11 cult

"Holy mother of pink! These are some sweet rides," Embry hollered as I took them into the outbuilding that passed for the Cullens garage.

It had been a week since they'd disposed of Laurent. I hadn't yet told them that the other vampire was Victoria. Now that I knew who it was killing these people, I knew in the depth of my mind that it was my job to hunt down and kill her. Not theirs.

It was also my duty to try and help the human man she'd ripped from his house and changed. If I could find him. If he could be taught. I remembered Jasper's tale, his upbringing, which had been so much more violent than any of the rest of the Cullens.

According to what he had told me, some newborns were completely impossible to teach, some simply had to be destroyed. I sincerely hoped that wasn't the case for this Riley Biers. If I ever found him.

Ironically, once the three days were up there was no more dead campers, no house ripped up in town, no sigh of her at all. I'd been waiting to hear about something, anything, but all was silent. I almost wondered if Victoria had taken off now that Laurent was dead. I just couldn't see it though. Everything I had learned about my own species taught me that when one of us was set on revenge, nothing in heaven or hell would stop it.

I imagined what my own reaction would be if I discovered something had happened to him, Edward, and I knew that not even the pack of wolves would be enough to stop me from getting my own revenge. I forced the thought away, not wanting either of the two in front of me to see any of my thoughts. Jake was so very good at reading my thoughts merely by looking at my eyes. He was practically as good at it as my mother had once been.

I looked around the garage with them. It turned out, almost all the vehicles were still here. In fact, there were only two missing. Carlisle's Mercedes and Rosalie's BMW.

Parked on the right side of the garage were the black Austin Martin Vanquish and the silver Volvo S60R, both of which were owned by Edward. Then there was the red Monster Truck Jeep Wrangler owned by Emmett, for some reason, it looked bigger now that I was a vampire than it ever had when I was a human. Notably missing was the Mercedes which used to park between Edward's two cars.

On the left side was the pearl white Audi A4 that Esme owned and drove, and the Maserati Spyder with the purple/blue ChromaFlair paint job that belonged to Jasper and Alice. I'd had the info about the paint job driven into me with a metaphorical hammer by Alice after I'd had a small freak out when the color changed my first time in here. Finally, there was my own car. The red Chevrolet Camero.

"Yes, they had fancy tastes." I walked past them to the Camero. "This was what they gave to me, for my birthday." I tried not to remember my reaction when they'd first shown it to me. If I'd been excited by it? Would they still be here? At least until my one year anniversary?

I shook the thoughts off. It was better this way, it had to be. I wasn't living in a lie of a relationship for almost an entire year this way. I was still in love with him, still loved them all in some way – even Rosalie – but the letter had made it clear, my emotions had been strictly one-sided.

"Well," Jake said, stepping up beside me. "It's no fifty year old run down pick up."

"It's swe-eet." Embry's eyes practically fell out of his sockets as he took in the car.

I snorted. Sweet? Maybe. A waste of money? Far more likely.

"I'm sure if you check, it will have the speaker system we found the box for," I said, looking at Jake.

"I'm sure you're right." He stepped closer to the car anyways, opening the door so he could look in. "Yes, the stereo system is in here. Have you driven her yet?"

I just stared at him, arching a sardonic eyebrow. My car was a her, was it?

He finally looked back at me, and proceeded to roll his eyes. "Of course, you haven't. Only you would waste an opportunity to drive a work of art like this." I didn't drop my eyebrow. "What?" he demanded.

"Her?"

"Well yes. Cars are always shes. Even my VW Rabbit is a she. You could call this beauty here Red, or Fire... I bet she streaks like fire."

"And what do you call your car?" I asked.

In spite of Jake skin tone, I still saw the blush that spread through his cheeks, even as Embry burst out laughing.

"Nothing of importance," he muttered.

Embry started laughing so hard he had to gasp for breath before he finally started to talk. "It's a Rabbit he could have called it a Rabbit. That would have been fine. Even Hare would have been alright. Hey, even if he'd went for his second choice, Bella, it wouldn't have been so bad. Though I'd personally never call a Rabbit beautiful. But no he called it –"

"You finish that sentence, and I'm gonna make you eat a shoe. Do you hear me?" Jake exclaimed, cutting him off.

It was too late though, the train of Embry's statement told me exactly what he must be calling it. "You named it Bunny."

"Err... no comment."

I laughed, I couldn't help it. "Isn't that a bit degrading to a car?"

"What? Bunnies are cute." He crossed his arms over his chest stubbornly.

"You aren't helping your argument against it being degrading."

He shook his head muttering a quick, "Sure, sure."

"Are we going to ride in it?" Embry demanded.

I bit my lip. It was almost too easy, to forget what had happened after discovering the car, while I was spending time with these two, but there was no way I could get in that vehicle. Not now, and perhaps not ever.

"Maybe we'll do that later," Jake stated as he watched me. "Let's go practice. I don't want Beau getting another scar." He frowned at my neck.

He hadn't realized, before it completely healed, that the venom of another vampire would permanently scar me. Oh, he'd seen both Edward's bite mark and James's, but they had both occurred while I was still human, and he'd assumed it was different now that I was a vampire, as I'd healed from all the damage he'd done without any lasting marks.

…

I crouched, eyeing the two wolves that were stalking me from two different positions. I was outmatched with only one of them and I knew it. I just didn't have the skill that their own natural born instincts gave them. But If I couldn't beat two wolves that were just over thirty between the two of them, how would I ever beat a centuries old vampire?

I didn't have time to figure out how to answer that currently.

We'd been doing this for four days now, them tag-teaming me, and me getting my ass handed to me miserably. For the first few days after Laurent, Jake had been against even practicing with me one-on-one, afraid of causing more damage, but I'd managed to convince him it was needed.

Jake though, was much more cautious now, which annoyed me. Every one of the last four days, if it even looked like he was going to slip through my defenses and bite me, he pulled back. Embry, on the other hand, determined I wasn't very breakable and kept going at it. Even so, he wasn't as skilled as Jake was. There was only a few weeks difference between the two and their first shifts, but Jake just seemed to have more knowledge of fighting than Embry did.

Just then both of them jumped at me at the same time.

"Jump backwards," he shouted in my head. His voice came at almost the exact moment I started to flip backwards.

I knew it was going to be the only time I would hear him. Ever since I'd accepted my insanity, he only spoke at the start of our practice sessions. Maybe the insane part of me had finally realized that I was perfectly safe practicing with these two, I wasn't sure.

They smashed together and I smiled. Jake was the first to get his feet back under him and he spun to me, growling when he saw my smile.

I raised my hand, giving him a come here gesture. He growled again, racing towards me.

He threw himself at me and I knelt down, making him flying over top of me. My hands immediately went up, grabbing him. I threw him back at Embry, who had only just gotten up.

The both ended up sprawled out on the ground. I spun, racing towards the trees behind me, jumping high up into the closest one.

They both raced over to the tree, but couldn't get up it. I grinned widely.

This, jumping up into one of the older trees, was about the only way I could avoid them. The problem was that it wasn't actually a win, wouldn't do any good against another of my own kind, and really ticked Jake off.

Jake shifted back to human, crossing his arms over his chest, glaring up at me. "Cheaters never get anywhere, Beau."

Case in point.

I flipped out of the tree.

…

"I'm fine, Jake," I said for what felt like the hundredth time in the last half hour.

Jake looked at my waist again, but he could no longer see his teeth marks after I'd gone inside and gotten a new shirt so he would quit staring at it.

Embry rolled his eyes. "It wasn't even that bad of a bite. I did worse damage yesterday."

Jake focused on him then, glowering. "I remember."

"Oh, come on!" Embry smacked my arm, the sound of his flesh hitting my rock hard skin sounding similar to a loud report going off. "What's the point of him being an immortal self-healing rock if we can't take advantage of it?"

A part of me thought I should be offended by that. I wasn't.

"Ugh." Jake threw his hands in the air and started to march into the forest. "Let's get patrolling."

It was something else that had been different since Embry had joined our little party, instead of Jake shifting to a wolf, we went through the woods with them both in human form. It made Jake and Embry a little bit slower, but they could actually talk with me this way.

It had supposedly been Embry's idea, though I wasn't sure I believed that.

As we headed off, heading in a general southwest direction, Embry started to talk.

"It's so weird, you know, being part of this crazy cult now. Especially since it shouldn't be possible."

"Cult?" I asked, curious.

"It's what Quil, Embry, and I called Sam, Jared and Paul. We didn't know they were werewolves. All we knew was that one day Sam cut off most of his hair and started acting like somebody completely different, then, almost a year later Jared just joined him. A few months later, so did Paul. None of them used to hang out together. Frankly, we half thought aliens had overtaken them."

"Of course, when Jake here first cut his hair off, Quil and I thought they'd gotten to him too. We didn't realize..." He cut himself off suddenly.

"Didn't realize what?" I asked. I remembered that his hair had already been cut when I met him on his first shift.

"He didn't realize originally that I did it for a different reason." Jake's words were strained.

"What reason?"

Jake took a deep breath, but didn't reply.

Embry finally answered instead. "He was grieving. It's not specifically all that common of a thing to be done in our tribe, but plenty of tribes and different people around the world cut their hair off in a show of mourning."

"Grieving?" I felt like I was missing something very obvious.

"I thought you were dead, Beau." The agony in the words was beyond obvious.

"Oh." It was obvious.

"It makes sense now, of course. His reaction. At the time Quil and I didn't really get it. I feel sorry for Quil, because he still doesn't get it, but that'll change soon enough. I'm sure. It'll be nice for our band to be back together."

"What do you mean, you didn't get it?"

"Well, like I said, it isn't really a common thing for our tribe to do. Our hair is important, a show of honor, a symbol of our people... So if one of us was to do that, then it would have to be an extreme reason, like someone losing the love of their life. Given that you probably were meant to be his imprint. It makes complete sense now."

"Oh," I said again.

"It was more than that," Jake grumbled. "Beau, when I read the paper that described your death... I know that truck. It just didn't make sense to me. Unless it was on purpose."

"Oh." Apparently my speech skills were lacking tonight. Suddenly what he said fully sunk in. "Oh! You thought I killed myself?" I was horrified. Was that how it had looked to Charlie as well? I sincerely hoped not.

"Yes. I now know it had to be done that way. But I didn't then."

I needed to change the subject. It was obvious it was a sore one. "You said it shouldn't be possible?" My half vocalized question was directed at Embry.

"My father, Timothy, and I moved here from the Makah Res when I was a little kid. I always thought my mother was Makah. My father had told me she died in child birth. That of course would have meant I was a hundred percent Makah. I couldn't have become this. Only descendants of Aki can become wolves. I'm pretty sure my dad lied to me now about her being dead. She definitely wasn't Makah."

"Isn't it possible that the woman was just from this tribe? He could have been telling the truth about the rest."

I didn't turn around, but I could tell Embry and Jake were sharing a look.

"It's extremely unlikely," Jake finally said. "We know most of the lines that came from Aki. There are several options available, but the most likely is Jordan Uley, Sam's mom. We know that It wasn't my mom. We're born too close together, unless we're twins, but that just seems preposterous, I mean we were born six days apart. There's a slim chance it could have been Quil Atearas mom the fourth's, but it would mean that Quill was born about two and half months early at the minimum. Even then we'd be pushing it, and I just don't see that. We've certainly never been told Quil was a preemie."

"Of course, if his mom was having an illicit affair with my dad, it would explain the vast majority of why we don't know anything about it." Embry pointed out.

"And that's why you weren't aware of the stories?" I asked, remembering what Sam had told me last week.

"Yeah, by the time it became pretty obvious I was going to be one of them, they didn't want to risk explaining it to me ahead of time. It would have been too obvious to share the tales with me at that point."

"Frankly, it's stupid," Jake complained. "Sure, most of us know the stories, but none of us believe them. When we start shooting up almost a foot in height in less than a month they should be taking us aside and telling us what's going on, not waiting until we're freaking out because we suddenly have four paws, fur, and a tail."

"Well, given that Leah has shot up almost a foot in the last two months, it's no wonder that they don't."

My brow furrowed, I recognized that name. It was one of the Clearwaters.

"She's a girl, Embry. Obviously her sudden spring up is just a normal growth spurt. We all know that the wolf gene is only on the male line. The elders should still be taking us guys aside. It's going to be such a shock to Quil and Seth both. I wish I could let them know ahead of time."

"You could, you are the chief of the tribe now."

I arched an eyebrow in shock, but didn't interrupt.

"I've already made enough dictates for now. I don't think it would be a smart idea to push my luck past that at this point."

I knew, on some level, that he had to be talking about the fact that I wasn't being bound by a treaty and that I was helping them out.

"What I really wish is that you'd let me tell my dad everything." There was a wheedling note in Embry's voice. I had the distinct impression it wasn't the first time he'd brought this up.

"You know why we can't. He isn't part of the tribe, and in the long run it would only put him in danger."

"But if I told him, I could probably convince him to let me drop out of high school the way you did with your dad. As it is, I'm having to ditch. It's going to earn his ire sooner rather than later."

"Wait what?" I spun around to stare at Jacob, shocked.

"There's no way I can juggle school and my other duties," Jacob muttered. "Besides I was failing all my classes except for gym anyway."

"And your dad just let you drop out?" I didn't believe it. I couldn't see Billy letting him off the hook like that. Schooling was important... unless you had a perfect memory like myself.

Jake looked away, stalking past where I was standing watching him.

"He didn't have much choice. He either filled out the papers to let me drop, or I was going to just stop going. One way would get him in trouble and the other wouldn't."

I quickly caught up to him. "Why would you do that? Education is important."

"This is sort of a life sentence, Beau. Longer really. At least for people like me. Probably Embry too."

"What do you mean?"

"As long as we're shifting, we don't age. Sam and Jared have a reason to stop. They have people in their lives that will grow old without them," Embry said from slightly behind me.

"In my case..." Jake continued. "Well, if we were meant to be imprints, then you're immortal now. I literally have no reason to ever stop shifting. As for Embry and Paul... well unless either of them find that someone, be it an imprint or just someone they genuinely love, neither of them will probably ever stop."

I frowned. "You don't think you'll ever find someone you want to settle down with?"

He glanced at me and the flash of pain in his eyes was quite clear. "I doubt it will ever happen, Beau."

I opened my mouth but then shut it. I knew Jake and I were going to have to talk, but not at the moment. It wasn't something I desired to discuss with Embry present. Still, Jake had to know that my heart and soul belonged entirely to Edward. There was no future between him and I as anything other than friends.

I could feel Embry glancing between us before he finally spoke. "Well I certainly have no plans to settle down. If I settle down I'll have to deal with an annoying pregnant wife probably and that's just disgusting really. Besides, it's about time a man got to be a real protector for a change. Hell, with our immune systems and the way we heal, it probably wouldn't even matter what diseases they might carry."

Jake took a long breath, the sound annoyed. "We have absolutely no evidence to back that up. So don't even think of trying it." He ticked off three seconds with his fingers. "And don't even consider rolling your eyes at me." He ticked off two more seconds. "Or sticking your tongue out."

I blinked. "Common reactions?"

"Well, we've known each other since we were three and he really is quite predictable." Jake jerked his head slightly as if telling me to look behind us.

I quickly twisted my head to check, and sure enough, Embry had his tongue stuck out at him. I looked back at Jake.

"Don't stick it out unless you intend to use it," Jake stated.

We continued on our patrol for a while in silence before finally my curiosity got the better of me. "So you can't get anyone pregnant as long as you're shifting regularly?" I asked. I'd lived with Renee for the first seventeen years of my life. I knew what a cycle was that women went through.

"Oh, we can get someone pregnant alright. It's just a little... different for us."

I waved my hand in a slight flourish, signaling he should continue.

Embry continued instead. "We go into heat. Most of us it'll probably only be about once a year, but some of us might actually have it happen about twice a year."

"Wait. Heat? Like actual wolves but like female wolves?"

"Exactly like female wolves." Jake's ears were red as he spoke. "It affects us in both forms, but our legends say it makes us go absolutely crazy in wolf form if we shift during that time but we aren't the ones who get pregnant our partners are."

"Since Sam doesn't already have a kid or two of his own, it can obviously be resisted," Embry pointed out.

I couldn't help but wonder, if it was so like the animal they changed shapes into, did that mean the partners tended to give birth to a litter too? I didn't ask it out loud.

"No," Jake said suddenly, he was eyeing me. "Usually they only get pregnant with a kid, just like normal people, normal pregnancy timeline too. Of course, twins are always a possibility, especially in my family where it runs in the bloodline, but they don't have litters."

Apparently I didn't have to say it out loud.

"You're almost as predictable as Embry."

…

It was the next night after a particularly trying practice session.

"Come on. Don't tell me you're afraid of getting on the bastard seat," Jake complained from where he was sitting on one of the two motorbikes. Embry was on the other.

I crossed my arms over my chest stubbornly. "It's usually the opposite order."

"Do you know how to use one of these things?" Jake asked.

"I know how to ride a bike. It can't be that different."

"I didn't think so."

Embry snickered.

"Why don't we just go patrol?"

"Because I want to have some fun. Besides there's no point. The female vampire and her new creation are completely absent. It's strange though, all our legends tell us that vampires are very possessive of their mates. I don't understand why she isn't trying to get revenge."

I looked away, feeling guilty, but I didn't say anything. Victoria wasn't their problem. She was mine. I climbed on to the back seat of his bike before he noticed something in my expression.

"Finally." He started the bike and a moment later Embry did the same. "Hold on."

He didn't bother to tell me how, so I put one of my arms gently around his waist.

We took off, heading out of the Cullens private road and onto the highway, driving in the opposite direction of Forks. For about thirty minutes there was nothing but the sound of the bikes as we raced along the highway before Embry spoke, half shouting to make sure we both heard him.

"I wish there was a gulch around here somewhere that we could make these things jump." He was glancing our way, and added on as an afterthought. "One that wasn't so high it would kill even us if we messed up."

"If you want to be a daredevil then you have to actually be one," Jake said back.

It gave me a crazy idea. I put my hands on Jake's shoulders, quickly getting my feet on the back seat and standing up, spreading my arms wide, allowing myself to use the balance that I'd gained after becoming a vampire in a way I'd never had the chance to do before.

"What the hell are you doing?" Jake demanded.

"Having fun," I said, letting my head fall back and closing my eyes.

"Are you out of your mind, Beau?"

Quite possibly, but I didn't say that. "I'm dead, remember? It isn't going to hurt me even if I do fall off."

Embry had a different reaction.

"Jump to my bike," he exclaimed.

"Don't encourage him!"

I opened my eyes, looking between the two bikes. I knew instantly that I could. I'd calculated the force and speed I'd need before I'd even really thought about it. The problem was, it would be too easy.

I flipped backwards off of the bike instead, landing in the road a moment later, creating a small pothole from the force of my landing. I laughed even as I heard Jake curse and pull to a stop.

It would be a long time before I realized the reason I enjoyed it so much was because it was the first time since I'd become a vampire that I had really and truly let myself go.