AN: Yay! Fanfiction is working again! Here's the chapter you've been waiting for so patiently . . .
Billy grinned widely at her. "I just need to write a letter for my son, Jake, explaining that I'm doing this of my own free will. That way you won't have to worry about him trying to retaliate or anything."
Tanya returned his grin with one of her own and quickly carried him inside the house, chair and all.
Chapter 32 - Changing Men
"So, handsome, I should probably introduce myself, seeing as we'll be getting to know each other quite well in the near future," Tanya purred. "I'm Tanya Denali. I live here with my family. My sister Kate is the one who helped me change Charlie. My blond sister Irina was standing with her new mate, Laurent. He is still trying to adjust to our lifestyle, having been a nomad for many years. He was changed in France a couple of centuries ago. He expressed an interest in our diet after meeting our cousins, the Cullens, and they sent him our way, for which we, on behalf of Irina, shall be eternally grateful. No doubt Alice foresaw the mating bond between them, prompting them to direct him our way. I must admit, I was a bit confused at first as to why they would send him to us to train rather than training him themselves, but it was obvious once those two clapped eyes on one another. The other couple you saw on the porch joined me and my sisters a few centuries ago. Eleazar worked as a Guard for the Volturi, the vampire royalty that govern us and enforce our laws, for many years, until he found his mate, Carmen. He didn't want her to be subjected to a life of violence and worry, waiting anxiously for him to return from each of his missions, so he retired from the guard and the two of them eventually found us."
Billy smiled and nodded. "Well, I am Billy Black, the hereditary chief of the Quileute tribe and head of the Council of Elders. Charlie is the Chief of Police in Forks, Washington, the nearest town to La Push, the reservation owned by my tribe. He and I have been best friends since we were little boys. We were nearly inseparable growing up together. Both of us got married young to our high school sweethearts, having gotten our girls pregnant while still in high school, though it didn't carry the same stigma for me as it did for him. My tribe expected me to produce an heir as soon as possible, given my position within the tribe. I was younger than Charlie, still just a child by today's standards, when I got married and had my first daughter. She's nearly three years older than his. She's married now, and my second daughter is away at college. You already met my son, Jake, who is one of the protectors of our tribe. My wife, their mother, died years ago, while the children were still young. Charlie helped me raise them after she passed."
"Well, Billy, I am honored to meet you," Tanya declared sincerely. "I'm glad you're comfortable with the supernatural, given your place at my side. While I am grieved that you will have to be separated from your daughters, I'm supremely thrilled for you that you'll be able to keep your best friend and your son with you in your new life. Most vampires have to cut all ties with their pasts, so you are very lucky to have them both."
"You know, I never thought it would even be possible to develop feelings for a bl - vampire," Billy admitted. "I thought you were all heartless monsters, enemies of the people, who should be killed on sight."
Tanya pouted. "I'm not heartless, honey. If I didn't love humans so much, I wouldn't feed on animals. I mean, animal blood tastes like dung compared to human blood. It's extremely difficult to choose the animals only diet, because it goes against our bodies' needs and desires. It's like a human choosing to eat nothing but tofu, when surrounded by steak and ice cream. That's why there are so few of us able to maintain it. It takes an incredible amount of determination and willpower, and it never fully quenches the thirst."
"Really?" Billy asked, surprised. "I had no idea there was such a difference between animal blood and human blood. I never appreciated how difficult it was to choose to live differently. I guess I really underestimated the Cullens."
"Oh, yes, speaking of the Cullens, you mentioned before that you were looking for them," Tanya remembered. "How did you get to know them? I assume you met them while they were living in Forks."
"The young Quileute men turn into wolves when vampires are near, in order to protect the tribe and other humans in the area. We have a long-standing treaty with the Cullens, allowing them to settle in Forks, Washington, as long as they don't come on our land or bite a human," he explained. "It was made by my grandfather over seventy years ago, when they moved to Forks that time. Knowledge of them and others of your kind have been passed down from generation to generation. We even have stories of the Cullen leader from before any other white men stepped foot on our territory."
"Ah, yes," Tanya murmured in understanding. "The Cullens have mentioned the shape shifters of La Push to us before, especially when we discussed coming their way to visit while they were living in Forks. We've just never seen any of you in person. Wait a minute! I seem to remember Carlisle telling me vampire venom was fatal to your kind! What if I can't change you?" She jumped up, agitated and began to pace.
"I don't think it'll be a problem. My wolf genes were never activated, so I should still react normally, I think," Billy responded.
Tanya looked at him with venom bright eyes. "I can't lose you, Billy. I can't risk killing you. If you die, I will too. Now that I've found you, I can't live without you. I don't know if you understand what it means for a vampire to find his or her mate. I've waited over a thousand years for you. I would do anything for you. Anything you want is yours, just name it. If you want the moon, I'll find a way to yank it out of the sky and deliver it on a silver platter for your delectation. Just say you'll be mine forever, and I'll spend the rest of eternity making you happier than you've ever been before. How are we going to make sure it's safe to change you?"
Billy's heart constricted at the sight of her distress, and he opened his arms to her. She immediately climbed into his lap, wrapping her arms around him and sobbing. "I don't know, sweetheart," he murmured, his lips pressed gently against the top of her head. "I don't know."
Jake chose that moment to interrupt them, stepping into the open doorway from the hall. "Uh, Dad?" he muttered, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly and blushing at the sight before him.
"Jake!" Billy exclaimed, lifting his head to meet his son's gaze, but not shifting position otherwise. He wasn't the least bit ashamed to be caught in a 'compromising' position with a beautiful woman, especially his own soul mate. "I wasn't expecting you back so quickly. Was there a problem?"
"Nah," Jake quickly assured him. "Paul just decided he'd rather run than take a plane, so we figured out we didn't need the car after all. I parked it just a few miles away from here and ran to the hotel and back instead of driving. It's so much faster to take the direct route than to follow the roads. So, what's going on here, Dad? You're actually uh, thinking about, um, you know . . . becoming a vampire?" His voice squeaked a little on the last part, and he wrung his hands in front of him, shifting nervously side to side.
Billy sighed and met his son's dark eyes without flinching. "She's my soul mate, son. If I die, she dies. If she hurts, I hurt. Why would I cause my soul mate pain? I don't think I'm even capable of knowingly hurting her. It would hurt me even more to cause her pain. So how can I sentence her to eternity without me? I love her. I know it's sudden, but that's usually the way it happens with the supernatural."
Jake glanced from him to Tanya, meeting her golden eyes, judging and reading her sincerity.
"I love him, more than my own life," Tanya admitted, meeting Jake's probing gaze. "He is my whole world now. Nothing and no one else matters as much as he does. I would never knowingly hurt him or harm him in any way. I want to give him everything, every part of me, and everything my world has to offer him. I want to give him health and wealth and immortality. I want him to have strength and speed and super senses. I want to run beside him and explore the world together and share the rest of eternity with one another. He is my sun, moon, and stars, the light to my darkness, the day to my night. He is my everything, and my primary goal will be seeking his happiness for the rest of our lives, however long they may be."
Jake dropped his eyes and nodded, his expression troubled. "That sounds a lot like imprinting, which is what happens when the wolves find their soul mates. I, um, heard your sisters talking, Tanya. They mentioned that you and your sisters are, um, well, real life succubi. Even if my dad is safe with you physically, I need to be certain you aren't setting him up for emotional suffering. You won't be able to keep up your um, normal activities, if you really desire his happiness."
"Oh, Jake. There is no need for concern, I assure you. Being an unmated vampire is a lonely existence, especially after hundreds of years. Becoming a succubus was a way to seek companionship and fill the need, the emptiness, lurking inside all these years. Vampires mate for life. The bond between true mates is permanent and unbreakable. I am whole now, in the presence of your father. I will never again feel the need to seek out another for sexual intimacy," Tanya explained.
Jake looked up at her and then at his dad. "The accident, it uh . . . ."
Tanya giggled. "Don't worry, he already told me. As long as it's safe to change him, the venom will restore his body to full function. All parts will be in peak condition."
"Really?" Jake asked, his eyes bugging out in shock and awe. "It can heal him? Like totally?"
She nodded, smirking happily. "Yep, he'll be able to run and jump and everything."
"Awesome!" Jacob exclaimed, looking excitedly at his dad. Then his face fell. "Why do you think it might not be safe to change him?"
"Vampire venom is poisonous to the wolves. It just kills them instead of changing them," Tanya admitted.
"But he's not a wolf," Jake was quick to point out to her.
She nodded seriously. "I know, but his grandfather was and his son is. That means the anomaly runs through his DNA. How do we know his body won't react more like a wolf's than a human's?"
Jake frowned, understanding the dilemma. They all sat quietly and thought about it for a few minutes.
"Couldn't we test it out under a microscope or something?" Jake finally suggested. "See how his blood cells react to your venom compared to a human's and a wolf's? I don't mind giving you a blood sample for testing purposes."
"You're brilliant!" Tanya praised, smiling proudly at him. He ducked his head and blushed again.
"Well done, son," Billy agreed, offering his own quiet praise. Jake felt his chest warm along with his cheeks. He valued his father's praise more than any other. "I think that'll solve the problem nicely, at least of knowing one way or the other."
"I'll go get a sample of human blood," Kate offered from the hallway. "How much do you need?"
"Just a vial or two would be plenty," Tanya accepted. "Thanks!"
"How are you planning to obtain it?" Jake asked, eyeing Kate suspiciously.
Kate rolled her eyes. "I'm just going to the hospital lab. They usually take more blood than they need to do their tests and then dispose of the extra. Don't worry, I have plenty of control."
"If you're planning on bringing it here, then Laurent and I are going hunting," Irina declared.
"Why don't we take an extended hunting trip, mon amour?" Laurent purred suggestively, not wanting to be around when two newborns first awoke. He'd had a bit of experience with hostile newborns and didn't want a repeat.
Irina smiled happily up at him and giggled, "On second thought, we'll be gone for a few days."
"What about the newborns?" Eleazar questioned with concern. He wasn't looking forward to being around two potentially violent newborns either and was worried his family wouldn't be able to control them.
"I think they would feel less threatened without so many unknown vampires around them in such close proximity," Laurent offered smoothly, not wanting to admit his fear.
"I guess you're right," Eleazar decided reluctantly. "Please, keep your phones on though."
"Yes, of course," Irina easily agreed. Her only experience with newborns had been the various Cullens she had met over the years, and even then none had been less than a year old, so she was unaware of the concerns of the men.
"How would you like to meet an old friend of mine?" Laurent asked Irina, as the two of them were packing their bags. "She called and asked me to meet up with her and catch up for old times sake. I'd like her to meet my mate and know I'm taken."
Irina growled slightly, feeling jealous and threatened. "Does she know you have a mate now?"
He grinned slyly at her, noting her jealousy. "I haven't actually spoken with her. She just left a message on my phone. I haven't seen her since last spring, when I split ways with her and her mate. Relax, sweetheart, I have no desire to rejoin their coven."
"So why even bother meeting up with her?" Irina demanded.
He frowned. "She and her mate tend to be rather sadistic and vindictive. I want them to know I belong to another coven now and am protected by others. I left them when they picked a fight with the Cullen coven, since I had no desire to take on such a large coven. Victoria told me she had some very important news for me and that if I didn't want to run the risk of being considered an enemy to a large coven, I needed to meet with her and hear what she had to say. I figured it had something to do with the Cullens, and knowing they are friends of yours, I decided I'd better find out what their plan is, for all our sakes. I had planned to meet up with her alone, to keep you off their radar, but I don't feel comfortable leaving you here with two newborns, who can attack irrationally at the slightest provocation."
"Oh, I see. Well, in that case, let's go see what she has to say," Irina concurred, intending to put this Victoria women firmly in her place.
xxxxxxx
After the blood tests had proven Billy's blood cells behaved like a human's in the presence of venom, Tanya had taken him up to their bedroom and bitten him. Jake had stayed down in the study, watching through the microscope as her venom caused his wolf blood cells to fall apart, dissolving the cell barriers and causing them to empty their contents into the blood stream. With nothing to hold the cells together, his blood would then be unable to serve its purpose and carry oxygen to his tissues, leading to a rapid and painful death. It was rather freaky to see and was all the warning he needed to know to stay far away from a vampire's teeth.
As soon as Tanya reported that Billy was successfully in the process of changing, Jacob took off to return the rental car and check out of the hotel. He gathered up all their belongings and delivered them to the house. Then he ran off into the woods to hunt and contact Sam to take care of their loose ends.
Sam was quite shocked at the turn of events, though experiencing it through Jacob's perspective was very different than experiencing it through Paul's mindset. With the insight Jacob was able to provide, along with the testimony of the feelings held by both Billy and Tanya, Sam was able to see how similar the vampire mating process was to the wolves imprinting process. Having imprinted himself, unlike Paul, he was very aware of how involuntary and inevitable the supernatural mating process was. Thus, he was forced to accept the mating of his chief with the vampire, despite his concerns and prejudice.
In fact, combined with Charlie's thoughts on the subject, the process was rather enlightening for Sam. The blond haired soldier who changed Bella was the first to cause Sam to doubt the unemotional heartlessness of vampires, and these latest events only further eroded the foundations of his prejudice. He was reluctantly admitting to himself that there was far more to vampires than the stories ever indicated. The behavior of this most recent group of vampires, helping and protecting Charlie and Billy in the face of Paul's attack, lent much more credence to Charlie's theory that vampires retained their humanity, such that their degree of evil was just as variable as that of the humans they once were. This idea was so far removed from what he had thought and believed for so long, that he was forced to question the origin of his deep-seated hatred for the entire species.
He was further shook by the knowledge that humans could easily be changed into vampires without their knowledge or consent. Recognizing the tarring of all members of a certain group by the same brush, based simply on circumstances beyond their control, was no different than the stereotypical prejudice toward African Americans, Native Americans, Jewish Americans, homosexuals, women, or other groups, caused him to take a good, hard look at himself and his beliefs. His subsequent ruminations on the subject while in wolf form, were causing major changes in the thought processes of all the pack members, including Paul, whether they liked it or not. Suddenly, vampires were becoming people, with feelings, hopes, dreams, friends and family of their own, instead of mere monstrous cannon fodder. This alteration of perspective did not sit comfortably with any of them, given their purpose to kill said vampires. None of them liked the idea they would be killing 'people' and not just heartless monsters, mindless killing machines.
xxxxxxx
While Billy was changing, Tanya didn't leave his side. She held his hand and smoothed the hair from his forehead, trying to ease even a minute amount of his pain and discomfort. Charlie was changing in the room next door, and Kate and Jacob took turns sitting with him. Eleazar and Carmen hovered in the background, nervously keeping an eye on things, especially the shaky shape shifter, who seemed so torn by the changing of the two men. Eleazar was preoccupied with the knowledge that both of the changing men were strongly gifted and wondering how that would affect his coven. He knew Aro would be highly interested in both of them and was making plans to keep them under the Volturi's radar as long as possible.
When Jake came in to check on his father early on the third day, Tanya engaged him in conversation, wanting to both gather information and give the boy's tired mind a brief respite from his obvious concern.
"You know, I never did find out why you all were looking for the Cullens," Tanya mused, glancing at Jake out of the corner of her eye. He startled and turned to look at her.
"Oh, right. Yeah. Um, they changed Charlie's daughter, Bella, and we were coming to check on her," Jake mumbled, rubbing his face with his hands. "We wanted to make sure she was happy and wasn't killing people, like the Cullens promised. We also wanted to make sure she wasn't with that bastard Edward, since he was the one who broke her heart and made her attempt suicide in the first place."
Tanya was shocked by the way he described Edward, her former crush. It didn't fit with her memory of him at all. "Edward broke her heart? What happened?"
Jake shook his head and looked at her sadly with his big puppy eyes. "We don't know. That's one of the things we wanted to discover. I do know he did or said something extremely hurtful to her, which caused her to try to kill herself. The blond male with all the scars filled her full of his venom as she was dying. She left suicide notes for her parents, but they didn't really explain anything. I guess that isn't too surprising, considering she couldn't say they were vampires and all."
"Jasper changed her?" Tanya asked incredulously. The Cullens had always indicated Jasper struggled the most with resisting human blood. How did he have the strength to change someone then? If Billy hadn't been her mate, she doubted she would have had the strength to taste him or Charlie without draining them both. She had never been successful in any of her attempts to change past lovers she had accidentally injured during intimacy.
Unaware of the source of her apparent disbelief, Jake continued, "Yeah, she shot herself in the head and then plummeted off a cliff to the rocks below, breaking most of her bones and tearing her flesh in lots of places. There was blood everywhere, yet that Jasper fellow was in complete control."
"Really?" Tanya inquired, confused and awed. "I didn't think Jasper had it in him. Wait a minute! Where was Edward?" She remembered Edward's fascination with the human girl and how he had initially run from her.
Jake scowled and shrugged. "I dunno. His scent wasn't anywhere around."
Tanya frowned, lost in thought. "So, you're saying Bella is a newborn and staying with the Cullens?"
Jake nodded. "Yep."
Tanya's frown deepened. "Carlisle, Esme, Emmett, and Rosalie just visited a few days ago, but none of them mentioned her. In fact, now that I think about it, any inquiries about Edward, Alice, and Jasper were deflected or answered extremely vaguely. What is going on with them? Why wouldn't they tell us about Bella? What are they trying to hide and why are they hiding it from us?"
Her sudden alarm and consternation only fed Jacob's own.
"I'm going to call Esme and ask her," Tanya abruptly decided. She reached for the phone, but both she and Jake froze as they heard Charlie's heart stutter out a few last beats and then stop.
Charlie was awake.
xxxxxxx
AN: Yay! I'm back in the saddle.