Fuil 'o mo chuislean

Enormous thanks to each and every one of you who have reviewed; I am, as always, in awe of your kind words and the time you spend to give them. I see a lot of you enjoyed Carlisle's badassery coming out a bit. I do too! For those who expressed concern, Alistair is not a wolf. I'm not overly keen on the wolves at all and I don't have any plans for them to play much of a part in the story. If that changes, their part probably won't be as good guys.

I adore travelling by train but have never gone First Class so all of the high class trimmings are products of my imagination and a lot of old Agatha Christie type films (for me, all trains should be like the Orient Express, elegant, beautiful, with private cabins, dining cars and every luxurious thing you can think of). I have no idea if it actually does work like this or if there are even cabin trains still in general use or not. But this is a pretty AU story, so why not better service, too? ;)

I think we can agree at this point that any predictions I make about how often I'll be updating are way off as I'm finding very little time to write. I apologise for that, and will understand if I lose the patience of some of my readers, but thank you for staying at least this far.

I have been and continue to be unsure how wise it is to continue this story; it's basically a Twilighted version of major parts of my original novel and having seen some instances of plagiarism on the site it may be a dumbass move on my part. I think I either need to change the direction, impacting Alistair's nature, or discontinue the story. No decision reached either way yet, though, and I won't abandon it without letting anyone know.

This chapter is fairly short and unexciting, but I want to get back into the swing of things and hope I can have something of a better length for you sooner rather than later. On a critical note, I think I'm using too much description, telling too much rather than showing, and am trying to fix that, but any pointers are welcome.

Chapter Six

Baby I need a friend,

But I'm a vampire smile; you'll meet a sticky end.

I'm here trying not to bite your neck,

But it's beautiful and I'm gonna get

so drunk on you and kill your friends...

Kyla La Grange - Vampire smile

Bella POV

I nervously kept my eyes away from the flushed cheeks of the ticket agent as he handed me my First Class ticket and Carlisle's credit card. I turned my head in surprise, though, as a hand was laid gently on my backpack. It belonged to a young man in a uniform. I was too tired to shrug his hand off, but wondered what he was doing. The ticket agent spoke, solving that mystery for me.

"Simon, this young lady is a client of the highest priority. Please make sure that she reaches her berth on the train about to depart platform nine and that she has everything she needs." To his credit, the man showed no outward animosity toward me as a result of Carlisle's end of the phone call. The young man nodded and turned to me with a small movement of the hand touching my backpack.

"May I take this for you?" His voice was so kind that I suddenly found that I had to swallow back a lump in my throat.

"Uh, that's OK, I can carry it." I wasn't used to being waited on like this. After three years of having to find and often fight for my own warmth and shelter, carrying my own belongings seemed inconsequential to say the least.

"I understand, Miss. All the same, please allow me," he said with such a sincere and charming smile that I couldn't help but stutter out a thank you. I let the strap slip from my shoulder and into his waiting hand. "If you'd follow me please, Miss, I'll show you to your seat. We'll be departing shortly." He kept an eye on my gait for the first few metres and adjusted his own so that he was neither holding me up nor leaving me behind. Another small kindness that only increased the vulnerable feeling in my chest that was sending little tremors out across my shoulders.

I was surprised to find myself being led through a plush waiting area instead of the route to the platform shown on the overhead signs. We arrived much sooner than we would have had we taken the alternate route, I thought. I was glad of it; my legs were almost numb with fatigue and my feet were lumps of lead. I felt the weight of my owns hands tugging at my wrists and shoulders, suddenly glad to have been relieved of the burden of my backpack for even a short time. I saw slight indignation on the faces of several well dressed people as I was led past and in front of them to board the train carriage. My mind noted in passing that the train I was boarding was something I would have expected to see in a British period movie, not waiting at a train platform in the present day.

I was also not met with the familiar double row of seating I had expected. The slim, empty corridor ran on one side of the carriage only, was wood panelled and smelled of beeswax. The frames of the panels and windows were not ornate, but they were tooled in a very pleasing way, and the beautiful sliding windows were quaint and well made. If I hadn't been nerve wracked and stumbling along well past the point of exhaustion, I might have given in to the urge to lean out one of those windows and wave a handkerchief in farewell. The carriage was not so much old as it was simply luxurious in the style of a previous era, with more care given to quality and appearance than to materials that would have been cheaper and more easily maintained. The young man stopped at a deeply polished, windowless wooden door, which he opened with a small brass key.

"Your berth, Miss." He motioned to the open door with one arm, encouraging me to step inside. I did, and was struck speechless. I had been led not to a first class seat but to a private cabin. The last place I had rested had been a bench with a plank missing, from which I had been unceremoniously dragged by one arm. I had no idea how to feel about these new surroundings and the steward graciously did not comment on my obvious ambivalence. He smiled and nodded his head. My hand opened and closed automatically around the small key he passed to me. My body had some very definite ideas about relaxing in luxury even though my mind was still reeling.

I was left to my swirling thoughts as he exited quietly through the small door and closed it behind him. My eyes went to the soft looking seating time and time again, but I knew that if I sat I wouldn't be able to get up again any time soon. I was still being pursued, and Alice had made it clear just how closely. I walked to the window instead, edging my body to the side so that only my eyes peered out. My fingertips found the smooth grain of the wooden frame, partly to feel something solid, and partly just to hold me upright. I monitored the slowing of my pulse as it throbbed gently in the ear I pressed to the cool, wallpapered carriage hull. I leaned my whole cheek into it, finding something comforting in the gesture. I would rest once we'd left the station and that would be soon, judging by the greatly shortened queue of people alighting on the train's other carriages.

The last people to board were an older, elegantly dressed couple who had stood arguing heatedly on the platform for several minutes. I couldn't hear what they were saying, but inferred from their body language that their tickets were missing, that the elderly gentleman thought his wife had packed them, that she had quite obviously told him several times to pick them up and wasn't he a twit for not doing so. This was followed by some angry arm waving and red-facedness on the man's part, and him trying to stuff his glasses decisively in his shirt pocket, only to find their train tickets. It ended with some very apologetic hand gestures and what I thought could have been promises of a trip to Venice and as much gelato as she could eat. I made that last part up but if someone were apologising to me like that I sure as hell would want gondola rides and gelato in recompense.

The vibration of the engine straining to pull the train's mass away from the platform caused the most horrendous pins and needles in my tired leg muscles. I leant my forehead against a brass plate on the wall until they passed, semi-pleasant goosebumps erupting down both arms at the coolness of the metal. The carriages swayed and creaked and thumped as we went through the short, dark tunnel that bridged the space between the station and the town, emerging into watery sunlight. My breath was misting on the glass for some minutes before it eventually registered that I could relax, at least for now.

I felt a kind of adoration for the soft cushions that met my backside that I'd previously reserved only for Edward. Maybe a little more; sitting on his lap had been more exciting but a lot less comfortable. It wasn't the kind of couch that swallowed you up but it was a damn sight softer than sidewalks and park benches. The only downside was that leaning back and relaxing brought into sharp relief every ache and pang and twinge of my poor, misused body. My ears and nose were in the enviable position of being the only parts of me that didn't hurt. I tilted my head back, my neck softly supported, and stared at the ornate light on the ceiling while quiet tears ran backwards from my cheeks. They pooled in my ears, tickling, but I didn't have the energy to wipe them away. At some point, my eyes closed of their own accord.

Jasper POV

"Bella." It only took that one word to put a huge grin on Emmett's face. But it disappeared the moment he remembered Carlisle screaming down the phone that she had been attacked. I felt the precise moment that that realisation hit him, as the brief but intense relief and excitement turned into worry and dread.

"What happened, Jazz? Is she OK?" He pulled a visibly worried Rose into his side, her arms wrapping around him while her eyes remained locked with mine.

"She's alive but…well you know Bella. Danger magnet." I wiped a hand across my face, suddenly feeling tired for the first time in centuries.

"Did we find her or did she finally contact us?" asked Rose.

"A little of both. And not a moment too soon. We've been worried about Victoria this whole time. Turns out that wasn't even close to the mark."

"Where is she?" Rose was vacillating between worry and curiosity, but worry was winning by miles.

"Scotland, but hopefully leaving it very fucking quickly."

"Why?"

"I think we need some, scratch that, a lot more information from Carlisle on that score. I can hear him loading some pretty heavy tomes in one of the cars so I imagine we'll get it. But it sounds like Bella might have attracted the attention of someone a lot worse than Victoria. Hell, a lot worse than the Volturi."

"Shit. Aside from your sire, what the hell is worse than the Volturi?" Emmett interjected. Rose hissed angrily at the mention of the vampire who created me.

"It's not Maria, Rose. But I don't know yet if that's a good thing or not. At least Maria would have been a known variable. Bella would have been in deep shit, but it would have been deep, predictable shit."

Alice chose that moment to glide to my side, her fingers wrapping between mine, her head tilted just enough to keep an eye on my expression as well as Emmett and Rose.

"Jazz, I'm not getting clarity as often as I should with the glimpses I'm getting of Bella. I thought at first something was just interfering with them, like static, maybe down to Bella's potential shield getting a little stronger. But it's not that. Whatever it is, it's making me feel almost disobedient for looking for the visions. I feel like I'm trying to sneak into the movie theatre with no ticket and about to be caught red-handed." Her gaze shifted uneasily. "I think there's something I'm not supposed to see. But according to whom, or whose rules?"

I pulled her closer, tucking her head under my chin. If she was uneasy, so was I, and I didn't like that feeling following so close on the heels of our collective panic. Interrupting my inner musings, Carlisle's voice carried clearly up the stairs.

"The jet's being prepped and will be ready by the time we get there. We need to go now if we're to have any chance of catching up with Bella." The 'before Alistair does' was left unsaid.

Alice and I followed Emmett and Rose swiftly downstairs and out to the front of the house, where Carlisle and Esme had three of our cars waiting. We exchanged last glances before buckling up and peeling out of the driveway. Apart from the low purr of high-end engines, ours was a mostly silent convoy, all three cars keeping perfect distance and speed with each other as they rolled smoothly away from Forks. The six of us were mute also, although our proximity would have allowed easy conversation. It was simply that nothing about this was easy. We were used to being able to handle all things quickly and with little risk so this was new to all of us.

Alistair POV

The station was crowded and humid. A train conductor thought better of putting out his hand to see if I had a ticket, the fingers of his other hand automatically pushing the button to open the gate as he turned his face away, his cheeks colouring a little. He shouldn't feel shame for being afraid; it was the smartest thing he'd do all day.

Hurry.

"What do ye think I'm doing, ye great oaf? If I move any faster the humans will ken I'm something nae right."

Fine. Dawdle faster then, for the love of god.

"Which one?"

I dinnae care!

"Alright, keep yer britches on, I'm almost there."

Warm bodies unconsciously parted and closed around me, not wanting to touch me even by accident. Their voices dropped low and hushed as I waded through them, rising again immediately afterwards. I was used to this, being carried through people in the soundless trough of a great wave, my presence in their brief reality firmly denied. They wouldn't remember me even if shown a recording, which is no small good fortune for them. I always remembered them, though, and the feeling of their misty breath condensating on my cool skin. Strange, how walking through people without caring could be so intimate.

It's called loneliness. In case you were wondering. I dinnae feel it, as I have you, but you…

"If I had been, do ye think it'd be you that I asked?"

The scent hung so rich in the air now it almost seemed a prehensile tendril that wound out in front of me with purpose. I wasn't aware of having been afflicted with any kind of synaesthesia in my first life or in this one, but every part of me was becoming more convinced by the second that just a little stronger and it might shimmer visibly like heat haze.

Some of this intensity must have been evident in my manner. The hurrying humans pressed closer to the opposite wall as I trudged quickly through an underground pedestrian tunnel that linked the platforms on the farther side of the station. They averted their eyes, all but one. A small boy carrying a toy car in one hand and one of his own shoes in the other hushed his happy chatter and stared at me with wide eyes. His small mouth moved once, I thought in greeting, before his arm was yanked by his mother who, having gotten a look at me out of the corner of her eye, rightly flinched from me and diverted his attention.

I still had not laid eyes on my quarry but was being pulled along so forcefully that I was no longer worried that it would escape me. I worried instead that I would somehow disappoint the object of my pursuit. That had not happened before. But then, nor had I ever found blood that sang to me before. Perhaps this was the way of it, that I would feel the weight of expectation. Would I be the perfect killer for them, would I live up to whatever anticipation one might have of an angel of death? What if I fell short? What is I was found wanting?

Aye. The female of the species has always had that effect on us, laddie.

"She's no my species. Why would I care either way?"

A more interesting question would be, why would she?

"As always ye make nae sense! Hush yer yapping. I'm trying to be sneaky."

I slowed as I stepped out onto one of the station platforms. The light was brighter here, with patches of sunlight, and I needed more caution than haste. The scent ended at one of the carriages not far from where it disappeared under the dark tunnel that separated the self-contained world of the station from the one outside. Several windows down, in a strangely absent concentration of itself, the scent was muffled by and behind a closed window. I slouched toward the mouth of the tunnel, approaching the side of the carriage behind the window.

So near and yet so far…

I said nothing, merely brushed the backs of my knuckles across the metal of the carriage hull, sensing warmth pressed against it from the inside. The urge to lean closer was heady. If I were to take one step forwards, I would be face to face with my singer. Would it know me, would I see that knowledge in wide eyes, blue or brown or green? Would I lose control and take it into myself with no thought for witnesses?

Once you see her, there is no going back, and even I could not control what happened next.

"I'm no a child. I dinnae need to be supervised."

Both of those statements are debatable at best.

The hum of the engine warned me of impending departure and the window moved towards me and the tunnel. Separation and discovery were equally unthinkable, so I slipped quickly toward the mouth the short tunnel. Once in shadow, I braced my feet against tunnel wall and metal to hop lightly to the top of the carriage as it started moving, only a soft thud betraying my landing on the roof.

I lay quickly on my back; a man my size can't be too careful in tunnels, where an errant wooden beam or spur of rock could easily relieve me of my head. My head was at times a confusing place, but I still preferred it to stay where it was. Spreadeagled as I now was, my only option was to revisit the past as the carriages picked up momentum for the journey, wherever it would take us.

Jasper POV

We were only three miles from the airport when Alice stiffened in her seat, eyelids fluttering. I held up a hand and all three cars as one pulled down a sidestreet and came to a halt. She only felt puzzled, which comforted me a great deal. I slipped my fingers through hers, squeezing just enough to let her know that I was, as ever, here in the real world, grounding her while she struggled in another, one of many I would never see. Her strong, slim fingers curled around mine out of long habit before she turned to me with determination rolling off her in waves.

"Jazz, we need Edward. He has to be there, too."