Edward:

Back at our place, I delivered Bella into Esme's care in the kitchen. Esme was stirring something in a pot when we walked in, and she immediately called Bella over.

"Bella dear, come and taste this, and tell me if this needs any more salt or pepper. Edward," she turned to me, patting me on the cheek, "Why don't you run along? I'd like to spend some quality girl-time with Bella." Carlisle is waiting for you, she continued in her thoughts.

I kissed Bella on the temple. "I'll be upstairs." I turned to find Emmett in the entryway, leering at my girl.

"The schoolgirl look! Nice, Bella!" he said, adding an off-color remark that made Bella blush and made Esme scold him and send him out of the room. He had an even more off-color thought about Bella, for which I cuffed him quite roughly on the way past him. He retaliated, and our violent shoving match lasted all the way up the stairs until the thunderous noise brought Carlisle out of his study. I could hear Esme reassuring Bella that it was nothing, just her boys being boys. I heard Bella mutter something about girls being women, and then Carlisle was speaking.

"Remember, if you break anything, you replace it out of your own bank accounts," he said mildly, making it sound like he'd used the word 'pocket-money' instead of 'bank accounts.' "As for those," he continued, indicating the dents in the wall all the way up the stairs, "You will fix those yourselves. With no outside help," he added, in case we hadn't understood his meaning.

"Yes, dad," we said in unison, grinning at him.

Carlisle had learned a long time ago that making us fix the damage we caused instead of allowing us to pay professionals to do it was an effective way of lessening the chances of a repeat performance. Usually, Emmett and I took our arguments outdoors, and in extreme cases, we took them all the way out into the wilderness, as far from civilization as possible. Those types of argument were rare, though.

Of course they had a good chance of becoming more frequent if he didn't keep his dirty thoughts off my girlfriend, I thought sourly, glaring at him. He guffawed and walked off, but I did notice he was reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in his head as he left.

I followed Carlisle into his office and sat down across from him, curious as to why he was so carefully controlling his thoughts. Of all of us, Carlisle had the greatest ability to keep certain thoughts hidden from me. It must be experience; he was the oldest by far.

"So tell me about this vision," I said carefully, not yet sure if Alice had stumbled on to my half-formed plans for Bella, or how much she might have told Carlisle about them.

"It was about Bella," he said, getting straight to the point. The fact that I couldn't see the details of the vision in his thoughts meant he was concealing it from me, and that meant it was bad, and he wanted to prepare me for it.

"Where is Alice?" I said suddenly, focusing and scanning the background noise of thoughts in the house, looking for hers. It would be much easier if I could just see the vision as she had seen it, rather than have to rely on a less accurate, second-hand description. All I heard was Esme thinking about how beautiful Bella would look as a vampire, and Emmett thinking…I snarled, half rising out of my seat. I knew he heard me, because he started declaiming in his head again, this time reciting the Gettysburg Address. I subsided with a rumbling growl.

I could find no trace of Alice and Jasper. "Where are they?" I asked urgently. "And what is this vision?"

"They had some more shopping to do for the graduation party, they will be back soon. Now, Edward, I want you to stay calm and not react until we have talked this through," he said, taking me even further away from calm than I already was.

"What is this vision about?" I insisted, hearing the panic in my voice.

"Edward…"

I lunged out of my seat. "Tell me!!"

Carlisle came out of his seat too. "Edward." He spoke quietly, and very, very sternly. "Sit. Down."

I sat, my hair standing up on the back of my neck. Carlisle was the kindest most mild-mannered man I had ever met, and because it happened so seldom, it was all too easy to forget that he could put the fear of God in you with the flip of a switch. He couldn't have held a family of vampires together for so long without the ability to keep us in line. He could be every inch the patriarch if he felt it was necessary, and could make you feel every single one of his 362 years. I felt a stab of sympathy for Bella, understanding for the first time how I sometimes made her feel.

"She saw Bella lying at the foot of a steep incline. She had a severe head injury."

"How severe?" I ground out, my hands balled into fists.

"There could be no doubt that she was dead," he said quietly.

I went completely still. "What else?" I asked, my voice devoid of emotion.

"That's the problem, there isn't much else. Alice can't tell where it is, except she is pretty sure it isn't around here. She also can't tell what happened; it could be a hiking accident, or something more sinister. Based on her clothing, it would seem to be summer."

There was a commotion downstairs. Alice and Jasper were back, and I instantly honed in on my sister's thoughts, looking for the dreaded vision. She must have been holding it in her mind for me already, because it hit me immediately, like a Technicolor image frozen on a movie screen. I cried out in anguish, and Carlisle was beside me, a firm, comforting hand on my shoulder.

It was a horrifying image, one that was seared permanently into my brain and which I would remember in excruciating detail until my dying day: Bella lay on the ground, like a rag doll thrown down by a child having a temper tantrum, in a debris field of small boulders and rocks. It looked like she could have stepped on a loose stone and set of a small landslide which took her down with it. Or she could have been thrown there by a vampire having a temper tantrum.

The side of her head was bashed in. And the blood…I choked on a moan of both desire and desperation, hating myself more than I had ever thought possible for the former.

My control was fraying rapidly. I started to quake with fury, self-loathing, and fear for her. Carlisle tensed behind me, his hand tightening on my shoulder seconds before I erupted, flying out of my seat, the chair crashing into the wall behind me. I got no further than standing before Carlisle's arms locked around me like bands of titanium, pinning my arms to my sides. I struggled briefly, and then went limp.

"Edward, Edward, calm down," he soothed, still keeping an iron hold on me. "Don't go berserk until we know what we are dealing with. You know the future isn't set in stone. We don't know what it all means yet."

Not true. I knew exactly what it meant. It meant I had made the right decision, and that the time had come for me to act. I could make no preparations, for fear of Alice finding out; it would have to be a fly by the seat of my pants operation. And even my lack of planning didn't guarantee that Alice wouldn't have a vision just in time to thwart me.

Things came to a head on the evening of our graduation. Alice had been avoiding me, and Bella picked the absolute worst time she could have to tell me why. Then again, perhaps she had done it deliberately. We were surrounded by celebrating graduates and their families, and Charlie was making his way through the crowd toward us, when Bella explained to me why she thought the Seattle vampires were after her, and not my family, as we all believed. I saw Alice's vision of Bella's broken body again, and pure rage flooded me as the horrifying realization dawned that Bella was right. She was the target. To hell with caution; I was going to snatch her up and carry her off right then and there. I reached for her, and then Charlie was there, pulling her in to a hug, and shunting me out of the way. Bella accepted his congratulations, observing me warily all the while.

I struggled to gain control of my fury at the unknown vampires, making and discarding plans so quickly that even if Alice had seen anything, I doubt she could have made heads or tails of it. I barely heard Charlie's grudging invitation to join them for dinner, and pulled myself together just in time to formulate a stiff but polite refusal. Excusing myself, I went outside to wait. I would follow them to the restaurant and keep an eye on her from the darkness outside.

I would never leave Bella alone again, whether she liked it or not. From this moment on, I would be her shadow until the day she died.

The evening just kept going downhill from there. The graduation party was a success, but I can say that only because Alice's parties usually were. My family and I were otherwise occupied, first when Alice had another vision letting us know that the Seattle vampires were finally coming for Bella, and then with a brief stand-off with Bella's pack of La Push dogs, during which an uneasy alliance was proposed. Bella frantically protested, as usual more worried about everyone but herself, and was utterly ignored as strategy was discussed over her head. I was just grateful for the commotion because it kept Alice busy, hopefully so busy that she wouldn't have any sudden visions about me and Bella. I barely registered that we had made plans to meet up with the rest of the pack 10 miles north of some ranger station, when Jacob and his friends slunk off into the darkness, Bella still pleading with him to reconsider.

None of this mattered to me anymore. The Seattle vampires would be wasting a trip. Bella, though nobody but I knew it yet, would be long gone.

The wait for the party to end was almost unendurable, and tested my patience and control more than once. Bella was as relieved as I was when it finally ended and I was driving her home. She was nervous and unsettled, consumed with worry, and pleading to be allowed to come to the meeting with me.

"No," I said curtly.

"But, Edward…"

"I said no."

"I'm going with you to that meeting," she stated mulishly.

I pulled up behind Bella's truck and killed the engine. "I'm not going to the meeting, I'm staying with you." There, that wasn't a lie, and it would make her feel better. She didn't like to be left out, especially out of something like this.

I stayed with her until she had closed the front door, and then ran around the house to her window. Leaping up lightly, I climbed in, hearing Bella staggering up the stairs, helping a groggy Charlie who had fallen asleep on the sofa. She deposited him in his bedroom, came in to get her toilet bag and pajamas, and then went to the bathroom where she showered and got ready for bed.

"In you get," I said, holding up the covers, when she came back into the room.

She came a little reluctantly, climbing into bed. "Edward…are you going to wait until I fall asleep and then go to the meeting without me?" she asked pointedly.

I caught her chin. "Bella, I swear on your life, that I will not leave your side."

That seemed to satisfy her. She lay down on her side, and I stretched out behind her, pulling her back against me. She was restless, and it took every scrap of my skill to calm her down and lull her to sleep. When the change in her breathing told me she was out, I sprang off the bed, picked up her backpack, and started cramming as much as I could into it; clothes, a pair of shoes, her toilet bag, even an old stuffed bear that meant a lot to her. She may yet need its comfort. Closing her pack, I slung it over my shoulders, and then turned to watch her closely. When her eyes started darting back and forth beneath her eyelids, I knew she had reached the deepest stage of sleep.

It was time.

Gently tucking her comforter around her, I picked her up, murmuring soothingly to her when she stirred in my arms. I carried her silently through the dark house, and out to my car, settling her carefully in the front seat. I reclined it, and held her head gently as I wadded one of my sweaters beneath her as a pillow. Putting the backpack behind the driver's seat, I closed the door very quietly, and then went to lock her front door.

Once inside the car, I pulled Bella's seat-belt across her sleeping form, clicking it into place. I started the engine and turned on the heat for her, looking at Charlie's house one last time. It was the only home she had, and I was taking her away from it, away from her life, without her knowledge or consent. It was kidnapping, pure and simple, but I no longer had a choice. I just hoped our relationship could survive my actions.

Pushing all doubts aside, I pulled out on to the street, and took us out of Forks and into a new life together.

To be continued…