Bella Swan stalked forward, her heart racing. No, no actually it wasn't Bella Swan. No, it was the predator. The predator stalked forward. Her prey was so close, she could feel his life through the air. Through the fog, she could almost feel his heart beat.
The park was dark, shadowed, the few lamps providing little light through the thickening fog. The predator felt at home, hidden, undetected.
The man in front of her walked on, oblivious to the fate he was about to endure. As the predators muscled tightened, and her breath caught in her throat, preparing for the final lunge, Bella escaped through, fighting back the predator momentarily, collapsing onto the ground.
"No." she muttered to herself through gritted teeth. "No I'm not doing it again."
But she looked down at her cupped hands as she sat on her heels. They were so pale. She could see her blue veins sticking out from under the skin. And she felt so weak. So terribly, terribly weak. Her stomach spasmed and she groaned, wrapping her arms around her torso and bending over, trying to ease the horrible agony.
And when she lifted her head again, she was no longer Bella. She was the predator once again. And she did not want to stop the hunt. Because the predator loved to hunt.
So when she prepared for her fatal attack, she did not stop herself. Instead she launched herself through the fog, feeling the damp particles slap her face as she shifted through the darkness with inhuman strength. Her heartbeat thudded against her chest, her pulse going wild in her neck and she loved the feeling of it. The predator loved the feeling of it.
The man in front of her collapsed instantly to the ground as she landed on his back. He barely let out a sound as his head slapped against the ground. He lost consciousness instantly, and the predator frowned. She liked the look in her prey's eyes when the life left, when she sucked on the soul and watched it leave their bodies.
But she was too hungry. Even the predator felt it and couldn't wait to have fun. She flipped the body over so he was on his back and placed her small, pale, delicate hand on the side of his face, cupping his cheek, almost gently. She straddled his waist, smiling slightly as she brought her lips down to his.
From a distance, it would have looked intimate. Like a midnight stroll turned lust filled. It almost looked like a deep, sentimental kiss, filled with love.
But then, if you had still been the one to look on, you would see it slowly change into something horrific. The man, the prey, arched his back as if in pain, all muscles clenching and his fingers curled into fists. Bella, the predator, opened her eyes, watching the man's face, his eyes as they darted wildly behind his eyelids.
As you watched on, you would watch as her lips slackened and parted from the mans. The predator closed her eyes, placing both hands on the side of the man's face and inhaled. Her mouth was open, the man's mouth was open, and their lips were about an inch apart.
The predator took a gasping breath in, and the man collapsed onto his back, his eyes opening wide, wider than was normal, and a blue string rose from his throat. It was stringy, misty, like a thin strand of fog. It rose up from the preys mouth, swirled through the air, and was inhaled into the predators own mouth.
Her hands tightened on the side of the preys face and her eyes clenched shut as she inhaled the glorious energy, and relished in the glow of it as it coursed through her veins and mind as her prey slowly lost color, slowly lost life.
The predator started to glow, her skin shinning as if the moon light was coming from her body itself. And the end of the misty blue string appeared from the depths of the man's throat. It detached itself from the prey's heart, its body, its life, and flowed through the predator, into her mouth. She gasped as the string ended, as the glow filled her completely and she looked at the lifeless man in her hands.
She tilted her head to the side, looking at his hollow cheeks, his glossy eyes, his pale, pal lips.
And then Bella snapped back into her body and she was flying away from the man, flying away from him and scrambling across the little path they had been walking on. Oh no, she didn't even remember going to the park. She didn't remember leaving Charlie's house let alone stalking him. She remembered trying to stop herself. She remembered the hunger and the agony but now it was getting so bad she was losing focus when she hunted. Oh god it was getting worse.
She looked at the body, at how pale he was, how dead he was. "Oh I'm so sorry." She whispered, her eyes blurring with tears as she looked at her glowing fingers. "Oh god I'm so, so sorry." She sobbed. She couldn't look at her body any more, at the man's life coursing through her and energizing her. It made her want to throw up. She crawled forward, looking at the body, trying to find any movement, and failing to do so. She touched the side of his face, tracing the outline of her fingers, and felt the tears drip down her cheeks.
"Oh no. Oh no, no, no. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry." She sobbed, crawling away from the body and standing to her feet with her new found strength that disgusted her. And she muttered her apologies to a man she didn't know, to a man who could no longer hear her, all of the way back to her house where she hid under her covers and tried shaking off the fact that she was a monster.
A living, breathing monster.
And she was so, so, alone.
…
I pried my eyes open at the jarring sound of my alarm clock. Last night's memory burnt in my mind, and I was reminded once again as I reached my hand out to shut the alarm clock off. My hand was still glowing slightly, the amount of energy I had taken last night so extreme. The fact that I had taken a soul as powerful as that mans brought fresh tears to my eyes.
I hated this. I hated what I was and what I had to do. I tried desperately to not hunt, and I do good, for a few weeks. And then I just . . . lose control. Like I did last night. I sat up and kicked my legs over the side of the bed, lightly hitting the side of my suitcase in the process. I looked down at the unpacked bag, wondering how I could have gotten here just yesterday. It felt like I had been here for weeks if not years.
It wasn't that I was tired. I only got tired when I hadn't hunted for a while. And since I had obviously hunted last night, I was feeling good. Very, very good. No matter how much I hated hunting, I couldn't deny the fact that it felt amazing the next day.
I placed my fingers on my pulse point like I did every morning since the accident, making sure I was really alive. Because what I did wasn't normal. It wasn't human. But I still had a pulse. I could feel the evidence of it underneath my finger tips. But when I stood up, and looked at the mirror by my closet, I could see my skin, and see that I really, really wasn't human.
Humans don't glow.
And humans don't need to cover their entire bodies with three layers of foundation to cover aforementioned glow to get through a day of high school.
I sighed, standing up, and began the tedious process of covering up how different I was.