Dead Men Tell No Tales

A/N:

Twilight time frame – post an AU version of New Moon, where Alice never had her vision, thus never giving the Cullens a reason to return to Forks. Story picks up as Bella is about to turn twenty and heading off to college in Shreveport, La. The Cullens will likely make a regular appearance later in the story, but their return isn't the story's driving force. Despite the heavier prologue, this story will meander into lighter territory. My initial goal (for now) is for the story to lead Bella into experiencing fun adventures in Sookie's world. Just wanted to do something a little different...hoping even the non-fans of either book series/saga can still read and enjoy, though I'm sure a basic knowledge of the characters and places mentioned in both sets will come in handy.

For those who may be reading my other Twilight based story, Lightning Crashes, I am NOT putting that story on hiatus to work on this. That story only has three chapters left, so I'm only planning on piecing this one together when I need a mental break from writing LC. I'll shift my focus to this story more permanently once my first fic is wrapped up. Without further ado...

Prologue

I looked around the room making sure I had packed anything and everything that could be considered as having sentimental value. I didn't really care about the rest. I couldn't possibly take it all with me, and I knew better than to plan on coming back to retrieve whatever was left behind. I knew better than anyone when you left something behind, it was usually for good.

I threw the last duffel bag in the bed of the truck and turned to look at my Dad.

Charlie shook his head and absentmindedly kicked the front tire of my truck as he spoke the first words of the morning.

"I can't believe you're trusting this piece of metal for a 2 ½ day trip."

I smiled at the mention of my Beast, the name I had affectionately adopted for the hunk of junk about to take me over 38 hours southeast of where I was standing. I wasn't worried. The Beast had been in my life since I moved to Forks, and it had surprisingly survived quite a lot. The damn truck lived up to its name admirably.

"I gotta get on the road if I'm gonna make it to Boise before I need to stop. I really don't want to end up in the middle of nowhere for the night." I smiled at Charlie and gave him a quick hug.

The two of us had never been good at goodbyes. We had grown accustomed to them when I was a child, but this one was harder. We had formed a bond over the past couple of years. But even a bond like the one we now shared had its limits, and we both seemed to understand that the distance would be a significant test in maintaining our relationship. And then there was the issue of our communication style. Neither of us talked much on the phone. Charlie was awful with computers.

A sad sigh escaped my lungs before giving him a final hug. He cleared his throat, visibly uncomfortable with the entire situation as he backed up toward the house – a signal to both of us that he was ready to pretend to be prepared to let me go.

I jumped in the cab and brought the Beast to life. Before I could back out of the driveway, I heard Charlie call out over the growl of the motor.

"Bella! Be... careful."

I gave Charlie a slight nod and then an open mouthed smile at his final words, and then backed out of the driveway as I waved a final goodbye. I wasn't naïve. The words Charlie spoke weren't just about the journey, they were more about the destination. But despite Charlie's concerns over my choice, I knew I made the right decision.

Charlie's reservations about my leaving wasn't about the decision to go to college. Choosing to go to college would have been fine, except I chose to attend a school far from everything I knew. At least, that's how Charlie saw things. He had become stiflingly protective since the incredible news story broke. When I told him I wanted to go to college in Louisiana he had pulled a very uncharacteristic move by demanding I explain myself while at the same time letting me know it was absolutely not an option. Charlie was never the type that required much explanation for any of my actions, but I wasn't entirely shocked by the outburst. Our world had changed dramatically over the last couple of years. Myth became reality. Science fiction was fiction no more. I still had a hard time believing that the secret I exhaustively kept over the years was now public knowledge. Well, some of what I had been keeping was public knowledge. They had never gone public with what they were because they were no longer here. Despite their absence, I'm sure the suspicions were there. But no one ever voiced them to me or tried to get my confirmation on the matter. After all, I didn't talk about them anymore. Ever.

I gave Charlie all the right answers to explain myself. LSU - Shreveport had everything a soon-to-be college student would want. It was in the top fifteen of affordable public four year schools in the country, and affordability was a strong determining factor in where I could go. A factor I thought would prove to be the most convincing for my Dad. With the affordability came recognition from the LSU name. Although I wasn't actually going to be attending the main campus in Baton Rouge, it didn't matter – my degree would still contain those same three recognizable letters. As an added bonus, I would have student status for athletic events when I did want to take the short trek to the main campus. If I hadn't appealed to my Dad's pocket book, I tried winning him over with the idea of his daughter falling in love with the sport of football after seeing a night game in Death Valley. When that didn't work, I finally went after his sensible side. The school had undergraduate degrees in all three areas of study I had been torn between. English? Check. Journalism? Double check. Speech? Triple check. The Speech program had an award winning debate team that I thought was an interesting possibility, at the very least. Adding to that sensibility was the fact that LSU Shreveport was on a smaller scale than its parent university, a better fit in my eyes for a girl coming from a small town.

Charlie saw through it all. He argued that affordability couldn't be my main focus or I would have chosen a public school closer to home, or even one online where I would have virtually no living expenses. He scoffed at my mention of football and my feigned interest in going to a game. He smirked at my academic reasoning, arguing that just about every college in the entire country offered those three basic degrees. But the worst was when he actually laughed at my attempt to appeal to his small town life. Charlie brought out the big guns when he bitterly reminded me that I didn't grow up in a small town, I grew up in the big city of Phoenix.

I would have felt defeated if not for one thing – I was nineteen and legally able to make my own decisions. I had taken a year off after High School to work and save up money, knowing I would need it. I didn't tell Charlie about the decision until I already had the acceptance letter. I never applied anywhere else.

Somehow he knew I was really going to Louisiana for one reason, and one reason only. He saw my reactions to the news stories. He wasn't oblivious to the way I turned up the volume on the TV when the news focused on the new civil liberties debates. He wasn't blind to my seemingly inexplicable draw to magazines and books claiming to have expert knowledge on the myth to reality movement. And he knew as well as I did that the majority of the news was coming from the South. In particular, Louisiana.

And a part of me knew that he knew. About them. Maybe he thought I believed I would find them there. But what he couldn't possibly know is that I didn't want to find them. What he couldn't understand, and what I couldn't explain, was that I just wanted to find a door to their world again.

Yes, they had unceremoniously ejected me from the world I became inextricably intertwined with before anyone else even knew their world existed. True, they left me hollow and broken, and I vowed to never speak of them again. But even so, I couldn't seem to let it go. Oh, I could let them go – just as easily as they had done with me. But I missed the excitement of it all. Did their world have danger? Check. Adventure? Double Check. Intrigue? Triple Check. They might all be dead - uh, undead - but it wasn't until I had been thrust into their world so abruptly that I felt truly alive.

No, I wasn't going there to find them. I was going to Shreveport to find me.

End Notes:

I've been toying with this idea for some time. The Prologue is MUCH heavier than I anticipate the story being, if I decide to continue it. Just thought I'd put this Prologue out there to see if it piques any interest – if it does, please review and let me know!