A/N: Chapter 7!

I'm aware I've updated again, but I'm only getting back into my schedule of updating every Monday.

If you read my story Lost in Orbit, I have posted a poll on my profile with a question referring to that story, it's very important as the results of the poll will help with planning on the last couple of chapters. So yeah, if you read that story, go vote in the poll. It's very important and it won't take you very long to do it.

I want to thank my two betas cullenite21 and twilightrocks1 for being amazing betas.

Disclaimer: I own the Twilight BOOKS, but at the same time, I actually don't. Damn. I wish I could steal Jasper.


Chapter 7 - Her Name Was Mary

I didn't get very far before I slumped onto the nearest bench in the park around the corner. I bowed my head down, placing it into my open palms, and closed my eyes. I was in desperate need of some peace after what had just happened.

I had done the one thing Shadow told me I could never do. I had gotten involved with him, and not only him, but his whole God damn family. How had this happened?

I looked out at the scenery in front of me, my eyes searching, yet unseeing. I sighed, placing my hands in front of my face in a praying gesture. What the hell did I do now?

I needed guidance, guidance from the coven, or more specifically Shadow. She was in a similar situation as to what I was. She would know what I should do. But she wasn't here, and I didn't wish to return to the coven house. She still hadn't contacted me since our last meeting. I had worried for days wondering whether I should go back and find her, and check to see if she was alright. But I knew that I had to follow what she had told me.

But that was two weeks ago now, and I had began to wonder whether I would ever find my family. Today was yet another reminder to what having a family felt like. I had felt more connected to someone today than what I could remember in the past seven years. No matter how much I had wanted to get away from them, it didn't mean I hadn't felt the connection.

I knew now that I wanted a family of my own more than ever. I wanted someone to protect as I had with Rosalie. I wanted someone to love like I did… but I couldn't say it. I wouldn't allow myself to say that I loved him because I didn't. I didn't. It was his blood that I loved, craved, nothing more. So I made the word a taboo, and promised myself that I would never think of it again.

I sighed once more, leaning my head back against the bench. I closed my eyes, wishing that I could curl up and sleep through the long, lonesome hours of the night.

I was only vaguely aware of the daylight fully diminishing around me. I didn't feel the cool breeze around me as the stars splayed across the night sky. I didn't even listen to the sounds of the insects or the nightlife around me.

I couldn't even say I was listening to him, as such. The sounds he was making were just constantly there in the back of my mind. I didn't even have to tune into him anymore, because he was just… there.


I bolted upright.

If it were any other situation, I could have said that I was sleeping and something had awoken me. But knowing that that just couldn't have been the case, I looked around me, dazed and confused. I knew what it was I heard, but it just couldn't have been that, surely?

Then I heard it again, so loud that it was as if it had been spoken right next to me, yet he was over a hundred metres away from me. That didn't matter. I had heard my name being called as clear as the night sky on a cloudless night.

I looked around at the now dark grounds, until my eyes fell on the Hale house. I stood in one smooth movement, and ran towards the house with an unknown urgency. Within two seconds, I was standing beneath his window, looking up at the room I knew he was laying. Then I heard it again, louder than what it had been when I was sitting in the park.

"Alice…"

I jumped up to his window without a second thought. Just from listening to his breathing, I could tell that he wasn't awake, he was dreaming. He was dreaming about me.

This time, I didn't think about leaving the window open as I glided straight to his bedside, looking down at him. His arms were splayed above his head lazily. The covers were lying around his waist, with only a small thin t-shirt covering his top half. The shirt had ridden up slightly, and was showing a small patch of pale skin on his stomach. But I wasn't paying acute attention to that. It was his face that I was looking at.

The fear and fright were two emotions that I thought I would see clearly on his face, but as I looked down at him, I saw one emotion that I didn't expect. Contentment. How could he look so content whilst having a nightmare? I took a step back as his head turned, thinking that he was awakening.

"No, Alice. Please. Don't," he gasped, his head shifting slightly from side to side in a restless manor. Oh God.

I had the sudden urge to wake him from his nightmare, to stop him from dreaming what he was. As I had a pretty good guess at what he was imagining, my eyes, darkened with thirst, staring at him just before I would attack. But I shook the thoughts from my mind. Even if I did wake him up, he would wake into another, far worse nightmare, and that I couldn't allow.

I had to leave. I couldn't be here listening to his nightmare. Who knew what else could escape his lips.

I turned away from the bed, preparing myself to jump from the window onto the lawn below, when I heard him turn over on his bed again. I was too curious to carry on going. But as I heard his next words, I stopped dead in my tracks.

"Please, Alice. Don't. Don't leave," he murmured in a soft voice. This is far too much of a coincidence, I thought to myself, completely shocked.

I whipped around, to find him still in a deep sleep. I crumpled to the floor in one swift, silent movement, never once letting my eyes fall from him. He was begging me not to leave him. Now he was just plain torturing me as slowly as possible.

I was the prisoner in my emotions, and he was the only one who could set me free.

He tossed and turned a few more times in the night, but to my relief, yet slight disappointment, he did not speak again. I should have been glad his nightmare was over, yet there was something about the way he said my name that made me go all weird. I just couldn't explain it, and I had the sudden impulse to hear him say it again. But not tonight, or this morning, as it had so quickly became.

I left before the light outside began to stretch across the sky. I ran straight back to my prison, jumping through the large windows at the back. I never bothered with doors – they were always locked. Not that they'd deter any of the people who were likely to visit.

I walked into the main room, where I kept all my main possessions. If I were human, I would have been startled to see Shadow standing at the edge of my room, partially hidden in the darkness. She was like a statue, not moving, not breathing.

"Shadow?" I called out. As soon as I spoke, her frozen body showed signs of life, and she rushed forward, holding me in an extra tight embrace.

"Oh, Alice," she gasped. "I'm so sorry for being absent for such a long period of time. Marcus takes a lot of… persuading. It's not easy to lie to him."

"Why do we have to lie to him?" I asked. "I don't understand why he is so stubbornly against me finding my family."

She sighed, and I knew that the reason was something she didn't like to talk about.

"I guess, after what happened with my father." She paused, wincing at the memory of it. "It's just been harder for him to commit to a search like that again."

"Yes, I understand that," I told her. "But how does he know that I am going to do the same thing? For all he knows, they could already be gone."

She looked down, her brow pulling together as if something I'd said upset her. I couldn't understand why, I only assumed my comment made her think about her own family. I didn't say anything, knowing I just had to wait for the moment to pass.

"I'm going to do everything in my power to help you search for you family. No matter how big, or how small, we will find someone. I promise you that, Alice."

I pulled her into a tighter embrace than before, and she returned with the same fervour. I whispered 'thank you' into her ear. I felt her nod, and I knew that she meant what she had said. As we pulled away from each other, a new bout of determination hit me, and I was finally ready to begin my search.

"So, where do we begin?"

Shadow gave me a devious grin and pulled me over to the large couch at the far end of the room. We sat down together, and I watched her eagerly, waiting for her to begin.


That had been just over a week ago now, and since then, Shadow had explained our course of action. She told me about the many contacts she had acquired when she had been set to find someone for Marcus. She had been insistent that Marcus would not have known about these contacts, and for that, she was slightly proud of herself. Apparently she he had managed to outwit Marcus, when usually, that wasn't an easy thing to do.

I had been utterly confident in the fact that I would be possibly finding my long lost family soon. But the confidence was short lived. It faded the moment Shadow asked for my input. She wanted my memories.

I had stuttered and failed when she asked me to tell her what I remembered of my human life. She wanted to know who I remembered – names, faces, locations, and each time I tried to delve into my human memories, I would always come up short. I knew there had been a time when I remembered, when I remembered it all. But it had been too painful to think of those who I would never see again. So I had buried the memories in the deepest chest within my mind, and thrown away the key, knowing I'd never want to think of them again.

Now it was as if my previous life hadn't been there, for I couldn't remember anything that occurred before I was born into this vampire world. I didn't know who had turned me, nor did I know where it was that I had woken up. I had walked for days before I stopped anywhere. That much I knew. But I had buried the memories of the first few days of my existence with that of my past, and now I was living to regret doing such a foolish thing.

I felt that I was letting her down. I was unable to help her when she was doing all in her power to help me, to help me find someone I didn't even know existed. I was the least helpful person in the world, and yet she never once lost her patience.

Each lead we had, each time it led to another dead end, she kept coming back with more. Her contacts were always a mystery to me. How they managed to find missing girls that had disappeared around the time that I had, always baffled me. I didn't know how things as refined as that could be searched for.

I was exceptionally interested in why it was that she had all these contacts to speak of. I had put it off for the whole week, never asking her where it was that she acquired these people from. But we were not getting anywhere with our search, and now was a better time as any.

She was sitting down at the table, looking over the latest sheets that one of her mysterious contacts had given her. She looked fed up and bored. So I took my chance, and called out to her.

"Hey, Shadow," I began, getting her attention. "I was wondering about all these contacts you have. Where did you find them all? How come you even know them?"

She sighed and sat herself down next to me. The look on her face told me that she was obviously expecting me to ask her this at one point or another.

"Well, it's kind of a long story," she began. For a second, I thought she was trying to put me off. "But I'm sure you can keep up. Just tell me if something confuses you."

I nodded, and the anticipation to hear her story was clear on my face. I was eager to find out something more about this curious coven.

"You see, years ago now, our leader, he was infatuated with this one family. But he was especially interested in the oldest daughter. She was special." I couldn't help but notice that she was editing things, but I thought nothing of it.

"Hang on, do you mean Marcus?" I asked, but she shook her head, and settled herself into the chair more comfortably.

"Marcus hasn't always been our leader. He was the second in command, I guess you could say. We had a different leader who we followed. He was called Aro. You saw him in the large painting in the main room at the coven house. It was him that we took orders from. He had ordered us to search for this family, you see. That's why I obtained so many contacts. Let's just say this family were not easy to find, they travelled a lot."

"What happened? To Aro, I mean. Did he find the people that he was looking for?" I asked. I was so curious to find out about their past. This was probably the most I'd heard about them since our first meeting.

For the first time, she suddenly didn't seem very eager to share her knowledge. But as soon as that thought came to me, it went again, and she began speaking. But this time, I could clearly tell that she was editing, and I just couldn't fathom out why she would want to do that.

"We found them in the end, the whole family, in fact. But Aro was proud, and liked to boast his strength. He went for the family himself, and he took the daughter. He killed the youngest child and the father, but after he had the eldest, he left the mother alive. He had no interest in her after he had his hands on the daughter. He took her away and changed her. But she overpowered him and escaped as a newborn vampire."

I was silent for a moment as I took the new information in. I certainly wasn't expecting her to say that. It seemed all very surreal, and for a moment, it made me feel ashamed of what we were. Aro had power, a lot of it, clearly, and he had used that power to carry out a massacre of a small family.

"Where is Aro now?" I asked, trying to hide my disgust as I spoke his name aloud. Surely if he was still with the Volturi, then I should have met him by now, especially if he was their leader.

"He's dead," she said slowly, as if she didn't want to say it. "We are not sure as to what happened, but when he was overpowered, he couldn't fight her. He lost the battle because he refused to have anyone else there with him. Marcus resumed Aro's post as our leader from that moment forward."

"What happened with the newborn who escaped?" I inquired, once again trying to hide the tone in my voice. I was actually glad that this vogue vampire had killed Aro. It was almost like revenge for what he did to her family.

As the thought finished, I couldn't help but notice that everything she said evoked a new question in me and I had the feeling she didn't like all the questions I was asking.

"Ah, you see she became our new priority," she replied, as if she was getting to the main point of the story. "That is where previous contacts were obtained, vampire contacts, of course. She was exceptionally tricky to find, but we did eventually."

"What did you do with her?"

"What we do with all newborns," she said in a matter of fact voice. "We gave her an ultimatum as to whether she wanted to join our coven, and when she refused Marcus disposed of her."

"He killed her?" I asked incredulously.

"Yes," she said solemnly, looking away. "He was angry with her, furious, even. He loathed her for killing our fearless leader. For she had done the one thing others had been scared to do for centuries. When I think about it now, I believe that even if she had said she would join us, then Marcus would have killed her anyway. His hatred was too strong to form an allegiance with her."

I stared out of the window as the silence stretched. It was so much to take in on one sitting. I was shocked at how easy it was for Marcus to kill another of our kind, even when there were hardly any of us around anymore, or so I thought at least.

Shadow must have sensed my shock from what she had just told me, as she rested her hand on my shoulder, rubbing it slightly, but not soothing me at all. I had a million and one questions that I wanted to ask her, but I could tell as she stood, that she was about to leave.

"I'm sorry, Alice," she started. "I shouldn't have told you the whole story. I can tell that you are affected by it. I wish that I could stay and answer the many burning questions that you need to ask, but I have to leave. Marcus must be wondering where I have got to, and the last thing we need is for him to get suspicious."

I nodded even though she was right about one thing, I had many questions I wanted to ask her, but one stood out from the rest, and I knew that if I didn't ask her now then it would be on my mind until our next meeting. She had already started to move towards the window. I guessed she was using it as her exit like I did. I had to call out to her before she jumped.

"Shadow."

She turned to me with a smile on her face, although I could see in her eyes that she was desperate to travel home. The thought distracted me for a moment, making me unable to speak. But I recovered quickly.

"Yes, Alice?" she prompted.

"That girl, the one you were tracking. What was her name?" I asked cautiously, I wasn't sure how she would react to my question. Nor did I know why I was even asking the question, as knowing her name wouldn't do anything for me.

I didn't miss the flash of hesitancy that played across her face as she took in my question, but like before, she recovered quickly.

"Her name was Mary," she replied curtly. "Goodbye, Alice."

She was gone before I could reply to her, and as soon as the sound of her footfalls disappeared, my mind was full of more questions. I thought back to what it was that she had said to me last. Her name was Mary.

I tried not to think about why that name sounded familiar as I jumped from the window of my house, running full pelt in the direction of the boy whose blood sang to me.


A/N: So, what did you think? You got a lot of information in that chapter. It's just up to you how you interpret it.

But oh my God! Jasper is dreaming about Alice, and begging her not to go too! That must be a good sign, right?

Anyway, as always, please review. Do you have any questions? By all means ask away.