“I’ll try.” He shook his head, as if he doubted his success. “Come and tell me as soon as you figure it out.” Something occurred to him just then, something that made his hands shake. “If you…if you want to.”

“Why wouldn’t I want to see you?”

His face turned hard and bitter, one hundred percent the face that belonged to Sam. “Oh, I can think of a reason,” he said in a harsh tone. “Look, I really have to go. Could you do something for me?”

I just nodded, frightened of the change in him.

“At least call me—if you don’t want to see me again. Let me know if it’s like that.”

“That won’t happen—”

He raised one hand, cutting me off. “Just let me know.”

He stood and headed for the window.

“Don’t be an idiot, Jake,” I complained. “You’ll break your leg. Use the door. Charlie’s not going to catch you.”

“I won’t get hurt,” he muttered, but he turned for the door. He hesitated as he passed me, staring at me with an expression like something was stabbing him. He held one hand out, pleading.

I took his hand, and suddenly he yanked me—too roughly—right off the bed so that I thudded against his chest.

“Just in case,” he muttered against my hair, crushing me in a bear hug that about broke my ribs.

“Can’t—breathe!” I gasped.

He dropped me at once, keeping one hand at my waist so I didn’t fall over. He pushed me, more gently this time, back down on the bed.

“Get some sleep, Bells. You’ve got to get your head working. I know you can do this. I need you to understand. I won’t lose you, Bella. Not for this.”

He was to the door in one stride, opening it quietly, and then disappearing through it. I listened for him to hit the squeaky step in the stairs, but there was no sound.

I lay back on my bed, my head spinning. I was too confused, too worn out. I closed my eyes, trying to make sense of it, only to be swallowed up by unconsciousness so swiftly that it was disorienting.

It was not the peaceful, dreamless sleep I’d yearned for—of course not. I was in the forest again, and I started to wander the way I always did.

I quickly became aware that this was not the same dream as usual. For one thing, I felt no compulsion to wander or to search; I was merely wandering out of habit, because that was what was usually expected of me here. Actually, this wasn’t even the same forest. The smell was different, and the light, too. It smelled, not like the damp earth of the woods, but like the brine of the ocean. I couldn’t see the sky; still, it seemed like the sun must be shining—the leaves above were bright jade green.

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 déjà 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. I 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, unmoving. 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?

I knew the answer to that one. It said that there was something deeply wrong with me. Why else would my life be filled with characters from horror movies? Why else would I care so much about them that it would tear big chunks right out of my chest when they went off along their mythical ways?

In my head, everything spun and shifted, rearranging so that things that had meant one thing before, now meant something else.

There was no cult. There had never been a cult, never been a gang. No, it was much worse than that. It was a pack.

A pack of five mind-blowingly gigantic, multihued werewolves that had stalked right past me in Edward’s meadow….

Suddenly, I was in a frantic hurry. I glanced at the clock—it was way too early and I didn’t care. I had to go to La Push now. I had to see Jacob so he could tell me that I hadn’t lost my mind altogether.

I pulled on the first clean clothes I could find, not bothering to be sure they matched, and took the stairs two at a time. I almost ran into Charlie as I skidded into the hallway, headed for the door.

“Where are you going?” he asked, as surprised to see me as I was to see him. “Do you know what time it is?”

“Yeah. I have to go see Jacob.”

“I thought the thing with Sam—”

“That doesn’t matter, I have to talk to him right now.”

“It’s pretty early.” He frowned when my expression didn’t change. “Don’t you want breakfast?”

“Not hungry.” The words flew through my lips. He was blocking my path to the exit. I considered ducking around him and making a run for it, but I knew I would have to explain that to him later. “I’ll be back soon, okay?”

Charlie frowned. “Straight to Jacob’s house, right? No stops on the way?”

“Of course not, where would I stop?” My words were running together in my hurry.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “It’s just…well, there’s been another attack—the wolves again. It was real close to the resort by the hot springs—there’s a witness this time. The victim was only a dozen yards from the road when he disappeared. His wife saw a huge gray wolf just a few minutes later, while she was searching for him, and ran for help.”

My stomach dropped like I’d hit a corkscrew on a roller coaster. “A wolf attacked him?”

“There’s no sign of him—just a little blood again.” Charlie’s face was pained. “The rangers are going out armed, taking armed volunteers. There’re a lot of hunters who are eager to be involved—there’s a reward being offered for wolf carcasses. That’s going to mean a lot of firepower out there in the forest, and it worries me.” He shook his head. “When people get too excited, accidents happen….”

“They’re going to shoot the wolves?” My voice shot through three octaves.

“What else can we do? What’s wrong?” he asked, his tense eyes studying my face. I felt faint; I must be whiter than usual. “You aren’t turning into a tree-hugger on me, are you?”

I couldn’t answer. If he hadn’t been watching me, I would have put my head between my knees. I’d forgotten about the missing hikers, the bloody paw prints….I hadn’t connected those facts to my first realization.

“Look, honey, don’t let this scare you. Just stay in town or on the highway—no stops—okay?”

“Okay,” I repeated in a weak voice.

“I’ve got to go.”

I looked at him closely for the first time, and saw that he had his gun strapped to his waist and hiking boots on.

“You aren’t going out there after the wolves, are you, Dad?”

“I’ve got to help, Bells. People are disappearing.”

My voice shot up again, almost hysterical now. “No! No, don’t go. It’s too dangerous!”

“I’ve got to do my job, kid. Don’t be such a pessimist—I’ll be fine.” He turned for the door, and held it open. “You leaving?”

I hesitated, my stomach still spinning in uncomfortable loops. What could I say to stop him? I was too dizzy to think of a solution.

“Bells?”

“Maybe it’s too early to go to La Push,” I whispered.

“I agree,” he said, and he stepped out into the rain, shutting the door behind him.

As soon as he was out of sight, I dropped to the floor and put my head between my knees.

Should I go after Charlie? What would I say?

And what about Jacob? Jacob was my best friend; I needed to warn him. If he really was a—I cringed and forced myself to think the word—werewolf (and I knew it was true, I could feel it), then people would be shooting at him! I needed to tell him and his friends that people would try to kill them if they went running around like gigantic wolves. I needed to tell them to stop.

They had to stop! Charlie was out there in the woods. Would they care about that? I wondered….Up until now, only strangers had disappeared. Did that mean anything, or was it just chance?

I needed to believe that Jacob, at least, would care about that.

Either way, I had to warn him.

Or…did I?

Jacob was my best friend, but was he a monster, too? A real one? A bad one? Should I warn him, if he and his friends were…were murderers? If they were out slaughtering innocent hikers in cold blood? If they were truly creatures from a horror movie in every sense, would it be wrong to protect them?

It was inevitable that I would have to compare Jacob and his friends to the Cullens. I wrapped my arms around my chest, fighting the hole, while I thought of them.

I didn’t know anything about werewolves, clearly. I would have expected something closer to the movies—big hairy half-men creatures or something—if I’d expected anything at all. So I didn’t know what made them hunt, whether hunger or thirst or just a desire to kill. It was hard to judge, not knowing that.

But it couldn’t be worse than what the Cullens endured in their quest to be good. I thought of Esme—the tears started when I pictured her kind, lovely face—and how, as motherly and loving as she was, she’d had to hold her nose, all ashamed, and run from me when I was bleeding. It couldn’t be harder than that. I thought of Carlisle, the centuries upon centuries that he had struggled to teach himself to ignore blood, so that he could save lives as a doctor. Nothing could be harder than that.

The werewolves had chosen a different path.

Now, what should I choose?