SM owns all the sand that go up to make the universe I play in.

Thank you to everyone for their comments so far on this tale. I have been blessed with not only the most patient beta in the existence of betas - CindyWindy listens to me moan and groan, and then attacks the overgrown and out of control jungle of my words, making them palatable and understandable. Thank you my friend, you are the reason we are here at Chapter 10.

Chapter 11 may be a little late in arriving, maybe a week, it's half written, but I have been working nights all this week, and haven't been awake enough to write.

Enough waffle, let us find out some answers...or just get more questions?

EPOV

The remains of dinner buried under a tree in the forest, I made my way back to the cabin. My mind was racing. I'd never recalled hearing from the minds of my family any of them sharing a meal. It was primal; a show of trust that was unheard of. It was also quite the sexiest thing I had ever experienced. Not difficult given my blank page of experience in all things sexy, but as an introduction, I am sure it would take some beating.

My Bella, when not covered in animal innards and dried moose blood, was quite the most exquisite creature I had ever laid eyes on. I hadn't meant to drop the moose in the unceremonious way I had, but at the sight of her my world had shifted again. I mentally kicked myself at how ridiculous I must have looked gawping like a teenage boy. Oh yeah, that was right, I was a teenaged boy. The only geriatric teenaged virgin on the planet. I gave myself a shake to get rid of wallowing thoughts. I wasn't sure it worked.

The outline of the cabin came into view and my thoughts grew sober. This was going to be difficult for my Bella. I resolved to be a man, give her space, let her reach out if she needed me, and not be the fawning mass of hormones that I had been whilst in the forest disposing of our dinner.

I allowed myself a last grin at the memory of our shared meal then pulled myself together.

The cabin was dimly lit. I entered the lounge and took a seat on the sofa next to Alice. Bella was sitting on a plush armchair facing us. I nodded at her.

Take your time, tell me if you need me with you. Bella heard my words of encouragement and nodded back.

"No conversations that everyone can't hear - no fair!" Alice said with a pout.

Bella looked guilty. "Alice, I have no idea how to control this. I don't do it on purpose, and I think it makes it more difficult for Edward as well. Believe you me, I really don't need him hearing my inner monologue at the moment!"

"Just keep your mouths in gear!" She laughed and sat up a little straighter.

"OK, so in the interest of openness," Alice began, "and to make sure you feel safe and so you know there's nothing funny going on, this is what's going to happen. Jasper will be here in a day or so. He's going to meet Edward in the nearest town and bring him here because Edward's car will be in the shop for a couple of days.

"We'll do a last check to make sure you are ok to travel, and then we will start to make our way to Forks - that's where we live. Jasper will have documents for you and I'll take a couple of photos of you after we've had a little chat and get those off to him so our man can use them to make your new IDs.

Bella raised her hand. Alice looked pleased at this manner of interruption and nodded at her to proceed. "Who is Jasper?"

"My husband. He's also experienced at looking after newborns, so he will be well placed to make sure everything goes smoothly on our trip home." Alice eyes glazed a little at the mention of Jasper; she was missing her mate. "I promise that we will tell you all about our family and answer any questions you may have later. Bella, I'm eager to hear how you were changed. Will you tell us?"

Bella got up from the chair and walked to the window. It was around midnight, and snow was starting to fall. We waited as she composed herself.

I watched as she walked to each window and looked out. She'd go to place her hands on the glass before stopping for fear of breaking it. Then she'd move on to the next one. Rinse, repeat. Finally she stopped and half turned; her eyes squeezed shut and a small crease formed between them.

"After a certain point everything is so clear. Thinking back now, other things are fuzzy, but I will try my best. Please interrupt me to ask questions if you need to. There may be things of a...personal nature I don't want to talk about. I will tell you the basic details of what happened though." Bella spoke slowly, obviously trying to sort through her memories.

"Everything important will come out, just maybe not all in one go." Bella turned away from us as she said this, as though ashamed. The urge to go to her, to tell her she didn't have to relive these things was huge.

"I feel like I am being interviewed for a job!" Bella laughed at herself then, before turning back to us. "What if I'm not good enough? What if what I tell you is too awful?" Her crisp accent sounded like fine cut glass to my ears.

I shook my head. "Bella, you are coming home with me - with us. We just need to know what happened so we can help you better. There is nothing you can tell us that would make me change my mind about you. I'd be lying if I didn't admit to you that we're very curious about the pull you speak of. Let's start off with how you came to be who you are now?" I tried to look as neutral as I could. The thought of my Bella not coming home with us scared me more than anything had for as long as I could remember. There was no home for me where there was no Bella.

Bella nodded, and turned back to the window.

"I was coming home from a trip to the West End. We live...lived in South London - Herne Hill, do you know it? Anyway, I'd been to late night shopping to get Mike a birthday present. Comics. He loved graphic novels, and I'd had to go to Soho to pick up some FacePunch novel that had just come out - it was a special order. Usual Mike, not backwards about coming forward with what he wanted as a gift.

"It was properly dark, had been for a few hours, and it was last Friday. Mike's birthday was this week." She stopped, turned around to us.

"Mike is my hus..." Bella paused, swallowed deeply, then continued. "Mike was my husband. We had been married for two years." Bella winced as she corrected herself.

I hid my thoughts deep in my mind, and cringed internally at the mention of her husband. I felt like a cad, but it bit deep into me that she belonged to another. I worried that whatever we might have would not match her former marriage. I was jealous of a dead man. I was scared of the power a dead man had over the woman who was my mate. I couldn't comprehend how much of a bastard I was at that moment. I filed these thoughts deeply away from the front of my mind where Bella couldn't hear them, and steeled myself to be as supportive as possible. I mentally gave myself an "11" on the bastard scale. I listened as Bella continued.

"Anyway, I got off the train, and it was dark, like I said, but there were a few people getting off the train as well. I started for home. It's a bit of a walk; anything too close to the station is too expensive. Mike's parents bought us that house. Well, him.

"I nipped into the shop near the house, bought some ice cream as a treat for me, and stocked up on some fizzy water and some milk. I'd just finished some silly research thing I had seen advertised in the paper, and they'd paid me for my time, so I was a bit flush.

"The shop is like, I dunno, two minutes from the house." Bella stopped talking. She turned around to face us. Her face contorted in fear and anger.

"I knew something was weird when I opened the door. The lights were off, but the telly was on - I could hear it. I remember going into the lounge." Bella stopped again, then started to pace and wring her hands.

"Mike was handcuffed to the radiator...he was gagged. The fear! He looked so afraid, his eyes, it was like he was telling me to run. Then...then I saw him." Bella stopped pacing, slumped down against the wall by the window and drew her legs up against her chest. She didn't make eye contact.

"I went to get out, but he caught me." Bella's voice was small, her hands in her hair.

"He looked like you...us. His eyes, they weren't like yours, but were deep deep red, deeper than mine are now. He was stroking my hair, telling me things...what did he say?" Bella stared off into space, her eyes glazing as she searched her dim human memories.

"Something about being impressed, how it had been a long search," Bella looked up at that. "I will try and remember more, but let me tell you this all first?" She looked at us for approval.

"You are doing so well, take your time. The memories are fuzzy, aren't they? Human memories are not as perfect as our enhanced minds, so they seem dull and fuzzy. Take your time, Bella." I wanted her to know she was doing so well. I was seeing her memories as she saw them, but she didn't need to know that at the moment, as it would make my Bella more uncomfortable. The memories were harrowing.

Bella nodded and took a calming breath. "I was screaming blue murder at him. He broke my arm to make me shut up, and then I remember him laughing. The noise was horrible.

"I kept trying to get away, and he'd swat me like a fly and then laugh. I spat at him after he had hit me in the face, and the blood splattered in his face. I think that just excited him. He'd let me get so far away then strike me. In the end I was laying on the floor just looking at Mike. Both arms and a leg I think he broke, and the pain was immense." Bella heaved back a sob, then laughed an empty joyless laugh.

"Well it seemed bad...but what came after was worse.

"He told me to say goodbye to my life. He made me say goodbye to Mike. He told me that as long as I was quiet he would ..." Bella stopped speaking then; her hands covered her face.

I couldn't stand it any longer. In a flash I was on the floor, sitting next to her, with my arm around her. She was as rigid as a pylon.

From beneath her hands she started to speak again. "He told me that if I was quiet and didn't make a sound he would make sure he kept Mike alive for me. He made me thank him, he made me say his name to thank him." Bella's hands moved from her face. She looked at me, and threw herself across the room, hitting the far wall and crumpling to the ground.

"I thought he promised to keep him safe, promised to spare him! I thanked him! I thanked him, and he kept him alive for me to feed from!

"I didn't know what I was doing! I thanked that bastard for making my first meal my husband!"

Bella lost any and all composure she had managed to bind to herself at that point. Huge dry heaving sobs were dredged from her. Her hands shook as she saw them in her mind destroying her husband as she fed from him.

I growled; I couldn't help it. The memories Bella was showing me were horrific. The vampire held her up against the wall by her neck, made her say her goodbyes, and then made her promise to be quiet. Then he bit her, and let her drop to the floor. I closed my eyes and forced her thoughts of the change out of my head.

Alice had the forethought to move to Bella's side and had her arm around her shaking, sobbing form. Small comforting sounds were all that Alice could manage. She was doing better than me; I was in a murderous rage, and the growl in my throat hadn't yet stopped.

"Edward! Stop it, you aren't helping! It's done, and all we can do is be here for her. You are scaring her, and she needs calm." Alice was right.

I closed my eyes and readjusted my temper. I had to be strong and calm. When I was in a little more control, I moved over to where Alice and Bella were, and sat in front of Bella.

"Bella," I said gently. She had stopped sobbing, and had pulled herself into a tight ball, her legs against her chest again. "You don't have to tell us what happens next, we can work it out. Just know there is no blame in this; it was not you fa-" Bella looked up at me.

"I killed him," Bella said quietly. "I woke up. He ripped Mike's hand off. Mike screamed." Bella swallowed as she relived the scene. "I couldn't stop myself." Alice held her hand.

"I ripped him to shreds, Edward. There was nothing left that could be identified as Mike!" Bella held her hands up in front of herself and stared at them like they weren't hers.

"He laughed at me while I did it, told me I was messy." She spat the last word.

"He told me he'd show me how a real man could be, and then he tried to...he...er.." Her eyes averted. I growled again, and Alice shot me a look.

"I pulled part of the radiator pipe off the wall smacked him with it, and then I grabbed the closest part of him and yanked. I was so angry and scared!" Bella looked at me, her hands clenched tightly together.

"That's how I found out..you lot..we...I mean..vampires don't die when you pull their heads off. They look like they are dead, but their bodies move towards their heads!" Bella held her head in her hands, and took a deep breath. It was a truly horrific sight: in Bella's mind she saw the headless body quiver and inch its way towards its own head, the eyes unseeing.

"I panicked. The house was trashed. I set fire to the place. He wouldn't have survived that would he? I made sure his cloak was soaked in lighter fluid, and the head, then I doused the rest of the lounge and then I got out and started to run." Bella looked at me, she was still shaking a little. I stared at her in shock.

"Fire just seemed to be the best course of action. Before I knew what was happening I had the lighter fluid in my hands. I wanted no evidence, and I didn't know how to kill that bastard. He wouldn't stop moving and I wanted him dead." Bella was bunching her hands into fists, her teeth were clenched.

I caught her hands in mine and held them, forcing her to pay attention to me. "He had a cloak? Anything else he was wearing that you can remember? Please think about what he looked like, so I can see." I look at her carefully, and I see it: a gray cloak. The man has blondish hair and is about the same height as me. Bella is looking at his body, and there is a necklace, golden with a crest. I recognise it immediately from Carlisle's memories.

"Bella, do you remember his name?" I asked carefully.

"Demetri. He said his name was Demetri. His accent was English." Bella's voice was small. She was still seeing her past in her mind, and I was seeing it as well. The confusion was immense. Sounds and smells were magnified; my own throat was burning from the memory of Mike's blood. Added to that was the acrid smell of the lighter fluid, the mixture of noxious fumes from the furniture starting to burn, and the smell of the vampire as he went up in flames. All that mixed with the laughing voice of Demetri, his face up close to hers, and his hands unwelcome in their advances, the sickening crunch of his head leaving its body and hands inching their way towards a discarded head.

I marvelled at the strength of this small woman in front of me who had woken as a newborn with all the disorientation that the state of awakening brings with it, plus the added discombobulation of the voices she must have been hearing from her newly awakened gift. She is driven to kill her own husband, is attacked, defends herself, and then has to destroy everything she has ever known and run, destination unknown, with a body that she could barely control. Her fortitude left me breathless.

The confusion from the events she is reliving in her mind are confusing to me, and I am dizzy from the sheer overload of her memories. I gasp and hold her close.

As her panic subsides, I feel her mind return to the present time. Another part of my mind is registering Alice's alarm. I hear her thoughts in a scramble and I know Bella does as well. Alice is a smart cookie, and she knows me well enough to tell by the stricken look on my face what has happened.

I tried to keep the fear from my mind, but I know I fail when Bella pushes herself away from me.

Alice looked at me in trepidation as she took out her phone and dialed.

"Carlisle, we have a problem."