Prey: A Twilight Fanfiction
Author's Note: So, after writing my little drabble deal with how James might have changed Victoria, I got interested in how Victoria might have changed James. This is the result. My supposed drabbles keep getting longer and longer though. One of these days James might push me into a multi-chap fic. Dx
Disclaimer: If I don't have the commitment abilities to write a multi-chapter fanfic, would I have been able to write a 500+ paged books (let alone a series of them)?
The damp, dark alleys are home for James—his shelter and comfort, his home and his life, as they had been since he was fifteen, a wild-eyed runaway with a formerly abusive father and a bloody knife in his back pocket. They were everything that was familiar, everything that he loved: dark and mysterious, where it took wit and skill and a little bit of luck to survive. He knew everyone there, by sight if not by name—Old Agatha, the bat-shit old lady who collected cracked and grimy marbles; Jonathon, a dealer with eyes that darted in constant paranoia from too much ingestion of his own product; the beautiful Maria and her self-proclaimed "sisters," and all the clients who frequented them. This was a place he called his.
Likewise, the place claimed him as its own—he was an important addition to the back-street economy here. James could tell the difference between a prostitute and a cop like they had a sign on their back, tell when a gang member's loyalty was wearing thin, instinctively knew where the best dumpster-diving prizes could be obtained on any given day. Likewise, he could find people for shady clientele, who kept him housed—in a run-down apartment, his only possessions therein a laptop and high-speed internet. They called him the tracker, the hunter. The ceremonial nicknaming was as close to affection as it got in the streets.
That's why, that gloomy night, he noticed her—a new arrival to his dark and dreary home. If h was as young and inexperienced as the night he had arrived there, he would have said she was too beautiful to work the streets; but now he knew better, knew that the lookers were often the ones stationed out on nights like this. Still, her looks were nothing short of exceptional—perhaps the most gorgeous he had ever seen—with cherry-red hair and cherry-red lips, and pale white skin that, to his dark-accustomed eyes, seemed to almost glow in the moonlight. She was novel, she was exotic, and she was looking straight at him. The pleasant gleam in her dark eyes, so close to black, and the cocky twitch of her mouth gave him the confidence to stride up to her. After all, this was his court, his game.
"Hey, honey. You're new 'round here."
"I suppose I am." Her voice was high and girlish, and she fluttered her lashes.
"Then I suppose I'll be seeing you. Maybe after I finish today's businesses." He winked.
"Oh, I hope so," she murmured. The scarce light made her eyes flash red, and James shivered at the look of animalistic desire thaw was in them.
"Wonderful," he replied, before sauntering off, throwing an appreciative glance over one shoulder.
He didn't know her name, didn't know what she was. But he would, soon enough. But for now he lived in blissful ignorance that the predator would soon become the prey, and the hunter, the hunted.