Here you will find out where the split with canon occurred. Hope you enjoy.

8

"You should have broken it a little easier Alice." Bella swam back to the surface of consciousness.

"She's coming around." Alice said and she helped Bella sit upright on the sofa.

"I… I"

She felt her wrist lifted and cold fingers felt her pulse. "Don't rush to get up, you just fainted." Mr. Carlisle said.

Bella nodded, she was familiar with the feeling.

"Mr. Carlisle…"

"Just Carlisle," he corrected gently. "I'm afraid we weren't quite honest back in Phoenix. My name is Carlisle Cullen, and here in Forks I'm a doctor at the ER." Bella's head was swimming.

"Let's start at the start… Bella are you listening?" Alice's cold hand grabbed her friend and the temperature focussed her mind slightly.

"You're cold." She stated rather unnecessarily. "I remember in Phoenix when Mr… when Carlisle…" she paused looking at him and he nodded.

"When I put my hand on your shoulder, yes I thought you had noticed." He said.

"Wow, I…" she looked at Alice again, "109?" Alice nodded, "What anti-aging cream do you use?" both of her visitors laughed.

"Are you ready to hear this?" Alice asked.

"Just go for it." Bella said, Alice smiled knowing this was the correct response.

"I think Carlisle should tell you his story first." Alice said. Her father nodded and sat down on the recliner that Charlie sat in to watch baseball on TV.

"I was born around 1642 or 43, it's a bit hard to be accurate, in London England. I was definitely born during the reign of Charles I. My mother died of childbirth fever when I was born, leaving my father a broken man. My father was puritan vicar… parson, to a small, poor parish near the river Thames just east of the Tower of London. He was a bitter man, his elder brother had inherited a huge estate, but because of bad blood between them he was left with nothing at all. He turned his anger and disappointment into passion for his work. In short he was a zealot, in no way could he be called a nice man, but he was definitely God fearing. He saw enemies of the church everywhere, Catholics for the most part, but the supernatural too, witches, warlocks, daemons, werewolves and vampires. The black death had swept through London in the past few years, taking away my elder brother and his wife and children, which drove my father to even greater depths of despair, he blamed every supernatural spiritual thing for his losses. He made it his mission in life to stamp out such heresies, he would preach fire and damnation from his pulpit until he had the whole congregation roused, and then he would lead them against the forces of Satan." Carlisle paused and Bella was already fascinated by his story, she leant forward, willing him to continue. "Many a poor young woman burnt to death at the hands of my father and his followers. When I was about 23 or 24 my father was already an old man, back then if you were poor and lived to be 45 you were considered very old, I was already considered almost middle aged. My father was no longer physically fit enough to lead 'his people' in the march against evil and he forced me to take up the banner. One day we received a report of vampires living near the river. With fanatic, almost unholy, relish he gathered the usual crowd of zealots, whipped them up into a frenzy and gave them into my hands. I was always uncomfortable with this, I didn't see evil everywhere as my father did, and no matter the so-called evidence I could not condone burning witches that were probably just innocent young women or people who supposedly turned into wolves at the full moon, without proper proof. So I was sceptical about this supposed vampire lair. I was wrong. For probably the first time ever, there actually WERE monsters. As we approached the river bank we caught up with what seemed to be a man. He was tall, pale and seemed to be in pain. When the mob approached, with me in the lead, of course, he shouted out in Latin and ran.

"We gave chase, and even though I now know it should have been impossible, we caught up with him. Five of us cornered him in a blind alley behind a bakery in Pudding Lane. He must have allowed us to get close as I know he could have jumped onto the buildings at either side and escaped easily. Whatever his motive, when we approached him he turned, as any wild animal would, and attacked us. I remember being bitten as he passed to get to the man behind me. He killed all the others and then turned back to me, at that point the rest of the mob arrived, most of them with burning pitch torches, and he fled carrying the body of one of the men. They gave chase, leaving me for dead with the others. I felt fire race through me, I was in excruciating pain. I dragged myself to the base of the nearest wall and fell down a coal chute into a cellar.

"In the far corner of the basement was a root cellar. I buried myself in a pile of potatoes, I still remember the sweet, cloying smell of the mouldering vegetable." Bella was totally captivated now, immersed in the story so much she could almost see it in front of her. "I burned, for almost three days and nights all I did was burn, not realizing that above me a huge portion of London burnt at the same time. I knew what was happening to me, but as much as I did not want to be a vampire, I could not risk shouting out in pain, self preservation instincts kept me silent for most of the time. When the burning stopped, I had a dreadful thirst and I knew that I needed to feed. The scent of humans was almost too much for me, I coated my clothing in the rotting potatoes, overpowering the stench of people and burnt bodies nearby. Remembering the lessons of my father I knew I could not go out in the day, so I waited until night and escaped from the city to the south easily swimming the Thames. There was a royal park there and for several days I managed to stay out of the path of humans. I was so thirsty I thought that if I ever smelled one I would attack without thought, I could feel the animal inside me trying to force me to sate its thirst, tempting me to find someone to kill. After a week I decided that I had had enough. I headed to a clearing and waited for the dawn. You can't imagine how disgusted I was to realize that sunlight did not turn me to dust as my father had preached. So I turned back north, to the river. The Thames was a disgusting cesspool of pollution back then. I sank into the water, determined to drown myself." He laughed and Bella shuddered at the thought of the man in front of her determined to die. "I sat under water for almost an hour before I gave up; even forcing myself to inhale under there didn't effect me. I headed west and eventually came to some rather rugged country and threw myself off a cliff. I landed on my feet at the bottom, shocked that not only had I survived but I wasn't even injured. I found an abandoned village, the residents all having died of the plague, and entered the church, I moved to the altar and embraced the cross, I even tried drinking holy water. Nothing seemed to have an effect and day by day I was getting weaker and more likely to attack the first person I found. I had not eaten since before I was changed. I tried eating human food that I found in the abandoned houses, in the hope that that part of the lore was wrong too, typically it was about the ONLY part that was accurate, an hour after I had eaten some winter stored vegetables, I had to vomit them back up the same way I had the river water before. I tried repeatedly to kill myself, always trying to stay away from humans, until one day, I was in the New Forest, which covered a lot more area than it does now, and a herd of deer passed. My inner animal would be denied no longer and I attacked! As I came to my senses I realized that strength flowed through me again, I looked down, 3 full grown deer lay drained at my feet. I had a solution. I did not have to kill humans; I could live on animal blood!" He smiled and Alice squeezed Bella's hand drawing her attention.

"We all live off animal blood." She said.

"All vampires?" Bella asked, not really believing that she had asked that. But it was obvious to her that what she had believed, and what the two people in front of her believed, had been, up to now, two very different realities.

"No, just our family and a few others." Alice clarified. "Jump to 1918 now," she instructed her father, Bella looked at him, expecting him to say how he had met Alice, she was to be surprised again.

"I was working in a hospital in Chicago in 1918 when the Spanish Influenza struck, it was a terrible time. People came into the hospital faster than we could help them, bodies piled up in the corridors, only the lucky few actually got beds on wards. I remember when Edward Masen was brought in a couple of months into the epidemic. He was a tall, robust looking man in his late thirties, but I could tell straight away that it was already too late for him. His wife and son accompanied him and they sat with him all the way through his illness until, 3 days later, he died. It was about 4 or 5 hours before he died that it became obvious that his wife, Elizabeth Masen had also contracted the illness, when the porters removed her husband from the ward, the nurses immediately put her into the bed he had just died in, there was no room for sentiment. Edward Jnr fell ill only a few hours later. I worked all night, every night, to save each and every person on the wards. It was obvious though, that it was a losing battle from the start. Almost no one who came into the hospital left it alive. Edward Jnr fell into a delirium first. His mother struggled out of bed and sat at his side, sponging his face as she herself got worse. The nurses tried to put her back to bed but she would not leave her son. He was a handsome lad, only just 17 years of age and had everything to live for, but it obviously wasn't to be. On the evening as I did my rounds four days after Edward Snr died, Elizabeth grabbed me by the hand. She looked me directly in the eye and said "You must do everything in your power. What others cannot do, that is what you must do for my Edward." I still wonder to this day if she knew I was different. She collapsed and died almost immediately after talking to me. But she gave me an idea, or rather she crystallized one that I had had in the back of my mind for years. You see, I had travelled all over the world in the previous 250 years and had never met another vampire who lived off animal blood. No vampire I had met would even be persuaded to try, and I could not keep company for long with those who slaughtered innocent people for their food when there was another way. I took Elizabeth down to the morgue; there was no one there, no one alive that is. Bodies in shrouds were stacked like cord wood. Thirty or forty in that small room. As I returned to the ward I could hear Edward's breathing labouring, his lungs were almost full and he was drowning in his own body's fluid, it was obvious that he was going to be dead within the hour, if not sooner. I carefully lifted him and wrapped him in a sheet and carried him down to the morgue. I then escaped the hospital with him to my home on the outskirts of the city, where I recreated the wounds that I had received 250 years before. I left him as he started burning and returned to work and finished my shift. There was nothing I could do for anyone there, it was obvious. That night I packed my things and went home, never to return to the hospital.

"Edward awoke after just under 3 days of burning. It was apparent something was wrong immediately. He was almost driven mad by the thoughts of others, that he could hear all the time. My house was on decent sized grounds, and quite remote, I had thought, after all no one had heard him screaming through his transition. But it was not isolated enough. The voices in his head were constantly shouting at him." Bella looked at him, her eyes expressing the question that she could not put voice to. "Some vampires have extra abilities, Edwards was the ability to read people's thoughts, whether they wanted him to or not." Wow, that was… disturbing. She didn't remember Alice mentioning an Edward though; Bella wondered what happened to him. Carlisle carried on with his story, "So as soon as I dared allow him out of the house I put him in my car and we escaped to the north west and into Canada. As soon as he was out of range of people, he seemed to snap out of his daze and I could explain to him what had happened and what he was. We lived in seclusion for a couple of years. He became my son; we grew closer than I had ever imagined being to another person after all those years. Gradually we were able to introduce Edward to people as his thirst and mind allowed until late in 1921… At that time we moved to Wisconsin. Edward was strong and was doing well avoiding the temptation of human blood and had settled in his mind so he wasn't being constantly bombarded with other peoples' thoughts. But still we moved to a small town, I don't know if he could have coped with the numbers in a city.

"Years before I had worked in Ohio, where I had met a young woman. Her name was Esme Platt, she had been a stunning 16 year old back then, who had broken her leg climbing trees," he gave a fond chuckle and Bella joined in, thinking of her own accident prone history. "I had been very attracted to her when I knew her before… more than attracted, if truth be told… only the fact that she had been so young had stopped me trying to turn her back then. I had left her behind to live a normal life; the decision was not without pain. One night in Wisconsin, as I was working the police arrived with a suicide victim for the morgue. The hospital was small and there was no other staff at night except a couple of nurses, so I let the police into the place. I knew as soon as they brought her in that she wasn't dead, though it was obvious that she soon would be, she had severe internal injuries and the blood loss meant that her pulse was almost imperceptible, even to my senses.

"I recognized her immediately, it was Esme. I could not imagine what she was doing there, so far from where she had lived before, and in such a state. However now I had another opportunity and if I did not move swiftly, like with Edward, she would soon die. Again I stole someone from a hospital and bit her. I asked Edward to watch over her as I returned to my shift. I put my notice into the hospital when I got back and by the time Esme had woken, we were ready to set out straight away for the wilds of Canada again."

"It was hard on Edward, after losing both his real parents we had formed a family, just the two of us. Then all of a sudden Esme was there, don't get me wrong, he wasn't jealous! But I had noticed right at the start, that Edward was unsettled staying with us, mated vampires are… affectionate and passionate, to say the least, we also do not tire or need to rest or take food or toilet breaks like humans." Alice grinned wickedly and wiggled her eyebrows at Bella as she blushed violently at the subject, Carlisle carried on as if lecturing a hall of students. "It was worse for Edward than it would have been for almost anyone else, he not only could hear us with his ears, he would get visualizations of what we were doing through our thoughts. Within a month we became fully mated, and one day he went for a hunt and never came back. He left a note in his room saying he could not stand to be around us for a while and needed space, and he just…went. This upset Esme tremendously, she was already thinking of herself as his mother, and she had already lost one son. She believed she had driven him away from the only father he had and she insisted that we look for him. We did look, but it was in vain, however just short of 10 years later he returned, it was obvious that he had not stuck to our diet, but we welcomed him back, just glad that he returned. He had been back less than a month when I came across Rosalie bleeding to death in the street. I immediately thought that she may be a suitable mate for Edward, and rushed to save her. Unfortunately they didn't get on very well… you could say it was loathing at first sight!" both vampires laughed lightly and Bella could not help but smile with them. "Again we moved to the country, but this time we went south to Tennessee rather than Canada like before. Two years later, Rosalie went hunting on her own; she had a great resistance to human blood, probably because she actually resented being changed. Several hours after she left, she arrived back at speed, a broken and bloody man in her arms. Emmett had lost a fight with a bear, and Rose had immediately picked him up and carried him all the way back to us so that I could change him for her. No matter how much she did not wish to be a vampire, she recognized her true mate when she found him and begged me to change him too so they could be together. Luckily we were rather isolated where we were and so we didn't have to move while we waited for Emmett to get over his early bloodlust. However now Edward was on his own, with 2 mated couples in the house. Making it twice as hard for him to feel like he belonged." Carlisle sighed and paused; he looked at Alice and raised an eyebrow.

Bella wondered where all this explanation was going. Why were they telling her? If the Carlisles… Cullens, wanted to avoid her, they wouldn't have moved to Forks. Alice knew years ago that Bella's father lived here and she sometimes visited. No something else was going on, and Bella had a feeling it was to do with Edward, rather than anyone else.

"I awoke in the grounds of a hospital in Perry county Mississippi in 1920 without any memories of being human. I have no idea how I became a vampire nor who my Sire was… a Sire is the vampire that bites you, Carlisle is Emmett, Rosalie, Esme and Edward's Sire…" Alice explained as she went, "The first thing I remember was 'seeing' a face, a man with red eyes, and then flashes of things happening, strange visions of people and places. I wasn't sure at first if they were memories or dreams that I remembered. I accidently killed and drained a gardener as he was trimming the bushes on the grounds and in horror ran away as fast as I could. Even as I moved away from people I could still see these 'flashes'. The first time I realized what was really happening was when I had a flash of a severe storm, lightning shot all around and a huge tree split almost down the middle, sparks shooting off and the undergrowth at the base of the tree catching fire. I saw myself being engulfed in flames and the… vision… stopped, dead. The next day as I made my way further inland I came across a tree that looked exactly like the one I had seen. As I watched lightning flashed across the sky and suddenly with an almighty crash I saw the tree start to split. I didn't wait around for the rest as you can imagine and took to my heels as fast as I could. Several times over the next few weeks things like that happened. The weather visions always came true, but I realized my actions could change the outcome as it affected me. In this way I was able to keep away from hunting parties, and could find food easily just by deciding that I needed to hunt. I could 'SEE' animals as soon as I wanted them and so could head straight to them without having to wait and really 'hunt'.

"I stayed away from all people, not even going near them after my newborn phase ended. I found a little cave in the wilderness and moved in. I would often get visions of certain people, the red eyed man most, but others too. A blond man and his wife. A bronze haired boy. I also saw a young woman being attacked and left for dead in the street, and later the same woman carrying a huge man who was bleeding after losing a fight with a bear. Over time the visions changed, after 1933 the visions of the dying woman stopped, in 1935 the vision of the man and bear stopped. Still the vision of the red eyed man stayed with me. But still, I was quite happy on my own. Then, in 1945, just after the end of the War in Europe, I had another vision. In this vision I saw the man, young, handsome but badly scarred with red eyes, in the vision we were…" Alice paused and grinned, waggling her eyebrows again. Bella blushed. "For 3 months I sat in my cave trying to force the visions of this human eating vampire, to see why I had been shown him like that now, I could not see what had changed to focus the vision, in fact all I could see was either the two of us naked or him walking into what looked like a diner, walking up to me, tipping his hat and speaking.

"I finally decided to look for him, I trusted my visions by this time implacably, they had never let me down. As soon as I decided, of course, the visions came thick and fast and though at the time I didn't realize what they meant fully I knew I had to find him! I would marry this scarred southern gentleman and help heal him of the emotional scars that were even worse than the physical ones I could see. As the vision cleared I could see through the diner windows behind him as he walked towards me, I could see a shop opposite, and on its awning was an address. I immediately started making my way to Philadelphia; I wasn't in a rush because I knew it was winter when the vision would come to pass. I hunted along the way and even paused to steal a few clothes as mine were, by this time, just rags. It took me just over six weeks to walk there.

"I sat in the diner, in the booth that had the best view of the door and ordered a coffee. I sat there every morning until I was in danger of being caught in the sun as it came over the buildings opposite. I was almost about to despair, I had been waiting so long, over four months! But the vision was as strong as ever and I decided to wait just one more week when the door opened and in he walked, he headed straight for me and I said, "You kept me waiting a long time." He tipped his hat like a true southern gentleman and replied "I'm sorry, Ma'am." I gave him my hand and he took it and we walked out of the diner and never looked back." Alice sighed and Bella joined her, it was so romantic! Though Bella was practical to a fault she was also a teenage girl.

"As soon as we got out of town he asked me why my eyes were gold. I explained about the diet of animal blood that I had seen in a vision of a family that lived in the states somewhere and he agreed to try and stop killing humans. Jasper had been changed during the Civil War, and he had known nothing but blood and violence for almost 90 years, as the evil witch that turned him used him to help her in the southern vampire wars!" Alice's voice turned as cold as her hands and it was clear to Bella that she held some hatred for this vampire. "We spent the next two years living in the wilderness, I did my best to help Jasper stick to his new diet and on the whole we succeeded. I knew that if we were to successfully join the Cullens we HAD to conquer his thirst. Eventually he felt he was ready, my vision showed me that the Cullens were living just outside New York at a place called Ithaca, so we headed North."

Alice paused and looked so sad that Bella grabbed her hand trying to convey her willingness to help in any way she could.

"This is where my visions failed me so badly!" Alice's voice choked. Carlisle stood and put a consoling hand on her shoulder.

"It wasn't your fault Alice, you could not have foreseen what was to happen, it was pure accident."

"If I hadn't been so overbearing though…"

"Alice, just tell Bella." He patted her shoulder, his jaw clenched as well as his fists as he moved back to the chair, he looked as sad as Alice did and Bella wondered if Edward had died.

"I had a vision you see, the perfect introduction to the family. I could see everything I needed to do for us to join them successfully. We arrived at the house at midday. Esme was in the garden tending her plants, Carlisle was in his study, and Rose was tuning up one of the cars in the garage. Emmett and Edward were hunting as it was sunny and so they couldn't be at the university as they usually would have been.

"I walked up to Esme and hugged her and introduced myself as her new daughter. I explained that Jasper was my mate and that it would be best if he pretended to be Rose's twin brother. Carlisle and Rose heard me speaking and came to see who was visiting. And that was that. I went into the house and just knew which bedroom would belong to Jasper and me. Oh how I wish I had just waited!"

"What happened Alice?" Bella asked.

"I persuaded Jasper to help me move the things in the room into the garage, so we could start decorating it and putting in extra closet space. Emmett came back first… this was where my vision had changed. He and Edward were supposed to come back together, if that had happened as it should have then everything would have been fine. But it didn't. I hadn't been watching for anything going wrong! I knew what was supposed to happen so well that I never noticed when things went off track. It was just so strange, a series of events that on their own meant nothing, but in the end added up to disaster.

"First that morning, as he ran an errand before the sun rose, someone had bumped into his favourite car while it was parked, they dented the wing and drove off without leaving a note, then the needle on his record player broke so he could not play his records, by the time he found out the sun was out and he could not get to buy a new one that day. Added to which, Emmett had been in one of his teasing moods, winding Edward up all day. When they were off hunting, every time Edward targeted a meal, Emmett would either scare it away or knock Edward over as he prepared to hunt, or jump in and steal it if he could. As they got close to the house they startled a herd of deer and Edward, took the opportunity of being so far in front of his brother and attacked them. Emmett, tired of baiting Edward, came straight home, expecting Rose to have finished in the garage. Which she would have if I had not interrupted them.

"As I had piled Edward's things into the garage, I had left his most precious possessions, the photograph of his parents, a musical jewellery box with a few pieces in, and his mother's best china dinner service, on top of the pile where they were safest. Emmett, hearing Rose still in the garage burst in, knocking the pile of possessions over, not knowing they were there and everything crashed to the floor. The dinner service smashed, of course, the box lid broke off, but worse, the picture was damaged by the glass on the frame and the pottery shards, it was ruined, totally," Alice sobbed, holding her hands out as if begging for forgiveness, "I didn't see it until it was too late! I got to the garage seconds after they fell and just as I picked up the picture, Edward came in! He stood, silently as I, over and over again, apologized, the Cullens gathered in the garage, Jasper as well. I knew exactly how he was going to react but had no chance of trying to change the future.

"He looked at his possessions, then at Jasper, and at me… he looked at everyone in turn then without saying a single word he got into his car and just… left. We haven't seen him since. It wasn't supposed to happen like that! All the visions for YEARS had shown exactly how it should have been… he should have come in, met us, laughed about me moving into his room and then everything would be fine." Another sob broke through her voice and she couldn't carry on.

"It wasn't Alice's fault; no one could have foreseen it happening. Added to which Edward comes home and finds yet another happy mated couple whose thoughts he will have to try and ignore. It was just too much for him. We have tried to find him over the years, but every time we get close he 'hears' us coming and vanishes. The only way we know that he is still alright is that he keeps in touch with another coven of vegetarians who live permanently in Alaska."

"Vegetarians?" Bella wasn't sure she heard right.

"Oh yes, sorry that's what we call vampires who live by eating animals rather than humans. It's a lifestyle choice that goes against our natural diet, like human vegetarians."

"That makes sense I suppose and it saves you being accidently overheard saying that you have given up killing humans for a while I suppose."

Carlisle looked at Bella with pride. He didn't know of anyone else in the world who could have taken the information Bella had been given that morning so calmly. She was showing no signs of shock, which would have been the understandable reaction. She calmly accepted what they said as true but she wasn't delusional. She had weighed what they said against the physical proof of lack of aging in her friend and just absorbed the information given. Alice swore by all that she held holy that Bella would not tell anyone, ever, what she had been told.

"What can I do to help?" Bella asked, "I guess that it wasn't an accident us meeting all those years ago if you can see the future. So what did you see about me?"

Alice continued the story, telling Bella, with a bit of judicious editing, all about her vision years before, how it was so extraordinary for her to have visions of so far in the future and how important it must be. She explained why they met and why Alice had kept in touch all those years. It made a lot of sense to Bella; they had looked after her because they needed her for something. After all it was the only time Renée ever seemed to want her around, when she wanted something. Bella didn't feel used or angry at the Cullen's for wanting to use her, she just accepted that that was the way things worked, in fact she was happy to be of help. However she did need to know what they needed her to do…

"Which brings us to now… here you are in Forks, as far as I can see Edward will be coming through two weeks today. This is where we need your help…"