Blood Moon [a Twilight Saga FanFiction]

Bloodline

IT WAS A FEW MONTHS BEFORE NATALIA'S EYES TURNED THE STRONG AMBER. No one had left the house in six weeks. We had told the town that grief had gotten the better of us, that Igor couldn't keep working while Verity was still missing, at this point assumed dead.
          I lie. Igor had occasionally left the house to follow the same route they took that first day. Eavesdrop and listen in to what the town was saying. I took Verity hunting one day while he was out and when we returned, Johann and Natalia were watching him pace on the front porch.
          "Igor? Is everything okay?" I asked.
          "We're going to have to leave a lot sooner," he said. The look in his eye told me everything I needed to know, even without his scent.
          "Okay."
          "What?" Natalia said. "He wouldn't tell us anything until you got here."
          "People are talking, even the werewolves are getting edgy and it's got nothing to do with them," I said to her. "Drained bodies, so many deaths in a few weeks?"
          "And as they haven't found your bodies, girls," Igor added. "They're suspecting that it's you two flying around the night as bats."
          Natalia chuckled. "They're only half wrong," she said.
          "This is bad, Natalia!" I yelled at her. "They know! We need to leave, now! We've managed to avoid contact with the Volturi, and we've been able to keep our secret from humans and protect this family against them, but you've done this and now we all risk a punishment worse than death!"
          "What's worse than death?"
          "Watching those you love about die first," Verity answered.
          "Really?"
          "Don't. Not with them," Johann said. "It's a long story for another time."
          "About another time," Verity chuckled.
          "What?" Natalia emphasised.
          "We leave tonight," Igor growled walking forward and pulling out the sheets for our belongings, Verity ran up and grabbed our bags. "After we do a proper clean-up of this mess."
          "Proper clean-up?" Natalia asked.
          "You and Johann will be hunting, away from the town," Igor growled. "Verity, Elizabeth and I will run through the town destroying every bit of evidence the humans think they have on vampires. We have to protect the secret, we told you that."
          "I've been good. This isn't my fault anymore."
          "The damage was done," I explained, calmer now. "We're not blaming you, we're just fixing something you started a long time ago. Don't worry, we're used to this."
          "Are you?"
          "We've had to move more than a few times because someone in the coven slipped. After, of course, cleaning up," Verity explained. "It's okay, sure we're annoyed, I like this town, and I'll be happy to come back to It. But for now, we have to leave."
          Natalia nodded and Johann left with her.
          "Shall we?" Verity said waving towards the forest.
          In the town, we were able to burn photos and papers that had anything to do with vampires. Burnt a lot of things actually, as if we never really existed here.
          The three of us had separated to cover the whole town quickly, and I was running to meet Verity and Igor in the centre when in passing I had to run past the Rossi's house. And I did just as Johann was knocked out onto the street.
          I ran to him to help him up.
    "I'm sorry," he said. "She... she just ran. She was saying that she was in control of herself enough to see her parents one last time. She wanted to see her family one last time before leaving."
    I looked into the house in time to watch her father fall, limp on the ground, dead.
    And next was little Gabriel Rossi.
    "Natty?" I heard his sweet, innocent little voice say.
    I knew I could try to stop her, but the risk of exposure was already too great. So I closed my eyes as Natalia ran to her brother and drained him of his blood.
    Igor and Verity joined us as her brother fell down the stairs.
    I could see it in her eyes that she knew exactly what she had just done. Though her eyes shined red, there was a pain and grief in them that I knew I'd never understand with or without my gift.
    She looked at us in fear. She screamed and slipped down the stairs before scrambling away from her brother's corpse. And then she ran.
    I held Johann back.
    "Igor," I said.
    He sighed before following after her. Something we never spoke about but something I knew he knew I knew about.
    "Quickly. Before any humans wake up."
    Verity, Johann and I burnt the house before I took my son's hand and began our way back home.
    "I want to-"
    "She just killed her family, Johann." I tried to keep my voice soft and calm. "We're the last people she wants to look at right now."
    "Then why did you send Igor?" He tore his arm from my grip and yet, kept walking with us.
    "Because Igor knows that pain."
    Both Verity and Johann froze. I stopped and faced the two of them. Only a little surprised at Verity's surprise.
    "He knows what it feels like to kill the human family you loved so deerly," I finished.
    And that was all I was going to say. I continued back to the house.
    When they finally joined me, they said nothing. Johann went straight to his guitar and began strumming away and Verity sat beside me as I drew.
    "I didn't know that about Dad," she whispered.
    "It never came up in his future?" I asked.
    She shook her head.
    After a moment she leant her head back with a heavy sigh.
    "Where do you think we'll go next?" she asked.
    "Where do you two want to go?" I offered.
    Johann paused mid-song.
    "Greendland?" Verity suggested. "We haven't been there yet. And it's close enough to Scotland that Dad could go see Svend every other weekend."
    I had to laugh at that image, and the memories.
    "It's a different language," I said. "Depending on the region."
    "Which language?" Johann asked.
    "Danish."
    Verity nodded.
    "We can do that," she said. "I'm sure there are books somewhere about it. We're going to sound very cool."
    "Very cool?" I repeated. "You're spending too much time with teenagers."
    Verity laughed before she shot up from the chair.
    "Germany destroyed Denmark in the war," Johann muttered.
    "They don't have to know that you're German, Johann," I said softly. "We can always change your name for our new home. We've all done it plenty of times before."
    "Really?"
    "We have to," Verity continued. "It's especially needed now that computers and the internet are slowly becoming a thing. We can't have someone looking us up and resulting in a thousand different things from a thousand different eras."
    "That would be bad."
    "Yes, it would," I said.
    I put the drawing down when Igor and Natalia returned home. She looked absolutely broken, and Igor... I saw a pain in his eyes and I hated it. I ran into his arms and he softly kissed my forehead.
    "Hunt with me?" he asked.
Always. I nodded and took his hand in mine.
    Verity joined us. "Mind if I come too?" she asked.
    "Of course, not."
    I looked back at the house. Natalia was still standing at the far wall, looking out the window like a statue. My still heart hurt for her.
"She'll be okay, Miss Elizabeth," Igor said.