This is the #1 most requested outtake by a landslide: Peter and Charlotte meeting the Cullens for the first time! Fortunately, back when I was first writing the Alice/Jasper outtakes, I somehow missed that one line in the Guide that said they travelled with Jasper AND Alice for a while. So this is also their first time meeting Alice as well, and they're hearing about the animal diet for the first time. I doubt it was SM's final headcanon anyway, since it doesn't really jive with the timeline, and it's much more fun this way.
We may brave human laws, but we cannot resist natural ones.
-Jules Verne
July 1969
Peter POV
"I think she's going to bring the cubs out today," Charlotte whispered. Her voice was so soft it could have been just another breath of wind. The lioness's left ear flicked in response, but she yawned in disinterest. As soon as she had turned her back, I nodded in agreement.
We had been parked in the grasses surrounding the mouth of this cave for seven days, thirteen hours, ten minutes and thirty-eight seconds. It had taken a full day for the mountain lion—Cleopatra, according to Charlotte—to show her face, scowling in maternal worry and warning, and another day for her to truly accept our permanent integration into the landscape. She had finally inched out into the daylight then, circling in front of the cave's mouth in patrol for another hour before meandering to the nearby stream for a drink. Charlotte had begun to worry on the third day that our presence might be hurting the cubs' health; their mewling had grown more insistent, and Cleopatra would not dare to trust us long enough for a decent hunt.
We had catered the meal ourselves in the end. Or more accurately, I had catered the meal. Charlotte was far too entranced to leave her post, worried that she would miss something in her absence. So I was the one sent to fetch some decent prey for the new mother. This thankless task was more difficult than I would have expected; the first deer I caught died of sheer terror the instant my hands touched it, and the second one was so rambunctious I had to carry it on my shoulders like a lamb. And when I did get it back to Cleopatra's cave, it refused to stay put. I had to crawl out of the grass on my elbows and keep one of its legs shackled until Cleopatra got the message. It kicked and nibbled at me the whole time, its panicked grunts matching nicely with Charlotte's incessant giggling. And of course she got a picture of that. But it was worth it in the end, I guess: Cleopatra had her meal, the cubs had theirs, and we had officially earned their trust.
Charlotte's foot nudged mine, and I felt her catch her breath beside me. Sure enough, Cleopatra was plodding out her front door, nudging along a clumsy ball of fur with her nose while another one nipped at her heels.
"A boy and a girl," Charlotte exclaimed happily. "Though I had thought... wait, look!"
A third cub came tumbling out of the cave, promptly knocking his brother on his back in his eagerness to be first.
"He's a feisty one," I laughed, forgetting to keep my voice down. The cubs instantly tucked themselves under Cleopatra's belly, crying their squinty little eyes out, but their mother just turned her majestic head and gave me a look that said now see what you've done.
"I knew there were three," Charlotte sang to herself. "I win!"
"Not if there are four," I said, but after a few minutes I conceded defeat. This was my third loss in a row; that meant Charlotte got to pick our next three adventures in a row. I didn't mind one bit, and she knew it, but a victory was a victory and my Charlotte was a sore winner.
"I win, I win, I win," she sang under her breath, rolling in the grass to land herself smack in my face, camera and all. I growled and locked my arms around her, tickling her sides until she buried her gloating mouth in my shoulder to keep herself quiet.
"All right, hot shot. What are you going to name your three little pigs?"
"Guess."
I snorted. "Ptolemy, Cleopatra and Ptolemy."
She rolled free, getting up onto her elbows to start snapping baby pictures. "You have no imagination."
"Neither did the Ptolemies," I observed. "Well?"
She studied the cubs for a few more minutes, finally getting an amazing picture of the feisty male squinting up at his mother. "Larry, Moe, and Curly," she decided. "The girl can be Curly."
I shook my head, smiling as I watched her. She was entranced, talking and cooing and wriggling ever closer on her elbows to get a better angle.
"That's the last roll of film," I reminded her. She pouted, clicking the last picture. She laid the camera down and settled her chin on her folded hands. Day turned to evening, and evening into night. She watched the cubs with curious fascination, and I watched her with even more.
Charlotte found beauty everywhere we went. She had equal streaks of poet and genius, so it made sense that this kind of thing would keep her enraptured for days on end. But she even found beauty in the unlikely places: in storm clouds, in the graceful skeleton left behind by a snake, in the smelly, dirty skyline of New York City.
She even found beauty in me.
"Do you think she'd let me hold one of them?" she asked when the sun rose again. The weather was quite nice this week, allowing the new little family to play and rest and sleep outside. Now Cleopatra was lying helpless on her side while the cubs suckled a mere twenty feet from where we lay watching.
"I think she might. I think she's beginning to feel actually safer with us here."
Charlotte smiled, closing her eyes and squinting hard the way she always did when she was dreaming up her poetry. I waited, smiling as I watched the wheels spin in her mind. She opened her eyes.
"Golden youth from winter's death
Free from care and danger wild
Safe in the guard of gargoyles,
Burning stone."
I nodded, reaching out slowly to touch her shoulder. The first glitter of the sunrise was blushing over her skin. Its brightness set her afire to match her verse. "I like it."
We waited until the cubs' meal was over. Charlotte wriggled closer and closer, keeping herself low and quiet. Cleopatra watched her progress intently, but never moved to get up or bustle the cubs back into the cave. By the time Charlotte was close enough to reach out and touch the cubs, the sun was at its noon height.
"Larry," she crooned, trilling her fingers in the dirt and walking them closer like spider legs. Larry sneezed and then pounced, wrapping himself around her hand and gnawing on her wiggling fingers. Charlotte giggled. "That tickles!"
She slowly drew her hand in, tickling him back and letting him pounce again and again until he was butting his head against her side and chomping holes in her shirt. He finally got a good mouthful of cotton, growling and tugging and whipping his fuzzy little head back and forth to dislodge his prey.
Cleopatra watched the scene for another moment, then looked away and yawned her permission. I began my own stealth mission, drawing the last roll of film out of my pocket and loading it so quietly Charlotte didn't even notice. She was too wrapped up in Larry's antics, laughing and doing a little growling of her own as she played tug-o-war with her tattered shirt. She finally rolled onto her back and brought out her other hand, carefully stroking his back as he clambered up onto her stone belly.
"Good boy," she sighed, scratching behind his ears. They both startled as I raised the camera to my eye and the shutter clicked. "Hey! I thought you said we were out of film."
"Surprise," I teased, fiddling with the zoom lens to get a close-up of Larry nibbling on her chin. She lay perfectly still, letting his paws tread on her face.
"Oh no you don't," she growled, tugging him down when he decided to take a mouthful of hair. "I've hardly got any left as it is."
"You think his teeth would tear it?" I worried.
"I don't know, and I'm not going to find out!" She pushed him away again, but he was determined now, pouncing at her hair again and again. She sat up just in time for Curly to join in the fun, knocking her brother out of the way so she could have a taste of shirt, too. I took picture after picture, then set the camera timer and slowly crawled out to join them. I reached them just as the shutter clicked and Moe streaked in as well. He butted my shoulder so hard he bounced back, looking dazed.
Cleopatra rumbled a note of disapproval, but gave us only a glance before continuing her disinterested vigil. We spent most of the afternoon having our clothes torn to shreds by our new little friends and generally serving as their playground. Cleopatra lumbered to her feet once the breeze began to smell of rain, and the cubs whisked back to her side.
"Bye," Charlotte called softly as they all tucked back into the cave. The rain began to make polka dots in the the bare dirt outside the cave's mouth. We went and found a little cave of our own, making love while the storm raged and flashed outside. I also made a thorough inventory of Charlotte's hair, worried that the cubs might have torn it after all. Not that her hair wasn't short and ragged already, but I was relieved to find no change.
I wasn't one to fixate on my regrets, but this was one memory I wished I could blot away as easily as my human ones. Jasper had never been able to be near the newborns when they were still in transition, and Maria wasn't one to do her own dirty work. So I was the one who had always carried a knife on my belt—I was the one who had casually wrapped his fist in Charlotte's long, beautiful hair and ripped my knife through it all a few inches from her scalp. She hadn't meant a thing to me back then, and so neither had her screams, but... it felt like I should have known somehow, even then. I would have been so much gentler, even if I couldn't have avoided following orders. I would have cut it more evenly, left her a little more than this. I wouldn't have moved right on to the next woman in transition, absently spilling Charlotte's hair out of my hand to fall into the mud in a tangled, forgotten pile.
I would do anything to give it back to her. Even now, more than thirty years after her change, her hand would sometimes go up to graze her shoulder when she was upset or lost in thought, finding nothing there. When she was feeling pretty she would run her fingers over and around her ear, though there was hardly anything to tuck behind the ear at all. I had finally confessed what I had done, a few years ago; it made her sad, but I could tell she had already suspected it had been me. But this was the world we found ourselves in. There wasn't any use in letting that early pain continue to have any power over us.
We had chosen to explore that world instead. There was an eternity's worth of things to learn and observe and experience. Even if we lived long enough to visit every last corner of the earth, by that time we would be able to start over because everything would have changed by then. And who could say what the future held? The space program was achieving miracle after miracle lately. If the humans were soon conducting regular traffic around the solar system, might vampires find a way to hitch a ride as well? And even without that possibility, the opportunities were endless here on Earth. National parks and crowded cities, museums and orchestras and insects and fascinating languages... even something as simple and small as a trio of baby mountain lions exploring the world for the first time. We could never fully escape the monstrosity that Maria had forced on us, but the victory was in relegating that monstrosity to the smallest corner of our existence. We knew vampires whose entire existence centered around the hunt, whose exploration was limited to seeking out the best types of prey and stalking them for days on end. Others relished the kill and the ecstasy it could bring as if it were the only pleasure in the world. They brought themselves to life by dragging that life out their prey, inflicting as much pain and fear as they could manage.
Our world was so much more than that. We fed when we had to, but we were merciful and quick. Yes, we took every advantage that humanity had to offer, but from humanity as a whole. Two minutes of hot-blooded fulfillment was one thing, but the produce of the human mind... that was eternal. Every mortal had the chance to become immortal in their own way. A poem, a composition, a trilogy of adventures written down, new innovations and technology, an invisible brilliance playing out in the social evolution of whole societies... that was what we spent our time consuming. And that kind of consumption took nothing away. We would read a book and leave it for the next person to enjoy, human or vampire. Partaking of the beauty of a symphony took nothing away from its performance. We had no choice but to take a human out of the world now and then, but that world was overcrowded as it was. They had their nature, and we had ours. If anything, our kills were just another part of that balance. We refused to let that dark corner of our life stop us from enjoying the beauty in the rest of it. And in moments like this, when the lightning flashed and illuminated Charlotte, lying beside me with her scarlet eyes fixed on mine in grateful wonder... we made our own beauty.
.
.
.
We stayed with Cleopatra's family until I couldn't stand the thirst anymore. We made our way westward toward Salt Lake City, finding a pair of grizzly old men who seemed to have nothing better to do than shoot more deer than they could carry home. After that we turned north, picking through a confusing twist of hills and lakes. Charlotte decided that our next destination would be the Aleutian Islands off the coast of Alaska; she had recently read Island of the Blue Dolphins and wanted to see the landscape and horizons she had been trying to imagine.
The trees were just beginning to thin as we approached the city of Logan. We were planning to wait until nightfall to go steal ourselves some new clothes, but we stopped in our tracks when a breeze stirred, bringing a hint of vampire scent with it.
"I can't tell who it is yet, can you?" Charlotte asked.
"Not yet." I stepped forward against the wind and up the hill, sniffing and trying to tell if... "It's Jasper!" I said, turning around with a grin. Charlotte smiled and scampered up to my side, sniffing as well.
It was him, all right. We followed the scent over the hill, in and out the other side of the next clump of scraggly trees and over another two hills. It grew stronger and stronger, and when we crested the third hill I saw him in the distance, waiting under the edge of another hedge of smaller trees. I gave him a wave and we picked up our speed.
It had been so long since we'd seen Jasper... just over twenty years. I had begun to worry how he'd been faring, because he hadn't been in great shape upon parting with us back then. He was better off than he'd been with Maria, and we'd parted on good terms after running together for a few years, but he'd been notably more depressed. His gift had always worn on him, even now that he was free of the violent emotions of war. It was the feeding; no matter how he handled the kill, he always suffered from the humans' dying emotions. And in those last couple years with us, it had been doing something else to him. His bouts of depression had stretched longer and longer between kills. He seemed fine now, from a distance, but I hoped we would find him in higher spirits. I owed him my life three times over, and I wanted to see him at peace with the eternity he was travelling alone.
"He looks happier," Charlotte murmured at my side as we ran toward him. I thought so too. We closed the gap and joined him in the shadows. Charlotte hung back just enough for me to embrace him first, which I was about to do, but I stopped short.
"Your eyes!"
Jasper nodded, grinning anyway and reaching to grasp my shoulder. "I'll explain everything. I'm so glad to see you both!"
"Jasper," Charlotte said happily, scooting up to my side. He nodded his greeting, his strange golden eyes sparkling with happiness. Suddenly he laughed. "What?" she said.
He shook his head, turning to head deeper into the trees, and we followed him. I finally noticed that he wore a knapsack on his back. Charlotte had been wearing one as well lately, carrying her camera and the few pictures that we had developed and decided to keep for a while. As we came up behind him, I noticed more changes: his clothes looked new, and they fit perfectly. The shoes... his hair, neatly combed and clean. There was even a gold ring on one of his hands, and some kind of wide band made of black leather on one wrist, and a fine-looking watch on the other. It all made the scars more obvious, more out of sync with his civilized appearance. And this close, I also noticed the hint of another scent on him.
"You've met up with others recently?" I asked, clambering over a huge fallen tree and hopping down from it.
"I have so much to tell you," Jasper said, turning around and stopping once we were deep in the shade. "For one thing, I've got a mate now. Alice," he added, his voice going soft. His smile grew in a way I'd never seen before.
"A mate!" Charlotte cried, finally jumping into his arms. She'd never been so close to him before, and it made my skin crawl for just a fraction of a second, but that was all.
"A mate," I echoed, clapping him on the shoulder. "I thought I smelled someone on you. Congratulations! Well, where is she?"
"You'll meet her soon. I'm taking you to our house—it's a little closer to Logan, though still out of the way of the humans."
"Your house?" Charlotte laughed. "Come on, Jasper, tell us everything!"
"Alice and I have been together since '48. We met in Philadelphia... or I should say, she was waiting for me. Alice is gifted; she has visions of the future and she saw me coming."
I let out a low whistle. "That's some gift."
"She's incredible. And she had golden eyes. She's the one who taught me..." He paused dramatically. "We feed on animals."
I laughed, waiting for the punch line.
"I know... crazy, isn't it? But that's what makes our eyes this color... something about the blood is different. I haven't had human blood in several years now."
"You're kidding," I said flatly.
"Not at all." He smiled, looking more solemn but at peace. "It's set me free... she's set me free. You know how I suffered before, hunting humans."
"You don't feel things from the animals?" Charlotte asked doubtfully. Jasper shook his head. "But... how? Animals don't... well, they sure don't smell like something I'd want to feed from!"
Jasper grimaced now. "It's something of an acquired taste. To be honest, I'm still getting used to it. And sometimes the temptation is too much, and I slip and have a human. But it's been a while now. Anyway, come on! Alice is dying to meet you. Oh—she sent these along with me." He slipped the knapsack off one shoulder, unzipping it to reveal a wad of clothes. "That's what had me laughing," he added, passing us each a bundle. "She said you'd want these, and now I see what she meant!" Charlotte giggled, hooking a finger into one of the larger holes in her shirt.
We ducked into a denser part of the woods to change, giving each other a wordless glance of incredulity at Jasper's story. Animals... who would have thought it was possible? I wondered what that even tasted like.
When we joined him again, he picked up the pace. "Alice and I spent a couple of years alone. It was especially hard at first, getting used to the animals. Or rather, getting used to not having human blood in me. We got as far as we could from human civilization as we could while I... adjusted. And then we went to join the others."
"Others?" Charlotte asked, accepting my offered hand as we crossed a stream, tiptoeing on the rocks.
"The Cullens. We're like a family. Alice had seen them beforehand, just like she had seen me. Carlisle is the leader, and his mate is Esme. Rosalie and Emmett are together, and there's also Edward."
I felt a shiver of warning rush through me. So many! I'd never met a coven anywhere near that large, unless you counted Maria's army and the groups we had fought during my time there. "And they're all at your house? We're going to meet them all now?"
"Yes, they're all waiting there to meet you. Alice saw—with her gift, I mean—that this would be easier for you if I came to meet you alone. They're all friendly, but it probably would have a little overwhelming if you'd met or smelled everyone at once."
We were following along a highway now, cars zooming past us. One truck driver slowed down, probably to offer us a ride, but when we turned to look at him he sped up in a hurry. We trudged on at human speed now, following the highway up into a thicker section of trees. It felt good to be travelling together again, but he was so different... so carefree. He walked so close to us, whereas before he had always kept a little distance between himself and us, knowing how his gift could affect us sometimes. He even seemed taller, though that could have been the shoes.
Jasper turned onto a dirt road that was barely visible until we were right on top of it. We picked up into a run again, and a moment later a grand house appeared. Three stories at least, and it was immaculate, right down to the handsome flower beds and the winding cobblestone path that led to the front porch. It looked like someone really lived here.
"Now I'm really glad for the clothes!" Charlotte exclaimed, her hand going to her shoulder. "I can't believe a house like this was abandoned!"
"No, we bought it."
"With what?" I asked. "How do you have any cash at all anymore, if you don't have your prey to pickpocket?"
"We actually have quite a lot of money," Jasper said. "Carlisle is a doctor, if you can believe it."
I blinked. "I can't."
"Feeding on animals—" he began, but the door swung open and a little female vampire zipped out to meet us. "That's my Alice."
"Peter and Charlotte!" she squealed, slamming into Jasper and bouncing up on her toes. "I've been waiting to meet you for ages and ages!"
"Hello, Alice," Charlotte began, but Alice peeled off of Jasper and slammed into Charlotte this time. Charlotte let out a squeak and I tensed, but it was just a hug. They were nearly the same height, Alice being just a little shorter, and her black hair was cropped short as well. It was styled and clean, though it stuck out from her head in wild little wings. Her scent was a little spicy, matching the one I had detected on Jasper earlier.
"Alice," Jasper chuckled, his grin wider than ever. "Sorry," he added to us. "She's really been looking forward to this."
"It's a pleasure to meet you," I offered, relieved when she stayed latched onto Charlotte and merely took my offered hand. "It's about time this guy settled down—wait, are you two actually married?" I asked, finally noticing that Alice's ring matched his own, and the diamond that sat beside it. How odd!
"Of course!" Alice crowed, turning to look back at the house, and the front door which still hung open. "You can all come out now!"
A male with short blond hair appeared in the doorway and stepped out onto the porch. He turned and waited for the next vampire to emerge—a smiling female with caramel hair that bounced with every step. She took the male's hand and they darted over to us in a flash. The other three vampires filed out. They all looked a bit younger than the first two: another female, tall and beautiful with flowing golden hair, a huge male that jumped right off the porch toward us, and a slighter male with hair the color of an old penny. Charlotte and I both flinched back a step, especially when the huge male landed and sprayed us with dirt.
"Oh, Emmett!" the oldest female scolded, but she never lost her smile. "Peter and Charlotte," she said warmly, turning back to us. "We've hoped this day would come. We've heard so much about you!"
"Carlisle Cullen," her mate said in a voice just as warm. He shook my hand and then Charlotte's. "This is my wife Esme. This is Edward"—he gestured toward the youngest-looking male—"and Rosalie and Emmett."
What a group. Jasper stood completely at ease next to his new leader. Alice had gone back to Jasper's side, and everyone stood in a line smiling at us, a row of vampires with golden eyes, all relaxed and supposedly happy to have a pair of complete strangers in their territory. It felt like I should be afraid, but I wasn't... Jasper must have been calming me from the start.
"Please, join us inside," Carlisle continued, turning back toward the house. "It'll be raining soon."
Charlotte looked up at the clear sky. "It will?"
Esme laughed, sounding like a happy set of wind chimes. "It was quite a revelation when Alice joined our family back in 1950. She's the most accurate meteorologist in the world. Did Jasper tell you about her gift?"
"Yes, ma'am," I answered politely. I had never called a vampire "ma'am" before, but these people made me feel like I was a young human again, dressed in a stiff suit and minding his manners at one of his parents' dinner parties. Everyone was so clean, and they all wore shoes. Everyone but Edward wore wedding rings like Jasper.
"Thank you for the clothes, Alice," Charlotte said shyly as we all followed Carlisle.
Alice beamed. "Do you like them? Of course I would have gotten something nicer, I just didn't have any time, I only just saw the possibility of your visit this morning, and I didn't even see a visit at first—you would have been scared off when you found all our scents at once, I sort of had to work backwards—anyway, once we tweaked everything so you would come, I had to run into town, but then—"
"Breathe, Alice," Edward said, chuckling. Alice gasped a breath as we all bounded up the porch steps, then started again, this time about how delighted she was to finally meet us in person, how she had watched us back when we were with Jasper but hadn't been able to see us since then. It was a little disconcerting to think of her being able to watch us like a television show, especially when she began to recall specific things she had seen. There seemed to be something a little... off about her, though the same thing could be said for the others. They were moving and talking just a little too slowly—not quite human speed, but it was odd. They swung their arms when they walked and held themselves loosely. Jasper moved more normally, but now that I thought about it he seemed a little sluggish as well.
Carlisle offered us chairs in the living room—a cozy-looking picture right out of a magazine except for the enormous grand piano taking up a full half of it–and everyone else gathered loosely around the room, sitting or standing. "I've also been looking forward to this day," he said with a smile. "We've always been so grateful for what you did for Jasper, and now we finally have the chance to thank you."
"Yes," his mate agreed, squeezing his hand. "We can't thank you enough for going back down to Mexico to help him escape. That must have been very frightening. For both of you," she added, smiling warmly over at Charlotte.
"Don't worry about it," I said awkwardly, not liking the feeling of so many vampires staring at me with their strange yellow eyes. It felt even more cramped in the living room than before. What was wrong with standing in the rain?
"You have our eternal gratitude," Carlisle continued. "And our welcome. Jasper is a part of our family now, and it wouldn't have been possible if you hadn't done what you did. If there is ever anything we can help you with..."
"We're fine, thank you," Charlotte protested. "But we're so curious... you actually live in this house? All the time?"
"For now," Edward answered vaguely.
"We can't stick around too long," Emmett added, scooping a basketball out from a cluttered corner and tossing it up in the air to himself. "The humans are pretty easy to fool, but even they eventually catch on to the fact that we never get any older! We do about four to six years each time. So we've got a couple years left here, and then we'll move on."
"We generally keep to the northern half of the United States and Canada," Esme put in. "Although we do travel sometimes. I'm sure you two have seen far more of the world than we have!"
"We've been around," I agreed. "We spent some time in Iceland earlier this year, and we're on our way to the Aleutian Islands after this."
"Ooh... make sure you stop at Kodiak Island," Emmett said roughly, grinning and showing his teeth. "Good bears there... aw, but I guess you wouldn't be interested."
"Not really," I said, turning to look again at Jasper's eyes. "You really drink animal blood? I can't even imagine..."
"Carlisle's never fed from a human," Edward said, looking toward his leader with a smile.
"I've never even tasted human blood," Rosalie said, leaning back into her couch with self-satisfied disinterest. I looked around at everyone, still waiting for the punchline. What was wrong with these people?
"How do you..." Charlotte shook her head slowly. "How do you stand it?"
Carlisle smiled. "It's merely a matter of practice. Anyone can do it, although it's admittedly more difficult when a vampire has been accustomed to human blood for an extended time, and then decides to switch. Jasper has come a long way."
"It took a while," Jasper admitted. "And it's still harder for me than the others. Carlisle created everyone here, except Alice and myself, so they were all vegetarians from day one."
"Vegetarians?" Charlotte echoed with a giggle.
"That's what we call ourselves," Edward said with a rueful smile.
"But you're the opposite of real vegetarians!"
Edward shrugged. "Not really. It's not a perfect analogy, but the point is that we choose to abstain from the food—drink, rather—that most of our kind consume. We feel that it's the right thing to do."
"And it allows us the freedom to live among humans," Esme added. "What with our eyes not being red and our practiced self-control, we're able to build a life for ourselves that feels close to normal. Carlisle works as a doctor at our local hospital, and the others usually attend school, either the public schools or a nearby university."
"Why would you want to do that, though?" I asked. "I mean, no offense, but you just said that we've gotten to travel more than you have, because we don't have a permanent home."
"We do enjoy traveling. Any kind of learning, really," Carlisle said. "But I also find it very rewarding to put down roots, to stay connected to human society... to feel that I'm contributing. The whole thing makes us feel more human ourselves. Although we would abstain even if there were no rewards. To hold human life to be sacred and worthy of protection, in and of itself, is what makes us feel the most human of all."
I tilted my head, wondering what the point of that was. Carlisle raised his hands, smiling sadly. "I'm not going to preach at you. Believe me, if there's anything I've learned over the past three centuries it's that most vampires aren't interested in trying our strange way of life. But if you'd be interested, the forested area just to our north offers an excellent variety of prey."
"Yeah, we were going to go hunting tonight anyway," Emmett added, dropping the basketball and lazily tumbling onto another small couch and wrapping an arm around his mate.
I tried to picture it. Jasper, the most bloodthirsty vampire I had ever encountered, hunched over a rabbit, peeling back his lips away from the fur as his teeth sought the tiny veins...
"Rabbits!" Edward laughed suddenly. "No, thank you!"
"I tried one once," Rosalie offered, wrinkling her nose. "It tasted almost like the humans' salad, and there's hardly any point considering the size." Emmett chuckled, ruffling her hair slightly. But I was staring curiously at Edward.
"I was just thinking of rabbits," I told him.
"Were you?" he said innocently.
"We thought it'd be more fun this way," Jasper said, grinning and pulling Alice closer. "We told you about Alice's gift, but you have to guess Edward's."
"Okay..." I studied Edward closely, tilting my head in curiosity. "Something like Alice's? You can tell what people are going to talk about?"
"Guess again," Edward said, shaking his head. "Here's another clue... Charlotte just noticed the clouds rolling in." I glanced out the window; sure enough, the wind had picked up and Alice's prediction looked to be coming true any minute.
"You're right," Charlotte replied, tilting her head curiously. "I was just... wait, so you can actually hear what I'm thinking?"
"You got it," Emmett announced. "But you should have dragged it out longer, Eddie. It's not every day we get to pull your mindreading thing on unsuspecting strangers."
"Edward," Edward scowled, rolling his eyes. I frowned at him, not liking the idea of his digging through Charlotte's mind. Or through my mind, if I was thinking certain things about her. He caught my eye and sighed. "I can't help it," he said apologetically. "It doesn't turn off. I do give what privacy I can, though."
"Fair enough," I offered, still frowning.
"That's a lovely picture," Charlotte announced, standing up and moving toward a framed photograph of a sunset that hung on the wall above the mantle.
"Thank you," Esme said, joining her. "I took that back when we lived in Oregon in the fifties."
"You took this?" Charlotte whispered, moving even closer and reaching up her hand to nearly touch the brilliant sunrays. It was beautiful. I thought of all the pictures Charlotte had taken since she had picked up the hobby; we had tried saving a few of her earlier ones, keep them in a little plastic bag inside the knapsack, but they got so tattered anyway they weren't worth keeping. There wasn't any point in the first place; we didn't need the pictures in our hands when our minds kept the images perfectly as it was. But I remembered Charlotte's sadness the last time we had been obliged to throw away the worn pictures.
"Actually," I said, speaking over Charlotte's chatter with Esme, "maybe there is something you can do for us."
"Anything," Carlisle said warmly.
"I don't know how it would work," I began, "what with the way you move around, but Charlotte takes pictures too, and we don't have anywhere to keep them. Do you have some kind of... storage facility?"
"Several," Jasper said, a sparkle of laughter in his yellow eyes.
Carlisle looked thoughtful. "I don't believe you can mail things to a storage unit, though..."
"Oh, but I'd love to see your work!" Alice told Charlotte. "Why don't you just mail them to us, wherever we are?"
"But how would we know where you were at any given time?" Charlotte asked.
"Every time we move we write to whoever has a mailing address," Edward put in. "Or a P.O. Box," he added, turning to me. "Have you ever signed up for one?"
"Why would I want to do that?"
"So that we have a place to mail to when we move, obviously, so that you can mail us Charlotte's pictures."
"You'll have to excuse Edward," Rosalie sighed, examining her painted fingernails. "Carlisle dropped him during his transformation." Edward rolled his eyes again, getting up and moving to sit at the huge piano.
"Let's just keep it simple," Esme offered, shooting Rosalie a disapproving look before turning back to Charlotte. "I'll give you the address of our cousins in Alaska. They're a coven of five who also feed on animals, and they're always in the same place. And since you're headed that way already, you could stop and introduce yourselves and drop off the first batch."
"Cousins?" I echoed.
"I first met them when I came alone to North America," Carlisle said. "It was such a relief to find them; I had never met another vampire before who felt the same way I did about not feeding on humans. At the time the coven consisted of three females who called themselves sisters, and they've now been joined by a mated pair originally from Spain. We've kept in touch and visited one another through the years. They're rather like extended family. They don't participate in the human world nearly as much as we do—at least not in person—and so they are able to maintain a permanent residence near Denali National Park."
"We wouldn't want to impose," I said uneasily. How many of these yellow-eyes were there?
"There aren't any others that we know of," Edward said out of the blue. I realized he was answering what I had just thought. "But it's no trouble, we do little favors for each other all the time. If you want to go, or do the picture thing, we'll just call and let them know to expect you."
I blinked. "Call a vampire?"
"They sound wonderful," Charlotte told Esme. "Thank you so much." They began chatting about some of the things they had each photographed or wanted to photograph, and eventually it was all the ladies chattering and us males sitting there with nothing to do. Edward began to play the piano; he had an incredible talent. But halfway through the second piece he began playing louder and louder.
"You'll love the painting Esme did of a forest in Washington State, it's in Edward's room..." Alice zipped over to the staircase. Charlotte didn't even give me a glance as she went upstairs with the others.
"Thank you," Emmett grunted.
"Works every time," Edward said with half a grin, quieting his music again.
"So where are you from, Peter?" Carlisle asked, crossing one leg over the other and relaxing further into the depths of his chair. "In your human life, I mean?"
"Oh. Well, I grew up near Miami..." We settled into our own chatter, everyone sharing their human stories and what they had been up to since then. It turned out that Emmett was actually the youngest, changed the same year as Charlotte. Edward had died in the Spanish Flu epidemic in 1918, and Carlisle was particularly old, hailing from London back in the 17th century. It was always interesting to hear someone talk about another century in such a personal way. I myself had so little to say about my human background, it was a relief to find Carlisle so full of things to say.
He had to leave at six o'clock. At first I thought he was joking when he said he had to go to work, but it turned out that Jasper had been serious when he had mentioned Carlisle being a doctor. He actually worked at the local hospital, even performing surgery and handling blood, all without tasting a drop or hurting any of the fragile humans he patched up all day long. Oddly enough, as he prepared to go to the hospital he began to move even slower, nearly at human pace. It was strange to see him plod cheerfully out the door, carrying a black medical bag and a briefcase and jingling a set of car keys as he called goodbye to everyone upstairs. His mate zipped down the stairs and kissed him, zipping back up in less than a second to answer a question Charlotte had asked about the house.
"Hunting?" Emmett asked soon afterward, springing up onto his feet and looking out the window. The rainstorm had already moved on. Jasper nodded, getting up as well, and Edward went upstairs to see if any of the ladies wanted to join us, which they didn't.
"She'll be fine," Jasper insisted as I lagged behind them on the way to the garage. "Alice will probably be making her try on her entire closet before long. Come on, I know you're curious about the animal thing."
That was one way of putting it, I supposed. Edward laughed suddenly. "All right, I promise!" he called up the stairs, chuckling and shaking his head.
"What?" Emmett asked, jumping into a different pair of shoes in one leap and sailing out the open garage door in another. We started to run, not toward the town but away from it, into the damp thickness of the forest.
"Charlotte was worried," Edward explained, throwing another amused glance over his shoulder. "Esme told her that my favorite prey was mountain lion, and apparently you two have become attached to a certain litter of cubs? She was debating with herself about asking me to leave them and their mother alone, at least for a while. So I will." He shrugged. "We generally try avoid younger females anyway these days, to protect the population... and cubs certainly wouldn't be worth the trouble."
"Thanks," I offered.
"There's always rabbits," Emmett snorted.
"I'm unclear on where the cubs are, though," Edward continued, leaping smoothly over a fallen tree. "Could you picture the area for me in your mind?"
"Oh." So he could see into my thoughts, as well as hear them? What with Alice's gift and Jasper's too, this "family" was probably the most powerful coven in North America! Even Maria, who had always had an eye for talent, supernatural and otherwise, had never assembled such a force. And yet here they were, jingling their car keys and lounging on couches and kindly trying not to eat the animals my mate had befriended. Eccentric or not, I was impressed. Power usually birthed ruthless ambition, regardless of species.
"Thanks," Edward shot over his shoulder. "The cubs?"
I wasn't sure how to go about it, so I just flew through my memory of our travels over the past few days, focusing on the broader landscapes and horizons and altitudes.
"Good enough," Edward said. "Now on that same note..." He slowed to a stop, his nose sniffing the moist air like the others, but he turned back to face me. "Carlisle never got around to this earlier, but could you both avoid hunting humans in this area? We like to feel that they're under our protection, in a way, while we're here. And in order for us to be able to stay here without rousing suspicion, it helps not to have unexplained deaths or disappearances. You're welcome to stay as long as you like, of course."
My throat burned at the thought of not being permitted to hunt, but I nodded. Their territory, their rules. "Of course."
"Hey, there's nothing stopping you from hunting right now," Emmett pointed out. "Want to give it a try?"
"Uh..."
"Don't worry about it," Jasper said, kneeling down to examine the ground. He brushed away the light cover of leaves and crept forward in a crouch, clearing more leaves as he went. Edward was examining the smaller branches of the nearby trees that lined the thicket we had paused in. We passed through several tangles of dripping branches in silence.
"Went this way," Jasper finally murmured, rising back to his feet and edging toward the west. Were they tracking their... prey?
"Hopefully," Edward answered distractedly, plucking a tiny tuft of brown fur off the branched it had snagged on. He held it to his nose, sniffing deeply and letting the fur drift away with the breeze. "Definitely grizzly," he announced with a grin. "Less than an hour ago. And there were at least two deer right here earlier today," he said, pointing out the crowded tracks Jasper had uncovered. "Though I can't tell—"
"Emmett?" Jasper hissed, looking around in a circle for his "brother." He was gone. How could someone so big disappear so fast?
"Oh no you don't," Edward growled, diving suddenly into the prickly wall of spruce and firs directly in front of me, followed immediately by Jasper. What on earth were they doing? I ducked lower, following on foot and then taking to the branches once they were thinned by sparse pines and spindly aspens.
We caught up to Emmett in less than a minute. "Nice try," Edward muttered as he leapt up to share Emmett's perch in an ancient, dead-looking oak. Emmett growled back something obscene about Edward's telepathy, but pointed down toward the bubbling stream that lay just out of sight from where I was hanging. Jasper and I picked our way through the branches until we could just see the huge, furry back that was bent over the stream. I personally couldn't pick the scents apart, though I could hear the trademark huffing and chewing of a deer somewhere up ahead. I focused on the sounds of the heartbeats, noticing the slower thuds of the bear's pulse.
Jasper sniffed the air again, hanging on to the tree with only one hand and turning in a slow circle. "There's only the one," he announced, a sly grin spreading over his face. "Losers get the deer."
They were off like sprinters after a gunshot, but not toward their prey. All three brothers slammed into each other, the collision of their granite bodies echoing for miles across the forest. It looked like they were vampires after all; all that pretended civility went out the window when there wasn't enough prey to go around. I dropped anxiously down to the ground, watching their snarling battle as it tore through the treetops. But after a second of genuine panic, I realized it was just for fun. The violence being done to the forest's canopy was real enough, and it sure sounded like someone was dying up there, but it was obvious they weren't trying to actually hurt each other. If anything it was more of a wrestling match than a fight.
At first it looked like Edward and Emmett were teaming up against Jasper, though a couple seconds later I thought Emmett and Jasper were coordinating. Emmett finally found some room to swing his huge fist as close quarters, sending the other two tumbling backwards and crashing down through several layers of branches before they could catch themselves. He scrambled on ahead toward the bear, which had raised its head at the first sound but had already lost interest.
The fight between Jasper and Edward was brief. Edward moved like lightning, but Jasper moved like death itself, striking low and hard. I could tell when he pulled back suddenly, letting Edward throw him against a nearby trunk, but instead of landing on his back he twisted and ricocheted off the tree in a new direction. Edward met him again in the air, but Jasper was stronger, shoving him away just before they hit the ground together. Edward grimaced and picked himself up slowly, clutching his elbow as he watched Jasper plow into Emmett just inches from the bear.
"You all right?" I asked Edward uneasily.
He worked his arm back and forth a few times, grinning when we saw Emmett go flying backwards into the trees. "Just fine. I'm out, though, since my back touched the ground." We watched the rest of the fight as we slowly walked toward it, unconsciously agreeing to each root for our respective "brothers." I thought for sure Jasper had it, but Emmett came back at an unbelievable speed and the ground shook as he tackled his opponent. The bear didn't like the earthquake, and began to lumber away. That seemed to be the signal for the fight to get just a bit deadlier; Emmett's hand closed around Jasper's throat and Jasper brought both feet up at once to kick the groin. Edward shouted for Emmett to block it. Emmett let go and blocked the kick, but Jasper took the momentum and swung low again, catching his fist behind Emmett's knee. He reached out again and flung Emmett by the belt in into the trees again.
Jasper had just cut off the bear's escape when Emmett came rushing up again, roaring like a bull. But Jasper reached out in slow motion, shooting Emmett an evil grin as he tapped the bear lightly on the nose. Emmett roared again, but this time in defeat as he skidded to a stop and sulked back to where we stood.
"That's it," Edward reported. "Once somebody touches the animal it's over."
But it wasn't over yet. Jasper circled his prey slowly, crouching low and slinking on all fours like a cat. The bear was thoroughly confused now, and it had had enough of the strange, sparkling animals that kept darting around in circles and interrupting its lunch. He reared up to his full height, bellowing a slobbery warning. When Jasper didn't get the message he plopped back down onto all fours and charged.
Jasper took the hit and dug his heels in, letting the bear push him a good ten feet before leaping up onto its back and rolling off behind it. "Hey!" he called, slapping the crunchy leaves on the forest floor. The bear turned and charged again, this time closing in on its sparkling enemy with a swipe of its enormous claw. Jasper ducked the claws and closed the gap, half disappearing from view inside the shaggy fur coat. The bear tumbled over backwards, fighting with teeth and claws now to shred Jasper to pieces. His shirt was a quick casualty, hanging in ribbons, but he snarled happily and leapt back up. He shoved the bear away and shrank down into an attack crouch again, springing up to land on the back of its shoulders this time. He whooped like a cowboy at a rodeo, struggling to stay atop his steed as it bucked and tried to shake him off.
"Showoff," Edward muttered.
Jasper was done playing, though. He grabbed the huge head and gave it a quick tug to the side, twisting down to bury his face in the bear's throat as it collapsed. He knelt hunched over his prey for a minute, gulping its blood with his eyes closed and sighing a dangerous rumble of satisfaction.
We stayed back until he was done. Finally he let go and sat up, leaning back on one hand and sighing in deep content as he wiped the blood off his chin with the other. "That was a good one," he decided, grinning in triumph at Emmett's jealous growl. But it was easy to see that there was no real enmity here.
"Come on, Em," Edward sighed. "Let's go see if those deer have found themselves another predator."
"Too right," Emmett agreed, ruffling Jasper's hair the wrong way as he passed. "I'm not having deer today, thirsty or not. You can clean this one up yourself, cheater."
"Who, me?" Jasper laughed. "You're the one who decided to wear a belt today."
"And whose idea was that?" Edward called out, his voice already muffled by a football field's worth of trees.
"Alice's," Jasper said, looking thoroughly pleased with himself. His golden eyes were even brighter than before. He flopped over onto his back, eyes closed.
I was curious. I reached out and dipped a finger into the bloodied throat of the bear, and had a careful taste. And spat it out. "That's disgusting! How can you possibly... ugh!"
Jasper opened his eyes, but didn't get up. "Well of course it's disgusting now," he chuckled. "It's been dead what, two minutes? Carlisle has this theory about oxygenation, that it's not really about the temperature... well, if you ever do try it, don't try it like that." He sat up and had a good laugh at my expense as I cleaned my tongue with the sleeve of the shirt his mate had given me.
"Disgusting," I insisted, finally joining in his laughter for a moment. "Seriously, why?"
Jasper flipped up onto his feet, motioning for me to join him. He slung the bear over his shoulder, making for a pile of good-sized rocks gathered at one of the bends in the stream. "We each have our reasons," he said, feeling around the boulders to see which ones would be more easily dislodged and replaced. "Carlisle and Edward are the most... altruistic ones, I guess you could say. They do it because it's the right thing to do."
"Carlisle seems to want to be human," I guessed.
"True," Jasper agreed. "...to a degree. But if he was truly given the chance to become human again, I'm not sure he would really take it. Anyway those two are the most motivated, morally speaking. They've got a lot in common. And Esme has the kindest heart I think I've ever felt, so it's just what she needs as well. I think she'd really suffer if she didn't know about this option."
"Rosalie seems proud of it."
He nodded, tipping one of the boulders up onto its side and beginning to dig. The bear tumbled off his shoulder, forgotten for the moment. "Right. For her its more about not giving in... not letting her instincts beat her. Do you know she killed several humans when she was a newborn... and didn't draw a single drop of blood?"
"That's pretty impressive," I agreed. "But I thought Carlisle changed her?"
"He did. He wouldn't ever change anyone who wasn't dying already... he'd never take away a life if there was still a chance. She was..." he hesitated for a second. "Well, those humans she went and killed, it was vengeance. They had ended her life, or at least up to the last inch of it. Carlisle barely found her in time. She's never quite accepted what he did to her, so it's a matter of pride that she doesn't let it win."
"Fair enough. And Emmett?"
Jasper grinned. "He does it for Rosalie. Don't get me wrong, he has a heart of gold, and he's glad to spare the humans, but without her he'd never stick to it."
"And you do it because of the emotions?"
He climbed out of the deep hole he had dug, and I tipped the bear down into it. We began scooping handfuls of dirt in on top. "I tried it for Alice, when we first met. It was our destiny, she claimed: to be together, to get my eyes golden, to join the family that was waiting for us... even though they didn't know it yet." He grinned, a look of nostalgia coming into his strange eyes. "I was going to do it all for her, or try it at least... but it was obvious right away how much better it was for me. It's incredible, to be able to feed without all that." He was silent for a moment, trickling another handful of dirt into the grave. "But it's more than that. What we do... it changes us."
"I've noticed. Why do they all move so slowly?"
"I think that's just the human pretense... it rubs off on you after a while, even when nobody's looking. Feeding this way doesn't have that kind of effect, itself. There are a couple of genuine drawbacks—we're just a tad weaker and our senses are very slightly blunted—but I like what I've become. We really are a family. Living this way frees us, to an extent, from so many of the darker corners of our nature."
"Like the fighting," I guessed. "You were all in control, even though you were fighting over your prey."
"More like we don't need to fight over our prey at all," he corrected. "Sure, we fight because it's fun and we do need to blow off some steam now and then. But like you said, it's much easier to control ourselves and trust each other. Feeding this way, it just sort of... takes the edge off, in general. I think part of it is chemical, something about the blood itself... but my guess is it's mostly psychological. For me, at any rate. And since I hadn't done it from the start like the others had, I was able to feel the change happen inside me... to believe in it. It's one of those things where the effect is greater than the sum of its parts. Where all of us making this choice together are making something bigger than just that single choice. We're freed to form real relationships with each other outside just our mates... not just for convenience or protection. Playing human... for some of them it really is about reaching for something they've lost, but I think that desire flows naturally when you feed this way. There's a whole new level of confidence in our own civility, in the fact that we're still free to pick and choose our values and our identities and not let our nature do it for us."
"I have values," I said defensively. "We kill quickly, and we don't make a scene over it. We don't take anyone with any real potential... children, musicians, students... people that seem to be contributing."
He grinned, shaking his head. "I'm the last one who would criticize you, Peter. Even in this family I'm the odd one out, morally speaking. The others like to bend over backwards for every single human life, whereas I don't see the point myself. I do this because it works for me, and because it makes Alice proud of me. Although like I said, now I also do it because I like where I am. Even if the human game does get a little absurd sometimes. Do you remember what you told me, when you first came back for me? How you liked to go as long as you could between kills so that you could feel more like yourselves? Not who Maria made you to be?"
I nodded.
"It feels like that... but all the time."
We sat and rested while I thought about that. I tugged at the grass, tearing up one blade at a time. Charlotte and I were used to feeling like we were more civilized than many of our kind... it was uncomfortable to have the tables turned like this. To feel like these people were the civilized vampires, the good vampires, and I wasn't. But was it so wrong to want to stay in the role that fate had shuffled me into? I could see how much good it had done Jasper... but I didn't suffer like he had. I didn't have a golden-eyed mate to pressure me into changing. And I certainly wanted no part of this bizarre life they were making for themselves, parked in a three-story house and resting in easy chairs and reporting to work or school so their throats could hurt all day. And if drinking this garbage was the secret to getting there... that was the opposite of motivation.
"Maybe I'll try it someday," I said vaguely, just to please him. He just shook his head, grinning lazily at the lie.
"You know," he went on, "Carlisle would say you're a prime candidate. That your act of compassion in going back for me was evidence that you're still full of what he calls humanity... that you of all people would find a lot of peace in this way of life. That you'd be strong enough to keep your resolve, once you made it. Whether or not you were interested in playing human," he clarified. "That is something I definitely do for their sake... for Alice. Though it is nice, sometimes, in and of itself."
"And what do you say?"
"I'd say the inverse... that your act of compassion means that you're already plenty 'human' without having to change anything. Though... I'd have to agree with him on one point, I think it would be worth trying for a while. Just to see what you think."
"Has Alice... seen us doing it?" I asked, worried.
"No, her gift doesn't work like that. Futures are created in her visions when people make decisions... though sometimes it feels a little more magical than that. She found me without even knowing me first. For years she watched me and waited, knowing that it would come. That's why she sticks to animals—it's been her destiny all along and that's really all she needs. She believed in this future from day one."
"She knew all this would happen? As a human?"
Jasper frowned. "No... well, we don't know. She woke up alone, with no memories of her human life or her change at all. We don't know anything, other than the fact that she woke up in the woods in Mississippi wearing a hospital gown."
"Nothing? I was wondering who changed her... well, the hair..."
Jasper nodded slowly, tugging at the grass along with me. "I've wondered that myself. Whether she might have been changed for the Wars. Waking up that far south and with her hair shorn close and sloppy like that... it's possible. It's possible they changed their mind, seeing how small she was, or that something happened and they weren't able to return for her." His brow creased briefly in anger. "It's also possible she didn't wake up as late as she thinks she did... that something happened to her later on to make her forget, or start over somehow."
"A gifted vampire," I guessed.
He nodded. "But she has no scars, so I like to hope that's not the case. And we've never talked about this, so..." I nodded my understanding. His smile returned. "So what do you think of her?"
"I don't know yet," I said honestly. "She seems great, if a little... energetic?"
His smile split into a grin. "That she is. Her emotional world... she's amazing. She's everything I needed."
"So it's not the animal blood," I clarified. "It's her."
He shrugged, fingering the circle of gold on his left hand- his wedding ring. His fingers trailed down to his wrist, to a wide leather band set with a medallion. There was a lion on it. "Maybe. For me, they've always gone together, so how would I know? But it doesn't matter. All I know is that I like what I have now, and that it's the diet that binds us all together. And we're strong. Maria visited a while back, not long after we joined the family. We stood united and sent her running."
I tensed. "Maria? What were you doing that far south in the first place?"
He shook his head. "No, she came and found me, all the way up in Canada. Things had been going badly for her. It started when you first left, but without me... I think everything just fell apart."
"Good," I spat. "Why on earth didn't you kill her?"
"I could have, but she was just so small and pathetic by that time, and I had already gained so much. I didn't need to kill her. I never wanted to in the first place, you know that."
"Are you crazy?! She'll come back!"
"If she does, we'll see her coming. But I doubt it. She's seen our numbers and our power, and she knows what's good for her. Peter," he said sharply, and for a brief moment the old authority was back in his hard gaze, unchanged by the color. "This is important. If you do ever run into her, for whatever reason... she can't ever know I have a mate. She met Alice, but we passed her off as being with Edward. Got that?"
I nodded. "That was smart. Still wish you had killed her, though."
"I do too, sometimes... but then I remember that mercy is the path that we're all choosing here. It doesn't do much for the one you're sparing—God only knows how miserable Maria is, and the humans wither and die regardless—but it feels very... healing, for me at least. Especially after all I've done. After all she made me do."
I shook my head, glancing over my shoulder when I heard the distant, boyish laughter coming from Edward and Emmett. They were such innocents. "How much do they know?"
"Everything. They took me as I was. And I was a mess at the time! It was less than two years after I had met Alice and started the animal thing. I couldn't even be around people anymore, I was so starved for their blood. I made some mistakes at first, though they were usually able to stop me. Carlisle was always so understanding and patient... they all were, really. It was a wonderful feeling. And the love everyone shares is a beautiful thing. We have ours ups and downs like any 'family,' but this emotional world I live in now... it's great."
"I'm happy for you," I told him truthfully. But I couldn't help but feel that I had somehow lost my friend, my brother... part of him, anyway. This yellow-eyed creature, so calm and soft and well-dressed, he felt half like a stranger. What had this new life done to him, to make him not even care about losing some of his strength and speed? That would have been unacceptable before. And letting Maria live when he had that chance to kill her, now that the stakes were even higher... that was just nuts. And what about his freedom? Maybe it was rotten of me to question this new happiness he'd found, but this wasn't exactly what I had been picturing when I'd gone back for him. He made a good case for why he'd chosen these people, but... well, I guess I couldn't help but feel a little jealous.
"This doesn't change anything," Jasper said quietly. "I may have a mate and a sister and two new brothers, but you and I have come through fire together. Nothing will ever change that, not even the color of our eyes."
He waited until I looked up, and he gave me a small nod, which I gratefully returned. There was no need to speak of the past, of the debts we'd incurred and fulfilled time and again. How Jasper had pushed me back when I was new, helping me ruthlessly shed my humanity so I could survive through the horror of my first year. How I had fought my way through the ranks to prove my worth to him. How he'd worn Maria down to approve my installment as his second, when it was past time for my execution. How we'd fought back to back when the Arizona coven had sent their assassins. How I'd saved his life on the Guatemala mission, and he'd saved mine in the sea battle of '34. How I'd guarded his back and his pride from the others the times when his gift had overwhelmed him. How he'd let me and Charlotte escape, then turned and taken the heat of Maria's wrath for it. How I'd gone back for him, putting my new freedom on the line so he'd have a chance at his own. How we both knew, without having to say it aloud, that we were both ready to come and fight together again should the need ever arise.
We'd come through fire all right, and we had the scars to prove it. And even though we now lived in peace and had no use for those scars anymore, it was a relief to still share that past. To have someone who understood what those scars had once meant... what they'd cost.
It was a relief to know that some things didn't need to change.
.
.
.
We stayed for four days. It was reassuring to spend more time with Jasper in his new habitat. He hadn't changed that much after all, and if anything I could see the divide between him and the others. He didn't seem to have quite the same sense of belonging that Alice did, and he certainly didn't seem to be playing the role of "son" the way that his new "brothers" did. But they were all so different anyway that I didn't think it mattered too much. I couldn't feel what Jasper could feel, but after a while I came to see those different types of love going on. It really was impressive how relaxed everyone was all the time. There was tension now and then, especially between Edward and Rosalie, but it was remarkable how it never escalated into anything dangerous. Even when the "parents" weren't home, everyone was relatively docile.
Carlisle was worrying, though. He had been doing the animal thing far longer than the others, and I worried that Jasper might eventually change even more, like he had. It was really strange how slow Carlisle moved and talked sometimes—almost like he was ill. And Edward, much younger but the next oldest in terms of the diet, acted a little funny sometimes. I supposed part of his oddness was hearing all our thoughts in his head, but he had these weird twitches sometimes, his head jerking to the side or wincing or smiling for no reason. And Carlisle's mate—she was a peach, but she seemed to live in some kind of dream world. Like the others were really her children, and that this was just a normal human household. I wondered how much of their charade fell apart whenever any of them had one of their "accidents." Despite their gentleness, there was definitely a ferocity that hovered beneath the surface. How hard were they fighting it? How different would they all be after another hundred, two hundred years of starving themselves like this?
Time would tell, I supposed.
But for now, at least, they all seemed to enjoy their peculiar lifestyle, and they genuinely seemed to enjoy our visit, as did we. We spent time exploring their territory, but we also enjoyed some of their more human pastimes with them: television, board games, letting us rummage through their libraries. I helped a little with some work Carlisle and Edward were doing on the house. Charlotte spent some time with Esme down in her dark room learning how to develop pictures. They even took us out to a nearby field to play baseball, outfitting us with uniforms that matched their own. They had to wait for thunderstorms, they said, to mask the crashing sounds of their powerful hits and the occasional collision. It was eerily similar to the way Maria and the other Southern coven leaders waited for thunderstorms to conduct their battles. We played all night, despite the field dissolving into one giant mud puddle. It was... fun. Who would have thought that such a large group of vampires could keep themselves organized and happy for so many hours at a time?
The Cullens also had a huge garage stuffed full of fancy vehicles. I had little interest in automechanics myself, but it was interesting to listen to Rosalie's lecture about the changes she had made to optimize speed, while minimizing damage to the engines. Jasper even had his favorite, a motorcycle. "As close as I'll ever get to riding a horse again," he told me with a grin. "And a whole lot faster." He took me out on it once, and I voted it the one part of their human charade that was absolutely worth doing.
After the novelty of our visit had worn off by the third day, everyone began to return to whatever activities they liked to do, while welcoming us to join in. Carlisle spent hours at a time in his dusty, smelly office flipping through papers, and Esme seemed to be on an eternal crusade not to let a speck of dirt settle anywhere in her house—though she also spent some time flipping through paperwork, including an enormous set of blueprints for some project she had in mind. I learned that all of them—even Jasper—conducted various sorts of philanthropy, quietly funding medical clinics and women's shelters and things around the world. Jasper's money mainly went to the DAV and a few funds that provided lawyers and scholarships to the descendents of the slaves he had once fought to keep.
They were constantly in and out of the house with their various errands and hobbies. Charlotte even went shopping with Esme and Rosalie for a new coffee table, though she politely declined a second shopping trip with Alice.
"I only wear one set of clothes at a time," she protested to Alice's disappointment. "It's not like I'm going to carry a closet around with me."
Their obsession with stuff really was odd. I gathered that they hardly ever had vampire visitors like this, and as a rule did everything possible to avoid human callers. So what was the point? But I still couldn't help but feel a twinge of worry, and not just over Jasper's fate. Charlotte also seemed to enjoy fussing over the paintings and the furniture and the hobbies, in her own reserved way, with the others.
Was she starting to wish we lived like this too?
.
.
.
We were ready to move on by Saturday morning, but Carlisle urged us to wait until nightfall.
"There's something on television this afternoon I think you'd like to see," he said mysteriously. Edward raised his eyebrows and Rosalie was practically vibrating with excitement, but we were left in the dark until we all crowded into the living room and the television set was switched on.
It was a special report on the Apollo 11 mission. I remembered reading about it in the paper when we were back in Nebraska, though that was well before it had launched. It looked like everything had gone according to plan so far.
"They're scheduled to land on the moon within the hour," Carlisle explained, speaking over the newscast, "even take a few steps if they can."
We all sat together, transfixed, watching the footage come through via NASA's live feed. Rosalie, who was apparently the house expert on the subject, murmured explanations as we listened to the astronauts' chatter with one another and with Houston. The Eagle, the module sent down to the lunar surface, finally touched down.
"The Eagle has landed," one of the astronauts reported, and the camera cut briefly back to the newsroom, where the reporters were wiping away the tears this historic moment had brought. There were no tears around our television set, just a group of awestruck immortals with various colored eyes, but at this moment I could feel it: this was one of those moments where the entire world was united, watching in amazement. Where time stopped for all of us, pulse or no.
Not a single one of us breathed for the next eight minutes; that was all it took for history to be made again. Neil Armstrong carefully made his way down the ladder, noting his observations regarding the conditions of the surface as he went. He stepped down.
"It's one small step for a man," he said to the world, "... one giant leap for mankind."
Indeed it was. I finally breathed again, glancing around at the Cullens. In this moment, it was plain to see the difference that Jasper had been talking about: in varying degrees, each one of them was burning not only with amazement but also with pride. The human world, just taking its first steps in a new frontier, was their world. They weren't pretending at all. I felt sorry for them, because in reality they were trapped between the human and vampire worlds, not really belonging to either one. But it was clear to see which side they'd chosen.
Why did there have to be sides at all, though? Why couldn't we all just accept what we were, and find peace in that role? Live the way our nature drove us to live? Carlisle, at least, seemed to feel that his human life and his vampire life were one continuous existence. I felt the exact opposite, that my human life couldn't feel more remote. But that hadn't turned me a monster, like it had others. I felt no enmity toward either world, and I felt free to move between them, but at the end of the day I could only belong to one of them. Was it so wrong to be content with that?
To be fair, the Cullens were obviously trying not to be preachy about their choice; they had lots of red-eyed friends and they were used to their role as eccentrics. They were genuinely grateful to us for Jasper's sake, and kind. They were all but adopting us into the extended family, proudly hanging up the framed photograph of Charlotte and me and our trio of lion cubs. Next to it went a smaller picture of Jasper and me laughing as we flew by Esme's camera on his motorcycle. I was ready to be alone with Charlotte again, but it felt good to have this new bunch of weird friends, to remember and to visit again sometime. And while I was still doubtful where this new path was taking Jasper, I knew I was leaving him in good hands.
.
.
.
The Cullens sent us off that night with good wishes and an open invitation to visit whenever we liked. Jasper came along with us for the first couple miles, bidding us farewell as we turned and began to make our way north toward Alaska.
We walked in comfortable silence for a while, the way we always did after spending time with other vampires. We'd certainly never had such an eventful visit with anyone before. I soaked up the quiet, enjoying the simple feel of Charlotte's hand in mine.
"I like them," she finally announced, breaking the silence.
"So do I," I agreed tentatively. We were silent for a few more moments before Charlotte burst out laughing.
"Oh, let's just say it!" she said. "If Alice is watching, it's her own fault for eavesdropping!"
"They're just so strange," I burst out in relief. Charlotte laughed again, nodding and swinging our hands between us. "Did you see how many pairs of shoes Jasper has?"
"Did you know Esme cooks in that kitchen?" she shot back, giggling.
"And how slow Carlisle moves—"
"And how long Rosalie spends on her hair!"
We wandered up into the mountains, enjoying a few more good laughs at the expense of Jasper's new family. "But I do like them," Charlotte said firmly in the end.
"So do I."
"That animal thing though..." she wrinkled her nose. "I mean, I see their point and it sounds lovely to spare the humans' lives, but... it's not like the animals are the ones having wars with each other and polluting the environment, you know?"
I sighed deeply in relief, pulling her closer. "And humans aren't an endangered species," I pointed out. She nodded, looking thoughtful.
"Still..."
"What?"
She shrugged her tiny shoulders. "I don't know, I guess... I wouldn't want to be tied down like they are, with the house and the job and the possessions, but... I do like some of the ways they've found to stay a part of the human world. To contribute to it."
I shrugged back. "I tasted the animal blood when I went hunting with them that first day. It's horrible."
"I'm sure! But we wouldn't necessarily need to feed that way, would we? If we ever wanted to feel a bit more like we were a part of things... versus just partaking of it?"
"I'm fresh out of million dollar bills," I grumbled.
She laughed. "Oh, that wouldn't be our style anyway." I closed my eyes and briefly lost myself in the music of her happiness, pure and strong and accompanied only by the gentle shush of the mountain breeze. How could anyone want more than this? But I did see her point.
"You have your photography," I offered. "And your verses. It's not like we have to keep all that to ourselves, or even stash it all with that Alaskan bunch. We could frame the pictures and leave them up somewhere for the humans to find... write out your poetry and tack it to the wall in a coffee shop now and then."
"I'd like that," she said dreamily. "What about you?"
"I don't know."
Charlotte sniffed, tasting the wind. "I feel like a swim before we head to Alaska."
I grinned and picked up her hand, kissing it. "Where to, Ma'am?"
She closed her eyes and spun in a giggling circle, throwing out a hurricane of dead leaves in her wake. She stopped at random, her finger pointing back toward the northeast. "Mmm... Great Lakes? Hudson Bay?"
"Siberian Sea?" I teased.
"We'll know it when we see it."
I glanced back toward Jasper's new home, wondering where they'd be next time we met... wondering where this new life would take him in the end. It'd probably take a couple centuries to tell. And that was a relief, to be able to set aside the more uncomfortable questions that this visit had stirred inside me. I fingered the new bracelet Alice had left on Charlotte's wrist. It suited her, but I liked best the sparkle of adventure in her eyes as she winked at me and took off at a run, daring me to catch her.