Author's Note: I hope these last few chapters have met everyone's expectations. And I hope you don't mind that I strung them all together in one huge clump, either. I honestly thought I shouldn't keep the readers waiting any longer. :)

Song: Too Late by M83 .com/watch?v=qSMeriXQ2ss (and may I say, this is the most moving song I've heard in a long time)

Enjoy!

36. Mulder

"Scully?" He had seen her eyes open, register his face, and then fall closed again. She was breathing shallowly. He could tell her shoulder was hurt, maybe dislocated. Her other arm was wrenched around at a sickening angle. He didn't want to touch it for fear of damaging it further.

Mulder cradled Scully to him, as gently as he could. He had made it to the clearing in which Scully lay minutes after Sam Uley, his lungs seared from the exertion. He'd never run that fast, not even in a marathon. But he'd forgotten all about his own exhaustion as he'd seen Scully lying broken on the ground.

He would kill the man who did this to her. That is, if he wasn't already dead. If that was the case, he would drive a stake through his heart, burn him to ashes, whatever it took to make sure he never hurt Scully or anyone else again. Mulder thought that was fair.

The loud rumble of Sam Uley's growl made Mulder look up. The giant werwolf was crouched ready to spring, his hackles raised. Craning his neck, Mulder leaned around the bulk of the oversized animal to divine the source of Sam's unease.

Six of the seven Cullens were gathered into a loose formation opposite Sam. The wolf was so huge that his front haunch came up to Carlisle Cullen's shoulder, and Alice Cullen was dwarfed by the animal. The Cullens' posture indicated that they knew what Sam Uley thought of them and were not at all sure what he was going to do about it, but they didn't seem surprised to see Sam in the form of a giant wolf.

Mulder had a few seconds to wonder how and why the Cullens were in the same clearing as Scully, where the killer was, and how he was going to find the killer before all was explained to him.

Carlisle broke the silence over the group. "Greetings, Sam Uley ." The doctor's voice sounded strained, and he threw a glance in Mulder's direction as he spoke.

"Carlisle Cullen." Mulder was startled by the flat voice. He looked at Sam, but it was clear that the wolf hadn't spoken.

"You're on my land," the voice continued. Mulder finally tracked it to the mouth of Edward Cullen, standing to Carlisle's right. "You've broken our treaty. I can't overlook that." Edward's face was expressionless, like he had fallen into some kind of trance. When Sam snorted at the young man in annoyance, it somehow clicked in Mulder's head.

He could read minds?

"I broke the treaty for an entirely different reason than you believe," Carlisle said.

"You've killed this woman," Sam-through Edward-said. Mulder was still trying to wrap his head around that.

Carlisle shook his head slowly, as if afraid to make a sudden movement. "No, I didn't."

"For one thing, Dana's still alive," pointed out tiny Alice Cullen. Mulder held Scully a little closer as the girl's eyes fell on them.

"This is the killer," said Jasper Cullen from his place by a tree, and, with a movement faster than thought, he flipped a figure around to show Sam. In the moonlight it was hard for Mulder to make the figure out, but he could tell it was male, tall, and blonde. The killer's skin was freakishly pale, but not in the same way as the Cullens. Mulder knew right away that the man was not...whatever this strange family had turned out to be.

"Graeson Hughes," Jasper Cullen continued, shaking the man like a rag doll before Sam's narrowed yellow eyes. "A pathologist from Harborview hospital in Seattle. If you don't believe us, you can look him up. He's been missing for over a month. He was supposed to come here, to Forks, to help with the first Forks Killer autopsy. He never showed."

Mulder felt his mouth fall open. If the Cullens were telling the truth, Scully had been right. Her text about the pathologist...she had solved the case.

"Graeson Hughes was killing those women," added another Cullen, one who just stepped out of the shadows of the trees. Mulder was startled to see she was the same blonde woman he'd seen on the security camers feeds, and she was unearthly. Even though Mulder's mind was foggy with worry over Scully, the woman's beauty eclipsed anything else for the moment it took him to recognize her.

Sam growled at this new addition to the gathering; apparently he recognized her, too. "Look," the woman told him, "you may not like us, Uley, but you have to know that we're telling you the honest truth. No other explanation makes sense. Dana Scully was on to this man when he got to her. She could tell you."

"Only she can't." Mulder hadn't realized he'd spoken until he heard his voice, cracked and ragged, echo into the air. The Cullens and Sam turned to look at him. The rest of the words came tumbling out of Mulder like bullets from a machine gun, uncontrollable. "And I don't care whose fault this is at the moment-" he showed them Scully, bleeding and broken, "but if someone doesn't pay for what they did to her, I will tell every single person in the bureau what went on here. I'll make sure someone pays. No-" he stopped Edward Cullen in his tracks, "no, don't you touch her!" He pressed Scully tighter to him.

The man in Jasper's grasp gave a half-mad laugh at Mulder's harsh tone.

"Fox," Alice Cullen said softly, "we aren't going to hurt you."

Mulder wasn't listening; he didn't care what they had to say. Carefully, oh so carefully, he lifted Scully off the ground, keeping his eyes on the people in front of him. "Don't let him go," he told Jasper.

The blonde man nodded. "I won't, Agent Mulder." The white-faced man simply watched Mulder back away, a disdainful smile visible from thirty feet sliding across his lips.

Mulder got sixty feet into the forest before one of them appeared beside him. "Agent Scully needs my help, right now," said Carlisle Cullen, and somehow Mulder could not doubt the truth of his words. "Her injuries are life-threatening, Agent Mulder, and they must be corrected before she goes into irreversible shock."

Some base instinct screamed at Mulder to run from the doctor facing him. He took a few more steps back from Carlisle. "The nearest hospital is twenty-five minutes away," Carlisle persisted. "Please, Agent Mulder, let me help her. We are trying to help you."

"How did she get like this, then?" Mulder demanded. "I saw how fast you are; how did she ever get hurt like this?"

"I'm sorry," Carlisle said, his amber eyes full of vicarious pain. "Agent Scully ran away from me and Hughes found her first. I'm so sorry, Agent Mulder."

An obstruction in his throat that felt too much like tears prevented Mulder from speaking. He stared down at Scully's deathly pale face, brushing a sweaty strand of hair from her blue mouth. "Not as sorry as I am," he finally said, and surrendered most of Scully to the doctor, but did not let go of her hand.