back in denali. day. 20
the several days after Charlie left were uneventful.
he had left on the tuesday morning and midafternoon the same day hulien & nahuel had returned from the extended hunting trip that they had been on.
i was pleased to see them, although it was unfortunate they hadnt returned sooner.
I had told Charlie, who was anxious about what the baby would be like, about Nahuel and he had hoped to meet the man for himself.
unfortunately neither hulien nor Nahuel had taken a phone with them and so could not be recalled early. not
knowing how long they intended to be away and with a precinct to run charlie had had to leave without meeting him
i spent the following several days quietly around the house reading and spending time with the various members of the family. each and every one had led long interesting lives and I liked to hear the stories of the many things they had experienced .
garrett had been a soldier as a human and had fought in the revolutionary war.
he had beren changed by accident, the result of a vampire taking advantage of the carnage to feast. The opportunist had been almost beyond sated when he reached garretand so had not drained him. The vampire never returned to see if his victim died or changed and so garrett never knew his creator.
after his transformation Garrett traveled wildly and developed a hobby of Joining any war that took his fancy, on the side of whoeve he personaly thought in the right.
the Joined the war of the oranges not staying in one place long but helping any of the besieged fortresses that loocked likely to fall. he held that his aid was instrumental in the stalemate.
he made quite the project of the napoleonic wars changing armies and even overal sides regularly
after that he spent several decades aiding in a number of
smaller wars. helping, among others,the greek revolutionaries.
in the middle of the 19th century he returned to america and took part in the fighting around california between the settlers and the natives trying to aid the natives attempt to resist the overtaking of their land. garret later felt he may have done more harm than good. he felt that the Settlers had been incited to further violence in retaliation for attacks he had assisted on.
he remained in america to take part in the civil war taking it upon himself to oversee the safety of escaping slaves in areas where they could not travel by stealth. stories spread across the south of a ghost who haunted the roads doing strange and awful things to white men who questioned blacks they found traveling.
garret then returned to europe intending to travel peacefully
but instead got caught up in the trenches of WWI with the french. when he tired of trenchlife he Joined the Italians in the alps.
his final foray into warfare came during WWII he Joined the alled armies at D- Day and as they swept across europe liberating the camps and ghettos.
the suffering he saw in these places was the final straw for garret and he gave up warfare for good.
he spent the next several decades traveling, avoiding inhabited places unsure what he was looking for until Just a few months previous. when he found himself in alaska and met Kate, he found his mate in her and the vegetarian lifestyle suited his desire for peace.
elazar had traveled widely as a member of the voltori and told me tales of the vampire talents he had found for them. but the stories I
liked better were of his later times.
he had left volterra before carlile had found his way there. after leaving the voltori he and carmen had made an the world meeting many famous people. carmen was very much a people person and
she often Joined elazar in the telling of their Joint adventures.
they told me facinating stories of the people they had encountered.
they attended the wedding of catherine the great,
duri ng a tour of england they met Jane austen, who spent much time discussing her writings with carmen.
carmen claimed to have helped Jane overcome a problem wirth the plot of one of her books but refused to say which one.
another author they met was charles darwin who facicinated elazar. the idea of evolution intreaged the vampire, who became one of the
first reader of dawin's origin of the species.
they obtained an audience with queen Victoria,
then made the ir first trip to ameraica where they were briefly aquainted wirth nicola testa. carmen loved his ideas and would have stayed for longer than they did. elazar however declared the mans machines "troubling" and" strange" begging carmen to move on.
they even met a 21 year old hittler and, following a heated debate about the young man, ideas were invited to dinner. elazar expressed that he later wished he had accepted the invitation, observing that much suffering could hav been avoided by attending and
making Hitler himself the meal!
Kate had once made a project of visiting every single country. exploring them all in detail and relayed accounts of vast rainforests. ancient cities and lost tribes.
it w as fantastical to listen to them and i had to remind myself more than once that these people had actually done all these things and the stores were all true.
but as much as i enjoyed spending time with all the members of the family i spent the most time with tanya.
i found that whenever i found myself unoccupied i tended to gravitate to wherever tanya happened to be.
tanya took it upon herself to keep house so I would follow her round as we changed beds, washed dishes cleaned & dusted. she spent a lot of time picking up after Seth and embry until Jacob noticed how messy they were & took them to task. after that they cleared up after themselves but tanya insisted she didn't mind cleaning their house.
one day Jacob discovered that the denali clan had never been tobogganing. so he, his back, and all the. denalis except tanya who insisted on remainging behind with me set off, with several hastily made sleds, up the nearest mountain.
tanya and i were in the kitchen. I was sat at the table watching tanya fold laundry, she wouldn't let me help. there was a breeze blowing in the slightly open window & suddenly tanya looked up.
"it cant be"
she sniffed the air more deliberately.
"what is it" I asked.
"the smell on the breeze" she replied "it smells like irina"