Here was my understanding of vampires, based on my admittedly limited experience: all vampires were blonde. I mean, you had, what, the Cullens who were all shades from blonde to reddish blonde. Rosalie was blonde. Tanya was blonde. As far as I was concerned, they were all blonde, every last one of them. Maybe it was some kind of master-race thing, or—I don't know. I hadn't spent a lot of time thinking about it.

My theory was supported by the fact that the vampire who was currently attacking me was also blonde. It was a different blonde, a sort of silverfish blonde with a sharp chin-length cut, sharp facebones that meant business and looked good angry. And right now, she was angry—she was angry at ­­me. One minute I was kissing Tanya, and the next I was knocked flying, sprawling into the snow with this new woman pinning me, hands clawing for my face. I grabbed her by the wrists and, naturally, tried to prevent this.

"Hey!" I yelled. Trying to figure out how best to communicate that I was nice and harmless, that I was a cool guy really once you got to know me and that wouldn't happen if I got strangled. In ten words or less. "Tanya!"

And because of our brand new connection that we had just established, Tanya was actually the right person to call. "Irinia!" she protested, putting a hand on the woman's shoulder, trying to pull her away. "What are you doing? Do you know who this is?"

"Do you know who he is?" Maybe it was just the stress of the situation, but her voice was nails on chalkboard. Fairly high soprano not helped by anger and homicidal intent. "Didn't Rosalie tell you? He's one of the La Push werewolves, Tanya!"

"Yeah, I am," I choked, trying to keep enough space between her hands and my throat that breathing was still working out. "Can we—talk about this later? We can all sit down and talk about it—"

"Yeah, La Push, so what?" I don't think Tanya cared that much about me, I don't think she was necessarily defending me. She was mostly just confused, and hey, she wasn't alone there. "It's just some stupid town in Washington—"

"In Washington, Tanya!" Irina yelled. "Werewolves in Washington! Laurent."

Laurent. The name rung a bell. Not a big one, though, and not a big enough one to know why this chick was trying to kill me. I mean, vampires usually tried to kill me, that was to be expected, but usually it didn't seem so personal.

It certainly seemed to mean something to Tanya, though, because she stepped back with her hand going up to her mouth, somehow managing to go paler than she had been. "Oh my God," she said. "Laurent. I didn't—"

"That's right you didn't," Irina berated her. Good thing she was busy chewing Tanya out, actually, because it distracted her from immediately killing me. I moved around a little under her weight, testing for weaknesses in her hold. Gotta get out of here somehow, and maybe with less help from Tanya than I'd thought. "Some werewolf bats his eyes at you and suddenly you forget he killed your friends?"

Okay, I really needed to figure out who this Laurent guy was. I was racking my brains for the vampires I'd killed, it hadn't been that many—there was Victoria and her newborns, and then that other guy. I guess I'd never known his name, but I hadn't known any of the newborns either, it could be anyone. "Is that true?" Tanya's eyes had suddenly gotten darker—I already knew she could look scary, but this was a new high. "Did you kill him?"

"Would you believe me if I told you that I honestly didn't know?"

"Laurent," Irina snarled, pushing me deeper into the snow. "Tall vampire, dreadlocks? He just came down to talk, and you killed him."

"Oh," I said, losing my last hope that this all might be just a big misunderstanding. I remembered Laurent. I remembered snapping my teeth into his arm. "He wasn't just talking, you know, he tried to—"

"Shut up," she said, lifting my head and shoulders and slamming then back down into the ground. Which was frozen. It was called permafrost. It hurt.

"Tanya," I tried one last time. I looked at her and there was another person slipping up over her shoulder—another gorgeous blonde vampire. This was getting ridiculous.

"Kate." The way Tanya spoke, sounding shellshocked—whatever this Laurent thing was, it was a big deal, it was a bigger deal than I'd thought, it had Tanya staring and backing slowly away. "He's—"

"I know, Tanya," the new woman said, a hand on her shoulder seemingly more to pull her back than to comfort her. "You should go."

"Tanya," I said. I hadn't been all that worried with just one vampire—I mean, sure, she was mad, but it was just her, she couldn't kill me. Two angry girl vampires though. Not good. "Tanya, no. Don't leave me here."

I tried to understand why she was turning to leave. I couldn't be mad at her, it wasn't in me, and maybe she'd known this guy, of course she'd known him hadn't he lived here? I'd killed one of her friends—and now she was remembering exactly who and what I was. We had been trying so very hard to forget but this wasn't forgettable. She was leaving me.

I tried to watch her as she went, but I got a little—distracted. Because Irina was trying to kill me again. Not that she'd ever really stopped, but now she was really going at it, breaking through my hold to get her hands around my neck, closing off my breathing. Tanya was not going to help. Time to think about other options.

I immediately went into a quick shift, had to be a werewolf if I was going to fight vampires, but it was the strangest thing. I got about two seconds into a change, and all of the sudden it just—shuddered to a stop. I wasn't changing. It wasn't like it was complicated, it wasn't even physical, it was just a thrown mental switch, it had never been a problem. I couldn't shift. I couldn't make it happen.

"Oh, yeah, sorry, forgot to tell you," Irina said. "We have these special talents, us vampires…Laurent had to deal with you as a big, bad wolf, you didn't give him a chance. But when you're around me, things are going to be a little more…even."

I couldn't shift. I couldn't shift, she was somehow stopping me, I couldn't do it. Suddenly, this situation had gotten really, really bad. I put a hand on the side of her head and pushed, tumbling her sideways off me because the only thing I could think to do right now was run.

I didn't make it two steps. I was running barefoot through the snow, just getting into stride and then suddenly Kate was in front of me—I hated the way they moved, we were fast but you could see us, and vampires, they just—appeared. She popped up in front of me and put her hands on my shoulders and threw me back into a tree, hard enough that I could feel it splinter, that I could feel myself splinter,I couldn't handle this human.

I dropped just in time to miss Irina's fist, slamming straight over my head and four inches into the tree, she wasn't messing around. There was something wrong with my shoulder where I'd hit, and I needed time to heal it. I was really not getting that time. Her punch missed by a mile but she learned from her mistake, and her next sweeping kick caught me right in the ribs, another crack, and I'd broken enough bones to know the feeling exactly when it happened. I had to get out of here.

"He was my mate," she was yelling, I had to admit I wasn't paying a ton of attention, I was a little busy trying not to get stomped to death. "I loved him!"

"I'm sorry!" I really was, I felt bad. I never thought of vampires as having mates, having hearts that could potentially be broken. Also I felt bad because she was still kicking me—I grabbed her foot as it came down this time and pushed her away—I might be human, but I was still pretty strong, and she went over.

I could almost deal with one of them at a time, too bad there had to be two. I managed to get back on my feet with one hand on my ribs to make sure they weren't going to fall out or anything. Kate chose to take this opportunity to grab me by the throat and shove me back into the tree, snapping my head back so that it slammed into the trunk. And here was a feeling I hadn't had to deal with in a long time—I was pretty sure I was about to pass out. She hadn't taken her hand off my throat and it was all starting to get really quite fuzzy, blackening around the edges like an oil spill, seeping in. It was all going black.

And because I was Lovesick Imprint Guy, my last thought was of Tanya. I had just enough time to wonder if she would miss me if I died. And to decide probably not.

After that it was basically just black.