Part 2 : Incognito

Without a sound, Alice pulled Jasper out of the house and to the edge of the forest.  She didn’t want to be heard or seen.  The house was completely deserted, full of a troubling emptiness.  Only Edward and Bella were to be avoided, and they were a half a mile away tucked into their cottage.

    “We’ve got to warn them,” Jasper suggested as he grabbed Alice’s hand, deciding for the both of them to go to Edward.

    “No,” Alice said with a low voice.

    She held her husband back and then pushed him in the opposite direction toward the winding path toward the road.  “Edward can’t know,” Alice repeated to herself, hoping that a new vision would come with each passing second, a vision that would hold a better outcome.  But the only thing she could see was Jasper, waiting for an explication as to why they shouldn’t go and warn Edward and Bella about the future kidnapping of their daughter.

    “Alice…”

    “If we let Edward in on what Rosalie is about to do, it will be too late, we won’t be able to do anything for her—he’ll kill her,” Alice declared, continuing to walk down the gentle slope that led from their home and toward the main road.

    Jasper didn’t respond.  

    Alice hoped that he would still help her.  She looked at him over her shoulder and saw him frown.  Jasper couldn’t deny it- Rosalie’s treachery deserved no mercy.  Tonight, the girl that humans took as his twin sister was going to prove that she was no longer part of their family.

    “I want her to have a chance to explain herself, Jasper,” Alice insisted, turning toward him and taking his strong hands into hers.  “We’ve known Rosalie for a long time.  I refuse to believe that she would do this selfishly.  You don’t trust me?”

    “What a question!” Jasper sighed, and bent over her to kiss her forehead, right at the edge of her black bangs.  “I understand.  But I also know Edward.  He’ll be angry to know that you held the truth from him.  I don’t want to have to fight with him.”

    “Edward is the least of my worries right now.  No one else need to know this right now.”

    Without another moment lost, she continued the path in the darkness, keeping her distance with the cottage and still seeking a solution.

    “We have to warn Jacob,” she murmured to herself.

    “If Renesmée is with him, we have to get there as soon as possible,” Jasper said, clenching his fists.

    This possibility did not make him particularly happy.  The Quileutes Reservation was forbidden territory, the only part of the area that they could not touch.  Jasper thought that it would be, without the terrible play on words, throwing themselves directly into the mouths of wolves.  Alice, even without being able to read his thoughts, guessed why he was tense.

    “You know that we don’t have the right to go there,” she reminded him.

    She thought that if she had been human, her heart would have tightened in her chest, she would have bit her lip and let out a tearless sob.  What an idea!  Once again, she couldn’t stop herself from analyzing her recent visions.  She shouldn’t have been able to see Renesmée and Jacob (or any other werewolf for that matter).

    “I know, but do you think that Rosalie would let some treaty keep her from what she wants to do?” Jasper remarked.  “If she’s really serious about kidnapping Renesmée, we don’t have the choice.”

    “You’re right.”

    “Just don’t get too far ahead of me.”

    Although they had never been there, Jasper and Alice easily found the road to the reservation.  With the same fervor, they eyed their surroundings suspiciously, and returning into the forest, ran like the wind into the La Push.

    Suddenly, they halted their silent slicing through the flora of the forest and instinctively took the other’s hand.  They sniffed the air—smoke.  They listened—shouts.  They took the glowing red lights to be a fire.  A few hundred yards away, not far from the boundary line they could not cross, a fire was growing.

    “It’s too late,” Alice said, forging ahead.

    “Alice!” Jasper exclaimed as he caught up to her, attacked by the stench of smoke as they walked closer.

    Finally, they walked across the invisible line of the Quileute territory.  A few more steps and they emerged from the forest, only to discover worse than what Alice’s visions had predicted.  A small garage, close to the Black home, was on fire and slowly smoldering under the whistling flames.  All around, neighbors were trying desperately to put out the fire and keep it from spreading.  Also close to the house was Jacob, laying on the ground and surrounded by his giant wolf brothers.  He was just as Alice had seen him: his face against the dirt, in his werewolf form, his mouth gaping and dripping with blood.

    “Oh no!” Alice started, not even noticing that Jasper had placed himself before her.

    Around them was nothing but desolation.  “It’s too late,” Alice said again, looking with horror at the group of wolves who now had their teeth bared and ignored the flames swirling around them.  They even had seemed to lose sight of Jacob.  The wolves only had eyes for two things: the two vampires that had just crossed onto their territory, the two vampires that belonged to the same coven that had just strewn terror across their land.