Twenty-Seven

Carlisle could spend days in his office laboratory at the back of the house. He cherished his family and he loved the time that he got to spend with his wife and each of their children, but his work was a passion that was deeply ingrained in his psyche. There had been so many scientific advancements in the last half century, so many changes in the way that the medical profession could combat disease progression and initial treatment responses. With each new year that passed he found himself more and more fascinated with the tools at his disposal.

He often brought his work home with him, a luxury afforded to him by his lack of sleep and continually drumming mind. Difficult cases stayed at the forefront of his thoughts, and his wealth of knowledge on the case studies of hundreds of years of patients and diagnosis he found it soothing to find links and clues.

He was still working on the latest samples from Renesmee. He had the initial base sample from prior to her drinking human blood, then the secondary sample from shortly thereafter. The contrast between the two was striking. Her immune system, previously suppressed by a violent infection, was nearly fully recovered. Shortly before dawn, before Edward and Bella had returned from their shared hunt, he had crept into the cabin to take another sample. Rosalie, had been reading in the corner of the girl's room and she stood when she heard his approach.

Rosalie had warned him, "She's a sleep." Her voice whisper-thin even to Carlisle's vampiric ears.

He gave her a gentle look, squeezing his daughters arm. "I know," he obliged. "I need to take another sample." It had been several hours since the first feeding, and he needed to ensure that the change was still taking affect.

Rosalie objected, "Do you have to? She hasn't really had a deep night sleep in days."

"I do," Carlisle said by way of apology. He approached Renesmee's bed and quickly took the blood sample that he needed. She stirred slightly from the mattress, but as soon as the needle was removed, she fell back into a deep sleep. From across the room, he heard Rosalie tense with the sudden scent of blood in the room. Carlisle trusted her; he did not need to visually confirm that she could handle it. He brushed the hair out of Renesmee's eyes, smoothing the roundness of her apple-pink cheeks. He could hear her heartbeat and it was steady and peaceful. His samples would reveal much, but the sound of her deeply sleeping forewarned of an improved constitution.

From across the room, he could see the worry on Rosalie's face. "She's sleeping deeply," he told her. "It's all we could hope for tonight."

"Will she be alright?"

As a doctor he knew the woes of giving false hope, "I think so." He laced his fingers over Renesmee's wrist, counting the pulse beats.

Rosalie was brusque, "But you don't know…?"

"I'll run more tests with this," he added courteously. He held out the vial, red liquid thickly glistening from the other side. This time he saw Rosalie tense, but she remained in control. "We'll no more later in the day." He watched her relax. "You're very good to stay with her."

"I'm her aunt."

"Of course, Rose."

Rosalie was not one to accept embraces from the family, with the exception of her husband and mate Emmett, but in that moment, Carlisle would have liked to reach out to her, fold her into his arms and take away the pain that she tried too hard to hide.

Carlisle reached out his hand to her, a gesture that appeased his need to embrace and comfort, and he was gladdened when she reached out in response and took it, squeezing his fingers.

"I love you, Rosalie." Carlisle didn't say it enough.

She smiled, as sly as a cat in the gloaming light. "I love you, too, Carlisle."

Retreating from the darkness of his granddaughter's bedroom, Carlisle headed back to the house. Once inside he saw Esme, standing with her arms crossed in front of the television, her back was to him, and he could tell, from her posture, that something was amiss. Emmett stood beside her, his back straight and his gaze intent on the television.

"What's happened?" Carlisle asked.

Esme turned to him, offering him a small smile. She gestured to the television.

The screen was filled with photos of a pregnant women, honey-colored hair falling across high cheek bones. The newscaster was explaining: "No new leads today in the strange disappearance of a missing Italian women who is eight months pregnant." The screen changed, revealing another set of intimate photographs, the same women in a wedding dress, the groom, with his neck bent over the woman's face while she was turned to smile at the camera. "Isobel Bianchi disappeared three weeks ago. Her husband Angelo Bianchi returned home to find her missing. Suspicion and blame were originally placed her Bianchi's husband—an executive at Sprezzatura Technology, a firm based in Volterra, Italy. He has since been cleared. Sources close to the family warn that Isobel was not the type to disappear and she and her husband Angelo were deeply in love. The added element of Bianchi's advanced pregnancy has authorities puzzled and fearful as each new day brings her closer to her due date." The newscasters voice cut away to an interview with Angelo Bianchi, elegant Italian streamed from the screen, which both Esme and Carlisle could easily translate, despite the fact that the English translation was dubbed over his voice. The man was pleading, tears streaming down his face, begging his wife to return, pleading with anyone who may have taken her to return her to him. Next, he sobbed for his child, imploring the world to bring his family back safely to him.

"It has to be the Vulturi," Emmet was positive. He smashed his fist into his open hand, itching for a fight.

Esme tilted her head, contemplating. "I don't think so."

"I agree," Carlisle added. "The Volturi are against any form of publicity. They would never involve themselves in something so obvious as this."

"Do you think she was killed? The human?" Emmett asked.

"It's difficult to say," Carlisle noted. "Why take a pregnant woman?"

"Fetish," Emmett said. "Jasper told me once—"

Esme cut him off. "We can only hope for the best. Her husband looks so frightened."

"I'm sure it's not the Volturi," Carlisle said, comforting his wife with a reassuring hand on her arm. "Exposure is not their way."

Esme reached out to him, clutching her fingers tightly around his.

"I have a sample," he started to explain.

Esme finished for him. "Go," she smiled kindly toward him, reassuring him on his way back to his laboratory.

Carlisle bent to kiss her on the neck, he felt her lean her soft cheek against his mouth, and he was tempted to stay. As he departed, he heard Esme tell Emmett that they were almost out of milk for Renesmee and was wondering if he could stop by the Forks general store, either today or tomorrow. Before shutting himself away in his laboratory, he heard Emmett say yes.

He emptied the vial quickly, observing it from underneath the microscope. Visually he could see the difference, but he could also smell it. Illness tended to give off a powerful odor of rot or decay. For the human senses it would have to be incredibly potent, but for his senses he had trained himself to detect things long before his human counterparts could.

This newest sample that he had taken was dramatically different, for the better. He wondered what the same sample would look like later in the day when Renesmee had her second feeding of human blood. He kept a small refrigerator hidden behind one of the paintings in his office. Only Esme, who had helped him design the hidden pocket in the wall, knew that it was there. If Jasper, or any of the others knew that human blood was so close to their reach he knew that they would not be able to control themselves.

Carlisle was in the process of sighing when the door to his laboratory clicked open. Even though his back was turned he knew it was Esme who approached. "My love," he reached his hand out to her, feeling the slender length of her fingers enclosing around his.

"What did you find out?" She asked, leaning her body lightly against his.

"Renesmee's immune system is almost completely intact," he explained. "It's extraordinary."

"Almost?" Esme questioned.

He held up the vial. "This was taken about six hours after her first feeding. I'd imagine after another supply of blood her results will show another drastic improvement. She'll likely need to sublimit human blood for the rest of her life, though."

"A human diet, and" she added playfully, "A human diet."

He chuckled, despite himself. Envisioning a human diet of peanut butter and jelly, cheeseburgers and fries, and the occasional dram of human blood inside a soft drink cup. He remembered Bella sucking human blood up from a straw when she was pregnant with Renesmee. "Something like that, yes." Esme reached her arm up around his waist, and he leaned into her touch, immediately relaxed. "There was something else, too."

"What?" Her voice was whisper-thin, empathetic as any mother, yet still playful as the human girl he once knew.

Carlisle pulled the printed documents he had worked up earlier from the first sample of blood he had taken. "Her blood has a high level of the Gonadotropin-releasing hormone."

She waved her hand, dismissively. "Is that all?"

Carlisle smiled again, other than Edward, none of the rest of his family had obtained any medical degrees over their decades together.

He wrapped his arm around her, mimicking her own embrace. "It's called GnRH, for short."

"Naturally," she edged in, her smile playful.

Carlisle was tempted to boop her on the nose like a naughty child.

"It's the primary hormone that induces puberty. GnRH travels directly to the pituitary gland, once there it releases additional hormones into the bloodstream, the luteinizing hormone and the follicle-stimulating hormone."

Esme furrowed her eyebrows. "LH and FSH, for short?"

Carlisle's chuckle turned into a full-bodied laugh. "Correct."

She gripped him tighter, all serious now. "She's four."

"She's not like other girls," he confided.

"She's so young," Esme warned. "Bella and Edward are still so young. Renesmee's childhood has gone by so quickly, they'll mourn it when it's gone."

"We'll help them," he squeezed her shoulder.

She smiled. "No stranger to teenagers. Remember that first decade with Rosalie?"

His eyes were bright, remembering how difficult she had been in those early years.

"Something else happened," she began.

Carlisle didn't worry. If there were a real problem Esme would have confided it to him immediately, her hesitation, explained to him that she needed to unburden herself. "Go on," he coaxed.

"I got a call from Tanya."

"Is everything alright?"

"She says everything is alright, but she mentioned that Kate has decided to leave the coven."

"Leave?" Carlisle was genuinely shocked. "They must have gotten back a few hours ago, at most. Garrett was so excited to get back home to her."

Esme shrugged, at a loss. "She didn't come with them," in hindsight, this did explain quite a bit. "If the situation were reversed, I would make sure I accompanied you."

"Did Tanya say where Kate was going?"

"Tanya said that Kate wanted to travel for a year. She said that she was struggling with her own demons, and that Alec, escaping from a life that he was struggling with as truly changed her. Tanya said that she wants to go back home."

"Home," Carlisle questioned. "They came from Russia, before it was known as Russia. More than a thousand years ago."

Esme went on, "Kate has never gotten over Irina's death. She took it the hardest of them all, I think."

"But, Garrett…?" Carlisle still did not understand.

"I can't explain it."

In Carlisle's mind he saw the image of Irina dying at the hands of the Volturi on that snowy mountain top a few years ago. Tanya had wailed, but it was Kate who had immediately tried to intervein. Ready to fight the entire Volturi army if it had come to that, just to save her sisters.

"And now there's this business with the Italian women," Esme continued.

Carlisle shook his head. "I can't see that Aro would be involved, or allow any of the others to be involved. National headlines," he shook his head again, to clear it. "Aro has killed powerful vampires for much less exposure."

"I've never heard of Sprezzatura Technology," she noted, bringing up the name of the company where Angelo Bianchi worked. A company located in the heart of the vampire capital of the world.

"Neither have I."

Esme went on, "I did some research."

"That was fast." It had been less than an hour since he left Esme and Emmett in the living room.

She handed him a print out. "It seems that they make surveillance equipment. Sprezzatura means "effortless elegance," from what I can tell it's all high-end cameras and motion capture devices."

Carlisle studied the pages. "I thought you were sure that the Volturi were not involved."

"I am," she said. There was less conviction in her voice. "But I have such a strange feeling about this. I can't help but think that something else is going on here."

He squeezed her hand, reassuringly. "We'll keep an eye out. See if there is anything that we can do to help. Alice, might be able to see something."