Twilight: But it's a Thriller and I Never Read Twilight

Chapter 21: The Return of Leah Clearwater

But it wasn't just about the bikes. I knew that fully well. Every thought and inkling of Edward made me afraid. Mostly, I was afraid I'd never see him again, never feel his presence or hear his voice again. I wasn't sure I quite remembered what he sounded like anymore and that gave me a shiver. I think I was just afraid too. I'd never been so afraid before I met Edward, and now I found it at every turn. Maybe that was love.

The further we drove, the more the radio turned to static. Soon the voice of Michael Jackson couldn't even be made out and I switched it over to another station. The voice of a news anchor came through and I reached to turn it again in the hopes of finding some music to distract, but Jacob stopped me, batting my hand away as he turned the radio up a little more.

"...three dead found in Port Angeles. The police are calling them mountain lion attacks. Some which may have come down from Olympic National Park," the news anchor was saying.

"Mountain lions?" I mused. It wasn't so uncommon to hear about a mountain lion, but all the way in Port Angeles seemed odd. They weren't dumb enough to get so far into a city like that.

"Could be," Jacob said. "That sucks. They're probably going to try and hunt them down then."

I stared ahead at the road as I drove, trying to make sense of what the anchor had said. Three people had been killed. It felt all too familiar, like I'd heard about it before, maybe in a dream. Or maybe it was just because three men had been killed in Forks last year. I'd nearly forgotten about it after nothing came of it. The police department failed to find any good leads. They'd never even IDed the men with how viciously their faces had been torn up. It all sounded just the same.

"...Mountain lions aren't likely to come into a human populated area and they aren't likely to go after humans as prey says Olympic National Park official, James Daniels. The Olympic National Park maintains the position that any mountain lions, wolves, or bear making their habitat within the park could not be responsible for the three separate attacks occurring last night."

A thought came to my head in a creeping fashion, like animal stalking prey, and I didn't realize I'd had it until it was already on top of me. It was the Cullens. Three people had died, all so swiftly and mercilessly that I knew it had to be vampires. The police didn't really have an answer. Their best guess was an animal attack and that would have been believable if not for what I knew.

Vampires hunted humans. They drank their blood and not cleanly. They would have left a mess that looked like an animal attack. My heart leapt with the sudden idea that perhaps the Cullens were coming home. Maybe when I pulled back into town, they would be moving back into their glass house outside of Elk Creek.

But even as I had that thought, I knew it could never be true. The Cullens didn't drink human blood, at least they hadn't when they left. They ate only from the animals in the woods, but if they were back, they wouldn't be in any headline news about a mountain lion attack. Unless something fundamental had changed about the Cullens. If they were killing people, I wasn't sure I wanted to see them again. As I held tight to the wheel, I imagined Edward's face covered in blood. It didn't sit right in my stomach, my Edward, killing a human being.

It wasn't them, no matter how much I wanted it to be, and I wanted it to be. My disgust for three dead people in Port Angeles aside, I wanted to see Edward again, beg him to turn me and take me with him. If he had come back, it would have been because he changed his mind and I wasn't sure, after three and a half long months, that it was even possible.

"It's bullshit," Jacob said, lowering his head as he listened. "It wasn't an animal attack."

I swallowed back all my wishes and all the thoughts of Edward. "What else could it be?"