Midnight Sun (The Twilight Saga #5) - Stephenie Meyer Page 0,267

weapons—but I did know there would be a story. And then what? How would I save Bella when the immortal authorities came, asking questions? I could not involve the Volturi, not unless I was too late.

But Bella was screaming.

Jasper ramped up my novocaine dosage. Numbness soaked through my skin and into my brain.

I jammed my foot against the gas pedal and swerved into the oncoming lanes of traffic.

There was just enough space to weave between the other cars. They were all moving so slowly compared to me that it felt like dodging around standing objects.

One thirty.

I snaked my way through the frozen intersection, crossing to the right side of the road as soon as it was clear.

“Nice,” Emmett hissed.

One forty.

The final light would be green.

But Alice had different ideas.

“Turn left here,” she said, showing me a narrow residential road behind the commercial area where the dance studio was located. The street was lined with towering eucalyptus trees, quivering leaves more silver than green. The spotty shade was almost enough for us to move through undetected. No one was outside. It was too hot.

“Slow down now.”

“There’s not enough—”

If he hears us, she dies!

Unwillingly, I moved my foot to the brake pedal and started slowing. The angle for the turn was sharp enough that I would have rolled the SUV if I hadn’t. I took the turn at only sixty.

Slower.

My jaw locked in place as I braked down to forty.

“Jasper,” Alice hissed at top speed, her words nearly silent despite her fervor. “You cut around the building and come through the front. The rest of us go through the back. Carlisle, get ready.”

Blood all over the shattered mirrors, pooling on the wooden floors.

I pulled the Cayenne into the shade of one of the soaring trees and parked with only the slightest sound of tires against loose stones on the pavement. An eight-foot block wall demarcated the border between residential and commercial. The opposite side of the road was edged with close-packed, stuccoed houses, all with their shades down to keep the interiors cool.

Moving in perfect synchronicity thanks to Jasper, we darted from the car, leaving every door slightly open so there would be no unnecessary noise. Traffic churned both north and west of the commercial building; surely it would cover any sounds we might make.

Maybe a quarter of a second had passed. We surged over the wall, leaping far enough to avoid the bed of gravel at its base and landing almost silently on pavement. There was a small alley behind the building. A dumpster, a stack of plastic crates, and the emergency exit.

I didn’t hesitate. I could already see what was behind that door. Or what would be behind the door one second from now. I angled my body so there would be no mistakes, no tiny window the tracker could slip through, and then launched myself at the door.

26. BLOOD

THROUGH THE DOOR.

It shattered around me, flying off the wall in pieces.

The roar that exploded from my core was entirely instinctual. The tracker’s head jerked up, and then he dove for the crimson shape on the floor below him. I saw one pale hand stretched out in futile self-defense.

The obstacle of the door had not slowed my momentum. I flew into the tracker mid-lunge, throwing him away from his target, smashing him into the floor with enough force to crater the wooden planks.

I rolled, pulling him over me, and then kicked him to the center of the room. Where Emmett was waiting.

For the entire quarter of a second that I was grappling with the tracker, I was barely aware of him as a living creature. He was just an object in my way. I knew that at some point in the near future, I would be jealous of Emmett and Jasper. I would wish for the chance to claw and slash and sever. But that was all meaningless now. I spun.

As I had known she would be, Bella was crumpled against the wall, framed by splintered mirrors. Everything was red.

All the terror and pain I’d been subduing since I’d first heard Alice’s dread in the airport crashed into me in an unstoppable tidal wave.

Her eyes were closed. Her pale hand had fallen limp beside her. Her heartbeat was weak, faltering.

I didn’t decide to move, I was just there beside her, kneeling in her blood. Fire burned through my chest and my head, but I couldn’t separate out the different kinds of pain. I was afraid to touch her. She was broken