Dear Diary:
January 15, 2014
"I know WHAT you are! And I will EXPOSE you to the WHOLE WORLD!"
We stared in shock at Jessica who was still standing there with that tape recorder in her hand. Just then immediately behind her, Rogue, Amy, and Corin touched down and the next thing we saw was that tape recorder fly out of Jessica's hand and into Rogue's.
"I don't think that would be a good idea." Rogue said as she vaporized the recorder and Jessica gasped.
"Y-you're not v-vampires." She stuttered staring at Rogue who smiled at her as if she was looking at a very stupid person. Which considering what Jessica had said and done wasn't smart by any means.
"No we're not. And you don't have to worry about who we are either." Rogue replied. Then she nodded at me.
We took the opportunity of Jessica's shock at the appearance of Rogue and the other two to have Jasper and Rosalie move on either side of Jessica not even caring about showing our lightning speed; which of course caused Jessica to all but shrink back. Both stared at Jessica with faces of ice; neither were the smiling type so they fit perfectly as the two "body guards" of our now very petrified human being. Bella had called Jacob on the cell phone and asked the wolves to hang back along with Nessie. They had been going for a walk in the woods behind the house. We didn't need more people to add to the confusion. And no one as hell was going to explain wolves or Nessie to Jessica.
At that point we escorted Jessica into our house; well escorted is a nice way of putting it. Rosalie shoved her forward with enough force to not even attempt of any retaliation on Jessica's part. Jasper's pissed off demeanor didn't change. Jessica gulped and took a shaky breath as she walked into what Edward later told us she thought of as 'the lion's den'. Rogue and the other two knew we could handle this and with a nod and a smile flew back home. We took her to the living which was immediately to the right of the front door. Most of the family was present as in Esme, Jasper, Alice, Rose, Emmett, Bella, Edward, and I. Now it was time to get some answers. Rose shoved her into a chair that Jasper had pulled out as the rest of us sat around the room. She wouldn't be able to run even if she tried though she did look for an exit at the very beginning. I could tell Bella was steamed but she let me have the first word so to speak.
"Jessica, what is going on?" She struggled with the answer that's when Bella just laid into her.
"Seriously, Jessica....what the fuck is your problem? You never liked me when we were in school and always pretended to be better than me. I get that you were jealous but seriously, grow the hell up! Now how dare you come here and threaten my family like this?" Bella was in her face a second later with the same lightning speed as the other two showed. Jessica's eyes grew wide then.
"You're a vampire too?"
"Yeah, so? What's it to you?"
"Out with it Jessica, we really don't have a lot of patience with people who threaten our family regardless of past history." I said calmly but strictly.
Just then, Jessica who had been staring at all of us except Jasper who frightened her too much put her face into her hands and started to weep. We were all taken aback by that. What just happened here? Wasn't she just threatening to expose us to the world? Edward was looking confused and said loud enough for us vampires to hear that her thoughts were going a mile a minute and he was having a hard time pinpointing anything. Then we looked at Alice who wasn't happy. While Jessica was sobbing into her hands, Alice explained:
"She somehow knew about my gift and didn't make her decision until literally the last possible moment. If I look back now, yesterday she was in Vermont. I did see her but I thought she went up there and came here to ski! Nowhere in my vision did I see her doing this!"
Edward rubbed her shoulder soothingly. Alice hated when the holes in her visions were used for these kinds of surprise visits. Last time it happened, we ended up fighting a chunk of newborns and Victoria. Finally, Jessica's sobs quieted as Esme handed her a box of tissues. Only Esme would think to offer it to someone who just threatened our very existence. She was kind to the very end. Have I mentioned lately, how much I love my wife? Once Jessica's sobs had quieted down, we all looked at her as she finally started to speak:
"Th-the recorder was empty. I didn't even have the tape in it. I just used it as means for....for....getting some answers." I know some of my family's jaws were slightly open at that one.
"Jessica, please tell me you aren't that stupid to come to a house full of vampires and threaten them with an empty tape recorder?" I said flabbergasted.
"I didn't know what else to do! I don't know who to turn to for something like this."
"Let's start at the beginning, how did you find out about us and what could be so horrible for you to attempt something that could have gotten you killed without a second glance had it been any other coven and not a family?" I asked slowly.
"It's....it's.....Mike. You remember Mike Newton from school?" She started sobbing again.
"What about Mike?" Bella stepped into the ring again and looked at Edward as his eyes went wide as he read Jessica's mind but let her continue.
"He.....he.....was turned into a vampire! I don't know how, I don't know when or by whom. All I know is that we were supposed to come home for the summer and all of a sudden he vanished. No one could find him for weeks which turned into two months. I was worried sick and had to return to school without him. I was in my second week of school when one night I was going for a walk around where my dorm was located and I felt like someone was watching me. I turned in circles but couldn't see anyone. I felt oddly uncomfortable, like I was being stalked by an animal. Then it happened. I saw two red glowing dots in the forest which were high enough to be considered eyes; I opened my mouth to scream as the figure rushed forward in a blink of an eye and put his hand over my mouth. For a split second I thought I saw the Mothman."
"Mothman?" Alice was the one to speak this time, clearly confused. What the heck was a Mothman? Jessica hurriedly explained.
"I've been taking a class on myths and legends and he is an 8ft tall winged creature with glowing red eyes. He's said to haunt Point Pleasant, West Virginia since the mid-1960s. There have been hundreds of sightings of him there." This was news to me but hey anything is possible in our world; we've certainly seen our share of strange especially in the last 8 months; last being a pack of dragons! I looked around the room and everyone pretty much thought the same thing; Edward shrugged.
"We're getting off the subject at hand." Rosalie said stiffly. Jessica nodded and continued.
"Where was I? Oh yes the hand over my mouth. I struggled to break free but whoever had this hold on me was as strong as a piece of granite. None of my karate moves I learned when I was a kid worked. Then I heard a male voice say 'shh Jess I won't hurt you.' I instantly realized the voice though different belonged to Mike. He let me go when he could tell that I recognized his voice. I whirled around staring at him with my eyes probably bugging out of my head. I looked him up and down. He didn't seem to have particularly changed but those eyes......they gave me the heeby jeebies." She shuddered then at the memory and continued:
"I wanted to know everything but I couldn't get the words out. He then had me sit down on a log or a rock I don't remember which and he explained what happened to him. He said he was packing to come home for summer break when he thought he saw someone or something outside his dorm window. He went to investigate and couldn't find anything. Suddenly something plowed into him with such force that he was flung deep into the forest. He landed but he didn't remember that part. What he did remember was the insane burning sensation in his ankle which only intensified. He says it felt like he was being charred alive from the inside out. He screamed a lot but no one came to his rescue which he deduced later was because he was so far back in the woods that no one could hear him. Whatever the thing was that had thrown him and bitten him was still there; I guess it was waiting for the change to happen. He said it too had blood red eyes."
We just looked at each other and everyone shifted a bit uncomfortably as we all remembered too well that part of our lives; especially for those of us who were turned against our will. To hear it yet again and from the most random of people was disconcerting to say the least. However, no one said a word as we let Jessica finish her story as obviously there was a lot more where that came from. We still had to figure out how we fit into this equation and how she knew about the loopholes in Alice's visions.
"So after the burning was over, he knew he had become something totally different. There was an insane burning in his throat. He then looked up at the tree where the other thing was sitting, it jumped down to him and he realized it was a female. She smiled at him and then explained to him what he had become. Obviously, Mike was horrified and wanted to run away but she blocked his escape route. She explained that though he was a newborn and had more strength than she did, there were others in the forest watching so he shouldn't try anything stupid. When he asked her why she had picked him and for what purpose, she refused to answer him. The one thing she did say was that the Cullen family was to blame. It was your fault that they were all vampires. She explained everything she knew about you which wasn't that much but she did say that certain vampires had gifts and that a few in your family had them but the only one she could recall and the one that helped her out the most in whatever her scheme ultimately was, was the seeing the future thing but only after a decision was made."
All of us then inadvertently looked at Alice who shook her head in dismay. Not too many people knew that we existed unless they'd been around for a long time—like the covens that had come together in our time of need to battle the Volturi that first time—let alone knew what our gifts were and who the gifted members were to begin with. So this was incredibly alarming to say the least. Jessica had also realized that the person in question was Alice and she looked at her for a long moment; Edward explained later that she had recalled all the times in HS when Alice would have a vision when around Bella's human friends and they would all cover for her. Jessica didn't think too much of it then but it certainly made sense to her now. Alice caught her staring and motioned with her hand for her to continue.
"Right. So then Mike said that the woman vampire explained what his food source was which horrified him and at the same time he realized his body was craving it. The woman also said that another coven of vampires were your family but lived in Alaska. That you are all beyond evil and that she wanted to bring 'light' to the world again for all vampires; that you were holding the vampires of the world back from having their time in the 'light'. That's all she said. It was all very cryptic. Then somewhat shamefully he told me of his first 'meal'. He killed 5 people but he justified it as they were homeless and no one would ever miss them anyways. I couldn't believe my ears. My boyfriend was a vampire who killed 5 people just to eat and thought nothing of it!" Jessica said disgustedly. Then she looked at all of us with horror, Edward answered her:
"No we do not kill people to feed; we drink the blood of animals just like humans only we don't consume their flesh. That's why our eyes aren't blood red but golden. We refuse to be monsters." He didn't say much else as Bella took his hand in her own and squeezed reassuringly. They looked at each other for a long moment and then back at Jessica.
"So then what happened?" Rose asked to move the conversation along.
"Mike waited until I had digested everything to tell me that the female whose name he still didn't know told him not to go looking for me because humans were only food for them or to make a new 'friend'. That's what she called all of the vampires she knew; her 'friends'. But he refused; some part of his human self still remembered that he loved me. He told me he had to do some stuff but would be back soon. He visited me only one more time and that was right before Christmas back in Forks. He had come to see his parents; well to watch over them as they had filed a missing report by that time as had the school. He knew that could never see them again and that made him extremely sad. He told me that he was with his new friends and the female who still wouldn't give up her name. He said all they really did was eat and travel around the country. She told him that she was just teaching him the ways of being a vampire. And that's the last time I saw him. I didn't know what to do with myself. So I decided to test the theory of Alice's loophole vision thing and so I kept my mind occupied and thought only of skiing and snow until I literally pulled into town and even then I was afraid of totally thinking of it as I wasn't sure what would happen. I had the tape recorder since like middle school; I don't think it would have worked even if I tried to stick a tape in it. I was so angry that I didn't know who to believe so that's how I ended up at your front door."
Jessica finished with a sigh. We all looked at Edward who remarked that her thoughts were pure and she was being truthful. She jerked head up and looked at Edward. But his face was one that she didn't even want to raise the question. Talk about confusing. We had so much to figure out, who changed Mike, what to do with Jessica, for what purpose was he changed, and exactly what was being planned or conceived. Just when we thought the day couldn't get any weirder, the phone rang. Esme who was closest to it picked it up, it was Tanya. We listened stunned as Tanya said Mike had broken into their home and attacked them because of his strength as a newborn, no one could take him down until Kate zapped him and hard. He was tied up in a chair with literally an electric fence around him so he couldn't escape! He was screaming bloody murder in the background. She asked what we wanted to do with him because they had no problem killing him.
That proposition had to be given some serious thought. They told us they could hold him for as long as need be. I got on the phone and told Tanya to tell him that Jessica was here and if he wanted the optimal solution he would shut his mouth and remain cordial. That got him quiet quick. Kate kept her zapper trained on him at a very high level; any wrong move and he'd be toast, literally.
Talk about being in a pickle. Now we had a lot of things to consider. What were we going to do first? Time to caucus.
To be continued.....
~Carlisle Cullen