bella. "Let's have a talk," he told me.
"You can't leave!" I raised my voice, unable to hide my frustration. "Tell them, Sam! Tell them what just happened to Rosalie!"
But Sam just kept drifting in and out of consciousness, so he simply groaned something unintelligible and fell asleep in Emily's arms.
"I saw what happened to her," Alice interfered, her tone of voice strangely calm, and her attitude detached. Cold even. "That's why we have to leave."
She was acting so oddly serious, so unlike the Alice I'd come to know, that it made me remember the time before Nessie was born. How Alice used to be a total jerk to me. Now I was seeing that side of her again. No pixie smile, no bubbly personality, no room for negotiation. Nothing. Just a complete brick wall unwilling to budge.
I narrowed my eyes suspiciously as Esme and Bella stood on either side of Edward, holding on to his arms to help him up from the couch where he'd been sitting. Along with Alice, each of them exchanged farewell hugs with Seth and Leah, then, went on to lead a very confused Edward towards the front door. Alice followed behind them as though Edward were a prisoner they were escorting out.
"Bella!" I pleaded once more, although, in my heart, I already knew it was pointless to even attempt to change her mind. Her crimson eyes showed me she was determined to leave no matter what.
My heart sank when I picked up the same cold and detached vibes from Bella that I'd picked up from Alice. I looked at her and tried hard to swallow down the lump in my throat that was suddenly choking me. Even though I couldn't see Bella's shield, I could definitely sense when she had it up. It didn't happen often, only during a couple of arguments we'd had over Nessie a few years ago, but that was enough for me to learn how to tell the difference. And right now I could tell she had her shield up. She was shutting me out, and it tore me up inside that she'd do this to me.
Bella waved at me, and her skin shimmered like thousands of miniature diamonds as the sunlight shone in through the open door. "Listen to Carlisle and you'll understand everything," she told me. And, with that, she blew me a kiss and walked out the door.
I literally felt like one of my limbs had been amputated abruptly and without anesthesia. It hurt that bad to see her go, especially under such circumstances. For all I knew, this might be the last time I'd ever see her.
Dr. Cullen gestured for me to follow him down the hallway, and I did so reluctantly, since no explanation in this world, no matter how logical, would ever convince me to let Bella go.
For one, she was my strongest link to Nessie, but there was also the emotional bond we shared—a bond that had only grown stronger with time. Without question, Bella was my best friend. And yet, with all the confusing emotions she'd stirred up inside me recently, I had a sneaking suspicion that things were about to get really complicated between us . . .
If we survived to see each other again.
As much as I hated to admit it, the time had come for me to face the music. Nessie's party was officially over, although I could hardly call the ordeal from the night before a party, but still. Whatever we chose to call it, after the Cullens announced they were leaving, everyone dispersed, so I guess it all amounted to the same thing in the end. Party or no party, it was over anyway, and now there was a hell of a mess left behind to clean up.
Seth walked Old Quil home, while Leah pushed my dad in his wheelchair back to our house. Emily ran to the store to buy some ingredients for the hermit so he could concoct one of his magic potions to help heal Sam's infected wounds.
I couldn't particularly say things were working out, because our pack brothers were still scattered out in the woods along with Emmett and Jasper, but at least Old Quil and my dad were going to get some much needed rest.
At the risk of feeling like a complete ass for being so selfish, I had to confess—if only to myself—that it was kind of a relief to know that the hybrid had abducted Blondie. Yet it was only because I hoped with all my heart that the hybrid would take Blondie to the same place where she was keeping Nessie.
Under the circumstances, this gave me a small measure of peace, because at least I knew that Nessie wouldn't have to face the Order of the Dragon alone. As a matter of fact, if my suspicions were correct, Nessie's chances of escaping had just increased exponentially now that Blondie was with her.
But, ultimately, these were all just theories floating about in my restless mind. After two nights without sleeping, I was a nervous wreck, not to mention the fact that losing all that blood had done strange things to my head.
"Jacob, I know you're worried," Dr. Cullen said as he pulled up a chair and sat down near the small kitchen table at the back of the house. "But can you please sit down and listen to me for a moment?"
The air in the Clearwaters' kitchen felt stuffy, and, on top of that, the early morning light hurt my eyes every time I tried to look through the window. There was no way I could calm down enough to sit still, not even for a second. So much was at stake for me, that I felt like I was drowning in my own desperation.
My hands damp and clammy with distress, I roamed in circles back and forth, pacing around like a caged beast. "You can't take Bella away. Nessie needs her. I need her. We have to stick together against this monster. It's the only way—"
He cut me off. "I can't allow this alliance to continue, Jake," he muttered, looking emotionally spent as he rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands.
I clenched my jaw, and it took a huge effort to control myself. "Why?"
"Because the hybrid—" he pressed his lips together to stop himself, then hesitated. It gave me the distinct impression that he was choosing his words carefully. "The hybrid's not after you . . . or after your people." Pausing again, he sighed and looked straight into my eyes. "She's after my clan."
"How do you know that?" I demanded. All of a sudden, the squeaky clean concept I'd always had of him began to crumble.
His eyes glinted with an unrelenting intensity. "It doesn't matter how I know it—"
"Yes, it does!" Now it was I who interrupted him. "I knew you were hiding something, Dr. Cullen, and that's very unfair."
But he stood his ground. "I don't want anyone else to get hurt. How is that unfair?"
"I'm part of your clan," I declared, unwilling to back down. "If Bella or Nessie get hurt, I get hurt, too, and you can't deny that."
I could tell he felt torn. He might try to lie to me with his words, but the wavering expression in his eyes betrayed him. Yet, even then, he insisted. "I won't let you drag your people into this any longer, Jacob. Your duty is to protect them, just the same as it's my duty to protect my own."
"But why would she want to destroy your clan?" I pressed on.
Lowering his eyes, he deliberated, probably debating with himself on whether or not he should tell me anything else. After a long silence, he shook his head like he didn't want to deal with me anymore and got up to leave. Just like that. He must be crazy to think I'd let him walk out on me and leave me hanging like this.
Frustrated to no end, I stood in the doorway to block his way out and got in his face as he tried to get past me. "Why won't you answer me, Doctor? You know what she's after, don't you?" I hated myself for disrespecting him like this. I knew he was trying to look out for my people and me, but, at the same time, he wasn't playing fair. Keeping secrets wasn't going to help us. If anything, it was going to bring us all down for being divided.
After a short time, he finally admitted it. "She's after me."
His confession hit me so hard, that I felt like the ground had cracked open like a giant mouth, and now an overwhelmingly strong magnetic force was pulling me down towards the bottom, a black hole trying to swallow me whole. "And you knew this all along?"
"I suspected it, but I had to be sure first. I didn't want to set off any false alarms."
Whatever his explanation may be, I'd lost all my faith in him and I knew he could sense it in my tone of voice. "You let her take Nessie. You let her drain Edward's blood. You let your sons get attacked by the hellhound, and then you let her take Rose! And you still didn't bother to warn us about her?"
He hung his head in shame and shut his eyes tightly as if doing that could make it all go away. "I'm doing something about it now. I'm dissolving the alliance so your people will be safe. It's the best thing I can do to make things right."
"It's too late for that, Dr. Cullen. The only thing that can save us now is the truth. You owe it to all of us. Why is the hybrid after you? You have to tell me."
He didn't even have time to answer. My indignation still hung in the air when, out of nowhere, something interrupted our argument.
It was the hermit who had just barged into the kitchen, screaming his heart out. "He's dead!" he kept yelling over and over. "I couldn't stop the venom from spreading. Sam is dead."
My mind went blank from the shock, and I reacted automatically. Out of reflex and without thinking, I got to the living room so fast, it almost felt like I'd teleported my way over there. Still in denial, I felt like I'd turned to stone as I looked at Sam. I just had to see him with my own eyes to believe it.
I found him lying very still on the floor, his face up, and with coins for the ferryman on his closed eyelids. Most likely the hermit's superstitions had led him to place the coins on Sam's eyes like they often used to do back in the Dark Ages to keep a spirit from remaining earthbound.
I could tell Sam wasn't breathing, especially after I noticed the deathly hue of his lips, and how the unusually pale skin tone of his face was now beginning to spread all over his body. I'd never seen a pack brother die before, and yet, just by watching him, I knew for sure that the hermit was right. Sam was really dead.
Dr. Cullen got there just as fast as I did. Dropping down on his knees, he pressed two fingers to Sam's neck to feel his pulse, and I saw the same look of realization register in his face. Shaking his head no, he shot me a penetrating gaze that confirmed what I already knew.
I had let Sam die.
Hating myself and wishing it had been me instead of him, I collapsed into an armchair and covered my face so no one could see my tears.
Sam Uley, the Alpha of our pack, the first one in our generation to change from man to wolf. The one who'd helped each of us make the transition after he himself had been forced to tough it out on his own. He'd been there for us through thick and thin, showing us the way of the shapeshifter and helping us adapt to the painful changes in our bodies that came with phasing the first few times.
In spite of our many disagreements, none of us could deny that we all looked up to him. No matter how much we complained about his decisions sometimes, in the end, he was always the one we came to when we didn't know what to do. That was Sam. That was our Sam.
And now he was gone. Killed by the hybrid's venom, all because of my self-serving pigheadedness.
The sight of his corpse sent a shiver down my spine, and I felt like my whole life as I knew it had been shattered in an instant. Maybe Dr. Cullen was right about everything he'd just said to me. If only I had listened to him from the start, Sam might still be alive.
Maybe I could've saved his life somehow. I knew vampire venom spread impossibly fast in a werewolf. Even though we weren't children of the moon, our kind was the mortal enemy of vampires for a very powerful reason. Vampire venom had a different effect on a werewolf than it did on other humans.
To us it was lethal. It was our one and only weakness, and yet it was also the very same defense mechanism that prevented us from becoming vampires. Our self-healing powers made us immune to getting infected by the venom, which meant that shapeshifting wolves like us weren't able to become vampires. Our system reacted to the venom by shutting down and killing us in the process, so at least I knew that Sam was safe from becoming a vampire.
But the fact still remained that Sam was dead, and I'd done nothing, not a single thing, to try and save him.
All this time I'd been so focused on solving my own problems that I'd wound up forgetting about everyone else. What was going to happen to Emily now? Who would take Sam's place as the Alpha? How was I supposed to travel to the Spirit World to consult with the Wolf Ancestors?
The questions just kept on piling up in my head as I remembered that Sam was the only one willing to tell me how to spirit travel. Now the secret had died with him, and there was no way that Old Quil, or even my dad were going to tell me how to spirit travel. To them it was unthinkable, so if I wanted to do it, I'd have to figure it out on my own.
Right as I started wondering who might be able to help me, the hermit broke my concentration.
"He's here," he whispered.
Quickly wiping off my tears, I sprung up from the armchair and looked around in confusion. "Who?"
That's when I realized that the hermit was the only one there, and Dr. Cullen was nowhere in sight.
"Where's Dr. Cullen?" I asked, my stomach in knots. Somewhere deep inside me, I already knew what the hermit was going to tell me, but I just had to hear it said out loud.
The answer he gave me hurt so much, it felt like someone had stabbed me in the heart with an icy dagger. "He left."
Unwilling to face the truth, I frantically shook my head and declared, "No! He's still here!" I struggled to no avail to believe my own lie. But as soon as I swung open the front door, a surge of anguish welled up inside me. Both of the cars the Cullens had driven here from Port Angeles were gone.
"But you just told me he was here!" I complained to the hermit as I came back inside and slammed the door shut behind me.
"I didn't mean Dr. Cullen."
There was no one there. I had no idea what the hermit was talking about, but I also didn't like the ominous tone of his voice as he said it. Once again, I felt so defeated and hopeless that I envied Sam for being dead. Still, I didn't want to tell the hermit what I really thought of him, because I kind of understood how anyone would go mad after everything that had happened.
It was then that a weird sensation I suddenly felt showed me that I may have been a little too quick to dismiss what the hermit had said as madness. Unless madness was contagious, of course, but I could've sworn that someone, or something, was in that living room with us.
I'd never experienced anything like it before, so it's not like I had something to compare it to.
All I knew was that the hermit and I weren't alone. I could clearly sense a presence that, somehow, had shifted the energy all around us. It almost felt like it wanted to make its presence known. Whatever it was, it wanted to get our attention.
"You feel it, too, don't you?" the hermit asked.
Under different circumstances, I would've been way too embarrassed to admit it out loud, but, with the hermit being an immortal alchemist and all, I actually felt sort of at ease confiding in him.
Swallowing hard, I asked him flat out, "Is it . . . Sam's spirit?"
"Yes," the hermit replied like it was the most ordinary thing in the world. "He's still lingering here."
It only took me a moment to figure out what Sam wanted. He knew just as well as I did that our only hope to defeat the hybrid was for me to consult with the Spirit Warriors. So he had refused to move towards the light at the end of the tunnel, like spirits are supposed to do after their physical body dies, just so he could guide me.
Even in death, Sam was a much better man than me. Not only had he sacrificed his own life and his future happiness with Emily, but now, on top of everything, he was also risking an awful fate.
Our elders had drilled this warning into our heads from the moment each of us grew old enough to understand it. Death was merely a rite of passage, a transformation, a new beginning. Any spirit who lingered and refused to move towards the light at the moment of death could wind up stuck between the worlds.
That, according to the elders' teachings, was a fate worse than death. Those were the spirits that many cultures in the world referred to as earthbound spirits. Lost souls that were stuck wandering the earth sometimes for hundreds, or even thousands, of years.
I couldn't let that happen to Sam. I'd already let him die, so now my only chance for redemption was to make sure he made it safely to the afterlife where he belonged.
A part of me just wanted to jump on a motorcycle and go after Bella. I still believed I could convince her to stay so we could go find Nessie together. Yet, in the end, I suppressed the urge to do it and accepted Dr. Cullen's decision instead.
"I need your help," I told the hermit. "I need you to take me to the most hidden place in the woods that you know."
Even though I couldn't see his face under the hood, I could still hear the shock in his voice when he asked me, "What for?"
"I need a place to hide my body so no one can find it."
Now it was him who probably thought I'd lost my mind. "And why would you want to do that, son?"
"I'm going to travel outside my body and I need you to tell me how to do it."
"What makes you think I can tell you that?" the hermit asked defensively.
"I saw the titles of your books when I put out the fire." I felt confident that he knew exactly what
I was talking about, so I pressed on. "Up there in the mountains where we found you."
He must have heard it in my voice just how determined I was, because he didn't say a word. And yet I noticed by the way he fidgeted with the skin around his fingernails that what I'd just said had struck a nerve.
Taking advantage of his silence, I proceeded, "Journeys outside the body, astral projection, remote viewing. Ring any bells?" I paused to wait for a reaction, but he still didn't have anything to say, so I kept going. "I know why you were so worried about your books getting burned. Because you've been experimenting with them for centuries. I know you can tell me how to do it, because you've done it yourself."
I stood right in front of him to make it clear that I had no intention of stopping. I was going to keep pushing his buttons until he cracked under the pressure.
But, apparently, he was smart enough to play along, or at least make me think that he was.
"You're right," he admitted, raising his voice. In the tone he'd spoken, though, he may as well have said, "Enough!"
I almost gave into the impulse of bombarding him with questions, but I backed off for a bit and waited to see what he wanted to tell me.
"It's true," he confirmed. "I have spirit-traveled many times before."
The optimistic side of me leaned towards thinking I'd won this battle—more of a minor hurdle, really. Or so I thought. Now all I had to do was sit back and listen as the cryptic monk spilled out his guts and revealed everything he'd learned during his travels to the beyond. It seemed simple enough, and I couldn't imagine why he, of all people, would refuse to help me.
But, as it had been happening all too often lately, optimism did me no good whatsoever. To the contrary, I was in for yet another freaky surprise.
Instead of giving me the convenient step-by-step list of instructions I was expecting, the hermit drew near the one window in the house where the sun shone in the brightest. Then, without warning, he pulled down his hood to uncover his face.
Once again, just like on the night I'd snatched the blindfold from him, I found myself staring right at the mess of gnarly scars around his eyes. To say it wasn't pretty would've been an understatement. Only this time, it wasn't merely the soft glow of the firelight that illuminated the hideousness. Now I had to endure it all in broad daylight, with no nightly shadows to mitigate the full impact of the shock. And, boy, was it a rude awakening!
"Do you see these scars, Jacob?" He pointed at his eyes, his shriveled fingers shaking, and his movements frail and weak. Yet he spoke with so much authority, that he made me feel insignificant in his presence. "I need you to take a good look at these scars," he insisted, orienting his face towards me as though he could sense the exact spot where I was standing.
Even as I towered over him with my tall, imposing frame, I still couldn't find the strength to look into the filmy white layer that concealed his pupils. Supposedly, he couldn't see anything without the blindfold on. And yet, for some strange reason I couldn't explain, my skin crawled with the sensation that he might still be able to see me somehow. Or, even worse, see right through me.
Unable to contain myself any longer, I exploded. "I've seen them!" I blurted out much louder than I'd intended. "I've seen your scars, okay? Now what?"
"Don't you want to know how I got them?" the hermit asked as he took a step in my direction.
Letting my wolf instincts take over, I acted without thinking. I flinched backwards and looked away horrified, unable to stomach the haunting visions stirring up inside me. As irrationally as I was thinking at that point, the idea crossed my mind that maybe his scars had some type of "Medusa" effect on anyone who laid eyes on them.
For a second there, I went as far as to examine my arms and hands just to make sure I hadn't wound up a stone statue. At the very least, I had to give the hermit credit for knocking the boldness out of me so quickly and thoroughly. Next time, I'd think twice about pushing him over the edge.
"Don't worry," he chuckled, mimicking my snarky attitude from before. "My scars don't have magical powers." He fluttered his hands in front of my face as he said this in a mockingly scary tone. "You're not going to be damned forever for looking at them." He was actually making fun of me. A deformed old man. Who would've thought?
A sudden burst of anger shot straight up to my face, and, before I knew it, my cheeks were smoldering. "Listen to me, Padre," I told him in the most menacing tone I could manage. "It's going to take a hell of a lot more than that to scare me."
"You really think I'm doing this just to scare you, son?" This time, his tone of voice sounded different, much more serious than before, but also compassionate and sincere. "I'm trying to warn you so you don't end up looking like this someday."
My jaw dropped in disbelief as I put two and two together. "You mean to tell me—?" A gasp caught in my throat, forcing me to stop abruptly to regain my bearings. I had to give myself a moment to digest what I'd just realized. "Of course!" I exclaimed. "Someone did this to you."
He nodded his agreement, slowly pulling the hood back up over his head.
Now I understood why he wanted me to look at his scars. "They attacked you while you were spirit-traveling."
"Yes," he confirmed. "They spied on me and waited until my spirit was gone out of my body.
Then, they burned my eyes to prove that I couldn't feel any pain."
It was hard to believe what I was hearing, but I knew he was telling the truth. "Who were they?" I asked.
"My fellow monks. They believed it was a mortal sin to read books about the supernatural. That's how I became a fugitive of the law. The Church accused me of practicing witchcraft and condemned me to die at the gallows."
"But you escaped," I interjected.
He nodded in response. "Indeed. And yet, somehow . . . I'm still a prisoner."
I fell silent, understanding full well what he meant. It must be awful to possess the secret of immortality, when you had to spend your whole life hiding your face under a hood.
Lowering my head to gaze down at the floor, I remembered what had happened to Taha-Aki, the last great Spirit Chief of the Quileute Nation.
His body had been stolen from the forest, where he thought he'd hidden it away safely. When he tried to come back to it, he found that his enemy, Utlapa, had seized it to impersonate him as the Chief.
Some time later, after Taha-Aki managed to take over the body of a wolf so he could return to his people, the first thing he'd done was eliminate spirit traveling from our traditions by banning its practice for good.
I was already well aware of the potential dangers of spirit traveling. But now, the hermit's scars only made the reality of it that much more vivid, especially when I knew that the hybrid and her minions were out there, waiting for us to slip up so they could hunt us down.
Yet, even then, the prospect of surrendering was altogether out of the question. I had to push the envelope. Sam's death wasn't going to be in vain, and I most certainly wasn't going to give up on Nessie. Whether or not she'd run away willingly still remained to be seen, and there was only one way I could think of to find out the truth.
After a brief moment of reflection, I announced my final decision to the hermit. "I'll take my chances."
Judging by the way he sighed while shaking his head, I could tell the news hadn't come as a surprise to him.
I couldn't help but feeling a twinge of guilt for having been so rude to him before. "Padre, I appreciate your concern, I really do, but there's something that doesn't make sense to me. You're an alchemist. I mean, if you figured out how to concoct the elixir of life, I'm sure you can find a potion to heal your skin, too. Right?"
"You really think it's that simple, don't you?" he asked as though my ignorance had offended him.
"Of course not," I retorted, "but the clock is ticking, and we're wasting precious time. Can we discuss this along the way? We really need to get going."
He mulled over what I'd said for a short time, then replied, "Fine. If you insist. But only on one condition."
"Name your price," I fired back without fear.
"You must become my apprentice."
Sam's Thunderbird shook violently as I drove it up the dirt road leading to the rainforest. The wind blew thick, whirling clouds of sand at the windshield as I made sharp turns along the curvy path ahead. I'd been awake for almost two days straight now, and my eyelids stung with the afternoon sun.
Next to me, in the passenger's seat, my new mentor pressed his back hard against the seat to keep from bouncing around inside the car. My new mentor. It sounded so surreal. Not even in my wildest dreams could I have ever imagined that I'd wind up becoming an alchemist's apprentice.
To be brutally honest, the whole idea of becoming the hermit's apprentice seemed ridiculous to me, not to mention completely unnecessary, but it's not like I'd had much of a choice.
Old Quil and my dad would've never told me how to spirit travel for the very same reason that the hermit had also been so reluctant to reveal what he knew. It was dangerous, it was reckless, and it had the potential of condemning me to a fate worse than death.
But even then, in the end, I'd wound up agreeing to the hermit's request more out of desperation than anything else. I didn't even want to consider the implications of such an agreement, and a part of me kept wondering what I may have gotten myself into.
Still, none of that mattered anymore. The harsh reality was that I could easily have just made a deal with the devil and now might be heading straight for my own demise, or something far worse, as I had no clue about the hermit's motives.
And yet, here we were, driving back up to the ruins where the hermit had lived for God knows how long, none other than onboard Sam's most prized possession, his restored Thunderbird. I trusted he would've wanted me to have it, what with him being dead and all, so I considered it mine now.
And besides, the whole idea of traveling to the spirit world had been Sam's in the first place, so I honestly didn't think he'd mind. Nobody was going to take care of this baby better than me anyway, so I'd had no problem reaching into my dead friend's pocket to retrieve his car keys.
After all, I knew I had to jump at the chance before anyone else—say like Paul, for instance—came along and beat me to it.
Before we left, I draped a blanket over Sam's remains after the hermit performed a ritual of protection to ward off evil spirits. This was absolutely necessary, he'd indicated, for there were plenty of disembodied entities roaming about in search of a fresh corpse to possess.
Truth be told, to me it all sounded like a bunch of medieval superstitions, but I let him do his thing anyway just to be on the safe side. With all the bizarre stuff I'd seen happening in the past few days, I figured anything was possible, so I wasn't going to let my lack of faith ruin Sam's peaceful rest, or worse, cause him to turn into some demon-possessed zombie.
I also texted Leah and Seth to prepare them for what they'd find when they returned. Keeping the text short and sweet, I asked them to come home immediately so they could be there for Emily when she came back from the store. The poor girl was going to need a lot of moral support, so I wanted to make sure someone would be there to explain to her what had happened.
For the time being, that was all I could do as far as fulfilling my duty with my people was concerned. I wish I could say the same about Bella, though. I must have texted her at least ten times only to find out when I called and it went straight to voicemail that she'd turned off her cell.
"You seem rather absorbed in your thoughts," the hermit commented.
I nodded just to be polite, although the last thing I wanted right now was to start a conversation.
And that's when it hit me.
"Why did you let Bella drink your blood?" I asked him, realizing the question had been in the back of my mind from the moment I'd seen it happen.
"Dr. Cullen asked me to do it," the hermit explained. "He said Bella needed it to strengthen her shield."
Bella's vampire superpower was her shield. It was basically an invisible field of protective energy that she could stretch out far enough to protect her clan, plus an entire army of allies if she wanted to. The Volturi and their guards were the royal mafia of Italian vampires who supposedly ruled the world of the undead. And even they weren't able to penetrate Bella's shield.
Shrugging my shoulders, I said, "Sure, that makes sense. She looked like she needed it."
I'd always wondered what would happen to vampires when they went too long without drinking blood. Now I understood it perfectly. Just like their bodies grew weak, their powers did so as well. Bella had grown so weak from refusing to feed, that her shield had become vulnerable. That's why the shield hadn't worked when the hybrid had attacked Alice and Blondie.
I could see how Dr. Cullen would ask the hermit to donate blood. It was probably the strongest and most nutritious type of blood a vampire could find. Immortal human blood, a blood enriched by the elixir of life of an alchemist. Knowing that made me feel a little better. To understand why Carlisle had done this before they left. He knew he could count on Bella's shield to protect them in case the hybrid came after them. Genius.
And yet the fact still remained that Nessie was beyond the reach of Bella's shield, plus, in just a couple of days, Bella would need more human blood to keep her shield strong.
"You don't seem particularly thrilled about it," the hermit pointed out.
I knew what he was doing to me. He was trying to get me to voice my concerns out loud even though I'd made it quite clear that I didn't want to talk. "It's just a temporary fix," I muttered, hoping this would be the end of it and he'd leave me alone.
"So you worry that she might need to continue drinking human blood just to keep her clan safe," he pried yet again.
I sighed and hit the steering wheel with my fist. "I'd rather not talk about it, if it's alright with you, Padre."
"You are my apprentice," he reminded me as if I could forget such a thing. "You must learn to trust me so that I may instruct you more effectively."
I had to swallow hard to avoid going off on him. "What does spirit traveling have to do with my personal issues?" I asked in a defiant tone.
"It has everything to do with them," he fired back, undaunted by my attitude. "Any feelings of anger or fear that you might be trying to sweep under the rug will make you vulnerable in the spirit world."
As much as I hated to admit it, that last bit of information had piqued my curiosity. "Vulnerable to what?"
"Why, to the predators, of course," he answered matter-of-factly.
"What kind of predators?" I probed.
But instead of answering my question, he threw it right back at me. "Haven't you ever heard of poltergeists, demons, shadow people?"
"There's no scientific proof for that," I countered, though not very confidently.
He chuckled. "Well, if my memory serves me well, there's no scientific proof for vampires or shapeshifting werewolves either."
I grinned to accept my defeat. "Okay, Padre, you got me there. Happy now?"
Just as I said that, I started noticing the moss-hung trees that signaled the entrance to the Hoh Rainforest. I took a detour and purposefully avoided the Hall of Mosses, a trail that was always packed with hikers and tourists, especially during the summer months. At this point, I knew it was time to ditch our ride and continue on foot, so I set out to find a spot where the brush was overgrown enough as to hide my new pride and joy.
Once I'd concealed it well enough, all I could do was hope and pray that some nosy, overzealous park ranger wouldn't find it and decide to report it as abandoned or, even worse, stolen. But, as much as I treasured Sam's inheritance, I knew I had far more serious problems to worry about, so I did my best to let it go, secretly hoping that somewhere, somehow, Sam's spirit might be watching over it.
As the hermit led us deeper and deeper into the overcast shadows of the wilderness, my stomach churned with foreboding. This was it. I was on my way to perform the riskiest feat of my life yet. And, as if that weren't enough, I'd just learned that all the anger and fear I'd been harboring within would make me an easy target for spiritual predators whom I knew virtually nothing about.
Way to go, Jake, I told myself. How's that for flirting with death?
I always liked to boast about being a creature of the wild whether or not I was in my wolf form. But, to be quite honest, the thick, shadowy woods that lay ahead of us seemed impenetrable even to me.
What a marshmallow! I could've sworn I heard a familiar voice in my head throwing my own insult back at me.
Wait, what? For a brief second there, I thought all the sleep deprivation from the past few nights may be finally taking its toll on my sanity. Was I hallucinating? Or was it really the voice of Bella's old high school buddy, Mike Newton, coming back to haunt me for making fun of him when he got sick during an action movie? I felt so confused that I didn't know what to think anymore.
Meanwhile, the hermit had fashioned a walking stick out of a fallen branch he'd found on the ground and now was swinging it around with great ease and agility as he sliced through the dangling mossy vines and prickly tree limbs ahead. He led the way as if the wilderness were his own backyard. Still, even though he appeared to know every rock and crevice of that place like the back of his hand, I'd had a real hard time letting him take the lead at first.
There was no trodden path I could discern anywhere near us, and yet the hermit avoided all the mangled roots and jagged rocks that stood in our way with so much confidence and finesse, that I wasn't sure whether to feel envy or dread.
Something along the lines of "the blind leading the blind" made the idea of following him sound altogether ridiculous to me—laughable, to put it bluntly. The Hoh Rain Forest wasn't exactly my area of expertise, especially the no man's land to where the hermit had led me, so I simply couldn't understand how a blind old monk would dare venturing out into such isolated areas without so much as a Braille map, or, if nothing else, a seeing-eye dog.
But, as I quickly learned, the old saying about how seeing is believing was dead on in this case. It was only because I was right there and watching it with my own eyes that I could accept what my human logic just couldn't seem to reconcile.
No matter how dark or foggy it got in certain regions of the forest, the hermit didn't need physical eyes to see his surroundings. He said that, after losing his sight, he'd been forced to rely entirely on his mind's eye, and I had to admit that he was doing a hell of a job.
I was so impressed by what I'd seen him do so far, that I no longer had doubts about becoming his apprentice. By now, my curiosity had been officially piqued, and I couldn't wait to start my practical training.
Learning this trick would sure come in handy, especially now that I was, by default, the new Alpha of the pack. I bet Sam would be really proud if I managed to pull this one off.
"When you train your mind to see energy," the hermit explained, "you'll be able to perceive everything with your eyes closed. That's how your spirit sees when it travels outside the body. It sees the energy that your human eyes cannot perceive."
Ever the skeptic, I couldn't resist the urge to challenge him. "Right," I said, narrowing my eyes. "But don't you need light to see?"
"Energy is light," he replied emphatically. "Your mind's eye perceives the spiritual energy of things. This is the only way to see their true essence and what they really look like."
I closed my eyes and tried to follow the sound of his footsteps without looking, but the terrain we were crossing was far too rugged, so I quickly stumbled and would've fallen if I hadn't opened my eyes right away. "How long does it take to train your mind?" I asked once I'd regained my balance.
"It's different for everyone," he replied without stopping. "The more attached you are to the appearances you've come to accept as reality, the more difficult it will be for you to let go."
"So you're saying I need to lose my mind if I want to spirit travel." I'd meant it as a joke, and yet it somehow wound up sounding like I was mocking him, so I braced myself for a scolding.
But he didn't give me the satisfaction. With the patience of a true master, he turned around and sat gingerly on an oversized rock to give me time to catch up. Then, he remained there, "watching" me without saying a word.
In all honesty, I felt humiliated and defeated. Now I had to find a way to break through this awkward silence and I hadn't the slightest idea what to tell him.
"It's just that . . . well, you know what doctors say," I managed after a while. "You lose your grip on reality, then you're insane, right?"
He raised an eyebrow and shook his head as a sly grin spread across his lips. "Going insane should be the least of your worries, Jacob."
"Alright, fine," I spat, deciding to just go along with whatever he said. "So I need to let go of reality. And then what?"
Holding onto his walking stick, he got up from the rock and once again turned his back on me to resume the hike. "I never said let go of reality. You need to pay attention if you want to learn something, boy."
"What do you mean you never said that?" I protested. "That's exactly what you said! Why are you always trying to confuse me?"
He ignored my outburst and kept going up a hill, carefully avoiding the sections covered with hard ice. "You misunderstood me. What I said is that you must learn to see through the appearances you've come to accept as reality. Appearances, okay? Not actual reality. There's a big difference."
I remained behind, waiting at the foot of the hill, in case he might slip and fall, but he reached the peak with little trouble by clinging to vines as he clambered up the icy mud.
"What is actual reality then?" I asked, having to raise my voice, as I'd already lost sight of him.
By the time I joined him up on the hilltop, he'd come to a standstill at a clearing that overlooked the river valley below. Not sure if he'd heard my last question, I started to repeat it, but, before I could finish talking, he gestured with his hand for me to give him a moment. Then, as he stood there, visibly entranced by the allure of the fiery sunset colors reflected upon the water, he took a deep breath and, out of the blue, broke into the most outlandish monastic chant I'd ever heard.
In less than a minute, a sudden awareness came over me, and I realized once more that we weren't alone. The sensation felt very similar to what I'd experienced that morning, right after Sam died in the Clearwaters' house. Only this time, the powerful force that overtook me was almost too much to bear. I felt a pressure weighing heavily on my head and chest like it was about to crush me, so I instinctively cried out in an attempt to make it stop.
It only got worse, though, and before I knew it, I was hearing voices and seeing transparent, shimmering faces all around me. It was extremely difficult to make out what they were saying, because they seemed to be trying to tell me something all at the same time. It was like they were warning me not to do something, and the more I tried to struggle against it, the louder and more desperate they became.
I wouldn't have cared so much about it if they'd been unknown beings, but what really got to me was that I recognized them. One of them was my mom, another one was Sam, and the one who shocked me the most was . . .
Bella.
She looked disturbingly sad and was crying tears of blood. Tears of blood! But why? What did this all mean? Why on earth would Bella be among these apparitions? Sam and my mom were dead, but Bella was still somewhat alive as far as I knew. I mean, vampires were not fully dead, right? They were undead. So what was she doing there with them?
Just then, the hermit's voice broke through the commotion and told me, "Does that feel real enough to you? Can you see them?"
Hell yeah, I could see them! Was he kidding? But I was so overwhelmed by what was happening, that I couldn't answer him, so he asked me again and again until it eventually dawned on me that this must be some sort of a test I had to pass.
It took every bit of self-control I had to ignore the apparitions. The pain I felt inside was indescribable. That image of Bella crying tears of blood would haunt me for the rest of my life. But the absolute worst part of it all was not to know what it meant, what she was trying to tell me.
And my mom? And Sam? Were they trying to stop me from spirit traveling?
In the end it didn't matter. There was no turning back for me. No way around it. This was the point of no return. I had to complete my training and go see the Wolf Ancestors if I wanted to save my loved ones. I had to get my hands on that talisman, and that was that.
The moment I focused on the talisman, I somehow managed to snap out of it. The apparitions vanished, and the voices quieted down. I'd passed the first test and, most importantly, I had seen the spiritual energy the hermit had been babbling about. Now I was ready to spirit travel.
By the time I'd fully recovered from my first glimpse of this so-called "actual" reality, night had fallen, and I was ready to collapse from exhaustion. Luckily, the hermit confirmed what I'd predicted. The time had come for me to start my practical training.
We trekked down the hill towards the valley below and then crossed the river. When we got to the other side, the hermit pointed towards a flat area densely populated with big leaf maple trees. "There they are!" he exclaimed with enthusiasm.
He'd found the elusive plants he'd told me we needed. He called them "power plants" and assured me it would be impossible for a "neophyte," or a rookie like me, to cross over to the spirit world without ingesting them first.
According to him, only ancient sorcerers with hundreds of years of practice would be capable of traveling outside the body without the aid of these power plants. My generation, he explained, was much too attached to the world of appearances to see beyond what our five senses perceived.
Only these power plants contained the necessary ingredients to open the doors of perception and allow me to get in the right frame of mind to spirit travel.
Two hours later, I was completely undressed and buried alive in the mud from head to toe. My face was the only part of my body sticking out of the ground, and that was only so that I could breathe while I left my body behind. I had a thick layer of mud caked on each of my eyelids to keep me from opening them. Using my physical eyes was strictly forbidden, the hermit had warned, as it would only distract me from seeing with my mind's eye.
All around the area where I was buried, the hermit had cast a protective circle, plus he'd also consecrated the ground to keep my body safe from any potential intruders. The bitter-tasting plants I'd ingested had kind of upset my stomach a bit, but I was in such an altered state of mind, that I could barely feel my body anymore.
The moment the hermit started chanting his bizarre invocations, my journey began.
It started with the trees. All of a sudden, I could see auras of bright white light forming an outline along their edges. Then, my awareness started expanding beyond the boundaries of my body, and I literally felt like I was a balloon getting inflated.
I floated upwards slowly and, little by little, I discovered that I could see all around me as if I were a gigantic, all-seeing eye. As my awareness continued to expand even further and in all directions, I began to understand what the hermit meant when he talked about the spiritual energy of things.
Every single rock, tree and plant in that forest had a glowing aura surrounding it. Everything from the ground to the water to the sky was alive and pulsating with luminous energy. There was so much brightness everywhere, that it was hard to tell one form apart from the other. We were all interconnected with one another like a single living network. I couldn't tell where one thing ended and the other began.
The state of bliss I was experiencing felt incredible, safe, warm and altogether amazing. The same forest that had appeared treacherous and deadly to me earlier, now seemed to embrace me and welcome me into its loving arms. Now it made sense to me as to why my people had called our planet Mother Earth.
I would've probably remained in this state forever hadn't it been for a dark spot that suddenly showed up out of nowhere. At first, I decided to ignore it, thinking it might go away on its own, until it started growing larger and moving closer, heading straight towards me.
As soon as I felt its magnetic pull sucking me towards it, I realized it was some kind of a black hole trying to engulf me. I fought hard to figure out how to resist its dark force, but I had no idea how to do it. All I knew is this thing was bad news, whatever it was, and I had to get away from it before it sucked me into its vacuum.
That's when I heard her voice again. It was just a faint, distant whisper that I could barely hear, but I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt whose voice it was. Bella's.
She was taking us out one by one.
First came Nessie, then Edward, after that it was Sam, and now Blondie. Still, I knew she wasn't going to stop there. If her pattern of attacks had taught me anything, I'd say she was only getting started. Her mission was to hunt us down until she killed every last one of us. No question in my mind about that.
There was only one little obstacle she'd underestimated. Me. I, Jacob Black, was going to stop her. I solemnly vowed to annihilate that freak of nature for good, even if I had to sacrifice my own life to do so.
Every titan had its weakness. I was by no means an expert in mythology, but I'd read just enough to know this much and I intended to use it to my full advantage. It didn't matter how powerful a shapeshifter she may be, or even how many bloodsuckers she had under her command.
The wolf within me had foretold my destiny, and now there was no turning back. I would be the David to her Goliath, the Perseus to her Medusa, the slayer to her dragon. You get the point.
Bottom line is I was certain that using the talisman against the hybrid would be my only chance at defeating her. But I had yet to find out how. Surely, there had to be a secret to it, and, so far, everything seemed to indicate that the answer I sought awaited me in the Spirit World.
I sharply turned on my heels and was about to go back in the house, when I realized that Sam was languishing on and off behind me, stumbling between steps like he was about to faint. It was then that I became aware of the inflammation around the claw marks on his shoulder.
The wounds didn't seem to be healing as fast as they were supposed to. In fact, I even doubted they were healing at all. They appeared swollen and infected, with some kind of watery fluid oozing out from them.
Doing my best not to cringe at its sight, I could only hope the discharge was nothing more than harmless pus, something that could be treated at home with any over-the-counter antibiotic. I didn't even want to consider the possibility that it might be vampire venom, because, if that were the case, Sam would drop dead in less than an hour. Vampire venom was the one thing in this world that could kill a werewolf.
Tucking my shoulder under Sam's good arm, I took long strides towards the house as I hauled him along. "Where are the other wolves?" I urged him on, having to shake him over and over so he would open his droopy eyelids.
"I lost them." His voice sounded so feeble, I could barely understand what he'd just said. "We got separated."
As if I didn't have way more than my share of worries to deal with already! Yet, even then, I forged ahead, trying with all my might to fend off the visions of carnage that kept invading my mind.
I scrambled up the front steps in a panic, wondering what the hell I was supposed to tell Doctor Cullen about Blondie. That I let some winged gargoyle fly away with his daughter? Just the mere thought of it plagued me with so much shame, that the blood rushed up to my face, flushing my cheeks red hot.
But I knew Dr. Cullen would be the only one who could tell me if Sam had been infected with vampire venom or not, so I mustered up the courage to open the door and quickly dragged Sam inside.
"What happened to him?" Emily shrieked, bolting towards her wounded fiancé.
Too dumbfounded to be able to speak, I gaped in shock at my surroundings. The protective circle had been broken, and Esme was helping Alice gather their things. The Cullens were obviously getting ready to leave, but where were they going? Nessie was still missing, Emmett and Jasper hadn't come back from the woods, Edward's eyes had the same vacant expression as before, and I had yet to break the news about Blondie.
I froze in place as I caught sight of Bella who sat at the dining table, her eyes having changed from pitch black to a bright crimson red. This meant she'd been drinking human blood. Avoiding my glare, she lifted a wine glass to her lips and, in a single gulp, drank the burgundy liquid in it. I wondered whose blood she might be drinking but was afraid to ask.
As it turned out, I didn't have to ask anyone, because the answer lay right in front of me. Sitting across from Bella at the table was the hermit, his sleeve rolled up to make room for the intravenous tube connected to his arm. The other end of the tube was hooked up to a clear plastic bag full of blood, same as the ones we'd used to collect the blood I'd donated to Edward.
"What's going on here?" I finally managed, swallowing hard.
"Jacob," Dr. Cullen replied as he removed the tube from the hermit's arm and pressed a cotton ball against the tiny puncture wound left by the needle. "Come with me, son, I'll explain everything."
"You're not leaving, are you?" I looked at Bella, hoping she'd side with me, but I could see in her eyes that her only concern right now was to get her empty glass refilled.
Gently nodding his head, Dr. Cullen emptied the blood from the bag into the glass and handed it to Bella. "Let's have a talk," he told me.
"You can't leave!" I raised my voice, unable to hide my frustration. "Tell them, Sam! Tell them what just happened to Rosalie!"
But Sam just kept drifting in and out of consciousness, so he simply groaned something unintelligible and fell asleep in Emily's arms.
"I saw what happened to her," Alice interfered, her tone of voice strangely calm, and her attitude detached. Cold even. "That's why we have to leave."
She was acting so oddly serious, so unlike the Alice I'd come to know, that it made me remember the time before Nessie was born. How Alice used to be a total jerk to me. Now I was seeing that side of her again. No pixie smile, no bubbly personality, no room for negotiation. Nothing. Just a complete brick wall unwilling to budge.
I narrowed my eyes suspiciously as Esme and Bella stood on either side of Edward, holding on to his arms to help him up from the couch where he'd been sitting. Along with Alice, each of them exchanged farewell hugs with Seth and Leah, then, went on to lead a very confused Edward towards the front door. Alice followed behind them as though Edward were a prisoner they were escorting out.
"Bella!" I pleaded once more, although, in my heart, I already knew it was pointless to even attempt to change her mind. Her crimson eyes showed me she was determined to leave no matter what.
My heart sank when I picked up the same cold and detached vibes from Bella that I'd picked up from Alice. I looked at her and tried hard to swallow down the lump in my throat that was suddenly choking me. Even though I couldn't see Bella's shield, I could definitely sense when she had it up. It didn't happen often, only during a couple of arguments we'd had over Nessie a few years ago, but that was enough for me to learn how to tell the difference. And right now I could tell she had her shield up. She was shutting me out, and it tore me up inside that she'd do this to me.
Bella waved at me, and her skin shimmered like thousands of miniature diamonds as the sunlight shone in through the open door. "Listen to Carlisle and you'll understand everything," she told me. And, with that, she blew me a kiss and walked out the door.
I literally felt like one of my limbs had been amputated abruptly and without anesthesia. It hurt that bad to see her go, especially under such circumstances. For all I knew, this might be the last time I'd ever see her.
Dr. Cullen gestured for me to follow him down the hallway, and I did so reluctantly, since no explanation in this world, no matter how logical, would ever convince me to let Bella go.
For one, she was my strongest link to Nessie, but there was also the emotional bond we shared—a bond that had only grown stronger with time. Without question, Bella was my best friend. And yet, with all the confusing emotions she'd stirred up inside me recently, I had a sneaking suspicion that things were about to get really complicated between us . . .
If we survived to see each other again.
As much as I hated to admit it, the time had come for me to face the music. Nessie's party was officially over, although I could hardly call the ordeal from the night before a party, but still. Whatever we chose to call it, after the Cullens announced they were leaving, everyone dispersed, so I guess it all amounted to the same thing in the end. Party or no party, it was over anyway, and now there was a hell of a mess left behind to clean up.
Seth walked Old Quil home, while Leah pushed my dad in his wheelchair back to our house. Emily ran to the store to buy some ingredients for the hermit so he could concoct one of his magic potions to help heal Sam's infected wounds.
I couldn't particularly say things were working out, because our pack brothers were still scattered out in the woods along with Emmett and Jasper, but at least Old Quil and my dad were going to get some much needed rest.
At the risk of feeling like a complete ass for being so selfish, I had to confess—if only to myself—that it was kind of a relief to know that the hybrid had abducted Blondie. Yet it was only because I hoped with all my heart that the hybrid would take Blondie to the same place where she was keeping Nessie.
Under the circumstances, this gave me a small measure of peace, because at least I knew that Nessie wouldn't have to face the Order of the Dragon alone. As a matter of fact, if my suspicions were correct, Nessie's chances of escaping had just increased exponentially now that Blondie was with her.
But, ultimately, these were all just theories floating about in my restless mind. After two nights without sleeping, I was a nervous wreck, not to mention the fact that losing all that blood had done strange things to my head.
"Jacob, I know you're worried," Dr. Cullen said as he pulled up a chair and sat down near the small kitchen table at the back of the house. "But can you please sit down and listen to me for a moment?"
The air in the Clearwaters' kitchen felt stuffy, and, on top of that, the early morning light hurt my eyes every time I tried to look through the window. There was no way I could calm down enough to sit still, not even for a second. So much was at stake for me, that I felt like I was drowning in my own desperation.
My hands damp and clammy with distress, I roamed in circles back and forth, pacing around like a caged beast. "You can't take Bella away. Nessie needs her. I need her. We have to stick together against this monster. It's the only way—"
He cut me off. "I can't allow this alliance to continue, Jake," he muttered, looking emotionally spent as he rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands.
I clenched my jaw, and it took a huge effort to control myself. "Why?"
"Because the hybrid—" he pressed his lips together to stop himself, then hesitated. It gave me the distinct impression that he was choosing his words carefully. "The hybrid's not after you . . . or after your people." Pausing again, he sighed and looked straight into my eyes. "She's after my clan."
"How do you know that?" I demanded. All of a sudden, the squeaky clean concept I'd always had of him began to crumble.
His eyes glinted with an unrelenting intensity. "It doesn't matter how I know it—"
"Yes, it does!" Now it was I who interrupted him. "I knew you were hiding something, Dr. Cullen, and that's very unfair."
But he stood his ground. "I don't want anyone else to get hurt. How is that unfair?"
"I'm part of your clan," I declared, unwilling to back down. "If Bella or Nessie get hurt, I get hurt, too, and you can't deny that."
I could tell he felt torn. He might try to lie to me with his words, but the wavering expression in his eyes betrayed him. Yet, even then, he insisted. "I won't let you drag your people into this any longer, Jacob. Your duty is to protect them, just the same as it's my duty to protect my own."
"But why would she want to destroy your clan?" I pressed on.
Lowering his eyes, he deliberated, probably debating with himself on whether or not he should tell me anything else. After a long silence, he shook his head like he didn't want to deal with me anymore and got up to leave. Just like that. He must be crazy to think I'd let him walk out on me and leave me hanging like this.
Frustrated to no end, I stood in the doorway to block his way out and got in his face as he tried to get past me. "Why won't you answer me, Doctor? You know what she's after, don't you?" I hated myself for disrespecting him like this. I knew he was trying to look out for my people and me, but, at the same time, he wasn't playing fair. Keeping secrets wasn't going to help us. If anything, it was going to bring us all down for being divided.
After a short time, he finally admitted it. "She's after me."
His confession hit me so hard, that I felt like the ground had cracked open like a giant mouth, and now an overwhelmingly strong magnetic force was pulling me down towards the bottom, a black hole trying to swallow me whole. "And you knew this all along?"
"I suspected it, but I had to be sure first. I didn't want to set off any false alarms."
Whatever his explanation may be, I'd lost all my faith in him and I knew he could sense it in my tone of voice. "You let her take Nessie. You let her drain Edward's blood. You let your sons get attacked by the hellhound, and then you let her take Rose! And you still didn't bother to warn us about her?"
He hung his head in shame and shut his eyes tightly as if doing that could make it all go away. "I'm doing something about it now. I'm dissolving the alliance so your people will be safe. It's the best thing I can do to make things right."
"It's too late for that, Dr. Cullen. The only thing that can save us now is the truth. You owe it to all of us. Why is the hybrid after you? You have to tell me."
He didn't even have time to answer. My indignation still hung in the air when, out of nowhere, something interrupted our argument.
It was the hermit who had just barged into the kitchen, screaming his heart out. "He's dead!" he kept yelling over and over. "I couldn't stop the venom from spreading. Sam is dead."
My mind went blank from the shock, and I reacted automatically. Out of reflex and without thinking, I got to the living room so fast, it almost felt like I'd teleported my way over there. Still in denial, I felt like I'd turned to stone as I looked at Sam. I just had to see him with my own eyes to believe it.
I found him lying very still on the floor, his face up, and with coins for the ferryman on his closed eyelids. Most likely the hermit's superstitions had led him to place the coins on Sam's eyes like they often used to do back in the Dark Ages to keep a spirit from remaining earthbound.
I could tell Sam wasn't breathing, especially after I noticed the deathly hue of his lips, and how the unusually pale skin tone of his face was now beginning to spread all over his body. I'd never seen a pack brother die before, and yet, just by watching him, I knew for sure that the hermit was right. Sam was really dead.
Dr. Cullen got there just as fast as I did. Dropping down on his knees, he pressed two fingers to Sam's neck to feel his pulse, and I saw the same look of realization register in his face. Shaking his head no, he shot me a penetrating gaze that confirmed what I already knew.
I had let Sam die.
Hating myself and wishing it had been me instead of him, I collapsed into an armchair and covered my face so no one could see my tears.
Sam Uley, the Alpha of our pack, the first one in our generation to change from man to wolf. The one who'd helped each of us make the transition after he himself had been forced to tough it out on his own. He'd been there for us through thick and thin, showing us the way of the shapeshifter and helping us adapt to the painful changes in our bodies that came with phasing the first few times.
In spite of our many disagreements, none of us could deny that we all looked up to him. No matter how much we complained about his decisions sometimes, in the end, he was always the one we came to when we didn't know what to do. That was Sam. That was our Sam.
And now he was gone. Killed by the hybrid's venom, all because of my self-serving pigheadedness.
The sight of his corpse sent a shiver down my spine, and I felt like my whole life as I knew it had been shattered in an instant. Maybe Dr. Cullen was right about everything he'd just said to me. If only I had listened to him from the start, Sam might still be alive.
Maybe I could've saved his life somehow. I knew vampire venom spread impossibly fast in a werewolf. Even though we weren't children of the moon, our kind was the mortal enemy of vampires for a very powerful reason. Vampire venom had a different effect on a werewolf than it did on other humans.
To us it was lethal. It was our one and only weakness, and yet it was also the very same defense mechanism that prevented us from becoming vampires. Our self-healing powers made us immune to getting infected by the venom, which meant that shapeshifting wolves like us weren't able to become vampires. Our system reacted to the venom by shutting down and killing us in the process, so at least I knew that Sam was safe from becoming a vampire.
But the fact still remained that Sam was dead, and I'd done nothing, not a single thing, to try and save him.
All this time I'd been so focused on solving my own problems that I'd wound up forgetting about everyone else. What was going to happen to Emily now? Who would take Sam's place as the Alpha? How was I supposed to travel to the Spirit World to consult with the Wolf Ancestors?
The questions just kept on piling up in my head as I remembered that Sam was the only one willing to tell me how to spirit travel. Now the secret had died with him, and there was no way that Old Quil, or even my dad were going to tell me how to spirit travel. To them it was unthinkable, so if I wanted to do it, I'd have to figure it out on my own.
Right as I started wondering who might be able to help me, the hermit broke my concentration.
"He's here," he whispered.
Quickly wiping off my tears, I sprung up from the armchair and looked around in confusion. "Who?"
That's when I realized that the hermit was the only one there, and Dr. Cullen was nowhere in sight.
"Where's Dr. Cullen?" I asked, my stomach in knots. Somewhere deep inside me, I already knew what the hermit was going to tell me, but I just had to hear it said out loud.
The answer he gave me hurt so much, it felt like someone had stabbed me in the heart with an icy dagger. "He left."
Unwilling to face the truth, I frantically shook my head and declared, "No! He's still here!" I struggled to no avail to believe my own lie. But as soon as I swung open the front door, a surge of anguish welled up inside me. Both of the cars the Cullens had driven here from Port Angeles were gone.
"But you just told me he was here!" I complained to the hermit as I came back inside and slammed the door shut behind me.
"I didn't mean Dr. Cullen."
There was no one there. I had no idea what the hermit was talking about, but I also didn't like the ominous tone of his voice as he said it. Once again, I felt so defeated and hopeless that I envied Sam for being dead. Still, I didn't want to tell the hermit what I really thought of him, because I kind of understood how anyone would go mad after everything that had happened.
It was then that a weird sensation I suddenly felt showed me that I may have been a little too quick to dismiss what the hermit had said as madness. Unless madness was contagious, of course, but I could've sworn that someone, or something, was in that living room with us.
I'd never experienced anything like it before, so it's not like I had something to compare it to.
All I knew was that the hermit and I weren't alone. I could clearly sense a presence that, somehow, had shifted the energy all around us. It almost felt like it wanted to make its presence known. Whatever it was, it wanted to get our attention.
"You feel it, too, don't you?" the hermit asked.
Under different circumstances, I would've been way too embarrassed to admit it out loud, but, with the hermit being an immortal alchemist and all, I actually felt sort of at ease confiding in him.
Swallowing hard, I asked him flat out, "Is it . . . Sam's spirit?"
"Yes," the hermit replied like it was the most ordinary thing in the world. "He's still lingering here."
It only took me a moment to figure out what Sam wanted. He knew just as well as I did that our only hope to defeat the hybrid was for me to consult with the Spirit Warriors. So he had refused to move towards the light at the end of the tunnel, like spirits are supposed to do after their physical body dies, just so he could guide me.
Even in death, Sam was a much better man than me. Not only had he sacrificed his own life and his future happiness with Emily, but now, on top of everything, he was also risking an awful fate.
Our elders had drilled this warning into our heads from the moment each of us grew old enough to understand it. Death was merely a rite of passage, a transformation, a new beginning. Any spirit who lingered and refused to move towards the light at the moment of death could wind up stuck between the worlds.
That, according to the elders' teachings, was a fate worse than death. Those were the spirits that many cultures in the world referred to as earthbound spirits. Lost souls that were stuck wandering the earth sometimes for hundreds, or even thousands, of years.
I couldn't let that happen to Sam. I'd already let him die, so now my only chance for redemption was to make sure he made it safely to the afterlife where he belonged.
A part of me just wanted to jump on a motorcycle and go after Bella. I still believed I could convince her to stay so we could go find Nessie together. Yet, in the end, I suppressed the urge to do it and accepted Dr. Cullen's decision instead.
"I need your help," I told the hermit. "I need you to take me to the most hidden place in the woods that you know."
Even though I couldn't see his face under the hood, I could still hear the shock in his voice when he asked me, "What for?"
"I need a place to hide my body so no one can find it."
Now it was him who probably thought I'd lost my mind. "And why would you want to do that, son?"
"I'm going to travel outside my body and I need you to tell me how to do it."
"What makes you think I can tell you that?" the hermit asked defensively.
"I saw the titles of your books when I put out the fire." I felt confident that he knew exactly what
I was talking about, so I pressed on. "Up there in the mountains where we found you."
He must have heard it in my voice just how determined I was, because he didn't say a word. And yet I noticed by the way he fidgeted with the skin around his fingernails that what I'd just said had struck a nerve.
Taking advantage of his silence, I proceeded, "Journeys outside the body, astral projection, remote viewing. Ring any bells?" I paused to wait for a reaction, but he still didn't have anything to say, so I kept going. "I know why you were so worried about your books getting burned. Because you've been experimenting with them for centuries. I know you can tell me how to do it, because you've done it yourself."
I stood right in front of him to make it clear that I had no intention of stopping. I was going to keep pushing his buttons until he cracked under the pressure.
But, apparently, he was smart enough to play along, or at least make me think that he was.
"You're right," he admitted, raising his voice. In the tone he'd spoken, though, he may as well have said, "Enough!"
I almost gave into the impulse of bombarding him with questions, but I backed off for a bit and waited to see what he wanted to tell me.
"It's true," he confirmed. "I have spirit-traveled many times before."
The optimistic side of me leaned towards thinking I'd won this battle—more of a minor hurdle, really. Or so I thought. Now all I had to do was sit back and listen as the cryptic monk spilled out his guts and revealed everything he'd learned during his travels to the beyond. It seemed simple enough, and I couldn't imagine why he, of all people, would refuse to help me.
But, as it had been happening all too often lately, optimism did me no good whatsoever. To the contrary, I was in for yet another freaky surprise.
Instead of giving me the convenient step-by-step list of instructions I was expecting, the hermit drew near the one window in the house where the sun shone in the brightest. Then, without warning, he pulled down his hood to uncover his face.
Once again, just like on the night I'd snatched the blindfold from him, I found myself staring right at the mess of gnarly scars around his eyes. To say it wasn't pretty would've been an understatement. Only this time, it wasn't merely the soft glow of the firelight that illuminated the hideousness. Now I had to endure it all in broad daylight, with no nightly shadows to mitigate the full impact of the shock. And, boy, was it a rude awakening!
"Do you see these scars, Jacob?" He pointed at his eyes, his shriveled fingers shaking, and his movements frail and weak. Yet he spoke with so much authority, that he made me feel insignificant in his presence. "I need you to take a good look at these scars," he insisted, orienting his face towards me as though he could sense the exact spot where I was standing.
Even as I towered over him with my tall, imposing frame, I still couldn't find the strength to look into the filmy white layer that concealed his pupils. Supposedly, he couldn't see anything without the blindfold on. And yet, for some strange reason I couldn't explain, my skin crawled with the sensation that he might still be able to see me somehow. Or, even worse, see right through me.
Unable to contain myself any longer, I exploded. "I've seen them!" I blurted out much louder than I'd intended. "I've seen your scars, okay? Now what?"
"Don't you want to know how I got them?" the hermit asked as he took a step in my direction.
Letting my wolf instincts take over, I acted without thinking. I flinched backwards and looked away horrified, unable to stomach the haunting visions stirring up inside me. As irrationally as I was thinking at that point, the idea crossed my mind that maybe his scars had some type of "Medusa" effect on anyone who laid eyes on them.
For a second there, I went as far as to examine my arms and hands just to make sure I hadn't wound up a stone statue. At the very least, I had to give the hermit credit for knocking the boldness out of me so quickly and thoroughly. Next time, I'd think twice about pushing him over the edge.
"Don't worry," he chuckled, mimicking my snarky attitude from before. "My scars don't have magical powers." He fluttered his hands in front of my face as he said this in a mockingly scary tone. "You're not going to be damned forever for looking at them." He was actually making fun of me. A deformed old man. Who would've thought?
A sudden burst of anger shot straight up to my face, and, before I knew it, my cheeks were smoldering. "Listen to me, Padre," I told him in the most menacing tone I could manage. "It's going to take a hell of a lot more than that to scare me."
"You really think I'm doing this just to scare you, son?" This time, his tone of voice sounded different, much more serious than before, but also compassionate and sincere. "I'm trying to warn you so you don't end up looking like this someday."
My jaw dropped in disbelief as I put two and two together. "You mean to tell me—?" A gasp caught in my throat, forcing me to stop abruptly to regain my bearings. I had to give myself a moment to digest what I'd just realized. "Of course!" I exclaimed. "Someone did this to you."
He nodded his agreement, slowly pulling the hood back up over his head.
Now I understood why he wanted me to look at his scars. "They attacked you while you were spirit-traveling."
"Yes," he confirmed. "They spied on me and waited until my spirit was gone out of my body.
Then, they burned my eyes to prove that I couldn't feel any pain."
It was hard to believe what I was hearing, but I knew he was telling the truth. "Who were they?" I asked.
"My fellow monks. They believed it was a mortal sin to read books about the supernatural. That's how I became a fugitive of the law. The Church accused me of practicing witchcraft and condemned me to die at the gallows."
"But you escaped," I interjected.
He nodded in response. "Indeed. And yet, somehow . . . I'm still a prisoner."
I fell silent, understanding full well what he meant. It must be awful to possess the secret of immortality, when you had to spend your whole life hiding your face under a hood.
Lowering my head to gaze down at the floor, I remembered what had happened to Taha-Aki, the last great Spirit Chief of the Quileute Nation.
His body had been stolen from the forest, where he thought he'd hidden it away safely. When he tried to come back to it, he found that his enemy, Utlapa, had seized it to impersonate him as the Chief.
Some time later, after Taha-Aki managed to take over the body of a wolf so he could return to his people, the first thing he'd done was eliminate spirit traveling from our traditions by banning its practice for good.
I was already well aware of the potential dangers of spirit traveling. But now, the hermit's scars only made the reality of it that much more vivid, especially when I knew that the hybrid and her minions were out there, waiting for us to slip up so they could hunt us down.
Yet, even then, the prospect of surrendering was altogether out of the question. I had to push the envelope. Sam's death wasn't going to be in vain, and I most certainly wasn't going to give up on Nessie. Whether or not she'd run away willingly still remained to be seen, and there was only one way I could think of to find out the truth.
After a brief moment of reflection, I announced my final decision to the hermit. "I'll take my chances."
Judging by the way he sighed while shaking his head, I could tell the news hadn't come as a surprise to him.
I couldn't help but feeling a twinge of guilt for having been so rude to him before. "Padre, I appreciate your concern, I really do, but there's something that doesn't make sense to me. You're an alchemist. I mean, if you figured out how to concoct the elixir of life, I'm sure you can find a potion to heal your skin, too. Right?"
"You really think it's that simple, don't you?" he asked as though my ignorance had offended him.
"Of course not," I retorted, "but the clock is ticking, and we're wasting precious time. Can we discuss this along the way? We really need to get going."
He mulled over what I'd said for a short time, then replied, "Fine. If you insist. But only on one condition."
"Name your price," I fired back without fear.
"You must become my apprentice."
Sam's Thunderbird shook violently as I drove it up the dirt road leading to the rainforest. The wind blew thick, whirling clouds of sand at the windshield as I made sharp turns along the curvy path ahead. I'd been awake for almost two days straight now, and my eyelids stung with the afternoon sun.
Next to me, in the passenger's seat, my new mentor pressed his back hard against the seat to keep from bouncing around inside the car. My new mentor. It sounded so surreal. Not even in my wildest dreams could I have ever imagined that I'd wind up becoming an alchemist's apprentice.
To be brutally honest, the whole idea of becoming the hermit's apprentice seemed ridiculous to me, not to mention completely unnecessary, but it's not like I'd had much of a choice.
Old Quil and my dad would've never told me how to spirit travel for the very same reason that the hermit had also been so reluctant to reveal what he knew. It was dangerous, it was reckless, and it had the potential of condemning me to a fate worse than death.
But even then, in the end, I'd wound up agreeing to the hermit's request more out of desperation than anything else. I didn't even want to consider the implications of such an agreement, and a part of me kept wondering what I may have gotten myself into.
Still, none of that mattered anymore. The harsh reality was that I could easily have just made a deal with the devil and now might be heading straight for my own demise, or something far worse, as I had no clue about the hermit's motives.
And yet, here we were, driving back up to the ruins where the hermit had lived for God knows how long, none other than onboard Sam's most prized possession, his restored Thunderbird. I trusted he would've wanted me to have it, what with him being dead and all, so I considered it mine now.
And besides, the whole idea of traveling to the spirit world had been Sam's in the first place, so I honestly didn't think he'd mind. Nobody was going to take care of this baby better than me anyway, so I'd had no problem reaching into my dead friend's pocket to retrieve his car keys.
After all, I knew I had to jump at the chance before anyone else—say like Paul, for instance—came along and beat me to it.
Before we left, I draped a blanket over Sam's remains after the hermit performed a ritual of protection to ward off evil spirits. This was absolutely necessary, he'd indicated, for there were plenty of disembodied entities roaming about in search of a fresh corpse to possess.
Truth be told, to me it all sounded like a bunch of medieval superstitions, but I let him do his thing anyway just to be on the safe side. With all the bizarre stuff I'd seen happening in the past few days, I figured anything was possible, so I wasn't going to let my lack of faith ruin Sam's peaceful rest, or worse, cause him to turn into some demon-possessed zombie.
I also texted Leah and Seth to prepare them for what they'd find when they returned. Keeping the text short and sweet, I asked them to come home immediately so they could be there for Emily when she came back from the store. The poor girl was going to need a lot of moral support, so I wanted to make sure someone would be there to explain to her what had happened.
For the time being, that was all I could do as far as fulfilling my duty with my people was concerned. I wish I could say the same about Bella, though. I must have texted her at least ten times only to find out when I called and it went straight to voicemail that she'd turned off her cell.
"You seem rather absorbed in your thoughts," the hermit commented.
I nodded just to be polite, although the last thing I wanted right now was to start a conversation.
And that's when it hit me.
"Why did you let Bella drink your blood?" I asked him, realizing the question had been in the back of my mind from the moment I'd seen it happen.
"Dr. Cullen asked me to do it," the hermit explained. "He said Bella needed it to strengthen her shield."
Bella's vampire superpower was her shield. It was basically an invisible field of protective energy that she could stretch out far enough to protect her clan, plus an entire army of allies if she wanted to. The Volturi and their guards were the royal mafia of Italian vampires who supposedly ruled the world of the undead. And even they weren't able to penetrate Bella's shield.
Shrugging my shoulders, I said, "Sure, that makes sense. She looked like she needed it."
I'd always wondered what would happen to vampires when they went too long without drinking blood. Now I understood it perfectly. Just like their bodies grew weak, their powers did so as well. Bella had grown so weak from refusing to feed, that her shield had become vulnerable. That's why the shield hadn't worked when the hybrid had attacked Alice and Blondie.
I could see how Dr. Cullen would ask the hermit to donate blood. It was probably the strongest and most nutritious type of blood a vampire could find. Immortal human blood, a blood enriched by the elixir of life of an alchemist. Knowing that made me feel a little better. To understand why Carlisle had done this before they left. He knew he could count on Bella's shield to protect them in case the hybrid came after them. Genius.
And yet the fact still remained that Nessie was beyond the reach of Bella's shield, plus, in just a couple of days, Bella would need more human blood to keep her shield strong.
"You don't seem particularly thrilled about it," the hermit pointed out.
I knew what he was doing to me. He was trying to get me to voice my concerns out loud even though I'd made it quite clear that I didn't want to talk. "It's just a temporary fix," I muttered, hoping this would be the end of it and he'd leave me alone.
"So you worry that she might need to continue drinking human blood just to keep her clan safe," he pried yet again.
I sighed and hit the steering wheel with my fist. "I'd rather not talk about it, if it's alright with you, Padre."
"You are my apprentice," he reminded me as if I could forget such a thing. "You must learn to trust me so that I may instruct you more effectively."
I had to swallow hard to avoid going off on him. "What does spirit traveling have to do with my personal issues?" I asked in a defiant tone.
"It has everything to do with them," he fired back, undaunted by my attitude. "Any feelings of anger or fear that you might be trying to sweep under the rug will make you vulnerable in the spirit world."
As much as I hated to admit it, that last bit of information had piqued my curiosity. "Vulnerable to what?"
"Why, to the predators, of course," he answered matter-of-factly.
"What kind of predators?" I probed.
But instead of answering my question, he threw it right back at me. "Haven't you ever heard of poltergeists, demons, shadow people?"
"There's no scientific proof for that," I countered, though not very confidently.
He chuckled. "Well, if my memory serves me well, there's no scientific proof for vampires or shapeshifting werewolves either."
I grinned to accept my defeat. "Okay, Padre, you got me there. Happy now?"
Just as I said that, I started noticing the moss-hung trees that signaled the entrance to the Hoh Rainforest. I took a detour and purposefully avoided the Hall of Mosses, a trail that was always packed with hikers and tourists, especially during the summer months. At this point, I knew it was time to ditch our ride and continue on foot, so I set out to find a spot where the brush was overgrown enough as to hide my new pride and joy.
Once I'd concealed it well enough, all I could do was hope and pray that some nosy, overzealous park ranger wouldn't find it and decide to report it as abandoned or, even worse, stolen. But, as much as I treasured Sam's inheritance, I knew I had far more serious problems to worry about, so I did my best to let it go, secretly hoping that somewhere, somehow, Sam's spirit might be watching over it.
As the hermit led us deeper and deeper into the overcast shadows of the wilderness, my stomach churned with foreboding. This was it. I was on my way to perform the riskiest feat of my life yet. And, as if that weren't enough, I'd just learned that all the anger and fear I'd been harboring within would make me an easy target for spiritual predators whom I knew virtually nothing about.
Way to go, Jake, I told myself. How's that for flirting with death?
I always liked to boast about being a creature of the wild whether or not I was in my wolf form. But, to be quite honest, the thick, shadowy woods that lay ahead of us seemed impenetrable even to me.
What a marshmallow! I could've sworn I heard a familiar voice in my head throwing my own insult back at me.
Wait, what? For a brief second there, I thought all the sleep deprivation from the past few nights may be finally taking its toll on my sanity. Was I hallucinating? Or was it really the voice of Bella's old high school buddy, Mike Newton, coming back to haunt me for making fun of him when he got sick during an action movie? I felt so confused that I didn't know what to think anymore.
Meanwhile, the hermit had fashioned a walking stick out of a fallen branch he'd found on the ground and now was swinging it around with great ease and agility as he sliced through the dangling mossy vines and prickly tree limbs ahead. He led the way as if the wilderness were his own backyard. Still, even though he appeared to know every rock and crevice of that place like the back of his hand, I'd had a real hard time letting him take the lead at first.
There was no trodden path I could discern anywhere near us, and yet the hermit avoided all the mangled roots and jagged rocks that stood in our way with so much confidence and finesse, that I wasn't sure whether to feel envy or dread.
Something along the lines of "the blind leading the blind" made the idea of following him sound altogether ridiculous to me—laughable, to put it bluntly. The Hoh Rain Forest wasn't exactly my area of expertise, especially the no man's land to where the hermit had led me, so I simply couldn't understand how a blind old monk would dare venturing out into such isolated areas without so much as a Braille map, or, if nothing else, a seeing-eye dog.
But, as I quickly learned, the old saying about how seeing is believing was dead on in this case. It was only because I was right there and watching it with my own eyes that I could accept what my human logic just couldn't seem to reconcile.
No matter how dark or foggy it got in certain regions of the forest, the hermit didn't need physical eyes to see his surroundings. He said that, after losing his sight, he'd been forced to rely entirely on his mind's eye, and I had to admit that he was doing a hell of a job.
I was so impressed by what I'd seen him do so far, that I no longer had doubts about becoming his apprentice. By now, my curiosity had been officially piqued, and I couldn't wait to start my practical training.
Learning this trick would sure come in handy, especially now that I was, by default, the new Alpha of the pack. I bet Sam would be really proud if I managed to pull this one off.
"When you train your mind to see energy," the hermit explained, "you'll be able to perceive everything with your eyes closed. That's how your spirit sees when it travels outside the body. It sees the energy that your human eyes cannot perceive."
Ever the skeptic, I couldn't resist the urge to challenge him. "Right," I said, narrowing my eyes. "But don't you need light to see?"
"Energy is light," he replied emphatically. "Your mind's eye perceives the spiritual energy of things. This is the only way to see their true essence and what they really look like."
I closed my eyes and tried to follow the sound of his footsteps without looking, but the terrain we were crossing was far too rugged, so I quickly stumbled and would've fallen if I hadn't opened my eyes right away. "How long does it take to train your mind?" I asked once I'd regained my balance.
"It's different for everyone," he replied without stopping. "The more attached you are to the appearances you've come to accept as reality, the more difficult it will be for you to let go."
"So you're saying I need to lose my mind if I want to spirit travel." I'd meant it as a joke, and yet it somehow wound up sounding like I was mocking him, so I braced myself for a scolding.
But he didn't give me the satisfaction. With the patience of a true master, he turned around and sat gingerly on an oversized rock to give me time to catch up. Then, he remained there, "watching" me without saying a word.
In all honesty, I felt humiliated and defeated. Now I had to find a way to break through this awkward silence and I hadn't the slightest idea what to tell him.
"It's just that . . . well, you know what doctors say," I managed after a while. "You lose your grip on reality, then you're insane, right?"
He raised an eyebrow and shook his head as a sly grin spread across his lips. "Going insane should be the least of your worries, Jacob."
"Alright, fine," I spat, deciding to just go along with whatever he said. "So I need to let go of reality. And then what?"
Holding onto his walking stick, he got up from the rock and once again turned his back on me to resume the hike. "I never said let go of reality. You need to pay attention if you want to learn something, boy."
"What do you mean you never said that?" I protested. "That's exactly what you said! Why are you always trying to confuse me?"
He ignored my outburst and kept going up a hill, carefully avoiding the sections covered with hard ice. "You misunderstood me. What I said is that you must learn to see through the appearances you've come to accept as reality. Appearances, okay? Not actual reality. There's a big difference."
I remained behind, waiting at the foot of the hill, in case he might slip and fall, but he reached the peak with little trouble by clinging to vines as he clambered up the icy mud.
"What is actual reality then?" I asked, having to raise my voice, as I'd already lost sight of him.
By the time I joined him up on the hilltop, he'd come to a standstill at a clearing that overlooked the river valley below. Not sure if he'd heard my last question, I started to repeat it, but, before I could finish talking, he gestured with his hand for me to give him a moment. Then, as he stood there, visibly entranced by the allure of the fiery sunset colors reflected upon the water, he took a deep breath and, out of the blue, broke into the most outlandish monastic chant I'd ever heard.
In less than a minute, a sudden awareness came over me, and I realized once more that we weren't alone. The sensation felt very similar to what I'd experienced that morning, right after Sam died in the Clearwaters' house. Only this time, the powerful force that overtook me was almost too much to bear. I felt a pressure weighing heavily on my head and chest like it was about to crush me, so I instinctively cried out in an attempt to make it stop.
It only got worse, though, and before I knew it, I was hearing voices and seeing transparent, shimmering faces all around me. It was extremely difficult to make out what they were saying, because they seemed to be trying to tell me something all at the same time. It was like they were warning me not to do something, and the more I tried to struggle against it, the louder and more desperate they became.
I wouldn't have cared so much about it if they'd been unknown beings, but what really got to me was that I recognized them. One of them was my mom, another one was Sam, and the one who shocked me the most was . . .
Bella.
She looked disturbingly sad and was crying tears of blood. Tears of blood! But why? What did this all mean? Why on earth would Bella be among these apparitions? Sam and my mom were dead, but Bella was still somewhat alive as far as I knew. I mean, vampires were not fully dead, right? They were undead. So what was she doing there with them?
Just then, the hermit's voice broke through the commotion and told me, "Does that feel real enough to you? Can you see them?"
Hell yeah, I could see them! Was he kidding? But I was so overwhelmed by what was happening, that I couldn't answer him, so he asked me again and again until it eventually dawned on me that this must be some sort of a test I had to pass.
It took every bit of self-control I had to ignore the apparitions. The pain I felt inside was indescribable. That image of Bella crying tears of blood would haunt me for the rest of my life. But the absolute worst part of it all was not to know what it meant, what she was trying to tell me.
And my mom? And Sam? Were they trying to stop me from spirit traveling?
In the end it didn't matter. There was no turning back for me. No way around it. This was the point of no return. I had to complete my training and go see the Wolf Ancestors if I wanted to save my loved ones. I had to get my hands on that talisman, and that was that.
The moment I focused on the talisman, I somehow managed to snap out of it. The apparitions vanished, and the voices quieted down. I'd passed the first test and, most importantly, I had seen the spiritual energy the hermit had been babbling about. Now I was ready to spirit travel.
By the time I'd fully recovered from my first glimpse of this so-called "actual" reality, night had fallen, and I was ready to collapse from exhaustion. Luckily, the hermit confirmed what I'd predicted. The time had come for me to start my practical training.
We trekked down the hill towards the valley below and then crossed the river. When we got to the other side, the hermit pointed towards a flat area densely populated with big leaf maple trees. "There they are!" he exclaimed with enthusiasm.
He'd found the elusive plants he'd told me we needed. He called them "power plants" and assured me it would be impossible for a "neophyte," or a rookie like me, to cross over to the spirit world without ingesting them first.
According to him, only ancient sorcerers with hundreds of years of practice would be capable of traveling outside the body without the aid of these power plants. My generation, he explained, was much too attached to the world of appearances to see beyond what our five senses perceived.
Only these power plants contained the necessary ingredients to open the doors of perception and allow me to get in the right frame of mind to spirit travel.
Two hours later, I was completely undressed and buried alive in the mud from head to toe. My face was the only part of my body sticking out of the ground, and that was only so that I could breathe while I left my body behind. I had a thick layer of mud caked on each of my eyelids to keep me from opening them. Using my physical eyes was strictly forbidden, the hermit had warned, as it would only distract me from seeing with my mind's eye.
All around the area where I was buried, the hermit had cast a protective circle, plus he'd also consecrated the ground to keep my body safe from any potential intruders. The bitter-tasting plants I'd ingested had kind of upset my stomach a bit, but I was in such an altered state of mind, that I could barely feel my body anymore.
The moment the hermit started chanting his bizarre invocations, my journey began.
It started with the trees. All of a sudden, I could see auras of bright white light forming an outline along their edges. Then, my awareness started expanding beyond the boundaries of my body, and I literally felt like I was a balloon getting inflated.
I floated upwards slowly and, little by little, I discovered that I could see all around me as if I were a gigantic, all-seeing eye. As my awareness continued to expand even further and in all directions, I began to understand what the hermit meant when he talked about the spiritual energy of things.
Every single rock, tree and plant in that forest had a glowing aura surrounding it. Everything from the ground to the water to the sky was alive and pulsating with luminous energy. There was so much brightness everywhere, that it was hard to tell one form apart from the other. We were all interconnected with one another like a single living network. I couldn't tell where one thing ended and the other began.
The state of bliss I was experiencing felt incredible, safe, warm and altogether amazing. The same forest that had appeared treacherous and deadly to me earlier, now seemed to embrace me and welcome me into its loving arms. Now it made sense to me as to why my people had called our planet Mother Earth.
I would've probably remained in this state forever hadn't it been for a dark spot that suddenly showed up out of nowhere. At first, I decided to ignore it, thinking it might go away on its own, until it started growing larger and moving closer, heading straight towards me.
As soon as I felt its magnetic pull sucking me towards it, I realized it was some kind of a black hole trying to engulf me. I fought hard to figure out how to resist its dark force, but I had no idea how to do it. All I knew is this thing was bad news, whatever it was, and I had to get away from it before it sucked me into its vacuum.
That's when I heard her voice again. It was just a faint, distant whisper that I could barely hear, but I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt whose voice it was. Bella's.
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