Author's Note: The moment of revelation has come for our dynamic duo! I have estimated another two chapters after this, and then our rambling journey will come to an end, my friends. :)

I dedicate this chapter to the Mulder and Scully Barbie dolls I saved from a dusty fate at a garage sale the other day. Without those two characters, this story would not exist (you didn't need me to tell you that, did you?).

Enjoy!

38. Partners in Myth?

"Oh, crap," Bella gasped, leaping an inch or two into the air. "Ah-oh-I wasn't here, okay?"

"Okay..." Scully watched the girl dart out of the room through the back door, her cast scraping and clunking against the tile. What kind of love made a nice girl like that fall for a vampire, Scully wondered. Surely not the routine feelings of summer romances and drive-in movies? Surely it was a seventeen year-old's attraction to the macabre, pursued to the extreme? A form of the gothic or emo subculture? A mania for dead people?

"Mulder..." Scully turned to her partner as he came to sit at her bed. "If you knew I was a vampire, would you still..."

Mulder raised his eyebrows.

Scully suddenly felt like laughing. "Nevermind. Too weird of a question."

"Scully," Mulder said, "if you were a vampire, you would have such a hard time believing it yourself, I doubt my opinion on the subject would even matter."

"Of course it would matter!" Scully winced as her shoulder twinged from her exclamation. "Admit it: you would do everything in your power to convince me it was real."

"Naturally. I might even go so far as to wave a couple pints of O Negative around."

"And where would you get that, the evidence lab? You'd try to poison me with contaminated blood?"

"You know that song, Scully. Tainted blood...tainted blood..." Mulder did a very bad impression of Soft Cell's main singer.

"And I think this conversation stops right here," said Scully, holding up her free palm for emphasis.

Mulder's smile froze on his face as the first Cullen stepped through the doorway. Scully watched as Carlisle approached her cautiously, wearing a white consultation coat and a guarded expression. "How are you feeling, Dana?" Scully did not miss this new form of address, like she was his patient. She made an easy connection in her mind: she was Carlisle's patient, of course. No one else at the scene of the attack could have given her the level of medical attention her injuries had required.

Scully sighed. Just one more thing Carlisle Cullen had done for her. "I feel like I have a broken elbow, a broken shoulder, and a bruised face."

"And a stitched scalp," another voice added cheerfully, and Alice Cullen sailed through the door. Mulder had not moved from his position on Scully's bed, and his hand hovered over her as if he was ready to snatch her out of harm's way at the slightest provocation. With a smile, Scully took his hand and laid it on the sheets.

"Are you experiencing any pain?" Carlisle asked her, monitoring the readouts from her machines with a practiced eye. Idly, Scully wondered how long he had been a surgeon.

"No, I'm fine," she answered the doctor. "Whoever set the cast must have been an expert. I don't feel anything."

"That would be Carlisle," said Alice. "He's taken care of you since we called the ambulance to come and get you."

"What?"

"Dana, you were found lost in the woods with a crazed serial killer! When we saw you lying in the trees we called everybody! Agent Mulder got there first, as I'm sure you could predict."

"But-"

Alice's eyes were locked on Scully in warning. Ever so subtly, she titled her head backwards, and Scully looked past her to the door. She understood in a second: behind Jasper, who had just come in, a curious nurse had poked her head into the room. "Alice, I can't thank you all enough," Scully said immediately, covering up her slip as smoothly as she could.

"Is there something you need, Sarah?" asked Carlisle, directing his diamond-like smile at the nosy nurse. After a moment of the typical reaction to the handsome doctor, the nurse made a mumbled excuse and darted off.

Once Sarah's unwelcome footsteps had faded, Alice dropped her bouncy facade. "Oh, Dana, I'm so sorry," she said, wringing her dainty hands, causing the four rings on her left hand to clank together. "I couldn't see him fast enough, and then your shoulder. I'm a terrible person. I'm a terrible pyschic. I'm just so sorry."

Terrible...pyschic? She did just say pyschic? "You-you're a psychic?"

"I have visions of the future." Before Scully could interrupt, Alice rushed on. "No, really, I do. I'll prove it. When you and Fox came here, I saw you both getting murdered by Hughes. I could see you getting brutalized when your car broke down-that's why Jasper and I went out to meet you-and then Fox got killed trying to find your body."

"That sounds like Mulder," Scully muttered.

"That doesn't prove anything," Mulder said, but he sounded as if he did believe Alice. That was no surprise to Scully.

Jasper broke in unexpectedly. "Yes, it does, because I got a picture of Hughes by Scully's car." Without waiting for a reply, he pulled out his phone, thumbed through a folder, and crossed the room to show the screen to Mulder. Mutely Mulder examined the photo, then showed Scully.

It was the killer, all right; unmistakably so. He was tall, blond, and pale, and he had something small and metal in his hand that Scully recognized as a syringe. And he was unquestionably standing feet from the borrowed car, just concealed by the trees. Scully dropped the phone onto the bed, feeling a bout of vertigo coming on.

"And remember, Dana, I told you to take Carlisle with you after the autopsy?" Alice persisted.

"Yes, I-" Scully sat up. "Do you mean to say you knew I was going to-that we were going to-"

"I did," Alice said. "Only you ran away. I couldn't see that because Sam Uley was spying on you from the hotel and I can't see anything when he's around."

This whole sordid plot was spinning out of control. Vampires, psychics...Before long Sam Uley would come around and say he was Cheif Wolf of his tribe. Scully needed to focus on facts, on questions. She stared at Jasper. "If you knew all this time who was killing these women, why didn't you tell someone? Chief Swan, or one of us?"

"We couldn't," Alice said. "We didn't have any proof except for my visions and Edward's observations. We never caught him at it."

"I did," Carlisle said, and in his voice there was something that disturbed Scully more than Alice's psychic claims. When she looked to him, the doctor was standing with his arms crossed, calm, or determined to remain calm. Scully tried to forget the image from the day before, of Carlisle pinning Graeson Hughes one-handed to a tree. "I was there the night he killed Lily Maris. I was watching over Bella for Edward-"

Alice shushed Scully with, "Edward's ridiculously overprotective. Just listen, Dana."

"-when he dragged Maris's body into the Swan's yard." Carlisle shook his head. "She was already dead or I would have saved her and dealt with Hughes, then and there."

"I would have killed him."

Scully started. Where had Edward come from? Now he was leaning against the doorframe, too relaxed for the statement he had thrown at two FBI agents. Still, Scully knew he was dead serious. The glint of a reformed killer screamed at Scully from Edward Cullen's eyes, chilling her despite the warm blanket across her lap. "I would still kill him," Edward told Mulder. Mulder turned his face away.

"How old are you, Edward?" Scully said. "Really."

Edward did not looked surprised at this question. However, he glanced at Carlisle before answering. Scully could see the two of them communicating silently. "I'm seventeen."

Scully snorted. Seventeen her eye. "No seventeen year-old I've ever seen promises murder like that, Edward."

"She knows," Mulder said. "Scully figured it out before I did, way before. It just took her scientific sensibilities time to adjust." When the Cullens didn't respond, he rolled his eyes. "Tell her, Edward."

Edward shrugged. "I was born in 1901. I nearly died in the Spanish Influenza. Carlisle found me and saved me."

Scully's brain was running around in circles like a chicken with its head cut off, but her mouth worked quite rationally. "You're not human," she said calmly.

"Nope." The fifth Cullen shouldered his way past Edward, a grin spreading across his face. "Emmett Cullen," he said, offering his hand to Scully. "We haven't met formally."

"You're vampires."

"Yep," said Emmett, popping the 'P' without shame. "You're quick, Agent Scully. Or maybe Carlisle landing in a Spiderman crouch on the road gave it away?"

"It did, somewhat." Scully was shocked to find that Emmett's flippant treatment of his family's curse made it easier to discuss.

"Carlisle," Emmett said with a sigh. "He can't resist showing off."

"Emmett, this is so not the time for that," said Alice. "Dana nearly got killed yesterday."

"I know, and I'm really sorry...that we didn't kill that animal when we had the chance." Emmett bared his teeth and Scully automatically shrank back from him.

"Go away, Emmett!" cried Alice, shoving him backwards.

Scully felt it was time to clear the air. "If you're expecting us to scream and run in horror, don't," she told Carlisle. "I, unfortunately, have seen stranger things than you in my career."

"Wow, you must have an awful job," said Emmett.

"Mulder and I are actually assigned to a collection of cases called The X-Files. We investigate any case that has traces of the...bizarre about it."

"And so that's why you were assigned to the Forks Killer," said Carlisle. "You already suspected supernatural beings were involved?"

Scully sighed. "I didn't, Mulder did."

"I was right, just not in the way I originally thought," Mulder said tiredly. Scully had rarely seen him so exhausted. He seemed ready to sink down onto the sheets at any moment.

"So, you're-" Scully swallowed, "vampires. Now, tell me what happened after I passed out. And, not to be rude, but please make it quick. I think a prolonged explanation might send me over the egde."