Author's Note:

I do not own any of the Twilight characters that may appear in this world.

I can't think of anything smart to put here...

Chapter 8: Seattle

"Hey, can I ask you an uncomfortable question?" I hear from under the car. Rosalie is helping me with an oil change and tune up for Valkyrie. And by helping, I mean she is doing all the work. After I struggled to turn the oil filter the least little bit, she shoo'ed me out of the space and insisted on doing everything herself. I was more than happy to keep her company.

"Sure Rose, what do you want to know?" I have gotten used to this by now. Everyone has questions. Some of them are rather good.

Of course, I can count on Rosalie to see my history from a completely different angle. "You've lived all these lives, right?"

"Yeah" I answer. This isn't really a secret anymore.

"And you've gotten married in some of these lives, right?" Again, I wonder where she is going with this. Surely this isn't a sex talk.

"Yes Rose."

"Well," she pauses from her work just as I hear the oil start to drain into the pan by her head. Scooting out from under the car, Rosalie focuses her beautiful golden eyes on me. "Have you had children, Alexa?"

Immediately my heart starts to break for this woman in front of me. Now I know where she is going with this. With a sad smile, I sit on the ground in front of her. "Yes, I've had the pleasure occasionally."

Rosalie looks down at her lap then. If she could cry, I'm sure she would be. "I wanted so badly to have children, but that was taken from me."

Tentatively, I scoot a bit closer, closing the space between us until there is only a hair width left. Gently, I take her hands in mine. It is the first time that I've touched one of them willingly, other than a handshake. The significance is not lost on Rose, as she jerks her head up to stare into my eyes. "That's why you did it, isn't it? That's why you killed those people?" I say, as quietly as I can.

"Yes." she whispers. I would have expected to hear shame in her voice, but instead her words burn with anger. I smile as her aura pulses golden around her. Such beauty… I close my eyes and breathe it in, reveling in the feel of the Goddess around me.

"What are you doing?" Rose asks, seeing my strange behavior.

"I told you we are sisters Rosalie… I'm feeling your aura. You should be able to feel mine if you concentrate hard enough. Give it a try." I say, sighing again as her warmth surrounds me. Dike, I've missed you.

"I think I'll pass." Rosalie smirks as she scoots back under the car, breaking our contact.

I laugh as I follow her movement. Run all you want Blondie, that wall is coming down!

"Does it bother you?" I hear her voice again, just as she scoots the used oil pan to a different spot on the floor.

"Do you want to be more specific?" Again, I am confused by her question, and wonder where she is going with this.

After twisting off the old oil filter, she asks me to hand her the new one and I bend to oblige. Seeing her troubled eyes, her next words aren't much of a surprise. "Does it bother you to leave your family behind in each of these lives? Don't you ever want to stay with them?"

I laugh at this, which causes the woman in front of me to scowl. Quickly but carefully, I try to smooth her sudden tension. "Yes Rose, it bothers me, more in the beginning than it does now. At first, I didn't know how I was supposed to carry on with what Dike wanted me to do. I tried to avoid trouble as much as I could, to prolong my life. What I came to realize though was that the bodies I am placed in are not meant to be long term vessels. Their time is up the moment I inhabit them. It's kind of like that movie, about the kids who are trying to avoid 'Death'."

"Final Destination?" Rose asks from under the car.

"Yeah, kind of like that. Sooner or later, I always run into a monster. They either seek me out, or I run into them on a dark street somewhere, or even occasionally I'm just involved in some mass death event. Eventually, my lives are always taken from me, and I end up back on the Styx. If the death is sudden enough, I may not even know how I got there. The soul with me does though, so that makes the trip a bit more interesting I guess..." I trail off as I think about the last time this happened. I was on a plane... and then I was in a boat, rowing down a river of souls.

"So, what you are saying is that no matter what you do, you have to leave your kids behind. There's no choices you can make, no options left to you?" Rosalie scoots out from under the car once again and moves to put new oil in. "Isn't that depressing?"

"Yes of course it is! It makes forming any type of friendly relationship unnecessarily hard. That's why I'm standoffish with the kids at school. To me, they are just silly children. If I get to know them, then they will become more, and that makes everything harder. But, don't get me wrong Rose, I still fight to stay alive if I can. I try to enjoy life after all, so if I can figure out a way to remove an asshole and stay alive, I do it. Its just, staying alive isn't always an option." Rose and I get up from the floor to make ourselves more comfortable at her work bench. A stack of high performance tires make a pretty good seat if you balance right. "It gets easier Rose. No matter what, even if I die, my children live on, and after a day or two, so do I."

"The death tole in Seattle today stands at more than 50. City officials still believe this to be gang activity, despite most of the violence being centered around areas of town that are not known for violent crime. If you have any information regarding…."

I tune the TV out. Fucking vampires! I knew it! I knew this whole goody-two-shoe act was too good to be true! I swear I'm going to kill whoever is doing this, and anyone who knows about it as well.

I'm almost in tears as I tear out of my driveway and speed out of town. The Cullens are going to answer for this! I can't believe I fell for their act. Braking at the last second, I punish my tires as I pull onto the barely visible lane that leads to the their residence. The gravel causes my car to fishtail slightly as I bomb down the narrow drive. Seeing the house at last, I slam on the brakes so hard my car does a 90 degree slide, throwing gravel into the flower beds in front of the house and knocking down several of the taller plants.

Before I can even make it out of the car, Esme is standing on the front porch, staring at me in horror. "Alexa! You could have killed yourself driving like that? What's wrong?"

"Was it you?" I demanded, marching around my car. I quickly stared into her eyes and was relieved to find them to be a warm gold, not a hint of red, even at the edges.

"Was what me? What's going on?" she demanded, following me as I marched into her home.

"Family meeting!" I shout, not even concerned that I'm not technically family. I flinch slightly as I feel six gusts of wind enter the dining room around me. Each of them is seated, all except for Jasper, around the giant table. I hurry to catch Jasper's eye, and am relieved that his eyes are just as gold as his matron's. Whew! That would have been a hell of a fight to take him down.

Slowly, I examine everyone else's face, growing more and more concerned, and not a small amount of relief, as I confirm for myself that none of them have been cheating on their diets.

"Alexa?" Esme asks, prompting me to start with my explanation.

"Have you seen the news recently?" I ask. Understanding dawns on their faces. Yes, they've seen the news. "There is at least one rogue vampire in Seattle, isn't there? Why have you not dealt with it?" I demand, staring at Carlisle.

The question seems to make Carlisle uncomfortable. He glances at Edward and Bella, then at Jasper. After a small nod from the blonde boy, Carlisle's eyes settle back on me. "This is an issue that we have only recently begun to understand, Alexa. Frankly we considered it a family issue and didn't see the need to involve you."

"Didn't see the need?" I yell. "Carlisle, taking out monsters is what I do! I could have taken care of this weeks ago! Those people didn't have to die!" I can't believe this man!

"Trading one life for another is not justice Alexa, and in this case I'm not sure that it would have done much good. We are pretty sure this isn't one vampire, but many."

I'm brought up short by this statement. I hadn't considered many. 'Many' would pretty much make me useless.

"By the number of new deaths each day, we estimate that there are at least ten vampires in Seattle, and we fear that this number is growing." Jasper says, coming forward with his hands clasped behind his back. "Unfortunately, we didn't grasp the severity of this situation soon enough to be able to deal with this ourselves. At this point, we aren't sure what to do other than wait for the Volturi to step in. Of course, with you and Bella in our company, this is something that we must avoid, but we aren't sure how. They outnumber us two to one, and newborns are especially hard to kill."

"Who is doing this? Why?" I demand, confused as to the motive behind this action. Any vampire in their right mind would avoid the attention of the Volturi.

"Another thing we have just figured out." Carlisle states. "Last year, we disposed of a nomad vampire who was hunting Bella." I quirk my eye at this. Sorry I missed out on that… "This nomad had a mate, who disappeared afterwards. We believe that this woman is at the heart of these newborns in Seattle."

"We've also had a few run-ins with her in the woods around town" Emmett decides to add. "We almost had her a few nights ago, but the wolves go in the way."

"Wolves?" This has my attention. I remember Alice mentioning wolves once, back on the first day that I had met the tiny vampire. The detail didn't seem as important then, now I expected some answers.

"Oh uh… oh shit, did I just…" Rosalie chooses this moment to slap Emmett as hard as she can upside the head. I cover my ears at the thunderclap that fills the room.

"What are you hiding from me now?" I ask, peeved again that I'm not in the know.

Carlisle signs in resignation, "Alexa, this isn't really our secret to tell. We've made a deal with a certain group of people…"

"The La Push treaty, yeah, I know." I interrupt, bringing Carlisle to a full wide eyed stop. "Bella filled me in when I was talking to her a few weeks ago about Edward and his unusual hang ups" I smirk, eying the boy in question. "Seriously dude, either trust your girl or don't. This controlling bullshit is going to drive her away." I roll my eyes as he huffs at me. Obviously he still thinks I'm a heathen. "Are you telling me that the La Push legends about spirit walkers are true? Do the natives turn into giant wolves? Yes or No?"

"You've been reading the local legends?" Carlisle questions, looking at me with squinted eyes.

"Yeah, the mind is a terrible thing to waste." I quip, still irritated that these people, who I have actually started to have feelings for, have been hiding things from me. I thought we were being honest with each other… I grumble to myself.

"Oh sweet, so we don't have to hide anything… I'm off the hook!" Emmett crowed, earning another, smaller, slap from Rosalie. Honestly, how does he still have hair back there? Does vampire hair grow back if you slap it off?

"Alice had a vision" Bella whispers in my ear as we walk between classes. Glancing up, I tell her with my eyes that she has my full attention. "She says that the newborns are going to attack just after a snowfall. The best she can do to pin it down is a few weeks from now."

"Do we have a plan?" I ask, all business.

Bella looks up in surprise? "We?" she asks, a look of terror in her eyes. "Why would you want to be a part of this Alexa? These are vampires!"

I roll my eyes. "Bella, I literally can't die. Of course I'm going to be there. Even if I can only take out one, that's one vamp that doesn't eat another person! And then I get to talk their ear off about how they fucked up all the way to hell Bella! You wouldn't deny me that, would you?" I give Bella my best puppy dog impression, complete with laying my head on her shoulder.

Bella giggles before sobering again. "You can too die. Maybe not in the usual way, but you will still leave us. Its dangerous…" she whispers, her eyes falling to the floor. "Please, can we talk about this with everyone else? I don't want you to get hurt for me."

"Of course." I say as we enter our next class. Besides, I'm already forming some plans of my own.

Good place to stop? Too bad if you disagree! This brings an end to the 5 chapters I had written all at once one day about a week ago, guess I'll have to go on another writing binge soon.

Join us next time as we discuss what I've thought up on how a human could potentially kill a vampire. I can really only think of a few possibilities, all of which would count on a lot of luck or somehow distracting a vamp into not paying attention. It isn't like you could trick them into tripping into a volcano after all.

Hey speaking of which, if you burned a vampire's head but kept the rest of its dismembered body, would it eventually regrow the head? In every reference to this that I've read in this universe, they insist on burning the whole body, but I was under the impression that once a body part was burned (like if you tore an arm off and burned it separately), then it won't regrow. Its gone, right? So... why bother being thorough?

These are the questions that keep me from working when my boss says I should be.