A/N: I had started this a couple years ago and had it laying around for a while. But I'm vamping it and posting it now. Hopefully, everyone squeals along with me at the exciting moments...
Enjoy!
Disclaimer: Sadly, I am not Stephenie Meyer and I don't own Twilight. I am merely exploring my fantasies of that universe.
Written ... way back when. I seriously don't remember.
Title: A Chance Encounter
Raye spun around as she sensed movement behind her and her short black hair whipped about her face from the motion. She faintly heard the muffled padding of paws. She focused on her senses – which were quite incredibly enhanced by the vampire genes running in her blood – to identify and catch the position of whatever was lurking in the line of forests. Her senses were far superior and had surpassed those of an average human's senses to a point where its extent was unimaginable even to her own mind.
For a moment, her thoughts briefly flickered to the idea of a human hiking along this area but she quickly dismissed it and swatted it away like a fly to the farthest and darkest corners of her head. However, that moment was enough for her hunger and thirst to flare up powerfully due to her abstinence of drinking blood for almost half a century. With a swift move that was extremely too fast for a human eye, Raye clenched her hands around her neck, screwed her eyes shut, and gritted her teeth against the tremendous pain and burning sensation at the base of her throat. Immediately, she blocked all her senses – a secondary instinct formed by her deep fear of consuming human blood: an act she greatly disapproved of and avoided at all costs, even if her life depended on it. She became numb to her surroundings as she lost the impression from her receptive senses.
She concentrated solely on taming her hunger and thirst first before slowly and firmly pushing it into the very back of her mind, where it haunted her incessantly.
Though still rather aware of her thirst, she released her breath and unblocked her senses one after another, confirming her control over herself. Raye darted her advanced eyes back and forth, trying to peer in vain through the thick rows of trees surrounding the little meadow she was standing in. She concentrated on the being in the forest again, trying to make up for the moments of distraction.
As Raye sensed more movement to her left, her heart – an inheritance from her human mother, and which pulsed strangely fast regularly – sped up to an even faster pace.
Only smelling the woodsy scent of the forest, which she summarized was most likely covering other animals' smells and odours, only hearing the vaguest hint of soft footfalls of giant paws, and only able to see a camouflage of brown and green as the trees merged together irregularly – alarm bells suddenly went off in her head as she realized that she couldn't identify the position nor the number of the beings that were treading closer and closer. She planned and readied herself to use her last weapon if she still couldn't get a decent reading of the creature.
Suddenly, Raye flinched and jerked back a few steps as a vaguely repulsing smell burned through her nose. She could hear the footfalls of about half a dozen creatures clearer each moment as they came closer. She attuned her senses to perceive every single trace of them, to recognize the danger they posed as she peered through with a sense of curiosity, fear, and adrenaline rushed excitement.
In the long time that she had survived alone, she had met and seen all sorts of animals and people while traveling and roaming across the lands of Asia, North and South America, and Africa, without a destination. But she had never encountered such a different smell in her life – and she had lived for at least a century.
When she was born, the first sight she experienced was one that of her bloody mortal mother. The next vision was of her immortal father. At that point, she had both unconsciously and consciously understood - with her rapidly growing mental capabilities and capacity - that they were her parents and that her mother was also quickly dying.
She had suffered, grieved, and shared her father's quiet pain during the first few years after her mother's death, but soon overcame the pain and relished the memory of her human mother - who had given her a heart - with extra affection, taking care to always remember even the tiniest of the details from those few moments of her.
She had grown very quickly, her body and mind developing unnaturally fast. Then, over the years, she had watched her vampire father hunt and had learned the skills needed to survive as one of his kind. She could've survived on human food alone, but that food had no taste for her. Blood was much more tempting and desirable. She was shown a method of feeding to satisfy that ever annoying thirst without imbibing human blood. A method of feeding that classified the her and her father as vegetarian vampires, making them outcasts of their own kind - not that they minded.
Raye's body was - all the while - aging at a very fast rate. She matured and grew about four times faster than an average human. By the time she was seven years old, her body had developed to a physique of a woman in her early 20's. She had continued to age rapidly until she reached her 10th year. Then, her growth had slowed down to the point where her body appeared and remained unchanged as the years passed.
Raye continued to peruse the forest, observing and examining every sound. Once the strange smell had registered with her mind, it became marginally easier to not be distracted by it. As she heard them cautiously slow down and pad forward, she used her last resort at sensing danger and activated her Sight.
During the period when her body slowed down its growth to a stop, her extra talents were stirring awake and making themselves known. Sometimes, she suddenly found herself unexpectedly looking at pools of various colours, mixed and blended. She referred to this as "the Sight" when the change in her eyesight occurred more and more frequently after the first time.
The first time when she had endured her ability, the Sight, she had panicked and was shocked. She had thought that she had lost her eyesight or that something horrible had happened to her eyes to make her see and register vision that was just a bizarre fusion of colours. But, her father had calmed her down and asked her what exactly she saw before her vision quickly diverted back to her customarily keen eyesight.
As the Sight flared up recurrently, she had explored and discovered its abilities, extent, and the potential skills it offered. She had learned to diffuse it back into her regular eyesight and activate it whenever she wanted to. She had found that the Sight showed her the auras of all the life around her - be it the people, the animals, or the plants and trees surrounding her - along with their different emotions represented by the tons of swirling colours in their auras. She had also discovered a neat little technique - surprisingly and out of the blue - of activating the Sight in only one eye while maintaining her regularly sharp and acute eyesight with the other. Thus, she could see through both with her normal eyesight and the special Sight at the same time.
Raye gasped as she saw - with the Sight - the animals outlined in varying shades of brown and red auras. They were huge! They looked like - no, scratch that, they were giant wolves, as tall as and more bulky than an average horse. Their auras projected colours that she unthinkingly deciphered as anticipation, excitement, revulsion, loathing, and disgust. She also saw slight shades of curiosity in a few of the auras.
She searched for any emotions that presented danger and might cause her any harm. But she didn't find any. Most of their auras were overly cautious and weary. They didn't seem too threatened by her presence but instead, were anticipating her.
Something, a thought or a notion maybe, nagged at her mind as she looked through the pattern of the wolves. Then, abruptly she realized what was unusual about them. The wolves were moving in synchronization, with a methodical order. They were in a carefully planned formation designed to surround her and trap her.
These were no ordinary beasts! Her eyes widened in disbelief and incredulity. These wolves were unreal – they were too intelligent to be normal animals. She should've figured that something weird and out-of-the-world was going on with these wolves when she had noticed the enormous size of them, or even when she had first noticed the strange smell.
She searched again with her Sight for any more surprises, inspecting and studying the formation of the pack. As she looked at the wings of the formation, another thought hit her like lightening that they might have some members of their pack circling around widely and approaching her from the direction her back was turned to and was least expecting from.
She quickly switched to using her special technique and activated the Sight in one eye while keeping her normal vision in the other. She kept her vision fixed in front of her and concentrated on her Sight to catch any other auras that may be advancing towards her from behind and adjacent to her.
There! -Two reddish brown auras were heading towards her diagonally and another lighter – almost a dark tan – aura was moving towards her directly straight from behind. The lighter aura caught her attention immediately as it was different from all the others and she wasn't able to produce a reading of it that was as proficient as the others, though she was able to pick up on a little bit of detail with that aura having a colour that the other auras did not have. The wolf with the lightest aura of the pack was hastier in getting to her and was struggling to stay in formation with the rest of the pack.
She whipped her head around to view with her normal eyesight and tried to catch a glimpse of that wolf, as she strangely felt an attraction to that particular aura. She felt a pull from the direction of that wolf and a huge part of her wanted to let it overwhelm her.
Her instinct commanded her to simply focus on that one aura and ignore all the others and follow the pull while her logical mind analysed the potential dangers of being captured by those wolves. She realized, as she pulled herself out of the trance she had sunk under while watching the light aura in fascination, that if she didn't risk and retreat now, she wouldn't be able to breach whatever trap they had laid out for her.
Raye thought of all the possible things they could and maybe even would do if they found out about her vampire heritage. She didn't even know what they themselves might do to her for she had never seen nor even heard of creatures like them. She didn't know what to imagine or presume of them. The only definite point that she was driving on was the fact that her instincts were ceaselessly prodding her to sink under the magnetism of the pull she felt towards one of the wolves and her logic screaming at her to run away and escape them.
She didn't know which way to go: to run away or face the attraction? She had to choose in the next few moments. The wolves were only seconds away. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to clear her head of the panic and the overload of senses to attempt to think clearly. Raye tried to focus and contemplate on all the other situations where she was faced with problems that were somewhat similar to now. But she recognized that in each situation, she knew her adversaries and could predict their actions. And in this circumstance, she barely had any knowledge of the beasts.
She imagined what would happen to her if she were caught: the wolves surrounding her - as she stood stock-still with wide eyes - waiting to lunge and hungrily tear her pale body to pieces at even one wrong action. Or if she ran away: the wolves giving chase and finally cornering her, surrounding her and lunging at her this time again.
For once, she did not trust her instincts. She took a deep, big breath and prepared herself to run. She figured, if either way she was going to be caught, might as well try to escape first as she still had that tiny bit of chance of succeeding. Her vampire-blood influenced stamina may not even be enough against them, but she was going to fight first before surrendering.
But it was too late…
Just as she took a step, the wolves burst into the clearing and a ferocious snarl ripped through the air. She unconsciously registered that some were even taller than her and involuntarily snapped her eyes to the tan wolf.
And in that instance, all motion seemed to stop, all the wolves abruptly froze, and time seemed to slow down and hang suspended.
Her thoughts had all disappeared.
She forgot that she was in danger, surrounded by a bunch of horse-sized wolves. She forgot that she was supposed to be getting the heck out of there. Her Sight even disintegrated from her disorientation. For once, her unnatural mind was completely overwhelmed. She was speechless and her mind was blank.
An indistinguishable amount of time passed. All parties stood frozen: the half-vampire staring at the tan wolf and all the wolves starring at the half-vampire. It could have been three seconds, a minute, or even five minutes before any movement was made. The tan wolf made to take a step forward.
And with that tiny motion, Raye's mind immediately snapped back to awareness. But she knew - in that instant - that she had no choice. She would have to stay. She would have to surrender to the tan wolf, if not the other wolves. She would have to give in to the pull. The attraction.
The air around the tan coloured wolf shimmered ever so slightly and the wolf went back into itself. The huge size of the wolf curled into a smaller figure, giving a faint outline to the new shape and build.
It had transformed. And a bronzed man stood in its place.