A/N: . Alphonse has somehow taken on the role of Jasper here. . That wasn't my intention, but, now that I think about it, it makes a lot of sense. Astra's got more of an Emmet type thing going on since she's the strong arms there. Avalon's got the clairvoyance… except worse. And Ed's the wiseass who tends toward being amazingly emo………. No wait, there's no difference there is there. XD;; Sorry Eddy.

And since that gets brought up…. Ed/Astra=Edward/Emmet? .

And Tom's in a category all his own. He'd rip Rosalie apart and burn her remains.

And for those who are curious or have no idea why I do this, I genuinely despise Meyer and her creation, but the Cullen family is fun to pick at a lot and I love them well enough to keep picking at them. My friend Amanda started me on it and we enjoy picking on Edward the most. We blame Meyer for ruining them.

Chapter Ten

Amber went to bed that night uncertain what was happening. Her father had said he had heard a fight outside, but when he went out he couldn't find anything. He had said it sounded like a pack of animals fighting. Perhaps it was just that, perhaps it wasn't. One thing Amber knew was that Tom had been there and left and just shortly after he left the fighting started with a female sounding voice crying out in pain.

The next morning when she woke she put her shoes on carefully, her ankle too swollen to put on the shoe any better, pulled her coat and the scarf Mr. Knight had made for her, and walked out into the cold. She limped across the street and into the neighbor's yard, looking for any evidence that maybe it really had just been animals fighting. Perhaps it had been a territorial battle? She saw the dry bald spots on the neighbor's lawn and frowned deeply as she limped carefully over to them. Against the tall tree in the yard she found the biggest patch of bald. She tilted her head slightly and frowned more as she imagined something laying there and bleeding.

A tiny, silver light caught her eye and she frowned at it as she looked at it peeking out of the grass. She knelt down and picked up a small silver rectangular pendent with a cross shape cut out of it hanging off of a very thin silver chain. She stood up and eyed it carefully before looking around again. This had come off of a girl, the chain was too small to have come off of a man, and they had heard a feminine shout of pain from across the street.

Amber stowed the necklace away into her pocket as carefully as she could before limping carefully around in the other yards looking for the same bald spots in the usually immaculate yards. She found one more several feet away. She looked down at it and frowned once more. All around she could see where the grass had matted down slightly from feet, but nothing very definitive. She sighed after a while and walked back to her house with the necklace in her pocket. There she took it out and examined it. Avalon didn't seem the type to wear such jewelry, but Astra did. However, there was just one problem with any one of them wearing it: how could a vampire stand a cross, a holy symbol of Christ, on their body?

She set the necklace down on her dresser and sat down on her chair in front of her small desk where she kept her laptop running. She looked up various articles on vampire myths, as many as she could find, and found that none really matched what she was slowly finding out. The ethereal glow to them, the need for human meat rather than blood, their strange beauty, they even walked out in the daytime, so what exactly were they?

One thing was very clear, however: they weren't human.

She stopped researching and went back to her bed where she laid down with one of the books she had to read for class. The books that they usually had to read for school were typically far too dull to care about and often bored her so badly that it was an absolute chore to go through them. However, she did it diligently and read as quickly as she could get away with so she wouldn't have to endure it for very long. Thankfully, she was a fast reader and very good at memorizing detail.

The sun shone a bit more than it usually did, though it was mostly just a break in the cloud cover over the little town of Forks, Washington. Kids were in school and everyone else was doing what they usually did on a weekday at that time of the day. Most would never dream of seeing something as unusual as a predator out and about during the day, but when their guard is down it is far easier to prey on people. It's almost too easy, in fact. People see what they want to see and ignore the finer details in lieu of the things that matter to them.

Tom sat in the shade of his car, staring out at the break in the clouds through the tinted glass of his windows. Such ridiculous rules applied to him and yet he could not break them unless he really wished a very nasty sunburn that would make him a wonderful spectacle to the rest of the school. Oh no, cloud cover was fine, a bit irritating and draining, but fine. Direct sunlight, however, was killer. It was ridiculous, but a ridiculousness he had to endure. As the clouds moved back into place he started to get out of his car, not really caring about going inside except to keep up the ridiculous appearances that were demanded of him by that awful doctor and his ditzy wife.

And then something caught his eye…

A flash of white in the corner of his vision forced him to pay attention. His deep, dark blue eyes flicked over to where he had seen the ghostly vision. By the side of the school? Had the fat cow managed to heal up entirely already? She was faster and far more agile than her size should give her the ability to have, but something was different. Whoever he had seen was not Astra Knight, but someone else with long white hair. He was certain of it. His gut feelings never failed him before.

Tom closed the door of his car and walked steadily over to the side of the school where he had seen the vision of white, his eyes starting to turn red as he felt a hunt coming on. It would be the perfect thing to make his day better to rip something apart, especially if it meant that his head would not throb and he would not lose any of his blood doing it.

He sniffed the air and frowned faintly. Whatever it was had a similar smell to Astra, similar but different all at once. He looked to the tracks in the ground and then looked around carefully. It had not been a ghost. The physical evidence was before him that someone had indeed been there, but who and why?

Another flash of white and Tom was thrown several feet away from where he had been standing. He only had enough time to roll out of the way as a woman came right down on him with her hands resembling more like claws than hands. He rolled to his feet and moved away from her as she went right after him, far faster than Astra could have ever dreamed of being. Then, he heard her giggle as she came at him, an insane little giggle that made his blood run cold when he heard it.

He jabbed her hard in the face and kicked her in the stomach, sending her flying backward. She landed and rolled to a stop before getting up slowly. It was then that he saw her more clearly. Her hair was a mess, all wild, white curls that were in need of a good grooming with leaves stuck in them. She lifted her face and he could only see part of her face through the hair that hung in it, but what he saw made him very uncertain of what he was seeing. Her face was very similar to Astra, her cheekbones high, her jaw fairly strong though more feminine than Astra's, her face a little more pointed than Astra's. One eye peered at him that he could see, presumably the other was hidden by her hair, and it was as pale and vivid gray as Avalon's eerie eyes.

He took in what he could of her body. Astra was heavy, her shoulders broad and her hips just as wide, her breasts large and her waist wasn't small enough to make up for the width of the rest of her if it tried. This woman, however, had the fairly broad shoulders and hips and a perfectly small waist to give her a nice hour glass figure. It was an improvement, at least, to the rest of the women he had seen, including Astra. He preferred women to be small, doll-like even, to what most men considered sexy. This woman, however, wasn't nicely dressed, or, to be more exact, she had been nicely dressed and she had clearly ruined it while running around.

"Who are you?" he asked finally, watching her stare at him with those eerie eyes of hers. She just giggled, however and swayed on her feet as though about to run or pounce on him again. "I'll ask again… who are you?"

"I answer no one. No one and everyone. I answer only me!" she giggled. "Birdy loves to play games! Will you play a game with Birdy?"

Tom frowned at her. What on Earth was wrong with her? This was getting very irritating and she was putting him out of his mood to kill something. He snorted and straightened his tie and ran his gloved fingers through his hair. If she wasn't going to do anything then he might as well just leave her to do whatever she had come before. However, he didn't make it more than a few steps before he felt an explosion of pain and her arm was sticking out through his chest on the right side, her hand once more like that of bird talons. He gurgled and wrenched at her arm, twisting it hard to force her to move away from him. She screamed and shot away from him, holding her limp arm as he held onto his chest, panting hard. Red-black blood dribbled down his chin from his mouth and sizzled. Then, he did the last thing he ever thought he would have to do…

He ran as hard as he could away from her.

He dashed to his car and heard her running after him. He ducked when she took another swipe at him and ran right into another car head fist. She swiped at him again and got the car instead, her talons hooking into and ripping the hood of the car like some fantastical monster. For once Tom was frightened for his very life and seeing those talons turn the hood of the car into little more than scrap made him even more fearful. His chest burned as the light hit it, sizzling as the red-black blood poured down his torso. He was getting dizzy and needed to get someplace safe away from the white haired beast before him. He shot for his car and dove into it quickly. He heard her leap right on top of it, but she fell off as he peeled out of the parking stop and out of the parking lot. He didn't even look to see if she was satisfyingly rolling on the asphalt or not. He was too frightened to look.

The trees moved past as though they were nothing. Not a single cop stopped him and if they had tried he would have simply ditched the car to run away. His vision was getting blurry from the lack of blood. He needed to feed and he needed to get home where that damned doctor could help keep him from dying long enough to feed on something. She had thankfully not damaged his heart, though she had done enough damage to him. He reached the outskirts of the town where the more expensive houses were located along the road, though most were hidden by the trees. When he found the right driveway, a mailbox marking the house drive with the name Knight written on the side of it, he turned and weaved along the drive trying to avoid running into the trees as his vision began to fail him.

He stopped when he reached the house and leaned back in his seat, panting, sweating faintly, the color somewhat pinkish. He loosened his tie and tried to get some air. He slammed his hand on his horn to get someone's attention, the sound echoing through the woods surrounding the house. He unbuttoned his shirt with one shaky hand as Mrs. Knight, tall and blonde haired, leaned out of the house and then ran to the car. Her curly hair bounced as she jogged over to his driver's side and opened the door, looking in. Benedikta Knight pulled him out carefully and picked him up in her deceptively strong arms and hurried into the house with him, shouting for help as she did so. Tom hardly cared. His mind was deciding now would be a good time for a time out from the daily grind. And so it did.

The sun was shining brightly down on Forks when Amber went to school the next day. She noticed that she didn't see Tom Knight's car or Astra Knight's blue car out in the parking lot as she had ridden her bicycle through the student parking lot. By lunch time she noticed that none of the knights were there at the school, as though they all decided as one to skip school. She frowned faintly as she looked out over the cafeteria. She hardly wished to see the awful Tom Knight, but she still needed to ask Astra Knight if the necklace she had with her was Astra's or not. While Amber suspected it was, she still preferred confirmation. And confirmation of the necklace meant that Astra Knight had been there that night.

Amber didn't like having to be so sneaky, but given how the Knights closely guarded their interests she doubted a single one of them would have willingly agreed to talk to her, especially Ed Bell. Yet one more thing to add to her mental list was the idea that her own great-grandfather was a vampire of some sort. That wasn't something you saw everyday and definitely not something out of a novel. Even in novels they never went that far with a strange plot device like that, usually. No, what was occurring was far stranger than anything Amber could have ever dreamed up inside her head.

There was also Avalon Knight who clearly was trying to warn her away from Tom Knight on account that he clearly wanted to do something nasty to her. She couldn't think of what was causing him to be so angry, but, judging by his behavior, he didn't really need a reason to hate someone or to target someone other than a good challenge or pure boredom. He was clearly sociopathic; he hated everyone around him equally and took joy in being cruel to them when he could.

Amber was glad when Fred and George took her mind off of things by telling her about a double date they were planning between her and Fred and George and a girl that Amber had only seen on occasion in the hallways named Rina Fury. Rina was a pretty girl with golden brown hair, a gentle face and big green eyes. If she thought about it, Rina resembled a bit of a woman she had seen in the family photo album as well as a man her father had pointed out as Maes Hughes.

"So, you still want that date, hmm?" asked Amber as she eyed Fred with a small smirk playing across her face. He grinned broadly and waggled his eyebrows at her, making her giggle. "Hey, I'm being serious. I've got a bad ankle, remember?"

"Yeah, yeah, I know," said Fred, grinning, "But I'm not missing a single chance to go out with you. Not one single chance. If you can't walk I'll carry you!" Amber blushed and felt that strange niggling thought of Fred dying crop up unexpectedly. It chilled her inside to think of it. Fred frowned faintly at her expression as it turned very pale and frightened. "Hey, Ambs, you all right? Y-you look like you've seen a ghost or something," said Fred, rubbing her side gently, his arm wrapped around her waist.

"It's nothing," she said quickly and shook the notion from her head. Everyone had a fear of losing someone close to them. Amber had lost her mother when she was young. She could lose her father at any given moment if the crime rate in Forks happened to hit just right. It only made sense that she had a problem with losing people and Fred was quickly becoming very close to her. They had not even made it to a first date and already she felt as though they had been friends for years. Perhaps in some parallel world they might have been friends for so long, but in this one she had only just come to Forks, Washington and he and his brothers and sister were the first people she had begun to get to know. Their mother and father she had just met not two days ago.

She sighed and let the feeling pass as they walked to class with Fred; George had gone off with Rina Fury ahead of them to take her to class before going to theirs. Today was like any other day with no Knights and Bells to make everyone disturbed. It was like someone had opened the windows and let all the fresh air and light in for them. Amber couldn't believe how much the Knights and Bells affected the school populace until that very moment when not a single one of them could be found inside the building. When they were inside the school everyone was just a little less free, a bit more tense, the air a bit more tense, when they were gone the school was like any other school; such was the affect of the strange beings that were the Knight family.

It was then that she felt a small shiver up her spine as something passed by the window of the classroom. The classroom was located on the ground level, so anything that was running around outside could be clearly seen. It was just a small dark patch, really, that she saw the movement in, and the shiver up her spine was neither the normal one nor the lazy finger trail that Tom seemed to cause in her. It was a cold feeling, more like seeing a ghost than anything.

She frowned and looked out the window as well as she could from her position in the classroom. It wasn't easy; she sat right in the middle of the class with Fred and George right in front of her. As she peered over the head of her neighbor she saw the movement again, a head of white, messy hair skittering across the ground to another dark spot as what looked like smoke trailed after it. She frowned deeply. What was she seeing?

"Miss Elric, is there a problem?" asked the teacher softly.

"Ah, I need to go to the bathroom. May I have a pass?" she asked quickly, standing up.

"Come and take one, Miss Elric, but don't take too long," said the teacher. Amber wasn't certain if the teacher figured Amber was going to do something or simply just didn't care, but Amber didn't argue and went to the front of the class and took a pass from the desk, signed her name on it and walked out with it in her hand as quickly as possible. The next thing she would do was going to be an interesting trick since whatever was outside was occurring outside her class room windows. She had to avoid being seen by the teacher at all costs.

She hurried quickly down the empty hallway, looking for teachers and hall monitors as she jogged to the exit at the end of it. Once she got out she was at the back of the school where no one would be keeping watch. She sneaked her way under the windows of the first floor, skirting the edge of the wall as quickly as she could. This was one advantage of her small height; she could get under the windows by practically ducking down to do so. Certainly she would have a kink in her back afterward, but if she were any taller she would be easily seen.

The clouds were shifting again, the shade they brought moving over the ground. She finally found the spot she had seen the white haired person moving around and saw the patch of shade from the cloud was moving away from the spot where she had seen them run to. Out darted the white haired person, a young woman not much older than the Amber's own peers, was running headlong right into Amber. Amber moved away sharply to avoid getting hit and only then noticed, after the strange, dirty young woman had passed, that there was a smell of burning flesh trailing after her in the smoke as she moved to a shady spot.

The young woman curled up in the shady spot and shook horribly, crying softly as she hid her head in her arms, her knees drawn up to her fair sized chest. Amber moved closer, uncertain of what to do. She saw on the young woman's legs that she had been burned badly by something. Patches of her legs had bubbled, turned red, from some great source of heat. The blood that oozed from her wounds was red-black and sizzled as it hit the air, making her whimper further. However, as she sat in the shade, the wounds started healing up as though they were nothing. It had been like the time she had seen Astra Knight in the bathroom nursing her leg.

"Um… miss? Erm—can I help you?" asked Amber softly, moving a little closer, though cautious. In reality, there was a feeling of fear bubbling up inside her as she stared at the young woman that Amber couldn't explain except as a need to run away as fast as possible. Amber did her best to ignore it to get closer to the young woman. If these people really were vampires then the sun clearly was their enemy and this was one of their own directly in front of her. It wasn't that she had a death wish; honestly, it was that seeing such a person so clearly scared that this young woman resembled more of a small, frightened little girl than an older teenager.

"Miss? Miss, the clouds are moving again," she said softly.

The young woman's head shot up, her pale gray eyes looking around and then to Amber. For a moment, they turned brilliant red as they stared at her and then quickly turned back as she saw the light moving toward her. She darted forward again to follow the shade to a set of trees, moving far faster than Amber thought possible. In fact, she could barely see her even move. She still smelled the burning flesh, however. Thankfully, the trees provided lots of shade so whoever this person was didn't have to run again for a while and there were plenty of bushes to lie under.

The young woman seemed to follow the same line of thinking, if perhaps instinctively, and ducked under the bushes until Amber couldn't see her at all. Why was one of the Knights' sort of people running around the school? Surely, if they were vampires, this one wasn't trying to find something quick to eat here at the school! If that were the case then wouldn't the scared thing have tried to kill her before running? She clearly could move fast enough Amber would never have noticed her hit her before running.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw a car, one that was dark gray and rather non-descript except for the severely tinted windows, parked in the back road that served as a street for the garbage pick up trucks and the recycle pick up trucks to get to the dumpsters. She watched the window roll down slowly and a face she had not thought she would ever see alive staring at her in disbelief.