Apologies for reordering the chapters; it was a little all over the place. None of the story has disappeared, there's just an extra 1100 words as a new prologue.

~Sin~

Chapter Three Tip of the Iceberg

Fourteen months ago – Forks, Washington

APov

I breathed in, my chest expanding with the swelling notes of the cello, exhaling as the violins picked up the wordless paragraph.

Flicker.

The scene barrelled into me, my room, bed and window forgotten as the music from my stereo was replaced by the war drum of the dark lord before me. I couldn't tell when it was, but knew that it was a broken timeline. This one, born in the past and bringing it with him, was forfeit to no laws but his own. It was the future, no doubt of that, but I knew without asking that I was not an active part of it. This saddened me. And for one brief eternity, the limits placed on me by my own sight allowed me to feel human and finite.

Shift.

My room was around me again and I found myself looking into the worried eyes of my husband. He stroked my cheek with a finger and slid onto the bed next to me.

"Alice, baby, are you OK? You just flooded the house with the strangest vibes." He tangled his feet with my own and pulled me closer.

"Vision." I panted. "I'm fine, though." I was holding his hand tightly enough that it would have crushed a human's bones, unsure of the truth of my second statement.

"Anything good?" His breath tickled my neck as he planted butterfly kisses along it and onto my shoulder. He meant to comfort me, not turn me on, but damn me if he wasn't doing both.

"I'm not sure, Jazz. Good, bad, in between. Whatever it is, it's big. I think there's a change coming and none of us are going to be able to hide from it." My fingers rolled the cuff of his shirt absently as I revisited the scene in my mind.

The man was an eclipse. Any of those surrounding him would have been a great prize on the battlefield but the one who led them surpassed anything I or my kind have ever seen. He was no vampire. Large for a human, some seven and a half feet, he moved with the grace and power of the large cats that lived on the hot plains half a world away. His abundant mane was reminiscent of them also, but of a colour never found on those marvellous beasts.

I looked up as Jasper smoothed my bangs from my face and his brow furrowed as he experienced the awe that was fluttering through me.

In my mind's eye I watched as the Goliath flung out a colossal hand, gesturing that something be brought to him. That he was obeyed without hesitation and without having spoken did not surprise me. From his blue-black hair to the copper skin stretched over muscles that could have rent most men in two, everything about this one shone like a beacon. There was something in him which did not register on any of my senses, and was utterly invisible to my otherworldly foresight, yet churned and roiled under his skin and was so undeniably there that the thought of his enmity made my skin prickle.

I flinched out of the mirage and sank back, letting the soft down of the bed envelop me. Something about what I had just seen nudged at the edges of my consciousness but remained veiled as I grasped at it, sliding out of reach with smug agility.

"You're reaching." After decades together, one supporting when the other falls and vice versa, Jasper knew the moment I started pursuing what I was not yet meant to comprehend.

"Pssh." I huffed. "I want it now."

"That's not how it works and you know it. Let it go, Alice; it'll come back when it's feelin' friendlier." He kissed my knuckles one by one, his golden irises regarding me knowingly.

Jasper saw my prescience more as a companion rather than a gift. Something about the interactivity of the process and the way the visions skittered from and to me on their whim gave him cause to anthropomorphise them. He'd once described a particularly elusive vision as a 'cocktease'. I'd had to let him have that one when, months later, the final clarity was almost sexual in its conquest.

"Guys!" The fragile moment was broken by Emmett's large voice. "Hunt! Now! You promised!"

I giggled. I know Jasper had been jittery with Emmett's excitement earlier today after I predicted not one but two bears emerging from slumber right into his loving arms. There was no way my husband was getting out of this one, but for the sake of my whirling mind I was loathe to leave the comfort of the room's quiet walls.

Jasper grinned his understanding and kissed my forehead quickly before heading out the door with a spring in his step. I mirrored his grin inwardly; Emmett wasn't the only one excited about tonight's hunt.

I sighed guiltily as I prepared to ignore my husband's advice.

***

I pulled a sleep mask over my eyes and luxuriated in the sensory deprivation as I unwound my cluttered mind and began to search. I meant to make that vision mine and I was prepared to use some fairly dark energy to do it. I knew what Jasper meant about not chasing it, but something churning inside me told me that I wouldn't be shown enough until it was almost too late. I couldn't risk those I loved for the sake of psychic propriety.

I pressed my palms into the bed as the first splintered images spun under my conscious mind.

Slide.

The dark Goliath hefted a giant sword in one hand, the muscles behind the hand that touched it boiling and rolling under the skin. The transformation sped up his arm, his hair standing on end, until it reached his shoulder…

The same giant hand in another time gripping the shoulder of my husband as he spewed his wrath on the enemy before him…

I shifted a little uneasily, unsure of how I felt about this one touching my husband. I would have to trust Jasper to choose well with whom he would stand in time of war.

Bella using her bare knees to grip the sides of a gleaming black horse, muscled like an Angus bull, as it slashed at some malodorous, slithering evil with the obsidian scimitar protruding from its forehead...

Twitch.

My eyes flew open and I sucked in a huge breath.

"No fucking way." I breathed out, grinning like a stoner. "That is so fucking coo.."

SNAP.

Pain. PAIN. Pain and screaming. Pain and blood. Writhing wrenching heartbreaking agony…

I arched off of the bed with the force of it. I would have given anything, anything on this earth for it to stop but the images pounded against my mind like tsunamis. This vision was much, much earlier than the others, perhaps as little as a couple months away.

Bella's face, twisted in the most intense terror imaginable. A swathe of shining bronze hair flashing in sunlight as a powerful male thrust himself so violently between her legs that I heard her pelvis crack.

"Nonononono." I whimpered, scratching at my face as I sought to stave off the horror my mind was being raped with.

A pale vampire hand pulled Bella's head to one side as its owner bit through one side of her neck. Her eyes were unseeing and her body a pitiful and shattered thing, splintered ribs and shards of hip bone poking from her blue-white skin and congealed blood dripping from the yawning wounds.

"Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh." My body shook with the outrage of seeing my sister like this and grunts of horror and anger spattered the room as the freight train of the vision hammered into me without respite.

One of her collarbones protruded from her pale throat, smashed and marrow red, the vampire licking the crimson drops from its ivory fragments. One profound and perfect tear fled down Bella's cheek as her broken body was rocked with one final thrust, an inhuman roar celebrating her defeat. Her eyes jittered for a second, then one pale, strong hand reached up and snapped her neck like a twig…the pale head turned…

Wrench.

I screamed as I had never done before as I ripped my mind away from the evil illusion in my head. The last image had been seared into my brain and I screamed without end as I denied, with every atom of my being, the face I had seen.

Edward.

BPov

My eyes widened in horror as the hatchet I'd just thrown narrowly missed Emmett's grinning face and continued its trajectory toward the playing card pinned to the tree. The thick, wedge shaped blade zinged stridently for a fraction of a second as it buried itself in the Ace of Spades.

"Goddamnit Emmett!" I glowered at him, murder not far from my thoughts as the fleeting panic dissipated as instantly as it had arrived. "I wish that had hit you." I muttered under my breath as he slouched toward me looking both smug and impressed.

"Aw. Were you worried about me, baby girl?" He punched me lightly on the shoulder, pretending not to have heard the second part.

"I was worried about my axe." I ground out in a dangerous monotone, rubbing my shoulder. This only made him laugh harder.

"Never fear, baby girl. You've been at this for months. I'd have been shocked if you'd hit anything other than that sweetspot right there." He jerked his head toward the tree. "I wouldn't be much of a mountain man if I couldn't teach you how to throw a hatchet straight."

"Yeah, yeah. Now when do I get to start on the goddamn crossbow?" I plinked a fingertip on his nose, keeping his attention on my demand.

"Aw, hunny, I think you're ready for something much more dangerous." he drawled with a twinkle in his eyes and what looked an awful lot like silent laughter shaking his huge frame.

"Do I dare ask?" I rolled my eyes, trying desperately to hide the smirk twisting my lips.

"Well, as you ask." He tried his utmost to look innocent and earnestly helpful. "I figured you shouldn't really get into anything else until you've mastered…the banjo!"

I groaned. Emmett had a profoundly intelligent and thoughtful side and a good few more layers than the others gave him credit for. On other days, that is. I'd been pleasantly surprised six months ago when he'd asked if he could teach me to use weapons so that I could protect myself a little better. Absolute shock, and no small amount of guilt, followed when I found that his interpretations and thoughts on Sun Tzu's The Art of War would be part of my training. Today…today's philosophical approach was more Jackass than Zhou dynasty.

I punched him and immediately regretted it, hopping around with my throbbing fist clamped under the other arm. I levelled an evil eye in his direction but my unrealistic thoughts of dismemberment were interrupted by Jasper as he appeared behind Emmett, clamping a hand over his mouth and broaching my irritation with a blanket of serenity. He winked at me.

"I believe the words were 'Hunt' and 'Now', Emmett." he muttered into his brother's ear, throwing me an apologetic look.

"Mmmph." was all Emmett could manage before Jasper pulled him off toward the trees with a dark chuckle.

My mind happily tittered over mental images of Emmett-torture while I tried to de-tree my hatchet. I had almost succeeded when I heard the most bloodcurdling scream come from the house. I felt my skin shrink in close and motion replaced immobility as I raced back to the house and in through the French doors.