Disclaimer: I don't own it. I do own the plot.

Hey all. Before I get started I needed to send out some thank yous. The first is to my all mighty Beta and close friend NanMcCullen, you rock bb, you know I love you. The second goes to Slyt, who read this story in one day and reviewed every chapter with enthusiasm. Thank you Slyt, you are bad ass.

So here you all are the next installment.

Chapter Nineteen: Bloodlines

"Bella, I'll meet you in the study. I need to go find out where Alice is." I nodded at him as he made his way around all of the boxes effortlessly. Esme, Jasper, and Emmett had been working on getting the house packed up for the last couple of days. We were moving across town, back to my house. Rosalie and Alice were remodeling the third floor, turning it into three new rooms, two bedrooms and a shared bath. We didn't need the rooms but they thought that it would be better if I was closer to Edward.

In between trips to the house everyone was also stopping at the town library, researching and trying to figure out what Tanya was. Jasper was studying the history portion while the rest of us worked on the lore aspect of our mystery. When we were not practicing with my gifts, Edward would surf the net looking for anything that might help. Still we had nothing. Emmett and Rosalie returned from Alaska with news that the house in Denali was empty. This news struck Carlisle as peculiar. In almost one hundred and twenty years the Denalis had not moved, he wondered what had spurred this exodus.

I walked up to the door that led to Carlisle's study and raised my fist up to knock. I had been very shitty to him in the last four days. Edward had been right on that front. I had been punishing the family for something that was out of their control. They didn't know what was going to happen to my family, they couldn't have known what Tanya was doing the whole time. Most of all they had no control over Edward's reaction. I wasn't entirely sure he had any control. But the way that I had treated this compassionate man was wrong of me.

I took a deep breath and knocked. "Come in Bella." I opened the door to find him standing behind his desk smiling brightly at me. "I was wondering if you were going to stand out there all day." He said with a snicker.

I let out the breath that I had not realized I had been holding. "I was… well I needed to apologize to you. I was acting like a child and I'm so sorry." I dropped my chin to my chest, staring at the floor. With every word I wished that I could get closer to the floor and bury myself in my shame.

I was startled when Carlisle's voice sounded from right beside me. "Bella, there is no need to apologize. We all have things that cripple us with emotion. You're new to this life; emotions run stronger in a newborn vampire. You weren't just grieving, you were angry as well. We all understand. There is nothing to forgive." The look in his eyes was almost painful. He understood me, he cared for me, and it weighed on my subconscious, but it was also very comforting.

"Thank you." I whispered.

The door to the study opened and Edward walked in along with Alice. She looked excited and the smug smile on her face was enough to bring one to mine. Could she know what happened in the forest? That thought was enough to make me smirk at her and wiggle my eyebrows. Jealous? She shrugged and spoke. "Are we interrupting?" she sang, skipping by me and gracefully lowering herself into one of the arm chairs in the room. She leaned back and threw her legs over the arm.

"No, we were waiting for you guys." I answered.

"What can I do for you all?" Carlisle asked.

Edward wasted no time jumping in to his thoughts.

Flashback (fifty-two years) EPOV

Carlisle had promised me that I wouldn't have to deal with her anymore, but here she was. Tanya sat in the corner watching me move in all of the boxes of LP's that I had collected over the years.

Tanya, Irina, and Kate had shown up at the old house in Forks under the ruse that they wanted to help us with the move, but as far as I had seen Tanya had not lifted a finger to help in anyway. The only thing that she did do was leer at me every time I passed by her.

She was blocking her thoughts from me, as were her sisters. That was a red flag all in itself. But I kept quiet and to my self. I had enough on my mind. School would be starting for us in a month. Carlisle was starting at the Forks clinic next week and we all were to spend the next month "moving in" to the house.

We would spend the next month becoming acclimated to the smells of the humans in the area. For our newest members, Alice and Jasper, we had more trouble. Not so much from Alice, because she had been a vegetarian since she woke from her transformation, but Jasper had spent the last two hundred years as a human drinker. The change in lifestyle was very hard for him. Every night we hunted trying to slate his thirst so that he could attend school with the rest of us.

In other words I had no time for Tanya and her games. Even though I knew that they were coming, Jasper was my first priority.

"Eddie, please take a break and come sit with me." She called as I sat down another box of records.

"Tanya how many times do I have to tell you not to call me Eddie?" I asked through clenched teeth. "Another thing is that we are vampires, we don't need breaks." I said while making my way back to the stairs, to quickly make my escape.

This went on for two weeks. She followed and tried her best to seduce me at every turn. This was nothing new, but it was a first to happen in my own home. I had no sanctuary, no way to get away from her. I was miserable.

Thank god for Carlisle, even his compassion was endless. At first he watched with hope that I would see that Tanya wanted me and I would 'conform', but then as my depression got deeper he took matters into his own hands.

It was the day that I threatened to move. I wasn't sure where I was going but I knew that if she was going to be here, I was leaving. Family be damned, I needed my sanity. I told Carlisle that I was going hunting and that when I got back I was leaving.

When I returned Tanya was waiting for me. "You think that you can just ignore me and turn everyone against me?" She asked. I looked at her and realized that it was the first time in a week and a half that I had done so. "You'll be sorry Edward. You'll fall in love and she won't want you. You'll be in so much pain that you will beg me to love you." She lamented.

Then her facial expression changed. She looked more evil than I had ever seen her. "You mark my words, Edward. She will be out of your league and you will be unhappy." With that she and her sisters left, I hoped for a long time. It would be two years before the next time that I saw her.

The next week was weird for me. I had been through school time after time but I was excited about this time. I wasn't sure why but I felt like I needed to be there. The week that I started was the week that I met Marie.

End of Flashback

We all sat in silence when Edward finished the telling of his story. I sat there thinking about everything that he had said. I was sure that Carlisle was kicking himself in the ass for his lack of intervention on Edward's behalf. Alice sat looking horrified at how Tanya had acted.

I was the first to break the silence, "So what you said about you being pushed to Marie and not pulled to her? What do you mean?" I asked.

Edward lowered himself into the other arm chair in the room. He was looking at the pristine wood floor and took a deep breath before he answered. "I think Tanya did it to me. I think that she was messing with me before the mirrors. I think that she set Marie up, as well as me." He said.

"But how?" I asked. I knew that Vampires had gifts but I had never heard of anything like this.

"I think that I have the answer." Jasper stood in the doorway of study with two vampires that I didn't know.

"Eleazar, Carmen, what a pleasant surprise. What brings you all to Forks?" Carlisle made his way to them with arms extended. The couple embraced him with no hesitation and entered the room. Jasper had already picked up Alice and placed her in his lap in the arm chair.

"I'm sorry, my old friend, for coming unannounced, but we need your help, as well as you need ours. We have information that you all may need." He said holding his mate Carmen to his side.

"It's no problem. We are at a loss as of right now so your help is welcomed. May I introduce the newest member of the family? This is my daughter, Bella." Carlisle said gesturing for me to step forward.

Eleazar's eyes pierced mine and a knowing look crossed his face. I felt naked standing there but unable to turn away. It was like he was looking into my very soul. "Hello." I mumbled finally able to lower my eyes.

"A shield and an antenna. Remarkable." He said in awe.

"Excuse me."

"You, my child, are a mental/physical shield and an antenna. You are a very powerful vampire indeed." He said. "We'll talk later." He whispered with a wink.

I wasn't sure how I felt about that but there were more important things that we had to work out. I walked over to where Edward was sitting and lowered myself into his lap. He instantly curled himself around me, like it was choreographed that way. I fit perfectly with him. I was safe.

Carlisle sat behind his desk and looked at the last of the Denali coven. He looked troubled as we all sat looking at them. "I think you had better explain what's going on." He said.

But Eleazar shook his head, "I think that we should let young Master Jasper go first." I briefly wonder how old he was that he could call Jasper, who was over two hundred years old, young.

Jasper stood up and lowered his wife back into the chair. Alice didn't even look tousled. It was so fluid. She looked up and looked at me before smirking and wiggling her eyebrows at me. I didn't have to be a mind reader to know that she was thinking "Jealous?" I shrugged and we let our attention fall on Jasper.

"What do you all know about the Salem Witch Trials?" He asked

"Well, the humans thought that a group of four sisters were practicing the craft. In order to deflect suspicion they gave the names of many innocent woman and girls as witches and a total of fifteen were killed as a result." Carlisle accounted. Of course he was over three hundred years old he was probably there. "It was a dark time in this country." He finished shaking his head.

Over the last week I had learned of his father, a preacher and zealot who persecuted the innocent looking for the monsters. The preacher was turning into the monster that he taught his congregation to fear, and the only thing that saved him was old age. I could only imagine the thoughts that passed through Carlisle's head, how many times he had seen zealots like his father kill the innocent and let the true monster get away, again much like his own father.

"Yeah, that's how the story goes, but a lesser known story is what happened to the sisters after the trials happened." Jasper finished. We all looked at him expectantly. "Well, they disappeared. But also they were taken in by the family that they lived with. They were wanderers."

"Okay, But I'm not sure how this relates to Tanya." Edward interjected.

"I'm getting there. Over the years the puritans tried to get rid of the records that covered that dark time. There was a family, the Maxen family. They lost two of their line in the trials and blamed the sisters. Turned out the one of the sisters was in love with one of the sons. His name was Jebidiah Maxen. He didn't return the affections and this angered her. He was betrothed to a girl in town and unlike most arranged marriages, he loved her. During the trial the girl was the first to be declared a witch. Jebidiah killed himself the next day claiming to not want to live in a world where she didn't. The girl wasn't." He paused and took a breath before going on, "The family moved from the colony taking with them all accounts of what had happened, including drawn pictures."

Jasper pulled out a small tattered book from the small of his back. "I had to steal this from the rare books section at the library.

This piqued my interest, "They have a rare books section at the library?" I asked.

"Focus, love." Edward whispered in my ear.

"Oh sorry." I mumbled.

Jasper opened the book to the page he needed and passed it to Carlisle who gasped and passed it to the remaining Denali, who shook their heads. Alice declined to look and so it was passed to Edward and me.

At first I didn't realized what I was looking at. It was a drawn picture of four young girls. They were lovely in the drawing so they must have been beautiful in real life. But then one caught my eye. Even though her hair was different, but it was… Tanya, in all her glory. I wasn't sure about the other three, but I knew that one was Tanya.

I sat up instantly somber, "Who are the other three?"

Edward answered, "That one is Irina and that one is Kate. I'm not sure who the other one is."

"Victoria." Carmen whispered. "Her name is Victoria. She used to visit over the years. She had a mate, a tracker named James, they were nomads. Over the last seventy years or so they had added one more to their ranks. His name is Laurent. Irina was taken with him." Her voice was shaken and weak. She was scared.

"Maybe this should be the time to tell us what you know." Carlisle said to them.

Eleazar looked at his wife and she nodded. I could understand their reluctance. They had spent years with three of these women; they had become family to them.

Eleazar looked at each of us respectively, "After Alice and Jasper joined your family and you all moved back to forks in the fifties, the girls left home for a while. Irina and Kate returned but Tanya stayed away. They said that she was searching for something and would return when she found it. Irina and Kate submerged themselves in research. They never told us what they were looking for but when we would ask if they needed help they would brush us off. From time to time Tanya would return for a couple days only to leave just as suddenly. Carmen and I suspected something but we never had any proof. Weird smells in the house, candle wax in their rooms. But after Edward disappeared that's when things got really strange. Tanya only returned when you all were coming to visit." Eleazar was running his hand up and down his wife's arm; at first glance it you would have thought that he was trying to comfort her but I thought that maybe it was comforting to him also.

"You can't think that they are…" Edward said trying to pick thoughts out of their heads.

"All I know," Eleazar said, cutting him off, "is that we don't know who sired them. They say nothing of there human pasts. It's possible."

I was confused. What was possible. "What are you all taking about?" I asked getting a little pissed at being kept in the dark.

"Witchcraft." The both said in unison.

"What? There's no such thing. The wiccan faith is all about the earth and stuff. There is no such thing as the craft." I said.

"And just two months ago you thought that there was no sure thing as vampires and here you sit, as a vampire." Carlisle said with a touch of annoyance in his voice.

"Touché." I said.

"There's more," Jasper said looking nervous.

I felt Edward stiffen behind me. I could only guess that he was reading something in Jasper's mind. "The Maxen bloodline survived for a hundreds of years before and after the trials. I tracked the line but in the early 1900's they died out. They changed the name over the years…" Jasper looked uncomfortable, like he swallowed something that didn't agree with him. "Apparently the last birth to the line was one Edward Anthony Masen Jr."

We all spun around and looked at Edward. He was staring at Jasper and Jasper at him. Edward's lineage was part of the trials. "But that's not the 'it.'" Jasper continued. "For over a thousand years every time there was an atrocity committed, Edward's linage was right in the middle of it… including during a time in England when vampires were hunted." He looked up knowingly at Carlisle. "The name then was Marks."

Carlisle looked at Edward, "You're a descendant of Nigel Marks? He was a deacon of my father's church until my father thought that he was a vampire. My father let Nigel's pregnant wife go but…" He didn't have to finish his sentence we knew what his father had done.

We all sat in silence till Carlisle spoke again, "I remember that Nigel had a son. His older son. I remember because I was helping with the arrangements for his wedding. It was a big to do because the girl was a common girl whose mother died. The son's name was Nicholas. He was in a great hurry to get married, I remember that. Apparently there was another girl pining for his affections, but he would not even turn his head to her." Carlisle looked like he was back in his own time. His eyes were glazed over as he struggled to remember what had happened.

"The night of the raid Nigel and his son were killed. Nicholas was trying to protect his father and was murdered. Nigel was set on fire." His voice was becoming hoarse and the anguish was written all over his face. Some how I knew that he had been there that night, and it had followed him for all these years. "The girl leapt to her death the next day, never wanting to live without him." His hands balled into fists and he pressed them to his mouth trying to hold in the sobs that I could see trying to escape.

Esme burst through the door and ran to her husband's side. She dropped to her knees and enveloped him in her arms whispering soothing words to her husband. The love that they shared was epic, rarely showed but often felt. They were beautiful together. They gave me hope.

But what the hell? Whatever was going on it all circled around Edward. This all had to do with the man that I loved. From the beginning it all started with Edward. I wasn't sure how this all connected but I needed to work it out. But there was a question that had to be asked. "Carlisle can you tell me how your father knew about vampires?"

"He said that he was visited by a yellow haired angel." HE said before rising and leaving the room. I had a feeling I knew who that yellow hair angel was, and was betting she was a devil in disguise.

Edward's bloodline had been wracked with tragedy. I walked around the room absentmindedly fingering the book that Jasper had brought into the room. I was unemotionally flipping the pages, thinking about how this was all connected. How could this all affect my Edward and this family so much? Then I looked down.

I gasped and dropped to the ground. Edward was instantly by my side, his words a jumbled mess. All I could do was stare at the drawing that sat before me. The drawing was of one Jebidiah Maxen and his betrothed Margret Swanson, it was a drawing of Edward and me.