Thank you so much to my wonderful pre-readers: Gredelina1, GermanAkice, SassYNoles, brierlynn03. They were all a massive help. This story has only been edited by me, so I apologize for any mistakes that remain.

WARNING: This story is complete, but it needs a sequel that is only just started. I can't guarantee a seamless posting schedule between this one and the sequel the way I try to provide. It ends with a cliffhanger that will be resolved in the sequel. If you read, you're doing so at your own risk.

1. Parting

Bella

Carlisle pushed the hair back from my face with a fervent look in his eyes. "My Bella," he said, his voice strained.

I leaned into his touch and said, "You don't need to be scared. I know you can do this, and we both know you're doing the right thing. These are true demons that you have found; they're not the innocents your father would accuse."

"They are, but there are innocents coming with me. What if they're hurt… killed… because they're trusting me? God will never forgive me."

I stared into his blue eyes and stroked his face, feeling the chapped skin of his shaven cheek. "You're doing God's work tonight. There is no greater way to serve Him, and He will understand your heart was pure in His name."

He pressed his lips to my forehead, and I felt their warmth and that of the breath he exhaled against my skin.

"I serve Him in all things but one," he whispered. "I disappoint Him when I do not honor my father."

I pulled back and looked at him. "Nor do I honor my father, Carlisle, but there is a good reason. Your father is a zealot that condemned innocent people to death in his hunts. I do not honor my father's will when I come to you in secret. But it is not you that he objects to; it's your father." When he looked troubled still, I cupped the back of his neck, stroking the fine hair at the nape, and said, "Our love is not a sin, Carlisle."

"No," he agreed. "Nothing that feels this pure and good could be a sin, but I do fear for judgment." My face fell, and he rushed on, cupping my cheek. "But no fear is great enough to keep me from you, Bella. We will be married. You will bear my children. We will be together."

I forced a smile and nodded as if I knew he was speaking fact. Though I was sure he meant what he said, believed he would be strong enough, I knew in my heart that I would never have a wedding with Carlisle, and I would never bear his child. As much as he loved me, he feared his father and God more. He allowed himself these snatched meetings in secret with me as he was driven by love. When the time came, he would choose God and duty first. I knew that and hated it, but he would not be the man I loved if he was not so dutiful to God and his father, however much I wished he wasn't.

The only way it would happen was if his father died, but he was whole and hearty in his fiftieth year still. As the daughter and student of an apothecary, I could see the health and fire in his eyes, even though he played at being weak in order to make his son serve him better and to bring him to the manhood that he judged by Carlisle taking on the mantle of protector of our small corner of London from the unnatural threat witches and vampires posed. No, Carlisle would marry a woman selected by his father, possibly the daughter of a worshipper at his church, that would give him sons to carry on the Cullen name.

Knowing this, I relished the time we had together even more and prayed selfishly that before that moment came, Carlisle would give me more than a sister's kiss.

From over the ramparts of the tower came a soldier's mocking call, breaking the spell around us. "Look at the lovers by the gate."

Carlisle froze and then stepped quickly back from me so that we were a respectable three paces apart. "I should go. I need to prepare the men, and it will be dark soon; you need to get home before the watchmen are about."

My hand reached for him, longing to touch, but the inopportune interruption to our meeting had broken more than the spell: it had taken my courage, too. I could not touch him as we were no longer lovers meeting at Traitors Gate. We were acquaintances—the wealthy apothecary's daughter and the minister's son—again as we could only be when we weren't allowing ourselves to pretend otherwise.

"Be safe, Carlisle," I said. "Come back to me."

"I will," he vowed, though his tone was more formal now.

He turned and walked away, following the north path along the Thames that would lead him on a circuitous route to Long Acre where our homes were, separated by mere feet but worlds apart when it came to happiness and love. By taking this route, he was giving me the safer and shorter journey home.

I tucked my basket onto my elbow, empty now I had delivered my father's donations to the unfortunates of the rookeries, my excuse for being out, and set off.

As I walked, I sorted through my troubled thoughts. Every meeting with Carlisle was bliss, and every parting was pain, but it was a pain I would bear willingly while I still had the chance. Our time together was limited as I passed the years following my twentieth and still failed to marry and start a family to inherit my father's knowledge and business.

I was being trained still, just as I had been since before I'd learned my letters, but that wouldn't continue when I married. My father waited for that day, guiding me towards the wealthier men that we passed on the street and met in our church on Sundays, but he did not push me. He was a far kinder and more patient man than Carlisle's father, Elias Cullen. I could only hope his patience would last when I failed to marry in another ten years, God willing I had them. I would not marry for anything but love, and my heart was owed to only one man.

I would never be Carlisle Cullen's wife, but I would never be another man's either.

I woke up with a start and flung back my blanket and jumped from the bed. My candle was unlit, but I could see with the bright moonlight that lit my window. I stayed perfectly still and listened hard.

I couldn't tell what had woken me, the only sounds were my father's snores from the room beside mine, but I was wary. As a wealthy family, we were a temptation to the housebreakers that would steal the gold my father stored under his bed, the precious ingredients to our medicines and salves in the shop along with my father's valuable surgical instruments. I was always warned to be aware of break-ins and to never apprehend the thieves myself, as I would be killed without thought. Those that would sin with theft were already corrupted enough to add murder to their score. I was supposed to alert my father so that he could apprehend them with his matchlock.

I wasn't sure that it was an intruder that had woken me, though, so I pressed my hand to my heart and stilled my breathing to allow me to hear better. That was when I heard the shout, and my breath resumed with a gasp, which made me cough and my heart race.

"Minister Cullen! It's your son!"

I ran to the window and saw the group of men down the street hammering on the wooden door of the church. They were carrying the torches they would have wielded as weapons against the vampires Carlisle had led the hunt of, and they were obviously panicked.

The door of the church opened, and Elias Cullen stepped into the street. He was wearing full day dress, and I assumed he'd stayed awake at home to hear news of his son's hunt's success.

The glass of my window was thin, so I could hear their raised voices clearly. "What is it?" Elias asked.

"The vampires," the round-bellied and usually friendly baker said viciously. "We found one, and it attacked us. Two of us were killed, and your son disappeared. We believe he was taken to feed."

I gasped and pressed my hand to the glass.

Carlisle was taken. He was believed dead, but it couldn't be true. Surely, I would know it. A love like mine for him had to have formed a connection between us; my heart had to stop when his did.

Elias Cullen nodded slightly and said, "Then we will avenge him. Gather our men, rouse the street; we're going on a hunt."

"No," the saddler replied, shaking his head. "We will all be killed. They are too strong and too fast. I served you on many hunts, Minister Cullen, slew witches, werewolves, and vampires that you unmasked, but the monster we faced tonight was nothing like I have ever known. It was the purest demon I have ever seen. Its eyes were black and mad, its skin pure white. I will not put myself in danger on a fool's errand."

"Coward," Elias spat. "We are protecting more lives than just our own." He spread his arms as he always did at the pulpit on his church and quoted the verse I knew from my own teachings and worship, "The wicked flee when no one pursues, but the righteous are bold as a lion."

"That may be," the saddler said, crossing his arms over his chest. "But we lost three good men tonight, and I will not add my name to that account. You may go, but I will not."

The other men around him shuffled their feet and shook their heads.

"Then you will leave my son unavenged!" Elias cried, his teeth bared.

As if his words were the final dismissal they needed, they began to walk away again.

I stared at them, my breaths coming quick and my heart beating a tattoo against my ribs, and then with a surge of emotion, I came back to life. Carlisle had been taken. He was not dead, couldn't be as God alone would give me that knowledge, so I had to go to him. He could be hurt, but I would save him. My years of study and teachings had all led to this moment, the moment I would save the man I loved more than my own life.

I stuffed my feet into my boots and ran down the stairs and through to the storeroom. I grabbed at the jars, stuffing them into my basket without thought, not seeing what I was taking until my hand found the arnica, and I pressed it to my chest. That was what I would need. Carlisle would be bleeding if it was a vampire that attacked him. I also took a folded pile of cloth to staunch the flow of his wounds and then ran out of the door.

The street was busy. Women and children stood in their doorways, and their men moved along the road. The door to the church was closed again, and Elias Cullen was nowhere in sight. He might quote Proverbs to push his point, but he was not so righteous to go out alone.

I darted along the street, calling to Carlisle without caution or care for our secret, and reached the place a group of men was standing in a circle. I looked through their shoulders and saw that there were two bodies on the ground. The smallest was one I knew by name. It was William Hearth, the young man, barely more than a boy, that my father had treated through a fever the previous year. The fever had left him weak and sickly, and I was amazed that Carlisle had let him be part of the hunting party. The second was the tall and broad tavernkeeper called Marsh. There were gruesome wounds with dark red, almost black, slicks of blood at their throats, and their skin was like snow in the moonlight.

I ran on, my calls for Carlisle becoming more urgent, until I reached a crossroads and faltered. Carlisle hadn't told me where the hunt was going to focus, perhaps thinking he was protecting me, so I had no idea where to go. I called him again and then darted right, imagining I could hear my name being called back to me.

I came to the entrance to the sewer and stopped. There were smatterings of black on the ground, black that looked like the blood at the victims' necks. I moved closer, calling for Carlisle again, and then my heart faltered as I heard a sound in response. It was a laugh, a strangely high and bell-like tone, and I moved towards it.

"Carlisle," I called cautiously. "Are you there, love?"

I heard another laugh, this time behind me, and I spun around. I saw a flash of black eyes in a pale face, and then something hard as stone was colliding with the side of my head.

My vision swam and legs crumpled. As I hit the ground and awareness dimmed, I called the name of my love one last time.

"Carlisle…"

So… What do you think? Is this a journey you'd like to join me on? This chapter was just setting the scene for their past, what they had been before. We will be back in 2005 in the next chapter where we will get lots of new questions to puzzle over.

Until next time…

Simaril xxx