anon plss! didn't you have another au, something about vampire hunters?
dear anon, I have so many AUs. Which is weird because I'm mostly a canon-compliant content creator.
You are thinking of the Vamp Hunters AU, where Charlie Swan comes from a long line of vampire hunters and is training his best friend Billy's son Jacob to be a vampire hunter. The vampire hunting order that Charlie belongs to was founded by Pastor Cullen and protection for Carlisle was written into the laws. This was a way to have something akin to a "treaty" without the gross power dynamics and re-writing a real tribe's history. So Charlie knows allll about vampires and the Cullens when Bella moves to Forks, but in order to protect her from a life of vampire hunting, he just has to play dumb about the whole thing.
There is the original post and then three ficlet follow-ups.
There's also the Old Vampire Rules AU where vampires are not made by being bitten, but are created more by chance based on old folklore methods like being cursed, having an improper burial, being murdered, or having bronze red hair. This one is the most ~complete although predictably I stopped writing it when we would have switched to modern day Bella/Edward stuff because that's not what I'm here for at the end of the day.
old vampire rules
more old vampire rules
old vampire rules pt 3 (Rosalie)
old vampire rules 4 (Emmett)
old vampires rules 5 (The Curse)
old vampire rules 6 (Edward)
old vampire rules 7 (Jasper)
old vampire rule 8 (The Witch)
And then the new au, where a lonely vampire Bella turns innocent humans to become her ideal vampire family, taking the whole 'the Cullens exist to serve Bella/Bella's story' to the horror extreme.
Remember when I said I had a really out there idea? This is it. I blame @volturialice‘s time paradox post.
Alice shrugged. "I think maybe I was a witch."
"What?"
"I don't remember my human life at all," Alice explained. "But I just sort of know that I've always been able to do this, to see the future. Doesn't that make me a witch?"
"I suppose . . ." Jasper drawled. He couldn't deny that she was magic, but 'witch' didn't feel right. 'Fairy,' 'pixie,' perhaps even 'imp'--these felt more accurate.
"So I think that's why I came back as a vampire. Witches come back after they die. But I don't have any idea how I died. I woke up alone, and saw you, and then I saw Carlisle, and that's where we're going to go."
"It still seems far-fetched to me," Jasper said. "No human blood? Living in a house? Like a family?"
"I've seen it," Alice insisted. "It's where we belong. It's where we've always been meant to go."
"You said the future isn't set in stone," Jasper countered.
"That's true most of the time. But sometimes things just have to happen a certain way," she said with the air of a mystic. "Sometimes people are just who they are, and there is only one choice they could ever make. Like me and you. It was always going to happen, some way, somehow."
"If I had stayed human I'd have been an old man before you could have met me."
"Then maybe we'd meet in a different life," she said, climbing on his lap and wrapping her thin arms around his neck. "Maybe we've been dancing around this for eons, always just missing each other, and only now that we're both immortal can it finally happen."
* * *
The witch knew she was going to die. She wasn't particularly bothered by this--she had died and been born so many times already. She was a little annoyed it would be another death by fire, though. Without a body to reanimate, she wouldn't come back as a vampire. She knew that's where her destiny lay--she had seen it. It was a vision so far in the future she couldn't entirely make sense of it, a world of horseless carriages and women with short hair and short dresses and two blond men, one of whom, she was certain, was standing before her now, although he was still a mere boy.
The witch looked at the father and the son, and she saw it all play out so clearly. The vampire raid gone wrong, the son killed ten years from now--by then the boy would be the man of her visions. The story could end there, with a young life cut short and a hasty burial in his father's churchyard. But she has seen another future. The blond man comes back, red-eyed and horrified. He tames the thirst. Becomes a golden-eyed doctor. The future is not set in stone, but these things are: this particular young man could never make any other choices but these. And then she saw herself and her multiple future incarnations, always with this strange gift of future sight. She has to be patient. Someday in the far future she will finally die the RIGHT way and come back as a vampire. And then she'd find him again. She needed him; he would teach her, and the other blond man, how to tame their thirsts. They'd be a family. It was all so clear, and she wanted it so desperately.
She felt a bit bad that it would take so long; the pastor's son would endure a great deal of loneliness until things worked out just right. There would be others who joined them, but they were the results of choices that had yet to be made, they weren't set in stone, they existed only as tantalizing possibilities, yet she loved them anyway. But the only way any of this would ever happen is if this boy in front of her became a vampire, and the only way he becomes a vampire is if she curses him.
Did speaking the future she had seen aloud make it a curse, or was it more of a self-fulfilling prophecy? She wasn't sure. But she had seen it would work; whatever magic governed these sort of things would shrug its cosmic shoulders and say 'close enough' and the man would come back as a vampire if she spoke the words aloud.
If they thought her a witch, then she would play the part.
“Condemn my body to the flames if you will,” she cried. “But I will not suffer long. It is you who will suffer. You will go to your grave knowing that your child, this child, has been condemned to something far worse. In 10 years, Death will claim him, but Death will not keep him. Heed my words! My death will seal his fate. He too shall burn!”
As the flames rose around her she smiled at the wide-eyed boy, knowing someday they'd meet again.
* * *
Alice stood on the front porch, clutching Jasper's hand in excitement, when the blond, golden-eyed doctor finally opened the door.
His eyes settled on Alice's face, and for just a moment there was the faintest wisp of recognition. He reached into the depths of faded human memory chasing after it, but it flitted away before he could grasp it. He shook his head, dismissing the strange feeling as deja vu, and looked at the two vampires on the doorstep.
I keep referring to Carlisle becoming a vampire because he was ‘cursed by a witch.’ I meant it. Part of the Old Vampire Rules AU.
The pastor stood with his 13-year-old son, watching with icy calm as the witch was tied to the stake.
His son, in contrast, looked uneasy. This didn’t feel right. It never felt right.
In the years to come, the son would realize that the father was rounding up innocent people and accusing them of being monsters. But this time his father had found an actual witch.
It was not unusual for the doomed witches to point an accusatory finger at Pastor Cullen or wish him harm. But there was something about this woman’s demeanor that felt different. She didn’t appear angry or frightened. She seemed determined.
“Condemn my body to the flames if you will,” she said. “But I will not suffer long. It is you who will suffer. You will go to your grave knowing that your child, this child—” she pointed at the fair-haired young boy, “has been condemned to something far worse. In 10 years, Death will claim him, but Death will not keep him. Heed my words! My death will seal his fate. He too shall burn!”
Pastor Cullen looked at his son with an uncharacteristically tender pang of anxiety, but then nodded to the executioners. He could not allow himself to appear weak. The punishment must go forward.
Over the next 10 years, Carlisle grew increasingly skeptical of the existence of witches, and by the time his 23rd birthday rolled around in February of 1663, he put little stock in it.
It was only four months later, in June, 10 years to the day since the death of the witch, that Death did indeed claim Carlisle Cullen.
While he doubted the existence of witches, he had found evidence of what he believed to be vampires lurking underneath the city. He had chased a suspected creature down an alleyway when the monster doubled back and snapped his neck. He died instantly. The monster did not even bother to drink his blood--there was another among his company who had far sweeter blood, and the monster killed all the other men quickly so he could savor every last drop.
His body was found and, bearing no marks of the monster’s bite, was buried rather than burned. Perhaps Pastor Cullen should have insisted, but he felt by burying the body of his only child he would at least avert the “he too shall burn” portion of the witch’s curse, not realizing that burning would have saved him. As so often happens, one meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it.
Carlisle Cullen was buried next to his mother, with a cross in one hand and a Bible on his chest. He was committed to the earth with a prayer, but it was not enough to keep the curse at bay.
* * *
After having been dead for three days, Carlisle Cullen sucked in a breath and tried to sit up, but he was confined to the coffin in which he had been buried.
He panicked, thinking he had been buried alive, and went to bang on the lid of the coffin, only for his fist to go straight through it, a shower of dirt falling on him. He found it surprisingly easy to break through the rest of the lid and claw his way up through the earth. He pulled himself to the surface gasping, although it was a human habit—he no longer needed to breathe.
He realized what had happened, what the witch had cursed him with, when the sound of the city's heartbeats and the scent of the city's blood caused a fire to erupt in his throat. The burning to which he was condemned was not a fire—it was a thirst.
The last thing he remembered was accidentally getting between a mama bear and her cubs.
When he awoke three days later, he found the gashes in his stomach had healed but he still didn’t feel quite right.
He knew he was different somehow, and he was pretty sure he shouldn’t go home, although Ma was probably worried sick about him. He didn’t like to think about that, never seeing Ma or Pa or his brothers and sister again. But that would have been the case if he had stayed dead, too.
He had been wandering around the woods for a day or two, trying to figure out just what it was he was hungry (or was it thirsty?) for, when he met face to face with an ethereally beautiful blonde woman.
“Well, shit,” he said. “You must be the angel sent to come take me back for judgement.”
Part of him didn’t mind the idea so much if she was the one escorting him to his almost certain doom. Hell didn’t seem so bad if you got to have an angel with you.
“What on EARTH are you talking about?”
“Well, seeing as I died—bear tore me up real bad—but then I didn’t stay dead, I figure there must have been some sort of mistake and you’ve come to drag me back to stand before God or whatever to face my final judgement.”
The angel looked at him for a moment, and then burst into laughter. It was the best damned sound he had ever heard.
“I’m not an angel,” she said.
“Coulda fooled me.”
The angel’s expression softened. “Do you understand what happened to you?”
“Like I said: I ran afoul of a mama bear, I died, and now I’m . . . not dead? Or only a little dead?”
“You poor thing. I’m Rosalie,” she said. It was the perfect name for an angel. “And I’m like you. A . . . a vampire.”
“A vampire?”
“It’s not a life I would have chosen for myself,” she said, and he hated how sad she looked, but admired the fire in her eyes. “But I can take you back to my family, and we can help you. But first, let me show you how we hunt.”
"Lead the way, Angel. I’m Emmett.”
* * *
“I’m mostly just upset that I can’t turn into a bat,” Emmett said to the assembled Cullens after his new status as a vampire had been explained to him. “And I’m mighty glad that Rosie here was just bringing me to see a doctor—I was worried she was an angel taking me to God for judgement.”
The red-headed kid, Edward, snickered.
“I’m glad that Rosalie found you,” the doctor, Carlisle, said. “It can be traumatizing to wake up as one of our kind and have no one there to explain things. How long were you in the woods?”
“I died maybe four days ago? I’ve been awake . . . undead. . .whatever for a day or so.” Emmett frowned a moment. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy to be a vampire rather than really, truly dead, but how exactly did this happen to me?”
“Without knowing your particular circumstances it’s hard to say,” Carlisle said with a sigh. “It’s possible that not having a proper burial could have been the cause, but there are many others ways. Are you by chance the seventh son of a seventh son?”
“Nope. Not unless Pa’s got a couple more sons we don’t know about.”
“I don’t know how to ask this delicately,” Carlisle said, “but did you lead a life of sin?”
“My Ma sure thought so!” Emmett answered with a booming laugh. “Do you think that was it? I guess I’m getting the judgment I thought I was in for after all. Although I gotta say, this doesn’t seem all that bad.”
“You’re welcome to stay with us, if you like,” the doctor’s wife, Esme, said. She reminded him of Ma, somehow, despite her too-young face. “This life can be lonely. It’s easier to bear with others to help and support you.”
Emmett glanced at Rosalie before answering Esme. “I’d like that.”
Rosalie let out a breath she hadn’t realized she had been holding. She’d like that, too.
In typical I’m-mostly-here-for-the-supporting-characters fashion, I just realized I never specifically addressed Carlisle finding Edward in this AU lmao.
Dr. Cullen always made sure to check the morgue at least once every shift. He’d never actually found anything out of the ordinary, and didn’t even know what exactly he was looking for, but he checked anyhow, as he thought that having someone to explain what had happened might make the whole thing a little less horrific and, maybe, just maybe, he could nudge the new vampire in a more humanitarian direction. None of the vampires he had met in his travels had much interest in or patience for his particular diet, but perhaps a new vampire would be more . . . open . . . to the idea.
He was heading down to do his usual check after a weekend away hunting when he caught a strange scent--different from the decay one might expect. As he pondered this development, he was startled by a dull thud from the direction of morgue. He abandoned human pretense and rushed there with preternatural speed to find a red-haired boy, only sixteen or seventeen years old, on the floor tangled in the white sheet in which he had been wrapped. He had red eyes to match.
Dr. Cullen did not have much experience with newborns, but he had heard they could be dangerous, volatile. He held up his hands in a gesture of innocence and stepped toward the boy.
“I know you must be confused. Frightened. But I can explain everything. I can help.”
“Dr. Cullen! What am I doing here? Is this the morgue?”
Carlisle blinked in surprise. “Edward? Edward Masen?”
He hasn’t recognized the Masen boy at first. Carlisle had been told that the transformation changed one’s appearance, making them more alluring to human prey, but he had never seen a before and after until that moment. Aside from that, the boy’s most prominent feature had been his green eyes; without them, he looked like a different person. Carlisle had been treating Edward and his mother, victims of the raging influenza pandemic. He realized, with a pang of sadness, that they must have passed away over the weekend, while he was away from the hospital.
“What is happening?” the boy, Edward, asked as he stood up, the white sheet wrapped around him like a toga. “One minute I was sick, the next . . .”
“I have a change of clothes in my office,” Carlisle said. “Let me fetch them for you and then . . . and then I will do my best to try and explain.”
* * *
“Why did this happen to me?” a distraught Edward Masen asked the elder vampire—vampire!—who a few days ago he had known only as the physician who tended to him and his sick mother on the night shift.
Carlisle frowned. A life of sin seemed unlikely, given that he was only seventeen, and he had heard from his mother, Elizabeth, that he was a good student and a piano prodigy. He didn’t think “still in the morgue and not buried yet” counted as “improper burial” although admittedly the rules were vague and governed more by magic and chance than by logic. Then there was of course the issue of his red hair.
“My what?”
“Pardon?”
“You were talking about how I might have been damned because of a life of sin but you didn’t think I was the type, and that being held in the morgue didn’t seem like an improper burial, but that my red hair might have damned me.”
Carlisle looked at the boy in slacked jawed amazement for a moment and then thought: I didn’t say any of those things; I thought them. Can you. . . hear me?
“What do you mean you thought them--?”
My God! I think this boy can read my mind.
Edward leaned over, his gangly elbows on his knees as he ran his hands through the hair that doomed him. “I can’t believe this.” He looked back up at Dr. Cullen. “What do I do now? Where do I go? How do I live like . . . this?”
Carlisle always checked the morgues at the hospital where he worked, but he hadn’t expected the first new vampire he found to be an orphaned seventeen-year-old boy who could read minds. He had been expecting a peer, a friend, not a . . . son? But he obviously couldn’t abandon this poor boy. He seemed so lost, so helpless. Elizabeth would have wanted Carlisle to look out for him, and so he would.
“You can stay with me. As long as you like. I can help you . . . adjust, to this new reality.” I think it will be pleasant to have some company at long last, even if this situation does present some unique challenges. If he’s as good as his mother said, he’ll surely agree with my hunting methods. Who would have ever imagined things would end up this way when that witch cursed me all those centuries ago!
“What was that about a witch?”
We can’t all be red-heads, Edward. “Come along, you must be thirsty.”
How do you solve a problem like Maria[’s vampire army in an AU where biting someone doesn’t make them a vampire]? Pet Sematary! But make it VAMPIRES.
The grave was shallow--probably less than two feet deep--and there was only enough earth sprinkled over him to cover him. He sat up, blinking the dirt from his eyes and spitting it from his mouth.
He tried to remember how he had ended up in a shallow grave in what appeared to be the middle of nowhere. There was a vague memory of three beautiful women, a confusing conversation, and then . . . darkness.
Another grave stirred, and the creature that sat up looked over at him. The creature's eyes were brilliant scarlet red; were his eyes the same color? He wasn't sure, but he was suddenly overwhelmed with a feeling of fear and confusion, double what he had been experiencing upon awakening, but also a strange territorial rage. Not entirely understanding what he was doing, he hissed at the other creature; it growled in return. Moving much more quickly than he would have thought possible, he found himself with his foot on the other creature's back, his hands around its neck, milliseconds from twisting its head clean off.
"That was very impressive," said a beautiful raven-haired woman, one of the women he remembered, with eyes that were more burgundy than scarlet. "But I can't have you killing all my other newborns. Let him go."
He released the creature and it scurried away. "I'm sorry, ma'am."
The woman smiled a breathtaking smile and walked up to him. He felt . . . confident. But he couldn't tell if these were his own feelings or . . . someone else's? That didn't make sense, did it?
She looked up at him, placing her hands on his chest, as he looked down at her in awe.
"I'm very happy you were one of the ones who came back, Jasper."
Two more graves began to stir, and Jasper sunk into an instinctual crouch, a snarl ripping from his throat, ready to fight again.
"Oh Maria,” said one of the other beautiful burgundy-eyed women. “You chose well. He’s perfect.”
* * *
After 90 years with Maria he finally left. He had traveled for a time with other vampires: Peter, who was like a brother to him, and Peter's mate Charlotte. But he still felt . . . lost. He was a natural at war and death, an instinctual, efficient killer even beyond the norm for his species. But he also had to feel the emotions of all his victims, human and vampire alike. Perhaps the ground in which Maria had buried him was even more cursed than she realized, or perhaps he was being punished for the sins of his human life. He tried to kill less frequently to stave off the guilt and depression that came with experiencing the last emotions of his victims, but the thirst would always get the better of him in the end.
He was traveling alone in Philadelphia when a thunderstorm rolled in. The rain wouldn't have bothered him, but casually strolling through the city in the middle of a downpour would have made him look suspicious, so he ducked into a diner. His eyes were dark enough not to attract attention, but it also meant it was thirsty, and he still found self-control a bit of a challenge. He didn't have time to worry about it, though, as the instant he stepped inside he was nearly knocked over by the excitement, joy and love radiating from a tiny woman at the counter.
She hopped down and, with a big smile, approached him without an ounce of fear. "You've kept me waiting a long time."
"I'm sorry, ma'am," he answered. He should have been on edge, being approached by another vampire; yes this woman was a vampire, although her eyes were not the right color. But he couldn't feel any fear or anxiety over the flood of love and joy and excitement which he realized, somehow, were her feelings for him.
She held out her hand. He took it.
"I'm Alice. And I'm so glad to finally meet you, Jasper! I was starting to think you weren't ever going to show up! Don't worry. Everything's going to be so much better from now on. There's this vampire, Carlisle, he was cursed by a witch a long time ago, and he--"
Nothing she was saying was making any sense, but in that moment he didn't care. Her excitement and joy and love were becoming his own, mixed in with another unfamiliar emotion: hope.
"Alice," he echoed, smiling as he said it.
I just had a really . . . out there idea for the Old Vampire Rules AU. I can’t decide if I want to go with it or not. It’s really weird. It involves certain afterlife philosophy that isn’t addressed in Twilight at all.
And also stretches the premise of Alice seeing the future really god-damn far. Hmmmmmm.
I mean it’s not Renesmee weird but it’s weird.
OH but I also just thought of a way to tone it down and still kind of loosely use it that might work better and be more in keeping with Twilight canon.
Gonna ponder some more.
I love the old vampire rules. Thank you for writing them and sharing them
You’re welcome! It’s a fun thought experiment, especially when you get to someone like Bella who wants to become a vampire on purpose, or Maria or Victoria who want to create vampires on purpose. With these old rules it’s not as simple as just biting someone, and there doesn’t seem to be a guarantee.
I’m imagining Maria like, trying everything at once but still only 50% of the people she kills actually come back as vampires and she doesn’t know which methods are more reliable than others because she’s not using control groups and rigorous scientific studies.
I’m trying to figure out Emmett now. It’s probably funnier if he just wakes up in the forest and Rosalie finds him when he’s already a newborn.
“Hey! Pretty blonde girl! Wanna watch me pull this tree out of the ground and just HEAVE IT clear across the forest!? BTW any idea why I’m so thirsty and came back from the dead? It’s been a real confusing couple of days.”
