A/N Sorry I haven't updated over the weekend. I've been in Miami visiting my cousin and haven't had a chance to update. This is a really long chapter. It's seven pages on OpenOffice (Microsoft word for linux) This chapter explains a few things that someone has had an issue with, and I wanted to address it. I also just changed chapter two a little bit so that this chapter makes sense. sorry if there were two update alerts. bear with me please. I'm writing, editing and posting at the same time and when I change one little thing, the butterfly affect goes off. I have to change lots of stuff if I change something a little. go back to chapter three and reread the dream scene if you noticed a continuity error between there and here. I've changed it.
This is dedicated to Kdub4127 for reviewing twice.
Disclaimer: I don't own Twilight. Nobody on this site owns Twilight unless SM still has the account that she used for that one contest. And I highly doubt that any of you are SM. I'm too tired to say anything witty.
I yanked away from the strange man. My mouth was filled with the mouthwateringly delicious taste of human blood that burned my throat and threatened to turn me into a monster. I fought against the vampire within me. Normally, I try to avoid killing as much as possible and hunt only when necessary, living off human food most of the time, but I was considering actually going vegan and only eating tofu and soy milk after this. I was repulsed. I had never touched a man other than my Jacob in my life.
I backed up against a tree, crouched into a defensive position, and flung my hair into a curtain between me and the strange man. He looked at me like I was food and took in a deep breath. It looked like he was sizing me up, even though he already knew he could take me. Or so he thought. He thought I was human, weak and breakable. I won't break that easily. If he snaps my neck, I'll just put it right back into place. And I won't let him bite me. I needed to get back to Cassadee, I needed to find Jacob.
His crimson eyes looked me up and down, slightly confused at why a "human" would be acting defensive towards him. He looked like the "bad-boy" type, the type of vampire who would lure a girl to come with him into an empty alley and then attack. He was almost as tall as Jacob and darker skinned than most vampires that I knew. This was why I had mistaken him for my husband, and that he looked quite strong, though no more than Jake.
Both his shirt- a green jersey- and jeans were ripped and never sewn back up. He only wore flip-flops on his feet, and his fiery red hair stood up on his head like flames. He looked very familiar, but I couldn't quite place why.
"Well, well, well," he asked, in a voice that reminded me of a winters' night. He knelt down to my side and traced my jaw with his long fingers. His cold touch sent a tremor down my spine. "What do we have here?"
I growled and spat at him.
"Ooh, you're a feisty one, aren't you?"
"Leave me alone," I hissed, my words dripping with ice. I screamed in my head for Jacob. "I'm not human."
"Oh, you aren't, aren't you?" He sauntered around the tree and stuck his head out right beside mine. "Your heart beats. You. Are. Scared. So what are you going to do to stop me from doing this?"
He leaned even closer and placed his lips on my neck, opening them slightly. Jacob! Jacob. I love you Jacob. I love you. I love you, Cassadee, Mom, Dad, Rosalie, Emmett, everyone.
A figure erupted from the bushes in front of me.
"MARCELLIUS!!!" She shrieked. She looked almost human, but I could tell that she wasn't.
"What are you doing here?" He demanded leaping up and stomping towards her. Faster than I could process, she slapped the back of his head. "You just lost me my lunch!"
"She hasn't run yet and you know that I don't want you to lure kids out to feed on them! You've scared her out of her wits!" The man turned around to see if I had actually stayed there. Of course. I was frozen in fear. This scene was even more familiar. Three more people shoved through the bushes. The tall man with the spiky black hair came to the woman's side, wrapping his arm gently around her waist. Two newborns went to the opposite side of the leader, Marcellius, had she called him? All of the newcomers had burgundy eyes, but the woman had refused to meet my gaze.
Alice's vision.
"Go hunt," I heard the woman whisper. "Take the newborns. We don't want to scare her any more than Captain Idiot has already and I don't want her hurt. Or dead." This surprised me. I disapproved when Jacob called my family bloodsuckers or leeches, but that was exactly what this coven was. Evil, bloodsucking killers.
The man squeezed her waist quickly and for a moment, they looked like a completely normal human couple. I almost expected the forest to melt into a mall filled with hundreds of other people and for the man to kiss her gently. As he herded the crazed newborns away from me and to the south, the woman inched toward me.
"It's okay, Little One," she crooned. I almost laughed. She only looked about four years older than me, but it was so true that I was much younger than her. About thirteen years younger, unless she was changed many years ago.
Her hair, shoulder length and brown with caramel and barely reddish highlights, the red being so light that no human would notice them, swished slightly as she came closer. "I won't hurt you." I looked up at her and took in the rest of her features. Her face was almost heart shaped, but a bit taller and rounder, and her eyes were wide and alert.
"Oh!" I gasped, seeing the amber shade of her eyes that was the trademark of a vegetarian vampire. "Your eyes."
"What about them?" she asked, now worried. "Is there something wrong with them? Did I smudge my mascara or something?" The woman was trying to distract me.
"No," I said carefully, in a desperate attempt to be discreet. "I just noticed the color of your eyes. My parents' eyes are the same color."
"Okay," she breathed.
She was just relaxing when I blurted out, "You don't feed off of humans." She grimaced.
"Whatever do you mean?" she questioned sweetly and I wondered if she actually was a vampire. Of course she's a vampire. "Why would I feed on humans?"
"You don't feed on human blood." She sighed again. I felt any doubt lift off of my mind. "I know about vampires."
"You know the secret. You can't live."
"Yes I can. I have just as much of a reason to keep the secret as you."
"What?"
"I... I have a secret too," I mumbled. "My entire family. They're like you. They don't drink human blood. They don't want to be monsters. They're also vampires."
"And you?"
"Ummm, not exactly. I'd rather not talk about it."
"But you aren't human. That much I can tell. You don't smell human. Tell me," she demanded.
"Drop it. I want to know who you are. Your boyfriend over here almost killed me. For me, a vampire bite is lethal. It isn't eternal life." When she flinched, I could tell that I'd hit below the belt.
"Marcellius isn't my boyfriend. He's the leader of our little group." she hissed. Her voice got softer. "Joshua is my boyfriend. My name is Eileen. Like you've probably figured out, this is Marcellius. We haven't been able to get the newborns to tell us their names. They just joined us a few weeks ago. Josh was hunting and he caught a whiff of those two and attacked. I got him off of them before he killed them, but they were turned." Eileen sighed again. "He tries."
"So, Joshua doesn't make a habit of hunting humans?" I asked, taking the vague hints she'd given me and putting two and two together.
"He really tries. He does. I love him, but he has problems with self-control. They're going hunting now. Well, I hope that Josh isn't. He's just the chaperon for the newborns, keeping them from going on a massacre. He must have slipped up earlier today, even though we went hunting a few days ago. He had gold eyes this morning." Eileen winced at the thought of draining a human of his blood.
"So why are you coming towards Rockford?"
"Do you live there? And how did you know that we were going that way?"
"My aunt," I grumbled, reluctant to spill a family secret.
"Oh! Alice, right? She saw us coming to Rockford?" My dumbfounded stare prompted another explanation. "Lucky guess. Stories go around. You're Renesmee Cullen, aren't you?" My jaw must have dropped at least an inch lower than it was supposed to because there was a sudden burst of pain through the lower half of my face. Even after Eileen laughed and gently closed my mouth, I had to pop my jaw back in place and the resulting click was clearly audible. "Your family is famous. The first known human and vampire couple where the human lived, and they end up with a half-vampire daughter who's mistaken for an immortal child. Then when the Volturi come, your family pretty much brings an army together and resists them. You live, there's no fight, but your family think it too dangerous to keep living in Forks so a few years later, you all move to Rockford."
"How do you know so much about us?"
"I told you, stories." She was hiding something, but I had a feeling that now would not be a good time to bring it up. "Your aunt can see the future and saw us coming to Rockford, didn't she?"
"No, she saw the five of you standing like you were a few minutes ago and assumed that you were coming toward our city. Unless she's seen you before, any time that she sees something, it has something to do with the family."
"Anyway," Eileen exclaimed as though we were good friends who had been interrupted during a conversation, "why did you come all the way out here? You can live off human food, can't you?"
"I usually do, Jacob is always at the house with us and he doesn't drink blood."
"The werewolf?"
"Yeah. Would you sit with me for a second?" She slid down the trunk of the tree, her grass-stained jeans contrasting incredibly with her pale ankles and my red miniskirt and ivory legs. "Close your eyes."
"WHAT THE HECK ARE YOU THINKING, EILEEN! WE CAN'T TRUST HER!"
"Shut up, Mark!" I ignored them both and placed my hand on her cheek gently. Only for my family and others that I was close to could I project my thoughts over the air. I showed her my family.
"What was that?" she gasped.
"My mom and dad, Carlisle and Esme-my grandparents- Uncle Emmett, and my husband. He's who I'm looking for. He went missing a few days ago." I explained, showing her my thoughts once again, Jacob only in his human for, seeing as Eileen didn't seem to have put together that Jacob and my husband were the same person.
"Husband?"
"Uh-huh. Dad didn't like where our relationship was going, especially since we weren't husband and wife yet. The way I saw it, there was no way to make our bond any stronger, so marriage would be pointless. But there was no privacy at the main home and the only way that Dad would let us buy a house together was if we were married. So we got married about a year ago and soon after, Cassadee was born. Look at me, I'm rambling. Have you seen my family?"
It was all true. Dad despised Jacob for imprinting on me and didn't want us to be a couple, but there was no way to stop it and whether or not I had married him, he would always be mine and I his. Dad also didn't want us to buy a house until we were married. Just one of his ways to try to keep us under his watchful eye and our relationship at bay. I loved Jacob, but both he and Dad knew that I really didn't want to get married, but Dad needed it to be "official" before he'd let us move out.
When we finally did get married, fourteen years after Jacob imprinted on me, after much pestering from Alice, Rosalie, Esme and Mom, and much to the annoyance of Dad, we had bought our house and moved in the same day. We found out about Cassadee a few weeks later, Dad was furious, the rest of us were ecstatic, but more than anything, we were all flabbergasted. I had stopped growing years previously and none of us thought that I could have a baby while I was still growing, let alone seven years later.
"Cassadee?"
"My... daughter. Cassadee Dakota. Have you seen any of my family? "
"I'm sorry, Renesmee, we haven't seen your husband. I think that we saw your parents a couple of minutes before we saw you." I leaped up at this new information.
"MOM! DAD!" I shrieked. "CARLISLE! ESME, EMMETT!!!" Marcellius was back around the tree and covering my mouth, holding me down. "JACOB!!!" I tried to yell out. I felt my teeth graze Marcellius's skin, and he laughed.
"No getting out of this one," he said.
"Let go of her, Marcellius! She doesn't want any trouble, she just wants her family!" Rocks started bouncing off him. "Her family heard her yelling, and they're coming now so you might want to let go of her!"
He yanked away from me and seventeen rocks, a boulder, and a tree froze in midair. Eileen had one arm straight in front of her, had perpendicular to her arm with her fingers spread apart in the easily recognized sign for "stop", which seemed perfectly normal, considering what she had just yelled. But she moved her other hand in a way that could not have been natural. As she gently flicked her hand, opening and closing her fingers as though she was pitching and catching an invisible baseball, but in a smoother way, the pine tree rotated from horizontally like an arrow to a normal vertical position. She then waved her arm and the tree floated as though she had gently pushed it. Did the same for the boulder. She clenched her fist and everything fell to the ground with a thunderous thud.
Dad and Emmett burst from the bushes, obviously in their fighting positions, Dad crouching while at the same time looking very big, and Emmett raising to his full height and looking absolutely huge, a deep growl escaping both their chests. Mom and Esme followed, crouching more defensively. Finally, Carlisle sauntered in, whistling a happy tune.
"Mom! Dad!" I screamed, running to hug them and knocking Dad flat on his back. In less than half a second, he was back up on his feet. Mom pulled me to her chest. I snapped my head up at Dad's growl. "They won't hurt me. Eileen won't let him hurt me, she's vegetarian. They're from Alice's vision."
"I know," he growled, "and I don't trust them."
"Don't hurt them."
"I won't, I want to ask them some questions so that I can know if I should tear them to shreds."
"Shoot," Eileen told him.
"First of all, Eileen, why are you here?"
"We're nomads. We never stay in one place more than a few weeks at a time."
"You're vegetarian. Why travel with four other vampires, two of which are newborns, who don't stick to your diet?"
"I don't normally travel with Marcellius. Joshua and I travel the world to try to get traditional vampires to change to our diet. I met Joshua a few months ago and he agreed to try my diet. He had eyes as gold as mine and yours until today. He must have slipped up when he went hunting earlier. The newborns are only a few weeks old, and once they're sane, we'll try to convince them to stop hunting humans. Marcellius is very stubborn, and won't even try animals, and therefore a lost cause."
"Try primate," Carlisle suggested. "They are the closest relatives to humans and will taste most like them."
"Joshua," Dad stated. "You and he are very close." Dad didn't even try to ask it as a question. He winced at the thoughts that were written on her face and running through her head.
"Oh, yes, we love each other very much. But you already knew that, you can hear what I think, can't you?"
Dad ignored this remark and went on to the next question. "So, who are you spying for?" he accused.
"SPY!!!" I shrieked. All heads turned to me. Mom rushed over to me to hold me down, her motherly instincts kicking in when I lunged for Eileen. Something that Eileen had just thought angered Dad even more. To keep him from attacking her, both Emmett and Carlisle had to grab him. Through this, Eileen had started crying and Esme had gone over to comfort her. "You were spying on us? Since when do we have someone spying on us? You were so nice to me."
"Please, please," Eileen begged. "I'm sorry. I had to. They would've killed Josh if I hadn't. They've been keeping tabs on you. I wanted to warn you, I really did."
"Who?" I snarled.
"The Volturi." Dad had answered for Eileen since she was unable to speak through her sobs. "She's been spying on us for nearly fourteen years now, since a year before you were born."
"I can't believe you were spying on us. I- I- I hate you!"
"Calm down, calm down, stop kicking, Renesmee," Mom commanded. "It hurts. And you know how dangerous the Volturi are. They wanted to kill you. Just because they didn't know what you were. They were afraid of you and they're afraid of us. It makes sense that they would want to watch us, we're the only family that's ever resisted them."
"And that makes spying on us okay?"
"No, but you can see how much Joshua means to her. What if you were told to spy on someone or else they would hurt us?" I didn't answer.
"Renesmee?" I heard Eileen ask tentatively, still shaking.
"Call me Nessie." Eileen froze, slightly confused and I could hear a slight gasp as she realized what I was saying.
"Really? You forgive me already?" I nodded. "Oh, thank you, thank you so much!" She squealed in a very Alice-like fashion that actually made me look around to see if the fortune telling pixie was with us. I did not expect her to be so excitable. She wrapped her arms around me and Mom, still bouncing.
"So, what's your story?" Mom asked Eileen, pushing her away gently. "You already know ours. You know that I fell in love with Edward when I was still human and that Renesmee is our daughter. You know all of us."
"Well, Carlisle was my next door neighbor and I remember very clearly that he was like a big brother or uncle to me..."
"Wait," Carlisle interrupted. "You lived next door to me?"
"Yes, don't you remember?"
"I'm sorry, Ma'am, but I don't remember you. I can't put my finger on why, but I can't remember very many people from when I was human. Wait, wait... no, ummm." I could care less how Eileen knew Carlisle, but watching him struggle to remember something was hilarious.
"Anyway, when Carlisle disappeared, I was only twelve and I was scared. Nobody knew what happened to him, but rumors went around that he was touched by the devil and killed himself so that no one would know." All of a sudden, Carlisle's face lit up.
"Leena!"
"Carles! I knew you'd remember!" Eileen threw her arms around Carlisle's neck. He returned the embrace but pulled back almost instantly when Esme coughed loudly. He grabbed her shoulders and held her at arms length away from him.
"You grew."
"I wasn't changed until ten years after you. It was my twenty-second birthday and I had just moved to Italy when I met the Volturi. I saw them and because of what you and your father taught, I could tell that they were vampires. I tried to ward them off with the cross and the garlic and it didn't exactly work. They changed me and I ran away." I started zoning out and daydreaming of what it would be like when I met Jacob again.
Jacob, where are you? I almost started listening to Eileen again when a huge mahogany wolf with familiar black eyes leaped from between the trees. It took a look at the group and its eyes stopped on Eileen and on Marcellius who Emmett was now restraining from attacking Carlisle for hugging Eileen, and growled. As it took a step forward, it pulled its leg back up and whimpered.
"Idiot," Dad mumbled, hitting the wolf on the nose. "Can't you see what you've put her through?"
"Don't make it mad, Dad." The wolf turned to me, careful not to step on the hurt leg, and stared at me with huge pleading eyes.
"Look at him, I shouldn't have to tell you this."
The wolf's eyes bore into mine and shone with adoration and loyalty. He nuzzled my chin gently and licked my face. I was still confused.
"You stupid, stupid, dog!" Mom yelled. She appeared at my side with inhuman speed and started pounding the wolf's side. With every hit, he whimpered and winced, but the wolf took it without moving. It was when we heard the crack of a breaking bone that the wolf howled and Mom stopped attacking it. "She called us every five minutes asking if we'd found you yet. She was worried sick! From what Alice and Rosalie told me, when we found out that you went AWOL, she collapsed! They also told me that she didn't sleep, didn't eat unless she made the food herself and she only cooked when she wasn't in her room crying, freaking out and calling us when Cassadee was hungry and she only ate a few bites at that! Any other time that Cassadee was hungry, Alice or Rosalie or, heaven forbid it, Jasper had to make her food, which normally ended up with the kitchen being destroyed and Cassadee having ice cream straight from the container or chocolate or something else unhealthy straight from the package for dinner! You going missing hasn't just affected us or you, but Renesmee and Cassadee, too!"
I was dumbstruck. I didn't realize that Cassadee wasn't getting a good dinner. Was I a bad mom for that?
"You're not a bad mother," Mom assured me. "HE's just a horrible father." Everything started sinking in. Alice and Rosalie telling Mom that I had collapsed, me not eating or sleeping or taking care of Cassadee, me calling every five minutes, and the wolf being a horrible father.
"Jacob." The wolf looked around again and started shaking. As he took a step backwards and winced again, I stepped forward, tangled my fingers in his fur and held him close. "Don't go again. It hurts, doesn't it?" I asked fingering his front paw. "You shouldn't be walking."
"We'll leave," Dad said, answering an unspoken question. He herded the rest of the family away so that Jacob could phase in peace. "Come here, Renesmee."
"No. I'm not coming, I'm staying here with Jacob." Dad didn't answer, but I heard the light crunch of his first footstep away from us. "Eileen, you have to go. Jake won't want you here when he phases back and I have a feeling you don't want to see him naked."
"And you do?"
"Is there a problem with that? I've known Jacob my whole life and I've missed him this past week." Eileen sat there just staring at us for a few moments but soon retreated to where the rest of the family was.
"They're all gone." I pulled myself even closer to Jacob and fell when he laid down on the ground.
"Nice one Jake." I wrapped my arms as far around him as I could and curled up by his side. I felt his body becoming less and less furry and much, much smaller. My arms went almost all the way around his waist and his body heat seeped through my clothes. His lips were centimeters away from mine and I couldn't help but close the gap.
"It's really you," he gasped when we finally broke the kiss to get oxygen.
"Yes it's me, who else would it be?" I joked
"I thought I was going crazy. I kept hearing your voice in my head."
"I was calling for you. I needed you so bad. Everything that Mom said was true."
"I'm so sorry. Um, can you help me get my pants on?"
I giggled. "Why should I? We need to make up."
"Not right now. Please help me get my pants on."
"Of course." I untied the shorts from his ankle and slid them up to his waist, where there were ugly black bruises and crusty blood. "CARLISLE!!!"
He was in front of us in a second, but not before Dad stepped between me and Jacob.
"If you've hurt my daughter at all, if you've done anything else to upset her, I swear, I will not hesitate to permanently cripple you. I would kill you, but Renesmee would never forgive me."
"DAD!"
"What happened?" Carlisle asked quickly, cutting our argument short.
"I was really, really stupid. I was running down that back road to get home and this huge truck hit me. I think it broke my arm and legs and maybe my ribs, but one of the broken ribs was Bella's doing. Then a hunter managed to hit me in the shoulder."
"Don't you ever say that you're stupid ever again. You're my Jacob and you're not stupid."
"These were nasty breaks," Carlisle interrupted again. "I'll have to re-break the bones so that they can heal. If I don't get it exactly right, you may never use that arm again. I also have to get that bullet out of your shoulder. I have to get you back home so that I can remove the bullet and it would be easier to break your arm again if I can open it up and actually cut through the bone. Either way, it'll hurt like mad but we'll have morphine at home."
"Well, Dr. Fang, you aren't giving me a choice. I'll have to go with surgery at home." He grimaced at the idea of a vampire opening him up and then fixing him.
"I'll be right there with you the whole time," I assured him.
"Aw, thanks, Honey." We heard a tree being uprooted, then another and another. When the trees closest to us was lifted into the air, a path had been forged through the forest. Eileen stomped down it, her hand raised in the air. She flicked it sideways and the trees flew to the side, landing simultaneously with an ground-shaking tremor.
"Are you doing that?" I asked. "And the rocks earlier. That was you!"
"Have they told you yet?" Eileen demanded. "Have they told you?" She grabbed my shoulders and shook me violently. I slapped her as hard as I could.
"Stop it! Told me what?"
"You and Jacob, you didn't tell me that Jacob was the person you were looking for."
"I told you that I was looking for my husband and that's Jake. What about telling me something?"
"They didn't tell you. It's about Jacob. They kept the secret from you. What were you thinking?" She shrieked, letting go of me and picking Dad and Jacob up by their shirt and hair.
"Let go of them! Just tell me what they kept from me and get it over with."
"Eileen," Dad choked, "don't tell her. I would have told her the day before her wedding but she and Jacob ran off to Vegas to get married. Broke Alice's heart. We haven't told her yet but this isn't how she should find out. Give us a chance to tell her ourselves."
"Ha, like you'd tell her. You've had fourteen years, Edward, and you still haven't told her. You have ten seconds to tell her or I will give her the cold, hard facts."
"Tell me, Jake, just tell me," I begged. "If it's about you, you should be the one to tell me."
"When your parents had that 'relationship bump', your mom turned to me. I thought that I loved her. I- I'm ashamed of what I did."
"Are you saying that you might be my dad!" I exclaimed.
"No! No, no, no, there's no dispute about that. Edward's your father, its just-"
"Time's up. You want to know what happened, I'll tell you what happened. Jacob loved your mother. Renesmee, Jacob made out with your mom. Twice."
A/N
Can we try for five reviews for this chapter? I still need that beta. PM me if you want to be the Beta
