Preface

Jasper's tale took a different twist, down a different path and with a different Miss. Her name was Vera. And she was changed during World War II.

Her plight was the Holocaust where she was no stranger to death. She was taken to Auschwitz when she was 13 and remained there for three years, from 1941 to 1944.

When she was 16 she was taken from her bunk at night by a guard, she thought. It wasn't unheard of; the soldiers had their sick fantasies.

All too soon she awoke to a new world, where everything was so much clearer, even her pain, her strife, the loss of her mother to Diphtheria in the camps. And her little sister…

The pain overtook her and she opened her never restful eyes only to want to close them forever on such clarity.

A shadow, no a man came towards her, he told her that he was liberating the Jews one by one, creating a Jewish army of vampires that would take revenge on Hitler's Nazi regime.

She was unfamiliar with the term vampire but she did not like the way his blood red eyes reminded her of fire from below and eternal punishment. She immediately knew that she had died and that she would now suffer greater tragedies in death than she ever knew in the camps. No peace would find her. No peace, ever again, such a foreign concept, peace. And she would never know it again, she wondered then if she ever did know it. All she wanted was peace; from the moment she opened her eyes as a babe, to the last…

She was reciting it over and over again. "All I want is peace, all I want is peace. I need no God. Just. Give. Me. Peace. Her eyes tightly shut against reality as she rocked back and forth reciting her peace mantra.

She heard noises. She felt hands tighten around her arms, some around her torso. She did not hurt. There was no pain accompanied with the grips. Her eyes flashed open to see this miracle for herself.

Chapter 1

Edward's POV

The new girl. All the little children were mulling around her, their thoughts interested in the new meat. My arm tightened around Alice reflexively. A gentle pat on my knee, Alice. I have nothing to worry about, people stopped thinking of her as "new meat" last year. I smiled at her and her thoughts reminded me of the night we had planned. My grip on her shoulder relaxed, as the image of us lounging together in our field flooded my mind. Seclusion. After we had our fill of the hunt, my mouth poured with venom just thinking….

My thoughts were interrupted by Jasper's, who was sitting across from me. He kept repeating the same lines over and over. It's not her, it's not her. I can smell her blood course; I can nearly taste it flowing in her veins. My sense of smell, I can feel it thudding in time with her heart. Her heart…

Jasper's thoughts were instantly consumed by an intense desire. He was struggling with the monster within. Words formed in his thoughts again, they just have the same scent, the same soft skin, the same face…kind of. It's not the same, not at all, therefore it can't be her.

He was still as a statue, his fingers wrapped around a piece of fruit in his hands. The image he kept seeing in his head was of the new girl, Bella Swan. The picture flashed between the human and his old love, Vera. Was he comparing the two? I didn't see the similarities. I very gently tapped my foot on Jasper's leg under the table. He closed his eyes and sighed. Another time Edward, he thought then he opened his eyes and continued his staring contest with an orange.

Rosalie and Emmett didn't notice the exchange, but Alice always knew. She just looked up at me, my arm still around her shoulders. I stared back, and Jasper's manic thoughts would have to wait for another time.