AN: I hope everyone had a great holiday. Don't own twilight!
Bella stared ahead of her with her eyes and mouth wide in disbelief. A riot of emotions battled for dominance inside her, until she felt like tearing herself open just to remove her heart. She wanted to be happy, to cry with relief and scoop her sister up in her arms, but that thread, that thin thread that linked the presence inside her to Lisa was still there.
Lisa began to move from the shadows of the trees, her blonde hair illuminated by the moon and her skin as pale as a pearl; beautiful and rare. Finally, Bella's emotions settled on happy and she ran forward to meet Lisa half way. The sisters fell into each other, hugging each other hard and crying tears of sheer joy.
Bella pulled back just enough to run her hands over Lisa's face, her thumbs sweeping up her tears and her finger tips feeling the corners of her mouth, which were pulled up in a large smile to match her own. It couldn't have been Lisa. It just couldn't, Bella thought to herself. Perhaps she felt a connection to her sister because her sister had been attacked by the same creature.
Lisa seemed to realize what Bella was thinking from the expression on her face and she grabbed Bella's face between her small palms and fiercely whispered, "I would never hurt you, Bella!"
Bella didn't believe that it was Lisa, but she still had to ask, or she would go insane. She hastily let go of Lisa and pulled up her pajama top, baring her smooth and uninjured sides where there used to be stitches. "There was stitches here, Lisa and then a… a creature, attacked me, and now they're gone. Did you do this to me? Were you that creature? Did you change me?"
Lisa pushed Bella's top down with anger and hurt painted over her pretty green eyes. "No! I would never, ever hurt you, Bella! You're my sister!"
"Adoptive sister," Bella corrected and winced at the flinch on Lisa's face. "I'm sorry, I just meant that you have no blood ties to me. You could have hurt me, if you wanted to."
"Well I don't, and I didn't!" Lisa hissed, clearly appalled. "And blood doesn't make you family," she insisted.
Bella nodded, ashamed of herself. Lisa was the only family she had, and she had been worried sick about her for weeks. She should be over the moon that she was alive, and relatively safe, but she couldn't just ignore what had happened to her, and clearly to Lisa too.
"What am I? And what are you? I don't want to accuse you, Lisa, but that creature you were looked an awful lot like the one that attacked me," Bella whispered, conscious of how close to the house they were.
Lisa tilted her head to the side, like a curios bird and regarded Bella for some time. Bella tried not to get wound up, but her nerves were fraught and her emotions all over the place. She was just about to lose her temper, and snap at Lisa when her sister finally spoke. "Right now, it's not safe for you to know, and this is not a safe place to talk."
Bella considered this, looking back at the Denali house before looking to her sister again. She couldn't just bring Lisa into the house and proclaim they had found each other against all odds, and especially not after Bella had turned up naked, caked in blood and mud on the doorstep just this afternoon.
She finally turned back to Lisa and let out a tense sigh. Lisa smiled and gently touched Bella's shoulder. "I want you to be safe, Bella. I need to go; get some sleep, but don't worry. We'll talk soon. Just promise me that you won't tell anyone that we've seen each other."
Bella nodded, having already internally resolved to keep this meeting a secret. "But where are you staying? When we see each other again?" She asked, her stomach churning at the thought of Lisa disappearing again.
"I've been a few places," Lisa answered elusively as she looked around her. She looked back at Bella and whispered, "I'm going to stay at an old shack in the woods. It's a mess though, and I'll need your help to clean it up."
Bella's blood ran cold. The shack covered in blood, stationed at the top of the hill where Bella had been bitten, and suffered intense agony. Why would Lisa go there? And how could Bella ever go near that place again? Just thinking about it caused her to break out in a cold sweat. But there was nowhere else, and Bella couldn't bring Lisa to the Denali's.
She finally nodded and whispered, "I'll come tomorrow night; I know where it is. It'll have to be at night time, every day, so the Denali's don't ask questions."
Lisa nodded in response and stepped forward for a quick, tight hug before she turned and ran back into the trees, disappearing. Bella felt sick with all the questions inside her, just bursting to get out. She knew for sure that Lisa hadn't attacked her, and couldn't believe she had ever thought she could.
This was the little girl that Bella held when her adoptive parents, and Lisa's real parents, screamed insults at each other, and smashed up the house around them. The little girl, even if she was the same age as Bella, who whimpered and cried into Bella's chest at the sounds of her father striking her mother across the face.
How could Bella ever believe that this girl, no matter what she had been forced to change into, could ever deliberately hurt her? How could she even think that Lisa would change her into a monster? Bella shook her head at herself as she walked back into the house, and locked the door behind her.
Lisa would never hurt Bella, ever, and she certainly wouldn't have put Bella through the kind of pain she had suffered. Even if Lisa had hurt her accidently, she would have stuck around and held Bella while she screamed and sobbed in agony. No, there was no way that it was Lisa. But then, who was it? Who would hurt her, and her sister, and change them into something… dark?
Bella crept past the living room, finding a still sleeping Kate curled up on the sofa. She stopped on the way to her room, pausing to watch the blonde girl sleep peacefully. She had never seen someone look so pretty in sleep. Bella knew that she drooled and slept with her mouth hanging open, and Lisa snored, but Kate was peaceful, and soft; beautiful.
The fire was still roaring and its glowing flames turned Kate's pale skin golden and her light blonde hair caramel. The light illuminated her blonde eyelashes and threw shadows over her cheekbones. She watched Kate with fascination, marveling at the true beauty she was. She finally shook herself and went back to bed, forcing herself to go to sleep.
Throughout the week, Bella pretended to go to sleep and then listened with keen ears until everyone had gone to bed themselves. Throughout the day she harbored the items she needed and then when it was time, she left the house with as much stealth as she could manage, and with the pilfered items from the Denali home in hand.
The first night she took cleaning agents, cloths and rags, black bags and food and blankets for Lisa to keep warm and fed. When she first saw the hut again, she nearly ran all the way back to the Denali's. Especially in the cold, terrifyingly dark early hours that she left the house. But Lisa was there and she helped Bella be brave as they cleaned the rancid shack.
It took them a few days just to make the shack inhabitable. First was the cleaning, but then they had to deal with the decay and repairs. Stealing tools from the Denali's was easier than the other items, because Bella could return them when she was done, but it was still a hard feat to carry them out of the house without making a sound, and the same to get back in.
They decided to keep the shack covered with the moss, trees and leaves that hid it so well, so that Lisa would be safe from people wondering in the woods and instead focused on making the inside cozy. The work was hard, and back breaking at times, but Bella enjoyed herself because she was finally with Lisa.
They laughed and talked, shared food and drink stolen by Bella, and worked in unison to fix up the shack. Bella tried to ask her questions: who was the creature? What did Lisa know about it? And what was the creature? Would she turn in to it? But whenever she tried, Lisa clamped up and stopped talking, which made Bella feel lonely and sad.
So after a couple of days of trying, Bella stopped bringing these topics up and instead just enjoyed being in Lisa's company. Every night it was harder than the night before to leave Lisa alone, in the cold and solitude of the woods, but her sister assured Bella that she liked it. That didn't stop Bella from trying to provide as many comforts as she could.
She brought as much food and drink as she could steal without rousing the Denali's suspicion, and also some of her own clothes that wasn't purchased by Tanya as her and Lisa were near the same size. By the sixth day of sneaking out and meeting Lisa, Bella had an air of urgency about her that couldn't be tamed.
She was worried that any day now she would be caught, or the Denali's would notice their things going missing, or even that Tanya would put her to work in town. But the Denali's seemed to be giving her some space for the time being, probably believing that was what she wanted, since she didn't speak to anyone all day.
On Saturday night, she decided to leave her guest room and join the Denali's since it was getting later, and she wanted to know why they weren't going to bed so that she could sneak out. Upon her entry into the living room, she found them laughing at something on the T.V and chatting amongst themselves with hot chocolates in hand, the fire roaring, and blankets.
There was no Kate, as she appeared to be working late, but there was Irina, for the first time since Bella had joined the Denali's, and a dark haired man who cuddled Carmen to his chest. Bella sat down and Tanya got her a hot chocolate. Eleazar introduced himself as the girl's step father and Irina informed Bella that she owned a night club, which is why she was rarely home.
Bella tried not to fidget, and be agitated as they sat in the warmth and watched the film playing on the T.V, but her eyes couldn't stop themselves from flicking to the clock and watching time pass by her. Lisa would be worried. It was nearly one am, and Bella always got to the shack by half one, at the latest.
Finally, the film finished at half one, and the Denali's around her all stretched, yawned and bid their goodnights. Bella did the same and offered to get up everyone's cups so that she could sneak out, but Irina insisted she would do it and so Bella was forced back to her guest room. More time crawled by, and Bella could still hear Irina cleaning up downstairs.
She finally couldn't take it and threw open her bedroom window, poking her head out to assess the drop. If she tried it, she would break something for certain. She looked about the guest room desperately and threw open the sliding doors of the wardrobe where she had been taking the blankets from for Lisa.
Rooting through the piles, she finally found a bunch of thin sheets and began to tie them together to make a rope like she had seen in films. As she worked, she heard Irina climbing the stairs to bed, but knew it would be too risky to try and leave through the front door without her being fast asleep.
Bella finally secured all of the sheets, knotting them twice over and then tied one end to the bed post. She took a deep breath and threw the other end of the window, and prayed that she didn't hurt herself, like she always did. She still wasn't sure of this plan as she began to climb down her make shift rope, and was startled when she reached the bottom, unharmed.
Bella looked at the rope and grimaced. She hadn't actually thought this one through. She couldn't take it down, because the front door was locked but if she kept it up, one of the Denali's might see it and know that she had snuck out. Deciding to chance it, Bella left the sheet rope hanging from her window and began to run through the woods.
When she came to the shack, she could smell something coppery and hot, but couldn't pinpoint what it was. In her haste, she tripped and fell to the floor where a sharp rock ripped through the knee of her jeans and cut away a strip of skin. Bella hissed for a second and then watched in wonder as the cut faded to a pink line, and the pain disappeared.
Marveling as she was at the clean, fresh skin on her knee, it took Bella a minute to register the sounds of harsh chomping, as if something large was biting through something especially tough. Bella looked up towards the shack and screamed at the sight of a creature literally pealing pale skin off of a bone. A human bone.
Bella's scream alerted the creature who turned with a growl and stared down at Bella, barely illuminated from the moon. Her heart sped up and her skin dampened with sweat and then her heart stuttered as the creature dissolved before her very eyes. Fur turned to skin, colors shifted to blonde, and large, hungry eyes transformed to pretty green ones.
Lisa.
She was covered in blood, obscuring most of her nude form and her hair was matted with dirt and had dark patches in it. Bella dreaded to think of what it was, even though deep inside she knew. Throughout her transformation, Lisa still held onto the bone in her hands and still had her fingers pinched around the skin to peel it off.
Bella turned and promptly threw up into the leaves behind her, her stomach convulsing and tightening in spasms. Lisa whimpered behind her and Bella heard a thud, as if she had dropped the human bone to the floor, half unraveled of its skin and muscle. Bella threw up again, her sick now nothing but the lining of her stomach, and burning on its exit from her mouth.
When she could finally clamber to her feet, and had wiped her mouth, Bella kept her eyes locked on her sisters, ignoring the dead body not two feet away from her. "Lisa, what have you done?"
"I have to eat, Bella. Did you think the food you were bringing me would keep me full?" Lisa whispered and Bella's stomach convulsed again at the smirk adorning her sisters slick, red mouth.
"That's a human!" Bella screeched, as if Lisa wouldn't have been aware of this when she was peeling the skin from the bone. "You've killed someone, Lisa!"
"Yes, I killed someone, Bella. But it wasn't my first time," she said and stuck her hands behind her back, like a child caught stealing a cookie.
Bella clapped her hand over mouth, terrified that she was going to be sick all over again. "What are you saying?" She rasped through the thin gaps of her fingers.
Bella felt like she had stepped into a nightmare. Her sister had killed someone, had torn the skin from their bones and was now proclaiming, with a smirk, that she had done it before. The most horrifying thing was not seeing Lisa in her animalistic form, but seeing her change from the girl Bella had believed her to be, to the monster now before her.
The sweet, beautiful little girl that Bella cradled and protected, who she lulled back to sleep when she was frightened, now stood before her covered in blood, with her blonde hair matted like a wild animal, and whose pretty green eyes were tinted with a lupine yellow. When Lisa opened her mouth to speak again, her canines touched her plump bottom lip.
"Let's just say: your family were delicious."
The wind sailed out of Bella's lungs and past her lips, ridding the oxygen from her body and leaving her dizzy. She collapsed to her knees, her pulse pounding and Lisa's words ringing in her ears. "Let's just say: your family were delicious." No. Oh God, no. It was Lisa. It was Lisa all along.
Lisa had killed her parents, had killed her friends and all those people that had died around her. Lisa had been the shadow that haunted her life, the eyes she saw when she was stumbling through the forest, the creature she saw from the corner of her eye, the laughter that had scared her stupid, and the creature that bit her, and changed her into someone unnatural.
Something like Lisa herself. Something with yellow eyes and sharp canines, with long claws and murderous intent. Something animalistic and wild, something that would kill deer and humans, children and adults. Something hideous and evil. No! Bella whimpered internally. She would not be like Lisa. She would not be evil!
Bella gasped as Lisa's knees fell into the leaves before Bella, rustling them and leaving her skin touching Bella's jeans. Her small hands, smelling like rotting meat and hot, coppery blood, gripped Bella's cheeks and chin, and pulled her head up to face her. Tears streamed down Bella's face, blurring her eyes and scattering Lisa's image before her.
"I had to Bella! I had to kill them all! Because this thing, this part of me… we're aggressive towards our property. They all hurt you, Bella! They made you sad, and so I had to kill them! We had to kill them!"
Bella jerked her chin back, sending Lisa sprawling into the leaves before she scrambled to her knees once more. "You're sick!" Bella screamed and stood quickly, still dizzy with disbelief, with the sheer horror of the situation.
Her mind spun as she processed Lisa's words, "they all hurt you, Bella! They made you sad, and so I had to kill them! We had to kill them!" And she was right. Just before they died, they had made Bella sad. The boy that bullied her, her mother who shouted at Bella for playing with her make-up, her father who took her mother's side and made Bella cry with the unfairness of it.
But they had been petty arguments! And they had made Bella cry because she was a child, and she didn't understand that boys picked on girls they liked, and women didn't like they make up to be touched, and men took their wives side when their child was naughty. They were so silly; things Bella would have forgotten the next day, but Lisa had killed them for it. All of them.
Lisa dived through the leaves and grabbed hold of Bella's thighs, locking them tight in an unbreakable hold. "Submit to me, Bella! You're mine. I own you, and I always have! I earned that right! Submit to me, or I'll tear this town apart!"
Bella struggled in Lisa's hold but finally kept still. She immediately began to cry, terrified of her sister and feeling as if the sister she knew had died. Lisa hands began to swipe over Bella's face and Bella cried harder at the rotten smell lingering on them, and the blood that smeared on her cheeks.
"It's okay, Bella," Lisa whispered.
Bella gasped as Lisa curled around Bella, trying to find the position that Bella had held her in many times. She tried to play along, trying to formulate a plan that would get her safely away from Lisa, and back to Kate. With trembling arms, Bella hugged Lisa to her chest, dampening her clothes with the blood on Lisa's skin.
"Why do you want me to submit?" Bella whispered, her voice choked as she continued to cry. "Are you in l-love with me?" Her throat tightened at the thought.
Lisa laughed, as if this was a normal situation and Bella's heart wasn't breaking at the loss of the sister she thought she had, and loved so fiercely. "No, silly. I just want you to be my sister, be my family. Me and you, in our own pack."
Bella swallowed tightly at the word 'pack' and tried to stop her crying. "You're a wolf, aren't you?"
Lisa's blonde head nodded against Bella's throat, where she was nuzzling into her skin. "So are you."
"How?" Bella asked hoarsely, her pulse fluttering rapidly.
"My father carried the gene. That's why he was always so angry, and more so on the full moon. It was the repressed gene." Lisa paused for a moment and giggled, making Bella's heart jump at the truly joyful sound in the midst of this horrifying nightmare. "I could feel… something inside of me, trying to get out. It felt dark, and naughty. I thought killing would free it, and it did."
Bella's heart stuttered and stopped for nearly three seconds before it kick started again. "H-how old were you?" She gasped.
Lisa looked up at Bella's face and frowned, as if annoyed that Bella wasn't reveling in her tale. "Five. I killed a girl who pushed me over, and then I changed. It was terrifying, but I felt so… powerful, when it was complete. But I was lonely; I was an only child, and parents fought all the time. The full moon was due, and the hunt was heightened. I wound up at your birthday party."
Oh God. Bella's eyes squeezed shut. How did this keep getting worse? The day Derek had died. It was Lisa. Even at five years old, and worse still: she had been a human, little girl when she had done it. It seemed worse than her being in her lupine form somehow. Bella tried to think back to that day.
All she remembered was Derek hurting her and covering her face to block the blow. Warmth and goo had dripped down her and Derek hadn't made a sound. When Bella had opened her eyes, the little boy was dead and he had been hurt severely. That had been Lisa. A little five-year-old, sneaking into Bella's kitchen and killing a five-year-old boy.
Bella couldn't take it. She stood quickly, throwing Lisa out of her lap and began to run. She needed Kate. She had to tell her the truth, even if Kate had her locked up for it. She couldn't let Lisa go around killing anyone any more. "DO YOU WANT PEOPLE TO DIE, BELLA!?" Lisa screeched after her.
Bella halted, her heart hammering. Would Lisa kill people if she ran? Of course she would. She had killed Bella's family, and anyone that had made Bella upset. She had killed that doe Bella had seen when she awoke from her agony, and she had killed the person whose skin she had been stripping from the bone.
Lisa continued to taunt her, "who will help you when the full moon comes Bella, if not me? Who will show you how to embrace the beast? You haven't even asked me how I can turn at will, and you can't. Who will tell you about mates, and mating rituals, if not me? You need me!"
Bella whirled around to look at Lisa, some feet away where she had dumped her from her lap. She opened her mouth to scream that she didn't want to embrace the beast when her eyes caught sight of nine lumps strewn around the shack. Nine bodies. Nine people. Dead, and stripped of their skin and muscled like animals. Because of Lisa. Nine people.
Bella choked on her own scream and cried heavily for the nine dead people, and all the people Lisa had ever killed, and all the families that had, and would, suffer for it. Lisa smirked, undeterred by Bella finding her kills. "I'll kill the Denali's too, Bella. I know you've took a fancy to that sheriff. Kate, is it?"
"Have you been watching me?" Bella gasped.
Lisa laughed. "You haven't been listening, have you? You're mine, Bella. I haven't let you out of my sight."
Bella grasped her stomach, fighting the temptation to be sick once more. "What do you want from me, Lisa?"
Lisa's face crumpled before it built back into a snarl. "I want you to love me!"
"I could never love you!" Bella screamed, her throat raw. "I will never love you! You're a murderer! You killed my family!"
Lisa snarled, "I AM YOUR FAMILY!" Her jaw opened wide until it transformed into a muzzle. Her face followed the transformation, altering from her pale skin to thick fur. Her body grew larger and her muscles thicker until standing before Bella was the beast that had slaughtered the people she loved, and others with it.
Lisa prowled forward, her dark eyes glinting, but Bella refused to cower in fear. Let her kill me, she thought. Let her do it. I don't want to be in a world where my sister is the reason I don't have a family. It didn't take long for Creature-Lisa to be before her. She raised a large paw and Bella screwed her eyes shut, awaiting death. The paw connected with her face, and Bella passed out.
When Bella awoke, she was at the Denali's, in the guest room and even in clean pajamas, with clean skin, as if it had all been a nightmare. The minute her eyes opened, Bella remembered Lisa's threats and she tumbled out of bed, noticing that outside her window, it was dark, as if it was nighttime.
She raced down the stairs and looked at the clock on the wall. It was eleven on the night! Which meant it was the next day, and that hit from Lisa had kept her out cold for over twelve hours. Bella rushed into the kitchen, trying to find Kate, and found her crouched at the breakfast bar, pouring over hundreds of papers.
"Oh, Bella, you're awake. We were worried you were ill, so we let you sleep," she said as Bella burst through the doorway.
Bella was breathing hard, and preparing to spill her guts about Lisa when she noticed the dark circles under Kate's amber eyes. "What's wrong?" She demanded, her gut tightening.
Kate took a deep breath, and her eyes watered. "It's horrible, Bella," she whispered and her voice was croaky, as if she was fighting off great sobs. "There's been a mass murder… some kind of beast. Nearly a fifteen people are dead, Bella! The town is in hysterics, and they're all looking to me, and I just don't know what to do!"
Bella gasped. Lisa. "I'll tear this town apart," she had said, and that was exactly what she had done, and Bella had been out cold all day. The whole day that Lisa had been slaughtering people, and waiting for Bella to come and 'submit' to her. Bella gasped again. "I'll kill the Denali's," she'd promised.
Bella raced outside, ignoring Kate's questions following her and barreled into the woods. She didn't have to go far before she found Lisa's waiting for her with a smirk. "Clever girl," she whispered. "Now bow before me, and submit, Bella."
Bella swallowed tightly and shook her head. She needed to get Lisa to Kate, so that Kate could get some handcuffs on her. She'd have to work out what kind of metal could keep Lisa down, knowing how strong her creature could be. Bella turned and ran back towards the Denali's house, knowing Lisa would follow.
With her heart racing and her mind spinning, Bella broke through the tree line onto the Denali's property, and began to scream for Kate. Very near to the door, she went skidding on her knees and screamed in agony as a large muzzle bit down on her thigh, cutting into her skin and muscle like a hot knife through butter.
"Kate!" Bella screamed, her nails digging into the dirt beneath her as she tried to resist Lisa dragging her back to the trees. "KATE!"
Kate came clambering out of the front door, her golden hair wild and eyes frantic. In her hands, she held a gun. "KATE, NO!"
The bullet zipped through the air, whizzing past Bella's head as the shot rang out, startling birds into flight with raucous cries. Bella flung herself onto her back, her leg now released and screamed. Lisa, now in her human form, and naked, lay sprawled behind her. The yellow bled from her eyes, returning to their pretty green and the bullet was embedded into her forehead.
AN: A huge thank you to everyone! and a special thanks to my beta LeighJ11 she is just amazing.