New Moon (Twilight #2)(72)

This was the forest around La Push - near the beach there, I was sure of it. I knew that if I found the beach, I would be able to see the sun, so I hurried forward, following the faint sound of waves in the distance.

And then Jacob was there. He grabbed my hand, pulling me back toward the blackest part of the forest.

"Jacob, what's wrong?" I asked. His face was the frightened face of a boy, and his hair was beautiful again, swept back into a ponytail on the nape of his neck. He yanked with all his strength, but I resisted; I didn't want to go into the dark.

"Run, Bella, you have to run!" he whispered, terrified.

The abrupt wave of deja vu was so strong it nearly woke me up.

I knew why I recognized this place now. It was because I'd been here before, in another dream. A million years ago, part of a different life entirely. This was the dream I'd had the night after I'd walked with Jacob on the beach, the first night I knew that Edward was a vampire. Reliving that day with Jacob must have dredged this dream out of my buried memories.

Detached from the dream now, I waited for it to play out. A light was coming toward me from the beach. In just a moment, Edward would walk through the trees, his skin faintly glowing and his eyes black and dangerous. He would beckon to me, and smile. He would be beautiful as an angel, and his teeth would be pointed and sharp...

But I was getting ahead of myself. Something else had to happen first.

Jacob dropped my hand and yelped. Shaking and twitching, he fell to the ground at my feet.

"Jacob!" I screamed, but he was gone.

In his place was an enormous, red-brown wolf with dark, intelligent eyes.

The dream veered off course, like a train jumping the tracks.

This was not the same wolf that I'd dreamed of in another life. This was the great russet wolf I'd stood half a foot from in the meadow, just a week ago. This wolf was gigantic, monstrous, bigger than a bear.

This wolf stared intently at me, trying to convey something vital with his intelligent eyes. The black-brown, familiar eyes of Jacob Black.

I woke screaming at the top of my lungs.

I almost expected Charlie to come check on me this time. This wasn't my usual screaming. I buried my head in my pillow and tried to muffle the hysterics that my screams were building into. J pressed the cotton tight against my face, wondering if I couldn't also somehow smother the connection I'd just made.

But Charlie didn't come in. and eventually I was able to strangle the strange screeching coming out of my throat.

I remembered it all now - every word that Jacob had said to me that day on the beach, even the part before he got to the vampires, the "cold ones." Especially that first part.

"Do you know any of our old stories, about where we came from - the Quileutes, I mean?" he asked.

"Not really," I admitted.

"Well, there are lots of legends, some of them claiming to date back to the Flood - supposedly, the ancient Quileutes tied their canoes to the tops of the tallest trees on the mountain to survive, like Noah and the ark." He smiled then, to show me how little stock he put in the histories. "Another legend claims that we descended from wolves - and that the wolves are our brothers still. It's against tribal law to kill them.

"Then there are the stories about the cold ones." His voice dropped a little lower.

"The cold ones?"

"Yes. There are stories of the cold ones as old as the wolf legends, and some much more recent. According to legend, my own great-grandfather knew some of them. He was the one who made the treaty that kept them off our land." Jacob rolled his eyes.

" Your great-grandfather?"

"He was a tribal elder, like my father. You see, the cold ones are the natural enemies of the wolf -  well, not the wolf really, but the wolves that turn into men, like our ancestors. You would call them werewolves."

"Werewolves have enemies?"

"Only one."

There was something stuck in my throat, choking me. I tried to swallow it down, but it was lodged there, un-moving. I tried to spit it out.

"Werewolf," I gasped.

Yes, that was the word that I was choking on.

The whole world lurched, tilting the wrong way on its axis.

What kind of a place was this? Could a world really exist where ancient legends went wandering around the borders of tiny, insignificant towns, facing down mythical monsters? Did this mean every impossible fairy tale was grounded somewhere in absolute truth? Was there anything sane or normal at all, or was everything just magic and ghost stories?

I clutched my head in my hands, trying to keep it from exploding.

A small, dry voice in the back of my mind asked me what the big deal was. Hadn't I already accepted the existence of vampires long ago - and without all the hysterics that time?

Exactly, I wanted to scream back at the voice. Wasn't one myth enough for anyone, enough for a lifetime?

Besides, there'd never been one moment that I wasn't completely aware that Edward Cullen was above and beyond the ordinary. It wasn't such a surprise to find out what he was - because he so obviously was something.

But Jacob? Jacob, who was just Jacob, and nothing more than that? Jacob, my friend? Jacob, the only human I'd ever been able to relate to...

And he wasn't even human.

I fought the urge to scream again.

What did this say about me?