It's only love, it's only pain.

It's only fear that runs through my veins.

It's all the things you can't explain that make us human.

- Civil Twilight, Human

Chapter 12

After walking ten miles home, Violet was exhausted. She drug herself up to her room, locking the door and stripping off her wet clothing. She threw the clothes onto the floor of her shower and began running a brush through her wet hair. She busied herself with towel-drying it, trying to distract herself from thinking about Jacob and what he was.

She pulled on some dry pajamas and crawled into bed, shivering as she snuggled down deeper under the covers. She lay there, watching the rain fall against her large window as she dozed in and out of consciousnesses, finally falling into a shallow and fitful sleep.

She awoke when she heard a slight tapping at her window. She looked groggily at her clock. Eleven PM. That meant that her parents would be at the dinner party that they had been invited to by her father's boss, and Tyler was at his friend's house for the weekend. She was completely alone. Alone in a city that apparently had vampires in it.

She cautiously peered over the protection of her bedcovers to look at the window. Once her eyes cleared from their sleepy haze, she saw that it was Jacob at the window. The rain had stopped, and he was now dressed in dry clothing. She motioned for him to leave, but he shook his head in refusal. She rolled over in her bed, her back now to the window, and attempted to fall back asleep.

There was another tap on the window. She ignored it. Minutes passed, and still she felt his eyes on her. She pulled the comforter over her head, indicating to him that it was time to go home. Finally, after what felt like an hour had passed, she angrily threw back her covers, not caring that her pajamas consisted of only an old tank top and skimpy shorts. She was cranky, and he was going to go away, whether he wanted to or not.

She pushed up her window, the pane cracking from the force she used. "Go away, Jacob. I told you to stay away from me."

"Sorry, Violet, but I can't do that." He paused, looking up at the sky as it began to sprinkle. "You should really think about inviting me in. I could catch a cold, you know."

"You're already dead," she said coldly. "You can't get in, anyway, unless I invite you. So just go away."

"Actually, I can," he said somewhat smugly. He gently pushed her aside as he slipped through the window, landing with a soft thud on her carpet.

"That's not how vampires work," she complained.

"Maybe not in the movies," he answered. "The only common clichés about us that are true are that we need to drink blood, and we burn in the sunlight. Unless we have these." He held up his hand, showing her his ring.

"What does that have to do with anything?" She asked, curiosity edging away some of her anger.

"Onyx protects us from sunlight."

"Great," she said sarcastically, fingering the pendant that still hung around her neck. "Then if I'm ever a vampire, this will protect me."

"Let's hope that never happens," he said with a frown, walking over and sitting down on her bed. "Violet, look, I know you're afraid. I was too at first. I still am at times," he confessed. "But me being a vampire isn't the scary part of this story. I'm not the one who is dangerous to you; I'm trying to protect you from her."

"Who?" Violet remained cautiously stanced by the window. If he tried to drink her blood, she would jump out of the window, roll off the overhang, and onto the ground two stories below. Even if I die, she thought, I would rather die by falling than at the hands of a vampire.

"Every story has a beginning. Where do you think vampires came from?"

"Hell?" She suggested.

He laughed. "Okay, yes. I was more asking how you thought vampires ended up on this Earth."

"The gates of hell burst open and you all crawled out?"

"I didn't crawl out of hell," he responded, a sad expression shadowing his face. He gazed down at the rug on the floor, sitting unnaturally still.

Violet felt a pang of guilt as she realized her words had hurt him. "I didn't mean you," she offered.

"I was only born a few years before you. When I was sixteen, my friend Bella met and fell in love with a vampire. Who you know as Edward."

"Edward's long distance girlfriend." Violet nodded in understanding.

"Wife," he corrected. "By the time I was eighteen, despite two years of my best efforts to dissuade her from becoming like him, she decided to marry him. I was disgusted; she chose her love for a living corpse over the life she could have had. They got married, and she somehow got pregnant."

"What?" Violet nearly shouted. "Are you kidding? That's so stupid! It sounds like some cheesy eighties movie or something. Are you kidding me?" Disbelief was etched firmly across her face.

"Strangely enough, no. I agree with you though; I laughed, until she stood up and showed me her very-pregnant stomach, despite only just getting married a few weeks before. That's not the important part of the story though."

"That's not? That seems pretty significant to me."

"It gets weirder."

Violet shook her head. Everything was getting way too crazy here. She shivered as a cold gust of air blew through the window. Noticing this, Jacob moved across the room in the blink of an eye and pulled the window shut.

"You look cold; why don't you get back under the covers?" he suggested.

"Because then I'd be trapped."

He sighed. "I told you, I won't hurt you. I promise I would never hurt you."

"Because you love me." She nodded. "That's what all the vampires say before killing the human girls they love." She laughed bitterly.

"But this one is telling the truth."

She looked at him thoughtfully for a moment, and then walked across the room, crawling back under the covers. Though every instinct inside of her was screaming for her not to, she decided to trust him. She shuddered with relief to be back under the warmth of the covers. "So who is trying to hurt me?"

Jacob remained by the window, and the distance felt comforting to her. "Her name is Kathryn. She's your… grandmother, of sorts."

"Let me guess – an ancient vampire."

"You sure have a lot of pent up sarcasm."

"Please just finish the story. Some of us actually need to sleep." She yawned.

"I do too. Why do you think I always look so tired? I've been following you around for the past two months, making sure Kathryn doesn't find you and kill you."

"Wait – you've been stalking me?" She asked, sitting up in bed and staring at him in an expression consisting of both horror and rage. So that's how he knew where she lived.

He sighed. "Yes, Violet, overlook the part about your ancient vampire grandmother wanting you dead to complain about me stalking you."

"Well it's creepy," she said defensively. "And you did just admit to it."

"Yes, I did. Now can we please get back to the story of why Kathryn wants you dead?" He took her silence as an invitation to continue. "Long story short, that baby killed Bella, and Edward turned her into a vampire. Only I didn't know she was going to make it. She was most definitely dead when I left that room. No heartbeat, no pulse, not a single breath... nothing.

"I was devastated. I was on my way home when I saw a cliff. Where I lived there in Washington, we cliff dove for recreation. So I thought I would jump off, land in the water. That I could just float there for a while and clear my head. I don't really know what I was thinking, honestly. The whole night is such a blur. So I jumped. The only problem was… it was from a much greater height than I had expected. And there were rocks down below, hidden by the crashing waves."

Violet stared at him, horrified. She felt tears beginning to form, the horror of what had happened to the vampire she was in love with tearing at her heart. That was how he died. Eighteen, scared, and completely alone.

"Kathryn had been following me. She was the one who found me; she jumped in after me and pulled me out. On my last breath, she fed me her blood. I don't remember any of it; the first thing I remember is waking up in a moving car. It was still night time. She was telling me to drink blood, but I refused. I didn't want to accept what I had become.

"She took me to her home, this large mansion in the middle of nowhere. She changed; she was kind when we met. But something was strange about her. So I tried to escape; only she came after me, kept me trapped there with her. I realized then that she was insane. She warned me not to try to escape again, but I didn't listen. I really wish I had."

"She came after you and hurt you?" Violet felt angry at Kathryn, wishing she had not put Jacob through all this pain. Vampire or not, he did not deserve any of it.

"No. I wish." Violet was about to ask him what Kathryn had done to make him prefer that, but before she could ask, he continued on. "The important thing you need to know is about Kathryn. She's an original vampire."

Jacob spent the next few minutes explaining what Kathryn had told him about the curse. "Only she lied about at least one thing, of that I'm certain."

"One thing?" Violet mused.

"Yes. She lied about there only being one doppelganger. Remember when I told you that she's your grandmother, of sorts?"

Violet froze, and it felt like there were millions of icy fingers grabbing at her body. "Violet?" Jacob was by her side in an instant, carefully taking her hand in his. The distance between them that had felt so nice moments before now felt terrible, and she was thankful that he had closed the gap.

"I'm the doppelganger," she breathed, terror infiltrating her body and mind.

"I'm not going to let her hurt you," he promised, a desperate look in his eyes. "I'll protect you with my life."

She did not reply; she instead pulled back the covers, indicating for him to get under them with her. He kicked off his shoes and lay down next to her. She cuddled up to him, pulling the covers up over the both of them and wrapping her arm around his torso. If he killed her sometime in the night… well, that was still better than Kathryn killing her as a sacrifice.

"I know," she murmured into his chest. "Go to sleep, Jacob. You look tired. I'm tired too."

A/N: I just wanted to ask that you please review this chapter! The sooner I get a good amount of reviews, the sooner you get the explosive part 1 finale I have all finished up and ready to share! So many alerts and favorites, so few reviews. :( It makes me wonder if my writing is maybe not that good, that it's not worth leaving feedback?

Thanks to the small handful of you who have been reviewing, you guys are awesome! It means so much to me.

Brace yourself for chapter 13 - it's going to be big.