Time for something a little different.

Enjoy!

Caius POV

I had told Isabella that I was going to do more research into the Cullen family and their aliases while she was otherwise occupied. Though, getting the information that I needed seemed to be more difficult than I had originally thought. Normally I was very good at getting the information I wanted. It was a skill I had picked up being over a millennia old, but I was having a bit of trouble tracking down any of the other women that Edward had claimed to love before Isabella came along, mostly because they had all died.

We were still checking the tapes from the bugs that we had placed in the Cullen's home every few days, so we did have that information to work with, but that wasn't enough for what the Cullen's had been up to before we had them bugged. I still needed to find out what Edward had been doing with those other women before Isabella had arrived.

Now that Alec and Demetri were both back in the castle, I had quietly asked their help in delving into the past of Edward Anthony Masen, Junior. Demetri and Alec both agreed with gusto and got right to work.

After doing a fair bit of online research, Alec was able to come back with a basic report on the human life of Edward, while Demetri traveled back to the States to see if he could get more information by conducting interviews with people. Personally, I didn't see how that could work since Edward's human life was well over a century ago and the likelihood that anyone was still alive who remembered the Masen family was extremely slim, but I wasn't going to question it too much. Demetri liked doing things the hard way sometimes.

It was only a week after Isabella had left that Alec came knocking on my office door with his report in hand. Putting my current work aside, I took the report from him with thanks and began to read what he had written.

It seemed that most of the information on Edward that Alec had cited was on Aro's personal hard drive. My brother was notorious for keeping records of every vampire he had ever heard of. I don't know why he felt the need to write everything down. We remember everything, but I guess the information wasn't really for him, but for those of us that didn't have access to those thoughts. One of the benefits of being able to read every thought someone has ever had, I suppose.

At Isabella's and Charlotte's suggestion, we had all gotten personal computers around the same time that we overhauled the rest of the castle with modern technology. Transferring all of the knowledge that he'd gathered from a thousand years of paper files to files on his computer took Aro about a year, but he was thrilled that everything was so easily at his disposal now.

As I read, I was able to gather that as a human Edward was, for the most part, unimpressive. Single child to an upper-middle class family, he was spoiled beyond comparison. Anything he wanted from his human parents, he got without question. His father, a well-renowned lawyer, provided Edward with many advantages in his human life including a private school education and music lessons, which in turn, gave Edward the chance to become a gifted pianist. Although his father doted on him when he was around, those occasions were rare and caused the two to be rather emotionally distant from one another, which in my opinion didn't make for a well-rounded adolescent.

Edward's mother, a homemaker, made her son the center of her life, therefore making Edward believe she was the center of his. Around the time of the first World War, Edward had delusions of grandeur about what it meant to be a soldier and the only thing hindering him from joining the US Army at the time he turned eighteen was his love for his mother and what it might do to her if he didn't survive.

That realization gave me pause. If Edward truly believed that his mother was the center of his universe, then why would he potentially put so many women in harm's way as a vampire? Wouldn't he want all the women in his life to be as important to him as she was? Did he just want a mother figure? If so, he had that in the form of Esme Cullen, who had treated him as nothing less her entire immortal life. Did he want someone to replace his favorite long-dead parent? Was he looking for a specific type of woman that was similar to his mother, and if so, why?

There were more questions than answers when it came to Edward, and nothing I was learning made me overly fond of the boy. However, this was a good place to start. I immediately rang Demetri to tell him what Alec had found out and asked him to look further into the life of Elizabeth Masen while he was Stateside. He agreed and hung up. Demetri never was one for extended phone conversation, but that was alright by me. I had more reading to do anyway.

Picking the report back up, I read that Edward was only seventeen when the good Doctor Cullen found him dying from the Spanish Flu. Placing the report back down, I stood up and walked to the window, trying to collect my thoughts. Seventeen was not young enough to be considered an Immortal Child, but it was still too young by Volterra's standards to be turned. The brain hadn't finished developing by that point and lacked the reasoning and maturity that most adults were supposed to have. Having an immortal teenager could potentially be just as bad as an immortal child. Teenagers are stubborn, hard-headed, and think they're all bulletproof, which gives their reasoning something to be desired.

The only exception that we had made to change someone so young was with the twins, but there were extenuating circumstances to having them turned when we did, plus Aro wouldn't hear anything against it. We got lucky with the twins and haven't really had many teenage tantrums from either, but perhaps that is a by-product of what they went through as humans. Who was to say?

Knowing what I did about Carlisle after the time he stayed here, and knowing how compassionate he was about life in whatever form it took, it didn't surprise me in the least that he would have chosen Edward to become his companion after so long alone. Whether that meant in a sexual, familial, or friendly manner, who was to say?

Grabbing the report off my desk and taking it back to the window, I continued to read. The rest of Alec's report was everything I had already known and not in any way enlightening except the lack of detail Alec was able to find regarding a four year hiatus from the Cullen's. Edward had left Carlisle a few years after his change and had indulged himself in the diet that was proper to a vampire. Aro hadn't been forthcoming in his notes regarding this point in Edward's immortality, but perhaps that was because he hadn't actually ever touched the boy.

Now that I thought about that though, had the Cullen's really never been to Volterra since Carlisle was here alone? Had they never actually met any of Carlisle's family before? Surely that couldn't be the case.

I placed a call to our current receptionist and asked her for Aro's whereabouts. It wasn't long before she got back to me and transferred the call to Aro's office. "Brother" Aro answers, "what can I do for you today?"

"Aro, I came across something interesting in a report that Alec brought over to me and I wanted your opinion."

"Go on."

"Have we ever actually met any of the Cullen clan other than the Major, and Carlisle?"

"Not that I can recall, brother. Why?" I heard the curiosity in his tone and a faint ruffle of paper as he set whatever he had been looking at on his desk.

"Doesn't it strike you as odd that after all of this time, we've never met them?"

"Not really." I hear a squeaking, groaning noise on the other end of the phone and assume Aro is getting more comfortable in his office chair. "There are several covens that we've not met in their entirety. However they all have at least one member within their coven who has met with us, usually the head of that particular coven."

"Since we are trying to be more accessible and visible to the Vampire population, don't you think that it's time we actually met with the majority of the covens? This way we may be able to prevent situations like the one with the Cullen's from happening."

"That's actually not a bad idea, brother. What did you have in mind?" Aro inquires intrigued.

"Nothing yet." I respond a bit grumpily, "As soon as something comes to mind though, I'll let you and Marcus know." I hung up quickly after that.

No new information from our records meant no new ideas, and I knew that Isabella would want me to give my all to this cause, especially since there was another human's life at stake. As I sat back down behind my desk and stared out the window at the gray sky, a new thought began to form and one that I hadn't considered before.

Being a human between the years of 1918 and 2005 meant that there was a huge leap for both technological and medicinal advancements in that near 100-year span. However, in the early 1920's through the 1980's, or 90's in some cases, humans didn't understand things like mental illness in the way we do now. Mental illness, learning disabilities, physical disabilities, or just deeming something wrong with someone wasn't something civilized people discussed. As barbaric as it was, most people who had family that they characterized as "unwell" meant that hiding their unwell family member out of sight until they were fit to be in public again was the best option. Worst case scenario was when the mental or physical state got to be so bad that they "killed" their own family member off after sending them away.

If a human had gone through something similar to what Bella had after an encounter with Edward, that human's parents would not have understood what had happened to their daughter. Therefore, the parents would do the only thing that made sense at the time. Sweeping that child under the rug, not to bother them anymore until their daughter was deemed 'healed'. Alice Cullen herself was incarcerated in one of these places for the visions she saw and although what she went through was inhumane and horrible, it gave me a new path to look into. I picked up the phone and called Demetri again.

"Yeah?" Demetri answers on the first ring.

Without preamble, I blurt "I need you to look into mental institutions and asylums in every city the Cullens have lived in since Edward became a part of the coven."

Quiet was the only response I got for a few moments before Demetri finally says "Oh shit" and hangs up.

At this point I'll just have to hope that this new request gives Demetri a new lead that we didn't have before. I can only hope it pans out.

What I really needed now was insider information on Edward. Luckily, we had a few covens that were loyal to us that had indeed met the Cullen family as a unit and were more than happy to answer the letters that Marcus had sent out a few weeks ago. I hadn't really had the chance to do more than skim the responses when they first arrived, but now might be the best time to reacquaint myself with those responses and see if anything was mentioned.

Marcus had a wonderful way with words that I would forever be envious of. He had managed to send quite a few letters to several covens that had requested more information about the Cullen's without being obvious about it. I think he had mentioned a curiosity about the way they fed as a preface to his questions, but I wasn't interested in how we got our answers, but what the answers relayed.

Personally, I was only interested in what was said about Edward in particular, so that's what I looked for within those letters. Anything odd, anything unusual, or even out of character for Edward would point me in the direction I needed to go, almost like a compass. Or, that was the hope.

Siobhan from the Irish coven had written: "..although we hadn't had the chance to meet every member of the Cullen coven, we did meet Edward, Carlisle, Esme, and Rosalie. First impressions were that Carlisle and Esme were very posh and proper, while Rosalie was a bit rough around the edges, and Edward was the perfect gentleman. Myself and Liam managed to get on well with Carlisle and his Mate for the time they were here, and Maggie took a shine to Rosalie, but Edward - though he was exceptionally polite - didn't seem to get on with anyone. Maggie didn't trust a thing out of his mouth, though nothing he said was a direct lie. And after an afternoon together, Liam had a feeling of unease around Edward for the rest of their stay, though Edward never said or did anything directly to make Liam uncomfortable.

As odd as the interaction with the Irish coven was, it didn't really delve into anything too specific. Edward could very well have been nervous or intimidated by the other coven and reacted the only way he knew how for a seventeen-year-old; awkwardness, which could have manifested as a general sense of unease for the Irish. Considering I wasn't looking for the potential hormonal reaction of a forever-teenage boy, this wasn't exactly helpful. I was sure there was more I could find from other covens.

The next correspondence was from - of all coven's - the Denali's. They were about the closest thing to extended family that the Cullen's had and I was sure that if there was anything unusual, they would be the ones to notice it. Though Tanya was the head of the Denali coven, it looked like our former Volturi member, Eleazar, had been the one to write us back: "...as you know, the Cullen's are the coven that we have the most similarities with regarding our lifestyle choices and that makes them an invaluable coven to us. Typically we get along well and the times that we've spent extended periods together has reaffirmed our beliefs that we're doing the right thing by keeping our diet this way. However, there have been times that we have witnessed Edward be very anti-social and isolated. Usually this behavior begins after some of the Mated couples have been elsewhere for several days just spending time with their other half. Tanya was under the impression that he was just lonely, but whenever the subject was brought up with young Edward, he would always find a way to redirect the conversation. Tanya though, is nothing if not persistent and has managed to imply - in her own way - that she would be more than happy to be there for Edward so he didn't feel quite so alone. Edward knows Tanya is a free spirit and shares herself with whomever she fancies, but sometimes Edward's rejections can be unusually harsh and cruel. Almost as though he thinks of her as nothing more than a whore at a brothel. Now, whether he actually means what he says, or is just taking out his teenage angst on her unnecessarily, I cannot be sure. For the most part though, our interactions with the Cullen's have been very civil and friendly."

It was interesting to note that Edward sometimes couldn't keep that polite demeanor in check. Though it was interesting to see him act like a typical teenage boy. At least from this point of view. What shocked me though was the implication of rudeness that Edward had exhibited towards a very polite and law-abiding woman. What was the reason for this? Did she proposition him too many times and he got fed up? Is there something in her mind that irked him in the moment? Was there something specific that set him off that Eleazar didn't know about?

The questions were endless, but this response was beneficial in showing that Edward could indeed lose his temper when provoked.

The last letter that we had received back was from the Egyptian coven. Amun had written this letter back to us: "We have only had the pleasure of meeting with the Cullen's a few times. Mostly our dealings and correspondences are with Carlisle and his Mate. They are an unusual coven and prefer themselves to be called a "family", but the reason they make this distinction escapes me. They are no more a family than my own coven, but my coven has far more respect than the Cullen's seem to for their own leader. While they were here, Carlisle did try and persuade us to try his way of feeding, but I found it abhorrent and tasteless. When I happened to mention this after a hunt, it was Edward who mentioned how tasteless it was to hunt humans.

I asked him if he had ever hunted humans and surprisingly he told me that he had. He mentioned that the only member of their family who had never tasted human blood was Rosalie and, assuming her morals were higher than a typical vampire, I asked for clarification. Was it a moral standing with her that she refused to hunt a human? Was there always someone with her during her newborn phase so she was not able to hunt a human? She reassured me that she had indeed hunted humans, but had never been tempted by the blood enough to let one drop pass her lips. I could see the pride in her eyes then as she said it and focused my gaze on the other members of this family just to see the same pride in her in all their eyes. Save one.

If Edward had the same gifts as my Benjamin, he would have set her alight in that moment. So much rage and hate for her in his eyes, yet none of those emotions on his face. You cannot trust a man who is not willing to let you see all of him. You risk your lives and the lives of those you care about if you trust a man who can seethe internally and be happy externally. That boy is two-faced and after seeing that, I have never allowed him to visit with Carlisle again."

Out of all of these correspondence letters detailing interactions with the Cullen's, there seemed to be one within the family itself that resented everything about her life. I wondered idly if Rosalie was my way inside the family. Perhaps there was something that I could offer her in payment for her knowledge on Edward. Maybe a different way of life that wasn't constantly so hard for her. I would need to find out what that was, but I was willing to see what I could do.

The idea was just blossoming, but if I could use Rosalie to see what Edward was up to, then that would bring a whole new set of questions. The least of which would be how I would contact her directly without giving myself or her away. Though, if I waited until the Cullen's arrived here in Volterra, perhaps I could get my information from her then. The idea required more thought and luckily for me, I had a month to think it over.

Hopefully by the time that month was up, I would finally have answers.