Hunter

I'll answer some of your questions in this chapter, but I'll also give you more questioned. Don't expect to figure out Bella's visions anytime soon. You're just going to have to be patient.

The Hunters mentioned in this chapter are the property of Supernatural's creator, Kripke. I'm just using them for your entertainment.

-

Bella's POV

Coming to school the next day was a relief. I'd never admit it to anyone, but I was scared of being alone. The only bad part about it was that Edward didn't talk to me.

I should have been thankful. I couldn't help but compare him to Alexander. However, Edward was different. His eyes were different. It was something about those eyes…

The days passed quickly. Varner still hated me, but he resolved himself to just ignoring me. I dreamt of hell and woke early in the morning, but I was handling it. I had a routine. I woke early, (usually screaming), I ate, exercised, showered, went to school, ignored Edward, came home, did homework, ate again, and went to bed. It was boring, but it was mine.

It was Friday. I'd just sat down for lunch with my group of friends. Eric and Mike still seemed too fascinated by me, but luckily, the attraction seemed to be dimming. Unfortunately, I had a new admirer by the name of Tyler Crowley. Why did the one guy I liked have to be the one who ignored me? I forced myself not to look at the Cullen table head on, but out of the corner of my eye, I saw that they weren't eating.

Again.

They'd touch the food occasionally. Edward had a habit of picking his bagel to pieces, but I never saw him once put a piece into his mouth. It made me wonder what they did eat.

If I hadn't been watching Edward, I wouldn't have noticed when a pickup truck pulled into the parking lot. Edward looked through the glass door as if someone had called his name. It was just seconds later that I heard the faint sound of someone shutting their car door. I reached for my knife instinctively, carefully watching to see who it was.

My friends turned to stare at me when I gasped. "Jo?" I asked. My voice cut through the sudden lull of conversation at the stranger's appearance.

Jo, of course, spotted me immediately. "Bella?" I jumped to my feet and ran over to her. I don't know who was more surprised when I threw my arms around her. I guess I was lonelier than I thought. "Can't…breathe," she gasped.

I let go of her but kept my hands on her shoulders. Jo was only a little taller than I was. "Sorry! Man, I missed you!" I said, grinning.

Jo gawked at me. "Are we having a chick flick moment?" she asked.

I smiled. "Indeed we are. One of us should probably throw a punch."

"Me first," Jo said.

"You wish!" I laughed. I pulled her toward an empty table. I held up my hand as my new friends moved to join us. They sat down obediently.

Jo noticed. "So, been here a week and you already own everyone. That's gotta be a new record."

I smirked. "Small-town fame, it's easy to get." I leaned forward to make our conversation more private. "How did you find me?" I asked.

Jo smiled. "I was a real detective. My dad would be so proud of me." She let out a little wistful smile and continued. "Well, after everyone heard that you got out, I tried to figure out where you would go. I didn't think you would be with any friends. You're too smart for that, so I just figured I'd do a little research on your family. Your dad lived here before you died, and I knew you always hated Forks. I almost didn't think you'd be here, but then I heard the news about the girl who interrupted a grocery store robbery." Jo rolled her eyes. "Has anyone ever told you that you're insane? There were four armed guys!"

I rolled my eyes. "Please, like four morons are going to stop me. I didn't even have to use my knife!"

Jo snorted. "Well, anyway, if that wasn't enough, I picked up a trail in Seattle. Girls around age twenty had been going missing for about two weeks. The cops were clueless, but I recognized that something was up. Thing is, when I get there, I find that someone had started a fire right near where this thing had been finding its victims. Comet Tavern, ring any bells?" Jo asked, giving me a dirty look.

I pretended to look guilty, while inside I was freaking. She knew about Alexander! Maybe she knew what he was. My eyes shifted suddenly and I found myself staring directly into Edward's startled eyes. I looked away just as fast, and my old suspicions came rushing to the surface.

I was pretty sure he could hear us.

"Aw, Jo!" I whined. "I couldn't just let that thing waltz out with another girl. I've been paying close attention to the news for stuff like that."

Jo frowned. "You're not supposed to be Hunting."

I restrained myself from decking her. "It's not that simple. He was on my turf! I had to do something!"

Jo dropped her eyes and began picking at a sliver of wood on the cafeteria table. "Maybe…maybe you shouldn't Hunt anymore…ever," she whispered.

I blinked. "What?" I asked. Surely, Jo hadn't taken Renée's side. She knew how much I loved Hunting. "For Pete's sake, Jo, what are you saying? That I should quit? Move into a house with a white picket fence, marry, have 2.5 kids and live some apple pie life?" I asked shrilly. I was aware that we had an audience, so I kept my voice down.

Jo bit her lip. "It would be a lot safer. I mean, when I told my dad I was scared of the thing in my closet, he gave me a .45!"

I leaned back. "Well, what was he supposed to do?"

"I was nine-years-old! He was supposed to say, 'don't be afraid of the dark.'"

I gawked. "Don't be afraid of the dark? What, are you kidding me? Of course you should be afraid of the dark! You know what's out there!" My eyes flicked back to the Cullen table. I locked eyes with Edward again. He stared at me, surprise etched in his expression.

"Whatever," Jo said, throwing up her hands in defeat. "You're so goddamn stubborn."

I smirked. "I know."

"I had another reason for tracking you down," Jo admitted. She reached into her own duffle bag and pulled out a laptop. Wires and circuitry stuck out the back of it. It was obviously homemade, and very familiar…

"Is that Ash's?" I asked in surprise. "He gave it to you?"

Pain flashed across Jo's face. "Ash is dead."

Ash is dead.

My eyes widened. "That can't be, I just talked to him a few days ago."

Jo looked up and narrowed her eyes sharply. "You talked to him? What did he say?"

I thought back. "He said that something really awful was going to happen…something huge. I don't know, I think he was drunk. It almost sounded like he was crying. He was also paranoid, said he didn't want to talk on the line. What happened?" I asked.

Jo squinted and continued picking away at the slivers on the table. "The Roadhouse burnt down."

My eyes widened. "Is Ellen-"

"Mom's fine," Jo reassured me. "They ran out of pretzels, so she was out when it happened. The police said it was an electrical fire, but they didn't find any evidence."

My eyes flashed with disdain. "Cops," I muttered.

Jo shrugged. "They're just doing their job."

"No, they're doing our job, only they don't know it, so they suck at it!" I said vehemently. I took a deep breath. "How many of us are dead?"

"Three that I knew, and a few others; R.C. Adams, Olivia Lowry, Carl Bates, some guy named Jed, but they're not the only one's who've been targeted. Jim Murphy is dead too."

"Pastor Jim?" I gasped. I narrowed my eyes at her. "What's going on, Jo?"

She wouldn't look at me. "I found traces of sulphur while I was in his church. He was in his basement. His throat was slit."

Sulphur, that meant demons. I shook my head. "That's impossible. The church is on hallowed ground. There's no way that a demon could have gotten in."

Jo laughed bitterly. "You've been away for a while. The country's been going nuts. Demons are getting stronger. They're becoming immune to some weaker protective symbols, gaining new powers. In the last week, we've found evidence of over fifty active demons in the States alone."

I leaned back, the shock making me exhausted. "Fifty…" I breathed.

The fluorescent lights over us flickered and I rubbed my temples, feeling another headache starting. That couldn't be right. Demons rarely escaped from hell. There had never been more than ten a year that got out. "What could have caused this?" I asked, my voice dead.

Jo pushed the laptop forward. "That's what Ash said you'd need to figure out. He gave me his laptop just a day before the fire. He said you'd be able to figure out the password." She looked away again.

"How many times have you tried?" I asked.

She grimaced. "Just look at the hint and see if it makes any sense to you."

I opened up the homemade laptop and the screen came on. Below the place where you'd enter the password was a green button that said, 'Hint'. I clicked it and the words, 'Heed The Siren' appeared on the screen.

I leaned back. I didn't know much about sirens. They were pretty rare. All I knew was that they were some fugly sons of bitches when you looked at their reflections. I was pretty sure that they could take control of someone by using their spit, but I'd never had much experience with them.

Heed The Siren. What did that mean? Heed meant 'to give serious attention to', but I didn't think with all the other crap going on in the world that Ash would be too concerned about a siren.

A thought struck me. "Maybe it's an anagram," I murmured, remembering that Ash liked to play word games with me. I looked at the letters, switching them around in my head for something that Ash might have written.

My name is Death and the end is here.

I jerked my hands away from the keys. It was that stupid song again. I couldn't get it out of my head. My name is Death and the end is here. The end is here.

Heed The Siren.

"The end is here," I whispered, typing out the words simultaneously. I entered the password and the desktop appeared. "I got it!" I said excitedly.

Jo jumped. "How?"

I grinned at her. "It was an anagram. Let me guess, you spent all day reading up on sirens, huh?"

Jo grimaced again. "Whatever."

I looked at the screen. I frowned. "Seems like he erased most of the data; I hope that includes his porn." I looked at one of the icons. It was titled, 'Bella, read this'. I clicked it and stared at the screen. "Yikes! What's black and white and red all over?" I asked.

Jo looked up. "A newspaper," she answered.

My lips twitched and I spun the screen around. "Actually, it's a convent of disembowelled nuns," I corrected, showing her the gruesome picture.

Jo flinched back. "Ew! Bella!" she scolded.

I smirked. "Getting soft, Jo?" I asked, spinning the laptop around again. "Let's see here," I muttered, reading to myself. "It says in this article that the nuns were killed by a priest, but get this, the priest said he was possessed by a demon named Azazel." For some reason, the name sent shivers up my spine. I read on. "This happened in Ilchester, Maryland at St. Mary's Convent less than twenty years ago."

Jo moved over and sat beside me, reading along. "So, a priest offs eight nuns; what did that mean to Ash?"

I read on. "I don't know, but it looks like there's more here." I scrolled down and found several newspaper headlines.

Former paraplegic runs marathon! Terminal cancer patient cured! Infertile parents give birth to twins!

I bit my lip. If I hadn't known any better, I would have thought that Ash was researching demon deals. And I was pretty sure that that Azazel guy had something to do with it.

I saw Jo look up from the corner of my eye, but I was too busy dates to care.

"Who are they?"

I recognized the tone, and stiffened. I looked up; already aware as to whom she was looking at. Edward wasn't looking at me anymore. He was engrossed in picking his bagel apart, pretending to eat.

"They're the Cullens. Don't worry. I checked them out. They're not a problem."

Jo looked at me in disbelief. "Are you sure?" she asked.

I smirked and tried not to think about the fact that I was probably protecting a family of monsters.

But he saved you.

"Those kids are so vanilla, they make vanilla seem spicy. Perfect looks. Perfect grades. Not even a speeding ticket. Oh, and their foster dad's a doctor. You should see him." I grinned. "He looks like that guy who played Detective Frank Turner in Hollow Man 2."

Sometimes my ability to manipulate people astounded even me. All I had to do was mention that their dad was hot, and Jo was putty in my hands. She looked back at them, not with suspicion, but with lust.

I felt a wave of jealousy wash over me as I saw she was looking at Edward. "Ew, Jo! They're in high school, you pedophile!" I laughed. "Besides, they're foster kids, and they're together," I said, mimicking Jessica's tone to a T.

Jo's mouth dropped open. She looked back at them and eyed Rosalie. "Hello doin' your sister."

I sputtered out a laugh and covered my mouth, shaking my head. I looked back at the laptop screen and scrolled down again. There were more newspaper headlines along with a list of names. Several of these had dates listed next to them. I frowned.

The bell rang and I jumped. I'd forgotten that I was still in school. "I'll see you later," I said, packing up. "I gotta go pretend to be normal for a few hours. Call me sometime, or come over."

Jo looked away. "I've gotta go. I'm meeting my mom up in Michigan. I'm already late as it is. I won't tell anyone where you are."

I snorted and stuffed Ash's laptop into my duffle bag. "Let me guess, Gordon Walker wants my head on a silver platter."

"To start with. There's also Kubrick and Creedy."

I looked up. "Kubrick? That freak! What'd I ever do to him?"

Jo shrugged. "He probably thinks it's unnatural. I gotta tell ya, kid, if the demons are getting strong enough to break out of hell in hordes, we're screwed. I mean, I wouldn't want to meet this Azazel guy in a dark alley."

I stood up. "I wouldn't want to meet him in a brightly lit candy store," I quipped. "So, is anyone on my side?"

Jo pointed at herself. "Bobby too, and your mom. My mom hasn't heard yet, I don't think, but she'll trust you."

"What about…" I snapped my fingers as I tried to recall a name. "What about that girl…Abby? She called herself Bela Talbot. I saved her life a few years ago. I own her ass."

Jo looked away, uncomfortable again. "Last I heard she's got a one-way ticket downstairs this December. I don't think she'd be much help, regardless."

I rolled my eyes. "Great, I feel so loved. It was nice seeing you again, Jo." I rushed out of the cafeteria, aware that all eyes were on me when I entered my Biology class.

I was most aware of Edward Cullen's.

-

Edward's POV

When I told my dad I was scared of the thing in my closet, he gave me a .45!

Well, what was he supposed to do?

I was nine-years-old! He was supposed to say, 'don't be afraid of the dark'!

Don't be afraid of the dark? What, are you kidding me? Of course you should be afraid of the dark! You know what's out there!

She knew.

I sat frozen at my desk in Biology, waiting for school to be over.

How was it possible? How could she know?

The thoughts from that blond girl, Jo, were nothing short of maddening. She was a very visual thinker. I saw things that couldn't be possible; men and women with black eyes, people being thrown into walls without any physical contact, people with their throats slashed and their hearts ripped out.

Hunting, what was that? Was it possible that some humans actually knew that things like us existed? How many more creatures out there did they know about?

And what did Bella have to do with it all?

When school ended, my family and I went out to the parking lot. None of us spoke. Bella rushed out to her own car and spared me a glance. She smiled as our eyes locked and my suspicions melted. She wouldn't smile at me if she knew what I was, of that I was certain.

"Now we're even," she muttered, winking at me, and my suspicions doubled.

She knew I could hear her.

Rosalie was cursing in her mind. She knew that Bella was a threat. The girl's conversation, while convoluted and riddled with confusion, was proof enough that she suspected something. When Jo had looked at us for the first time, she hadn't seen a family of beautiful teenagers; she'd seen a group of monsters.

Why had Bella defended us? Was it simply because I'd saved her life? Could she be trusted to keep her mouth shut? She hadn't seemed to have any trouble convincing her friend that we were nothing to worry about, although it was discomforting to know that she had been looking into us. In any other case, we would probably move immediately.

But how could we leave, when I didn't even know what she was thinking?

That was the real problem. We didn't know anything about Bella Colt. She'd appeared out of nowhere and turned our lives upside-down, as melodramatic as that sounded. She was beautiful and sarcastic, manipulative and kind. She could apparently take down four armed men without even using a knife and drove my Volvo as if she was a getaway driver. Was it actually possible that she'd learned all these things because she was fighting monsters on her off time?

"That is ridiculous," I muttered aloud. I pulled out of the parking lot and drove my family home.

Alice called Carlisle at the hospital. He rushed out to meet us. Esme took one look at our faces and knew that something was up. We waited for Carlisle in the dining room, going over everything we'd heard in the cafeteria. Bella's friend seemed to relax the second Bella mentioned that Carlisle looked like an actor she knew.

I snorted. And people thought men had dirty minds. The fact that she had just looked at a picture of, as Bella had put it, disembowelled nuns, had done nothing to dissuade her.

"Does this mean demons are real?" Emmett asked out of the blue. Everyone looked at him. Esme frowned, not understanding. "I mean," Emmett continued, aware of his audience's cynicism, "The way Edward's girlfriend was going on about them, it seemed like it was a big deal to them."

I didn't bother to correct his assessment of our relationship. He would probably use it against me in the future, but I couldn't care less at the moment. "Maybe," I murmured. "There are tens of thousands of legends about demons. Most of them are probably ludicrous, but still, fiction doubting fiction is hardly reasonable," I finished, smiling slightly.

Emmett seemed pleased that I was on his side. "Yeah, and maybe Bella and her friend Hunt them. That's what they called it; Hunting. Do you think that's why she was able to take down those guys from Port Angeles?"

Rosalie looked at him, confused. I remembered that we hadn't told the others about the attempted robbery. "That girl mentioned that. What was she going on about?" Jasper looked on, fascinated by Emmett's amusement.

Emmett laughed. "While we were driving to school with Bella, this announcement came on the radio. Some guys tried to rob a grocery store in Port Angeles, and the cops were looking for a girl who stopped them." He laughed again and I snickered as I heard what he was going to say. "I saw a video of it online. It was all grainy and you couldn't really see that well. One of the guys has her at gunpoint. He says something to her, but the camera couldn't pick it up." He sputtered. "She turns around, grabs his gun and knees him right in the family jewels!" He leaned back in his chair and laughed hysterically. Jasper smiled too, and the mood lifted noticeably. Even Rosalie relaxed.

Carlisle's car pulled up and I heard the confusion in his thoughts. He wasn't expecting our good moods. His presence reminded me of our situation and I sobered. He walked inside, smiling a little. "What seems to be the problem?" he asked. He looked at our faces one by one, stopping at mine. Is it something to do with the Colt girl?

"How did you guess?" I asked a little surprised.

You're smiling. Lately, you've only been happy when the Colt girl is around.

I knew if I were human, I would probably be blushing. Was I really that transparent? "Yes, it does have to do with Bella," I answered for the sake of my confused family. "But, maybe you should hear all of it."

Alice looked up. "We're pretty sure Bella knows we're not human. Did your father ever mention people called Hunters?" she asked.

I watched as Carlisle's thoughts took him back three hundred and fifty years to London, England. He ran over everything he could remember from his human life. Most of the conversations with his father involved hunting down monsters, so there was a lot to choose from. He frowned. "I think so. Several people passed through London. They called themselves many things, but some of them said they were Hunters. They killed monsters." He looked back at us, alarmed. "What does this have to do with Bella?"

"I'll explain," I said, knowing that Carlisle would want all the facts. "A friend of hers came to school today. I caught some of her thoughts. They were very…unusual. She was running over an old book in Latin, a book of exorcisms. When she walked in, Bella called her name, Jo. Jo explained how she found Bella. Did you hear about that robbery in Port Angeles?" I asked.

Carlisle blinked. "Yes, I've heard. They were looking for a girl who stopped it." His eyes widened. "Good Lord! Bella stopped it?"

Emmett grinned. "And did she! There's a video of it online. It's awesome! She took out four armed guys with her bare hands! The girl's got mad skills."

I frowned a little. "She confirmed it. It didn't seem like a big deal to her. But that's not the important part. They began discussing things that didn't make much sense. Jo was apparently headed for Seattle to deal with something. From what I could gather from her mind, she thought it was some sort of shape-shifter or siren." I shook my head, wondering again if they weren't just insane. "Bella said she had already dealt with it, whatever it was." I looked helplessly at Alice, knowing without asking that she didn't know either. Seattle was far away from us, and unless she had been watching for new arrivals in Forks, we wouldn't know what had happened. She couldn't see the past.

"They started talking about friends of theirs, other Hunters I presume, who had died." I remembered the pain on Bella's face when she'd heard that someone named Ash was dead. Jo's mind had given me a brief visual of a man in his late twenties with a mullet and dressed in filthy clothes. A lingering sense made me think that he was like a big brother to her. "Jo said that demons were killing them."

"Demons?" Carlisle thought, and I caught a flash of something in his mind that made me look up. There was a boy, no older than fifteen with a book in his hands. In front of him was another boy, tied to a chair and sitting inside a strange symbol drawn on the floor with chalk. The tied up boy's eyes were entirely black.

"Exactly," I said, confirming Carlisle's thoughts. "It looked exactly like that."

Carlisle frowned solemnly. "I've only seen one exorcism like it. Most of the others were obviously victims of mental illness or epilepsy in retrospect. That was the only one that made me really believe in evil. It wouldn't stop talking. It spouted out every dirty secret imaginable, cheating spouses, murders, thieves, manipulation. It knew it all. Once the boy finished, a black cloud of smoke escaped from that poor boy's mouth and disappeared into the ground, back to hell, I suppose."

"That girl said there were over fifty demons running around," Rosalie said dully.

Carlisle's eyebrows shot up to his hairline. "That's impossible! Sebastiano, the boy who exorcized the demon, said that only a handful escaped every year."

I frowned. That would explain Bella's reaction. "Bella seemed shocked, and Jo explained that they were getting stronger."

"How?" Carlisle asked. His own experiences made him immensely wary of such things. He was more likely to believe in monsters than any of us. His father had been a Hunter himself, although not very good at it from what I could tell.

"She told Bella that she needed to figure that out. She gave her a laptop, and Bella managed to figure out the password.

The end is here, I remembered.

"She began looking at the files and found one that seemed to be important. It had several headlines from old newspapers, stories about miracles, but also one about a priest murdered several nuns about twenty years ago."

"'What's black and white and red all over?'" Emmett quoted. "She's got a sick sense of humour to be honest."

Carlisle frowned. "What did Bella say about us?" he asked, knowing it could be the only reason we felt a need to get involved.

"Nothing," Rosalie said, sounded put out. She almost wished Bella had said something so that she would have an excuse to hurt her. I growled at her, furious.

"Nothing?" Carlisle repeated, a little perplexed. "But, if she knows there's something different about us, and if she's a Hunter, I'm quite sure she would have noticed, she must have said something to her friend, at least to warn her."

"She said she'd checked up on us," Emmett said distastefully. "We are so vanilla, we make vanilla seem spicy." I couldn't help but smile at that. Bella did have a way with words.

"Why would she-" Carlisle found himself cut off by an annoyed Rosalie.

"It's because Edward saved her. It has to be. 'Now we're even', remember?" she asked, looking angrily at me.

Alice perked up. "It's a good thing he did. Bella's reassurances were the only thing keeping that girl from looking into us. With what she's been trained to do, she would have found something, and we would have been in a lot of trouble."

"There's one thing I don't understand," Jasper added. We turned to look at him, knowing that he often had good insights about things. "If they do Hunt monsters, why didn't Bella immediately know what we were?"

That was a good question. Did she already know? If she did, why would she want to get anywhere near us? She'd kissed me for goodness sake! Surely, that wasn't normal procedure when Hunting monsters, if such a thing could be called normal. And that girl, Jo, hadn't figured out anything. She had never come across anything like us.

"She doesn't know," Alice said. "I don't think any of them know."

"Perhaps we should leave," Jasper suggested.

"No! I don't want to move again. We're almost out of high school!" Rosalie whined.

Alice frowned heavily, watching the future spin. "I think we should stay. Bella's not going to say anything about us as far as I know. She seems…curious, but not hostile."

"Curiosity killed the cat," Emmett sang.

Alice glared at him. "Nobody's allowed to kill her. She's going to be my best friend," Alice proclaimed. Carlisle and Esme looked at her, a little alarmed. "And imagine what you'd be doing to Edward," Alice continued before I could stop her. I groaned as Emmett grinned widely.

"Shut up," I muttered.

Like a real big brother, Emmett ignored my advice. "You have to admit, man, you two make a good couple. She's tonnes of fun, and you're no fun at all."

"Has something…happened?" Carlisle asked us. Esme looked on, her thoughts putting it together much faster than her husband. I stubbornly refused to look at anyone, instead mentally visualizing what I would do to Alice's closet full of clothes if she told them.

Alice gasped and glared at me. "You wouldn't," she growled. I smirked, daring her.

"Edward's fallen for her," Rosalie said, irritation coating her voice. I glared at her and she smirked, sending me a few more insults through her thoughts.

"Fallen for her?" Esme gasped. "Fallen in love with her?"

I stood up, unable to sit still with my parents' hopeful thoughts. "Edward?" Carlisle asked. I ignored him, my desire to get away from them outweighed my instinctive need to be polite. I marched up to my room and turned on my music.

"He's just mad that he might kill her," Rosalie said smugly.

I tuned them out as they began to discuss my relationship with Bella.

-

Lame place to end, I know. I'm sorry this update is so late. I was sick for a few days, narvo flu or something. I've also been working on Talent Search. I have an exam tomorrow, so I have to go study. I hope this chapter isn't too confusing. I tried to explain as much as I could. Ash's laptop is important. For those of you who watch Supernatural, you might remember Azazel, or Yellow-Eyes. He's going to be a big part of this story, so pay attention.

Peter Facinelli, who plays Carlisle Cullen in the Twilight saga, also played the role of Frank Turner in Hollow Man 2. I've never seen the movie, but it seems like something Bella would have watched.

I'll see you guys later.