-MAISIE-


Though Nahuel and Huilen gave us largely the same information that Joham had just days before, the delivery of said information could not have been more different. Nahuel's face didn't hide the disgust he felt over his father's actions, and Huilen's hard burgundy eyes betrayed every ounce of the contempt she felt.

"He thinks he can create a master race of human-vampire hybrids, but he hasn't been successful since Jennifer," Nahuel's words tumbled from his mouth like a confession. He didn't have to explain further. However many women Joham had assaulted since Jennifer's birth, neither the children or mothers had lived.

"I bore witness to my sister's pregnancy," Huilen told us. "I watched her become sick, her skin pale and her eyes dull, while her body tried desperately to contain Nahuel. The hybrid children, they grow far too quickly for a human body to accommodate. After just a handful of weeks, I also witnessed Nahuel's birth."

Here, the image of an alien bursting out of a person's body resurfaced in my mind. During Joham's speech he gave us, this had been all I could concentrate on. Now, though, the conviction in Huilen's voice kept me wrapped in her story.

"I'm sure he told you that hybrid children are not born in the traditional manner, but I doubt he told you the gruesome truth. Nahuel, of no fault of his own, killed his mother. The hybrid children are incredibly strong, even in infancy. Pire, my sister, never would have survived. Her back was broken, her stomach eviscerated, during Nahuel's birth. I had already thought Joham a demon even when he was courting my sister and hadn't touched her yet. At the time, I was convinced Nahuel would be the same. Pire begged me to care for him even as she lay dying."

Nahuel hung his head the entire time Huilen spoke.

"I remember my mother's face," he confessed. "That's a curse of my existence, that I remember it in its entirety, including my birth."

Esme was not only an adoptive mother to the Cullen children, but she had once had a natural born child of her own. A son, who died when he was just a baby. She reached out across the coffee table separating her from Nahuel, giving his hand a gentle squeeze. A smile almost broke across his lips.

"I also remember Huilen and biting her when she picked me up. I'm still sorry about that. I recognized her voice, and how she had cursed me throughout my mother's pregnancy." This was an old wound that had obviously healed between the two, replaced by affection. Huilen twirled Nahuel's long braid around her fingers as he spoke.

"Still, I wouldn't let Serena have him when Joham sent her to collect him. Nahuel is the only male hybrid that we know of. He differs from his sisters mainly in that he is venomous, whereas they are not. Joham has his hypotheses, of course, that Nahuel would be reproductively compatible with humans as well, unlike his sisters, but he'll never have the satisfaction of testing that hypothesis."

Huilen's words tugged at my mind. I had spaced out for a chunk of the conversation with Joham, distracted by the horrors of the birth of a vampire-human hybrid. A deep chill spread down my back as I realized the context behind her words. Joham's hypothesis would only exist if his daughters had been unsuccessful in carrying a child themselves.

I cut my eyes at Jasper. He gave me an almost imperceptible nod.

My mind spiraled from there. Joham had freely told us that Jennifer had been his last child carried to term. How much had his daughters, and how many human women, had suffered at his hands?

Carlisle must have had the same thoughts running through his head, because he ventured to ask his only question amid Joham and Huilen's tale. "Your sisters have been pregnant, then?"

"Human, vampire…it doesn't matter who or what that monster forces his daughters to mate with, the result has always been the same. None of the girls have carried a child for longer than a handful of months before having a horrific miscarriage. Only their enhanced endurance and healing as hybrids have saved them from suffering the same fates as their mothers."

I didn't even want to know what level of Stockholm syndrome was involved for those girls to voluntarily stay with their father and subject themselves to such horrors.

Swallowing past my disgust, I forced myself to pay attention to the rest of what Nahuel had to say. "My father's greatest pipe dream is that I would ever join him in endeavors. It's a future he'll never see. Still, he periodically sends me letters—or my sisters—in the hopes of swaying me. After he met your family, another of his letters came."

The envelope was entirely ordinary, plain white and thin, yet it felt ominous when Nahuel held it out. He extended his arm toward me. I would be lying if I said I didn't want to take it, but I forced myself to reach out and take it from his hand.

Thanks, I hate it, my mind instantly reacted, making Edward almost snort in humor. Almost.

To my great relief, neither Nahuel nor Huilen had any expectations that I read the letter immediately. As soon as the letter was in my hand, they stood in tandem. In their parting, Nahuel and Huilen explained to Carlisle that they would never follow Joham's insane ideology of himself. They felt it was their duty to share the words written in the letter, specifically with me.

But I didn't read the letter while on Isle Esme. Instead, I packed it in the bottom of my suitcase, beneath all my clothes. A terrible dread filled me every time I did think about it, as we prepared to leave. The out of sight, out of mind thing I was going for didn't really work for me, because I thought of the letter constantly on the flight back to Washington. Carlisle was endlessly curious about the letter himself, I knew, but he respected the fact that it had been given to me.

I loved our time on Isle Esme, but I didn't want to read the letter on largely unfamiliar ground. Weird, I know, but the thought of reading the contents in South America frightened me immensely. It was too close to the source; South America was the place Joham had come from. Joham, and other human-preying vampires throughout the years on the continent, were the cause of the terror that Kaure felt over my place in the Cullen family.

I guess I could have asked Alice about what the letter contained. She would see Joham's words in a vision, I was sure, since I fully intended to read it. I preferred to just let it languish at the bottom of my suitcase instead.


How anyone—Carlisle or Esme or Edward or Jasper, I mean—could stand me, I wasn't sure. I didn't read the letter for another three days after we were back in Forks for the remainder of the summer. The four of them were the most invested in the letter, aside from myself. Emmett had already written it off as containing more 'psycho mumbo jumbo', and Rosalie apparently agreed, focusing again on summer studies.

Alice's calm gave me some reassurance. If anything terrible was waiting for me by reading the letter, she would have told me.

Jasmine was just generally uninterested, and I didn't blame her. She still bucked against the whole concept of vampirism, though it was her life now. Really, she and Rosalie should have been friends, but Rosalie was notoriously hard to win affection from. I should know.

The letter moved from my suitcase to hidden in one of my drawers in my bedroom. I didn't care about expediency in reading the thing. In truth, I was put off by it, and honestly, I didn't want to read it until I had a chance to catch Gunner up to speed. I was blessed in the fact that the four people who did want to read the letter were either rebuked by the propriety they had learned in the time period of their human lives or stilted by their own love for me, which gave me time to talk to my brother.

I practically had to cleave Gunner away from Leah, but I eventually caught him alone. Sitting beside Gunner in his bedroom, game controllers in our hands as we beat the crap out of each other in Mortal Kombat, I started to tell him about South America.

"So," I began with what I considered one of the heaviest topics, banking on the sound effects of the game to cover my words, "I'm drinking blood every day now."

Gunner's intake of breath was small, but I caught it. Blood perks, I had taken to calling it. The diet did improve my senses. Jasper had graciously suggested that we wait until the summer was over and we were back in Alaska to begin the daily feedings, but I wanted to start immediately. If that little leather-bound book had shown me anything, it was that I didn't have the luxury of wait time.

"But…" Gunner began, letting the rest of his sentence fall away as he countered the attack I sent his way in the game. He blocked it just in time.

"No," I answered his question though it was unfinished. "Not yet. Maybe never. I still don't know. Besides, you'll know if I choose that. I'll have to ask Sam for permission. Just because he works well with Carlisle doesn't mean he'll exactly be thrilled if I ask him to let Jasper break the treaty."

Even when I entertained the idea of becoming a vampire, I refused to imagine it any other way. It was Jasper or no one for me. Well…maybe Alice, if Jasper thought it would be too hard on him.

"It's because of that book, huh? The one that Carlisle sent with me and Leah to Alaska." I wasn't surprised that Gunner had snooped through the book. The illustrations in the back would have told him everything he needed to know while the Latin words were lost on him.

"Yeah, it is. I started when we got back."

"Jasper still brings it to you?" Enhanced senses be damned, Gunner was still exceptionally skilled at video games. I watched Sonya Blade start to sway on her feet after I was unable to stop Gunner's volley of attacks.

"Mhmm," I agreed, bearing witness to one of Sonya's countless deaths as the game encouraged Gunner to finish me off. "That's not all I learned, though."

"Oh, yeah? They got a vampire training school down there?"

I rolled my eyes, selecting Sonya for another round as Gunner ran through the character options. He was never a loyal player in any game. "Unfortunately, nothing so lucrative exists there. But they do have lobishomen."

Kaure had taught me that word. Or, rather, I heard her speak it first, and had asked Jasper for clarification. In her attempts to verify my safety on the island, Kaure had asked Carlisle if any lobishomen were with us. But the true lobishomen was Joham: An otherworldly creature who preyed on human women.

An entire legend based on one man, even one as singularly focused as Joham, was a stretch. Which meant there were likely more vampires like Joham throughout Brazil's history. Not exactly a comforting thought.

"Is that word supposed to mean something to me?"

"You're annoying. I'm getting to that. Basically, it's a male vampire that makes human-vampire hybrid babies with unlucky women."

That gave Gunner enough pause that I was able to sneak in a solid attack as he cut his eyes at me. "Are you telling me you could have a kid with Jasper?"

"I mean, technically, yeah, but it would eat its way out of my stomach and kill me in the process, so I'd rather not."

"Wait, what? Like Alien vs. Predator?" I slammed his Shang Tsung into the ground, taking advantage of Gunner's surprise.

"That's exactly what I thought of! Yeah, so that's a thing that happens. We met one on the island, this guy named Joham. He has three daughters and a son, all hybrids."

"And no one, like, did anything about this? I mean, this guy has four kids, right? He probably wouldn't stop there."

I was ashamed to admit that Gunner's question made me stop short. No, we hadn't. We could have, probably. It wasn't like vigilante justice wasn't in my history with the Cullens, either.

"Um. No."

Gunner's disparaging look was enough to make color rise in my cheeks. "That's a first, for you, the wannabe vampire hunter."

When James targeted our family, and Maria was specifically after Gunner, it had been a no-brainer for me. There was no question that I protect them with everything I had. Kaure's kindly worried face swam up in my mind. She was powerless to truly help me, if I had been in any danger on Isle Esme, and yet she still tried. She still came to the island every day to check on me, despite her own crippling fear that rolled off her in waves even I could feel.

"You know, you're right." I didn't have the heart to win the round, my guilt hit me so hard and fast. Poor Sonya was soon laid to waste once again.

"Happens more often than you'll ever admit."


My one stroke of luck was that Joham wrote the letter in English. Maybe it was his intent for it to end up in my hands.

Dearest Son,

There has been an interesting break-through in my life's plan. On an island, about fifty miles out, you might chance upon a rather unique coven of vampires. They are headed by a man named Carlisle and his wife, Esme. All members of this nine-person coven are vampire's, save for a human girl, Maisie.

Or, mostly human. You see, I initially took her for a hybrid, like yourself and your devoted sisters. However, it was brought to my intention that she is actually dosed with vampire venom. I have it in mind to try this myself—my hunch is that the practice may yield more favorable faults where your sisters have consistently failed.

This Carlisle wastes the opportunities set before him, instead lying to me about the reproductive capabilities of the girl. I could smell the stage of ovulation on her as easily as I can any other human woman. Though he calls himself a doctor, he's far from a man of science. The girl is lucky she's surrounded by so many vampires, or I could expediate my work considerably.

Your ever-loving father,

Joham

I thought I hated Nahuel just handing me the letter. I really hate the contents. Viscerally so.

"We have to do something about this!" I whisper-shouted at Jasper that very night. Shadows engulfed us in my dark bedroom, but I could still clearly see the confliction on his face.

"I know you hate this, and I don't like it, either, but—" I cut off his sentence, for the first time ever, anger flaring up in me toward Jasper.

"He's killed women before, and this letter is proof he has no intentions to stop. And who knows what he's done to his poor daughters! How many times they've 'failed' him, that stupid bastard."

"Maisie, please." When I threw my hands up, he caught hold of them, cradling them to his chest. "I understand where you're coming from, but have you stopped to wonder why Nahuel and Huilen haven't done anything even though they made it clear they disapprove?"

Jasper did not try to extinguish the fire of my anger, even as it made him grimace in discomfort of its blaze. Despite this, I had to admit that I hadn't. "No, not really."

"There are rules for our kind. I know I haven't told you much about the Volturi, and I think that's been a significant mistake on my part. I lived for years in direct violation of one of those rules, and I have no doubt the protection I had first from the newborn army and now from my bond with Carlisle is why I'm still here now."

"What are you talking about?" I asked, annoyed that the conversation had taken such a drastic turn. "I thought they were just some ancients in Italy who monitored vampirekind."

"There's not a lot of laws," Jasper plowed on. "You know the biggest one, and you follow it religiously for us: Don't reveal the truth of vampires to humans. I've already broken that. Volturi members came to the southern states more than once to do sweeps of the armies. Through mine and Maria's wits alone, we survived all those sweeps, but that didn't make us any less complicit every time the wars drew human attention. The second goes along with the first, because there's almost no way to control them: do not create immortal children."

To his credit, that term, 'immortal children', did give me pause. "What?"

"Immortal children, the crime for which the Denali sisters' mother died. Children are off limits when it comes to creating new vampires. They are overpowered and not yet cognitively mature enough to truly gain a handle on their bloodlust. All immortal children and their creators were executed. Just like exposing the truth to humans, creating an immortal child carries with it an automatic death sentence if the Volturi find out."

"Okay, and? Does it even really count, you telling me about vampires? All you did was give a name to a mystery I had all my life, and none of y'all have ever created an immortal child."

"Perhaps, but the laws are subjectively black-and-white. Any gray area allowed is entirely dependent on the whims of the Volturi on any given day. You know that our family is an exception, as well as our Denali cousins. Human life is not valued by the majority of vampires, and the same is true for the Volturi. How else would the traditional feeding habits be allowed?"

"I still don't follow where you're going." Letting go of one of my hands for a moment, Jasper traced a finger along the scar on my cheek. The first one Maria had left on my body, when she had scratched my face to deliver the first dose of venom.

"Why do you think the practice that Maria used to mark you was unheard of to someone like Carlisle, who has seen centuries come and go?"

He wasn't asking me rhetorically, I realized. There was a pause for me to piece the answer together in my brain. "Well, when we had Garrett helping us with research, he said it was a fashion trend. That humans would seek it out. So…they knew about vampires."

"And the trend was snubbed out so entirely that all we have had to go on since is pieced together information from old friends such as Garrett or Peter and Charlotte, as well as one book."

The Volturi, these mythical overlords, had executed every vampire dosing humans and every human privy to that information, then. It was a sobering realization.

"Just because all the women Joham hurts die in the end and the secret is kept doesn't make any of it right."

Jasper let go of my other hand, running his own through his hair. "Maisie. Going to the Volturi, more often than not, results in death. Not just Joham's. Probably his daughters, for taking part in his experiments. Perhaps even Nahuel and Huilen's, for not coming forward. My entire family would be guilty of exposing the truth to you, as well as our Denali cousins, Peter and Charlotte, and Garrett. Mine. Yours. Gunner, Bella Swan, the Quileute wolves, their families and imprints."

With each name Jasper gave me, a deeper and deeper chill settled through my body. "We wouldn't have to tell them all that. They don't have to know."

"They will know. Aro, one of the leaders, will know. Think of Edward's gift. He can hear any thoughts, relive any memories, that are currently in your head. Aro's power runs in the same vein. All he needs to do is make physical contact, and he can see every memory, hear every thought. No one would be safe, no matter how desperately you want them to be."

"So, we just do nothing about this? While Joham misleads and rapes and kills women? While his daughters suffer his abuse?"

He seemed to deflate under his sigh, relieved, I was sure, as the fight drained out of me. When Jasper opened his arms, I went easily into them. I buried my face against his chest, wrapping my arms around his waist as he enveloped me. His relief bled into my own feelings of exhaustion and guilt and regret; so, too, did his pride and his love.

"We're all guilty of not acting on Isle Esme," he conceded. "I don't like what Joham is doing anymore than you do. But the chances are not in our favor, mi corazon. It would be all to easy to see Joham as technically innocent, while we are very much not. We do not go the Volturi."

"Okay," I murmured against his t-shirt. "No Volturi."

But Jasper did not say no werewolves.

It was such a tiny thing, I know, but I felt like I had to do something. Before the week was over, I found myself in Emily Young's kitchen, sitting across from Sam and picking at a chocolate chip muffin Emily had given me. I was too ashamed of my inaction to even have Leah there, though she usually accompanied me for any meetings with Sam.

The hard flintiness of Sam's dark eyes was all I needed to know how truly cowardly we had all been.

"Please," I begged hollowly. "I know. I know." Taking a habit from Jasper, I ran a hand through my hair. "I'm sick with myself."

"But not with them?" Sam snapped. I recoiled at his tone, even though I understood where he was coming from.

"Except for Jasmine, all the Cullens have lived for decades under the norm that human life is not valued by the vast majority of vampires. As there are no human survivors of Joham's sick experiments…by vampire laws…he didn't do anything 'wrong'. So, yeah, I hate myself more over this because I am human, and I still didn't think to do anything."

I raised my eyes to meet Sam's, forcing myself to keep his gaze even as his anger blazed plain as day.

"I'm telling you so the pack will know if he or his daughters come to Forks. The daughters smell like me, apparently. They follow the traditional vampire diet, all of them. I know you have your own rules within the tribe and the pack for protecting this land, and Forks. Your land. Your rules. I'll leave that choice to you, if they come here."

The bite was unmasked in my words; I was unable to keep myself from rising to the challenge. I doubted I would ever be half the diplomat Carlisle was. Sam held my gaze for another beat before looking away.

"Thank you." Unlike myself, Sam did share a lot of leadership qualities with Carlisle. Though I knew he was still outraged—that was evident enough in the slight tremor of his hand, a sign of anger among the shapeshifters—he pushed it aside to offer a handshake. "We'll keep a look out. Our list keeps growing, thanks to you."

My brow crumpled in. What was he talking abou— "Oh, fuck."

Vaguely, I wondered what kind of sight I made for Sam Uley as I ran from his fiancée's house. I know I jumped from the stool so quickly it wobbled as I fled, jumping down the entirety of the porch steps to run to my car.

Will I ever learn not to be so fucking stupid? I thought to myself, backing out without looking and narrowly missing Seth Clearwater and his friends as they walked toward the house. Barely raising my hand in apology, I gunned it back to Forks.

How could I have forgotten about Irina?


A/N: I feel obligated to state that I don't own Twilight, Mortal Kombat, or Alien vs. Predator, or any characters within those franchises.

I guess that's what happens when you make a ton of references in one chapter!

Oooooh, action.

I really ended up front loading a lot of information before making it to the more action-y pieces of the story, huh? I'm sorry about that! I hope y'all enjoy the next few chapters as we get into some meatier parts of the story.