Previously in Midnight:

"Wait….Are you a--?" he started. But Lydia cut him off.

"Yes, Carlisle. I am."

Carlisle's mouth hung wide open as he grabbed Esme and pushed her behind him. He started backing away slowly, and I couldn't imagine what he was so afraid of. What creature could possibly be so terrifying to a vampire? And apart from being extremely intimidating, Lydia seemed like an average human, apart from her scent. But something told me she wasn't human… "Well what are you then? Could you explain to us why Carlisle is so afraid of you? And how come you know what she is and we don't?" I said, turning to Carlisle. But he didn't answer; he just kept staring at Lydia, flinching whenever she moved. So I continued. "And what's all this about a revolution? And if you're so scary, why do you need us?"

"I already told you," she said, annoyed, "I need you to take their place! Honestly, can't you people pay attention to what I'm saying? I hate repeating myself!"

"Why do you want us to take their place?" I asked, ignoring her complaints.

"Because you're the most well-known 'vegetarian' family and if you took their place it would encourage more vampires to stop killing humans," she said indignantly, as if we should have known that. We were all in shocked silence, as we tried to absorb what was happening. I knew the peace wouldn't last. As we stood there, Lydia took a book out of a bag and climbed the stairs until she was right in front of me. "Here you go, Bella." She said my name like it was an insult. "This should explain a few things," she said, and with a sideways glance at Edward, went back down.

I looked at the book in my hands; it was red and quite big, but not very thick. And on the cover, written in cursive, was the title Dragonology: The Complete Book of Dragons, along with a picture of a dragon. I sighed; I had been expecting some other mythical creature to pop up sometime. If there are vampires and werewolves in the world, why shouldn't there be dragons? When I looked up from the book, I noticed that everyone was looking at me expectantly. I didn't know what to say, so I just held up the book; the title was big enough for everyone's keen eyes to see. There was silence for a few moments; then Jacob bravely broke it. "Dragons? So you're a dragon?"

"Well not exactly. I'm a dracomancer," Lydia said.

"What's that?" Jacob asked.

"Use your brain you mutt! 'Draco' means dragon, and 'mancer' is a suffix that means magician! And people say dogs are intelligent…" she scoffed. I was worried that her rudeness would cause one of them to get angry, but Jasper was there to help with emotional control.

"So what, you can like, turn into a dragon? What's so special about that?" Emmet laughed, but his joy was short-lived. Lydia ran to him and gave him an icy stare that would have scared anyone to death. Of course, he was already dead.

"Can you turn into a dragon?" she asked coldly.

"N-n-no," he replied shakily. I had never seen Emmet scared, and I knew that there definitely was something weird about Lydia, and the whole dragon thing made sense. She seemed like the fire-breathing, puppy-eating type.

"Exactly. I can shape shift just like wolf boy and his puppy posse," she replied with one last glare. Then she motioned for me to come down the stairs. I obeyed, and Edward followed close behind me. She took the book from me and started flipping through its pages.

"This is a very good book, you know… It's quite accurate, apart from a few things, of course," she began. "I know you're all confused, but if you just think for a second, it will all make sense. Let me help you out here; you know that werewolves protect humans and kill vampires, right? And that werewolves emerged to protect their fellow Native Americans against the 'Pale Faces'? But Native Americans live in America, right? There aren't any Native Americans in Africa, or Asia, or Europe. I mean, there might be now, but a long time ago there weren't any. Which means there weren't any werewolves to protect the humans in Africa and Eurasia, right? So the people living there evolved into dracomancers in order to protect themselves from vampires." I had never thought about how the people on other continents protected themselves, but I was starting to understand what Lydia was saying. It made sense…

"So you're saying that dragons protect the humans on other continents, right?" Alice asked.

"That's exactly what I'm saying. Each continent is protected by a different species of dragon, since the conditions are different. That's what this book is good for," Lydia said, and opened the book. On the first page was a map of the world, and each of the continents had a different name and dragon on it. The Americas weren't on the map.

"You see, the draco africanus was the protector of Africa," Lydia said, pointing to the dragon on Africa, "It had two legs and big wings, and instead of breathing fire, it spat acid. And the Australian dracomancers, or the Aborigine dracomancers, turned into draco marsupialis, which didn't breathe or spit anything, but it was breathe or spit anything, but it was very fast and had extremely sharp claws designed for ripping vampires apart." The dragon on Australia resembled a kangaroo, except more lizard-like and with tiny wings.

"Can it fly?" Esme asked eagerly. She seemed fascinated by all of this.

"It can, but not very well. And the dracomancers in Asia turned into this, the draco orientalis, or Asian lung as it was commonly called," she pointed to the dragon on Africa, which had no wings, and looked like a typical Chinese dragon. "They have no wings, they prefer to run. They were very nimble, and looked very serpentine. They couldn't breathe fire, but they had razor sharp fangs that could cut through anything, and they liked to wrap around their victims and crush them," she said enthusiastically. I was starting to feel a little uneasy; I was becoming scared to be a vampire. These dragons all sounded so frightening, and she hadn't gotten to the dragon on Europe yet; it looked like the dragon people imagined, four legs, big wings, and huge. And fire breathing.

"That brings us to our last dragon," Lydia said proudly, "Draco occidentalis magnus. The European dragon. They are the ones that look like the typical dragon you would imagine. It's the biggest of the dragon species and the most powerful. It's also the strongest flyer, because it has to be able to fly through the strong Atlantic winds, and it has to fly long distances, since it protects Russia as well as Europe. And it's also the only dragon that breathes fire." As she finished her explanation, we all just stood there staring at the book with our mouths open. It was a lot to take in.

"How come we've never heard of dragons before, if they protect people all over the world?" Rosalie spat, breaking the silence. She obviously didn't believe Lydia, or she was just angry that she had made Emmet look like a cowardly mouse.

"And how come I didn't see you coming, and Jasper can't feel your emotions, and Edward can't hear your thoughts?" Alice asked.

"Because we are undetectable to vampires, and werewolves. We have no scent, and your little powers don't work on us," she said. "And you've never heard of us before because those cowardly Volturi were so afraid of us that they annihilated us all!" she growled, "Just ask Carlisle. He knows what I'm talking about!" Everyone turned to Carlisle.

"It's true. Everything she said is true. Aro was completely terrified of dracomancers. He was so paranoid that, during the Middle Ages, he used his influence over the humans to convince them that dragons were evil and that they should be destroyed. That's actually why I left the Volturi; I thought it was cruel to kill off the dragons just because he was scared of them." We all stared at him in shock and disbelief.

"Why did you never tell us?" Esme said, caressing his arm.

"I didn't think there was a point. I thought they had all been killed," he said, looking up at Lydia.

"The dracomancers of Africa, Asia, and Australia were all killed by the very people they fought to protect. That was the cruel and cowardly part of Aro's plan; he knew that we couldn't hurt humans, so he had humans kill them off. There's not a single one left. But a few European dragons made it, since they were the strongest. Among them was my dad. And now, I want to take revenge on the Volturi for nearly wiping us out!" she said passionately.

"Hold on, I still don't believe you," Rosalie said. Lydia glared at her, but she just glared back.

"Don't worry, I'll show you. But we have to go outside. I can't fit in here," Lydia said, surveying the house skeptically.

"Bitch…" Emmet muttered under his breath. I couldn't help but smile. She was even worse than Rosalie after all. And that's saying something.

When we got outside, Lydia ran farther and told us to stay back. "I'm going to need some space," she said as she backed away. "You ready?" she asked. We all nodded. "All right then. Please don't faint," she said coldly. I bit back an insult and watched as the intimidating girl turned into a huge, frightening, silver-blue dragon.