Writing something like this takes a while. I think I started this chapter sometime back in May, I think. I just now finished it. It's taken a fair amount of proof-reading to make sure I liked it and a great deal of thought as to how to progress the story in an original fashion so that I am not simply just retelling the Twilight story with a twist to it. Not that there's anything wrong with that but if I'm going to put this much work into something I write in my free time I might as well go all out in it.

Anywho, Chapter Seven:

"I don't believe we were ever really introduced properly," Edward Cullen said as we worked on completing the lab write up. Considering the fact that he was a vampire and I was willing to bet that this wasn't exactly the first time he'd done a Biology lab of this nature and I was self-preserving immortal Meta-human and was in the same boat the lab didn't take long at all. Just some slides to identify the mitosis stages on and some follow up questions. We did however have a second lab to get started on. It was Advanced Biology after all.

"No I don't believe we were," I agreed, "Bella Creed, new resident bad-girl of Forks High School." I extended my hand out to him.

"Edward Cullen," he replied, taking my hand with his colder one, "Semi-model student of Forks High School."

"Semi?" I asked, I had an idea of what he was getting at but needed something to talk about. I was sitting next to a vampire for crying out loud. If it weren't for the fact that I was spying on him and he wasn't supposed to know how old I was and that I knew he was a vampire I imagined that we could have a host of things to talk about. Until then…

"My foster parents take my siblings and I hiking when the weather is good," he explained, "regardless of whether it's a school day or not." He smirked a little at this fact. "Benefits of being orphaned I guess," he sighed, a little theatrically, "Esme, my foster mother, feels that if the sun is shining here we should be out enjoying it so that we don't become depressed."

"She's thoughtful," I said, scribbling down some more words on the lab handout, "I don't suppose that happens very often, given this area's weather patterns."

"I can count the number of days I've skipped school this year on my hands if that's what you're saying," Edward smiled, "So what was Eric Yorkie talking about when he said you hospitalized a boy in your last school."

"Is he going around warning people about me?" I asked, humor filling my smile as I rested my head on the back of my hands.

"No but a few other guys were talking about you being "hot" and wondering how you liked it in bed and he overheard them," Edward said back evenly, "I was sitting a few seats over and so, naturally, heard what they were saying."

"They were wondering what I would be like in bed, eh?" I growled, clenching my hands into fists beneath my chin.

Edward chuckled. It was a musical laugh that would have sent butterflies to my stomach if I hadn't been expecting it to sound so beautiful. It did however make me tense up at just how beautiful it was. I had heard other Cold Ones laugh before when they came in to talk with James and they passed by where I was as I dealt with recruits. Perhaps it was just that it was up close and personal this time instead of from afar.

"Don't worry," Edward reassured me as we rose to get our new lab supplies. The lab was to see what chemicals affected algae in pond water. Edward went to fill the three one-gallon containers with pond water as I walked to the front of the room to pick out the chemicals that we would be adding to the water.

Three different kinds of fertilizers and pesticides, and car oil. Such were our choices. Remembering the book Silent Spring by Rachel Carson that I had read about a decade ago when I had finally gotten around to reading it I chose two of the pesticides and headed back to my lab station where Edward had the containers of water.

"Why shouldn't I worry?" I asked, resuming our conversation from where we had left it hanging a few minutes earlier.

"Yorkie's story of you telling him about hospitalizing a football player seemed to put the boys off a little," Edward casually remarked, eying my choice of chemicals. He turned his eye back to me as if to ask me the reason for my choice.

"I—read the book Silent Spring—you know, the one by Rachel Carson, and I guess I was influenced by it," I stammered. I swallowed. Something about that gaze made me feel…mushy? Terrible way to describe the feeling but for a hard-ass girl like me touchy-feely feelings were a bit foreign.

"You're and interesting girl, Bella Creed," Edward remarked as he drew samples of water from each container, placing them in test tubes which were placed into a small machine that spun the tubes around to get the water sediments to settle to the bottom. Strange how even though I had gone through high school a dozen times and graduated from college twice in the sixty years since World War II and I still couldn't remember things like the name of a simple piece of equipment.

"Why would you say that?" I asked, leaning back against the counter as we waited for our samples to finish spinning.

"You're a 'bad-girl', as you said, but you've spent the time to read something like Silent Spring?" Edward chuckled, this time I was prepared for the sound and it didn't affect me—as much.

"So you're saying I can't be a 'bad-girl' and not have an appreciation for literature?" I asked, "Are our samples done in the spinny-thingy?"

"You mean the 'Centrifuge'?" Edward corrected me, opening the top of the device and taking out one of our samples, "not yet. The sediments haven't settled just yet."

"Damn."

We were quiet for a few moments as the Centrifuge spun. I was then aware of the faint sound of Edward laughing to himself. I let it slide for a bit before my curiosity got the better of me. "What are you finding so funny?" I asked, crossing my arms as I looked at him.

Edward looked at me a little suspiciously. "You heard me laughing?"

"I have good hearing."

"Very good it would appear."

"Answer the bloody question."

Another soft laugh. "Alright. You smell of cigars, can curse like a sailor, but on the other hand you're incredibly smart, excelling in History, and well-read. I find you to be quite an intriguing person, Bella Creed."

"How'd you know that I was good at History?"

"I overheard a few people talking at lunch."

His response was a little too automatic. Vampires had better hearing than I did but Kyle would have difficulty sifting through all the conversations in a crowded room unless he was specifically targeting groups of people. This told me that either Edward and his coven of vampires suspected me already (which was potentially bad) or there was a lurking variable that I couldn't account for because I didn't know what it was.

Edward pulled me from my thoughts as the samples were done settling in the test tubes. I now had to enjoy about half an hour of meticulously going through ten samples, slide by slide and counting all the forms of plant life in the samples.

Joy.

Edward left the classroom at a near inhumanly fast pace. Much faster than I had seen him walk as we made our way to this class. Adding the facts together the only thing I could assume was that there was something about my presence that was unsettling to him. Somehow.

I couldn't ponder it for long as I had to quickly get to my last class of the day which was Gym. Thankfully a handful of the people in Biology, Mike and Lauren, were also in my Gym class and they lead me to the locker rooms.

I just picked a locker for now until the coach gave me an official one and a lock. I didn't have anything to change into yet, but I probably didn't need to. Likely the coach would just have me sit out for the first day, as the other schools I had gone to in the past did.

As I opened my locker I caught a whiff of something that smelled an awful lot like a vampire. I sniffed again, closing my eyes to try and discern what exactly the smell smelled like.

It was a beautiful scent. Quite feminine. And curious? I felt eyes on the back of my head at that moment. Shit. A vampire had just caught me sniffing out what was going on in the locker room. I slowly went back to putting my backpack into my locker as if nothing had happened.

The vampire continued to watch me. Closing my locker I turned around to see which vampire it was that was in my Gym class.

It was the tall blonde one. Rosalie Hale if I remember her name correctly. She didn't look terribly happy to see me. Forcing myself not to swallow and alert her to my apprehension of this new situation I calmly crossed my arms and cocked my head to one side as if to say "what?"

"What are you doing here?" she asked. Her voice was low. Low enough that a normal person wouldn't have heard it over the rest of the noise in the locker room. Thankfully no one else was in the little area of the locker room that she and I were in so nobody was witnessing the confrontation.

"What do you mean 'what am I doing here?'" I shot back at her putting a small laugh into my question as to ask "what the hell are you on?" Hopefully she would think I was just another more than human person just getting by in the world and not push the question much further.

"You smell different than normal humans. I've never met someone like you nor has any of my family," Hale continued, "Why are you here? And why are you sniffing around? You can tell that I'm a…" she paused briefly before saying "vampire" in an even quieter voice which I was barely able to hear before moving on… "so don't try to act like you know nothing."

"So another person who happens to be more than human isn't welcome in your town?" I asked quickly, hoping to put her off balance enough that she'd back down.

Hale paused for a split second, taken aback by my rapid response. I forced back another nervous swallow, not wanting her to know that I was indeed hiding something.

"Alright," she huffed, "I guess I jumped to conclusions a little too quickly this time."

I did swallow this time. But it was more in a staged manner than in actuall nervousness. I was quite relieved that she bought the first thing that came out of my mouth. I could think fast if I needed too but not nearly fast enough for a vampire. I learned quickly while talking with Kyle that its not easy to lie to a vampire since they can catch on to inconsistencies in your story faster than you can make connections.

"But don't think this means that I'm not watching you," Hale continued, "and just because Edward is getting intoxicated by your smell doesn't mean that I'm going to just let you waltz into my family's life. By the way, Coach Clapp doesn't care if you don't have gym clothes, he'll make you participate anyway and today's the mile run."

"Sounds fun," I smirked. I could easily do gym in any outfit I owned. As the most expensive weapon in the United States Military I was trained in combat situations wearing all sorts of varieties of clothing.

What she said about Edward being intoxicated by my scent sent unfamiliar shivers down my spine though. What the hell was that supposed to mean? Did I have to fend off the affections of an eternally horny teenage male now as well as the rest of the male population? Not that Edward being attracted to me was that bad of a deal. He was a perfectly beautiful man and what I had smelled of his natural scent through the smell of his arousal was equally as captivating.

I groaned and banged my head against the locker, thankful that Hale had made an exit a second ago. Rape victim at the age of sixty-eight I hadn't so much as masturbated since then in fear of reliving the loss of my virginity. Now seventy-four years later I was turning into a horny teenager upon meeting the first person of the opposite sex to really catch my eye.

I gunned the engine of my Harley as I roared down the highway to Port Angeles. I was heading to a bar to take care of some problems.

Gym had gone fine, as much as I wanted a low profile the sight of all the boys gawking at me as I outpaced them in my biker boots, jeans, and leather jacket, running a five minute twenty second mile was definitely worth it. I could run faster. I was faster than most humans, but I still needed to maintain a small semblance of being normal.

The bar wasn't that hard to find. Parking my bike I locked it and strode toward the door. The smell of cigarettes and cheap alcohol that was sold at a far higher price than it deserved was perceptible from across the street.

My kind of place.

The bartender inside looked a little suspicious of me as I sat down on a stool at the bar but couldn't do anything as I showed him the ID that denoted me as a legal twenty-one year old. With a slightly disbelieving look he nonetheless turned around and brought me my request of a bottle of Erin's Isle Irish Whiskey and a glass. I was somewhat surprised when I found out they had Irish Whiskey at a bar on the Pacific Coast about six thousand miles away from Ireland but it was here and that was what mattered.

I swallowed my first glass in one gulp, savoring the burning taste as it passed through my mouth and down my throat. My homework was done, though I wanted to go over my Calculus problems a second time to make sure I knew what I was doing. I had learned several things about the coven in Forks. I had even made a few friendships that would make the time here pass easier. My starting tasks had gone quite well.

I still needed to establish a way to keep a close eye on the coven, make contact with the La Push Wolves, pass my classes, and not piss off anybody while I did all of this. Passing the classes was the easy part of all this.

I downed my second glass slower than my first one. Alcohol is a depressant, one that I used more than I should to calm my nerves when I had a tough day. I could still remember what Robert had told me when he had to come haul me out of a bar in New York forty years ago when I had drunk enough to overpower my bodies healing abilities. I had drunk enough hard liqueur to kill a normal human Godfredson's size. Robert, while finding my state of intoxication quite funny, had told me that this was the only body I had in this life. Even if I had the ability to bounce back from anything I threw at myself I still needed to take care of my body. I slurred some words that I thought sounded like a question asking him why he cared since he trashed his body for the hell of it.

His response jarred my drunken mind. A trashed body can be recycled and turned into something else. But a body that has been hacked to pieces and burned can't be anything but charred remains to serve as an example for the next person to learn from.

I gave up drinking for a year after that.

After my third glass I felt calmer and decided that I'd had enough. Paying for my drinks I left the bar and headed down the street. There was an ally about a block down from the bar that I could tuck into and make a call to Kyle.

"Creed?" Kyle's voice said over the cell phone.

"Yeah, it's me," I said. I balanced the phone between my shoulder and ear to pull out a cigar.

"You smoking?" Kyle asked.

"Yeah."

"Be careful about doing that and drinking for a while. We just had a major breach of security. A group called the Friends of Humanity, you've heard about them no doubt, managed to get a few members into the Pentagon and hack a major database that held files to Meta-human agents."

I grunted and blew a cloud of cigar smoke out of my mouth. The so called "Friends of Humanity" were a radical group that believed that the mere presence of Meta-humans and other supernatural beings were a threat to human kind and took it upon themselves to exterminate as many as they could. They were even lobbying for a bill to be passed to have all "sub-human" as they called it, beings to be registered and required to wear identification markings. I personally thought it was to make their first and foremost initiative easier for them.

It was rather pointless though. The government already had files on about seventy percent of all Meta-humans and about fifty for supernatural beings like vampires and werewolves. At least there weren't elven tribes here in America like there were in Europe and northern Asia.

"How'd they break in?" I asked, "Considering the security around those files someone should have known of a breach before they managed to get within twenty meters of the door."

"Interrogations are still going on," Kyle explained, "until absolutely necessary neither James or myself are allowed to scan their minds and it's strictly human to human interrogation."

"Meaning you have no idea how they got in."

"We have some speculations but nothing that's able to be proven. But your file was in those that managed to be downloaded and sent to an outside computer. James tracing the file as we speak—"

"What?" I asked as he got cut off.

"James just sent me an e-mail. The file was sent to a computer in Oregon. Watch yourself for the next few weeks. We have reason to believe that the Friends of Humanity have managed to create a virus that attacks the Immune Systems of Meta-humans. You wouldn't be affected by the virus under normal conditions but if your healing factor is fighting something else, say smoking or drinking related side effects, than the virus would have a free shot at your immune system and we'd have no idea how your body will react after that."

"You want me to check out the place in Ore—"

"No," Kyle sharply cut me off before I finished saying "Oregon", "James is sending me to deal with it personally. I'll check in with you in a few days. Now then what was it that you were calling in about?"

I told him what had happened so far today and what I had learned in my debriefing with Charlie. I heard tapping noises from the other side. Kyle was probably recording my report on his computer which was probably the fourth safest place in the building to store it on. James had personally done the firewalls on the computers that the Moor's worked on. James being the programming whiz obviously had the safest computer and Kyle's and Ann's were the next safest. Beyond that the safest storage units for information were Kyle and James themselves. James could kick Kyle's ass and Kyle was easily the best fighter I knew. The only way I could think of to compete with either one of them would be to enhance Robert with my healing abilities. But as Robert was dead that wasn't going to happen.

"Alright Bella," Kyle said, report done, "before I hang up there are two more things you need to be aware of. The first is that I have you on satellite imagining right now and can see that you're still smoking. I recall giving you an order to lay off on the smoking and drinking for a while so I have to write you up for disobeying a command."

I coughed a bit as he said this to me. But my surprise at his words was nothing compared to what he said next.

"Also it appears that there are two individuals watching you from the building behind you. I can't make out any distinctive words or symbols on their clothes but I'd bet they are associated with Friends of Humanity. If they engage you and inject you with anything you call me immediately."

"Acknowledged," I answered.

The line went dead and I put my phone back in my pocket. Drawing one last draft on my cigar I extinguished it on the side of the building. Twisting my neck I felt tendons crack. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. Everything about my demeanor would have led an observer to think I was just dealing with a stressful phone call.

The deep breath had allowed me to scent the individuals on the top of the building. One male, one female. The female was Rosalie Hale. I didn't recognize the smell of the male but it was definitely a vampire. From Charlie's information on the coven Rosalie was involved with the one called Emmett, so I ruled the other two vampires I hadn't met yet out.

Opening my eyes I turned around and looked straight up at where they peered over the edge of the building at me. I smiled and waved to them laughing a little as they quickly vanished from sight.

I didn't need to call Kyle about an attack from some members of a crazed organization.

I did have to deal with the vampires knowing who I was now.

'That was a quick start,' I thought as I got back on my Harley. In my side mirror I saw a large jeep with the Emmett Cullen behind the wheel and Rosalie in the passenger seat watching me from a parking spot several stores down the street. I smirked and revved the engine bringing the front of my bike around to race down the street toward them.

Rosalie's face was priceless as I shot passed her with my middle finger up.

Fun stuff, ain't it?

Just so people know, I'd be much more motivated to update faster if I had more feedback from readers. So PLEASE, let me know how I did: please review.