The digital clock on Mame's nightstand read 4:00 AM.
Outside, the Forks drizzle was a constant, freezing mist. The world was pitched in absolute darkness, long before the dreary gray light of morning would even attempt to breach the canopy.
Mame stood in the dense woods roughly fifty yards behind the Swan residence. With his newly forged Rank C physiology, the biting cold didn't register as a threat, and his eyes easily pierced the gloom. He moved through the wet underbrush in complete silence, his $Anomaly$ skill passively erasing his footprint from the world.
He had a perimeter to build.
According to the fragmented meta-knowledge in his head, the nomadic tracker, James, didn't just stumble upon Bella. Once the hunt began, James stalked her. He tracked her scent right to the edge of Charlie's property, slipping through these exact woods to observe her through her bedroom window.
Mame wasn't going to let the vampire get that far.
Soft Chime.
Mame opened his Inventory. The grid hovered in the dark air, glowing with a faint blue light. He reached his hand into the third slot and pulled out a spool of high-tensile wire and a heavy, sealed canister of chemical accelerant.
He knelt by a pair of ancient, moss-covered cedars that created a natural chokepoint on the path leading toward the house.
"Let's see how much you like the heat," Mame muttered.
He set to work on his first Preemptive Incineration trap. He rigged the tripwire low to the ground, connecting it to a crude but highly effective pressurized release valve on the accelerant canister. Above it, he suspended a modified road flare and a striker mechanism. If a vampire moving at superhuman speed hit the wire, they wouldn't just be sprayed with highly flammable fluid—they would be instantly ignited.
It was brutal, effective, and exactly what Sam Uley had indirectly suggested. But Mame didn't stop there. He was a Fate-Breaker, and his previous life had given him a head full of fictional lore. He wanted to know exactly what the rules of this universe were.
He walked twenty yards to the east, finding another probable approach vector.
Reaching into his inventory, he withdrew a small, modified pressurized spray bottle. It smelled absolutely putrid. Mame had spent an hour the previous afternoon concentrating pure garlic extract into a viciously potent oil, pressurizing it with a modified bicycle pump mechanism.
In classic vampire lore, garlic was a deadly repellant. In the Twilight universe, he knew the Cullens ate human food occasionally just to keep up appearances, though they hated it. But what would happen if a vial of hyper-concentrated garlic oil was sprayed directly into the ultra-sensitive olfactory glands of a tracking vampire at two hundred miles an hour?
"At the very least," Mame whispered, securing the nozzle to a branch at face-height, "it's going to be incredibly annoying."
He carefully set the tension wire. If James hit this, he was getting a face full of culinary biological warfare.
Finally, Mame moved to the western flank of the property line. This was the trap he was most curious about.
He opened his inventory again and withdrew a thick plastic syringe filled with dark, coagulated crimson fluid.
Dead Man's Blood. In the Supernatural TV series he had watched in his past life, the blood of a dead man acted as a paralytic poison to vampires. He had no idea if Meyer's vampires shared the same physiological weakness, but he wasn't going to leave the stone unturned.
Acquiring it hadn't been glamorous. While he was at the Forks Community Hospital checking on Bella yesterday, he had used his $Anomaly$ cloaking to slip down into the basement morgue. The coroner was holding a John Doe from a fatal car accident that had happened a week prior. With his Rank C speed and his inventory system, extracting a syringe of the necrotic blood and vanishing had taken less than thirty seconds.
Mame rigged the syringe to a spring-loaded splinter trap hidden in the bark of a pine tree. It was designed to shatter and drive the needle into whatever hit the trigger line. If a vampire's marble skin was too hard, it would break. But if they were moving fast enough to impale themselves on the trap's momentum, the dead blood would enter their venom-laced system.
Soft Chime.
[Perimeter Established]
Traps Deployed: 3
Types: Incendiary (Lethal), Olfactory Disruptor (Tactical/Annoyance), Necrotic Pathogen (Experimental).
Notice: System acknowledges host's initiative in cross-referencing multi-versal lore. Data will be recorded upon trap activation.
Mame dismissed the window, the blue light dissolving into the morning mist.
He wiped his hands on his dark jeans and looked back toward the Swan house. The lights were still off. Charlie and Bella were sleeping soundly, completely unaware that their backyard had just been turned into a supernatural minefield.
The gray light of dawn was finally beginning to bleed through the trees. Mame stretched his neck, his Rank C muscles feeling loose and primed. The traps were set for James, but James wasn't the immediate problem.
Today, Mame had to go back to Forks High School. He had to walk into the cafeteria, sit with his sister, and look Edward Cullen dead in the eye, knowing that the vampire had saved her life—and knowing that Edward knew Mame was turning into a weapon.
Mame turned and jogged back toward the house, slipping through the back door just as Charlie's alarm clock began to buzz upstairs.
The kitchen of the Swan house was warm, a sharp contrast to the freezing, damp woods Mame had just spent the last two hours turning into a supernatural minefield.
He stood at the sink, vigorously scrubbing his hands with dish soap to get the oily residue of the accelerant and concentrated extract off his skin. As he dried his hands on a towel, he heard the familiar, slightly uneven thud of Bella's footsteps coming down the stairs.
She shuffled into the kitchen, wearing an oversized sweater and looking like she had barely slept. She poured herself a cup of coffee, but as she stepped closer to Mame, she paused. Her nose wrinkled in confusion.
"Mame," Bella said, squinting at him over the rim of her mug. "Why do you smell faintly of... garlic and gasoline?"
Charlie, who had been sitting at the small dining table reading the morning sports section, lowered his newspaper. He took a sip of his black coffee and eyed Mame with mild amusement.
"Were you out there trying to cook something at five in the morning?" Charlie asked, an eyebrow raised. "You trying to invent a new barbecue recipe in the freezing rain?"
Mame leaned against the counter, his expression completely deadpan despite the absurdity of the situation. He thought of the high-tensile tripwires, the dead man's blood, and the literal explosive traps rigged fifty yards away.
"Something like that," Mame replied smoothly, allowing a faint, humored smirk to touch his face. "I'm still working on the ratios. If I get good enough at it, I'll let you guys taste it."
Charlie chuckled, shaking his head and returning to his paper. "Well, keep the explosives away from the house. And speaking of the house—" Charlie folded the newspaper and looked up, his tone shifting into his authoritative, police-chief mode.
"Bella is staying home today," Charlie announced. "Dr. Cullen said to keep an eye on you, and after yesterday's stunt with the van, you need the rest."
Bella looked relieved, taking a long sip of her coffee.
Charlie then pointed a stern finger directly at Mame. "You, on the other hand, are going to school."
"Dad, I have things I need to—"
"No," Charlie interrupted firmly. "You missed nearly three days of classes playing hide-and-seek with the Quileutes. I'm the Chief of Police, Mame, but even I can't abuse my authority this much to cover your truancy. You've got missed tests and assignments piling up, and you need to get them all done before Friday."
Mame's jaw tightened. The last thing he wanted to do was sit in AP History while three nomadic vampires were potentially inching closer to Forks. But Charlie was right; staying home indefinitely would draw too much suspicion from the school board, the town, and most dangerously, the Cullens.
If he wanted to maintain his cover as an ordinary high school student, he had to play the part.
"Fine," Mame conceded, grabbing an apple from the fruit bowl on the counter. He took a bite, his $Rank$ $C$ jaw strength snapping cleanly through the fruit. "I'll go."
"Good," Charlie grunted, standing up and grabbing his duty belt. "Keep your nose clean, kid. I'll see you both tonight."
As the front door clicked shut behind Charlie, Mame looked at Bella. She was staring out the window at her dented red truck in the driveway, completely unaware of the invisible war starting to form around her.
Mame tossed the apple core into the trash. He grabbed his backpack, making sure his inventory was fully stocked and his mind was prepared for the psychic static he was about to project.
It was time to go back into the lion's den.
The fluorescent lights of Forks High School hummed a dull, monotonous tune that grated against Mame's newly enhanced Rank C hearing.
He walked down the crowded hallway, his dark jacket still faintly smelling of the damp woods and his experimental traps. Students parted around him, subconsciously giving way to the heavy, dense aura he now projected. He didn't look like the quiet, unassuming adopted Swan kid anymore. He moved with the calculated, predatory grace of a coiled spring.
Mame stepped into his first-period AP History class and immediately locked eyes with Alice Cullen.
She was sitting in her usual seat near the back, her golden eyes wide and unnervingly unblinking. As Mame walked down the aisle and took the empty desk beside her, he could feel the absolute wall of psychic static he was projecting. To her, sitting next to him must have felt like sitting next to a black hole.
For a long moment, the only sound between them was the scratching of the teacher writing the day's syllabus on the chalkboard.
Alice leaned over, her voice a flawless, musical whisper that wouldn't carry past Mame's desk.
"You spent three days with the Quileutes," Alice stated, her tone a mix of intense curiosity and deep unease. She tilted her head, her pixie-like features scrunched in confusion. "You feel... completely different. It's not just the static in my head. Your posture, your breathing. It's like you're vibrating. Are you even the same Mame Swan from a few days ago?"
Mame didn't look at her. He pulled a notebook from his backpack, his movements deliberate and perfectly controlled.
"I haven't changed who I am, Alice," Mame replied, his voice equally quiet but carrying the heavy density of stone. "I just stopped waiting for the world to dictate what happens to my family."
Alice's golden eyes narrowed slightly. "They told you their legends. They told you how to fight."
"They told me what I needed to know," Mame corrected, finally turning his head to look at her. His dark eyes were cold, completely devoid of the fear a normal human should have when looking at a vampire. "Right now, I need to think about what I know about your family. I'm still deciding if I can fully trust you around my sister."
Alice flinched slightly. The Cullens weren't used to being evaluated by humans. They were the ones who did the evaluating.
"Edward saved her life yesterday," Alice whispered defensively. "He exposed us to keep her safe."
"And I'm glad he did," Mame shot back, his tone leaving no room for argument. "But exposing yourselves has consequences. You know it, and I know it. You drew attention to this town."
Mame leaned closer, the faint, lingering scent of concentrated garlic extract and accelerant on his clothes making Alice's ultra-sensitive nose twitch in discomfort.
"Listen to me very carefully, Alice," Mame said, his voice dropping to a dangerous, icy register. "I know there are others out there. Nomads. Trackers. If they come to Forks, and if they try to attack the people I care about..."
Mame let the threat hang in the air for a fraction of a second, letting his absolute, unyielding willpower press against her senses.
"...they are going to find out exactly why your kind had to go into hiding in the first place," Mame finished. "They're going to find out that humans who inherited the will of Helsing are still alive."
Alice froze.
The name hit her like a physical blow. The Cullens were old, and they knew the dark, whispered histories of their own kind. The name Helsing wasn't a fairy tale to vampires; it was a ghost story. It represented the terrifying, impossible anomaly of a human who could hunt the hunters.
She stared at Mame, genuine shock fracturing her usually composed demeanor. She tried to search the immediate future, desperately looking for a vision of what Mame was capable of, but as always, she hit a solid wall of white noise.
The bell rang, signaling the start of class.
Mame turned his attention back to the chalkboard, picking up his pen. He had delivered the message. The Cullens now knew exactly where he stood, and more importantly, they knew he wasn't bluffing.
Beside him, Alice Cullen sat in complete, stunned silence for the rest of the hour.