Three

It couldn't be true. It wasn't true. The Cullens were not vampires. Vampires slept in coffins and burned in the sun and fed on...

Humans.

I began to back away from them. They all sat there, motionless, staring at me. I didn't know why I was suddenly afraid of them, because it was obviously just a joke. Soon they would all burst into laughter and everything would be normal again. Just a joke, just a joke. I repeated it in my head over and over again.

"Bella took it pretty well, in comparison," said Edward with a glimmer of a smile. "I seem to recall her finding out on her own terms, putting together the puzzle pieces until they made the right picture. Then she just says to me, out of the blue, 'I know what you are.' But she wasn't afraid, no..."

I stopped. Not because of anything that Edward had said, but because I'd backed right into a wall. Maybe I could... distract them... somehow. I looked at all of their faces. They certainly didn't look like they would hurt me. But what if it wasn't a joke? What if they were just pretending, to lure me into a sense of false security? Then they would attack and drink my blood and -- stop. I knew I was overreacting. This was just a joke, right?

"It's not a joke, Summer," said Edward.

I froze. "How -- how --" I couldn't finish. How had he done that? It was as if he knew what I'd been thinking.

"Exactly."

I stared at him.

"She's going into shock," observed Jasper from his seat. "I can feel it."

"She's going to faint," announced Alice. "She'll be out for a few days."

"Calm her down, Jasper!" ordered Carlisle. I watched as the scene played out before me like a movie. I was unable to move, pressed up against the wall.

"Five... four... three..." Alice counted. A wave of calm began to spread over me as she did so. I saw the look of concentration on Jasper's face and wondered what was going on. "Two... one... zero."

Then the floor zoomed up to meet me and everything went black.

***

When I came to, the blackness still surrounded me, suffocated me. I could hear everything going on around me, even if I couldn't necessarily see it. The voices floated up around me, seeming to echo in my head until I couldn't hear them because they were so loud, pressing on my eardrums. After almost a minute, maybe more -- in this state, I didn't know -- the echoes faded away, and I could hear what was being said more clearly.

"She's been out for four days," said a musical voice anxioulsy. I knew the voice, but I couldn't tell exactly who it was. "When will she wake up?"

"Soon," assured a voice that sounded like tinkling bells. "Don't worry. It'll be another ten, fifteen minutes, at most. I promise." There was a pause. "I've seen it. It's going to be soon."

"She can hear us," said a male voice. "She's a little confused, but she recognizes your voice, at least, even though she doesn't know who it is, Bella."

Bella. So that was the first voice. Slowly, the blackness began to grow lighter, turning grey, then white. It took what seemed like forever to do so, but finally my eyes opened. I was lying on my back, staring up at the pristine white ceiling. My eyes slowly adjusted to the bright light filtering in from outside, and I became aware that a large group of people surrounded me. The first person that I identified was Bella. Her eyes were golden again. I wondered if it had been a trick of the light, the blackness in her eyes the last time I had seen her. Then everything came rushing back. In my mind, I saw it all, rushing along through my head with no sign of stopping, whirling around, faster and faster and faster and faster... The Cullens, gathered around the big dining room table, announcing that they were going to tell me what they were. Carlisle saying that one word that scared me to death. Vampire. Just a joke...

I looked around at all of them. I stopped when my eyes came to rest on Bella again. My best friend. She stood right by my head, Edward's arms wrapped loosely around her, biting her lip anxiously. And I had to ask her the one question I would never have thought I'd be asking anybody. I didn't want to ask anybody this question, but I had to know the answer.

"Bell..." I swallowed. "Are you a v--v--vampire, too?"

She nodded.

Normally, I would have taken the news that my best friend was a vampire like the news that the world was going to end in five minutes. But I was too exhausted to react like any normal person would have. So I just gave her a weak smile and mumbled, "You never tell me anything."

Bella's face broke into a wide grin. "You're okay!" she cried happily, breaking out of Edward's grasp and hugging me, which took some maneuvering, because I was still lying on the dining room table. I managed to sit up, and she hugged me properly before returning to Edward.

The sliding glass door slid back with such force that I was sure it should have shattered into a million pieces of jagged glass on the wooden floor. A tall, dark-skinned boy that I recognized as Jacob Black, the one who spent so much time with Renesmee, burst into the room wearing only a pair of sweatpants -- wasn't he freezing? It was snowing outside! -- and announced, "Embry wants to know the situation. If I hadn't already imprinted, I'd think that he was nuts, sending me in here every five minutes to check on her, but --" He finally noticed me and clapped a big brown hand over his mouth. "Damn it! Why didn't you tell me she was up? What am I going to tell Embry? Oh, hey, Embry, sorry, but I let slip that you imprinted on Summer..." He rushed back outside.

"Mutt," muttered Rosalie.

"Leech!" came Jacob's voice from outside.

Esme sighed. "Just when I thought we were past that..."

"What's imprinting?" I asked.

Bella sighed. "You always ask about what you shouldn't know," she muttered. "I can't tell you. It's not my story to tell."

"I never get to know anything," I grumbled.

"We told you what we are," Bella pointed out.

"Is it really true?"

Bella nodded. "But we aren't like... like Dracula," she tried to explain. "Tell me what you think you know about vampires."

"Burn in the sunlight?"

"Myth."

"Sleep in coffins?"

"Myth."

"Wooden stakes?"

"Myth."

"Garlic?"

"Myth."

"Is anything not a myth?" I asked, exasperated.

"I'll just tell you the facts," interrupted Esme, smiling. "Real vampires aren't like the vampires in all of the stories. Practically the only similarities are that we drink blood, we are immortal, and we are incredibly dangerous. We don't burn in the sunlight, and garlic and wooden stakes don't affect us. It would be pretty hard for a wooden stake to penetrate our skin, anyways. We don't sleep in coffins; in fact, we don't sleep at all. Ever. We also can't eat human food -- well, we can, but we have to cough it back up later. We don't age; for instance, Bella is nineteen forever."

My head whipped around to stare at Bella. "Forever?" I whispered.

Bella nodded.

"But we aren't like others of our kind in a way," Esme continued. "We don't feed on human blood. We feed on animals; it's what makes our eyes this colour" -- she indicated her liquid-gold eyes -- "instead of the customary red. When we're thirsty, our eyes turn black. We call ourselves 'vegetarians' -- our little inside joke."

"We are the world's most dangerous predator," said Edward intently. "We have all the weapons we could possibly need. Speed. Strength. Agility. We don't have fangs, but our teeth are incredibly strong, and we are venomous. And then we have the things that draw our prey to us: we are attractive --"

"Modest, Edward, really modest," grinned Emmett.

"And you have yet to see our skin in the sunlight," Edward continued, ignoring Emmett.

Bella took my hand in her ice-cold one. I remembered what Esme had said about wooden stakes not being able to penetrate their skin. Curious, I poked Bella's arm. The skin didn't give; it was rock-hard. Bella led me outside into the snow. Edward followed us. She looked at me, deciding something, then picked me up and started to run. She leapt over the river and into the trees. The wind whipped my cheeks, blowing my long red hair back from my face. I glanced behind us to see Edward racing along, not even two feet behind. I shut my eyes because I was getting motion sickness, but very suddenly, we stopped. Bella put me down and took my hand again, leading me into a little cottage that looked like it had just popped out of a fairy tale. She took me up the narrow stairs and into a room with a big bed, a white couch and shelves upon shelves of CDs. She sat me down on the couch and disappeared into a large closet. Edward leaned against the wall next to the door, watching me closely. I sat there, silent, until Bella returned, wearing a tank top and shorts. Then Bella picked me up again, perched on the wide ledge at the bottom of the big window, and jumped out.

I screamed.

"Calm down! It's easier than going down the stairs, all right?" said Bella, landing neatly on her feet in the snow and taking off into the trees again.

"Where are we going?" I gasped.

"Out of the fog," she replied. "You're going to see what our skin looks like in the sunlight."

"Aren't you cold?"

"Temperatures don't bother us," she said, and by 'us' I assumed she meant 'vampires.'

Moments later, we stopped at the edge of the trees. I could see that we were at the top of a big hill or small mountain; I wasn't sure which. Bella put me down and I stood, shivering -- not only from the snow, but also from her cold skin -- and stepped out into the sunlight. Edward, standing beside me in silence, watched my face carefully as I stared.

Bella's skin was sparkling. Like thousands of tiny diamonds were embedded in her rock-hard skin, every facet glittering as the sun bounced off of it, shedding rainbows on the white snow.

"Time to go back to the house," said Bella, stepping back into the shadows beneath the trees. She picked me up again and we hurtled down the hill. This time we didn't stop at the quaint little cottage, but merely zoomed right past it and through the still-open sliding glass door, into the Cullens' dining room. Bella put me down and then headed through the kitchen into the big living room. I didn't hear a thing, but Edward had disappeared after her within seconds. I followed more slowly to see Bella standing in the entry to the living room, Edward right beside her, staring at a group of tall, muscular, dark-skinned boys.

"What's going on?" Edward was asking.

"You know what's going on, Edward," snapped Alice from the foot of the stairs. "I, unfortunately,don't, thanks to the --" She noticed me and fell silent.

Why was everyone keeping secrets from me?

"Embry wanted to see Summer," supplied Jacob.

"Why would he want to see me?" I asked, confused. "I only met him a few days ago!"

I saw Embry in the front of the group of boys. He was around nineteen, I supposed. He was wearing only a pair of jeans. His black hair was cropped short and his dark eyes lit up when he saw me standing behind Edward and Bella.

"He's seen her," said Rosalie pointedly. "Now, mutts, get out of here! The smell is getting to me!"

"The smell's getting to us, too," grumbled one of the boys.

"Why did you bring so many?" asked Edward. "It's not like we're going to prevent you from seeing her. We know what's happened."

"What? What happened?" I asked curiously, but they all ignored me.

"Everyone except Embry, move it," Jacob ordered, and they all filed out the door obediently. Jacob nodded to Embry. "See you back at Emily's for dinner tonight," he said, and followed the rest of them.

"I want to talk to Summer," said Embry. "Privately. I need to tell her what's going on."

"Are you sure that's the best idea? When we told her what we were she was out for four whole days," said Emmett. "And you don't have a doctor in the family."

"I'll keep her on your property," snapped Embry. "Edward can listen to my thoughts the whole time, and if she faints -- which she won't, judging by the reactions of the other imprints -- then he can get the doctor to her, all right?"

Emmett shrugged. "I was just warning you," he said. "Rose and I are going hunting." And with that, he tugged Rosalie out the door and disappeared.

"I have a headache," complained Alice, heading upstairs. Jasper followed her.

Esme claimed that she had to go and buy more paint for Edward's piano room and disappeared out the front door. Edward opened his mouth to say something, but Embry held up a hand.

"You don't need to make an excuse to leave, Edward," he said wearily, and Edward nodded and led Bella out of the room, leaving me alone with this strange boy I didn't even know.

***

Author's Note: Two chapters in one day! I suppose I'm over the writer's block now... Hooray! Thanks to starbright37 and HPobsessssssed7 for reviewing so quickly! You'll have to wait a bit for the next chapter, I think... I'm going to try and get another chapter done for Mudblood now...