Transmute | Emmett Cullen

5. Mind-trapped

I'd woken up to sounds of clothes shuffling and someone shaking me. My eyes blinked, the world slowly coming into focus. I barely heard what words my mother was telling me. Her mouth was moving but the words weren't coming to me. I blinked again, hoping it helped. I could only manage, "Get up, Olivia! Hurry!" before I knew something was wrong.

Fear and adrenaline were pumped into my veins as I threw my covers off me and shoved my feet into the pair of boots by the door. I yanked the backpack my mother had packed for me off the edge of the bed and swung it over my shoulders. The bag was usually half-packed with supplies and family valuables with one set of clothes just in case for a quick getaway. This meant we had a few spare minutes if Mom was packing even more clothes.

"Where's Dad?" I asked as we rushed out the door.

"Don't worry about him, we have to get out of here," she ordered, her voice clipped.

I stayed quiet as we got inside the car, my heart beating loud in my ears. The question was burning on my tongue but I knew the answer. It was bound to happen eventually. Why should I have been so surprised? They were picking us off, one by one until there was no one left.

As hard as I tried, the lump in my throat grew until it was hard to swallow it down and act tough. Big, fat tears rolled down my cheeks, hitting my chest and disappearing from there. There was nothing but silence as Mom continued to drive down the road, speeding away from the house and the danger behind us. She didn't have to say the words when I knew. Goodbye, Dad.

The silence grew with no other sound than the car speeding down the highway. My eyes were planted on the window, watching unseeingly as houses and buildings passed us by. Soon, we were past civilization with nothing surrounding us but farmland and trees. Wherever we went, we'd be far from this place. Far, far away.

One moment there was silence and the road ahead of us. Next, there was screaming, loud shrill screams, and pain. The world was spinning, everything was dizzy, and I couldn't make sense of anything. But it came to a stop, and suddenly everything made sense. We were under attack again. We weren't free or 'let off easy'. He was waiting for the perfect moment to pick us off. And it happened.

Blinking around, the world became clear after a moment. The car was tipped on it's side and in the middle of the road from what I guessed. Taking a glance at the passenger seat, I realized Mom was missing. Panic arose, my breathing shallow and quick, as I unbuckled myself and climbed out of the car through the broken windshield, tugging the backpack along.

I'd only gotten a few steps before my eyes found her. Her screams had faded long before I'd heard them but I knew when I didn't see her next me in the car. A body was hunched over an unmoving one, mouth over the neck hiding most of her body from view. In the pale light of the moon, I could see the skin of the monster, flawless and as pale as the moon, and the long red locks of hair falling over it's shoulder. I knew they were beautiful – always so capturing, enough to make a heart stutter in its steady pace. But even so as they were hunched over an innocent soul, I half-expected them to find them disgusting. I was wrong, though. The monster was beautiful.

Knowing I didn't have enough time to sit there and gawk or even cry, I shifted into a bird and flew into the air with the backpack of clothes in my clawed feet. It took every ounce of strength in me not to turn around fly back, begging the monster to leave my mother alone – to leave us shifters alone. But it wouldn't have done any good. I would have been their meal, too. That was the last thing my mother would have wanted. So I kept my flight straight and headed for Northern Minnesota where Jack was currently living.