Seven Days – Monday
"Women are afraid of mice and of murder, and of very little in between." - Mignon McNaughton, The Second Neurotic's Notebook
Edward
The sun rose behind me, bouncing in prisms off my skin and drawing the morning to my attention. I'd been sitting in the dining room for most of the night going over the information I'd been acquiring for the better part of a century.
He was out there, and I would find him, even though it probably would be the last thing I did.
My deadline was drawing closer, and my patience was beginning to wear thin.
I heard her before I saw her. "Not again," I muttered, and made my way out the back door to see what she wanted.
"Good morning, Leah. Just can't stay away, can you?" I asked the still trees as my bare feet hit cool solid earth.
"I was sent," she replied, and finally emerged from the forest in front of me, her stance casual. I quickly let my eyes roam over her body. She was in shorts and a tank top even though it was fifty degrees out. Her dark hair was cut short, accentuating high cheek bones and big, bright eyes.
"Sent by whom?" I asked politely before taking a running leap and landing lithely in the tree above her.
"That's not important," Leah muttered and glared up at me. "I need to know what you meant last night."
"About what?" I queried, settling on the branch and letting my feet dangle.
"About people dying if you left."
"Yes," I answered, smirking a little, and dropped soundlessly to the ground in front of her.
Leah stuck her hands on her hips and huffed. "Stop fooling around!" she yelled and shoved me.
"You know, you aren't nearly as scary as you were last night," I told her with a laugh. She glared harder; I laughed louder.
"I meant what I said, Edward. I'm trained to kill you. I've killed your kind before," she explained, her dark eyes hard.
"Oh, I don't doubt that, Leah. I've been here before, many years ago. I'm very familiar with Quileute legends," I said.
"What do you know?" Leah asked warily, her gaze softening and her arms hanging loosely at her side.
"I know that you only shift when my kind are around. But you've obviously been shifting a while, so there have been plenty of vampires in the area within the last few years. Am I right?"
"Nearly half of the boys in La Push have phased," she murmured and looked away.
"And the girls?"
"I'm the only one," Leah whispered, lost in thought. I only caught faces and names, nothing solid to go on, but enough to know that it was tough on her.
"Would you like to come inside?" I asked quietly. Leah's eyes snapped to mine, narrowed and suspicious. "It'll be easier to explain what I'm doing here if I can show you."
"Fine." She nodded and quietly followed me, her sneaker-clad feet almost as quiet as mine.
I led her inside and to the dining room, hearing her slight gasp at the mess I'd created.
"Are you some sort of serial killer?" She eyed me cautiously and I resisted the maniacal laugh that was threatening to come out.
"I don't think you really want me to answer that, do you?" I asked.
"I'm pretty sure you know what I'm thinking, and no. I just want to make sure you aren't going to cause problems for my family," she said, taking a step closer to the wall that was plastered with newspaper clippings I'd collected over the years.
She touched them softly, her lips moving as she read silently, and then turned to me.
"What are you, some weird vampire version of Dexter?" Leah asked and stepped away from the wall. Her eyes raked over the map on the table, the laptop I'd been searching on, and the clippings that had been scattered throughout the room.
"I'm not sure I know what you mean," I said, gathering up some of the mess I'd made on the floor: a bunch of dead-end articles that didn't help me in my search.
"Dexter is this cop, but he's also a serial killer. He only kills bad guys though," she explained with a shrug.
"Oh." I thought about it. "Kind of, I guess."
"Do you kill vampires?" she asked with her eyes trained on me.
I glanced at my feet and gave a sigh that my body didn't really need. "Leah, what you have to understand is…"
"Edward, do you really think I care if you kill vampires? As long as you don't eat people, I don't care what you do." She snorted lightly and I felt my lips tugging into a smile.
"How do you know I don't eat people?" I asked.
"Your eyes. They're different than others we've hunted. I've heard stories…"
"Right. The stories, when we first came here in the thirties-"
"When you came here in the thirties?" she cried.
"Yes." I nodded and gestured for her to sit down. She did so with an awed look on her face.
"Did you come here with your coven?" Leah asked, seemingly genuinely interested.
"We prefer… family," I explained. She rolled the thought around in her head for a moment before turning her attention back to me. "Most vampires have trouble staying together for as long as we've been. That's why the ones you come in contact with are usually alone or in pairs. I most likely met your ancestors. We created a treaty with them, that's why my family kept this house here."
"Where's your family now?" She seemed concerned, so I told her.
"In Alaska. There are others like us up there."
"Is this why you aren't with them? Why you say you have to stay here?" Leah gestured to the room and I nodded.
"I've been looking for someone for a long time," I said, touching the edge of the table gently.
"How long?" she asked.
"About ninety years," I answered with a smile.
She narrowed her eyes, her mind surprisingly blank. She really was very good at that. I'd have to ask her why and how she blocked herself. "How old are you?"
"Physically? Seventeen."
"Well, it seems you skipped that awkward, ugly stage all teenagers go through," she muttered and then covered her mouth like she'd said something wrong.
You're such an idiot! He's going to think you have the hots for him!
I chuckled. "I don't think that, actually. I'm sure I'm repulsive to you," I teased.
"So this guy you're looking for, you think he's here?" Leah changed the subject quickly. She got up and paced the length of the room, her eyes roaming over the articles again.
"My sister, Alice, had a vision of me here." I watched her again, enthralled by her interest in the different stories I'd posted.
"Vision?" she asked absentmindedly.
"She sees the future," I explained.
"You read minds, she sees the future. Anyone else got any superpowers?" Leah joked.
"Her husband, Jasper, can feel and control people's emotions," I said with a shrug.
"Huh. The leech you're hunting, he's not picky, is he?" she asked, pointing to an article about a murdered young girl.
"No. No he isn't," I said quietly, forcing my mind to stay in the present and not slip back to a darker time.
"Did you know him? Before you started hunting him, I mean?" She turned to me, curious.
"No."
"You're looking for him, but you kill others…why?"
"I know what I am, Leah. But my family and I try very hard to control ourselves. We value human life. That's why I do what I do. This one that I'm looking for... he was the first I ever saw kill a human. But he fled before I could kill him," I told her, which was partly the truth. "I look for him, but if I find others along the way well... let's just say I don't get bored."
"Aren't you afraid?"
"Of what?" I asked, trying my best to be nonchalant.
"That others are going to find out what you're doing and try to stop you?"
Fucking hell. She was smart.
"No, I'm not afraid," I lied. Well, I didn't have to be afraid of getting caught anymore.
"I should get back and tell– tell them what you've told me," Leah said as she crossed the room to the door.
"Will you be back to tuck me in tonight?" I asked, following her out of the door.
"If you're lucky," she replied with a wink, before taking off at a sprint. I watched her run through the forest until she disappeared, then I hauled myself back inside. I had work to do, after all.
xXx
Leah
"He's looking for a vampire," I told Sam once I made it back to La Push.
"Well, all he has to do is look in the mirror," Paul said, then guffawed at his own joke.
"You're an idiot."
Paul grinned. "You're right. He probably doesn't have a reflection." I threw a muffin at his head.
"I say we wait for him to kill the first one, and then we kill him," Jared threw out from across the kitchen.
I turned on him, livid. "No! He hasn't done anything!" I yelled.
"He's a vamp, Leah. They're our mortal enemy, or have you forgotten that?" Jared frowned, and Paul laughed again. I seriously hated being outnumbered by idiots.
"Have you forgotten that we're here to protect people? Edward hasn't hurt anyone," I argued.
"Oh my God, you gave it a name?" Paul cried. I blushed and turned away, wishing I could crawl into a hole.
"That's enough." Sam's voice was low, but commanding. Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum stopped laughing immediately. "Leah says he's not dangerous, so we leave him be."
"He's been here before," I said quietly. All eyes turned to me. "He said something about a treaty…with my ancestors."
Sam watched me for a moment, and I tried not to fidget under his gaze. A few months ago those dark eyes had made my insides flip-flop, but now… now things were different.
"Treaty?" Sam asked, and I nodded. He was silent for a long moment before he turned back to Jared and Paul. "He's off limits, got it?"
"Fine," they chorused before stalking out of the kitchen.
"I'm trusting you on this, Leah," Sam said once they'd left.
I nodded and followed the guys out, hoping that I wasn't wrong about the situation or about Edward. Something about him was different. It went above and beyond the whole "vampire versus werewolf" bullshit that I'd lived for so long.
xXx
"Edward, my father is waiting up for me. I should go now," she said quietly. I nodded and took her hand in mine.
"I'll be thinking of you," I told her, lifting her hand up and kissing it softly.
"You're such a romantic. I'll see you tomorrow, silly boy." Katherine blushed and pulled her hand away.
I watched her walk up the front steps of her house and smiled. We'd only been seeing each other for a few weeks, but I knew it was the start of something good. Katherine was someone I could see myself settling down and raising a family with.
I took a deep breath as I reached my own house, feeling a little under the weather and hoping a good night's sleep was all I needed. There'd been rumors floating around about an outbreak – a sickness that was claiming lives. My family had been fortunate so far, but none of us knew what was to come...
"I'm going to find you," I muttered to myself and closed my laptop. "Even if it's the last thing I do." Ha. Given my conversation with Aro two days ago, it looked like it would be the last thing I did.
I gave a quick glance out the back door, surreptitiously checking to see if Leah had come back. She hadn't, but part of me hoped she would.
Shaking my head, I climbed the stairs to my bedroom and stripped off my clothes. I fell into the bed, wishing I could sleep. Wishing I could have some sort of break from it all, from the unrelenting awareness of everything, even just for a few hours. Even when things were perfectly calm, I'd always been hyper-observant. Now, with my seemingly dwindling lifespan weighing on my mind as it was, I was so keyed up I could practically feel the earth turning.
The pictures across the room caught my eye, so I lifted myself from the bed (which held no comfort for me anyways) and made my way across the room. I lifted one of the silver frames, and my family's faces smiled up at me from a college football game that Emmett had dragged us to. There were others of us, and some from my human life, some things that Carlisle had saved for me.
Katherine's pretty face smiled up at me, and I couldn't help but smile back. A lifetime ago that smile had made my heart do back-flips. I was a seventeen-year-old boy head over heels in love with a beautiful, smart girl who felt the same.
Then my father died.
And my mother got sick.
And I... well, no need to say what had happened to me.
After Carlisle changed me, I didn't see Katherine for many years. When I finally did get back to Chicago, she'd married someone and started a family.
And I'd watched it all get ripped away.
I'd watched the life leave her eyes and done nothing as he drained her, too shocked to move or to help her, though part of me knew I was too late anyways. It wast the first time of my existence I saw another vampire kill a human. I was disgusted, appalled, and afraid.
The frame cracked in my hands as the memory flooded my mind: sobbing without tears, her head lolling back against my shoulder as I'd rocked her lifeless body in my arms.
I gasped for breath and dropped the picture, rubbing a hand over my face and falling back to the bed again, wishing again that a few hours of sleep would help suppress over ninety years' worth of memories.