I know, I know, the anxiety of the wait for this, chapter twelve, has made you miserable for the past week,

Oh, woe is you...

Well, in that case, get reading!!

:D

I could not believe that it was the boy from the dream, and, from the looks of them, his brothers. They all looked almost exactly alike, except they had a bit different hair styles, and a few minor facial differences.

The boy in front who had spoken, the one I had seen, had the long dark hair that fell into his face and covered one eye, and the one on his right had black hair pulled up into a small... oh what to call it... almost as if a Mohawk and a Ducktail had been pushed into a blender and exploded, so a mo-tail, I guess and he had peircings everywhere, and the one on the left, leaning against the doorway had the same silky black hair as the other, but his was not in the Mohawk, it was down, hanging around his face, framing it perfectly. He also did not have the lip piercings, but had one eyebrow instead and was smirking at me with one eyebrow raised.

I screamed bloody murder.

"Claudia! Shut up!" hissed the one in the middle, "We really don't want to alert the authorities, do we?"

I shut up.

"Who the hell are you and what the fuck are you doing in my room?!" I whispered menacingly.

"We," the one to the left, still smirking, paused for dramatic effect, "are the brothers Antoinette. And yes we are descendants of the infamous Marie." he bowed a very low bow, and it was quite obvious that they were very old vampires.

"And so why are you in my room?" I pretended not to be impressed by the bow-y-ness.

"Well, we were going to greet you all at the door, but we needed to take a look around, and you surprised us; Dominic did not see you." the one on the left said. So far the mo-tail boy had not spoken.

"What do you mean, he didn't see me?" I squinted my eyes at him.

"Dominic here can see anything that is happening, anywhere, or anything that has already happened." left-man said again, gesturing to the one in the middle, who I guessed was Dominic. "I do believe he is a bit like your Alice to a certain extent."

"A bit." I mused to myself. I put out a silent call to Edward, who I knew would hear me, and smiled at them. "Well, gentlemen, not to be rude, but I must ask you to leave my bedroom now."

"What's the point of calling it a bedroom? It's not like you use the bed... or do you?" asked the one with the mo-tail with a smirk. I got his meaning. I glared at him.

And then Edward was at the door, and crouched down low, ready to pounce if he had to. A low growl echoed from deep in his throat.

"Ah, yes, Edward, glad to meet you, sir." this time all three of the mysterious vampires bowed. I felt snubbed. I frowned. How come only the left one bowed for me?

"What do you want? Are you with the Volturi?" Edward said gruffly. Well, as gruffly as a vampire's velvety voice can get anyways.

"No, not Volturi, we are, as we told your young friend here, the brothers Antoinette, and I have to say, it starts to loose the ring to it after repeating it." Dominic said with a frown.

"What... do... you... want." Edward said through clenched teeth.

"Simply, just to greet you and welcome you to the city." he smiled, "Oh, how rude of me! I never got to tell you our names! I am Dominic, and these are my brothers, Victor, and-" he was cut off by a crash followed by a scream downstairs.

Edward and I were down the stairs and on the second floor in the library in a flash. All we saw was the large picture window shattered Bella screaming her head off and pointing at the opposite wall. Thank god she wasn't cut by any of the glass. I heard Edward thinking that he didn't want to relive the birthday incedent. Huh? Oh right.

"Bella! What is it?! What's wrong?!" Edward asked, extremely panicked. Bella was shaking and hyperventilating.

Once Edward took hold of her and calmed her down a little bit, she could speak. "So-someone, they, they shot a-a something through the, the, the window!" Bella's whole body was shaking in fear, "I was standing there," she pointed to a spot in the middle of the window now covered in a large slab of glass, "I was looking outside at the forest, and I thought I saw something move, and then someone shot that through the window!" she started sobbing.

I walked over to a dart that was stuck in the wall she had been pointing at. There was something stuck to it. A note. Someone had sent us a note. A note via dart. I took it off the wall and started reading it.

Dear Cullens, Miss Swan, and Miss Debeau,
You may or may not know me, but I know you. I know you all very well.
I would like to invite you to come to my home to meet my family and me. There will be an All Hallow's Eve costume ball and dinner for everyone, and we would be deeply displeasured if you declined our request. I regret the unfortunate way this message had to be delivered, but, alas, it was the only way, as you will realize at the party. If you would like to attend, go to Le Monde park and have Carlisle sit on the second swing from the right on October the thirtieth, and we will give you further instructions from there.
Until then, J.

"That is why we are here, actually. I was hoping it wouldn't come to this. I never thought that they would sink so low." murmured Dominic.

Edward was fairly intrigued by the note at this point, so he picked up Bella and walked to our side, plucked the note from between my fingers and read it. "Who are they?" he asked in a calm voice, though I could tell he was far from calm at the moment.

"They are your enemies. Not the Volturi, not werewolves, but still your enemy. Different vampires. We ourselves are part of a very large secret coven, almost as big as the Volturi, except not with so much history nor guards, for we are the guards ourselves, but we live in secret, and protect other vampires against them." said the mo-tail; I still had yet to catch his name.

"Oh. Well that clears things up!" I shrieked sarcastically, Victor chuckled. I snarled at him and stalked away to sit down on a nearby couch, which only made him shake his head at me, in a mocking way.

"So are we allowed to go to this thing, or no?" asked Rosalie, suddenly in the room, followed by the rest of my family.

Victor grinned wildly, "We must be your chaperones."

I frowned at this "How can we trust you?"

"Because of this." Victor shrugged and they all pulled off their shirts. My family all gasped except for Bella, for she was too preoccupied by her hyperventillation, at what was written on their chests. I gasped for something completely different. Hell, three of the most gorgeous vampires possibly in history had just pulled their shirts off in my library. But the more important thing, I guess, was that they all had a small tattoo on their chests, the same exact tattoo on each chest.

It was an extremely elaborate script, but in it the words Servo Silenti Etc Tutus were decipherable below a plain black skull.

"What is it?" I asked after getting over the initial shock of the shirtless vampires.

"It is the secret organization we told you of. This is the insignia." commented the mo-tail.

"What does it mean?" I got out of my chair and reached out and touched the skin of the vampire protector named Victor. As I touched his cool skin I felt a shiver travel down my spine, and I looked up into his eyes and felt myself falling into them, being mesmerized. He must have felt it too, because he shook himself out of it and stepped back.

"'Keep the dead safe.'" he whispered to me, enchanting me with his strange power. The next moment he was sitting in another leather chair like the one I had just vacated with his head in his hands.

"And since the dead, dead are safe, it's you lot we need to worry about." said Dominic with a smirk.

"How do we know that it's not a fake? Any imposter can get a tattoo." snorted Emmet.

"Turn off the lights." Mo-tail said smugly. Jasper turned and flicked the switch, propelling us into darkness, the only light coming from the almost full moon hovering low outside our broken window, by which we could see perfectly, a la heightened senses, giving our new protectors who were standing in front of it, shirtless, a kind of morbid halo of moonlight bouncing off of broken shards of glass. The tattoos were now sparkling somehow in the darkness. They looked like fallen angels, and in a way that's what they were: angels. They were eternally damned to life of being uncomfortable, cold, dark and shunned, but they helped others like them, redeeming themselves. I was astounded by the sight and the thought.

"I guess we can trust you then." grumbled Edward.

"You doubted us?" asked the mo-tail boy.

"Well, can you blame me? I hear Claudia mentally screaming at me to get up to her room, because there are three strange men talking to her, then I hear Bella scream the minute I leave her side to find out that someone shot something through our window. I had my reasons."

Dominic and mo-tail-boy chuckled, but I was still shocked by the strange creature who was Victor to take any notice of anything at all.

"There is one more thing; with protecting you while you are with them, that also means protecting you from them while you are not, which means that we will be staying here for a while." whispered Victor, getting out of his seat and standing across form me.

"You know," said Alice suddenly, speaking for the first time that night, "you two could pass off for siblings? It's kind of weird." she said this to Victor and me, and Victor frowned.

And then Victor mumbled something that I don't think he meant for me to hear, but I'm pretty sure it included the word incest.

I looked over at him with one eyebrow raised, but he never met my gaze, as he seemed to be suddenly interested in books about crocheting.

The rest of the night passed in a blur. I was still shocked, first because of Victor, and second because of the shock itself. Christian, who I learned was the mo-tail boy, was stationed outside Bella's room, with Edward inside. Dominic was keeping an eye on the rest of my new family, and Victor was babysitting me, because as they explained, whoever was out to get us was especially interested in new vampires, so they had to use extra precaution with me.

I was sitting at my vanity staring at the still unfamiliar refection staring back through the mirror when Victor came into my room.

"Hello, Claudia."

"Hello, Victor."

He paused and looked at me. After a while he said, "You know, has anyone ever told you that you have a very pretty name?"

My head jerked up to look at him. That was the exact line Louis had used when we first met. How did he know about Louis?

"What... did you say?" I whispered.

"I asked if anyone has told you that your name is very pretty." he said, stepping back, looking uncertain, like I could break at any moment, and he didn't want to be close enough to get hit with one of the pieces, but close enough to pick them up.

"How... did you know about... Louis?" I choked.

"Who?"

I eyed him suspiciously. "Louis. He was the one to turn me into this. The first time we met, he said those exact words." I turned my back to him, feeling my face fall.

"I can honestly say that I've never heard of him. And I'm surprised that you remember... before..." he trailed off. Obviously he didn't remember much from his human life.

"What do you remember?" I asked, suddenly being mesmerized again by Victor and wanting to know all about him.

"Well, I don't remember much of my human life, but I know what Dominic saw when he looked into our past. My brothers and I were born in Salem, Massachusetts in the late 1600's, 1686 to be exact, we were triplets you see, and we lived a fairly happy life until the witch trials started. Our father died when we were too young to remember him, so we never thought anything of it, but in 1706, when we turned twenty, our mother was tried for witchcraft for supposedly killing our father. She was burned at the stake in front of our eyes. She was innocent, after all, who really believes in those horror stories?" he gave a small half-smile to the window, which he was looking out, "After that we all decided to run away before they decided that we were next in line and would have inherited said witchcraft. We traveled through the forests on no trials in particular, just trying to get to New York, and on the way, we stumbled into a vampire. He was in need of company, for he had been around for much, much longer than us, and he was a little insane. He selfishly turned us into what we are now, and we stayed in New York for a while, but then, maybe in the twenties, he fell in love with a girl at a hospital he worked at, and she was about to die on the hands of another vampire, so he turned her into a vampire also, but the one who wanted her in turn killed him. He had been part of the Society, also, and he had introduced us into it, but he didn't even live long enough to see us through it. We have been training since then, and just now we are ready, and we have been assigned to you and your family. Now, what's your story?"

I gasped, "I am so sorry."

"No need. It was too long ago, and right now, what I am really interested in is you, Claudia. I must say, that whatever you have been doing to me to make me feel like this, don't stop." he frowned after he said the last words, like he hadn't realized what he said had been true until he said it, but the more important thing was, he was flirting with me! The last person to flirt with me had been Louis before he 'disappeared'.

I told him the story of my life and by the time I had finished, Victor was sitting next to me on the bench of my vanity. I felt strangely comfortable around him, like I was safe, but not only safe, but interesting. He made everything that came out of my mouth sound like breaking news, and he treated it as such. We talked for hours and hours, and we didn't even notice when the sun came filtering through the curtains to see us, bathing us in its light, making us sparkle.

Suddenly, right when I was in the middle of a sentence and least expecting it, something happened.

Victor leaned towards me and pressed his stony soft lips to mine.

Well you were all expecting it, right?

And sorry it's moving so fast, I just can't help that I have so many ideas, and I can't wait to write them out. Sometimes, having an hyperactive imagination really really sucks.

Anyways, see you all next week, review please.

I love you all, saira.