Clever Boy

Crispin ain't dumb. His curiosity often gets the better of him. But his attachment to Sera has been keeping him away from real work, as we all know. It's about time he started making progress.

The sun was hidden behind a layer of clouds. Idaho's rainy season had arrived, which meant there would be a storm or two every week. Crispin was glad to see the rains. It meant more time among the humans as the clouds helped hide the fierce sparkle of his crystalline, undead flesh. The rain also increased the greenery, which brought all the little herbivores out of hiding. The larger carnivores that ate the herbivores came out, too. Heaven knew the coyotes were tastier than the elk. A little extra furry, maybe, but that could be worked around.

Crispin tried to settle into his usual hunting routine first thing. His mind was still whirling, busy upon little Sera, fretting over her condition. She'd had a seizure. A post-traumatic seizure, over three weeks since the initial accident. This was bad. Seizures following a head injury were never a good sign, but a delayed one like this, which had come more than five days after the concussion, signaled deep and prolonged damage. She could be plagued by these seizures for the rest of her life. They could damage her brain even further, too, taking away more than just a little of her memory. Carlisle had promised her in the beginning that she would leave the hospital with both hands functional. These seizures could destroy that. Steal her hand-eye coordination. The thought made Crispin feel ill. It wasn't fair.

He resolved to do something about it when he got back. He didn't know what could be done, but he'd find something. He had to.

Until then, there was work to be done. Crispin scouted the edge of the town. Kellogg was plagued by annoying vermin like raccoons and foxes, which threatened little backyard farms and which were constantly tipping trash cans. Luckily, raccoons and foxes were perfectly good prey, although it took a lot of them to fill a vampire's ravenous stomach. To Crispin, they were the appetizers. He should have probably started with something bigger, like the elk or coyotes, to speed things up so he could get back to the hospital as quickly as possible. But the routine was important. It would calm his mind, keep him from making mistakes. It wasn't uncommon to come across humans while hunting out here. He needed to be on constant careful alert, expecting anything.

Yet, despite his care and caution, he was not prepared to suddenly come across Sera's familiar odor on the outskirts of Kellogg. Crispin, who had been trotting along after a coyote, skidded to a halt and whirled around on the spot, his nostrils flaring, sniffing madly. Sera?! What was this? He'd lost the scent, it had just come on a breeze …

Crispin found it again, turning his head and intently following the gentle wind to the source. There was a trail. She'd been hiking through the messy woods. The good news, Crispin discovered, was that the scent was stale and faint. She hadn't been here for a long time. Good. He'd had a small moment of wild panic, thinking she had somehow escaped the hospital. But this trail was old, and she was still safely in her bed where she belonged. Crispin panted softly through his mouth and nose, tracking the odor. What had she been doing all the way out here? He expected the trail to lead around the edge of town. It did not. It made a perfectly straight course deep into the heart of the woods, following the mountains.

What had she been doing out there?

Crispin hung there on the spot, caught. He had work to do. He was supposed to be hunting. But a powerful curiosity had seized him. She'd been plowing around out here. What had she been looking at? Was there something she liked out here? Some place she would like to come back to when she was strong again? (A date possibility, perhaps?) Maybe this was a trail leading to where she'd come from. Maybe Crispin could follow it to a car. There might be a wallet. Identification. A link to her family.

Well, he couldn't argue with that reasoning.

Crispin set off following the trail, crouching to keep track of Sera's scent. It was faint and old, which made it hard to pinpoint, especially when tiny breezes picked it up and tossed it about. Crispin had to depend on places where Sera's hands had touched. She was so short compared to him it still made him bend over. If he'd been human he would have been a hunchback by the time he found the end of the trail. Her smell carried that crispy odor, stronger than he'd expected. Much stronger. Crispin knew that she smelled crispier now, after her seizure. And, apparently, she had smelled just as crispy before the truck accident, before the hospital. Why on earth was that?

Sera was skilled at traversing the woods. She was incredibly good at picking out game trails, which would have made trekking through the undergrowth much easier for her fragile human body. She made her way around obstacles without hesitation and could pinpoint places that would be difficult to walk through long before she reached them, taking roundabout paths to avoid them, always maintaining a perfectly steady course as though guided by GPS. Crispin tried not to get too impatient as he meandered along her trail. She had been forced to be cautious in her journey, which involved lots of roundabout paths and small detours. Crispin, unhindered by the sharp forest because of his indestructibility, found the detours time-consuming. When he could easily have walked straight through trees and shoved boulders out of his way, these precautions were annoying. He had to follow the trail exactly, too. The scent was so faded it was difficult to keep track of.

She had to have walked for hours. For Crispin, the trip was faster, but still too long for comfort. He needed to be back for Sera soon. He didn't have much time, and he was still thirsty. He was supposed to be hunting. Crispin followed Sera's trail down a hill and around another one. Where was this leading him? She'd known exactly where she was going. Crispin remembered what she'd once told him about being here on errands. Well, it was clear she hadn't been lying about that. What errands were there to run in tiny Kellogg? She was a baffling creature, that much was certain.

Crispin reached the end of the trail all at once. It brought him up short, plunging straight into a solid wall of brush higher than he was tall. He held his breath for a moment. He knew what this wall meant—he'd reached the edge of an open, treeless space. The end of the journey? Crispin plowed easily through the sharp sticks, forcing his way through the wall, ignoring it when several spiders dropped down his shirt collar. He burst through the wall and into the soft, muted sunlight, then froze. He was startled at what he'd found. He'd emerged not onto an old road, but into an open meadow, full of tall grass and the occasional splash of color—mountain columbine flowers, one of his secret favorites. The grey sky threatened rain, a crisp breeze hissing through the grass, carrying the sweet fragrance of the flowers straight into Crispin's face.

The flowers were not the only scent here. Somebody had been here. Somebody who smelled extremely crispy and spicy, distinctly like good cedar smoke. Crispin tossed his head, taking in the odor, observing the meadow. The scent here was incredibly strong. She'd stopped here for some reason. She'd been here for a while. Crispin's sharp eyes took notice of several important things: first, no vehicle in sight. Second, flattened grass, wilted flowers with broken stems. Third, and most importantly, damaged trees. Lots of damage. Something had happened here.

Crispin slowly crept along the outer edge of the meadow, avoiding stepping fully into the open, his self-preservation instincts kicking in. He took in the scene from new angles, observed the fine details of snapped branches and a half-toppled pine tree. He scaled a couple of the trees that looked less damaged, trying to see higher, where more damage lingered in the tops of the old pines. The bark was scarred. The flattened grass had a strange pattern to it. Footprints? Crispin's stony stomach worked itself into a knot. Those looked an awful lot like footprints. He circled the clearing rapidly, taking in the whole scene, mapping it out in his head. There was a nasty patch of damage in the forest on one side. Small trees bent double or snapped, the branches scored clean off the larger trunks, a whole area cleared of almost all obstruction. Beside that, in the meadow, huge claw marks, gigantic slashes in the dirt that exposed the delicate roots of grasses, flowers, and shrubs. On the opposite side of the meadow were weird depressions where the plants had been flattened, the dirt depressed as though patted down with huge palms. No claw marks. A great deal of weight had been behind those depressions. Several tons, by Crispin's estimate.

Something huge had been here. Something alive. By the looks of it, something with wings. Crispin saw telltale signs that it had dropped out of the sky, crushing anything in the way, aiming mostly for the meadow, which had been just a little too small. The patch of damage in the forest had come from a tail, a great long tail with apparent indestructibility, and a sharp one, judging by the strange slash marks on the trees. The claw marks on the ground just next to the tail damage had come from back legs. The depressions in the earth on the other side of the meadow were from front limbs of some sort. Odd ones without claws, apparently. The entire meadow was strong with Sera's familiar scent.

Crispin soon came across another remarkable clue, which officially banished away any thought that Sera had come in a car. A strange little tent was nestled between two trees a little ways from the meadow, safe from the rain. It was made of a strange, unfamiliar fabric that was extremely tough, but soft, with a sturdy metal zipper. It was draped with a strange-looking system of straps, which made the tent look suspiciously like it was supposed to be looped around the neck and breast of a very large creature. As Crispin examined it carefully, he realized that it had a certain shape when collapsed and folded … it was a satchel. Folded up, it would have been like a conference table in size. The tent smelled so powerfully of Sera that Crispin was sure she must have spent at least a few nights inside it.

The contents were definitely Sera's belongings, too, judging by their scent. He cautiously peered at her things, hardly believing what he'd found, and was thoroughly embarrassed to be digging through her belongings. He marvelled at how much Sera's possessions told him about her. Half the bag seemed to be occupied by books, some in strange languages that Crispin wasn't sure even Carlisle would be able to read. Crispin saw more of the runes that Sera used when she wrote in her journal. He was a little put out when he realized she'd lied to him about making up the writing system. She clearly had not. It looked ancient, much older than her. Where had it come from? Why had she chosen to use it over all the other scripts she had in this bag? So many questions.

She'd brought clothing, too, meant to be used for hiking and other rough-and-tumble activities. She had jackets and coats and warm sweatpants and other, more exotic things, like a coat made entirely of a bear pelt and glittering stone jewelry that looked like something out of a fantasy. She had glass jars, preservatives, a pipette, and a sealing wax meant to seal the lids on the jars. She'd brought a journal with heavy paper bound in fine leather, filled with her strange runic writing. She'd also brought a single fountain pen, a nameless cheap one made of transparent plastic that was covered in dings and scratches, probably a knock-about favorite meant to withstand rough treatment. Crispin hesitantly tested it by drawing a few figure-eights in the back of the journal. It took a while to start, but when it did he recognized the deep green ink. Montblanc Irish Green. He owned a bottle of it, himself.

Crispin spent a very long time trying to decide what on earth he was supposed to do with what he had discovered. He needed a measuring tape. He needed a new notebook. These things that he had found were incredibly important, full of clues as to what Sera really was. His cold body had chills all over. He'd had a suspicion that Sera wasn't quite human, and he'd known she might be like the Quileute shapeshifters, but he had never anticipated that she might also be a shape-changer. He'd never anticipated such size, either. She was like the giant Roc, bigger than an elephant and apparently able to take to the skies. Crispin kept seeing some gigantic manticore in his head, with a long armored scorpion tail and lion paws with retractable claws. The possibilities were endless, wild, and wonderful. And a little intimidating.

One thing was for certain, Crispin decided as he sat there with a stack of Sera's books in his lap. He was going to have to confront her about what he'd found. No more secrets. She knew what he was, and now he needed to know what she was. Crispin vaguely remembered in the back of his mind how Jacob had needed specialized care from Carlisle the day he'd been broken to pieces by Victoria's newborn army. Carlisle had described the process of re-breaking bones to Crispin as part of his medical training. What if Sera, too, needed some kind of specialized care? Was that the reason she'd had a seizure? Crispin resolved to look into it immediately.

Most vitally, he had some questions for his strange little shape-changer friend. What was she doing here? What were those errands she'd told him about the day he'd met her for the first time? And, still, the question remained about her family and where she'd come from. She hadn't brought a wallet or purse with her. There was no identification to be found in her gigantic satchel. These things needed to be cleared up right away.

Crispin was just making up his mind to take her tent-satchel to the family's house for safekeeping and to fetch a tape measure when he heard a distant set of trotting footsteps, approaching rapidly. Instinct shot through him, warning of potential danger. The feet were small and super-speed, vampiric. They were accompanied by a second set, larger. Tavora?! Crispin threw himself behind trees and brush, facing the incoming sounds, all his muscles tense, ready to attack or flee. He subconsciously groped behind him for a stick, even though it would do no good against his enemy. He just needed something to help him fight. His throat was tight and his lips had peeled all the way back from his teeth in a hideous defensive grimace, ready to bite.

Not one second later, Crispin relaxed. It was only Alice. She was bringing Jasper with her, which had been the second set of approaching feet that Crispn had heard. He popped up from behind his scanty cover and approached them happily, his frightened grimace turning into a relieved smile. What had he been so frightened of? Of course it wasn't Tavora. Alice had been tracking him. The tiny, pixie-like vampire paused, tilting her head at him, her little hands on her hips. "There you are. I was going to talk to you."

"Hello," Crispin replied, relieved. His residual terror of Tavora and her abuse had driven the panicked response overboard, and it felt incredibly good to be safe. He was a little high on his own relief. "You startled me."

Alice and Jasper both winced. They knew on a very personal level what it felt like to be abused and afraid. Alice had been tortured as a mortal, and Jasper was no stranger to being hurt and hunted. He'd lived the same way Crispin once had. "Sorry," said Jasper, and Crispin's tight stomach felt immediately better. Thank heaven for Jasper's emotion-influencing gift. Crispin smiled and nodded to him to let him know he'd noticed the kind gesture.

"All's well. I was hunting, but I got a little distracted."

"We noticed," Alice giggled. "That girl's scent is everywhere. I wondered if you'd follow it." Crispin might have blushed if he were not undead.

Jasper narrowed his eyes, looking around at the meadow. "What … happened here?" Classic Jasper, noticing all his surroundings and ready to react to a threat in a blink.

"Sera," Crispin said, putting heavy emphasis on her name. "She's a shape-changer, like the Quileutes." Jasper raised an eyebrow at him. Crispin beamed and scrambled to show his siblings what he'd discovered. "Look, see these? Claw marks. And that? I think her tail did that. Swept all those trees straight to the ground. And this? She ripped all those branches off on the way down from the sky."

"On the way down?" Alice said, swiftly. Crispin nodded.

"Yes. She must be enormous in her other form. Look at how widely these footprints are spaced. Look at the length of that tail! Something this big couldn't walk through an old-growth forest without making a terrible scene. She dropped out of the sky and landed here. Then I suppose she must have taken the form she's in, now."

Alice bit her lip and looked at Jasper, who took a deep breath through his nose. "Well," the older vampire muttered. "That sounds like fun, I suppose."

Crispin stared at his sister, muddled. "What?"

Alice nodded, slowly. "The vision of you flying on something gigantic and black, Crispin. Remember?"

Crispin's jaw tightened, his eyes widening. How had he not made that connection? The idea was a shock, and it made sense. Crispin wasn't sure he was happy about it. "That was Sera?" he marveled, a little stupidly. Of course it had been her. What else? Alice laughed a little.

"I've never seen anything like that thing in that vision. Unless you'll be clinging to a fighter jet after it takes off, I suppose. That seems a little much for you."

Crispin ran both his hands swiftly through his dark hair. "You can see her," he said, baffled. "You can see her. Why … why haven't you seen visions of her in her human form?"

Alice shrugged her little shoulders. "I don't know. Her human form blocks me and her … giant form doesn't. It's just how it works. I don't know everything."

"What is she?" Crispin wondered aloud, speaking to no one in particular. "What on earth could possibly take to the skies when it's that big? Unheard of."

"We're unheard of, remember?" said Jasper. "We're vampires. And werewolves exist—the Children of the Moon. And the Quileutes. She doesn't even have to be something … you know, known to science."

Crispin shyly glanced over at Sera's tent-bag, avoiding eye contact. "I … wonder if she might be a manticore." He risked a look back up at his siblings, half-expecting them to laugh.

Alice pursed her lips. "You should talk to her about this. I don't think we should keep it a secret."

Crispin took a deep breath. They didn't yet know about what had happened in Sera's hospital room today. Sera's lingering blood-scent was probably covered up by the smell of raccoons and by her own pungent odor in this meadow. He told them right away. "Sera knows what we are." Alice's eyebrows knit, and Jasper looked immediately foreboding. Crispin hurried to finish, before his siblings could speak. "She had a seizure this morning. Bit her tongue. Blood everywhere, of course—" Alice gasped, but Crispin pushed on, "—and she was worried I wouldn't have the strength to hold myself back. That's how she told me."

"You stayed?" Jasper demanded, alarmed. Crispin smiled a little sheepishly.

"I had to. I couldn't leave her all alone. She was scared. She needed me. Besides, Carlisle was there."

Jasper rolled his eyes and walked off a few paces, probably marveling at the risky stupidity of his normally-clever younger brother. Crispin looked at Alice. The pixie-like vamp shook her head. "That could have ended badly. You're thirsty enough."

"It was hard," Crispin agreed. "But I … I was too protective to give in."

Alice was quiet for a bit. She tapped her lips with a delicate white finger, looking slowly around at the destruction that had occurred here. "Seems like you have a right to know what she is, now," she commented. Crispin nodded.

"I know. I need to talk to her about this. Besides, if the Volturi find out …"

Jasper made a small noise of disbelief. Alice and Crispin both looked at him. He gave Crispin a pointed look, and then bent down and carefully lifted a toppled spruce that had come up by its roots. The tree was over twenty feet long. Jasper held it out to Crispin with one hand, his face a deadpan sort of look. "The Volturi seem not to know about this. Think about it. She's young, and she's still huge. Can you imagine how big a seasoned adult is, whatever they are? If they're strong enough to do this without hurting themselves, I think the Volturi would have decided a long time ago that her kind are too dangerous to be allowed. Look at what they did to the Children of the Moon. If they knew about these, they would have done something about it by now."

"You have a point," Crispin agreed. "But what if they find out about Sera? They'll find the rest of her kind, her family. I don't want to be the one responsible for revealing them."

"Then we had better not," said Jasper, seriously. He dropped the downed spruce, which hit the ground with a mighty crash even though it had only fallen from six feet up. "This needs to be cleaned up right now. You'd better handle it, Crispin. Send her home."

Crispin was a little worried. "Right now? I can't do that right now. I'm still—I've still got—why, there's got to be—I'm not ready." He grimaced internally at what had just come out of his mouth. Boy, had that been clumsy. Alice gave him a saddened look.

"I think you had better. I think the Volturi are about to get personally involved in our lives again."

Crispin whirled upon his sister, alarmed. "What? What did you see?"

Alice took a deep breath. "Tavora."