GODS AND MONSTERS ↝ P. LAHOTE

[22]

Lark looked over the final answer to her biology homework for the evening, checking to make sure that what she had written was, in fact, correct before she called it a night and retreated downstairs to catch up on the latest episode of Supernatural. As she closed her textbook and set it back on her desk, a knock sounded at her bedroom window, pulling her attention to where it was covered by a dark gray curtain.

Lark crossed the room tentatively, pulling back the curtain to see Paul standing in the tree outside her window, an unreadable expression on his face. She quickly pushed open the window, and he climbed inside, nearly shaking, his skin radiating more heat than normal.

"What's going on?" she asked, furrowing her eyebrows as he paced around the room. "Hey," she said as he continued to pace, her question going unanswered. "Paul, come on, talk to me. If you don't calm down, you might shift in my room, and then we're really going to have some problems."

"A-are your parents home?" he asked nervously as she attempted to keep up with his pacing, though he was much quicker than her, despite the small size of her bedroom.

"They're in Seattle for the weekend for their anniversary." Lark explained, stepping in front of Paul's line of movement to keep him from pacing and taking his hands in hers in an attempt to calm the boy down. "Now, what's going on?"

"The pack split." Paul said bluntly, his eyes glued to the ground, unwilling to meet his girlfriend's eyes. "Jacob, Seth, Leah... they're all gone."

"They what?" Lark exclaimed.

"Bella's pregnant." Paul said, Lark's jaw nearly dropping to the floor in shock as she took in the magnitude of his words. While, for a normal newlywed couple the news might be exciting, for those aware of their situation, it was as if a doorway had been opened up into the unknown. "We don't know how-" he cut himself off, shaking his head with a disgusted look on his face. "Well, we know how, but we don't know how it's possible, or what's going to happen."

"Oh, my..." Lark trailed off, at a loss for words. "But why does that mean the pack split up?"

"Sam says we have to kill it." Paul said, his eyes finally finding Lark's. "And I agree with him. That.. that thing she's carrying is dangerous, and we don't know the kind of destruction it could cause. But Jacob refused to act on Sam's orders."

"Because that would mean killing Bella." Lark summed up, Paul's eyes once again finding their way to the floor.

"I know you two are friends." Paul said, his voice hardly above a whisper. "But that thing's killing her as it is. Since Jacob left the pack, I can't hear him in my head anymore, but before he did I saw an image of Bella at the Cullens' house. She was... she looked sick. She thinks Dr. Cullen can turn her at the last second before she dies, but the truth is she doesn't stand a chance once this thing comes. I don't want to kill her, that's not what we do. I wish there was another way, but... I don't know what we can do. She thinks it's a baby, and she doesn't want anyone hurting it."

"Come here," Lark said softly, wrapping her arms around Paul's hulking frame, and the boy hugged her back tightly, burying his face in her shoulder as he finally stood still, the heat radiating off his body becoming less and less until it returned to his normal temperature.

"I can't risk it destroying Forks." he said. "I can't risk it hurting you."

"I know," she assured him. "How about I make some popcorn and you pick out a movie? It'll take our minds off of things for the night. Does that sound okay?"

Paul nodded, giving her a kiss on the forehead before she left the room, retreating downstairs into the kitchen to retrieve a bag of popcorn from the pantry. She placed the bag in the microwave, moving absentmindedly around the kitchen to pick up a bowl from the shelf, her thoughts swimming with Paul's words from before as she wracked her brain trying to think of any old legends that might have covered this particular topic.

"Vampire babies, vampire babies," she muttered under her breath, the popcorn in the microwave filling the kitchen with the smell of butter. Lark could faintly recall a legend taking place in Brazil, though if it pertained to their current situation, she couldn't quite remember. "There has to be something about vampire babies."

Lark pulled the popcorn out of the microwave, dumping its contents into a bowl before carrying it back up to her bedroom. Upon re-entering the room, she noticed Paul's choice of movie sitting on top of her DVD player, though the boy was passed out on top of her bed, curled up with his feet still hanging over the edge, the mattress being not quite big enough for someone of his stature.

Lark chuckled softly to herself, pressing play on the movie and setting the bowl of popcorn down on her bed next to Paul. However, instead of climbing into bed herself, Lark slipped back out of the room and into her father's office, scanning through rows and rows of old books of studies on lore, searching for anything that might have something about what they might be facing.

She picked up a couple older volumes about old vampire lore, carrying them back into her bedroom and booting up her computer, typing up a search into Google for Brazilian vampire legends. While the page loaded, she began to flip through the books, eventually slipping into a focused state where all she could do was search through the information presented to her, in both the text volumes and online articles, desperately trying to find something to help the potential dangers facing Forks and unaware of the hours passing by.

On the one hand, she could understand where Bella's head was at. Lark herself always knew that she wanted children, but for Bella, once turning into a vampire was on the table for her, the idea of having a family of her own was no longer a possibility. For Bella to have one last shred of hope to cling on to that that might be a possibility after all... then Lark owed it to her friend to try and help.

On the other, she knew Sam and what remained of the pack had a point. No one could truly be sure what this meant for all of them. Carlisle had been around a long time, and if he'd never seen anything like this, then their odds weren't seeming very promising. For all they knew, Sam could be right. There could be a bloodthirsty monster lurking inside Bella, waiting to break out and set ruin to the town of Forks.

"Lark?" Paul's groggy voice asked, pulling Lark from the book in front of her to look at the clock on the wall. It was shortly past eleven, and the movie's menu screen played on the small TV atop her dresser, alerting the girl that the movie had finished long ago, not that she had noticed. "What are you doing?" 

"Oh, nothing," she assured him, closing the books and tucking them into her bag, as well as turning off the computer monitor.

"Come lay with me." he said, and she smiled, rising from her desk and crossing the room, setting down the untouched bowl of popcorn on the floor and climbing into bed next to him. 

Paul instinctively wrapped his arms tight around her, his unnaturally warm skin erasing any chill from the cool autumn breeze coming in through the still-cracked open window as he soon fell back asleep, her mind still racing with the endless possibilities of the months to come.