Thanks for your notes – they make my day.

So now that you folks know Bella's not going to let Jasper get away with his unexamined emotional bullshit, I want to reassure you that this has a happy ending for all three of them. I've gotten a few notes about liking where BLW ended but I think this story transforms their relationship into something stronger and better. I always try to leave my characters in a better space.

Speaking of ending, I am intending to finish this – with the disclaimer that intentions and reality don't always line up. And yes, I am reworking it quite a bit – editing/adding text and structure as I go along and generally having fun. That's why there are still so many typos. ;-)

'Guess I'm chatty today.

'

Thanks for reading and hope you enjoy.

'

'


Chapter 11- The Grey Mocker

(remember the poem?)


'

A demure knock sounded at the door of Bella's room at the George and Dragon Inn in the small town of Knighton in Whales. Toweling off her hair, she pulled the starched robe tighter around her neck and strode through the quaint period room. She didn't bother checking who it was through the peep hole, she already knew: Jasper.

Since the disastrous debacle on the plane, they had established an uneasy truce that consisted of no eye-contact and only brusque one-word communications only if absolutely needed. Therefore silence had followed them through bustling Heathrow Airport and into the commuter plane ride up north to Birmingham and then stretched across the hours in a luxurious (of course) rented sedan on the of winding country roads.

Finally 32km out from Knighton – where Jasper had tracked their infamous quarry – he'd broken the silence with a run-down of "the plan" in a voice so flat and emotionless, that his jaunty accent disappeared. Bella, chin propped on her hand on the door, stared out the window at the green, green countryside slipping by and listened.

"Ready?" Jasper asked with no preamble, as she pulled open the door.

Bella hung on the doorknob for a moment as she considered him dispassionately.

Hands folded diffidently before him, Jasper returned her stare with steady eyes… which were nearly black with hunger.

"I'm ready," she returned quietly, squaring her shoulders with a counterfeit courage.

With a broken heart struggling to flutter its way through a storm of trauma and terror, the last thing she wanted to do at the moment was chase down her last shred of hope in a dangerous and enigmatic Werewolf. But there was no time to mourn or despair or even rest. Never had time been such a precious commodity.

And Bella was quickly running out of it.

Jasper held out a sleek smart phone in a latex-gloved hand. "I've programmed the location of his shop in Google maps."

He turned it on and slid a finger across the colorful touch screen, showing both her current position and destination in pulsing blue pearls on a satellite map. "I have a car waiting for you downstairs- ask for the keys at the desk. I had it delivered so that it doesn't carry my scent." Jasper had warned her repeatedly that she could neither smell like nor ally herself with his kind in this dangerous game she was about to attempt.

Or the Grey Mocker wouldn't think twice. He'd kill her.

Bella nodded quickly as her hand reached out to pluck the device from his hand.

"You remember what I told you?" he murmured.

Bella looked up from where she was turning the gadget nervously over in her palm. "Yes," she whispered.

Jasper nodded, concern flashing behind the curtain of cool detachment. "I programmed my number into the phone. Call if you run into problems, Bella, and I'll do my best."

He was worried for her, she realized. Since he had kissed her – and she had lost it – he could only be described as subdued, dropping all pretenses along with his cocky endearments. Bella almost felt bad for him.

Almost.

But even still, this could be the last time she saw him.

"If something goes wrong…" Bella began.

"I will," he murmured soothingly. "But you'll be fine." Jasper spared her from having to repeat her desperate plea that he call Paul and tell him to make a run for it with their son.

Bella tossed her wet hair over her shoulder with a huff at her own hopelessly churning emotions. She didn't have time for this right now, but she also didn't want things to end on this note.

If they were ending.

"Jasper, I… I'm sorry. I didn't –" Bella began

Jasper's gloved finger slipped up to still her lips. "No, I heard every word," he gave her small smile. "Loud an' clear." His finger ghosted up to push back an errant lock of her hair and then caught himself, making a fist and dropping it to his side.

Clearing his throat he continued. "I figure I got me some thinkin' to do," he said pointedly as he snapped off each glove. "And what better way to do a little thinkin'…" A glittering smile peeled back to reveal the razor teeth he hid so well. " … than over a drink."

Like lightning he disappeared from the small cramped hallway, leaving Bella alone. Alone with heartache and fear. Alone with worry and grief.

And alone with the unenviable task of tracking down the last-known Werewolf in the world…

…and convincing him to help her kill the father of all vampires.

'

'

Bella pulled the knit sleeves over the heels of her hands nervously and peered through the dusty old storefront, sniffing a laugh at the shop name and – undoubtedly - double entendre.

"Old Things: Antiques & Curios" was painted in flaking gold lettering, curving over the door's window in a font from another century. Below it hung a dog-eared red and white sign that invited: "Come in, we're open!" It was nearly 9:00 pm and a cloud cover hastened the late summer dusk – she hadn't expected to find it open. Jasper had told her that the Grey Mocker had a certain quirky and enigmatic reputation.

As far as Bella could tell, that was par for the course in the supernatural world.

Blowing a steeling breath from her cheeks, she pushed open the heavy door- an antique in and of itself. A little bell jingled merrily and a waft of dank, musty air skirted past her as she pushed her way into the dim shop. Turning, she shut the door behind her with a thunk. The bell choked on its peal against the frame and plunged the room into a gloomy silence.

Rubbing her hands on her thighs nervously, Bella scanned her surroundings. It was a small little store, long and thin, but it was crammed full of everything imaginable. Heavy oak tables, mahogany bookshelves, slick lacquer dressers, and velvet-upholstered chairs were all pushed against the walls and piled high themselves with knickknacks. Long glass counter displays stretched back into the room, their dusty smudged glass hiding their contents. In the center of the room, an old garish crystal chandelier hung along with a generous dressing of cobweb from a dreary soot-caked molded ceiling.

Wrinkling her nose at the smell of musty old books and forgotten mothballs, Bella took two steps into the store. Other than the spectacular hodgepodge of trinkets and furniture, it was empty. As it probably should be at 9:00 pm.

"Hello?" she called out as she wandered aimlessly toward the nearest little table. Her fingers brushed absently around the lip of a demitasse cup as she looked over her shoulder for signs of life.

Pursing bemused lips, she turned back to the mélange of curios and tentatively plucked up a Georgian-era porcelain figurine of a dancing woman. She turned it in her hand idly, and then glanced over her shoulder again at the empty room.

Setting it carefully down in its ring of dust, she ran her fingers over the inlaid jewelry box beside it. Pretty little flowers made of iridescent pearl and abalone had been set into the wood. Her brow dipping curiously, she flipped up the little rusting clasp and delicately opened it with both hands. A tinkling melody skittered across the room as if it had been caged for centuries and finally set free. Glancing over her shoulder again, Bella allowed her nerves to be soothed for a moment by the haunting melody that was a perfect score for this strange little shop. Swan Lake crept up her spine in a slightly off-tune tinkle.

Sniffing at herself, she captured the song again with the lid and snapped the clasp shut.

"Can I help y' find somethin' luv?" a velvet British accent scurried through the room, smoothing away the prickling wake of the music box's tune.

Sucking in a breath, Bella whipped around.

A long lanky man of indeterminate age was leaning indolently against one of those glass cases, his elbows propped on the counter behind him. Shaggy dark hair fell to his collar and framed an pale angular face. It was set with a thin lips and light, eerie eyes that she couldn't quite make in the gloom. Dressed all in black, he wore a leather thigh-length jacket over a turtleneck and skinny jeans that cinched down to boots with pointed toes. One foot was propped over the other before him.

"Um… hi, uh…sorry," Bella began with a forehead-slapping eloquence.

With a jaunty raise to his brow, the man cocked his head.

Wolf like.

"Y-yes. " Bella licked her lips, encouraged. "Yes, actually."

At her graceless floundering, the man's lips stretched slowly into a private smile at her expense.

Taking a quick resetting breath, Bella tried again. "I'm looking for someone," she blurted finally, pulling a lock of hair around to twist in nervous fingers.

"Really?" His smile tilted into a smirk. "Pray tell," he urged as one of his hands flourished theatrically from where it rested on the counter.

"Uh…the.." Bella choked. She felt a hearty mix of terror and fool – it wasn't exactly a name one said with a straight face. "The Gray Mocker?" she whispered uncomfortably.

But the man seemed to have no trouble hearing it at all.

Whatever he was going to say died on parted lips that bloomed instead in a toothy smile. He pushed off the counter with a sniff and shrewd eyes darted over her with renewed interest.

"That's a name I haven't heard in a while," he crooned slyly. "Now what could a sloe-eyed beauty like yourself possibly want with such a scoundrel?" Clasping his hands behind him, he prowled several steps toward her with a feline grace to long limbs.

Bella's hand twisted the hair tighter around her finger and took a step back. "Um…I need h-help," she stammered.

The man sniffed again with a dramatic raised brow. "A damsel in distress, how delightful," he gushed, continuing to stalk her with his soft, clicking footfall.

Bella took another step back and bumped into the table, which clattered with porcelain on glass. Sucking in a quick breath of mortification, she turned quickly, hands outstretched to catch any casualties. Stilling the little figurine with a finger, she turned back to the room.

The man was at the door, peering out the window down the street in both directions. "And - were you to find him, of course –whatever sort of service could such a rogue possibly offer?" He turned his head and smirked, flipping over the sign to closed.

And it was then that she saw his eyes. Really saw them. They were shockingly gray; not the natural shade she had seen in eyes on occasion, or even in colored contacts, but a creamy, light gray like a storm cloud on a summer's day.

The man – indubitably the Gray Mocker, on both accounts – turned completely around with a purse to his lips, waiting for her answer.

Bella shifted her weight as her hesitation evaporated in the latent fury that simmered in her ravaged soul. She had come all this way for this moment, her last and only hope.

Jutting her chin you with determination, Bella expelled the words with heat. "I need to kill a vampire."

"Oh…" The Grey Mocker paused, his brow raising along with one corner of his mouth. "I stand corrected: not a damsel in distress at all, but a Joan of Arc," his lips peeled back further into a leer. "How delicious."

Bella swallowed, but squared her shoulders with a frown. She hadn't gone through what she had, left all she loved and made a barter with the devil himself, to be intimidated by a Wolf with an attitude problem.

At her visible steeling, the Were tucked his head and slunk toward her, staring at her with piercing eyes from under his craggy brow. "But…" he stopped not a foot from her and lifted his roman nose with an audible sniff. "Surely such a fragile little thing wouldn't venture into the lair of the Beast on her own," his voice dropped down to a breathy croon as his eyes darted over her face in unhurried assessment.

Bella pressed her lips together and steadily held his stare. "I came alone," she replied smoothly – albeit with a little less confidence than she would have liked.

Slowly he stalked in a crowding semi-circle around her, his eerie eyes skating over every minute detail of each perspective. Bella blinked and shifted her gaze to straight ahead, trying to measure her hitching breath.

"Surely such a delicate damsel – even from far off shores – has heard fable and tale of what can befall little girls in the dark, dark forest…" he whispered breathily.

He stopped on the other of side her, leaning in close and sniffing her hair. Bella kept her eyes trained carefully forward as she went through the mental mantra of what was held in the delicate balance of this game. The torturous agony of being separated from her imprint and child and the murderous hate she had for he who threatened them balanced her, coalescing into calming, solid courage.

"You don't scare me," Bella bit out from clenched teeth.

"And why not?" he breathed by her ear. "You're not afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?" There was undoubtedly a smile in that voice.

He was making fun of her!

Bella snorted at his theatrics and turned to him with irritation, pulling back slightly to look him in the eye.

"I married him," she said evenly, pausing for what seemed to be fashionable drama. "And my Werewolf would eat you for breakfast," she quipped, her lips spreading in a saccharine smile.

His brow shot up in appreciation.

With a deep chuckle he burst away from her with a flourish of both hands as he looked around the room with wide eyes. "Where is he, then?" he asked with exaggerated bravado as he spun back to Bella, both hands still shrugging melodramatically.

Bella licked her lips as her gaze fell to where her hands twisted in her hair. "I left him," she whispered, trying to steady her voice over such agonizing words.

"Well, this story just gets better and better!" the Were laughed in a patronizing tone. "And I think it simply must continue over tea."

Sniffling, Bella looked up and impatiently wiped away the errant tear that had slipped by her guard. She nodded faintly.

The Were studied her silently for a moment and then, with no more than a soft laugh, turned abruptly on his heel and stalked back through the dim shop.

Bella blinked, hesitating.

"Come along, child," his hushed voice slithered over his shoulder as his boots' clicking steps echoed in the silence.

Bella trailed after him timidly, her gaze washing over the piles of looming anonymous furniture. A door creaked open ahead and the Were disappeared through it. Long licking shadows were chased by light across the dusty ramshackle room.

Bella paused in the doorway, and her gaze panned the small, old fashioned kitchen. Like a soundstage for a 1940s TV show, it sat as a perfectly preserved relic of simpler days. Worn mint-green laminate was trimmed by dented stainless steel along counters and rounded tidy metal cabinets hung low over them. A small rectangular kitchen table with four matching chairs was plotted in the middle of scuffed checkerboard linoleum. The Were was standing behind one of those plastic-upholstered chairs, holding it out for her in a parody of chivalry … and watching her carefully.

Licking her lips, Bella crossed hesitantly toward him.

"Oh now, no need to be shy," he drawled in his educated British as his palms patted the smudged chrome.

With a ghost of a scowl at his taunting, Bella crossed the kitchen and sat stiffly in the chair… and then grasped the seat with a gasp of surprise. The casual strength in the arms that picked her clear up off the floor and scooted her in far defied his lanky build.

Bella's gaze snapped up to his sly smirk.

"So how do you like your tea?" he piped with a burlesque decorum as he crossed toward the small ceramic stove and the tea pot on the counter, his boots clicking evenly.

"Um, milk and sugar?" Bella answered as her gaze was immediately drawn to the place across from her. A slab of uncooked meat, pooling in its own blood, sat in the middle of a china plate in morbid contrast with its Grandmother dainty roses. A fork and knife were stabbed into the middle, standing up at attention as if his meal had been offensively interrupted.

She supposed it had.

Wrinkling her nose in distaste, her attention panned the rest of the room. In contrast to the shop with its gaudy Harry Potter mish-mash, the kitchen was neat and austere. Saturated in an aged yellow light from a bare bulb in the ceiling, the lines of the room were harsh and unforgiving. The counters were empty and clean, but battered by age. There was nothing adorning the walls, no ornamentation of any kind except a functional wall calendar with the days laid out in a plain grid. Each passed day had been marked with a neat, thick X, meticulously placed in the very center of each box.

Bella's gaze returned to the man across the room who was pulling out mismatched china cups from the cupboard. In the phlegmatic light of the kitchen she could see that he had a slight hunch to his shoulders that made his Adam's apple jut forward like Ichabod Crane. However he was completely ageless – time had not etched a single line in his face, though its hawkish structure gave him the appearance of being in his thirties. His hair was dark brown and shaggily cut so its waves made it messy– and fit well with the rest of his appearance. Worn at the elbows, his leather jacket had been repaired with white thread across a gash in the back. It fell down to his skinny and similarly worn jeans from which those idiosyncratic pointed boots protruded. Unlike the rest of his apparel, his boots – though obviously not new - had been vigilantly cared for and were polished to a dull black shine.

As she watched him fastidiously place each cup in the center of a dissimilar saucer with an almost effeminate grace, Bella noted that – other than his eyes (and perhaps those pointed boots)– he was absolutely average.

Every last one of the Pack – even its gentlest member, Brady - oozed raw and undeniable power. This man had none of the musculature or size, or that innate command about him. Had she met him on the street, she would have thought him to be a gay artist or bookworm…or maybe a gamer geek.

In other words, just a normal guy. With an attitude problem.

Not a werewolf.

He turned around with two tea cups balanced in one hand, cream and sugar in other and a knowing smile as if she'd spoken her thoughts aloud.

Bella rearranged herself on the seat uncomfortably as he walked toward the table with his clicking step.

"I kind of pictured you to be more…" Her mouth threatened to babble nervously on but she stopped herself as he set a cup down before her with an expectant raise to his brow.

More old, more supernatural… more frightening?

When Bella merely drew the cup into her palms, clearing her throat in chagrin, the Were chuckled and threw himself into the chair opposite her.

"I'm the ultimate chameleon, m'dear," he murmured cockily. "Totally, unremarkably human…" he paused. "… on the outside." A glittering smile slid across his lips as he raised the cup to them. "A raging beast within."

Bella frowned sitting up and leaning her elbows on the table. "It doesn't look like it," she told him earnestly.

The Were took a swallow of steaming tea and then set his cup down. "Looks can be deceiving, luv," he smacked matter-of-factly. "Now, tell me a little bit about yourself, will you? For instance, what are you called?" He pulled the gruesome plate closer to him and daintily plucked out the knife and fork.

"Bella," she replied absently as watched him in horrified fascination as he sawed a piece from the raw, bloody meat.

He glanced up from under his heavy brow at her interest. "Oh forgive me! How rude!" He scoffed. "Would you like some?" he scooted the plate toward her tauntingly.

Bella shook her head as her gaze dropped to the table. "Um, no thanks. I'm vegetarian," she mumbled. Which she was, for the most part. Not in a neurotic kind of way, but she didn't really have a taste for meat. Especially raw.

With a soft chuckle the Were pulled the plate back toward him with a clatter and the scrape of metal on ceramic continued.

"So, Bella is it?" he prodded her back on course.

"Yeah." Bella took a deep breath and opened up the sugar bowl and pulled out a neat white cube to distract her from the civilized slaughter before her. "And there's nothing much special about me – I'm pretty boring, actually."

"Oh of course. How silly of me," the Were crooned in overstated sympathy, making Bella look up with a scowl. "Just a poor, boring human who's an innocent victim of unnatural circumstances." He shoved a chunk of meat into his mouth and chewed while he watched her with his strange eyes.

"That about sums it up, yeah," Bella laughed derisively.

"Aren't we all," he hissed and a humorless smile peeled back from blood-stained teeth. It made him look… savage.

Bella blinked rapidly.

The man sniffed a laugh at her expression as he chewed crassly, pulverizing the blood flesh in an open mouth.

"So," his knife again sliced through the meat on the plate before him. "Tell me a about your big, bad wolf. Surely you didn't marry someone similarly cursed, or you wouldn't be here telling me the tale." He slipped another bloody lump of meat between his lips.

Bella swallowed and returned her attention to her tea. "Um, well we called them Werewolves," she began, pouring a stream of cream into the tea and watching it swirl. "But I guess that's not really right. They're shapeshifters. The Quileute have had shapeshifting Wolves in their tribe for generations."

"Ah yes," he affirmed around his full mouth. "I've heard tales of Indian shifters-…"

"Native American," Bella corrected tersely, looking up with disapproval.

The Were grinned with a flare of nostrils. "Of course, forgive me," he murmured mockingly. "They're part of the naturals; nothing like me," he sniffed in derision.

"A Viral?" Bella asked innocently.

When the Were paused with a furrow of confusion in his brow, Bella continued, backpedalling quickly. "I get it, the wolves are 'naturals,' like the Fae-" She caught her breath in surprise at the rumbling growl that tumbled across the table.

The Were's eyes flashed dangerously but he nodded her on.

Bella cleared her throat nervously, "and then there are Virals… like you. And Vampires."

"That's a tidy little moniker. And fairly accurate, I'd say," he tipped his head and sat back in his chair, considering her. "So how did an innocent, delicate, boring little thing like yourself come to be wooed by a …" he paused and gave her an impertinent grin. "Native American shifter?"

Bella picked up her spoon and stirred it once around her tea, trying to swallow the wash of longing and despair that came with talking about Paul at all. "His Wolf recognized me as his mate," she whispered, unable to keep the quaver from her voice.

"Mate," the Were chuckled and drew Bella's gaze back to his glittering eyes. " 'Such a deliciously carnal word," he leered.

Bella frowned and ignored his lurid undertone. "Do your kind imprint?" she asked as she brought the tea to her lips and took a sip.

"I had a wife, once," the Were answered as his gaze flitted around the room, chasing memories.

"What happened to her?" Bella whispered, the embers of her overactive empathy instantly flaring to life. Bella was a watcher – and she'd have had to have been blind to miss the flood of pain through his grey eyes.

"Well," the Were pushed the plate away from him and pulled the other chair toward him with the scuffing rattle of metal across linoleum. "Centuries ago I was a farmer and a blacksmith in a village near Brusand in southern Norway," he began in an unhurried, conversational tone. He propped his pointed boots up on the chair and settled back, snatching up the teacup and taking a sip.

Bella cupped her tea in both palms and waited.

"We'd been married for almost a year and she was pregnant with our first child," his gaze fell to the teacup as he set it carefully down with a click . "One winter evening, as I was coming back from a hunt, on a harvest moon…" he paused and looked up at Bella a tight lipped smile. "I was attacked by an animal," he related in the dispassionate sing-song voice of storytelling. "A wolf. The last thing I remembered was being savaged and realizing –in that crystal clear last moment of life – that I would die," he folded his arms over his chest. "Of course, I did."

Bella frowned as she leaned forward, propping her elbows on the table. "You died?"

"Yes – to Change one first has to die. It was no mere wolf, of course, but a Were. Most Werewolves don't have the discipline it takes to merely kill and not devour their prey, and even fewer victims survive the Change," his lip curled up from a canine. "Lucky me."

"So that's how you became…" Bella breathed.

"That is how I was cursed for eternity," he flicked his hair back from his collar and then rested his hands on the table before him as his gaze unfocused with memories. "But it didn't stop there. Pain. Like you've never imagined. For weeks I wandered fevered, mindless and crazed, Changing at night – though I had no idea what was happening, of course - I thought I was ill and passed out each night from the ravaging pain."

"It was painful?" Bella whispered hoarsely, her brow crumpled in empathy at the heart-rending suffering before her.

"It still is," he met her gaze with a dark smirk. "Not like your Shifters who Change with no more than a snapping shake of a fur sweater. Every single time it's like every bone in your body is crushed, that your skin is being pulled from your flesh while each muscle is torn apart," he sniffed a humorless laugh. "Because that's exactly what happens. Not being a natural – like your wolf - the bastardization of our humanity comes at a very high price, indeed."

"That's horrible," Bella whispered. "You don't have any control over it?"

"It took me centuries to get to the point where I only have to Change as I do now: on a full moon," he hissed, unconsciously gripping the table. "On those nights, I simply lock myself in a fortified room in my basement and wait until the sun finally rises."

"You don't have any memory as the Wolf?" Bella asked quietly, her mind desperately searching for some angle or strategy in how to garner favor and gain control of such a fate.

The Were shook his head. "I wandered in a haze of pain and rage for weeks until the full moon and the Change was complete. On that morning, I awoke feeling more or less like a normal man, albeit with rage boiling me hollow with every breath," he bared his teeth. "The first thing I did was go home, of course. My wife, had thought me dead – and it would have been a far kinder fate. She was overjoyed. It was only in her arms that I finally found any measure of peace... But at night…" his voice broke and his gaze fell to the table.

Bella swallowed, shifting in her seat with the need to reach out and comfort him.

"I woke the next morning writhing in agony," he continued in a harsh, empty hiss. "Among the bloody remains of my wife's eviscerated corpse."

Bella choked on her horror as she watched the man across from her try struggle with his breath, suffering through memories he had carried with him for many mortal lifetimes.

Alone.

Breathing harshly through his teeth he looked up with hard, empty eyes. "So no, I'd say that I don't retain any memory as a Wolf," he quipped, returning to a contemptuously conversational tone. "And it just might be better that way."

Bella's forehead crumpled in heartbreak. How did he stand it?

She couldn't any more. Bella slithered her hand across the table. "I'm so sorry," she whispered, covering his hand with hers.

With a sharp hiss he jerked his hand back, standing up and knocking over his chair in one inhumanly quick movement.

"I-I'm s-sorry," she stammered, sitting back wide-eyed as she watched him rub his hand as if he'd been burned.

With a caustic smirk, he held up his hand, showing her a blistering burn now marring pale flesh.

Bella turned over her own hand in shock; his wound was an imprint -the same width and thickness - of the back of her silver wedding band.

" 'My only foil and the closest thing to Mother Moonlight incarnate," he murmured as Bella looked up at him with open-mouthed shock. "Silver," he drawled and then crossed to the ice box.

"I'm so sorry," she repeated as he opened the refrigerator and pulled out a beer and held it to the wound.

"No matter," he snorted and the popped off the cap with his thumb, catching it in his other hand. "So enough about me," he breezed sarcastically and tipped the bottle to his lips as a pointed toe kicked open the cupboard under the sink. With casual aim, he tossed the cap into the rubbish bin below and then kicked it back closed. "Tell me about this unlucky vampire and what he's done to deserve the wrath of such an innocent, delicate, boring young girl," he mocked and leaned back against the counter.

Bella patted the table with her palms. Jasper had warned her to be as vague as possible. "Well… to make a long story short…"

"Don't worry about that, gorgeous," he interrupted. "I've been cursed with eternity," he lifted a cunning brow and glanced at the calendar. "You can bore me for ages."

With a frown, Bella sat back. "To make a long story short," she repeated as if he hadn't interrupted. "One of them decided that I have gifts that would be useful in some war of theirs, so he wants me Turned."

"Gifts? Pray tell," he urged in an uninterested tone.

"Well something about shielding," Bella touched her temple absently. "Their powers don't work on me or something stupid," she rolled her eyes with an attempt at conspiratorial mockery herself.

But instead of smirking, his face grew thoughtful. "Ah, another Morgath," he nodded, with a knowledge that surprised her. Bella quickly began rethinking her strategy.

The Were tapped his thin lips with the bottle for a moment, then his gaze snapped back to her and his eyes hardened. "So why do you still live?"

"I bargained for two weeks," she lifted her chin in pride. "So I have two weeks to figure out how… I'm going to kill him," she hissed murderously.

The Were laughed patronizingly. "Two weeks to find a way to spare your pitiful boring life?"

"I'm boring, but I'm not stupid," Bella snorted.

The Were chuckled appreciatively.

"I know I'm gonna die…" Bella began, and then leaned over the table with her conviction. "But he threatened my family."

"Such a heroine," the Were rolled his eyes. "He threatened that Wolf of yours?"

"Yes, and my father, my mate… " Bella paused a moment… and then quickly decided. "And our child."

His quick blink told her that she had been right that, in light of his own loss, bringing a child into the equation would garner more sympathy.

"They don't know you're here, I suppose," he murmured shrewdly as he stalked toward the table.

Bella shook her head.

The Were nodded slowly as he prowled toward her and his voice stretched over mockery. "So you expect me to believe that a vampire came out of nowhere," he rounded the table as Bella stiffened in her seat. "Threatened the little bitch of a Wolf – I don't care what kind - and his puppy!" he exclaimed like he was personally affronted. "…bloody kidnapped you and you somehow negotiated two weeks in the process from monsters? And then – boring little human you -somehow tracked me down all the way across the Atlantic ocean?"

He came up behind her and smacked his hands on the table, caging her between his long arms. Bella swallowed, keeping her gaze steadily trained ahead as he leaned down behind her by her ear. "That's a bloody load of horse shit if I've ever heard it," he hissed by her ear.

Bella closed her eyes nervously as her mind spun.

Like lightning he was leaning beside the other ear. "Why don't you start over and tell me this tale from the beginning," he breathed. "With no lies."

He pushed off the table and strolled back around the table. Throwing himself back in the chair, he propped his feet up jauntily.

"As you were saying," he quipped with a cocky tilt to his head.

Taking a deep breath, Bella started from the beginning: with Edward and his 'vegetarian' family. His obsession with her blood and the fact he couldn't read her mind. How her best friend turned into a wolf because they were there– along with the rest of the Pack - and Paul had imprinted on her. Victoria's mistake in thinking she was Edward's mate and the battle that left Paul injured and her kidnapped. She ended with Paul's rescue from an abusive and crazed Edward in Rio.

As she related the crazy sequence of events – carefully distancing herself from the Cullens or calling them by name and skirting the fact that she had actually dated Edward – she began to feel silly. She had never laid out her life story like this before and she realized that 'far-fetched' was probably the understatement of the century.

He'd never believe her.

But the Were listened stoically to it all, taking a sip from his beer now and again, but other than that, utterly unreadable.

Taking a deep breath, she began on the most recent turn of events. "So apparently, when Edward left, he went to the Volturi and that's how Aro found out about –"

"ARO?!"

Like a steel trap, the Were snapped forward, slapping his hands on the table with a crash and spilling his beer.

Bella jumped up, her hand going reflexively to her heart.

He batted the overturned bottle across the table with a flick of his wrist and it shattered against a cabinet as he skewered her with hard eyes.

"This is the Vampire you wish to kill?" he choked on his own hiss.

Her heart sprinting so fast she was dizzy. Gulping, Bella nodded meekly.

For a few more moments the Were stayed prone over the table, baring his teeth as his breath tumbled along with the growl in his chest like sneakers in a dryer.

Then with a mercurial abruptness – that Bella was beginning to think was par for the course in both viral species – he threw his head back and laughed. It was dark and ridiculing sound.

Bella frowned and shifted her weight, her hands fisting at her side. She was quickly losing control of this situation (as if she had ever had any) and somehow that just made all fear irrelevant.

"I thought-" Bella began defensively.

The Were's head snapped back down. "You thought what!" he reproached through dwindling laughter. "Oh, ho ho," he made a theatrical production of wiping the corners of his eyes as he straightened.

"Are you daft, little bitch?" he snickered, pinching the bridge of his nose as he shook his head scornfully. "The rest of your tale is simply too preposterous not to be true. I thought maybe you had caught the eye of one of the lesser Covens. Perhaps even Vladimir with what insanity he plots… but Aro!" Derisive chuckles of pure disbelief shook his shoulders as he turned and crossed the kitchen to the refrigerator.

Bella took a resetting breath as her mind scrabbled for traction in this mess. She desperately picked up the only useful thread in his diatribe: "What do you know about Vladimir?" she asked softly as the Were turned from the icebox with another beer in hand.

The corner of his lip lifted in a contemptuous smirk as he popped off the metal cap and it skittered across the floor, neglected this time.

He took a long unhurried draught that nearly drained the bottle. "Vladimir," he gasped, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "Vladimir has always been a bloody fool," he glared at her with derision.

"Carlisle said…" she began.

"Carlisle!" he balked with a barking laugh. "I should have known he'd be behind all this nonsense," he gestured dismissively at Bella. "Another bloody idiot!"

Bella licked her lips, suddenly feeling the urgency of dwindling optimism. This had so, so not gone as she had hoped.

"Carlisle said he's planning a coup and is making an army of Children of the Moon…" Bella pressed.

At such simple words a strange expression flashed across his carefully crafted façade. The Were's shoulder's fell and he slumped against the counter, tipping another reckless mouthful of lager down his throat. "He is," he rasped in pained affirmation.

Blinking and trying to keep up with yet another about-face, Bella licked her lips and dove in. "Can you tell me what you know? I thought maybe I could somehow, um, get in with them or something. Get the Werewolves on our side…"

"Our side," the Were chuckled darkly. "There is no 'our,' little bitch." He looked up with a callous steel to grey eyes. "There's only 'me.'" He sniffed a laugh and tipped the bottle again to his lips.

Bella drew in a deep breath and released it slowly. "It doesn't have to be that way," she began quietly. "We could go find them… maybe help them-…"

"Help them!" he shrilled suddenly slamming his beer down. "I hear them in my dreams – all bloody night! Screaming in agony! Do you know how many survive the attack itself? Do you know how many of those survive the next few weeks of torment? Do you know how many OF THOSE survive the first full moon?" he stalked toward her, his lips peeling back from his teeth ominously. "Vladimir is throwing bodies away by the truckload!"

Bella backed up a few steps from his wrath and brought her hand up behind her, steadying herself against the wall. "That must be horrible to watch," she soothed in the velvet croon she used for wolves losing their shit– she'd had many years to practice this particular skill, after all.

"Can you communicate with them? Maybe we can help them? Is there a cure?" Bella soothed, trying to refocus him –another strategy. If he was anything like her Wolf, he needed direction to keep from simply incinerating in his own rage.

The Were paused mid-stride and cocked his head curiously at her tone. And then he smiled – it was a frighteningly empty expression. "You learned a few tricks, eh?" he laughed softly and then shook his head. "Oh there's a cure, alright," he whispered, low and thin and deadly. "The Fae…" he paused spitting hatefully off to the side. "They can 'cure' this disease… but only if they catch it before the first full moon."

Bella blinked in surprise.

"And do you want to know why?" he crooned menacingly as he again began a slinking prowl across the room again.

Stalking her.

"Because they created it," he breathed with an exaggerated nod of his head.

Bella stiffened and pressed her back up against the wall at the hate and savagery in those eerie eyes.

"The beautiful, high and mighty Fae –as per usual - send someone else to do their dirty work," he hissed roughly as he skirted the table and set the bottle down with an exacting slick. "They made mewhat I am. They made us all – damned us to a miserable soulless eternity as an adulteration of the Creator's hand – to fix their dirty little secret…" oily sarcasm sluiced over the last three words and he paused not a foot from her.

He leaned over her menacingly until she could smell the bloody meat and yeast of lager on his breath. "And that secret is Aro," he hissed.

"Aro?" Bella choked, her eyes wide.

The Were nodded slowly as his gaze washed indolently over her face. "Aro," he breathed, almost like lover's whisper. "Used to be one of them. He was one of the immaculate Fae; the first-born sovereign rulers of our sad little world," he sniffed an acidic laugh. "So many gifts, but it wasn't quite enough, was it?"

Bella swallowed thickly as her eyes darted between his cold glare.

"Aro wanted more," the Were pushed abruptly away from her, sucking in a deep breath as he turned back toward the kitchen. "So now he sits as the consummate King of the Damned, where even the Fae loathe to touch him," he laughed haughtily. "So the sublime and incomparable Fae send… " he turned around and gestured to himself grandly. "Werewolves."

Bella's shock bloomed into indignation and she pushed off the wall. "It's the Fae who should be damned, not you," she bit out fiercely.

The Were whipped around with a small smile curving his lips. "Aw, how lovely," he murmured with a click of his tongue. "Such an adorable little bitch."

Bella frowned at his derision, but continued on desperately. "Help me! Help me kill him! For what they've done to you, for what they're doing to them," she urged passionately. "I don't have a choice: I have to get Turned…. But I can help from there. There're others too. We can take him down togeth-…"

"You really think I'll help you?" he sneered squaring his shoulders with an indignant toss to his head.

"I haven't survived all this time by being charitable," he gestured harshly at the calendar. "I've survived by being alone!" he boomed. "The Fae have graciously," he twisted the word hatefully. "…allowed me to continue this living hell as long as I don't do what they made me to do…kill," he spat viciously.

The Were shoved a hand through his hair and then took another long draught of beer. "I spend each and every day of my life alone," he mused under his breath morbidly. "…a living eulogy to their cowardice and a pathetic casualty of their failure."

Bella took several compassionate steps toward him. "But those Wolves in your dreams…they're your people," she breathed quietly.

"I don't have a people!" he snarled. "I only have me!"

Something in Bella snapped. "Instead of licking your wounds, you could change that!" she came back hotly.

"FUCK!" The Were brought down both fists on the table with a crash and it shattered under his fury and Bella jumped back.

His lips peeled back, viciously baring teeth as he skewered her with a glare. "Do you think I don't know that you're sashaying in here all beautiful, doe-eyed and ingenue... offering me scraps of some parody of hope because you're desperate?" he spat in a spray of vehement spittle. "You just want to protect what's yours! Your mate, your child!" He growled through gritted teeth. "You don't give a rat's arse about me!"

"Yes I do," Bella whispered, because she did.

Of course anything she decided had to put Paul and Caleb first, but there was so much pain and suffering in this man that she couldn't just turn her back in the process.

She just couldn't.

He froze, his gaze running over her face as he his forehead crumbled in disbelief – as if he could read that loud and clear. Paul had always told she was like an open book – it was one of the things he'd loved about her.

The Were closed his eyes as his shoulders fell. "Well I wanted what was mine," he rasped hoarsely, as he drew in a shaking breath through his nose and then opened eyes that didn't try to hide their suffering. "And she's gone."

Bella bit her trembling lip as tears burned and blurred the room in sympathy with that suffering.

A suffering that was so very close to her own.

"Get out," he hissed quietly.

Bella pressed her lips together dolefully. "Please, I-"

"GET OUT!" he bellowed his rage going from zero to sixty in a blink. With a roar, he threw the pieces of the table across the room with a deafening crash. "GET THE FUCK OUT!"

Instinctively crouching and covering her head, Bella turned to flee as smash after thundering crash followed her out into the shop.

Bella sprinted through the dark room, with only the street lights outside to guide her, banging her shins on anonymous furniture and stumbling into counters while the Were raged behind her with blood curdling roars.

As she yanked open the front door, the little bell tinkling wildly, he yelled after her from the back of the store in a rough voice that was no longer human:

"Come back when you're Turned and then I'll show you the meaning of charity!"

'


'

Review if you like.