DISCLAIMER!
I'm just an avid fan laying no claims to Stephanie Meyer's world of Twilight. All characters are hers and storylines are largely based off the Twilight series books. The Louisiana bayou vampire coven ARE mine however and completely and totally made up. Any resemblance to real or fictional people is entirely a coincidence, yada yada yada you get the gist!

Preface:

The metallic smell of blood permeated the air. Both wolf and vampire blood intermingled into a wild and deadly combination. Sounds of metal tearing and twisting with occasional whines and howls echoed in the forest. A new coven of vampires thought they could take up residence in the lush Pacific Northwest forests, however they didn't know that these forests were already occupied. They didn't know about the legend of the shape shifters who protect these lands. They didn't know how outnumbered and inadequate they would be. Picking off unsuspecting tourists in the Louisiana Bayou had been easy, too easy. They didn't know that they weren't the top of the supernatural food chain. What they didn't know would get most of them killed...
Unfortunately, despite the devastation of the loss of most of their coven, they weren't finished. The few remaining vampires wanted revenge and they figured out how to get it.

Chapter 1:

Claire POV (age 16):

Summers used to be my favorite time of year. My parents let me stay with my auntie Emily and her husband Sam, well they used to until the accident. The details around what happened are fuzzy. I have the feeling that the "adults" don't want us "kids" to know something. But that could just be my imagination working overtime again. I do that a lot. People say that I come up with some pretty crazy stories. Once my parents took me to a therapist when I told them that I had dreams of a giant wolf who was my guardian angel. Overactive imagination, I tell ya!

Back to the accident, last summer my auntie Emily was the victim of a wild animal attack. Some rumors say it was a bear, some say it was a cougar, but no one really knows the truth. Why? Because my auntie can't speak anymore. She survived the attack, however I don't think you could consider her current state as really living. She is being kept alive by machines pretty much, but my uncle Sam won't take her off of them. He says something about it being his duty to always protect her. Who knows - maybe there will still be a miracle that she'll wake up one day?

Now this summer is going to be spent at home with my parents. How much more lame can a teenager's summers get? Despite the lame summer, I really miss my friends and family on the Quileute reservation. I felt like it was my second home. And then there's this guy. Isn't there always a guy? I loved to spend my summers drooling over him. Of course he didn't even realize I existed much. That is to be expected when I'm still just a kid anyway, but hey I can dream! Oh and dream I do (overactive imagination, remember?) . In my fantasy land he's my soul mate and we are destined to be together, but he is just waiting for me to turn 18 - which explains why he has to pretend like I don't exist until then.

This guy though, how cliché it sounds but he's...so...perfect. All the guys on the Quileute reservation are like super tall and super muscle-y. Yeah not a word, but there is no better way to describe them then that. Quil though, The Guy, is just different than the others. His eyes, his hair, his smile, his biceps... I could go on and on. It's not just physical attraction though, at least I don't think it is. I really feel like we have some sort of secret connection even though he rarely looks my way or even says more than two words to me. Sometimes I get the feeling though that it's nothing more than a childish crush like my friends have on their favorite celebrity..and just as obtainable or possible too (in other words NEVER GONNA HAPPEN).

Apparently Quil (The Guy) used to be quite close with my family, so I know he knows my name at least. From family pictures and a few fuzzy memories I have, he was like a brother to me. We're NOT related though, let's be clear on that right now. Trust me, I checked the family tree. For some reason though he just really liked hanging out with my family I guess. He was a really good babysitter too and took care of me a lot (how embarrassing is that!) Something happened a few years ago though and he never came around as much, then soon it was not at all. Now it's like I don't even exist to him.
This summer my parents were planning on some big European cruise that they were supposed to take alone. However, because of auntie Emily's accident my sister and I are stuck here at home. I offered to keep an eye on things and watch my sister so that my parents could still go. Besides, my friends are all off having beach parties and whatever else, and I'm just not feeling up to it. I miss my Quileute friends and I miss seeing Quil. Even if he pretended like I wasn't even on his radar, just being near him made me feel better somehow. Now I feel only as if I piece of me is missing.

Today my parents are leaving for their cruise. They gave me a list nearly a mile long of "emergency numbers" to call. Oh and they also have our neighbor, an old cranky cat lady, keeping an eye out for us. It's not like I've never been home alone before, even if it is for three weeks . I can drive, cook, clean, and I'm perfectly capable of taking care of Gracie. My sister Gracie is only a couple years younger than me anyway...it will be a breeze. I have some grand plans of visiting the library, maybe watching a few movie marathons (Nightfall, a movie series about vampires, are my sister's favorite *gag*), and reading several books. All in all, it will be a SUPER fun summer (can you sense my sarcasm?)

Quil's POV /backstory

The few of us that are left who are strong enough to fight are nearly on constant patrol these days. We are jumpy and not quite ourselves. We often think we hear sounds and smell vampire when there is nothing there. This constant patrolling also gives me a lot of time to think...to think about things I'd rather forget and painful things that make me ache.

Being away from your imprint is worse than any imaginable torture for a shape shifter like us. However, tragic events over the past few years have caused me to place a safe level of separation between Claire, my imprint, and I. I am so thankful that I listened to my instincts back at the very beginning of all of this and distanced myself from Claire years ago. My wolf instincts knew that there was a threat against my imprint and that the only way to save her was to forget her. While an imprint can never truly be erased or forgotten, the bond grows weaker as distance and time separates the pair. It killed me to walk away from Claire, but I felt that I had to do it. I didn't know why yet, but I could feel that it was necessary.

At first I kept trying to come back and see her anyway. I couldn't just quit cold turkey. I needed to see her and know that she was okay. Turning my back on my imprint felt like a piece of me was being literally ripped away. As I kept seeing her, however, even the little amount of time it was, the more I felt that danger was in the air. This sort of danger was different. This sort of danger didn't make me want to run and protect Claire, but rather it made me feel like I needed to keep her away from me, for her own protection. I'm glad I listened...

I couldn't explain to the pack how I felt. They had imprints that they were romantically involved with already. Claire and I were different, however. I had no romantic interest in her, obviously. Our imprint bond worked as such that I was solely her protector. I was who she needed me to be. It worked the same for the other guys in the pack, but I think the romance side of things got in the way sometimes of the natural instincts. That is the only way I know how to explain what happened. God, I wish I had figured it out sooner. So much hurt and pain could have been prevented.

My memory starts to flashback to seven years ago...where it all began. We thought our pack was done growing after all the newborn vampire drama and Volutri intrusion, however we thought wrong. We were taken by surprise when two young boys of the tribe, Eli and Jace who were barely 13 years old, shifted. No one was expecting that. What we didn't know was that a new vampire coven was trying to take up residence in our forests. Silly them had never heard the legends up here I guess. They were from downs south, Louisiana or something. They led a pretty sheltered life in the Bayou from the looks of them. When we finally caught their scent and met up with them, they looked totally shocked to see us. We completely ambushed them.

Unfortunately in the scuffle, they took out Brady and Eli. A couple of the vampires in their coven were very fast, like Cullen fast. Once they recovered from the shock, they got a couple lethal bites in, and that was all it took. We got them back good though. We wiped out four of their coven that night. My only regret is that we couldn't get them all before two escaped. I figured they wouldn't be back, but after the deaths of Brady and Eli, the pack felt we needed to double up on patrol duties for a time. I couldn't spend as much time with Claire, and I started to feel that warning signal starting then - that I needed to keep away from her.

The quiet and calm of the next three years to follow was a facade. We realize now that the remaining two vampires were just laying in wait while trying to figure us out. They had all the time in the world to wait until the time was perfect to strike. They knew that two of them couldn't stand a chance against the pack, even with us down two members. So they found another way to get us. They had abilities that we didn't know about, abilities that could hurt shifters like us.

The first attack was four years ago (or three years after we nearly decimated their coven). Rachel, Jacob's sister and Paul's imprint, was out for a run on an old logging road up in the mountains. Paul hated that she would insist on these solo jogs up in the mountains. She loved Paul, but she loved her space though. He found a compromise by giving her enough distance to make her feel like she was alone, yet he could still be there within seconds if needed. That day , however, he got tied up patrolling elsewhere due to a report of a possible vampire in the area on the opposite side of the Rez. Rachel was supposed to be baking or something with Emily, but instead she decided to go for her run early that day. While up on the mountain road, a rogue vampire caught up with Rachel. There was only one purpose in mind for that vampire and it was to kill her. It was fast and quick. She never had a chance. By the time Paul felt danger for his imprint, it was already too late. We had thought it was very very bad luck, but we should have known better. It was too calculated, too quick, too perfect. Typically vampires have this sadistic habit of "playing with their food" as bad as that sounds. Not this vampire though.

When an imprint of a shifter is killed, it will nearly kill the shifter. It left him incapacitated and a mere shell of who he once was. It was like his eyes were dead and nothing else existed beyond them. The guilt took over quickly and Paul couldn't handle it anymore. He apologized to the pack but said that he needed to get away from the pack, the shifting, the vampires, and his memories. He was planning on just running as far as he could, way up into Canada or something and starting over as just a person, not a wolf and not an ex-imprintee, but just a guy roughing it in the middle of nowhere or something. We respected his space and hoped he'd come back to us someday. No one had ever lost an imprint before, we didn't know what to expect.

Patrols increased even more after that of course. We were all reeling over Rachel's death and could feel some of the pain that Paul felt. The connection of a pack is strong, imprints and all. Jacob, Rachel's brother, was devastated almost as much as Paul. He wanted revenge and he wanted it badly. However, we never did pick up on a trail for that vampire or find them for a long while. We decided it was just a vampire traveling through and we'd probably never see him after that, wrong again.

Two years later it happened again. This time it was Embry's imprint Chloe. Chloe is a semi-distant cousin of Jacob's. Embry imprinted on her when her family came to visit for some big family reunion of some kind. We knew then that Embry couldn't have been Jacob's brother and that Sam Uley's dad must have fathered him. No one knew before that, but we had speculations. Embry couldn't have imprinted on his own cousin though, so by process of elimination we realized that Embry was an Uley.

Chloe was driving up to see Embry (she lived on a different reservation across the state), when she was run off the road. It could have been made to look like an accident, except for the fact that her car door was ripped clean off the frame. Only vampires have that sort of strength. By some miracle though, Embry had decided to meet her and couldn't wait for her to drive over to see him. He was already on his way to see Chloe, and was in wolf form to get there faster, when he sensed the danger. This vampire was just as quick as the last one, but Embry was quicker in this instance. The vampire didn't wait around to be torn from limb to limb though. He took off before Embry got there. Embry didn't keep chase because he was more concerned about Chloe. She was hurt badly from the car accident but was going to be okay. She hadn't been bit yet and could recover from the human injuries of a car wreck. It was a long recovery, with Embry was by her side the whole time. She will always have a horrible scar across her head and face to remember the accident by and she deals with some chronic pain from the accident, but she's alive. We are so happy and thankful for that after Rachel's death.

Things started to pick up though after Chloe's accident. We started to think that it was odd that these super fast vampires have found two of our imprints. It was almost too coincidental. We had to be more careful and more wary. Patrols again increased. Yet still not a year later, the vampire tries again. Unfortunately for that vampire, Nessie is a hybrid between human and vampire. While she has a heartbeat and smells like a human, she's also gifted and strong like her vampire parents. She still probably wouldn't have been a match for that vampire though had she been alone. Thankfully Nessie's parents, Edward and Bella, were close by. Nessie was able to fend off the attack for a short time because of her supernatural strength, but mommy and daddy scared off the vampire before he could overcome her. Nessie was unharmed but shaken. We knew then that it was becoming too coincidental. Even Edward said that it was odd that he didn't sense another vampire. They were WAY too quick for it to just be a random attack. No one saw them coming.

We had a tribal council meeting to decide what to do. So far the attacks were only on imprints, and that was baffling us because the imprints served no danger to vampires. I was so thankful that I had distanced myself from Claire years ago. I think it may have saved her because our bond was so weak. Claire would have been an extremely easy target as just a child.

The council decided to take the remaining imprints, Kim, Chloe, and Emily, to Sam Uley's home and provide round the clock guard for his home. The pack would split up to do patrols on the borders of the Rez and the others would guard Sam's home. The shifter magic was still in effect as two new members, Nicky and Micah, shifted and were added to our pack. They helped filled the spots of the devastating loss of Brady and Eli. We thought we would be impenetrable. We thought we had it figured out, but we thought wrong yet again.

A year later, just as we're starting to think that it was over again and letting our guard down some, Sam's imprint Emily got distracted and wandered a little too far away from our protection. She got too far into the forest looking for huckleberries to put in her famous huckleberry pie. I swear that vampire was just biding his time and waiting for the right moment because he was right there and ready the moment she got far enough away for no one to hear her. The blood sucker tossed her around some this time though and hurt her pretty bad before Embry and Seth came along on their patrol route. The vampire didn't have time to finish her off and didn't want to risk being seen so he left, again. Emily was near death by that time already though. Sam was there an instant later, sensing the imprint warning signal, and whisked her off to a hospital. The doctors said she had massive internal bleeding, a major skull fracture, and several other broken bones. She was in a coma and they didn't know how long it would be, if ever, that she'd wake up. For the mean time, machines kept her alive and Sam refused to give up hope. How could he? The imprint bond would never let him. None of us would do any different.

Something was different about this time though. Earlier in the day Leah, Jared, and Micah had stumbled across the path of a vampire - two vampires to be exact. The scent trail abruptly ended oddly, but it was enough to jog a memory in Leah's head. That was the same scent of the two vampires we had tried to track for awhile after the Louisiana coven massacre. They were the two escaped vampires... suddenly things began to click into place. We contacted the Cullens to see what inside information they might have. They said that many years ago one of their family had come across a coven of vampires down south. It was unusual to see a large group of vampires as they usually like to be in pairs or solo. However, this coven was made up of six vampires, most of them mated. The Cullens said that if this was the same coven, then they had some really unique abilities amongst them. A couple had the super fast ability like Edward had, another had the ability to completely hide their scent in a shield-like way that Bella had, and another could sense connections or mated pairs. That vampire would be able to sense our imprint bonds. It suddenly made sense to us how our imprints were being targeted and how we never even know the blood suckers were coming.

Learning of this news, I immediately called Claire's parents to tell them that the Rez was extremely dangerous right now and with Emily's attack, Claire shouldn't come visit this summer. I hoped we'd find those vampires soon, or else none of us could rest easy with our imprints again.