A/N… This was written for Fandoms for JenRar. This will be the first two chapters, but I don't have a posting schedule for it just yet. I still have Mercward to finish, which is in progress. It's going to depend on which muse is the loudest. ;)

Okay, I'll let you get to it.

~oOo~

Judas

Summary: The sky opened five years ago, destroying more than just cities and buildings. It eradicated the thin veil that protected humans from the monsters. When society fell, those monsters started hunting, and so did I. Someone had to protect humans from the beasts they never knew existed. Those monsters call me Judas…because I am one of them. AU ExB Rated M

Chapter 1 – Blood on the Path I Walk

JUDAS

Leaning back against a tree trunk, I took in the small village below. The sun was setting, and they'd be closing their gates soon.

Gates. Villages. I sighed, shaking my head at the changes in the world.

The woods surrounding the village were coming back from fires no one had had the ability to put out, and those fires had stretched from the Pacific Northwest all the way down to California. Behind me was what was once Portland, Oregon. It was mostly empty now, with ruined buildings looking like broken teeth in the distance. There were several large craters in the center, but nature was beginning to take them back. All of that sat beneath the watchful gaze of Mount St. Helens in the distance. Even the quiet old volcano had scars of survival – deep impacts along the mountainside.

A scent wafted around me, and I smiled evilly. I'd been tracking this thing across three states for the last month. A glance up at the full moon told me that I'd timed this perfectly – or maybe my target had. I'd heard rumor about a village in Wyoming being torn to shreds – men, women, and children snatched from their beds in the middle of the night. The small settlement had only had a few hundred people. Less than fifty survived, which told me there was more than one of these beasts. I'd begun my hunt there.

Stone and wood gates couldn't stop this thing. Neither would lead bullets or fire. Glancing down at the long blade in my hand, I noted its shimmer in the fading light of the day. It had taken every last piece of my mother's antique silverware to make this weapon. Luckily, I'd been in my hometown of Chicago when the skies fell.

The stench of feral dog met my nose, and I turned toward the woods behind me as the low, long howl echoed over the valley below me. I wasn't sure if the village would sound a warning; different places had their own ways of doing things. For the moment, the village was still.

It was a strange feeling, knowing I was about to cross paths with something out of a fairy tale. It was also surreal the enormous amount of hypocrisy that I felt at the same time. But that feelingnever lasted long, especially when I finally stopped one of these monsters.

Using the scent, I moved closer to get a glimpse of exactly what I was hunting. It stood well over seven feet tall. What had once been human, now…wasn't, still wearing the shredded clothes of who it had once been. The shift had to be painful – bones stretching and bending, muscles swelling, claws and teeth extending. The werewolf threw back its furry, canine-like head and let out another chilling howl.

A quick glance to the village, and all was still quiet. My goal was to take down this thing before they were the wiser. Some habits were hard to break – staying secret from the humans was one of those.

The werewolf caught my scent before he saw me coming, and he spun toward me, but my reflexes were better than his. I caught him around the middle, and before he could sink his teeth into my shoulder, I slammed him to the rocky earth. He recovered quickly, giving me a snarl and readying himself for another attack.

"You're the one," he growled out through sharp teeth. "The rumors are true. You're the one they call Judas."

Grinning, I nodded. "I am. And they are."

"The world is now ours for the taking, bloodsucker. What the fuck are you doing? We could rule like kings!" He sneered at me, shaking his head.

"I don't want to be king," I countered firmly, barely listening to his bloodthirsty thoughts about the little human village below.

By nature, we were enemies. He had to have been a newly turned werewolf, because he didn't react to my speed. He also didn't know to be afraid of my bite, my venom. With a quick jump, I planted a bite on his shoulder at the same time I plunged the silver knife into his stomach. Neither thing would kill him, but they would render him immobile.

As soon as he dropped to the ground, writhing in pain, I stood over him and pulled out the knife, pointing it to his heart.

"How many in your pack?" I asked him, sighing when he shook his head. I placed the silver blade along his cheek, and he screamed when it burned fur and flesh. "How many?"

"Why should I tell you? You're gonna kill me anyway!"

"Because I'll take my time flaying the skin off you before I end your suffering." I picked up his arm, dragging the point of the knife down his forearm. The sound he made was a cross between a howl and a whine. "How many?"

It took several more slices to his skin before he finally gave up a number. Two. It took the loss of fingers and toes before he told me where those two were. The northern part of Washington. What he didn't say aloud was perfectly clear in his mind. And I knew who I was going to be looking for in the next state up.

The silver pierced his heart, and all movement and sound came to an end. His grotesque appearance faded, and the human returned before I buried him. In his back pocket was a wallet.

David Barnes. A thirty-two-year-old man from Montana. From the pictures, he had been a husband and father of three. Briefly, I wondered if his family was even still alive, considering the state of the world. Shaking my head, I threw the wallet on top of him before burying him.

I gave one more glance to the little village that never knew how close they'd been to losing everything. Their blissful ignorance was good enough for me, so I made my way to where I'd stashed my things beneath an old oak tree.

A few years ago, I wouldn't have been on foot. A few years ago, I wouldn't have been traveling across the country in search of werewolves and the like. I shouldered my bag and started making my way north into Washington. I gave another glance to Portland once I'd climbed the hill. It was just a small example of the world we lived in now – empty, battered, scarred.

It took a little over five years, but most of the globe had regressed hundreds of years. It was the twenty-first century, but it didn't feel like it. Where we used to have computers and smartphones and Wi-Fi, we now had lanterns and solar power. Fast food restaurants and convenience stores were now trading posts and pubs. No more airplanes. No more rush-hour traffic. No more bustling cities or schoolground squeals of laughter. It was all gone.

Scientists had only explored 4% of visible space. That's 0.36% of the galaxy. With budget cuts and bureaucratic nonsense, even if they had told us about the asteroid in advance, which they hadn't, there was nothing that anyone could've done to prepare for it.

It came, and it streamed live on TVs and cellphones. It shattered into a global meteor shower that took out everything. The asteroid was as tall as the Empire State Building and five times as wide; they called it a planet killer. There was nothing the world could've done except burrow underground, and even that wasn't truly safe.

That giant asteroid broke apart, bringing with it all the rocks and comets it had collected along the way, and they showered down on the entire globe with stone and iron and nickel. They set the world on fire, leveled cities, and eradicated satellites. What didn't hit land at twenty-five-thousand miles per hour hit the oceans, causing tsunamis everywhere – coastal states, islands, peninsulas took on massive flooding. And while it was a fraction of the size that had killed the dinosaurs, the colossal ripple effect was worldwide. I was honestly conflicted as to whether I was lucky or not to have survived at all, but I'd found a purpose in it all.

Judas. I shook my head at the name as I headed north into Washington. It seemed fitting. In another time and place, I would have ranked myself with these beasts I hunted. I still did in some way. I found a dark humor in the name. Judas, who betrayed one of his own for profit. That's how the monsters saw me – that I was ruining the open and free ability to hunt humans now that there wasn't anyone to stop them. But it was also the small legend of Judas. That story, while glamorized once in a movie, was that Judas had been the first vampire. He was cursed into immortality and a never-ending thirst for human blood. After betraying Jesus, Judas had tried to return the thirty pieces of silver and then hang himself. God cursed him with immortality – no reprieve for the guilt, the sadness of what he'd done, adding in the fear of all things Christian, the inability to be in the sun, and the constant thirst. Always the thirst.

Most of it was false.

I'd been turned in 1918, during the Spanish Influenza. I'd been blessed with a patient and wise maker. Carlisle Cullen had taught me that the legends were fiction – no adverse reaction to silver, crosses, holy water, or sunshine – at least the latter didn't burn us, though going out in sunlight did make us a shining spectacle. We could be killed by decapitation and burning the body, but the only thing true about any of it was the thirst.

Carlisle Cullen had taught me one other thing. I didn't have to kill humans. Animal blood sufficed. It wasn't as fragrant, and it didn't have the pull to it that human blood did, but it sated the thirst, kept us nourished, and somehow left us with the ability to think more rationally.

I missed my maker and the family he'd created. I'd been settling some things back in my human home of Chicago when the skies fell. Carlisle and his mate, Esme, had been in the northern part of New York. They, along with my siblings, two mated pairs of vampires – Emmett and Rosalie, and Alice and Jasper – had been living amongst the humans. I was supposed to have joined them when I'd finished my business in Chicago.

I'd taken refuge in the basement of my old human childhood home once the fall started. While my neighborhood had suffered, my old house was okay. The whole of Chicago, though, was a burning, crumbled wasteland. But the moment the rocks broke through the atmosphere, all cell and landline communication ceased to exist. I had no idea how my family was, and when I finally was able to, I immediately went to search for them, but they were nowhere to be found. Knowing Alice, she'd known where to take them to be safe, and she most likely knew the road my life had taken.

It had only taken a few months for the monsters to come out of the darkness. Werewolves and mimicswere first, and vampires slowly followed. They preyed on the injured, the dying, and the alone in the beginning. Eventually they stopped skulking in the shadows and blatantly hunted in broad daylight. And they multiplied like rabbits! If they weren't feeding on humans, they were turning them into nightmares.

I hated being outed for what I truly was. I hated that my kind and others felt they could hunt openly now. Maybe I missed my humanity. Maybe I missed the secrecy, because I used to be ashamed of what I'd become. Or maybe I simply thought humans had already gone through enough ugly in the world for them to turn around and become the prey of every monster they never knew existed. They were strong yet fragile at the same time.

The scent of a deer caught my nose, and I decided a hunt would shake me out of these maudlin thoughts. A doe and a bear later, my head was clearer, and I picked up speed toward Seattle, which was where the werewolf had said his pack was headed.

~o~

It was at the edge of the Olympic National Forest where I caught the scent of werewolf. It seemed that they were going through the national park, not toward Seattle. I hadn't been this way in decades, but I knew the area. There were small towns and Native American reservations. At one time, it was a good place to live as a vampire, because the weather allowed us to wander around in the daytime without our skin reacting like a hardened diamond.

I wasn't sure the weather mattered anymore.

The scent I was following still had traces of human attached to it. Most werewolves only changed during the full moon – that legend was true – but the human changed too. They became nomadic, aggressive, and conniving. In their human form, they sought out locations for the next full moon. It was a cycle that was easy enough to predict. I'd heard rumor that older, stronger werewolves could change into their lycan counterpart at will, but I'd never seen it.

As I moved toward the northwest over the next two days, the scent became stronger. I passed by two small campsites where it seemed two people had slept next to a fire. It was as I neared a small town with the unfortunate name of Forks that I caught not only scent but thoughts as well.

When I'd awoken from my immortal change, I'd gained an extra sense. Mindreading. It had taken years for me to grow accustom to it, hone it, train it, and now I wasn't sure I could've survived this new world without it. Where it once drove me mad hearing the thoughts of my family, neighbors, fellow students when I was in school, it now was a beacon for the living…and the monstrous.

It was the latter I was nearing.

The thoughts were centered around a young human girl with long brunette hair and a fierce expression on her face. In her hands was a rifle.

I ran faster, thinking the rifle would do nothing to help her. There was a small clearing ahead, and looming over the young girl was a werewolf that was larger than the one I'd just taken down days ago. Apparently the rumors were true – the older the lycan, the more they could control their shift. It was sunset, no full moon, and he was standing there snarling. And he wasn't alone, though his counterpart was still in her human form.

The girl raised her weapon, but the werewolf knocked it away, sending it a few yards from her reach. She tried to back away but lost her footing on something, and it sent her sprawling backwards. With a burst of speed, I tried to get to him before he could touch her.

He caught my scent, flashing teeth and snarling my way. He turned his attention to me instead of the young human girl. I was aware of the werewolf's companion, but since she wasn't transformed, she didn't pose much of a threat at the moment.

I came to a standstill in front of him, barely noticing that his friend was nervous – accelerated heartbeat, sweating, and shallow breathing. The lycan in front of me, however, was not nervous. His mind was filled with anticipation for the fight we'd have. And he was slightly amused that "Judas" was real.

That last thought caused a small smile to quirk up on my lips, but it didn't last.

"That's the one, Cyrus," his friend told him. "Judas."

He tossed a snarl over his shoulder at her, and I took advantage of his loss of focus. I launched myself at him, pulling my silver knife out midleap. By the time he'd realized what was happening, I'd tackled him to the soft meadow floor. Grasses, flowers, and small trees were uprooted, and the smell of damp earth filled the air. Cyrus's claws raked down my back and arms, but the only damage was to my jacket and shirt. They were shredded, and his claws were just a tad bit duller.

I could hear his frustration in his thoughts as I pushed off him, readying myself for his counterattack. He was angry and hungry, but he was old enough to control his emotions. But he couldn't control his mind.

Every attack was easy to see coming. Every swipe of his claws, every snap of his teeth, every death wish he sent my way was easy to counter, avoid, or use against him. Even better were the thoughts of his female friend, who was scared. Not only was her maker, her "alpha" being bested by a vampire, but the human was slowly raising her gun.

It was the human I couldn't really read, though I chalked it up to being a little preoccupied. Cyrus's friend started running for the human girl, but the sound of gunfire brought everyone to a halt.

The female werewolf dropped instantly, and Cyrus's attention was diverted just enough that I could get a bite in the arm gripping my ripped clothes. He let out a howl, shoving me hard enough to send me through the air a few yards, and I barely landed before I was back on my feet. My venom was not enough to incapacitate him. It was an irritant, but he seemed to shake it off.

"It won't work, Judas," he rumbled, shaking his head slowly. "It takes more venom than one bloodsucker can give to take me down."

"How about a silver bullet, asshole?" the human girl finally spoke, pulling the trigger.

Her aim was good, but Cyrus was quicker, and the bullet caught him in the shoulder. He lunged for her. I saw his decision and dove at the same time. Before he had a chance to touch her, I had him tackled back to the clearing floor, giving him another bite for good measure.

A handful of cluttered thoughts grew closer, and a howl echoed from behind me. Frustration at having to fight all over again made me groan aloud. But the human jumped to her feet, stepping between me and five large wolves who were bursting from the trees and into the clearing. Werewolves had a humanoid look about them; these wolves looked like a giant version of a timber wolf.

"Jake, stop!" she said, holding her hands out. "Not him." She pointed to me and then to Cyrus. "Him."

The red wolf was the size of a buffalo – as were all of his packmates – but his thoughts were in sync with the pack. Their hatred of me, of my kind, was all-consuming, but he trusted the human girl. Actually, there was more than trust there.

I snorted, relaxing a little when all five shapeshifters took off after Cyrus, who was shockingly still spry after two vampire bites and a silver bullet in his shoulder.

"I see the Quileute shapeshifter pack has grown."

The young girl's mind was interesting, like a radio with static. There were no fully formed thoughts, and it wasn't a lack of intelligence, because her eyes, her demeanor were sharp and competent.

"Yeah, that happened after the world ended," she mumbled sarcastically. "I'm Vanessa, but everyone calls me Nessa. And you're Judas, apparently. Thank you for—" She gestured rather wildly around the meadow.

I walked to Cyrus's companion, impressed that Nessa's aim had been perfect.

"Silver bullets." She raised her gun. "Dad makes them. Has since the first few monsters rolled through Forks." I caught a blurry glimpse in her mind of an older man with dark hair and a rather impressive mustache. "C'mon," she urged, waving me her way. "The least I can do is replace your shirt for saving my life."

"I…I'm…" I sputtered, not sure I was comfortable stepping into a village that seemed aware of all the monsters surrounding them.

She grinned. "I know what you are." There was a sweet giggle laced through her words. "You're safe. I promise."

I outright laughed. "I'm safe?!"

"Omigod," she grumbled, rolling her eyes like the belligerent teen I could see that she was. "Please just trust me."

My brow furrowed as I caught another blurry thought, something about my eye color.

I glanced around, looking for my things, and quickly ran to grab them up. "Okay, Nessa. Lead the way."

~oOo~

BELLA

"Here, Bells," my dad said, dropping a heavy box onto the counter. "See what you can do with this."

Brushing my hands off on my jeans, I peered into the battered Amazon box, trying not to remember the gloriousness of online shopping. Inside, there were some clothes, bedding, and a few towels. I pulled out the clothes first because that seemed the biggest need these days. If it wasn't the people working on the solar power panels, it was the men dealing with keeping us with clean drinking water, not to mention the hunters trying to keep us all fed, but mostly it was the boys from La Push. They went through clothes faster than I could get them into the trade store. Every time they had to transform in an emergency, their clothes didn't survive it.

"Thanks, Dad. Where did you get them?" I asked him, separating everything into allotted bins.

"The old Miller farm just outside of town. There are four more boxes outside."

He brought them all in, and I was happy to see some dry goods, canned vegetables, and some flour. All of it would be put to use. I wondered for a second how I'd become responsible for this trading thing. In a different world, I'd have been in college, but at eighteen, I seemed to be the only one willing to keep what used to be the Newton's outdoor supply…well, supplied. The Newtons were no longer around to do it.

I shifted the boxes around so I could stock the shelves later, ignoring the pinch of pain that my leg gave and the memory that came with it.

"Bells, let the doc—" Dad started, not missing my flinch.

"I'm fine." My answer was the usual interrupting one. There wasn't much that could be done. The burns were healed, but the skin would always be tight.

"Okay, well… We're going to try to make a go of that farm," he told me, rubbing his face in weariness. I opened my mouth to argue, but he held up a hand. "I know what you're gonna say, kiddo. We know it's outside the safety zone, outside the fence, but we think we've got a plan to keep it guarded."

I closed my mouth, letting the argument go. I was the daughter, not the parent. My father had been the chief of police when the world came to a screeching halt. People still looked to him for guidance. They still came to him with grievances and concerns.

"Where's Nessa?" I asked him.

"Your sister told me she was checking her rabbit traps, but she was probably going to meet up with Jake."

I smirked, shaking my head. "Okay. If you see her, tell her I need a little help here." I gestured around the store, and my dad chuckled.

Dad leaned in and kissed the middle of my forehead. "I don't know what I would've done without you girls."

I smiled sadly up at him and nodded. It was an honest statement laced with regret and grief. Five years ago, when the meteor shower destroyed everything, I'd been thirteen and on a bus coming back from Seattle from a school field trip. We'd had very little warning, and the adults decided to leave the city to make it back to Forks. Traffic slowed us down. A blown tire had delayed us. We'd been between Port Angeles and Forks when the first rocks started to fall. A close call with a meteor landing right in the middle of the road caused the bus driver to lose control. The bus rolled. I'd not only lost friends that day, but my mother had been a chaperone.

It wasn't the crash that had injured my leg but the rock that fell close by mere seconds after we'd come to a stop. I'd pulled myself out from under a burning seat, not feeling a thing at the time. I'd tried to help my mother, my friends, but Mom was gone. Only a few of us had made it back to Forks. If it hadn't been for the doctor driving by, I wasn't sure what would've happened. We'd been twenty miles from home.

Dad started for the door, but just as he opened it, there were voices and arguing outside.

"Guys! I said he's with me!" My sister was holding her ground with someone out there. She slammed open the door, glancing back. "He saved my life, so take your bullshit somewhere else!"

"Vanessa!" our dad chided, but there was a laugh lacing his tone as he left the store. "No one's saying anything."

"Whatever. Where's Bells?" Nessa asked, waving someone in behind her.

My eyebrows raised, but I walked to her. "Ness?"

"Look, I know what you're gonna say, but if it hadn't been for him, I'd have been toast. Werewolf toast! And I promised him I'd replace his shirt."

The figure behind her was young but was hanging his head nervously. It was when his eyes lifted to mine that the room seemed too small, close. His clothes were ruined, his hair a mess. He was handsome and extremely anxious. He tried to give me a smile, but my sister was still arguing his case.

"And Jake came with the pack and…"

"Ness," I said through an exasperated sigh.

My little sister was high-energy, fierce loyalty, and fearlessness all rolled into a belligerent, sassy sixteen-year-old. Though, honestly, she'd been that way her whole life. But something she said finally caught up to my brain.

"Wait… Werewolf? Ness, it's the middle of the damn day…"

The handsome thing behind her spoke softly. "Um…older werewolves can change at will. They have more control of it."

"Oh," I simply mumbled, shaking my head. "That's just what we need now. As if it wasn't bad enough."

He chuckled, nodding a bit. "Yeah, tell me about it."

His smile changed everything. He wasn't handsome; he was beautiful…and familiar.

"I'm Bella Swan," I said, holding out a hand to him, and he hesitated.

"Oh, snap… Sorry!" Nessa interrupted. "Bells, this is Jud—"

"Edward Cullen," I interrupted her, smirking at my sister's confusion and Edward's shock. "Yeah, I know who you are. If it weren't for your father, Dr. Carlisle Cullen, I wouldn't be here."

Something akin to relief crossed his features, and he stepped forward a little. "He's… Carlisle's here?"

I smiled, nodding. "Oh yeah, your whole family is here – give or take a few."

"Can you… Will you…" His excitement seemed to be too much. "I'm sorry," he said through a chuckle. "I haven't seen them since the… How'd you put it, Nessa? Since the world ended."

"No shit?" Nessa gasped. "That's like five years!"

"Yeah." His reply was soft and sad.

"Okay, okay. Ness, please run over to the doc's place and bring him here," I told my sister.

"Yeah, sure thing."

Nessa left the store, and I turned to Edward. "C'mon. We'll get you a shirt or two. And I think I have a jacket that may fit you. Not that you need it, but…"

Edward paused, his brow furrowing. "You know what I am." It was more of a statement than a question.

"Oh yeah," I said with a nod, going through a rack of shirts and pulling out a few that looked like they'd fit him. "Vampire. But your family is different. You feed on animals, not humans. Carlisle is very proud of you, and he speaks highly of you. But it's Esme who may squish you to pieces." I grinned at his chuckle, handing him some clothes. "Take what you need."

I gestured to the changing room, and he complied, only taking long enough to put on a long-sleeve thermal shirt.

He handed a few back, but I held up a hand. "Keep the extras. You may need them. And give me your ripped one because I can make use of it. You know…rags, bandages, etcetera."

Edward's brow furrowed again, but he did as I asked. "Thank you, Bella. You'll have to forgive me my poor manners. I've been away from people for a bit."

I smiled, waving his apology away. "New world. New rules."

I tilted my head in curiosity as I watched him walk around the shop. After knowing Dr. Cullen for so long, I could see that Edward was a bit like him. Calm, but when anxious, they tried too hard to be still.

"Did you do all this?" he asked, waving a hand toward the shelves and the clothes racks.

"Yeah, Nessa and me. A few other ladies help out, too. We had to organize, and we had to stock up. There are two hundred of us in Forks and another fifty in La Push, so we had to figure out how to keep us all safe. My dad is the chief of police – or he was – so he handles everything out there. Fences, scouting, defense…"

"And my family? How do they fit into all of this?" he asked and then shook his head. "I'm sorry for all the questions… I just can't…" He stared at me a moment, almost in frustration, but trailed off.

"Well, like I said, if it weren't for Dr. Cullen, I wouldn't be here," I said, rubbing the side of my leg. "And once the monsters started coming out, the La Push boys started to change, and eventually, your family had to step in to fight. It started with a few humans, looting and stuff. Then a werewolf. I think there was a red-eyed vampire or two, but the big fight was something called an aswang. Some awful creature that feeds on unborn children and small babies. That was when your family got involved and kinda outted themselves. But they saved an entire nursery full of kids.

"The La Push boys aren't happy your family is here, but thanks to my dad and their chief being BFFs, they've kind of worked out some sort of treaty."

"How did Carlisle help you?" he asked.

I smiled as the man in question opened the door of the shop, setting off the little bell. "Hey, Doc. Were your ears burning?"

Edward turned his head toward the door, and Dr. Cullen chuckled. "Telling stories about me, Isabella?"

"Of course!" I said with a laugh. I adored the doc. It was more than just the fact that he'd saved my life and the lives of the few students on the bus that day. It was his calmness, and when they'd had to out themselves as vampires, they'd been embarrassed, scared. All of them were. But they had now become an invaluable part of Forks. Their knowledge spanned centuries, and they were more than willing to pass it on. Well, some of them were.

"Hello, son," Carlisle said, smiling bigger than I'd ever seen. "It's so good to see you."

Edward walked to him and gave him a hug. They spoke so softly I couldn't hear. And then there seemed to be an unspoken conversation, and I'd forgotten that Edward could supposedly read minds. Suddenly, I was a bit embarrassed at how attractive I found him.

"Your mother is most anxious to set eyes on you, Edward," Carlisle said, gripping Edward's shoulder.

"I am as well," Edward replied, looking so young at the moment.

The bell on the door rang again, and it was my father – and he looked upset. "Jake and the pack lost the werewolf. It outmaneuvered them at First Beach."

"I should've ended him in that clearing," Edward said angrily, his hands balling into fists.

"You did what you could," Dad told him. "Nessa told me what you did for her. I can't thank you enough." Dad offered Edward his hand, and they shook. "But I have a feeling that thing will be back."

Dr. Cullen nodded. "You're probably right. I'll talk to my family. We'll guard the fences tonight. The pack can work the woods."

"This werewolf, Cyrus, is old, which makes him stronger than the usual lycans. I mean, he was in his lycan form in the middle of the day. My venom did nothing. Nessa's silver bullet to the shoulder barely slowed him down. And he was able to lose an entire pack of Quileute shapeshifters," Edward explained, looking between his father and mine. "I haven't seen one this strong in the five years I've been hunting these monsters."

"This Cyrus told the pack he'd be back for Judas." Dad looked confused.

Both men were quiet for a heartbeat or two, but Dr. Cullen finally nodded, letting out a deep breath. "Okay, everyone on guard starting now."

Everyone started to leave, and I came around the counter. "Wait! Who's Judas?"

Edward flinched, shaking his head. "I'm Judas."

~oOo~

A/N… First chapter down. I'll talk more at the end of the next one.