Parallax

Chapter 16

Several things happened all at once. Unfortunately for Bella, her human eyes could only see so much.

The next thing she knew, Alice's tiny figure was being held up by the collar with her back to the wall by another vampire. Before Bella could identify who it was, there was another loud crash and the other vampire was suddenly gone, leaving Alice righting herself on the ground.

Bella turned towards the sound of glass breaking and this time around, found Jasper the one holding the unknown vampire up on another side of the wall with Edward suddenly appearing beside Alice to ask if she was okay.

"I didn't see..." Alice spoke, more to herself.

Bella already had an idea who the vampire was, but she was only able to confirm it when the vampires finally stopped blurring around in the room. She recognized him right away.

"Caleb!" Both Helena and Bella spoke at the same time with Bella sounding surprised and Helena, with a hint of worry and fear in her voice.

Unfortunately, Caleb was not paying attention to his surroundings. His face was contorted in rage, red eyes shining against Jasper's gold ones who was looking at him with equal disdain, especially after how he attacked Alice.

"Get off me." Caleb threatened, a low growl reverberating from his chest.

"You're the one who attacked first!" Jasper growled, his golden eyes slowly starting to darken.

This was going to be a problem. Both vampires were too caught up with the need to protect their mates.

Bella saw Jasper's expression and it was like she was transported back to her own world when Jasper and she would be doing their work as Volturi guards.

They may be, for most of the time, the peaceful ones when trying to reinforce the Volturi law but when vampires underestimate them and try for a more violent approach, they would always end up at the mercy of Jasper's abilities and strength. Especially when they would almost always attack her first.

Bella felt a shift in the atmosphere and realize immediately that Jasper was projecting his anger and Bella had to remember that Jasper was acting the way he is now because he was fighting for his mate that got attacked... and that was Alice... not her.

She shook her head to clear her mind. This was not the time to think about herself because at that moment, Caleb's expression changed.

For Bella, seeing Caleb do it before and having been around too many gifted vampires, she had developed the instinct to know when a gifted vampire would be activating their powers because that's when she usually reinforces her own to make sure that she can defend effectively and now Caleb was doing that exact same thing.

Knowing that he was going to use it on Jasper made her fear for him because if Caleb would be sending Jasper to his past, he could very well be bringing him to the most unpleasant time that Jasper has been trying his best to never reminisce, his time in the Southern Wars and Bella didn't want him to experience that anymore. Even if this wasn't her Jasper, she couldn't bear to see any version of the man that she loves be tormented by his past, all over again.

Before Bella could even try to find a way to help, Helena had already made her move. Probably more attuned to her mate, Helena quickly crossed the distance of the small room and got to where they were confronting each other just as Caleb's eyes slowly turned from red to a purple hue.

That's when Bella realized that Caleb's gift had the similar effect of one of the Volturi twins, Alec. His gift didn't activate instantaneously. It was a slow build up before his powers would take effect. That's why Bella still had the time to process Caleb's purple eyes, and nothing happened to her right away when he first activated his gift on her.