Disclaimer: I am not Stephenie Meyer and I do not own the rights to the Twilight Saga, Life and Death, or any of the accouterments in the series.

Chapter 5 – Cheater

"You're late," Sam said, her arms crossing over chest.

I took a shallow breath to answer, forcing myself to ignore the smell of Bonnie's blood. "I had to change clothes before I showed up."

"Worried what we'll think? We already know you're a monster."

"I'm not human. That doesn't make me a monster though, it just makes me different." I didn't bother to add the fact that they were wolves and didn't really have any room to judge.

"You drink blood to survive, I don't know how you can define yourself as anything other than a monster."

"I actually don't, have to, that it. I could go indefinitely without blood if I so chose. I drink blood because I don't want to be in pain anymore. The blood is a desire, not a necessity, much the way chocolate or steak is for any of you."

"We don't kill for our food."

I opened my mouth to go into a tirade, my temper flaring, but Bonnie spoke. "Enough." She pushed her wheelchair forward a couple feet, separating herself from the wolves, her protectors. "This is a petty argument, Samantha. We may not agree with what he has become but as long as he is not hunting humans then it is not our place to judge him."

I didn't know which one it was, but I still heard the, "at least not openly," that Jaelyn or Paula muttered.

"I want to see your eyes."

"That isn't a good idea, Bonnie. Sam insisted that I show up after only two hours and it wasn't enough time to effectively hunt after not feeding for as long as I had. I am in control for now, but it only takes a momentary lapse in judgment for that to change." I paused, taking another breath of Bonnie's fire inducing scent. "Besides, my eyes are still almost completely black, I don't know if human eyes would be sharp enough to see the hint of gold in them."

"How do I know that you haven't been hunting humans if I can't see your eyes? That's the only tell that we are aware of."

She rolled her wheelchair even closer to me and I immediately skittered backwards. I could explain the other tells, the burning thirst that's never quite sated, the lesser strength and speed, but they were not tells that were really verifiable. "Bonnie, I am trying to keep enough distance that if I have a lapse in judgment, then Sam and the others will hopefully have enough time to stop me. I do not want to take a life, least of all yours. My dad has already lost far too much."

"His eyes aren't red, Bonnie," Sam finally said as she stepped closer to Bonnie.

"You say you don't want to take a life then don't."

"You make it sound so simple."

"Because it is."

Her words reminded me of a dozen plus conversations with Edythe from when I was human, my foolish insistences and beliefs. "I wish it was, but it isn't." I paused, seeing the judgment in their eyes, more so in Bonnie's eyes than Sam's whose were closed off and calculating. I knew Sam had already judged and condemned me, she didn't need to judge me anymore.

I took a breath, already regretting the decision I was about to make, but doing it anyways. I dashed forward, stopping only a couple feet in front of Bonnie a second later. All three of the wolves leaned forward, I barely noticed them, focusing only on Bonnie as I crouched so my eyes were level with hers.

"I want you to imagine eating a very hot pepper, say a habenero or a ghost pepper. Imagine the fire in your mouth, your throat. Now imagine there was a pitcher of ice cold water in front of you, promising to put out the fire. If you know anything about eating spicy peppers then you know drinking that water isn't a good idea, but at that moment, that wouldn't matter. I can't think of many people who would resist drinking that pitcher of water."

I was out of air so I took a breath of air, inhaling pure fire, as I crouched in front of her. I flinched and forced myself to continue. "That's what it's like for me, only a thousand times more potent. And unlike with the person drinking the pitcher of water, where it doesn't really help. Drinking human blood does. When my kind aren't thirsty, then the pain stops for a short while, though it never lasts."

I stood up and backed away fast. Bonnie's eyes were almost understanding, my analogy apparently being heard in a better way than I suspected the heroin one that I'd once been given would have. "I am trying to understand, at least a little, Beau. But if what you are saying is true then how do I know that you haven't been hunting. There's been a vampire in the woods these last couple of weeks."

"We haven't caught it yet," one of the girls that wasn't Sam said. I'm fairly sure it was the one she called Jaelyn, as the other was the one called Paula who had driven Bonnie the last time we'd met.

"First of all, until today, I hadn't moved at all in months, frozen in place like a statue. If Sam hadn't showed up on my property I'd still be a statue. Secondly, if I'd hunted a human in the last couple of weeks, my eyes would be red. As she already told you, there's no red in my eyes."

"What do you mean, a statue?"

"I was... shocked to find the people that I thought were my family had left me behind. It wasn't expected. Stillness is an involuntary reaction for my kind, similar to jumping for a human, or." I paused, testing it out in my mind before saying it out loud. "Shifting for the werewolves here."

"And why did they leave?"

I swallowed, knowing that the answer would cause me more agony than I was willing to deal with, but not having a choice. "Edythe and I assumed we were mates, and I think that – when I was human – we were. But change is hard for vampires to acclimate to. We are, in many ways, a living stone. Change is rare, and when it happens, it's often permanent. I believe Edythe changed when she met me originally. Unfortunately when I physically changed, she was unable to change again. I became too different from the human boy with the sweet smelling blood that she loved, at least that's how I've made sense of it." I winced every time I said her name, but kept talking. "They left a letter that I found and in it, it was made clear that without us being mated, there was no place for me in their family. I can understand that."

It wasn't exactly what the letter had said, but it was what I had come to understand from it after reading it and then having the four months with nothing else to think about.

"But you still lover her." It wasn't a question.

"Yes, my human life ended being in love with her... I was changed loving her. It's a part of me. I doubt it will ever change." I looked away, fighting with myself to not become a statue again. It was something I couldn't afford to do. Not here.

"Yet you haven't followed her."

"I would never disrespect their wishes in such a way. Besides, I am no tracker." I grinned wryly for a moment at my words, not that they would truly understand the reference I was making.

"It sounds like they didn't respect you, though."

"What does that matter? I'm not them. I–" lost the chance when I became a vampire "–will never be a Cullen." I flinched. "I'm just another vampire refusing to accept my natural desires. I will not hunt humans, Bonnie. I may not have a choice about what I have become, but I can choose to be good."

Bonnie's face steeled, becoming almost as cold as Sam's as I mentioned my nature. "And why are you still here, anyways? What are your intentions?"

"I'm here to watch over my dad." I lifted my lip viciously, snarling as I remembered the squalor I'd seen when I'd visited his home four months prior. "That thing you promised me you would do. I visited his house a few months ago, Bonnie. Is leaving someone a chronic alcoholic what you think of when you think of taking care of someone?"

"What did you expect? You were his only son, it hasn't been easy on him."

"I expected you to contact me if there was something I could do. If he's drinking that much, taking those type of pills that he is, not sleeping well, etc. Then he needs professional help. The Cullen's had the money to put him through rehab. All you had to do was tell me that he needed it."

"You just said that you aren't a Cullen though."

"It doesn't mean I didn't have access to their money while they were here."

"Hmph, well I don't exactly have you on speed dial, Beau."

I arched a sardonic eyebrow. "They've invaded the Cullen property, now my property, twice." I waved my hand towards Sam, Paula and Jaelyn. "I'm sure they would have come and spoke to me if you'd asked them to."

"Hmph," Bonnie grumbled again. "It's my understanding that you want to remain here until the end of the school year."

"I..." I paused, thinking it over. "No. You know what, that isn't enough. I am an innocent, Bonnie. I want to remain here, in the shadows, until my dad has either found peace with my death and moved on, or until he dies. I may not be able to do anything else for him. But I will protect him in the only way I can. I will not move to god knows where only to find out from some newspaper that I wasn't here to stop him from putting a bullet in his temple. All because his best friend is not helping him the way that she should."

Sam growled at me. "If you hadn't associated yourself with vampires then your father wouldn't be grieving you now."

"No, if I hadn't associated with vampires, then I'd just be dead, he'd still be grieving. They saved my life, more than once. Forget about what turned me into this, before that when I was in Port Angeles, I was almost shot and killed because a group of criminals assumed I was a cop. Actually, let's predate that event even. Only about a week after I started school here I was almost killed by a van running into my truck when I was standing right in the trajectory of that van. Both of those times, they saved my life.

"And if they could have saved my human life the last time with Joss, they would have, but I'd already been bit some minutes before they arrived and I was in bad shape. My femoral artery had been sliced open by some chunks of a mirror, I had a concussion and was bleeding from a head wound, and several of my ribs had been broken, at least one of which had pierced my left lung. They were originally going to try and suck the venom out, like with a snake bite, but it had spread too far already, even then... if there'd been the slightest chance that I could have survived, they would have gone through it. Reality is though that without the venom, I probably would have died well before they could have gotten me to an emergency room."

"A shooting? In Port Angeles? I remember nothing about that."

"It never happened, Bonnie, but it almost did. I got lost and turned down the wrong road. A group of people dealing drugs or weapons or something were at the end of the alley. Three of them came after me, and one pointed a gun after another claimed I was a.." I closed my eyes, trying to focus on the dim memory. "A pig, that's what one of them said to me. They would have killed me and walked away, but at that moment, Edythe drove up. She saved my life."

"That's horrible," Jaelyn murmured.

I looked straight at her. "What, you didn't think my species is the only monster that goes bump in the night, did you? Most murders are caused by humans." I turned my eyes back towards Bonnie. "You should know better than most, vehicular homicide wasn't it? That killed your husband."

Bonnie nodded. "And these people, what happened to them?"

"I honestly don't know. I know if I hadn't stopped Edythe then she would have killed them. She wanted to, she asked me to stay in the car and not watch, but by then I knew, or at least suspected, what she was. I'd been told ghost stories by your daughter just a few days prior, Bonnie. She of course assumed they were fiction. I took them a bit more seriously, and after being told that they only drank from animals, I didn't want her to do something she'd regret. So I stopped her. I assume those people are still out there somewhere."

"You stopped her?" The incredulity was high as Paula spoke. "At the time you were exactly what, a hundred and fifty pound human? Shy of offering her your wrist, I don't see how you could have stopped her."

"I told her if she got out of the car, then I would too. Looking back, probably a stupid idea, but it had the desired effect."

Paula snorted.

"You're asking for a lot, Beau," Bonnie said, going back to the reason we were gathered to begin with.

"I'm asking to be there for my dad in the only way left for me until something changes. It isn't that much."

"He's only forty-one. He could easily live another forty years. So that is a lot."

"Bonnie," I said, my exasperation clear in my voice. "I'm not a medical expert, but even I know, with the way he's drinking, he likely won't survive another five. There's so many diseases that come from being an alcoholic, not to mention the drugs that he isn't supposed to mix with alcohol but has been."

"That's still a lot. You have already explained how hard it is to control yourself."

"That would be my problem though, wouldn't it?" I looked at Bonnie, trying to convey how serious I was. "I will fight for my right to stay here and watch over him. I know I probably wouldn't win, I'd probably end up dead, but I would still fight. He's the only person left that gives my life, or undeath or whatever you want to call it, any amount of meaning."

Bonnie grumbled something unintelligible under her breath before Sam spoke. "Let him stay." The first words obviously directed at Bonnie, but she continued, this time speaking to me. "You will be bound by the same laws as the Cullen's, do you understand? That means no crossing onto our land, and most importantly, you are not allowed to bite a human under any circumstances."

"I understand," I said immediately. They didn't need to know I had almost already slipped. It wasn't like I was the first of the vegetarian vampires I knew to cheat.

"That means that when your father is on his deathbed, be that from old age, an overdose, or whatever the case may be, you will let him go. If you turn him, we will hunt down and kill both of you."

"I would never turn my father." I spat the words vehemently. "I am cursed to walk this Earth alone for eternity, do you honestly think I'd do this to someone else?"

My anger actually caused Sam to take a step back before she stopped herself, and stepped back forward, her face resolute. "If that is truly how you feel about yourself then it doesn't have to be eternity."

In my mind I could hear Edythe's wordless snarl at what Sam was suggesting.

I wasn't the one that replied though, instead Bonnie wheeled on her. "No, not without cause."

Sam looked down at her, a silent conversation going on between the two.

"Thank you, for the offer. But I actually do. You see, Sam, there is a price to associating with vampires, this is mine. An eternity of loneliness." I didn't add the I deserve it. I was sure that they all heard what I wasn't saying though.

"Very well, but you understand the terms of our agreement," Sam said.

"I told you already that I understand."

"Paula, get Bonnie in the van." Paula came forward and picked up Bonnie, wheelchair and all, just as Sam turned her back on me, which I understood it for what it was, disrespect. She walked back over to Jaelyn, even as she put up one finger.

I tilted my head, confused, did she want me to stay?

It took Paula a minute, but she got Bonnie back in the vehicle and the door closed, going around to the other side and getting in the driver's seat. Sam turned to look at me again, her voice much more quiet, but no less cold. "One last thing, should you mess up, the Cullen's will also pay for your transgression."

I paused, not sure I had heard her right, though my hearing was perfect. "I cannot speak for them, Sam. Only myself."

"On the contrary, you may claim they aren't your family, but they left you their house, so you are, at the very least, an ambassador for them. If you stay, and you mess up, you will condemn them to the same fate as yours."

"That is too much to ask of me, Sam. You cannot damn seven innocents just because of a completely different person's actions."

"I actually can and I will. You have your terms, if you aren't gone by the end of month, then you will be agreeing to them." She turned her back to me and a second later, her clothes shredded, black fur bursting forth as a giant wolf landed on all fours and took off into the forest.

The van started up and backed away from me.

AN: Apologies for how long this chapter took to get out. I've been having difficulty writing this story after re-watching the Twilight Saga movies and getting a idea for a story that doesn't want to shut up.