A/N: And here we go. Things start to really pick up here, and I'm sure you'll all notice there are only a few more Chapters left. Read, and if you like it, review.

Chapter Ten- Shadows in the Dark

Alice POV

We walked into the clearing with the wolves. Even though I was expecting the typical loss of sight I got around them, it didn't stop me from feeling very, very blind. Edward spoke for Sam again, since the wolves were all in wolf form to hunt the serial killer. It was more than slightly nerve racking to be outnumbered by our enemies, especially when they're hunting our kind. You keep looking over your shoulder, expecting them to jump you, and you're constantly on watch for any trickery from them. Even creepier, you know they're on watch for any trickery from you, which makes you feel like you're the one in the wrong instead of them. It's just plain unnerving, I know Bella thinks that maybe one day we'll all get along, but we're just not made for that. We're natural enemies.

He looked at Carlisle, "We are ready. We believe we should start about a half an hour to the east of Forks to cover all of the newborns territory." Edward's voice was the blank emotionless tone that indicated these weren't his words, but Sam's. It still felt odd to me that my brother could hook himself into the pack mind like that, be able to hear all their thoughts. I know it drives Sam insane too, if Edward has access to the pack mind then he'll know all their plans. And if Edward knows their plans, then by default we all know them too.

Carlisle nodded, "We are comfortable in that territory. We'll start in the rivers. I trust you can keep up with us, since running is faster than swimming." To the wolves Carlisle's expression would be calm, collected. To those of us who know him though, I could sense the challenge in his voice. Not even Carlisle was completely free of the enmity of out two races.

"Don't taunt me." Edward said. Sam shot him a look and Edward rolled his eyes and said, "I edited. What Sam actually said was 'the day we can't keep up to swimming leeches like you is the day we start digging our graves.'"

Emmett and Jasper rolled their eyes at each other, while Carlisle smiled thinly in amusement. "Let's get started with the insults after we've killed this bastard." He chided gently. Sam let out a low howl that needed no translation for us- it was time to hunt.

Agent Nicolas POV

Bella stared at me open mouthed for a few more seconds. She really didn't look good, she was paler than usual with huge circles under her eyes, with the exception of the gold eyes and intimidating presence she looked like one of the Cullens. "Let's go sit down in the living room." She said after a few seconds, still very clearly trying to compose her thoughts. I felt a tiny bit bad; we had very obviously startled the poor girl. Then again, it was for very good reason, so I wasn't feeling too sorry.

We all went and sat in Chief Swan's living room, neither me nor Sam made any sudden movements, Bella was obviously terrified as it was. When we were all sitting down Bella rubbed the back of her head, suddenly seeming self conscious. "I have no idea how to say this without sounding completely and utterly insane." She began.

"Just say it, Bella." I said softly. I had forgotten that the Cullens- and therefore Bella- had no idea that we knew anything. "It can't be that bad, can it?"

"You say that now." She laughed nervously, "Okay, here we go... the serial killer is a vampire."

"Oh we know." I said calmly, wanting to see her reaction and deciding to go on the offensive. Her face registered complete and total shock. Either Bella was a far better actor than we believed, or the Cullens actually had no idea. I'm betting on the second option, because short of them being able to read minds, there is no way the Cullens could have known that we knew.

"You... You... You knew?" she said, her voice caught between a screech and a whisper. "Oh boy... that's bad... How on earth did you figure it out? Please tell me we're not being obvious..." She was absolutely terrified.

I frowned, and then said soothingly, "Why would that be bad Bella? It's not like we plan on telling anyone."

"Then it doesn't matter. As long as you don't tell anyone it doesn't matter." She seemed to be reassuring herself, not reassuring us. I sighed, I had been hoping to have her go into a rage because I said it didn't matter. Obviously Bella was either more terrified, or just smarter than I thought.

"It's because of the Volturis, isn't it Bella."

A look of pure, absolute horror crossed her face, but there was a trace of something else too, something I just couldn't put my finger on. We had obviously hit a very big nerve. "How do you know about them?" she breathed. "What do you know?"

I leaned forwards, putting my elbows on my knees. "We know that the Cullens- your family- are vampires. We know that the Quileutes are shape shifters that turn into wolves. We know all about how old your family is, about how old your fiancée is. We know that you're all dead terrified of these Volturis- whatever they are. And if you tell us what they are, then we can protect you from them. Tell us who they are Bella, for the safety of the Cullens, for Charlie, for Edward."

Bella let out a high pitched hysterical laugh, "Protect me from the Volturi? You think you can protect me from the Volturi! Allow me to explain, the Volturi- and the word without the's' is plural- all of them and their guard are unstoppable. They're the leaders of the vampire world, they're over three thousand years old and they have never, ever lost a fight. No vampire can stand against them, let alone a weak human." Bella had said 'a weak human' which shows me that she considers vampires to be superior to humans, and that she probably resents being the weak link in a strong coven, and therefore she wants to be a vampire as well. She practically worships them probably. Second, we've been pronouncing the word 'Volturi' wrong, which shows her that we know next to nothing about the leaders of the vampire world, that we've done no research on them. We slipped up there.

"Why do you say 'a weak human' Bella? How do you kill a vampire?"

Bella continued, "They are not vampires as you know them." She realized that she had the upper hand when it came to this, that we were like babies compared to her in this area, "They are like the classic Hollywood vampires only because they drink blood, apart from that, there is absolutely no resemblance. They are so strong and hard fighting against them is like fighting against a rock. When they run they are so fast all you can see is a blur. They have no fangs, and they're venomous."

"How do you kill one?" I prodded, I needed to know this.

She looked me dead in the eye. "You don't." Taking a deep breath, she continued, "The only way to kill a vampire is to rip them apart and burn the pieces. And that is an impossible feat for a human to perform." She paused for a moment to let this sink in for me. How were we going to capture the serial killer then? Especially if the serial killer is one of the Cullens, a group of eight vampires, not just one random killer.

"Bella." I asked, getting back to business, "Who is the serial killer? It's one of the Cullens, isn't it? Which one..." I figured that going on the offensive again would be a good idea, I seemed to get a lot of information out of her when I did that. I was about to start listing off names when Bella responded.

"You think one of the Cullens is the killer!" she screeched, outraged. She was almost kitten-like in her anger, there was absolutely nothing she could do against us, and yet she still jumped in to protect her vampire family. "You idiot- it's a newborn, not one of the Cullens. Do any of the Cullens have red eyes right now? No. They don't. That means that none of them are drinking human blood- and that means none of them are murdering young girls. Idiot!" she yelled again.

"Okay," I winced, maybe I had gone to fast, "How do you know they're not lying to you about everything. And when I say everything, I mean everything. All of the facts you know about the Cullens might be false- what happens then, Bella?"

Bella gave me a look, and then rolled her eyes. "The list of evidence I have goes on and on and on and on... trust me, everything the Cullens have said to me I've checked and double checked. They're not lying about anything. There's too many people involved, too much evidence."

Too many people involved, too much evidence. We weren't dealing with just another case here, we weren't dealing with just one small group of people. We were dealing with another society, another world, and in this new world humans weren't at the top of the food chain- they were at the bottom. Sam and I weren't used to negotiating our way through this world, we were used to having people listen to us, sometimes even be afraid of us. In this world though, not one single being was afraid of us. Bella slid right into it, she could rule this world- a weak human being that entire covens and packs would die to protect. Compared to Isabella Swan, we were the weaklings in this world.

"Alright, why should their eye colour matter?" I began, starting with what appeared to be the smallest chunk of all the information she had just shoved down my throat in less than five seconds.

"Rule number one of hanging around vampires- know when they're thirsty. And the way to tell that is with their eyes. A vampire that drinks human blood will have bright red eyes that darken to black the thirstier they get. A vampire that hunts animals is exactly the same, but with gold eyes instead of red. You can always tell when a vampire is seriously pissed off at you because their eyes will turn dead black- all the colour will melt from them as their bodies absorb all the blood in order to prepare them to fight. A newborn vampire will have eyes such a bright red that they'll almost seem to glow because their own human blood still runs in their system."

"And you figured this out all on your own?" Sam asked, curious.

Bella Swan just blushed, "Yes. I've seen thirsty vampires, I've seen vampires of both types who just hunted, and I've seen newborns. Apparently I'm unnaturally observant when it comes to mythical creatures."

"What do you mean by that?" I asked.

"You think Edward just walked up and told me all this? I figured it all out on my own before I had the confidence to approach him and confront him about it. I didn't want to risk doing anything until I knew as much I could. Then we fell in love, and things just fell into place." Why do I get the feeling that there are some major gaps in that story she just told me?

"Alright then," I said, wanting to test her story, "Why did Edward leave if things were going so well?"

Bella sighed and wrapped her arms around her stomach, like she was trying to hold herself together. "He wanted to protect me. This world I live in is insanely dangerous for a human, I've been hunted, armies have been created to take me out, even spending time around the Cullens poses some risks- they have control, but if I start bleeding then it might slip. Edward left me in hopes that his world would stop following me. It was too late though, this is my world too, and once you're in you can't leave. Not with the V-" she cut herself off and started again, "We couldn't stand to be apart from each other either. The mate-to-mate bond is impossible to deny once it gets hooked in."

"Isabella Marie Swan- did I just hear you say someone created an army to take you out?" I hissed, wondering what Charlie would think.

Bella sighed, "Alright- if you insist I'll tell you all the gory, unimportant details. I guess I just didn't want to scare you."

"I don't scare easily." I bluffed, wondering if maybe Bella Swan scared less easily than I did these days.

"Okay," she began, obviously trying to put her train of thought together, "It all started when I went to school one day, I had already seen the Cullens and I knew something was up with them. I felt strangely, unexplainably attracted to Edward, but I smelled good enough to eat, so he avoided me. I was standing by my truck when Tyler Crowley came screeching around the corner with his van. Heading straight for me. Then Edward ran across the parking lot and stopped the van from crushing me. At the time neither of us had any idea why he did that, especially since he was avoiding me like the plague. His annoyingly superior attitude drove me to figure out what he was, so I went down to the Quileute reservation to hear some of their legends. That's how I figured out that they were vampires, I did some research to double check."

"How'd that research go?" Nicolas asked with a smirk, he knew that if you typed 'vampires' into a search engine then you were going to get a lot of crap.

"For the most part it sucked, but I did manage to find a myth about Carlisle though." I giggled at the memory, "He was shocked about that, when I asked him he just shook his head and said that one of his old friends had a twisted sense of humour."

"What was the myth?"

"Stregoni benefici: An Italian vampire, said to be on the side of goodness, and the mortal enemy of all bad vampires."

"Why's that funny?"

"Mostly because Carlisle isn't the mortal enemy of all bad vampires, and the fact that humans think he is originates from a mock fight he and his friend staged in an alley to develop the myth. That's not something Carlisle would ever do in real life. The Cullen's choice of lifestyle is painful, animal blood never fully stops the burning thirst. Carlisle would never, ever, force that choice on someone else, so he doesn't go around killing people who don't listen to him."

They both stared at me with open eyes, "You mean he's friends with vampires that are... murderers." He choked out the last word and I realized what Edward had meant when he said that my reactions were bizarre. After all, when Edward had told me that he had hunted humans for about ten years, I had just shrugged and said that that actually sounded fairly reasonable. And it did sound reasonable- to me anyways.

I doubted that it would sound as reasonable to the nice agents.

I shrugged, "It's not really as bad as it seems, it's not as if he hunts with them, they just spend a few hours talking about things. There are only..." I did the math in my head, counting up the Denali Coven and the Cullens combined, "... twelve vampires on this entire planet that hunt animals. It's a rather small group, so of course he talks to other vampires." Actually, I had no idea what the Cullens did when they were spending time with human-eating vampires. Peter and Charlotte had come to visit once, but Edward practically locked me in my room to make sure I was safe.

Overprotective fool.

Sam seemed intrigued by it all; it seemed to appeal to his logical way of looking at things, he was about to ask me something, but before he had the chance Nicolas shook his head, shutting Sam up. "So what happened next?" he asked, trying to change the subject.

"Well, I became Edward's... girlfriend doesn't quite fit, the bond is too deep for that... I became Edward's- for lack of a better word- mate. I started hanging out with the Cullens. One night we were playing baseball- well, they were playing, I was watching- when a couple of nomads decided to pay us a visit. We had known they were in the area, but they hadn't noticed the Cullens were in the area. They heard the game and decided to come see who was playing. These nomads definitely weren't Carlisle's friends." I said, remembering all the snarling and overprotective growling that had been going on.

"There were three of them; James, his mate Victoria and Laurent. James was a tracker, a vampire that lived for the hunt. And there I was, a tasty smelling human protected by the second-largest Coven on the planet. The perfect hunt. The Cullens killed James in the end and saved me, but they didn't notice he had a mate. Laurent had seen that James was bound to lose and left his coven, he had been planning to go see another coven, but before he had a chance he ran afoul with the Quileutes- he tried to hunt on their territory."

I decided that it would be a good idea to omit the fact that he had been trying to hunt me.

"It was around then that Edward left me to protect me. Both of us collapsed, and in the end Alice just dragged the two of us back together. We realized what a dumb mistake we had made and got back together."

That's pretty much what happened, minus the werewolves, Victoria, the Volturi, Laurent... I just don't think the agents need to know all that. Plus Alice had said to never, under any conditions, mention the Volturi more than necessary.

I chuckled slightly, "Alice is like that." It wasn't a complete lie, Alice was like that, and it's not important that she just wasn't like that at the exact moment.

"Anyways, we were getting settled back in when Victoria decided to come back to town and try to kill us all- with the exception of Edward- so that Edward could feel exactly like she did now that James was dead. She created an army of newborn vampires and came to Forks. The Quileutes formed an alliance with the Cullens, and they took out the newborn army together. Then Edward asked me to marry him and I said yes, we were heading home to tell Charlie when- of course- a newborn vampire serial killer decided to come and crash he wedding."

Agent Nicolas rolled his eyes, "You've left out all mention of the Volturi Bella, and I know that you've met them before."

Damn. I was hoping they wouldn't notice.

I sighed, "They came to deal with the newborns in Seattle, but we had already dealt with them, so the trail led them straight to us instead. They knew it wasn't us that had caused the trouble in Seattle, and we're all really grateful about that. The Volturi exist as the leaders of the vampire world because they have one purpose- keep the secret. They don't give second chances; they've given us one only because Carlisle and Aro are friends. When they came and found us they knew immediately that the Cullens had broken the rules, they left on the guarantee that I would be turned into a vampire. If they came back, and I was still human they'd kill us all. Add to that if they came back and I was still human, and two FBI agents knew the secret too... we'd be so, so screwed. That's why I freaked out so much when you said you already knew. I was afraid we were just being so obvious."

I shook my head, "No worries, you're not." There was way too much information for me to digest in this conversation. There was too much information for me to digest in this one conversation alone. I wondered if Bella was telling the truth, and if she wasn't then maybe a change of scenery would make her slip. "This is going to take a while, why don't we go for a walk to let things digest a little."

Bella looked slightly alarmed, "I don't think that that's really such a good idea-"

I cut her off, hoping I had her off balance, "Come on Bella. This is all too much for me to take in. I bet you went for a walk when you figured this out."

Bella obviously had, because she stood up and followed me out the door. Her face was lined with slight worry, like she was doing something she knew was against the rules and she was afraid of getting caught. Was she worried some of the Cullens would be in the woods?

All three of us headed down the small path outside Bella's house.