Luminosity (Book One)

Chapter 28: Ashes

"I hear the guard now except for Addy," Edward signed to me. We were just barely more than one mile from the field. Only the fact that nobody was raising their voice kept us from being able to listen directly to their conversation. Only thick tree cover kept us from being able to see them, up to and including the whites of their eyes. And vice versa. I held very still, moving only my hands to reply.

"And?" I asked.

"They don't want to kill me..." he signed. "Aro's still hoping to recruit me. They haven't gotten to the subject of you yet."

"Well, if they're hoping to recruit you, then that does limit what they can do to me," I answered. A hot flare of hope lit somewhere in my chest.

Edward nodded, a guarded grin spreading across his face. Then it disappeared.

"What?" I signed, alarmed.

"Run," he whispered, his hands unavailable to communicate silently because he was grabbing my hand and pulling me away. I couldn't keep up with his top speed, but he wasn't about to leave me behind.

"I'm slowing you down, we should split up, he can't track me and can't catch you -" I started to say. I didn't know why we were running, what he'd heard, but before I'd had a chance to try to convince Edward to let go of my hand and take off in another direction, we were tackled from behind.

I snapped my head around enough to recognize Leah's wolf form. She was the fastest wolf, faster than me, maybe not faster than Edward but he'd been trying to keep pace with me, and we could have fought off one wolf together but the others caught up almost at once.

Leah and at least one other wolf snapped their heads towards me and I flung out my one free hand to try to defend myself. I couldn't tell if I'd done any damage because I was in pieces an instant later. My ears stopped working. My eyes were unresponsive. I couldn't inhale to see if my nose was working. That was just as well because I couldn't have processed any sensory input through the shattering pain.

The pain, all by itself, wasn't as bad as turning, although it was in the same class. But it wasn't only pain: my proprioception was desperately confused. It was insisting that every direction was down. I sort of thought that I might be able to move some of my muscles, but the input from them was unclear, fuzzed out in comparison to the sharp awareness of the damage - I could try to twitch a finger but I didn't know whether I'd managed it or what the finger might be touching. I couldn't do anything, couldn't help -

Edward - was he okay - had he gotten away? - he could outrun them if only he'd leave me behind, but he never would...

The sensations apart from the pain were impossible to interpret, and my sense of time was shot to hell. I could have been in a heap moments later or scattered across a football field the following week, still in the mouths of several wolves or -

There was a sensation I recognized: I was on fire.

That was as bad as turning.

I couldn't scream. Couldn't flail around. There was only pain and dizziness and terror and I was going to die and what kind of shield could represent itself as protection for my mind if it was going to let my mind cease to exist, the mind was not safe without the body -

I felt something - something that wasn't pain. I couldn't be healing, not shattered into a hundred fragments and burning, but I felt something, like I was under a blanket that hugged my surface - my shield? Manifesting in some form I could detect only now, when it would die with me?

I tried to pull it in, willed it to put out the fire, come on, shield, if you want my mind safe you have to let it have someplace to live - the mind is not safe without the body -