By the time the weekend arrived, the Cullen household was beyond tense. Edward still refused to change his mind and help his family catch Victoria. As such Rosalie was refusing to talk to him outright while everyone else had settled on just being civil. On the few occasions that the two had been forced to interact, their conversation had been full of taunts and thinly veiled insults. The only reason why it had not broken out into full on fights was because Carlisle had stepped in every time. He was the only one capable of stopping the two. Whenever anyone else tried to intervene, Edward would turn his focus to them, provoking them into joining the arguments.
In truth, they all let out a breath of relief when Edward and Bella boarded their plane. If only because it would give them a break from all the glares and arguments. The Cullens loved Edward. He had their brother and son for decades, but over the past months he had changed and now they could hardly recognize him. He no longer cared for the safety of his family and was constantly dragging them into all sorts of trouble and danger. He placed all his focus on Bella and left them to clean up his messes. If they were being honest, the family was growing tired of it. Especially as he continued to insult and look down on them.
Even Carlisle was reaching the end of his patience. His family had lived peacefully and as such he had never had to really put his foot down as coven leader. But now, with the help of Maya who was spending much of her free time talking with him about how the other covens she had learned about did things, he was beginning to think that that had been a mistake. If he had tried to be more of a coven leader instead of a father figure, then perhaps his family wouldn't be facing this trouble now. Which was why as much as Edward's current actions bothered him, the one he truly blamed was himself for failing his family as a leader.
However, at this point it was too late for regrets. No matter how angry the family was with Edward or how much Carlisle regretted some of his decisions, Victoria was a threat that had to be taken care of. Which meant that whether Edward was with them or not they would still be going ahead with their plan to catch her. Though Edward's absence did mean that they had had to rework their plan.
In the end it was decided that Alice would hang back with Rosalie, who had taken Maya's role as guard. Leaving only Carlisle and Esme to watch everyone's back. This meant that Maya was now free to help Jasper and Emmet pin down Victoria and force her into a confrontation. The boys would now attempt to grab her while Maya used her flexibility and speed to stay on her trail. She would hopefully be able to keep Victoria from breaking away from them and be close enough to assist if the boys needed it. It was also their hope that she could provide the boys with more opportunities and openings to get her if Victoria was focused on the giant cat following her every move.
When the time came everyone was in place in the woods waiting for Victoria. They were stationed in a line with Alice in the middle, waiting for either her to arrive or for Alice to have another vision that would direct them.
"Are you sure this where you saw her?" Carlisle questioned. They had been there for almost an hour and everyone was growing restless.
"She's almost here" Alice said dreamily, sifting through her visions. After another minute she cried "on your left!" and they all took off after the red head.
Emmet was in the lead, the rest of the family not far behind. Maya was closest after Emmet, pacing herself and focusing on finding Victoria's rhythm so that she could match her pace.
They all wove through the woods after the redhead. When Victoria was forced to slow a little bit to weave around a tree, Emmet almost caught her, but she grabbed his arm before he could get a solid hold of her and threw him into a tree. He was quick to stand, a snarl now on his face and they all continued the chase until she jumped the river.
"Wait" Carlisle held out his had to stop them, "she's in their territory."
Victoria took off again running along to opposite bank while the Cullens followed on their own side. Maya was still on her tail though, not bound by the treaty as they were, and did her best to match the vampire step for step. She noticed Victoria looking over her shoulder with a look of worry as she realized someone had followed her and Maya sent her a toothy grin.
Unfortunately Maya did not have the speed to catch Victoria and without the aid of anyone else, chances were that Victoria would eventually slip away if this continued.
"She'll get away" Esme cried, realizing the same thing.
Seeing the wolves coming out of the trees to join Maya, Jasper shouted "No, she won't!" Pushing himself as hard as he could, he managed to come up along side her, ready for her if she jumped back to their side.
Seeing the wolves and cat closing in around her, Victoria did just that, jumping back over to the Cullen's side, not breaking her stride. Jasper was right on her tail, following her as she began to use the trees, jumping from branch to branch.
Maya was not able to scale the trees in her current form. Instead she used her flexibility to weave around them without losing too much speed, staying just far enough back to keep Victoria in sight as she ran overhead. Jasper managed to get into position to cut her off and launched himself at her but she twisted in the air, causing him to miss and crash back into the ground. Maya let out a snarl of frustration, pushing herself to go even faster. Her lungs were burning but she ignored it, completely focused on the vampire in front of her.
Emmet, once again in the lead with Maya, was right on her tail completely focused on catching her, causing him to ignore his surroundings and miss Rosalie's warning.
Victoria jumped the river again, this time Emmet following her along with Maya. Just before he could land one of the wolves came out of nowhere, knocking him into the water. Maya made it to the other side safely but halted her pursuit.
She knew there was a good chance that this could become a fight and switched her focus to keep that from happening. Paul, the one that had gone after Emmet, stayed crouched on the side of the river snarling at Emmet in warning as he glared up at the wolf from the water. Maya snarled in annoyance, catching sight of Victoria disappearing through the trees as she made her way over to them. She went right up to Paul and placed her front paws on his back so that she could bend her neck down and bite his ear.
Distracted by the pain, he turned to her with a snarl and she snarled back in admonishment. Jasper jumped down from the ledge then, landing in the river. He was careful to not cross the line, but wanted to be as close as possible in case the wolf attacked Maya.
Luckily, Carlisle stepped in then to calm down the situation. "We meant no harm. Nor did we mean to trespass. We simply wanted to catch Victoria before she could harm anyone else."
Sam growled at that to show his displeasure, the best they could do to communicate in wolf form. However after a minute of deliberation, he nodded his head and turned to call off Paul.
Giving a bark in farewell to Maya, the pack turned around and headed off into the woods, following Victoria's path to ensure that she had left the area.
As the pack headed into the trees after her, a part of Maya wished she could go too to help catch Victoria. But knowing that would just worry the Cullens, she turned around to face her worried mate. He still stood in the stream, waiting for her at the edge of the border.
"Come on Darlin', let's head home."
She headed towards him, rubbing up against his side as she did and they both made their way back over to the Cullen's side of the treaty line and back towards their house.
When they got there, Maya headed straight up to Jasper's room with him to dry off and pull on some new clothes quickly before joining the family in the living room to discuss what happened. Emmet arrived just after them, having had to change out of his wet clothes as well.
"I would have had her if it hadn't been for that mutt" Emmet declared, frustrated at their failure.
"We don't know that" Esme said, trying to make him feel better.
In truth though, everyone was a little on edge and frustrated at their lack of success. They had known ahead of time about where she would be and had a good solid plan in place. Yet Victoria still somehow managed to slip through their fingers.
"If only Edward had stayed behind instead of running off to help his little human." Rose sneered the last bit, completely done with Edward and his infatuation with Bella. "He would have been able to keep up with her."
"I'm not so sure of that" Jasper mused.
They all turned to look at him at that.
"What do you mean?" Carlisle's question made Jasper refocus on them as he pulled his thoughts together.
"We knew where she would be and we had a good plan. We even had the wolves helping us. And yet she still managed to stay one step ahead of us the entire chase. She instinctively knew where the treaty line was and always managed to move at the last possible second to dodge Emmet and I. And according to Maya, she's been escaping from the wolves for months. Not to mention that Laurent warned us when we were facing James to not underestimate her. I'm beginning to think that she has some sort of gift that is allowing her to do this."
"What? Like a gift that enables her to escape traps or something?" Alice asked, furrowing her brows in confusion.
"Or something" Jasper agreed.
Now it was Carlisle's turn to get lost in thought and as he considered all that Jasper said he had to agree that it did sound likely. "This could pose a bigger problem for us than I thought" he said thinking aloud and catching everyone's attention a few minutes later.
They had been debating what her gift could be, but quieted down as he began to speak. "If she does have a gift like that as Jasper suggests, then we won't have much luck with traps or running her down. Even if we do outnumber her, as we saw that is no guarantee that we will catch her. Which means that we might be stuck waiting for her to make the first move."
They all considered that, silently thinking over what he had said and what it would mean. "But it doesn't make sense," Maya said frustrated, "she's had months to make her move while you guys weren't here. Yes, the wolves were here but as far as she knew they didn't know what she wanted and as such had no reason to believe they were specifically guarding Bella. Not to mention this is the first move that she has made since you guys came back. I don't get what's been stopping her from just going after Bella."
"You said she doesn't fight Darlin'. Perhaps that's why. Maybe all her skills lay in evasion and she has no real offensive abilities. Don't forget, she probably knew from James that you are not human. Which means that she either knows what you are and is wary of it, or doesn't know and is playing it safe" Jasper surmised.
"Yes," Carlisle agreed, "you yourself are probably a big reason as to why she has not made a move yet. You live with Bella and attend school with her, which limits her openings to attack if she truly wants to avoid confronting you."
The others nodded along in agreement with this assessment and Maya sighed. "So, basically what you are saying is that she is super cautious and going to draw this out?"
"Unfortunately it looks that way" Carlisle conceded. He had hoped that this could be dealt with fast so that his family could go back to their quiet life, but apparently that was not going to happen.
They all groaned at this before getting back to the topic at hand. Many suggestions were brought up as they tried to think of away to lure Victoria in and capture her. None of them wanting to simply wait around for her to attack. Unfortunately, given that they did not know the specifics of her gift, or if she even had one at all, there really wasn't much they could do. Without knowing more they could not create a plan to catch her and since they had no idea what her goal was beyond Bella, they could not predict her next move. In the end they resigned themselves to having to wait for Victoria to make her move.