Midnight Sun (The Twilight Saga #5) - Stephenie Meyer Page 0,285

he’d been trying to goad her into action. His bared teeth shifted into a pleased smile as he leaped in front of her and, with a dismissive backhand, hurled her toward the wall of mirrors.

She was airborne for one fleeting, endless pause, and then with a metallic clang, a crunch of bone, and the shattering of glass, she slammed into the brass ballet barre and the mirror behind it. The barre burst free of its brackets and crashed to the boards below. Her body followed, completely limp as she slid to the floor, splinters of glass catching the light like glitter around her. I hoped again that she was unconscious. But then I saw her eyes.

Stunned, helpless, petrified.

My hands ached with the crushing pressure of my grip, but I couldn’t relax them.

The tracker sauntered toward her, his eyes focused in the mirror on the lens of the camera, staring at me.

“That’s a very nice effect,” he pointed out to me, hoping I wasn’t taking any of his planning for granted. “I thought this room would be visually dramatic for my little film. That’s why I picked this place to meet you. It’s perfect, isn’t it?”

I didn’t know if Bella was aware of his shift in attention, of if she was just acting on instinct alone, but she twisted painfully to put her hands on the floor and began crawling for the entrance.

The tracker laughed quietly at her pathetic attempt, and then he was standing over her.

Alice had shown me this. I wished I could look away. But I couldn’t, and the tracker’s foot came down hard against her calf. I heard both snaps as her tibia and her fibula gave way.

Her whole body jerked, and then her scream filled the small room, ricocheting off the glass and the polished wood. It felt like a drill boring into my ears through the headphones. Her face strained with the agony, and tiny blood vessels burst inside her eyes.

“Would you like to rethink your last request?” he asked Bella, all his focus on her now. He pointed one toe and pressed it with delicate care into the nexus of the break.

Bella screamed again, the sound scraping and tearing out of her throat.

“Wouldn’t you rather have Edward try to find me?” the tracker prompted like a director on the edge of the stage.

The tracker was going to torture her until she begged me to hunt him. She must know that I would understand that her answer was coerced. Surely she would give him what he wanted quickly.

“Tell him what he wants to hear,” I whispered uselessly to her.

“No!” she rasped hoarsely. For the first time she stared into the camera’s lens, her bloody eyes pleading, speaking directly to me. “No, Edward, don’t—”

He kicked her in her upturned face.

I’d already seen the mark of this blow developing across the left side of her face. There were two tiny fissures in her cheekbone. He’d been careful, knowing if he kicked her with even a fraction of his strength, it would kill her, and he wasn’t done yet. It was just a tap, really.

She flew through the air again.

I saw his mistake immediately, watching her trajectory.

The glass was already broken, the buckled edges pointing outward like ragged silver teeth. Her head hit nearly the same spot as before, but this time the glass teeth ripped into her scalp as gravity pulled her down to the floor. The sound of her skin giving way was impossible to miss.

He turned to watch, and in the mirror I saw his expression tighten when he realized what he’d done.

Blood was already seeping through her hair, trickling in crimson threads down the sides of her face, rolling down her neck and pooling in the hollows above her collarbones. Just watching this called fire into my throat, and the memory of the taste of that blood.

The blood found the floor, dripping in loud splats as it started to puddle around her elbows.

There was so much blood, flowing so quickly. It was overwhelming. I watched, shocked that she’d survived this. The tracker watched, too, all his planning and all his conceit fading. His face turned feral, inhuman. Some small part of him wanted to fight his thirst—I could see that in his eyes—but he wasn’t conditioned for control. He could barely remember his audience or his show.

A hunting snarl ripped from between his teeth. Instinctively, she raised one hand to protect herself. Her eyes were already closed, life bleeding from her face.

An explosive crunch,