Starless Night (A Twilight/Stranger Things Fan Fiction)

Chapter 8: Tracks

Emmett, Jasper, Esme and I sit in the police station in Forks high school.

Her scent is on everything--Bella's scent. As is Alice's--but neither of them are here, at least not now. Whatever Alice is doing, she's moving from place to place quickly, and she's taking Bella with her.

I wish I could say the same for the rest of my family.

"Alice's scent diverges in multiple directions from here," Jasper says. "It might be smartest to split up and cover all of her tracks."

"Only one of them also contains Bella's scent," I growl. "We should be following that one."

Jasper makes a sound of dissent, but Esme nods. "I agree with Edward. We need to find Bella now more than we need to know what Alice is up to. And I would prefer..." she looks around uneasily, at the ash in the air. This place puts all of us on edge--we have never known a place so completely devoid of life. "That we not split up," she finishes.

Emmett made a frustrated sound. "We should feed first," he says. "We need to keep our strength up."

"Have you seen anything to feed on around here?" I snap. "There hasn't been a single animal--"

"We could always try hunting those creatures," Emmett says.

I shudder in disgust, and so does Jasper. The creatures are more alive than we are, it's true--with hearts that pump languidly in their lithe chests, pumping thin, bad-smelling blood through their bodies. But they're the only thing I have ever seen that can match our strength, with the exception of the wolves. Can we hunt them without being defeated?

Esme, whose eyes are currently a deep brown, hesitates. For a moment, she seems to agree with Emmett, but then Jasper stands.

"No," he says. "There's no time for hunting. We can hunt once we find Alice and Bella, can't we?"

I wonder at Jasper's anxiety--it turns in his head so quickly I have difficulty reading it. It's so similar to my own the similarity is startling, but why his worry? Bella is vulnerable, human, weak--and, in this land, delicious to every other living thing. Alice... she's as indestructible as the rest of us, if not more. What is there to fear?

I'm about to ask when Esme nods. "We look first, and hunt later. And for now, we all follow the trail Alice and Bella left."

Of course, we'd all smelled the car exhaust. Alice and Bella, wherever they are, have to stop at some point, we're sure--there must be some kind of destination. But without Alice and her abilities, we don't know what that destination is.

Without another word, all of us leave the Forks station--and the heady scent of Bella, all sweetness and freesia--and set off down the road at a rapid run. It feels good to move, to be heading in her direction. Movement keeps the fear at bay.