Thanks to PTB for their edits and all of you for reading … and SMeyer for the originals.

Chapter 11: Paths Into The Woods

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Canada, 1931, BPOV

A low, menacing hiss burst out of me when I slipped on the ice. Again.

It was a bitterly cold night, even for Canada. Even for me – and I didn't have a body temperature to maintain.

What I did have was an appetite. My hunger was almost out of control, and my situation was not good. I'd been greedy at the last logging camp, taking advantage of a bad storm that had trapped several humans inside overnight at the little bar where I was working.

At first, I'd been determined not to eat them. The woods were full of more monsters than just me, and I was tired of being on the run. All I wanted was a little place to be safe for a while, a little place where no one asked questions of a woman traveling alone because they were lonely for a bit of pretty around the camp.

The two men who'd followed me outside when I went to check on the horses didn't realize I was actually snacking on the horses to stay sane. Or that I'd snack on them for what they had planned to do to me.

They hadn't tasted of evil, just lust and liquor with no hint of moderating intelligence. The barkeep proved to have a sterling sense of self-preservation, locking himself in his room when I came back to the house covered in blood. I could have just left, but by then I was angry, so I ate him, too. It was my way, and one more place I couldn't go back to now.

This new town was different. On the surface, it was just another logging camp, full of trappers and traders and transient workers. Underneath there was a more permanent fixture, a small bar at the edge of town that never seemed to close run by a couple that never seemed to change.

The man was the biggest man I'd ever seen, built like a giant blond grizzly bear. He must have been a soldier once. He carried himself with a military precision and watched the world with calculating eyes, constantly figuring the odds. He was always on guard, always ready to defend.

What needed defending, what he treasured the most, was obvious to even the most casual observer. His woman was also blond, but almost frighteningly pretty. She had a hard front, as every bar woman must, but every stray creature for miles around gathered at her back door for a nightly feast of scraps.

She fed four-legged strays outside, and two-legged strays inside. Children of all ages meekly accepted small snacks and cookies until they were full enough to burst. You could tell they were scared of her and the big man, but a hungry belly can find a soft heart. Even in the most unlikely places. And especially when those soft hearts were constantly looking out for anyone who might be hungry.

"You thin. Go, around the back. My Rose has food," the big man would say. He'd push the shy ones and bully the brave ones. His eye could spot a missed meal under layers of winter clothes, and he was adept at picking out the hungry ones, the bullied ones, the neglected ones.

It wasn't charity that lit the eyes of his Rose as she fed everything in sight. Maternal fierceness was in every line of her body. Life being what it is, they had no children of their own, and they seemed to be open to adopting everything in sight.

Still, I was no child. Their bar was busy, but not so busy they couldn't handle it themselves, even though they never seemed to sleep. I thought they might be like me, but then again, there didn't seem to be anything else like me in the world. Maybe it would be better to stay away … and yet I'd been hanging around for weeks, watching them and plotting a way to break into their lives.

Tonight, though, I struggled to stay away out in the cold. I had been watching for a long time, and I knew the routine. On freezing nights like this, Rose would have food at the back door for all her forest friends – half-tame food that ate out of her hand and then stumbled lethargically back into the forest and my own waiting arms. I just had to wait.

I hate waiting.

I fidgeted in the cold, needing something to take the edge off. The hunger inside threatened to take over at any second if it didn't get what it wanted now. And I couldn't afford a mistake – not if I was really trying to make friends. Or at least not make any enemies.

Reluctantly, I abandoned my post and slipped away for a quick hunt before the big feast I anticipated later.

I gave in to my hunger and my mind was on fresh meat when I came over the hill and heard the sob. It was late, full dark. The road I needed to travel to hunt was to my left, but the cries were to my right…

I paused, listened, and sniffed the air. Blood.

My mind went away and I was in the trees before I knew it. I tracked the blood at lightning speed, my hunger giving me momentum. But I came to a sharp halt when I found the source of the world's most intoxicating smell…

It was a boy.

He was half-frozen, sniffling, and beaten all to hell. He had run barefoot into the woods, and his bloody footprints marked the path I had retraced from the tree tops. Now he huddled against an icy trunk, sobbing, with no proper coat to cover him against the cold.

I tsk-tsk'd the whole situation out loud. He heard the familiar human sound and looked in my direction, not seeing me in my tree-top perch. His eyes tried to focus in the dark, scouring the shadows for the source of the noise.

"Please help me. Please. Somebody be there to help me." He stared off into the darkness for another long moment, listening, and then shivered violently as the chill of the snow all around us took hold again. The shiver hurt, and he whimpered softly as he slumped back against the tree trunk, "Please, somebody help."

I was insane. Completely insane. I'd eaten the last three humans I'd met for snacks. Admittedly, they hadn't been nice people, but my hunger didn't exactly discriminate. I needed to eat more than I needed to play rescuer.

He was just a boy.

I was a total monster.

He was just a boy...

He plastered himself back against the frozen bark of the tree when I dropped out of the branches to stand in front of him, a mass of stolen furs and wild hair. His breath stabbed out in short, icy spears from his open mouth, and I could see the tears freezing in his eyelashes as he stared through bruised lids at my otherworldly arrival. His eyes would have popped out of their sockets, had one not been black and the other nearly swollen shut.

It was clearly not his first beating, but it was going to be his last.

"Who are you?" he asked. His voice trembled, the sound echoing off the snowdrifts.

Who was I indeed? My plan hadn't included introductions. My plan ... well, I didn't really have one. I was nothing but dark instinct, the stuff of nightmares walking.

His bare feet bled into the snow. Silently, I watched the seeping red, hunger raging inside me, mouth watering – and then another set of instincts took over.

"I am ... Help Requested." My voice sounded alien to my own ears, too sharp, too strong, and too unnatural. I tried to soften my tone. "You asked for help?"

He nodded tentatively, tears threatening again, heart racing like the wind over snow. Bruised, battered, and terrified, I could sense his system crumbling as cold, shock, and blood loss combined to overwhelm his will to live.

There was no time. "Trust me, and you will be fine." I swooped my ragged bear coat over his shoulders and swaddled him in an instant, knowing our journey would be swift and cold.

For where do you take the bloodied children of men, if not to other vampires?

~:~:~:~

Her herd of deer scattered like leaves when we flew into the yard behind the bar. I stopped opposite the back door, just inside the tree line.

"You feed stray things," I said, announcing the obvious by way of introduction. Corn dropped from her outstretched palm while she carefully considered my statement.

"What do you find so straying?" she asked, sniffing the air. The foreign lilt to her tone was buried under a pitter-pat of corn hitting the doorstep as her nostrils widened and she dropped her apron. The birds would make short work of that little golden mountain later, when two creatures of the night weren't negotiating for a child of the day.

There should be three creatures here, but this was no time to fuss over details. The child was bleeding.

"I have a boy."

"Whose boy?"

"Your boy, if you feed and protect him."

"Where?" boomed a voice from behind me, as the bear-man of the house dropped down from the trees. "I smell blood."

I turned so I could see them both. She was framed by light, her fierce beauty profiled in the door of the house. He stood in shadow, one with the trees. I was pinned between the two, arms full of an item of unknown provenance. They couldn't see the boy wrapped up under my coat, though all of us could clearly smell what he represented. I'd swaddled him up and run, his face buried against a chest that no doubt felt as icy as the tree he'd been huddled against before I'd found him. Leaping through trees and over rocks, I hadn't really thought through my decision. It was just the only thing to do.

She had to take him in; I could not. I didn't have a home, just the trees and the dark nights where death was mere seconds behind my smile. A child had no place with me.

"He is here," I said, nodding toward my arms. The bear-man moved toward me and I pulled the boy closer and growled. The sound was black and rich with violent promise. Calculate these odds, soldier, I thought. He raised both hands in a blended peace-making and now-what gesture.

With slow, deliberate steps, I approached the house, keeping the bear-man in sight. When it was near enough to be an easy catch, I gently tossed my precious cargo into the woman's shocked arms.

It was lunacy on a grand scale. I didn't know these creatures and only assumed they were vampires from watching them. Watching them pass themselves off as humans, seeing them eating nothing but animals. They had the discipline to care for him; she would be able to care for him.

I could think of no safer place for him, in fact, than locked firmly in the circle of her arms. Which made it just a matter of formalities.

"You will see to his wounds?"

She raised one insulted eyebrow at my question, already fussing through the folds of my old bear coat. "Yes."

"You will protect him from further harm?"

Her face took on a determined look. "Yes."

"You will take him as your people?"

A deep voice behind me spoke. The bear-man was back in the shadows, watching us both, affirming, "Always."

I nodded, turned, and ran for the trees. With the boy safe and the niceties out of the way, retribution was in the cards.

Behind me, I could hear the bear-man start to give chase. He was fast, but I was faster and could have easily left him behind. Still, there was a story to be told in blood, and I wanted to make it clear this had not been my doing. I ran back to the place where I'd found the boy and made a slow circle, sniffing the air.

The bear-man arrived in a rush, scattering snow as he thumped down across from where I leaned against a tree trunk.

"So," he said in his thick accent, hands on his hips, giving me a once over.

"So," I replied, not liking what I saw reflected in his eyes. A slim woman, not much more than a girl, with matted brown hair whipping in the wind. Black eyes that gleamed in a pale face with sharp teeth. Dirty clothes, stolen from past meals who wouldn't miss them. My stovepipe jeans were missing their knees and my faded flannel shirt was far too big. An hour ago, I hadn't cared, but the boy had changed things. I wanted this man to like me, to know I meant no harm.

At least no harm to him.

"I am going to hunt this," I said, gesturing to the bloody footprints, "and then I will eat it. It is a bad thing."

"It is a people thing," he said. "We do not hunt people here."

"It is bad," I replied.

He nodded, eying the tracks. "It is bad."

Several slow minutes went by, or maybe an hour. We were statues in the wood, each in our own thoughts. Mine ran to blood, naturally.

"I am Emmett," he said, breaking the stillness.

I didn't say anything.

"We are here to be good people," he continued. "To make like we're humans and have a life."

I didn't say anything.

He didn't say anything.

An owl hooted in the distance.

"It is bad," I said again, pointing to the blood frozen in the snow. "I will hunt this, and stop it from happening again."

Emmett considered this, considered me. "Why?"

I just looked at him.

"Not why for humans. Why for you?"

"It is ... bad." Questions of morality and rationality were a bit foreign to my current existence, and before this my life had been ... nothing I could remember. So this was my life, a hunter of men and an eater of flesh in the woods, and I was struggling to make basic conversation, much less deep philosophical chit-chat.

Why was not a question I had ever answered – not why I hunted men, why I ate them, or why I was so worked up about this particular case.

Mealtime conversation is a little awkward when it's clear what's on the menu, and when I feasted on animals they didn't talk much either. So I'd had precious little opportunity for reflection on my actions over time, or how they were different from my actions tonight. I thought for a while, unusual thoughts, less wild and more civilized than I could ever remember. "To kill it is ... making it right. It is … a fair retribution."

"And the child?"

I growled at him. "The child is safe now. The child must stay safe. You are the safest thing here, because nothing can beat you."

He looked at me like I'd lost my mind, so I continued. "What? I have watched you. Watched her. You are strong, watchful, cautious. You would fight. You would protect him."

He nodded and appeared to think. "We play like people here. Like a family."

"Yes. Like a family. It is a good thing for the boy, for you to play a human family," I said, watching him and watching the light changing in the trees. The moon was coming up, illuminating the path the boy had made through the trees. The path I needed to take soon.

The man watched me. Thought. Watched me some more. Only when I started to move toward the path did he speak.

"It would be a good thing for the boy. It would be a good thing for us. But you … what will you do?"

I shrugged. "Let me fix this first."

"Hmmm," he said. "You fix one problem but leave another. What will happen to the boy?"

"You have him. Play human for him," I said impatiently.

"You can play this game, too. Do you accept this?"

"I will kill this first," I said, gesturing at the bloody footprints on the ground, leading away from us into the woods. I was nothing if not single-minded.

"To make it safe, yes. And then you will come and protect the boy?"

"Of course!" I snapped, not realizing until later that I'd walked into a verbal trap that was going to put an end to my wood-wandering days.

"Good," he said, turning away. "You will be back at the house when this is finished. And clean up – we are nice people here. No messes."

As he left, I went for the trees, tracking down the violent, drunken father of the boy I now thought of as mine.

He was sleeping peacefully when I returned to their doorstep, blood in my teeth and charred ash on my fingertips.

Rose took one look and immediately started boiling more water. As she scrubbed, we talked and planned, coming to an uneasy alliance between strangers.

No messes remained for our boy – our Ben – when he awoke, only three skittish vampires wondering how to make a normal life for a child. A child who knew from the start that he had no family save this family – a mama bear, a papa bear, and a freshly cleaned-up, barely civilized monster of an aunt. He'd eyed us warily when he'd come to, suspicious that it was only a matter of time before we ate him alive.

~:~:~:~

Canada, present day

The look in Ben's eyes that day must have been passed straight down to his grandson. Seeing it again took me right back to the original moment we'd started the family, but this time I had a lot more apologizing to do.

"I am so, so sorry I tried to eat you in the plane."

Ben Cheney the Third just kept staring at me, exhaustion and stress overwhelming his system and keeping him from really processing what I was saying. I tried again in French and Russian, adding flourishes until his grandfather hit me with his cane.

"Ow!" Our original Ben might look a bit wizened and weak, but he wielded his cane like a caveman with a club.

"If you can't tell the boy's in shock, you're not that bright," he muttered. "Give him a minute."

The Ben in the bed groaned. "This is all real, isn't it."

We both nodded.

"I'd been hoping it was all a bad dream."

"Hey, don't talk that way about family," his grandfather said. "This family is a good thing."

"She tried to eat me!"

"I've heard about that and you weren't in any real danger anyway. Emmett was there and besides, it's a rule: Family is not food."

The Ben in the bed shook his head. "It is so fucked up that we even have that rule."

"Watch your mouth. And that's not the only rule."

"How many are there?"

"Three," I answered. Three big ones, anyway.

Ben in the bed sighed. "Spit it out – although seriously, when were you planning to tell me about all of this?"

His grandfather glared at him. "Been telling you for years, boy. You just don't listen. More muscles than brains. First rule you know – family is not food. That's more for them than for us, keeps us safe. Second rule is for us – don't speak of what you see. Keeps them safe. And the third rule is for all of us – stick together. Which we do, thick and thin, even if some of us like to run off for decades at a time."

That last jab was decidedly directed at me. I'd been away from the family for a long time, and this wasn't exactly how I'd planned my homecoming.

Emmett had pinned me down in the plane and held me until my newborn nature had worn off. By that time, Ben had passed out in the bathroom from stress and exhaustion, falling into a sleep so deep that when Rose and our original Ben had spotted us carrying him out of the plane, they'd thought I'd killed him.

They'd nearly killed me until Emmett got things sorted out. And then things were normal for about five minutes, until I'd phased back over into human.

Which I was almost getting used to being. Almost.

"I'm going to grab some food from the kitchen. Do you want anything?" The Bens shook their heads in unison, clearly having much to discuss between them, so I headed out to find Rose.

Rose … another situation that was far from normal. Rose, who guarded the whole family she'd created under broad and viciously maternal wings, was not herself.

She was breaking every vampire rule I knew, and quite a few I was sure didn't exist yet because no one had ever tried what she was doing.

It's always been something of a given that vampires are vampires, once done and forever. Admittedly, I was now experiencing first-hand how absolutely bullshit that could be, but everyone knows basically how it's supposed to go.

Vampires get made and then stay made. No growing, no changing. No nothing from now until the world crumbles. Living statues with skins of cold stone, vampires walk among humans, but can't be truly one of them.

Rose was trying. On purpose. She'd taken the shots on purpose, so she could be human.

So she could change.

So she could grow.

Her full, rounded belly was messing with nature on a cosmic scale, its fragile passenger on a journey with a decidedly uncertain outcome.

Emmett guarded her like a hawk when he wasn't guarding me. I was a problem, that was for sure. I was a risk. Admittedly, the whole thing was a massive risk, but I was an added, unwanted, and unstable complication, dropping out of nowhere back into their lives.

Which I hadn't been planning to do, ever again. No matter how good we all were together. I was a threat to them for as long as I breathed.

Except I couldn't seem to stop breathing. Huffing, actually. The small walk from Ben's bedroom to the kitchen was really taking it out of my pansy human ass.

Rose heard me coming long before I arrived. She stayed sitting in the kitchen, deliberately finishing a plate of snacks when I walked in, my brain as full as my stomach was empty.

"Hungry?" she asked, starting to get up and fetch something.

"Yes," I said. "I'll take whatever you're eating."

Rose nodded and started assembling leftovers. "How are you feeling?"

"I'm okay. Okay enough for now, anyway."

Rose wagged a finger at me. "You need to see a doctor," she said, the personification of every bossy mom stereotype ever made. Then again, she'd read everything ever written on motherhood over the years, determined not to let our monster sides ruin the good impression we wanted to make on our adopted family. Nevertheless, I didn't particularly want to be mothered right now, especially since I wasn't planning to stay on as one of her human babies.

"It's temporary. It will wear off. Everyone says so. Besides, I don't want to see a doctor. They taste funny when you eat them."

Rose cast a baleful eye my way, not so easily dissuaded. "Don't brush this off as nothing, something you can will away. It's serious stuff. You've always been a little different, so there's no telling what these chemicals are doing to you. You need to get some professional help."

I bristled. "I just need a few days and then I'll go. You'll be safer."

She snorted. "Emmett is already on top of that, thank you very much. I can't so much as breathe funny without him noticing. He re-vamped just to be my 24 hour guard dog, and I only need one of those." She placed my plate in the microwave, fingers flying over the buttons as she continued. "And while we're on the subject of my well-being, don't you dare think of running off again. This is your home, too, as much as it is ours. We've had bad water under the bridge but that's done. You belong here, with the family. Rule three – we stick together, thick or thin, and we need you now just as much as you need us."

Rose let me mull that over while the microwave did its thing. As we waited, she unconsciously took out her locket and rubbed its smooth golden surface under her fingers. Inside was a picture of our original Ben and his wife, Angela, on their wedding day. Ben had given Rose the locket as a surprise, and had it engraved, "To my beloved Mother," a phrase Rose had loved so much she'd rubbed it right off the surface of the metal over the years.

Seeing her fingers trace that familiar path was a reminder of the all-too-human reasons I couldn't stay.

"Rose, I can't stay here with you. I'm a danger to you and the baby both. If you want this to work – and you're insane for even trying, by the way – I have to go."

"Hush. You brought me my first baby, and I would forgive you anything after that. Even the most horrible thing you can think of. I can even forgive you for James," she said with a laugh, "and he's the most horrible thing I can think of!"

"Rose!"

"He was an unfaithful piece of murdering scum, and you deserve much better."

I sighed in acknowledgment. "Point taken." I did deserve better, but hadn't realized it until Italy had gone and blown up in my face. Literally. And that had made all the wasted decades putting up with James and putting distance between my family and I all the more painful to bear.

Rose handed me a hot, loaded plate and pointed at the kitchen table. "Sit. Eat. Now."

I took the plate from her and sat, listening as my stomach gurgled in response to the food smells coming toward me. "This is so weird."

"You get used to it." She filled a glass with water and sat down across from me. "Eat it."

I dug my fork into a pile of reheated mashed potatoes, grimacing at the grainy texture against my teeth. I didn't really want potatoes. I wanted blood. Buckets and buckets of delicious blood. Human blood. Animal blood. At this point, I would even guzzle the dregs of the worst vampire's blood. Anything to fix the hunger. But under this roof, I had to live by different rules, human or not human. That had been the original arrangement, and it worked because we stuck to it. With difficulty, I swallowed the potatoes. "Being human sucks, Rose."

She gave me a considering look and dropped her hand to her stomach. "There are trade-offs in everything, Tanya."

"Yes, but I didn't choose to make this trade," I said, poking my fork at a pile of steamed broccoli topped with cheese.

"You probably didn't choose to be a vampire, either," Rose replied. "It's just all you know."

"True. You're lucky you remember something from before," I said.

She made a face. "It's not that pleasant, having those memories. I'm glad they're faded, and a long time gone."

I nodded, but internally disagreed. My life had basically started in the woods, and I hadn't even known my own name. All the humanity I had was due to Ben, Emmett, and Rose. It hadn't taken much for James to strip that all away to bring out the monster in me again. He'd been so pleased at my viciousness and cunning as a hunter of anything that moved … so pleased right up until the end, that is.

I smiled grimly down into my plate and shoveled more food into my mouth. At least that chapter of my life was done. I wouldn't be able to forget it, but at least it was over.

"Speaking of the past …" Rose started, slowly. "Emmett mentioned you had some pictures that might be from before you were changed?"

I nodded, opened my mouth to speak, choked on my broccoli, gagged, and barely made it to the sink before I threw up. Rose clucked sympathetically, rubbing my back and holding my hair while I heaved. She flipped on the water to wash away more evidence that I wasn't hacking it as a human.

But I couldn't seem to stop throwing up. And my head was spinning. Everything seemed to be in motion. Nothing felt solid. My hands were sinking into the countertop holding me up like it was made out of butter, worthless for support.

Feeling myself falling, I threw a hand out to grab the sink faucet in front of me, only to watch in horror as it crumpled beneath my fingers. Water exploded out of the spout, boiling into my palm. Emmett snatched me away from it, pulling me up into his arms and away from the ruined faucet, away from the melted countertop, away from Rose.

As he took me out of the room, the haze of my change didn't hide Rose picking up her phone.

More coming … eventually … I have to write someone out of a tree coming up here and it's been tricky. Reviewers find out who … and thanks everyone for hanging with me!