Chapter Eighteen: Play date.

Everyone else involved is really happy about the new vampire-werewolf alliance, absolutely sure that this will lead to a decisive and mostly safe victory over the newborn vampires. Everyone, that is, except for Bella Swan, human girl who really has no idea what her supernatural friends are capable of and doubts them at every turn. Way to keep morale up, Bells!

She insists she come to their 3 am meeting so she can see everyone play together nicely for herself. When Edward refuses, she fights dirty and says she'll just call Jacob and have him bring her instead. Bella gets what she wants; he'll take her with him. Of course, she's still freaking out about the werewolves and how they're all going to die, just like the other times they've fought vampires and...none of them have even gotten hurt. Right.

And yet, she'd rather people attack her rather than let her superpowered friends take care of business. Even Edward tells her that it's going to be easy, especially since a newborn vampire is going to be scared shitless of werewolves, considering they have no clue they even exist.

Since Bella can't sleep, she gets to go to the baseball clearing and watch some vampire on vampire action. While they wait for some giant wolves to show up, Bella expands on her theory. She thinks Victoria is behind it all, since it would connect all of the dots and would provide some symmetry to the three books, in that one of the evil vampire trio would be killed in each one. Edward tells her he still thinks the Volturi are the prime suspects, but is willing to entertain an alternate Victoria theory that will inevitably turn out to be right.

So, the wolves show up. And there's more than a few of them now; the pack has grown to a nice round ten thanks to the large Cullen family in their neighborhood. Edward agrees to translate, since he can pass the wolves' thoughts along without forcing them to phase back into their human forms.

Here's the gameplan: they're expecting about 20 newborns, ten for the wolves, and ten for the veteran sparklepires. The newborns won't have any real strategy; they're just going to use brute strength to try to take down the allied supernatural forces that guard Bella.

They use Emmett, the strongest of the Cullens (and one of the few without any superpowers), to demonstrate how a newborn will attack. He goes after Jasper, who darts around him until he's able to sneak behind for a killing blow. Apparently, the two rules of fighting newborns are "don't let them get their arms around you" (probably good advice in ANY fight), and "don't go for the obvious kill." If you use a little trickeration, they'll never see it coming. They always fall for the hidden ball trick, are really bad at peek-a-boo, and they fall for the play-action pass every time. Yes, they're just that thick.

Next up, Jasper takes on Alice, just to show Bella that her vampire sister can handle herself. Apparently, seeing the future is a great skill in battle, because Alice has no problem with Jasper, and could have killed him if she wasn't sleeping with him.

Then it's Edward's turn, but while they're still in the pregame warmups, Alice issues a warning to Bella. Apparently she's having some stupid ideas, and if they get any more defined, Alice is going to let everyone know to stop her. It definitely has something to do with killing herself like the third wife from the Quileute story.

Ahem, Bella, listen up for a second.

YOUR FRIENDS HAVE TOLD YOU A MILLION TIMES THAT THEY'RE GOING TO WIN EASILY, TRY NOT TO DO ANYTHING STUPID!

Sorry for yelling, but someone has to get it through to her that yes, werewolves and vampires are pretty good at what they do, whereas she is not exactly useful in a fight. Calm the fuck down, Bella.

Anyway, Jasper and Edward dance around a bit before calling it a draw, and then everyone takes turns pretending to fight while the wolves watch. When they're all done, they agree to come back again the next night. However, before the festivities conclude, the wolves all want to smell the vampires. So they won't get confused during the fight and kill the wrong ones, presumably. Or maybe Cullens secretly smell really great to them. Probably both.

As the wolves come up, a great big russet-colored one walks over to Bella and starts acting goofy. At first Bella suspects that this one might have rabies and need to be taken out back, but after a few seconds, she figures out that it's actually Jacob being all cute and such. Then he licks her, which might be cute if he were actually a dog, but is somewhat disgusting when you realize that he's also a boy who recently sexually assaulted Bella. Both the vampires and the werewolves also find this behavior a little off-putting.

After the werewolves leave, Jacob comes back in human form to talk strategy with Edward. They need to know what they're going to do with Bella during the fight, but Bella's more concerned about the date. She bought concert tickets for Edward and Alice as a graduation present, and the newborn army has the nerve to attack on that very night! Ugh, life is hard.

Hiding Bella will be hard, because she's so smelly. But because werewolves don't smell very good to vampires, if Jacob carries her to the hiding spot, that might disguise her scent enough to throw her pursuers off the track. Jasper has an even better idea: leave Bella right in the clearing where the newborns can smell her easily, and let them get within feet of Bella before stopping them. The newborns will go crazy, and won't even be able to concentrate on fighting. Brilliant, with no downside!

But sadly, everyone else is against this plan because they care about Bella or something, I don't know. Instead, they'll hide Bella, but use Seth Clearwater -- now a werewolf -- as a cell phone of sorts. He'll stay with Bella, in wolf form, connected to the rest of the the wolves through their pack mindmeld.

In the end, it seems like Jacob and Edward are getting along, at least in so much as they're really looking forward to working together on the murder of 20 newborn vampires. Vampires and werewolves working together? It's like cats and dogs! Or, actually, vampires and dogs. You know what I mean.