A/N: All things Twilight belong to Stephenie Meyer. I own nothing except the contents of my imagination and a nearly-new Dell Studio notebook computer.


"All right, Alice, give it back now." I held out my hand for the camcorder, but my sister ignored me. I should have known better. Once Alice got going, there was no stopping her. I caught up with her just as she'd reached her and Jasper's room. She was all but oblivious to me as she headed straight for the computer on her elegant mahogany desk.

I'd thought to simply hand the camcorder to Bella, and let her view what I, or rather Alice, had filmed. Alice had other ideas. She pulled out the camcorder's memory card and slid it into the memory slot in her desktop computer. She used this computer mostly for fashion design, and it had a 30-inch high definition monitor which she now angled so both of us could easily view it. Slipping a blank disk into the computer's disk drive, Alice played back the footage she'd shot, instructing the computer to record it onto a new DVD.

Now I understood what her intentions were. Instead of viewing the footage on the little camcorder monitor, Bella would be able to watch it on a computer, or even a television screen. The impact would be considerably greater. Why hadn't I thought of that? No matter, Alice had, and grudgingly I had to admit I was glad that she'd taken over.

Alice's filming was, I also had to admit, impressive. She'd begun with a wide angle shot of the clearing where Edward cornered the mountain lion. The image was soft, the muted light filtering through the clouds giving the scene an ethereal quality. The figures of Edward and the big cat moved slowly in the center of the screen, shifting in a cautious, sideways dance around one another.

Alice must have known exactly how the interaction would play out. The focus tightened suddenly, just as the mountain lion screamed. A closeup of its snarling roar was followed by a closeup of Edward's response. Reflexively, I took a small step backward; his face on the wide monitor, teeth bared, eyes furious as a hellacious growl ripped from his throat, was unexpectedly startling. Bella should be scared spitless when she saw that. Any normal human would be terrified. Of course, Bella wasn't exactly normal. Still, there was no way she could see this side of Edward without being profoundly affected by it.

The camcorder's focus pulled back a bit, in perfect time to reveal Edward's entire form as he sprang, lunging toward his prey in a fluid display of grace and power, throwing his arms around the big cat. He twisted in mid air, his hands tightening around the cat's neck even as the animal thrashed its hind legs, scrabbling in the sparse grass and dead pine needles, struggling futilely to gain purchase enough to claw my brother.

Edward's hands remained around the animal's neck as his feet dug into the ground, bracing himself as though he were truly made of stone. His long pianist's fingers flexed slightly against the furry throat in their grasp with what seemed like a gentle movement, almost as though he were caressing the big cat. A sharp crack rang out and the animal went limp—he'd broken its neck cleanly.

And now Alice had zoomed in for the money shot: A closeup of Edward's face as he bent to drink from his kill. His expression changed from one of savagery to hunger as his eyes closed, he took a deep breath, and his lips pulled back from his teeth. It made me oddly thirsty to watch him sink his teeth smoothly into the cat's muscular neck.

Edward was a rather obsessively neat eater (Emmett said he ate the same way he organized his room, "Two steps away from OCD"); no blood was actually visible as he drank. His face though was quite a study, shifting now from hunger to satisfaction to outright pleasure as he drained the animal. As he finished, dropping the animal and swallowing one final time, I could see nothing human about him. He was the absolute epitome of a predator.

I could also see why humans found him so fascinating. There was something compelling in an unearthly way about him. The single minded focus he was capable of was never more evident than when he dealt with prey. And when he played the piano, or read a book, or did just about anything. It frankly drove me crazy, but I could imagine how a human like Bella felt when that focus was trained on her. I found it aggravating, but then I thought Edward was utterly annoying most of the time. He annoyed me the first very time I heard his voice, and that opinion had not changed in the intervening decades. But I could see the attraction he held for others.

He was nearly as beautiful as I, and that was saying a lot. Too bad that whenever I looked at his perfectly sculpted face, I invariably wanted to punch it. He was my brother, and as such I loved him, but he certainly was difficult to live with. Unlike Emmett, with his perpetually cheerful acceptance of everything about our existence, Edward over thought everything. Emmett wrestled with his prey and half the time end up with shredded clothes and dirt under his nails. He threw himself into everything he did with total enthusiasm, whether it was hunting a bear or making love to me. Edward couldn't do anything without thinking it to pieces first. Only when he was hunting did he stop thinking and simply act, but even then, it was almost like watching a choreographed scene, perfectly executed in flawless detail.

Alice had kept Edward's face in the camcorder frame as he stood up, dusting his hands on his pants, then running one hand though his hair. It was a stark contrast to what we'd seen just moments earlier; now he was relaxed, radiating satisfaction. As the camcorder recorded his expression he paused, his eyes narrowing, shoulders tensing slightly. He gazed slowly around the clearing then stopped, motionless, just as he was looking in the camcorder's direction—it almost appeared as though he were looking right into the lens--and at that moment Alice had faded the scene to black.

"Did he see you?" If he had, I would put an end to this right now. There was no way I was risking my brother's wrath before I completed my plan.

Alice snorted indelicately. "Of course not. I'm better than that. He'd just caught the scent of the lion's mate. Here." She slid the disk out of the computer drive and slipped it into a clear plastic case. Her eyes took on the familiar distant gaze that told me she was looking for the future. "Have her watch it on the flat screen in Edward's room. She'll be alone in there for about half an hour tonight, while Edward talks with Carlisle." Her eyes refocused on me, and my sister smiled. She held out the DVD case and I took it from her hand.

For a moment, an unfamiliar hesitation came over me. I wasn't used to reaching my goals with so little effort on my own part. Alice had done everything, and it was unexpectedly perfect. It was perfect, I told myself; the DVD of Edward's kill would do the perfect job of keeping Bella from attempting a fatally foolish act with my brother. They'd waited for nearly a year and a half, they could just wait until she was changed, and spare us all yet another catastrophe.

Still, without knowing why, I hesitated, my hand holding the DVD case extended toward Alice. "Are you certain…" I didn't finish the sentence.

Alice knew what I meant. "This is exactly what Bella needs to see." She patted my hand and jumped to her feet, ready to dash out of the room. As she reached the doorway, she pivoted on one toe in a movement a professional dancer would envy, and tossed another smile to me over her shoulder. "We're doing the right thing. Trust me."