Hello, loyal readers.

I would like to take this time to say... I HAVE FANS! Or groupies, or whichever. That's really exciting! For me at least. It's so awesome to get tidbits of your personality through your reviews. :)

Speaking of which... These reviews - they're awesome! Like, really. Nothing makes me happier than to come and see that I've got insert number here reviews telling me that you love me. You better be careful, though - you're giving me self-esteem. I've never had that before, and I'm not quite sure how to use it. ;) I do want to hear everything you're thinking, though. If you think I can do anything, anything at all better, let me know and I will do my damnedest.

So thank you Monkey-en-TuTu, ridiculouskopec, Badr, quietandclear, lovelyxangel, Italian-swim-chick, i.love.oreos, Edward-Addiction, SIMPLY KIWI!, and T3HG0D355!. It's really good to hear from some of the same people that loved Moonrise. It makes me smile real big. :)

This chapter was exeedingly difficult to write. I must say, there was quite a lot of backspacing. But I'm finally, almost, semi-happy with it. XD Tell me what you think. You're the opinion that counts, here. ;)

The song for this chapter is Take Me Away by Avril Lavigne.

And now three... two... one... CHAPTER!

2. V I S I O N S

I didn't react. I didn't know how. How was I supposed to react to the utter terror that colored Alice's beautiful face? How was I supposed to relate it to Charlie? The worst I could assume was… but no. I couldn't let my mind travel there because that was not what had happened. There was no way on earth… Charlie… my father… he couldn't be… dead. Jacob was forgotten. Edward was right; he was mature. He could fend for himself. Charlie, on the other hand… what was happening to him? What was happening to my poor father? I wanted desperately to know, but my voice was at a loss.

I just stared at Alice's butterscotch eyes for what seemed like hours. I stared at her without blinking, without crying, and without really looking at her. There was no emotion on my face because I still didn't know how I was supposed to react. I waited for her to explain, for Alice to go into detail about what her vision had been about. Edward wrapped an arm around me, but I didn't really feel it. I only witnessed it. I still gazed unblinkingly at Alice, who stared right back with the same fear in her eyes.

At some point, I realized my mouth was open. The moment I felt that it was hanging open – making me look like a vegetable, no doubt – I snapped my jaw up. I swallowed, unnecessarily, and cleared my throat, finally seeming to have found my voice.

"Uhm, wha… what did you see?" My voice sounded distant and small. It didn't sound like mine at all. It was familiar, but I didn't know whose voice it actually was. The vulnerability in it triggered some distant memory, though. I remembered a time when it was my voice that had been so vulnerable. So innocent. That vulnerability had been lost for a long time now.

Alice's eyes were shining with emotion, not making the sinking feeling in the pit of me feel any easier. When she spoke, her voice was as helpless and shaky as mine had been. "It… it doesn't look good, Bella."

I felt a black hole open up in the pit of my abdomen. I felt my heart sinking toward it, moving southward to my feet. The whirlwind that my internal organs were experiencing was making me feel nauseous. My head was spiraling downward into the black abyss that was sucking everything down. I felt my lips move and my vocal chords rumble, but I wasn't sure what I'd said. Alice seemed to know, though. She started explaining something to me that I couldn't comprehend. It was like I was trying to talk to someone while my head was under shallow water. I could feel the reverberations of their voice through the air, but I could not, for the life of me, understand what they were saying. Alice continued to talk, however, never mind that I couldn't understand her. Finally I caught one key, hopeless phrase: "There's not much time."

There's not much time.

What in the hell were we doing standing here, accomplishing nothing if there was still any kind of hope? What was wrong with Alice that she'd let me stand here with my eyes glued to hers for God knows how long when we could be rescuing my father from whatever horrid fate awaited him? Alice was still talking, but I turned away from her and raced out the door.

"Bella!" I heard Edward call, but there was no time to stop and explain. I ran for the garage, not realizing that I didn't have a key to a car until I was sitting in the driver's seat of Edward's shiny silver Volvo.

I cursed at myself before hurriedly flinging open the door to run back to the house and force the keys from Edward.

"Edward, give me your car keys." My voice was calmer, in control. I didn't know why I was behaving so calmly exteriorly when my insides were raging with panic, fury, sadness, and, above all, terror.

"Bella, we can't go there!" Alice was trying to talk me out of saving my father. What was wrong with her? She'd already let me waste enough time as it was, standing here staring blankly into her stupid golden eyes.

"SHUT UP!" I roared. I surprised myself with my intensity. I had never yelled at any of the Cullens, especially not Alice. She was, by far, my favorite of the rest of the family. My sister since before Edward had changed me. Alice looked quite shocked, as well. Her next words were meek in comparison to my bellow of rage.

"There's blood… a lot of blood…"

If she'd thought those words were supposed to convince me not to go to him, she was sorely mistaken.

"CARLISLE!" I bellowed into the rest of the house. He was by my side in an instant.

"Yes, Bella?"

"We have to go. Now. We have to go save Charlie."

The doctor's expression was bewildered to the highest capacity. "What's happened to Charlie?"

Alice's eyes were frantically flashing back and forth from my face to Carlisle's. "He's been attacked, Carlisle. I don't think we can save him. There's so much blood…" her voice broke on the last word.

Jasper joined us in the Cullens' living room. "What's going on?" he asked as he approached his wife, noticing her distress. Jasper began to rub her back comfortingly, and not long after this simple gesture did I feel the coat of tranquility that he sent me. I was too keyed up to fully feel the effect of the power. My mind was still racing and I could still feel the sinking feeling in my heart, my voice was just calmer when I spoke again.

"What's he been attacked by?" I asked, choosing to ignore Jasper's question.

"I- I can't tell," Alice stuttered, clearly also not as affected by Jasper's unusual power. "It looked like… like a vampire." Edward growled lowly next to me.

Carlisle simply nodded his head, and left the room. He returned not an instant later with his black bag of medical supplies. "Coming, Bella?" he asked me calmly. I was instantly on his heels, following. Edward was right behind me.

"You don't have to-" I started, but he held up a hand to tell me to stop.

"He's my father in-law. I'm coming with you."

I didn't know how much time had passed as we raced to the black Mercedes that I had become so accustomed to. Carlisle flung himself into the driver's seat, and Edward and I leapt into the backseat. As soon as the door was closed, Carlisle was flooring it, eager to get to the scene of the crime as quickly as possible.

The speedometer needle was somewhere around one hundred and twenty-five as the tires squealed onto my street. The declination of speed was steep, and I flew forward into my seatbelt. When Carlisle turned into Charlie's driveway, I knew something was terribly wrong.

The front door was wide open and broken off its hinges.

I was out of the car and racing towards the house before Carlisle had even fully stopped. Aside from the damaged front door, the house was in its usual condition. The front hall was completely intact, the wooden railing on the staircase wasn't broken… the only thing that told me that something was up was the smell of human blood that hit me with the force of a wrecking ball.

I groaned at the tantalizing, alluring odor it took. Sweet and sticky and warm. Warm? It was warm. Charlie was still alive. I had to keep my eye on the prize here, so I decidedly stopped breathing. As Edward and Carlisle entered the house behind me, I warned them to do the same.

"There's blood. Hold your breath."

Carlisle merely shrugged and whipped past me to go to Charlie's aid. Edward heeded my warning, however, and took a deep breath of the damp air outside before crossing the threshold.

I could hear the TV on. ESPN, as usual. Charlie had probably been settling down to watch the basketball game or the baseball game or whatever sport was on. He'd probably heated up some leftover pizza, preparing for a relaxing night after a day of fishing. Why would he have thought he'd be attacked? Why would he be attacked? It was probably my fault. I'd created so many enemies for myself over the past month or so, and one of them had probably broken in and attacked. I felt the tears start to belatedly burn the back of my eyes.

I was still standing in the front hall. I wasn't sure if I wanted to cross that line into the living room to see what had happened to my innocent father. Edward's arm curled around my waist and he kissed my hair, comfortingly. But there was nothing he could do that would stop the image that I was about to see from haunting me for the rest of my existence.

I slowly made my way around the corner of the hall into the living room. The TV was showing a commercial for Budweiser light beer, and there was a plate with the remnants of burnt lasagna clinging to it. Charlie's body was on the floor in front of the couch, a puddle of deep, crimson red pooling from what used to be his face. I gasped and sank to my knees, unable to take a step further.

He was dead. He had to be. No one could look the way Charlie did right now and be alive. His right cheekbone was completely exposed, the flesh that once covered it dangling down around his ear. His nose was pushed to the side, completely broken, the cartilage giving it a bizarre, rubbery look. What was left of his white hair was dyed deep red from the amount of blood that was emanating from several large gashes in his scalp. I couldn't tell where his lips were – all I could see was his bloodstained teeth. It looked as though his lower lip had been torn straight off his face. He was wearing a flannel shirt that was now so drenched with blood that it would need to be wrung out. From what I could see, his eyes were still perfectly intact, but the buckets of blood that coated his once so handsome face obscured my vision.

Carlisle was bent over him, going straight to work wrapping his head wounds. It won't do any good, I thought to myself. He has to be dead. No one could have survived that pain. I wondered who could do such a thing? Who could rip someone's face apart with them shrieking in agony all the while? If it was a vampire, as Alice had said, it was once twisted freak. After opening the skin, it would have had to resist the bloodlust all the while it mutilated the poor man's face. No, this couldn't have been a vampire. But then… what could it have been?

I couldn't keep staring. I had to look away. It didn't even look like Charlie anymore. It was just a corpse. A lifeless, disfigured body. There was no way Charlie could have managed to survive something so ghastly. I stood, fully ready to run from the house that had once been my home, from the body that had once been my father. But when I turned I ran into Edward. He immediately wrapped his arms around me and I went into full-blown hysteria on his shoulder.

My sobs shook my entire body, relentlessly crashing into me one after the other. The tears that had not come at all at first now flowed through my eyes as if they were broken. Charlie… my father. Sure, we hadn't been the perfect match, but I loved him. And he'd loved me. It wasn't fair that he was being punished for something I'd done. It wasn't fair that his death had had to be so painful. He wasn't supposed to have a death of carnage and bloodshed. Charlie was a good man – he should have died peacefully, in his sleep, maybe. The wave of despair rose up over my head and was about to pull me under when Carlisle spoke up.

"There's still a chance…"

I broke away from Edward, controlling my sobbing enough to ask, "How?"

Carlisle had wrapped Charlie's whole face – save for a hole at his mouth for breathing purposes – in gauze wrap that was quickly being stained red. He had a cell phone next to his ear and was muttering something about an ambulance being needed as soon as possible at this address. When he snapped the little silver phone shut, he turned to look at me, somberly.

"This was no vampire."

For the second time today, I didn't know how to react. I simply stared at him, hoping he would continue without my needing to speak. He did.

"It was a werewolf."

I swallowed. Edward went rigid beside me, but remained calm as he asked, "A true werewolf?"

I frowned; hating that, even in this crisis Edwards suspicions immediately went to Jacob.

"It's hard to tell… Once one is in wolf form, they all smell alike, to me at least…" Carlisle answered, also frowning. Though, I did not know if his frown came from Edward's immediate doubt in Jacob or because he was lost in thought.

"But you say there's still a chance that he'll live?" I asked, my voice raspy from the hole of anguish that I had recently climbed out of.

"If the ambulance gets here soon, then yes. There is. He's lost a lot of blood, however. Bella… I can't promise anything, but the outlook looks slightly positive."

As if on cue, my acute hearing picked up the sound of sirens wailing in the distance.

"What's the story?" I asked, slightly cheered by the thought of Charlie pulling through this mauling.

Carlisle's frown became more pronounced as he searched for a half-decent excuse for the state of Charlie's face.

"I think attacked by a dog works as good as anything – we just need not mention what kind of dog."

The sirens were getting louder as the ambulance neared the house, finally coming to a climax as it parked outside. A police car followed, shortly. Four men in white came into the house with a stretcher. Two hurriedly set up the stretcher while the other two lifted Charlie's lifeless form up and onto the small cot that would take him to the ambulance.

I let Edward lead me back to the Mercedes while Carlisle answered some mandatory questions for the police. I wondered; if Charlie could pull through, would he want to? Would he want to live the rest of his life with a disfigured face? A werewolf attack didn't heal the same way as a regular dog attack. I shuddered, remembering Emily.

Emily. Sam. Sam was a werewolf. Sam wanted Jacob to come back to the pack. The only thing standing in his way was… me. Was this injury Sam's doing? Or was it one of the new pack's dirty work? Sam had mentioned that he would not kill me out of respect for Charlie and Billy's friendship… but he didn't say anything about another member of his phalanx. The gears were starting to work in my head when Carlisle graced us with his presence again, opening the driver's side door.

"Thank you," I said immediately.

Carlisle smiled sadly. "Don't thank me yet. I can't guarantee to you that he'll be all right. We can only hope, now."

I nodded. "But there wouldn't be any hope at all if you hadn't been so quick to help. Thank you, Carlisle. Really." I could feel my eyes were wide and swimming with tears, the lump in my throat swelling to a dangerously large circumference.

Carlisle started the car and drove back to his house at a third the speed we had come at.

It was only back at the Cullens' that I found my mind wandering back to Jacob. With all the talk of the werewolf attack that had just taken place, a lot of suspicion was placed on him with no actual evidence pointing to him.

When Carlisle told the family the news, not only Edward had prejudiced the blame to Jacob, but also Emmett, Jasper, Rosalie, and, to my surprise, Esme. It was only Alice and Carlisle who stood on my unbiased side.

"I'm telling you, he's been trouble from the start!" Emmett began to rant. "He's been manipulating us with his puppet power ever since he got here!" Rosalie nodded fanatically in agreement.

"I agree, Bella. This does not look good on Jacob's part," Esme said gently but firmly all the same.

"No! Jacob would never do that!" I argued, beginning to grow angry at the amount of pressure that they were putting on me. "Charlie was like a father to Jake."

"It doesn't matter who he was to him," Jasper pointed out. "Once he's in his wolf form, he's got no control over his actions. He could do anything to anyone."

"Including you, Bella." Edward finally put in his two cents. "It's dangerous to be around him anymore."

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. All of them were ganging up on me – it simply wasn't fair. I was about to retaliate, but Alice beat me to it.

"Will you listen to yourselves?" she snapped. "We've been living with Jacob for almost a month and we've never had any problem with him. But now, as soon as there's evidence of a werewolf attack, all accusations immediately point to him! Why? There are other werewolves out there, now. Why, just this evening did we not smell a baby lurking outside our house? Who's to say that it wasn't that one that attacked him? Hm?"

I smiled at Alice, warming up and forgiving her for earlier. No one seemed to know quite how to respond to that, so I continued. "I think we should just ask Jacob. I know him well enough to recognize his mannerisms, and if I think he looks guilty…" I let my voice trail. What would I do if it had been Jake that attacked Charlie? I hadn't even put consideration to the possibility because I knew he hadn't. I decided it should stay that way.

"Bella's right. Before we go pointing any fingers, we must talk to Jacob first." It was Carlisle that spoke this time. I was grateful to have him on my side of the argument, seeing as he seemed to have the most influence on the family.

Emmett agreed, grudgingly. And Esme nodded slightly. Jasper just looked out the window, and Edward held me more tightly to his side. Rosalie rolled her eyes and looked at the floor. The silence that followed was deafening.

We were standing in the living room, anxiously awaiting Jacob's return from his hunt. This was yet another factor that had raised suspicion to him. He had chosen to hunt alone and he'd been gone all day long. I wasn't sure what to make of that, but I was positive that he had a perfectly good explanation.

It seemed like hours that we stood there, completely wrapped up in overwhelming thoughts. The light outside became paler as the sun rose. Jacob had still not returned.

It was around noon that day that he came through the front door.

"I'm back, guys!" he called through the house. Poor Jacob had no idea what was coming to him. He rounded the corner, the smile dropping almost instantly from his face as he saw the entire family waiting for him. His eyes were a golden-honey color – proof that he had really been hunting.

"What's… what's going on?" he asked, his eyes darting from face to face.

It looked as though he were facing a firing squad – all of the Cullens' expressions seemed to grow more and more somber as he went down the line, finally landing on Edward's mutinous expression. I nudged him with my elbow, glowering. He let his eyes flick to me, but his face stayed in the same heinous fixture.

Jacob finally looked at me, his eyes full of questions.

"Jacob," I started, my voice wavering with the weight of the conversation that was about to unfold, "today… Charlie was… attacked."

Jacob's face fell into darkness, a shadow eclipsing his content expression completely. "By who?" he growled.

I felt the entire Cullen family glare at him. If I could nudge them all in the ribs, I would have. "Well… that's what we're trying to figure out… you see… he was attacked by a… well… a…" my voice trailed off, again. I couldn't do it. I couldn't ask him if he'd attacked my father because I knew that he hadn't. It felt like asking him would be like throwing the blame at him.

When he sensed that I wasn't going to finish, Emmett snarled, "He was attacked by a werewolf. You wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you, mutt?"

The shadow across Jacob's face only darkened at the accusation. His eyes narrowed and his jaw grew tight. His hands immediately clenched into fists and his whole body shook slightly as he fought a tremor off. He was still looking at me when he started to speak again.

"You… think… that I would ever lay even one finger on him?" His words came out through gritted teeth and he spoke slowly, so as not to lose control.

I shook my head back and forth fervently. Of course I didn't think he would, it was just the rest of them that had no faith in him.

"Well it wouldn't have to be a finger, would it? It would be one of your beastly paws!" Rosalie snapped.

I knew she'd gone to far. I'd known before she finished her sentence. Jacob let out a roar of frustration, his whole body shaking uncontrollably.

"Jake…" I started, but Edward pulled me back, stepping between me and Jacob, who was on the verge of a transformation.

Jacob whirled around to face the family again, his whole body vibrating. "I would never touch Charlie, do you understand? Never. In a thousand years."

"I know Jake! I know you love him, too!" I cried, stepping out from behind Edward. Jacob seemed to calm down very slightly – almost imperceptibly.

Throwing caution to the wind, I raced forward and threw my arms around Jacob's still shaking waist. At my touch, however, his body gave one last shudder before becoming completely still. His arms wrapped around me, then.

"How… how bad is it?" he asked.

I shook my head into his chest. "Bad. Oh, Jake, it was awful." I started to weep again into Jacob's warm shirt, and he stroked my hair, comfortingly. It was only then that I remembered that the entire Cullen family was watching this little display, and, as much as I wanted to continue crying into Jake's shirt, I pulled away.

"It wasn't Jake," I said forcefully. Emmett opened his mouth to argue, but I cut him off. "It wasn't Jake." The words came out in a menacing hiss, daring him to challenge me.

"Bella… no, Bella, no! BELLA, NO!" My neck snapped around to look at Alice. She was shaking uncontrollably, screaming, her eyes curiously blank. She was having a vision. A vision – by the sound of it – that strongly involved me.

"I'm here Alice, I'm right here. What do you see?" I took a seat next to her, on the opposite side that Jasper was on.

Alice turned her blank face in my direction, her eyes focused on something miles away. "It's going to kill you."