Sam, March 2004

I don't go to Newton's Olympic Outfitters in Forks very often, but I was on an errand for Leah's Dad to get some of the bait and tackle that was going on sale. There was a redhaired boy in there stocking up on something, and even though he wasn't doing anything wrong – he wasn't doing anything outwardly creepy – something about him made me give him a wide berth.

I didn't notice him again until we both came to the till at the same time.

"You can go," I said, motioning him over to the till.

"It's alright," he said politely. "You've only two things and I have five. Go before me."

So I got Harry's things and went back to the rez. As I went passed the guy on the way out I got a mouthful of an absolutely awful smell. It made my eyes water and made me feel queasy.

I still felt queasy that night. I just couldn't get the weird smell out of my nose for two days.

Over the next few days I started getting really hot and cold and achy, which I thought was a mild case of flu at first. I pushed through it. Mom and my two sisters needed me. I did see Sue about it, and she said that I had a temperature but nothing else. I took some Tylenol and got an early night, and Mom gave me a vitamin tablet. Then I was back on my feet. I still felt peaky, but what else was I supposed to do? My weekend job of picking up after tourists in the Olympic National Park was what was keeping the family going. I was in my senior year and I really needed my GED; I would have liked to go to community college, but I needed to support my mother and sisters. They came first. And even though my temperature was too high and I felt achy and moody sometimes, I didn't feel sick, and I certainly didn't feel tired. My family was relying on me. I'd be OK, I had to be.

May 2004

I felt weird, but I was bulking up on muscle and eating a lot, so I figured it was just some kind of weird late-onset growing pains. It was after a couple of months of feeling kinda weird (but not sick) that things got even weirder. The day started normally enough. I helped my Mom cook breakfast for me and my two sisters, took them to school, and spent the day there like you usually would.

But when I got home, my father's old car was parked right outside our cabin.

That couldn't be good. Dad had been off the rez for almost three years, finally running off to Portland where he could drink to his heart's content and mooch off the Federal Government even more than he did at La Push (which was really saying something) in peace and quiet. About six months ago Mom had finally decided to divorce him. Dad had been open to the idea of getting divorced at first, until his lawyer had explained to him that he would be getting less money in his welfare checks if he didn't have children living with him – children of whom he would probably not get custody, and that he would have to pay child support if he didn't get custody. If he was here to bully Mom, I'd –

OK. Wringing people's necks just because you're angry is a really bad idea, and it can probably make a bad situation worse. Generally speaking, I would always advise de-escalation before things get too rough, and I don't believe in attacking people for any reason other than defense, if that makes sense.

I was really angry, though. Dad didn't have any right to come back here, not after what he'd done, and certainly not after he'd left and put me in the position of having to keep the family afloat because he wouldn't share his welfare checks. Kevin Littlesea and Charlie Swan had alerted the Federal Welfare Office and tried to get them to send the money directly to Mom, and they'd succeeded, and the Tribe had been pretty supportive, but there had been an eight-month gap where Mom and I had worked our fingers to the bone and the whole family (sans Dad, who wasn't a part of this family any more) had gone without.

I was furious. I was clenching my fists. My head thudded and thrummed with anger. My muscles tensed, and I let out a growl and burst out of my skin in anger. Suddenly, all of my senses were in sharper relief. I could hear every bird in the trees, every crash of the waves on the beach. I could see more clearly than I ever had, but fury had leached the colour out of everything and now –

Wait. You could put the enhanced hearing down to an adrenaline rush, and if the world had been just a bit less colourful I could have put my weird vision down to an adrenaline rush too. But this wasn't just things getting a bit less colourful, it was a full-on black-and-white movie, except the picture quality was about ten times better. And the smells –

I could smell everything. Pungently. It was overwhelming. I nearly fell over.

So that was how I knew that something more than just 'I got really angry' had happened.

I got scared then. I guess instinct took over and I started running for the woods, but I knew somehow I wasn't running normally. I heard howling and realised it was coming from me, and I saw a giant pair of black dog paws moving when I ran, and because I had no idea just what happened I got scared and ran away.

The woods weren't the same. Of course I was running through bits of the wood I didn't know very well, because I was on the south side of the Quillayute river and I spent more time up at Mora, but – I was off the paths and scrambling over creek banks and hills I didn't recognise and everything was black and white but the gradients were so clear and sharp and I could hear so much and the smell –

The smell took the most getting used to. It wasn't a bad smell, it was just . . . a lot. As in, everything (and I do mean everything) had a really strong scent now. I could smell the rain as it came down, the rain as it soaked into the ground, tree sap in several different flavours, animal droppings, birds in the trees, trails and scents from animals with varying levels of strength and freshness, running water in the streams, different types of stone, diesel and tarmac whenever I was near a road . . .

I could smell everything. The primary way of experiencing the world was through smell now, then sound, and finally sight and touch. Before, it had been the other way around.

I didn't know where I was running, except for a vague notion that I was going east. I didn't know where I was until I reached the Sol Duc Falls, deep in the Olympic National Park, and I threw back my head and howled. It was about this time that I figured that I was a wolf. I'd heard some of the legends, of course, but I never expected it to happen to me. I mean, who did?

And then I promptly stopped being a wolf and fell to the (very cold, wet, stony) ground as a human.

A buck-naked human at an elevation of nearly 2,000 metres in the Pacific Northwest in late afternoon on a rainy day in May.

I'd been working with the rangers long enough to know that I would probably die of exposure. Either I would have to walk to the nearest ranger station almost two miles away in the rain – absolutely naked and barefoot – or I would have to turn back into a wolf.

I decided to give the wolf thing a couple of tries first. If it didn't work out, I would sacrifice my dignity and try and come up with an explanation for the whole naked-and-barefoot thing, but it would be a lot more dangerous and embarrassing than just being a wolf again.

Sometimes in the stories, they turned into wolves at will, so if I could just concentrate on being a wolf again . . . I felt that prickling underneath my skin . . . and it didn't work.

Sometimes they turned into wolves when they were angry, didn't they? That had certainly happened to me when I had first turned.

I took a deep breath, and concentrated hard on everything my Dad had and hadn't done. Well, there was an awful lot of pent-up anger and sadness in there . . . it wasn't working . . .

I thought about how much I wanted to turn into a wolf so I wouldn't die of exposure out here and leave Mom and my two sisters alone, about how angry my Dad made me, he who had been privileged enough to be born in this beautiful green land of trees and mountain and thundering sea, and of the brown-skinned women cooking salmon on the beach in July, my mother and sisters among them, of my friend Jerry and playing volleyball games with him and Leah . . . of how much I cared for them, and wanted to protect them, and about how I was angry at my Dad because he had betrayed all of that, and about how much I wanted to get home . . .

. . . And I was galloping through the woods before I knew what was happening.

I must have been going really fast, because I was out of the mountains and outside Quillayute airstrip before long. I actually sat down to figure all of this out for a bit. I had run over 40 kilometres, as the crow flies, and not on the flat, either. If I really was turning into a wolf, like my ancestors seemed to have done (this was all a bit of a mind-screw, which made it all hard to think about, which was kinda frustrating, but you had to deal with these things), then it was obviously my job to protect the tribe.

Well. I could live with that. All I had ever wanted was for my Mom and sisters to be safe and happy. Unlike some of the kids my age (looking at you, Bronson Cameron and Rachel and Rebecca Black), who wanted out of the rez, and saw college as the way out, I saw college as the way in. If I got some kind of certification in forest management, or ecological sciences, or anthropology or archaeology or linguistics or something – if I just got something in something useful, like engineering or architecture or even nursing, like Leah's Mom Sue – I could come and give it all back to the tribe. And I'd always liked the idea of being one of the Park Rangers.

It looked like I would get a lot of that now. But I wouldn't get it the way I'd planned or expected. For one thing, I wouldn't be able to go to community college in Port Angeles or Vancouver or Olympia the way I had hoped, because I wouldn't be able to leave the rez for that long. For another, I would have to hide this wolf thing from quite a lot of people to avoid the Feds coming down and locking me in a lab for goodness knew how long, and that could potentially make Park Ranging difficult.

And then another, terrifying thought occurred to me. Because who could I tell about this? Not any of my peers; they would think I was insane. I could hear Jacob Black's new nickname for me already. He'd probably call me Professor Lupin or something. Or even worse, he'd say I wasn't cool enough to be Professor Lupin. Leah might believe me, but she'd call me insane first. I couldn't worry Mom at a time like this, my eight-year-old sister Kylie was out of the question, and my fourteen-year-old sister Ella could compete at state level in a gossiping contest.

The Council? I could just imagine it: walking up to them as they discussed plans to get funding for the school and mending potholes and what to do about parking problems during the tourist season. Look, guys, I've turned into a wolf like Taha Aki, what am I supposed to do now? He wasn't even one of our major legends! The guy was practically a footnote, for crying out loud!

Well, I'd cross that bridge when I came to it. Right now I needed to figure out what to do in the immediate situation, and then I would have to figure out how to use this wolf-form to protect the tribe. Actually, thinking about it . . .

Cops did patrols, didn't they? And I wasn't getting very cold, or very tired, so why not start now?

I would carve out a patrol circuit. La Push, Oil City, the Quinalt rez and the surrounding areas, Forks, Beaver, Ozette, the Makah rez, Clallam Bay, Piedmont, Joyce, and the Elwha area – in that order – and then back home.

It took me the better part of a night. Even in the dark, I could find my way around largely by smell, but I was surprised at how much I could see at night. Even without colour, I could still see light and shade in high relief.

I picked up a strange scent near Forks. It was putrid, sickly sweet, enough to make me almost gag in my wolf form, and it was completely unnatural. Gasoline smelled pretty bad to me, now that I was a wolf, but this weird scent was ten times worse, and I instinctively knew it meant danger. I tracked it – it was all over the outskirts of the town – but most of the trails went to the gateway of a large, mysterious property. It was surrounded by an electric fence that was maybe twelve feet tall, topped with barbed wire and festooned with lasers and cameras and booby traps which stretched all the way to the Calawah. A thick screen of trees was planted about ten feet from the fence, but I caught a glimpse of a large white house. The gate itself was something else: there were cameras and lasers galore on the entrance. There was a small bay in front of the big gate, enclosed in a tall pinewood fence with an automatic wrought-iron gate, with a silver panel with buttons and a screen, the kind you see at the entrance of gated McMansions or the bottom of a high-end apartment building. There was a short drive inside, with a P.O Box and a place for parcel delivery. Trees lined the inside of the drive beyond the second gate, curving off out of sight.

The whole thing was like a haunted mansion. And the smell . . .

I figured it was best not to go inside until I knew more.

That didn't mean I couldn't follow the trails. They ran all over the Olympic National Park, but the trails were faint, washed out by the rain. I couldn't detect any trace near any of the reservations as I went on my rounds, although I did find a meth lab, which I'd have to report. Chief Swan would listen to me, I knew. He was a good cop, conscientious.

I would have to watch that big white house, though. It was my job to protect the tribe. Unfortunately, the sun was rising, and I did have school, so I had to get back to the house. I stopped in the trees nearby.

Oh, no. A Park Ranger's jeep was parked right next to Kevin Littlesea's police car. All the lights were on. Mom must have reported me missing, and they must have found my ruined clothes. How much must she have been worrying about me?

I wanted to run right out there and tell her what had happened, and I whined in distress. Somebody inside – it sounded like Old Quil – excused himself, and then he came lumbering out of the house. He stopped as he approached the road.

"If it's you, Sam," he said quietly, but my wolfy ears picked up every word, "Stop by in the woods just behind our house. We'll bring you a change of clothes and explain everything there."

I got to the back of the house quickly. A light went on in one window, there was a lot of shuffling and whispering, and then the back door opened. Old Quil came out, pushing his wife Molly in her wheelchair, leaning on it like it was a walking frame. Molly was balancing an enormous pile of clothes on her lap.

"It's too cold for this," Molly was saying. "You'll catch your death, Quil."

"You can't insist on coming out here, Molly, and then say that I'll catch my death."

"Well, I'm well wrapped-up. And you can come out, Sam, either form. Don't be embarrassed, I knew you when you were in diapers."

How did you go about turning back into a human? I wasn't sure. I whined in distress.

"Just a moment, Molly," Old Quil said.

"You can't be planning to phase now!"

"Whyever not?"

"You'll have to get undressed! It's chilly out here, and you are eighty-four years old!"

"He's probably having trouble controlling his phasing," Old Quil replied. He began tugging his coat off. "At least it isn't raining, right now, Molly." Off came his sweater, then his shirt . . . then his . . . I decided to look away.

And then I heard the voice in my head.

Sam? Sam, you need to think things at me.

Actually, it was more than a voice. It was a rush of knowledge and experiences and images and sounds and smells that was just . . .

It took a moment to get through all of that . . . new stuff in my brain.

What's going on?

Wolves share a mind, Old Quil's voice told me. A large, ancient wolf with a grizzled muzzle and thin limbs was standing next to Molly's wheelchair. She put a hand out and rubbed his ears. He put his head in her lap, and hummed in pleasure, and I could feel that pleasure in my own mind. I am the last wolf of my generation.

Then he started to explain things. The Blood-drinkers in the old stories are real. There is a coven of seven of them living in Forks, and you must see that they uphold their treaty.

Seven? In Forks? What treaty? I asked.

Quil thought back to 1936. He had been sixteen years old when he had first become a wolf. He showed me pictures of Ephraim Black, Billy's grandfather, and my grandfather Levi Uley . . . a chase in the woods of strange, pale creatures that looked human and weren't, who smelled like that strange trail I had picked up in Forks . . .

Quil Ateara II, 1936

We found them in the woods near Quinault, and chased them north. Faster and faster, the trees rushing past us, the scent rising in our noses and that strange excitement pumping through our hearts.

"Stop," cried a voice. It should have sounded pleasant, but to our ears, it sounded tinny and unnatural. "Please, we assure you, we don't mean any harm!"

"I don't see why we should even try this, Carlisle. They're trying to kill us," a female voice called from somewhere to the east.

"Let's try to get out of this without loss of life, Rosalie."

"They've heard us talking, Carlisle," another man called, this time up ahead of us.

In Ephraim's mind I could see a flash of movement in the trees, and a man leapt down in front of him. Or at least, it looked like a man. We could tell it wasn't. Ephraim snarled and snapped.

"We have no quarrel with you," the man called. I didn't believe that for a second.

"They don't believe you, Carlisle," called the second man. He was beside the first one in a flash. He rolled forward like a cat in front of the first man – the one called Carlisle - and readied to fight Ephraim.

"Why don't they believe us, Edward?"

I thought of the stories of the Blood-drinkers, how they had murdered their way through three tribes and killed an entire family of warriors single-handedly.

"They know what we are, Carlisle. They're protecting their land."

"Is that all?" asked Carlisle. He put a hand on Edward's shoulder and pushed him to the side. Then he approached Ephraim, palms up.

"We have no quarrel with you," he said. "Refrain from killing us, and we will leave you and your land alone."

Ephraim wasn't about to let go a group of murderers who feasted on people's blood.

"They don't approve of traditional diets," Edward said. "They seem to think of themselves as protectors of humanity."

Could he read minds or something?

Edward looked Ephraim straight in the eye. "Yes," he said, "I can read minds. And if you tell anyone, I will come and kill you. I can see that in your pack you all share a mind, and I will ask you now: do you have any others?"

Could we tell him? Ephraim thought.

He'll know if we're lying, Levi answered.

I could see Edward through Ephraim's eyes, and I could tell the exact moment that he knew there were only three of us. Had he read my mind? Had I betrayed the tribe? I began running towards where Ephraim was, heedless of the three other trails we had picked up.

"No, you haven't betrayed the tribe," Edward said brusquely. "We won't be killing anyone, human or wolf, unless you betray our secrets."

Images of the Blood-drinker Man killing the Makah girls and all of Yaha Uta's brothers came to mind, as did the image of the Blood-drinker Woman killing an entire village.

"We don't drink the blood of men," Edward said. "We value human life too. My father here considers human life a sacred thing. He has drunk nothing but the blood of animals for three hundred years."

Levi thought they were lying. Edward told Carlisle.

"We can prove it," Carlisle said. "The eyes of vampires who feed on human blood are red. Our eyes are yellow, because we feed on the blood of animals - "

"That's not going to work, Carlisle. They're colour-blind."

I thundered into the clearing and skidded to a stop beside Ephraim. I growled and stalked forward, but Edward and Carlisle met me with an unflinching gaze.

"Do you have a human form?" Carlisle asked softly.

"They do," Edward answered.

"In that case," Carlisle said, "You could look at me in your human form and see for yourselves."

Like we were going to turn back in the presence of two Blood-drinkers.

"They don't trust us enough to turn back," Edward began.

"Take my limbs off, Edward."

What kind of trick was this?

Edward snorted arrogantly. "It's no use, Carlisle. They think it's a trick. There's five of us and three of them – we can take them - "

"No. There will no killing of anybody today, or tomorrow, or ever, my son."

Edward smiled wryly; a secret smile. The two men exchanged a look.

"No," he agreed, in a strange, wistful voice. "There won't be any killing, Carlisle. But I am the mind-reader, and they know I am dangerous. Take off my limbs instead."

"Are you sure?"

"Very much so."

Edward held out his arms, and Carlisle ripped one off and tossed it to Ephraim. The arms came off with an ear-splitting screech; it sounded like metal tearing. Then Carlisle ripped off Edward's other arm, and tossed it to me. And then when Levi came galloping up, he tossed a leg to Levi as well.

This wasn't supposed to happen! Blood-drinkers weren't supposed to behave like this! Why were they behaving like this?

"Because of Carlisle," said Edward with a smile. "Like I said, he thinks human life is sacred. So do my mother and I."

Blood-drinkers had mothers?

Edward didn't answer that one. Hadn't he heard –

"Yes, I heard that," he said in a bored voice. "We were human once. We'd like to be so again, but such a thing isn't possible."

Carlisle pulled off the last leg so that Edward was a dismembered torso, propped Edward up against a tree, then ripped off his own arm and tossed it to Ephraim.

There was a long, pregnant moment.

Don't trust them, Levi thought angrily.

But couldn't we try? I thought back.

Ephraim was weighing up the wisdom of phasing in his mind. It would save us a fight, if what these bloodsuckers were saying was true, but we certainly didn't owe them our trust.

They dismembered themselves in front of us, I thought. I didn't know what to make of that.

It's a trick, Levi thought.

We can't afford to be too trusting, Ephraim thought, but we can't afford to be too suspicious. I don't want to try taking five of them.

Hey, you can't think that! Edward will read it!

"I would try thinking only in your own language, if I were you," Edward said. "If I don't know the language, it's a little harder to pick thoughts out of your heads. And make sure you all think in your language when one of you is near me, because your minds are so connected I can hear all of you when just one of you is in my range."

Range? We all thought.

"I can hear people's thoughts from four miles away," Edward explained. "Any further than that, and it fades out."

There was something funny about how Edward and Carlisle kept making themselves vulnerable like that. Either they really didn't want a fight, or they were just really good . . . you know, I didn't believe that they were such good tricksters. They really didn't want to fight.

Levi didn't agree with me.

Quil, Levi, Ephraim thought. He was finding it difficult to think in pure Quileute. Most of the elders spoke it, especially the ones who had been around before the arson attack in 1889, but it was getting harder and harder to speak it properly among ourselves. We all spoke English, most people who worked in logging or who kept shops spoke English, the pastor spoke English, we spoke English at school . . .

I'm going to turn back, Ephraim thought in Quileute with difficulty. Stand either side of me, on point, and get ready to attack at the first sign of trouble.

We moved into position, hackles up and muscles tensed.

Ephraim turned back, and looked into Carlisle's eyes, then Edward's. Neither man moved.

Ephraim went back to his wolf form.

It's true. Their eyes are yellow. We could all see it through his mind.

He focussed his thoughts on Edward, and began thinking in English. Listen here, Blood-drinker, and translate what I say for Carlisle and the rest of your companions.

Edward nodded.

I don't want any of you coming within five miles of our land, or the Hohs, or the Quinaults, or the Makahs, or even the Elwhas. We'll be running patrol all over the peninsula to make sure you don't. And if we hear so much as a rumour of a suspicious death, we'll fight to the death to tear you all to pieces and turn you to ashes, outnumbered or not. Understand?

Edward translated.

"Of course," said Carlisle. "For future reference, the three others are two women and a man: Emmett, Rosalie and Esme. We all live in Hoquiam."

"Rosalie says she doesn't want the wolves coming near our home. And there's Esme to think about, too," Edward said. Levi and I wondered what was going on, but Ephraim thought he must be hearing the thoughts of one of his compatriots a few miles away. "And there's your job, Carlisle," Edward was continuing. "What if you get called out to somewhere you've been forbidden to go?" He turned his head to face us. "Carlisle is a doctor."

We all felt a cold wave of shock roll over the three of us. Levi was wondering if Carlisle used the job as a cover to prey on sick patients, Ephraim didn't know what to make of it, and I was thinking Molly's old aunt really could do with some doctoring. One thing we were all pretty sure of: we didn't want him treating any of us.

"I think," Carlisle said, "That it might be a good idea for us to come to a provisional agreement here, then confer amongst ourselves privately, and come back to work out the arrangements. For ourselves, we won't come within five miles of your land and we won't kill or change anyone. But we ask in return that you do not come near our home, and that you keep our secrets."

Ephraim thought about all of this. He was formulating a plan. These Blood-drinkers were pretty civil, all things considered. In the stories they were mindless savages who couldn't seem to think further than their next meal and vengeance for their companions. They didn't dismember themselves to try and make peace, he was thinking (Edward was still in pieces and Carlisle's arm was ripped off). He didn't trust them, but it would probably be better not to fight, in this instance, if we could win without fighting. And this idea of conferring out of Edward's mental earshot (he was going to do it all in Quileute anyway, just to be safe) was appealing.

Get the rest of your companions here, he thought in English at Edward. I want to see them all. Then you can meet us in two days' time at Wynoochee Canyon.

"I'm putting myself back together before the others get here," Edward said angrily. "I'm not letting my mother see me like this." He turned his head toward Carlisle. "You know how much it will upset her! I won't give her any reminders of what she's been through!" Another pause. Edward must be reading Carlisle's mind. "Are you sure?" he said at last, and then he blinked and looked upward for a long moment. He seemed to be figuring something out. "Alright," he whispered at last. "But Carlisle, you should go get them all. Make sure Esme knows what to expect. And yes, you can leave me alone here, as a peace offering. They aren't going to attack me. At least, I don't think so."

Carlisle stepped over to Edward, and put a hand on his shoulder with a concerned look.

"No," Edward replied to Carlisle's unspoken question. "I wouldn't do that to any of you."

Carlisle smiled back at him.

"Keep my arm for now," he told us, "But please don't destroy it. I'll need two arms to practice medicine." He ran off into the woods.

Ephraim stalked up to Edward. I won't kill you, he thought deliberately, But we don't trust your kind. We'll be watching.

Edward scowled. "That's beyond fair in my case," he said, "But I'd advise you to give Carlisle some credit."

What is Carlisle to you?

"My father, in every sense that matters."

That worried us. If this was a family, thoughtful and closely loyal to each other, they could work together to take us down in ways their predecessors hadn't, Ephraim was thinking. Levi wasn't inclined to think of the Blood-drinkers as having any kind of familial bonds. I didn't know what to make of it.

But now . . . Ephraim seemed to be seeing an opportunity. (I wish I was as smart as him. I would never have thought to find out stuff about the Blood-drinkers).

You speak of a mother and father, and say you were human once. Tell me, how are . . . your kind . . . created?

"We are vampires," Edward said, so quietly that even we had to strain to hear him. "Every vampire, so far as we know, was human once. I don't know how our kind came to be, and neither does Carlisle, but the way it's . . . spread, for want of a better word, is through venom. Every vampire has a venomous bite. When the venom enters a human's bloodstream, then provided that human stays alive over the next few days, it circulates all around the body, and a new vampire is born."

We hadn't known this.

Levi was suddenly terrified: what was to stop these Blood-drinkers from creating an army?

Ephraim wanted to know why they hadn't done that before now.

I wanted to know who on God's green earth had started this all, because if a normal person could become one of those merciless Blood-drinkers, then surely death was preferable.

"It is preferable, sometimes," Edward said. "And Carlisle isn't planning on turning anyone else because of that."

Then why haven't you all just killed yourself already? Levi asked.

"We're pretty hard to kill."

Well, the stories had got that bit right.

"And there were armies created," Edward went on. "Most of that is over now, although some remain. They're all in Mexico and Central America."

Ephraim stalked up to Edward. If one of you turns any human into one of your kind, all the blood they take will be on your hands, and there will be no place in this land which we will not go to kill you.

Edward sighed. "Well, I daresay that would be just," he said wryly. He cocked his head. "They'll be coming back here in minute."

The awful, awful smell intensified.

Carlisle ran back into view. All of us growled and raised our hackles, because he had an absolute mountain of a vampire with him, one who was big and strong enough to do some serious damage. Levi almost jumped him there and then, but Ephraim told him not to attack. We had a lot to lose here.

"My daughter, Rosalie. Her husband, Emmett. Esme, my wife," said Carlisle, introducing everyone like this was some potlatch or something.

We've seen you all now. Get that big one out of here, and we'll give Edward his arms and legs back, Ephraim ordered.

Edward translated, and Emmett and the two ladies ran off. We tossed back Edward's legs for Carlisle to fit back on. Ephraim wondered if we should keep one of Edward's appendages as a surety, but decided to return it in an act of goodwill.

Wynoochee Canyon in two days, high noon, he reminded Edward. Edward repeated that to Carlisle, and the two of them ran due south.

We're going to follow them, he told us, making an effort to think in Quileute. We need to make sure they get back to where they live in Hoquiam. And then we'll talk among ourselves.

Two Days Later

Wynoochee Canyon was a steep-sided bend in the Wynoochee River. We arrived in the rain. I was quivering with nerves; Ephraim was nervous but wasn't showing it; and Levi was itching for a fight.

No fighting unless it becomes absolutely necessary, Ephraim snapped. They've got a mind-reader and a giant.

I wonder where they are? I thought. We'd bunked off church (it was Sunday) to come early, which meant I was missing out on seeing Molly –

CONCENTRATE, snapped Ephraim. I sighed and rolled my eyes. If I wanted to think about Molly, I would, because I thought about her all the time, and that was the truth of it.

Ephraim caught a scent, and he lifted his nose to taste it. We all turned so we could get the scent.

They're approaching downwind.

They'll be here in just a moment . . .

Five Blood-drinkers (vampires?) came loping gracefully out of the trees on the other side of the river, and leapt over the canyon like it was a puddle.

That's bad. They're as strong as the stories say they are . . .

They formed up: the three men at the front, the two women behind them. "Thank you for coming," Carlisle said gravely. Emmett opened up a folding table he had been carrying, and Carlisle put a briefcase on it.

"We didn't know if you wanted anything in writing," he said. "If you do, please keep them in a safe and secret place. And we brought maps, too, so that we can work out the boundary lines."

What's with all this civility? Levi thought angrily. It was making him suspicious. Surely Carlisle was too good to be true?

Oh, and he thought that in English. Edward would have heard! I quivered and looked over to him closely . . .

You couldn't see any reaction at all. It was like he hadn't heard.

Ephraim was pretty angry with Levi for the same reason. He sent him a burst of fury and annoyance.

I wasn't going to do anything stupid! Levi thought angrily, even though we already all knew that.

Not now, Ephraim thought angrily. We can't afford to be anything but a united front right now, even in our own heads.

It's this mind-reading, Levi thought, and I agreed with him. He's spying on us.

I glanced at Edward again. So did Ephraim and Levi. None of us could determine any reaction.

We will present our terms first, Ephraim thought clearly, in English. Belatedly, I suddenly realised that we'd been thinking in English for our whole argument in front of Edward, and suddenly I realised how terrifying that was. We couldn't even think in our own language to shield ourselves from our sworn enemies. I thought of how people were lamenting these days how less and less people were speaking the Quileute language properly, and I realised – suddenly – that we needed our language to protect us. Not just against mind-reading Blood-drinkers like Edward, but to keep us Quileute, to protect us and our way of life against white men and settlers, to keep the tribe alive. Levi was having a similar epiphany.

And in that moment, the carefree boy I had been resolved itself into a man with a people and a purpose, and I knew what my life would be, if only Molly would share it with me.

Molly! I'd thought of her right in front of Edward! My lovely, beautiful, fun Molly – Molly who was a white girl from Forks! Would the bloodsuckers go there? And he'd been a white man once – what if he killed me for daring to court a white girl? We were seeing each other in secret to avoid Old Man Swan as it was! If he came after Molly, I'd kill them all, treaty or not –

CALM DOWN! Snapped Ephraim. We can't afford a fight right here over something which may never happen!

He turned his attention back to the vampires.

As I was saying, we will present our terms first. Edward, translate.

Edward translated. Carlisle motioned for us to go ahead.

Our terms are these: you will neither kill anyone nor turn them into vampires. If we have so much as a hint of suspicion, then whatever agreement we come to today will be null and void.

"Agreed," said Carlisle, after Edward had relayed the message.

In addition, you will not come within five miles of our lands.

We hashed out the fine details of that pretty clearly. Carlisle took his maps out, drew the lines in green ink, and promised to mail a copy to La Push.

You will not doctor any Indian, and certainly not any Quileute.

Carlisle was less willing to accept that one. He could accept treatment being refused in some cases, he said, and he could accept not offering to treat an Indian, but in circumstances where treatment was required . . . in potential life-and-death situations . . .

No, Ephraim said. And if you aren't coming up to our lands, you won't be in those situations.

"I suppose not."

You will not take our fish or our game.

"Fish blood tastes terrible anyway," said one of the women when Edward relayed that one.

"When ya say game," the giant said, "Cain't we hunt in the mountains yander?"

No hunting game west of Olympia or north of Hoquiam, Ephraim said. The vampires looked distressed. Carlisle said that they could hunt game on Vancouver Island and in the Canadian cascades and Mount Rainier wilderness. He was happy to leave the coast alone, but could they hunt in the Olympic mountains? In places where no humans were present?

Ephraim decided to concede on that point. Making this concession now might put us in a better position later. Levi was a little suspicious, and so was I, but we understood his thinking.

"I'm afraid that we have to make some demands of our own," Carlisle said. "Secrecy, as we have already mentioned. What we ask is that you tell no-one that we are vampires. That is absolutely imperative."

Even our own tribe?

"Even your own tribe," Carlisle said seriously. "And tell no-one that Edward is a mind-reader. His life depends on it."

Why did he tell us then, that night?

"To avoid bloodshed," replied Edward shortly. "I knew your intentions were pure, so I felt you could be trusted, and I felt that a show of trust would be more conducive to reaching some kind of accord than not."

(Had a Blood-drinker just risked his life to pursue peace? The implications of that - )

Some tribal members already know about the wolf thing, Ephraim pointed out.

"Your secrets are yours to keep or divulge as you see fit," said Carlisle, "But our secret, and Edward's, is what we must ask you to keep. I'm not exaggerating when I say that both your lives and our depend on it."

He's making this up, Levi thought, making an effort to keep to Quileute. If they're a secret, what's to stop them picking us off one by one?

What could the tribe do, even if they did know? Ephraim thought angrily. Secrets will make no difference if it comes down to a fight, in the end.

What could kill a vampire that didn't keep secrets? I thought.

"Our other demand," Carlisle went on, "Is that you don't come near our house or bother us when we are out hunting. I can give you our address - "

"Carlisle, is that really necessary?" asked Edward.

"They'll have to know where we live, son, in order to avoid it."

"How near is near? I don't want those things near Esme, and there's Rosalie to think about."

"Hear, hear," chimed in the giant whose name I couldn't remember.

Carlisle turned back to us. "Do you ever need to go into Hoquiam?"

Levi was pretty sure we could avoid it if it meant avoiding these vampires. Ephraim wanted to be able to go into Hoquiam, but wondered if it was such a good idea with the vampires in town. I agreed with him.

"They don't," Edward growled. Wait, we all thought – that wasn't what we said –

"If you think I would let you come within a mile of my mother and my sister, in any form - "

"Calm it, jasper," the giant said in a sing-song accent, putting a hand on Edward's shoulder.

"Edward," said the shorter of the two women, "That was unforgivably rude of you! Apologize this instant!"

I never thought I'd see the day when I agreed with a Blood-drinker, Ephraim thought.

Levi was in too much shock to think much of anything.

I suddenly realised that Edward would probably do as he was told, and I was more than a little gratified when he actually mumbled an apology.

Stop that, Quil, Ephraim and Levi thought at me, in varying degrees of Quileute (we really needed to work on that). Just because he can follow someone's instructions doesn't mean he isn't a dangerous, malevolent beast. They all are, and you'd do well to remember that.

Carlisle apologized again for Edward's behaviour. "But for my family's peace of mind," he said, "We'd like to ask that you don't come within . . . how many yards shall we say?"

"I say none," the giant said. "Let's - ." The tall vampire woman smacked him on the arm. "Rose? What did I say?"

"I don't want them within a mile of us," the tall woman snapped.

"I would . . . prefer them to stay out of sight . . ." the smaller woman began.

"You can ask for more than that, Esme," Edward said gently. "If it were me, I would say half a mile, at least."

"How much would you like, Esme?" Carlisle asked gently.

"I wouldn't want any fights," she whispered, "But I don't like to think of anybody being inconvenienced on the way to the fish market . . ."

"Would five hundred feet be enough?" Carlisle asked her. She nodded.

"Five hundred feet, then," Carlisle said, "Except in life and death emergencies. But Edward believes you should be given the benefit of the doubt, and we will give you that."

Sam

Old Quil's memories faded out. Even though everything was in black-and-white, one of the vampires looked familiar: I knew I had seen him before, but I couldn't remember where. But that meant . . .

They're back in town, aren't they? I asked. Well, it was actually more of a statement than a question.

In Forks, Old Quil told me. He showed me a mental picture of the letter that Carlisle had sent last year when they all arrived, telling us that he was willing to abide by the treaty, but two other animal-drinking vampires had since wandered in to join the family, and that they lived near Forks now.

Well. The boycott of Forks hospital made a lot more sense now. And then came a familiar feeling of worry and panic.

What are we going to do? I went up near their house – does that break the treaty? What if they come and slaughter everyone on the reservation? In the town? How do we know the doctor isn't drinking his patients' blood on the side? How do I protect humanity on my own? I don't know Quileute . . .

I don't know how to handle this! I MUST handle this! If I don't, people die! I handled – I helped with Mom, didn't I? How –

Easy, there! Old Quil told me. He pulled something from the bundle on Molly's lap and threw it towards me. It's a pair of sweatpants. I'll show you how to change back.

I picked up the sweatpants, loped a few feet into the woods to preserve my dignity, and got ready. OK, show me how.

Think about something you really love, Old Quil thought. Something that makes you happy and human. That's the best way to get control for turning both ways.

I thought about fishing. I thought about the boats in the marina. I thought about the mountains and the forest. I thought about my mother and sisters. I thought about my girlfriend, Leah, and her family.

That's good. Now concentrate hard on being human.

It didn't work.

These things take time, Sam.

I kept concentrating.

I'm going to turn back to take Molly inside now, but then I'll come out and help you.

If he was going to turn back, maybe I could learn from it. I paid close attention to Old Quil's mind.

Turning was pretty easy for him, but from what I could tell, the way he did it was by keeping calm and in control.

I tried turning back. It didn't work. After a while Old Quil came back into my head and walked up to my side in the woods, and we kept trying. The sun was coming up. This was taking too long: if it took much longer I would worry Mom even more and miss school, and I couldn't afford to slip on my grades. I needed my GED to join the Park Rangers, or whatever guardian wolves did. Besides . . . I would have to keep my job to support Mom (how had last night's meeting with Dad gone?), stay in school, learn Quileute – there was only one really good speaker left on the rez, and that was Old Quil – and, most importantly, uphold the treaty with the vampires in Forks or risk everyone on the peninsula being slaughtered.

Relax, Old Quil told me. Think of something that calms you.

I'm worried about the tribe.

I know you are. But you're our best hope, and I'll guide you.

I'd never had much guidance in life. Mostly, I'd spent time watching other people in order to figure out how I did and didn't want to act, because God knew Dad wasn't giving me any guidance and never had. I'd had to figure everything out about life by myself. The thought of Dad made me angry, actually.

Sam? Sam, it's OK. I'll help you.

Thanks, Old Quil.

Look. This stuff took us ages to figure out when we all started, alright? It's normal to struggle. It took us all a couple of years to figure this stuff out.

I'm not sure if I know what to do now.

Old Quil huffed a sigh. Then he came up to me, and turned back into a human.

"It's fine to accept help, son," he said. "You aren't alone in this, anymore. I'll be your Dad, if you want."

And then I was falling into Old Quil's arms, as a human, in a giant warm man-hug. I'd never had a father before. I'd been bringing up my two sisters, but I'd never had a father of my own. Was this what it felt like? Was this what it felt like, when grown men hugged their Dads?

"We should get dressed," Old Quil said. I gave him the sweatpants that Molly had left out for me, and waited for him to get back in the house and come out with a spare pair for me.

Then we walked back into the house together, with his arm across my shoulders, like he was my grandfather and I was his grandson. We got back in the house, called Kevin Littlesea and Mom, and then Old Quil got Quil III and Joy to make breakfast for me.

We came up with a gameplan as we ate coffee, omelettes, and baked fish. I would go home after breakfast, go to school like I usually did, and then – every spare moment – I would spend with Old Quil to learn about the whole wolf thing. Our excuse would be that I was taking the opportunity to learn Quileute – which would actually be happening, since I needed to learn Quileute to avoid Edward the Mind-Reader.

Wait. I think I knew where I recognised him from. Hadn't I seen him in Newton's Olympic Outfitters or something . . . ?

"What should I tell Mom? And Leah?"

Old Quil thought about this for a moment. "Let me think," he said. "I'll talk to Molly – she knows about the wolf stuff. But we're going to have to keep this secret. Not many people can know. Myself, Billy Black, Molly, my son Quil – we're the only ones who know about the shape-shifting, and even they don't know about the vampires. The wolf secret is ours to tell, but the other one . . ." He sighed. "And since so much of the wolf stuff is going to be related to the vampires now . . . it's probably best that not too many people know. The last thing we need is a rumour getting out of hand and getting back to the Cullens."

"The Cullens?"

"That's the family name."

I paused. "I can keep secrets from Mom," I said, "But I don't want to keep secrets from Leah."

"Your girlfriend?"

"Yeah."

"Well, I know the feeling. I didn't like keeping secrets from Molly. It caused her a great deal of trouble. How about the two of us talk about how to put it to her tonight?"

"Sounds good, Old Quil," I said, and went back to school.

A/N: In Real Life, the last native Quileute speaker died in 1999. The Tribe has since made efforts to revive the language.

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