The Man in the Long Black Coat, Chapter Eighteen

"She's sleeping."

"How can you know that? I can't hear a damn thing."

"I just know."

"That ain't good enough. I'm going up there to knock on the door."

"That's a mistake, Charlie. Trust me. She's sleeping and she needs the rest."

"Trust you? Listen, young man. I admire your apparent devotion to my daughter's safety. Really I do. But do not ask me to trust you. I am far from that place, and I don't rightly know if I'll ever get there."

Charlie reached for the door again. Edward put a hand on his arm and stopped him.

"Speaking of mistakes," Charlie said. He flexed his arm and eyed Edward's hand and didn't stop staring until Edward removed it.

"You want me to stay here with you," Charlie said, "you'd better give me a damn good reason."

Edward sighed. He considered his predicament. He was sitting in a cop car outside the Cullen's cabin in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, with the father of the human girl he'd fallen for, the guy who'd just helped him kill a legendary vampire, and he was stuck trying to explain how he had magically read the thoughts of the vampires in the house when the truth was he wasn't even sure how it worked himself.

He decided to start with vampires.

"You already know," he said. "Or you suspect, at least. You have for more than twenty years."

"I don't have the faintest notion what you're talking about."

"The war, Charlie. You saw it. Your entire squad saw the results. But none of you wanted to believe."

"Saw what? Quit playing games and tell me what the hell you're talking about or I'll handcuff you right here and go about my business alone."

"Vampires use wars as a cover," Edward said. He looked into the forest, closed his eyes in remembrance. "It's easy to find victims. Easy to cover it up. Even when the soldiers see, they never believe."

"Now wait a goddamn minute."

"Just be quiet and listen, Charlie. I told you I would explain everything. That's what I'm about to do."

He turned his head so Charlie could look into his eyes as he spoke, see the honesty there.

"I've been a vampire since 1918. That family in there, protecting Bella right now, they're all vampires, too. The big guy you shot in the stomach. Vampire. The girl I shot. Vampire. The man you helped me kill in your front yard. The one whose body you set on fire. Vampire.

"We are stronger and we are faster than humans. We are very hard to kill. And yes, we drink blood. But many of us are powerful in other ways, Charlie. Alice, the girl who is fast becoming Bella's first real friend, sees the future. Aro, the vampire leader we killed, could see a person's every memory simply with a touch. I read minds."

"You've gone off the deep end, boy. I'll be sure you get the help you need when we get back to Forks. The state has a good mental health program. I promise to put in a word, once your trial’s over."

Edward smiled.

"January 1991. It sticks in your mind, doesn't it Charlie? You can't stop thinking about what you saw."

Charlie said nothing.

"Your unit was in Kuwait. It was a few days after the American invasion. You'd performed well. Defeated an entire Iraqi platoon. Mostly, though, they surrendered. You kept them prisoner. Waited for directions from command.

"But they never came, did they? Not before every one of your prisoners was slaughtered.

"An animal, you told yourselves. Nothing else could have done it. Nothing else could move that fast. No human could do what you saw being done. A single figure, alone, massacring dozens of prisoners.

"You were right in one respect. It wasn't a human. It was a vampire, Charlie."

"How? How can you possibly know about that? It's classified. All of it. Officially, the Army never acknowledged that we'd even taken prisoners, let alone what happened to them."

The two men sat in silence.

What if he's telling the truth, Charlie thought.

"I am," Edward said.

"You are what?"

"Telling the truth."

Holy shit. That's creepy.

"I thought it was creepy too, at first. But I've learned that it’s a useful tool to have when you're on the run."

Wonder why he's been on the run.

"Because I don't fit, Charlie. In that sense, Bella and I are alike."

"Stop doing that," Charlie said. "It's freaking me out."

He sighed. "I'd always wondered. I thought, hell, I don't know what I thought. I went through every possibility in my mind. There just aren't any animals in that part of the world that could do that, you know?

"A werewolf, I thought. A zombie. And yeah, maybe a vampire. It sure would explain a lot."

Edward laughed. "Mind if I smoke?" He drew a Marlboro light from its pack and put it between his lips.

"Not in my car you don't," Charlie said.

Edward opened the door and stepped outside. He patted his pockets, looking for his Zippo, and leaned against Bella’s pickup.

Charlie got out of the car and tossed Edward the lighter. "You forgot this."

"Thank you." Edward lit up. The smoke hovered over him like a raincloud in the still air.

Charlie leaned against the police car. "Your big friend. The one I shot. He healed. I told myself I must have missed him. Maybe I just clipped him. That's why he was able to get up and talk to me. He told me to burn that corpse before he ran off to chase the female you wounded.

"The look in his eyes told me he knew what he was talking about. I burned it, but I don’t know why."

"It's a lot to take in," Edward said. "I know."

"First time I killed, it was a garter snake that had snuck its way into the laundry room. Momma screamed. Daddy wasn't home. I saw it wasn’t poisonous. Went to the shed out back. Grabbed a shovel. I cut its head off and went back to my peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I was seven years old."

Charlie paused. "You got another one of those?"

Edward handed him the pack and the Zippo.

"Killing never bothered me much,” Charlie said, exhaling smoke while he talked. “I suppose it was because I figured the things I was killing were meant to be killed. I grew up hunting and fishing. Later on, after high school, I joined the Army. It was either that or the paper mill, maybe salmon fishing in Alaska. Ain't a whole lot of options in a small town for a guy like me. I took a liking to the long guns. The rifles. The Army had the sense to put me through sniper school. I'd always been a good shot."

He took another drag on the Marlboro, flicked the butt to the ground, crushed it with his boot.

"It wasn't much different in the Army. Not at first, anyway. I killed because it was my job. I killed because the things I killed needed killing. Special Forces came calling, and I signed up with enthusiasm.

"Nicaragua. Columbia. Grenada. Panama. I killed dozens. Maybe more.

"Then came the Gulf War. These people weren't fighting back. They just wanted food. Clean clothes. It didn't feel right, killing them."

He stopped and shook his head. "That night you talked about? I can't get it out of my head. Dream about it damn near every night, still. We had twenty seven prisoners. Supposedly Saddam's elite, the Republican guard. Truth was, they were just a bunch of scared kids.

"I had my guys clean 'em up. Feed 'em. I took the night shift guarding them because it seemed like the right thing to do. Lead from the front, that's what my daddy always said.

"It came from out of nowhere. Like it had been there all along. Red eyes. Moved so fast you couldn't hardly see it.  

"I got off a couple of shots, but it didn't seem to do any good. I don't miss, mind you. I never miss. But whatever that beast was didn't give two hoots about me and my weapon.

"Whatever it was killed all twenty seven prisoners in less than two minutes. It took off when my guys woke up. Left behind nothing but a pile of mutilated bodies.

"I never could figure out why it ran away. But after tonight, I'm gonna guess it was the sight of a rocket-propelled grenade launcher. If a shotgun loaded with armor-piercing rounds can do one of you people in, I suppose an RPG ain't gonna bounce off, neither."

Charlie leaned back on the hood of his police cruiser and put his hands in his pockets. The first hint of dawn showed over his shoulder, framing him in the glow. Edward studied his face as he probed his thoughts, curious.

What he’d just told Charlie was a lot to take in, but the man seemed to be taking it in stride, as if he wasn’t surprised at all.

“I told you I had my suspicions,” Charlie said, looking across at Edward. “You understand? I’ve seen enough in my life to know that it ain’t always gonna make sense, the things that happen. Renee, Phil, that whole mess.” He sighed. “That’s pure evil, right there. A man like that, well he’s more dangerous than any vampire. A man with no soul, is what he was.

“Now I don’t know you well, and you’ve still got to answer for Mike Newton, Waylon Forge and, to a lesser extent, Tyler Crowley, though lord knows he probably deserved what you gave him. But even with all that, something tells me you ain’t like Phil. You ain’t soulless, Edward. I don’t know if you’re a good man or not. Only time and your actions will tell me that.”

He ceased leaning against the car and stood up straight, taking two steps forward. He took his hands from his pockets and put one on Edward’s forearm.

“You asked me to trust you earlier. I can’t do that. Not yet. But I’m gonna promise to try. You’ve done me right. You’ve done Bella right.”

“Not yet he hasn’t, Charlie.” Bella ran down the steps and jumped into Edward’s arms. She closed her eyes and kissed him.

Edward stole a glance over at Charlie, who quickly looked away.

Bella broke the kiss and Edward laughed as he let her down carefully.

"Sorry about that, Charlie," he said.

"It's all right, I suppose. There ain't much in this world that ruffles my feathers, Edward. You ought to have figured that out by now."

"Hold on a second here," Bella said. She punched Edward in the arm, then looked from him to Charlie and back again.

"I never thought I'd see the day when Charlie Swan and Edward Masen were acting like best friends. What the hell is going on?"

-30-

A/N I am almost to 1,000 reviews. This shocks me more than you can possibly know. I didn’t think anyone would like this Edward. I really didn’t. I wrote him for myself alone. Lucky for me, crazy Bella came along for the ride.

Anyway, thank you. Every single one of you.