I am officially ending a long hiatus. I vow more updates, more quickly. Probably not as quickly as some, but as quickly as I can manage them.

Thanks for the continuing support from my small but seriously die-hard fangirls. (I think you're all girls. As my mom points out, you could be kidney-stealing, teenager-deflowering, onion-breathed weirdos.) This chapter is dedicated to Feisty Y. Beden, perhaps my most hardcore fan, who needs shit to read right now. And pain meds. I love you, girlie. Thanks for all the support and listening to me whine.

And now that I've totally BLOWN the atmosphere, I'll turn things over to Rose.

I hid the body near town, so that it would be found quickly. Too quickly. I heard the cries and screams of the passersby who saw him, lying peacefully in the grass just off the westernmost pathway. I hated listening to their pain. First because I had caused it, and second because they wept for a man who deserved no tears.

The run back to the house took little time. I was becoming more and more confident of my abilities, and the way to town was becoming more and more familiar. I had travelled this path too often.

But twice more, twice more my feet would have to carry me through these trees. Twice more my feet would have to carry men to their deaths. And I no longer knew how I felt about it.

When I returned to the house, it was completely silent. I walked through, the only being moving in the house, although it was a time when all should have been home. And they were. I found each standing immobile in their favorite spots. Esme by her desk, Edward by his piano, and Carlisle by the window in his office. No one moved or spoke. There is, of course, no need for any vampire to move or fidget. In our home, with Edward's ability to read thoughts directly from their source, there was seldom a need to speak. But this silence and stillness was unnerving.

Normally, I would have gone to Edward first, but I knew that he heard my approach, heard the questions forming in my mind, but he did not turn to engage me. I stood for what may have been a moment or an hour, standing in the center of a triangle formed by my statuesque family, unsure of whom to turn to for answers. If all were this concerned, this quiet, the source of the paradoxical unrest was clear.

Carlisle.

Carlisle, whom I had so disappointed by my actions, who had not yet had an opportunity to speak his mind directly to me, who had spoken only to my defenders. I would give him the chance.

I approached him quickly, decisively, before I had a chance to talk myself out of it. I heard Esme's intake of breath break the silence, and I wondered if I were making a mistake, but by then my feet had already carried me into Carlisle's study. He sighed as he heard my footsteps approach, and my unnecessary knock on his doorframe. He did not turn.

"We are a quiet family tonight," I said, pointing out the obvious.

"Yes, I suppose we are," Carlisle said. "Only fitting, I suppose, since we are all involved in murder, to be lost in one's thoughts, to be mired in guilt."

His words stung. I did not think of myself as a murderer. More of an executioner.

"I am sorry, Carlisle."

"But you have no intention of stopping?"

"I don't think I can. Not until it's done."

Carlisle nodded, although his shoulders dropped, losing some of their square resolve, into an attitude of defeat.

"You can't understand why?" I asked. I truly felt, as I still do, that their deaths were not only justified, but deserved. Necessary.

Carlisle sighed deeply. "I do understand why you are doing this. I do not understand how you feel, nor would I ever presume to. I have known Esme, known what happened to her, how she came to be with me, to be vampire. I would never wish for her absence, but if there were some way I could spare her the pain she felt when she was human, I would turn back the clock, and live the rest of my existence without her. What she went through was the closest thing to hell that we here on earth could possibly experience. The fact that she is not an absolute monster is only due to the fact that she is, perhaps, the most loving person ever to walk the earth."

I paused, unsure exactly how to take his words. "Do you think I am a monster?"

"I think, to some extent or another, we are all monsters. Not just vampires, but humans as well. We are higher predators than humans, but make no mistake, humans are predators, too. There is the rare person, like Esme, who can go through something terrible and retain the ability to love, but don't forget, she, too, came to the defense of what you are doing. She supports this killing."

"But you can surely understand why?" I said. I was angry that Carlisle was, on one hand, praising Esme's kind nature, and on the other, condemning her for loving me enough to allow me to do what I need to do. "We can't all be as civilized as you, as able to just let these people walk the earth, hurting whomever they will, as long as we don't have to get our hands dirty." My breath came faster, and the anger inside me built until I wanted to strike him, to break him out of his calm disdain.

"You never heard me say that these men are not deserving of punishment, nor will you ever," Carlisle said in his infuriatingly peaceful tone. "But I do not believe that we should be deciding this."

"And who deserves to decide more what they deserve than I? They killed me, Carlisle. They killed me. The stole my life after they stole my innocence. Who else should decide?"

"My dear, I worry that you are the least qualified to determine what their punishment should be."

I wanted to leap at him, scratch his eyes out, make him feel just a small sample of the pain that I had felt, that I had been feeling since my death. My breath came in small pants, my chest heaving with pure fury.

Carlisle turned toward me. "Rosalie, I do not wish to cause you more pain. You have suffered pain enough for several lifetimes. I want to save you more pain. That is why I do not support what you are doing."

"But you said earlier that you would allow me to continue." I sounded like a petulant child.

"Because I know that this is a choice I cannot make for you. You believe, and Esme, that this may help you toward healing. I'm not sure it will."

He paused, looking at me with both sorrow and love in his eyes. "I have killed, Rosalie. Humans and vampires and werewolves and more beings than you can imagine."

I looked at him, eyes wide with shock, as his words sank in. Carlisle had…killed?

"I know it is surprising. But I killed far more as a human than as a vampire. I learned, while human, the toll that killing takes on one's soul." He walked to his desk and sat down, gesturing me to a comfortable chair in the corner. "Please, sit. The telling may take a while."

"I was born in London, around 1642, perhaps. We did not keep close track in those days. When time is short, as lives were then, you do not care so much to mark its passing."

I was shocked. It had never occurred to me that Carlisle, so youthful and beautiful, was so much older than the rest of us.

"We are immortal, after all," Carlisle said, smiling, correctly reading my thoughts.

He continued with his story. "My father was an Anglican pastor, obsessed, as were many then, with the supernatural: vampires, ghosts, witches, demons, werewolves. He was committed to ridding the land of such evil. Humans having such poor senses, of course, and limited knowledge of the true picture of the supernatural, many innocent souls were killed, burned, hanged, mutilated. When he grew old, he turned to me to carry on his 'good works.' I was reluctant, but he and his strap persuaded me. I tried to avoid killing those who seemed simply mad. I pitied them, and believed not that they were possessed by demons, as my father insisted, but rather…sick, somehow. Curable. After all, Christ healed the mad, whether they were possessed by demons as the Gospels proclaimed, or whether there was some illness that they possessed that he was able to heal them of, I don't know. I had spent, even then, a great deal of time thinking about this. As a doctor, I know now that there are likely many physical causes for these ailments, many psychological causes that could be treated. I suspected so then, having a very different mind from my father, questioning so much that he spewed from his pulpit. His was an angry pulpit, full of hellfire. Not the loving God and Christ that I've seen in my own readings. We could never see eye-to-eye.

"I saw my father condemn the lowliest to death in the name of ridding the world of evil. Epileptics, women driven to sell themselves to feed their children, hysterics, poor urchins who wandered the streets at night because they had nowhere else to go, eccentrics, unfortunates born with birth defects…all were condemned and died for the sin of being different. It was painful to watch; yet watch, I did. I did not intervene, and because of me, many people died. At times, I even participated in the executions, at the urging of my father. I am ashamed of what we did and will work the rest of my life to make up for it. When I close my eyes, those poor souls are there, reaching out, crying out for help, and, like then, I do nothing. I relive those experiences every day of my existence.

"A time came when I could no longer deny what I should do. It had been a long time since I had brought forth someone for judgment, and my father was questioning my Christian ideals. Which, for my father, was done in the form of a beating. So perhaps it was simply to save my own skin that I went out that night to kill the creature that I would become.

"I spent a great deal of time in those dark days confused, no longer being able to recall what our purpose was, no longer being able to tell who was friend, who was foe, who was evil, who was harmless. People became objects whom I had to judge, and I lived paralyzed, barely capable of functioning under the burden my father had placed around my neck.

"But I was lucky, in a way. I found a nest of vampires living in the city. I watched them closely, and more than one person fell to their appetites, I'm afraid, before I became convinced that I should act. After all, I had to judge the vampires' victims as well. If the vampires were ridding the world of those whom I would condemn, then perhaps it was better that I let them go about their business. And it was tempting to condemn all who were out at so late night; to my mind, these people must clearly be about the Devil's work.

"Only one came out that night. He was shriveled, ragged, and nearly mad with thirst. My men and I greatly outnumbered him, of course, and we were armed, but we could not have known the strength of a crazed, starved vampire. He flattened half my men with one blow and attempted to flee, but when he realized that there was only one in pursuit—me—he turned for the attack. He bit me many times before the rest of the men caught up with us and beat him off of me. They left me to chase him, and I knew that I was contaminated. They would kill me when they returned.

"So, like a coward, I ran rather than face my own death. Figuratively, naturally, since I was so injured. The pain was extraordinary. My neck was all but severed, and he'd bitten my wrists to nearly bone. I was weak, bleeding, and the burning of the venom blacked out my vision. But I crawled to a nearby cellar entrance, and buried myself among the potatoes.

"The change took several days. I bit into a raw potato, attempting to muffle my screams. I could hear men searching for me. My father was among them. They knew I had been bitten, and that I would turn. My father wanted me dead. When it was complete, when I knew that they had been right, I tried to kill myself. But it is virtually impossible to do so. It is the great irony of our existence. We can kill so very many, but not ourselves.

"I avoided killing. I was so very tired of it. My human life had been drenched in blood and madness, and I could no longer bear it. Oddly, I was more compassionate as a vampire than as a human. There was no self-love, only an instinct for survival. I avoided being seen, even as much as I thought I wanted to die, and I avoided killing until I was so starved I resembled a walking skeleton more than a man. Out of desperation one day, I killed a deer. To my surprise, it lessened the pain of my thirst. And so I have lived this way ever since. The only humans I have bitten, I intended to turn. Whether that was right is something I struggle with. Particularly with you."

Carlisle's story was long, but I understood why he told it. We didn't speak for a long time. Finally, I worked up the courage to ask, "But weren't some of those you killed for your father evil? Don't you think that some of those deaths were justified? That there were people who survived because of your actions?"

"Perhaps. But I know for certain there were people who suffered. I made widows and orphans. I made mothers childless. I made fathers weep for wives and children lost. That is a certainty. And who was I ever to judge that even those people who were truly guilty could not have found redemption in their lives and still done some good in the world?" Carlisle's face was a mask of pain as he uttered these words.

"Do you think that the men that I have killed could ever be redeemed?" I asked quietly.

"I'm not sure. I think that what we have here is something beyond ordinary evil, that is true. And our conversation with Jeffries would cast the possibility of redemption into doubt. Have these men been infected with evil? Is it incurable? Can the venom of the incubus transform good men into monsters? I wish I could know for certain." Carlisle slammed his fist down onto the desk, denting its surface with his frustration. He was silent for a long time.

"Can you forgive me for what I must do?" I asked softly. I wasn't sure that I wanted to know the answer to the question. I bent my head and studied my hands clasped tightly in my lap.

He looked at me, then rose to approach me. His cool hands lifted my chin, forcing my red eyes to his golden ones. His face was relaxed, kind. "Rosalie, my daughter, I love you. I want what is best for you. I don't want you to do this, and I can't understand why you need to do it. But I know that you do."

He kissed me gently on the forehead, and sat in the chair to my left. "Edward left us for a time, you know. Has he told you?"

I nodded.

"So you know that he lived a more…natural life during that time?"

I nodded again, too emotional to speak.

"I accept that those I love are imperfect beings. And I accept that we are predators. We are, it is true, more capable of rational thought than any other predator. We have consciences, and, I believe, souls. It is difficult, the life that we lead. It is a sacrifice beyond any other. Perhaps it was so easy to forgive Edward because he was giving in to his natural impulses. Perhaps I can identify with his desire to rid the streets of evil. But for him, too, killing took its toll. He has been less happy since he returned. I have spoken to him of my experiences, told him that I understand, but I don't know if that's exactly true. I don't have his abilities to see into a person." He looked sad.

"I think you do see, better than most." I reached out tentatively, and took his hand.

"You are going to finish what you have begun, aren't you?" he asked without looking at me.

"Yes. I think I have to."

"Then I will try to make my peace with it. But remember those whom these men are leaving behind. You make victims beyond those you kill. And those circles can spread in unpredictable ways, even turning upon their maker."

I nodded. My belief was that, while their families would certainly suffer, they would be safer without these men in their lives. I kissed Carlisle gently, hesitantly, on the cheek, surprising him I'm sure, and surprising me a little, too.

I left the house without speaking to either Edward or Esme. I didn't know what to say. I wandered through the forest, right to its edge, thinking all the while about what Carlisle had said. My thoughts continually returned to the things that Edward had reported, the vile thoughts that these men seemed to have when in the company of women, that the thoughts didn't seem to be affected by fear, weren't touched by remorse. They simply never changed. I could only believe that it was a matter of time before these men acted on their actions again, ripped another woman to pieces as I had been.

And they had families, mothers, sisters. Richard Hallowell had younger sisters, mere children. Would he turn upon them as he had me? Would a mother's pain at losing one child be greater than her pain at knowing that one child had brutalized another? Did my own pain give me the right to decide?

I was surprised to find myself quite near where I had left Jeffries's body. I'd walked at random, but here I stood, reflecting upon blood shed, blood yet to be shed. The commotion had lessened to the north of where I stood, where Billy Jeffries had been laid and, by now, removed to his home or to the mortuary. Birds sang in the trees above me, and I could hear the gentle sounds of flowing water caressing the rocks in the stream behind me. There was peace in the clearing, where before there had been panic and fear.//

It was overcast, and although it was still a gamble without a hat or coat, dressed as I was in a simple skirt and peplum blouse, it was enough to make me seem more human. In point of fact, I looked far more ghostly than vampire. My clothes were entirely white, matching my skin nearly perfectly. The only spot of color was my hair, cascading golden down my back, slightly paler than in my human life, perhaps, but still recognizable as my own.

Perhaps that was why, as I walked down the street, I turned heads. The murmurs didn't seem to be about my beauty, but my ghostly resemblance to one recently deceased Rosalie Hale. I suppose that the fact I had forgotten shoes didn't help matters. I should have cared, I suppose, but maybe, on some level, I was hoping for exposure, for something to turn me from the path that I had laid before me.

But nothing did. Before I knew it, I was before the house of my penultimate quarry: Richard Hallowell. He was there, I knew. I could hear him inside, smell the scent that I remembered from that night: stale sweat, the sweet smell of gin, and something else, unidentifiable yet familiar, organic, like blood and saliva and decay. There was also a child.

This made me freeze. She was what had stopped me from going after Hallowell before, if I was honest with myself. I had made excuses that Hallowell would be difficult to get to, but here I stood. There were others in the house, to be sure, but with my light step, no one would hear me. No one was looking. No one would hear Hallowell scream. I knew how to take care of that. One blow and he'd never speak again. It was the girl. I could hear her singing inside the house, a tuneless, wordless melody. I could picture her playing with her dolls, brushing their hair, feeding them from pretend bottles. In my imagination, she had golden hair like mine, dressed in white, but with rosy chubby cheeks. And she loved her brother. Edward had sensed that when he visited this home.

"Richard! Riiiiiiiiiiichard!" I heard the little girl call to her beloved brother. "Come play house with me! You can be the daddy!"

I heard Richard's footsteps stumbling down the hall. "Sal, I have a headache, love. Maybe later?"

"You always say later. You never play wif me." I could picture her tiny pink lip poking out in a pout.

"I'm sorry, Sal. I'm not much fun, though. Why don't you play with Suzie or Paul?"

"Dey're at school, silly. And Mama's busy."

I could hear Richard sigh heavily. "Fine. What do daddies do?" I heard him sit down on the floor.

"Daddies go to work and dey smoke pipes and read the newspaper."

"Okay. Where's my pipe?"

"I dun-no," Sal said, sing-song.

"Well, how am I supposed to be a daddy without a pipe?"

"I dun-no," she sang again.

"Sal, my head's really hurting. Can't we do this later?"

"You ALWAYS say later," she said, the pout edging into her voice again.

I crept around the house to stand outside the window of Sally's room. Hallowell had his back to the window. I could just see the top of his sister's head. Her hair was a pale brown, darker than mine, with little ringlets forming a halo around her head. Richard seemed to be looking at her wearily. I wondered what he might be thinking.

"I don't think you really want to know," came a voice from behind me.

"Edward," I said. "You came."

"I promised I would help. And here I am."

"So what is he thinking right now?"

"He's thinking of his headache, the deaths of his friends." Edward paused, tilting his head slightly as if listening hard. "The thoughts are snarled, pictures mostly. He's seeing your face, his sister's face. There's blood. Pleasure. His dead friends. Your face again." His face tightened, slowly settled into cold rage, but he did not speak.

"What is it?"

"He's imagining his sister lying in your place. He…doesn't mind the image."

I hissed, and heard Edward give a low curse. I glanced up, realizing that Edward had flattened himself against the side of the house.

"Rose!" he hissed. But it was too late. A pair of brilliant blue eyes beneath pretty brown ringlets was peering out of the window. I could see her nose pressed against the windowsill.

"Richard!" she said, breathless. "There's an angel watching me."

"That's nice, Sally," Hallowell replied wearily.

"No! She's really there. She's dressed all in white, wif no shoes, and pretty golden hair. But she got no halo, Richard. Where's her halo?"

"I don't know, Sally. Maybe she left it up in heaven."

"Hide!" hissed Edward. "Before someone else sees you."

I didn't know what to do. There was a tree behind me. I thought for a moment that if I made it to the tree, I could hide in its branches. I took a leap, landing softly on a low branch, but I caused the leaves to shake as if in a sudden gale.

"Rose!" came another angry hiss from beneath the window.

I heard a sharp intake of breath. "The angel flew, Richard! She flew into da tree! Come look!"

I heard Richard's footsteps approach the window, and I tried to shrink back further into the shade of the leaves.

His gasp told me I wasn't well enough hidden. "What the hell!" His footsteps ran out of the room, approaching the front door, as I heard Sally call, "Richard! You not supposed to say that word. Mama won't like it! Come back! Come back and play!"

I heard the front door slam and Hallowell running down the street, his mother calling after him in alarm. A stream of unintelligible sounds met me, single words: "How? Rosalie Hale? Fuck!" His fear caused him to run faster, and he barreled into at least one pedestrian, who exclaimed, "Careful there, son! Slow down!"

"Catch him! Before he talks to anyone!" Edward urged.

I leapt from the tree. Sally called from the window, "Bye-bye angel! Bring back my brother!"

I heard Mrs. Hallowell: "Sally? Who are you talking to?"

Sally answered with the truth of a child, "The pretty angel who was watching Richard through the window."

I felt guilt at the pain I was about to cause them both. I heard Sally's little footsteps running down the hall, her mother calling out to her, running after her, Sally crying, "Let's watch the angel fly, Mama!" Their sounds quickly faded as I overtook her brother. He was cutting down a side street when I caught up to him, leaping over him and landing facing him in the alleyway between two buildings.

"You k-k-killed them," he said.

"They killed me," I said calmly. I was tired of this conversation. "I won't let you hurt the little girl."

"Sally? I wouldn't—I never—I couldn't…"

"But you were thinking of it, just now. You can't be in the same room with her without thinking about it, can you? Can you be in the room with any woman?"

Hallowell was backing up slowly. He knew, I think, that he couldn't outrun me, but his cowardice wouldn't allow him to stand still, to face death like a man.

I grabbed him quickly, twisted his neck once until it snapped, and dropped him. Footsteps were approaching quickly, running.

"Dey were running, Mama! The angels in Sunday school don't run, they fly. She's a silly angel if she don't know that."

There was nowhere to hide. I panicked and froze, and suddenly they were there. Mrs. Hallowell and the little girl. As Mrs. Hallowell began to scream, I heard little Sally say, "Look! Mama! The angel!"

"Richard!" I heard Mrs. Hallowell cry out.

Sally said, "Why you sleeping, Richard?" Her little feet approached her brother's body.

Mrs. Hallowell choked out, "Sally! No!"

I turned to run as Sally began to scream.

I ran and ran and ran, gasping for breath, tearless sobs wracking my body. I had broken a child's heart, a mother's heart. The face of my own mother at my funeral swam before my eyes, the look of pain at a loss no parent should ever have to suffer. I had just caused that. The circle of influence was spreading. I had hurt a child beyond all repair. Forever would she see her brother there, in that street, broken and mangled, eyes staring into nothing.

I collapsed at the edge of the woods. Edward was suddenly there. "Rosalie?"

I couldn't look at him. My chest heaved with pain, self-loathing. I felt it would crush under the weight of the little girl's screams, screams I would hear for the rest of my days.

"Kill me, Edward. Please. I should have died in that street. I should never have lived on."

"No."

"You never wanted me here, in your family. I've made you do things, help me do things. Terrible things." My breath came in ragged gasps.

"You've made me do nothing," Edward said firmly. "I made my own choice to help you, and for many reasons."

"You just wanted to keep everyone safe. You didn't want to help me kill, but you have. And it's my fault."

"You're making no sense, Rosalie."

"I ruined her, Edward. I ruined that child."

"You saved that child from a terrible fate. She just doesn't know it." Edward reached out to stroke my hair, humming quietly a tune I'd heard him play before.

I collapsed into him, and he just held me for a time, humming through my sobs, until my breathing slowed and calmed.

"I think the decision you have made is the right one. The men who attacked you do not belong in society. They will hurt people again and again and again. Our abilities are good for very little except killing. Why not use them for the benefit of mankind?"

"But what about what Carlisle says, that killing is wrong, that you can't predict how it will affect you?"

Edward paused for a while. "Will you ever be happy as a predator? I think we are programmed to kill, and with that comes pain. We have traded our happiness, our humanity, for immortality. We can only work with what remains."

"That is how you see your life?"

"That is how my life is."

"Will there ever be anything else?" Edward's vision of our lives was bleak to the point of absolute hopelessness. I didn't think I could bear it.

"I look at Carlisle and Esme, and sometimes I think that if there were someone…a soulmate…but how? How, when all of my kind, of our kind, are programmed only to kill? The others I have known are as bereft as I. Love and bloodlust are unhappy bedfellows." He looked at my face, clearly reading my thoughts, my hopelessness. "But we have each other, our family. That is far more than most of our kind have. We have unlimited time in which to learn. That is something."

I nodded. That was something. I loved my family as I'd never loved my human family. That would have to be enough for now. But it wouldn't be enough forever.

"Eternity is a long time, Edward. Don't you think that somewhere we could find what Carlisle and Esme have?"

"I don't know, Rosalie. They were hoping that we'd be that for each other, but we can't, can we?"

I shook my head. I was beginning to grow fond of Edward, but I couldn't see that affection growing into anything more.

"Why did you come back, Edward?"

There was silence for a long time. Finally he answered, "I missed my family. My home. I grew tired of the killing. So much blood."

"Isn't that proof that there's more to us than simply our instincts?"

Edward smiled slightly. "Carlisle believes so. I'm not sure."

"Will you forgive me if I choose not to believe you?"

"Of course." Edward nodded stiffly. "It is, of course, your own experience of our existence that will matter to you. Perhaps yours will be different. But I'm sure that this is my life."

My heart, what little was left, would have broken for Edward at that moment if it were not so weighted down with guilt and anguish. I have thought of this moment many times in years since, trying to understand the mystery that is my brother. I can't say that I've ever been successful.

But that moment in the clearing, I felt connected to him, felt that he truly became my brother as he held me, hummed to me, soothed me. I felt a flicker of love for him that I had not felt before. I would consider all he'd said. In fact, I would consider it for years to come.

But my decision about how to proceed would have to be my own. Carlisle couldn't make it; Edward couldn't make it; even Esme couldn't. My shoulders would have to bear the guilt of the pain in that child's eyes. My heart would be the one that refused to heal. And somehow I would have to deal with the fact that I was indeed a vampire, a predator.

And, perhaps, a monster.