Disclaimer: I own none of these characters; they all belong to the creative mind of Stephenie Meyer. I'm just taking them out to play a bit.


There are things that you should know about your enemies, aren't there? Little things like, oh, I don't know, the fact that as a vampire they might possess a gift that was the equivalent of heightened hearing. You would think that someone who could hear thoughts would have picked that one up, but apparently that was one of the many things he missed. He also missed that she was lurking, barely out of sight or scent, when he said goodbye. Maybe he was just concentrating too hard. After all, it's not every day that you destroy a soul.

So perhaps that's why he wasn't aware of her when he left me. He couldn't know that I would wander deeper into the woods, off the path, trying to find him, to beg him to take me back. He wouldn't have been in time, anyway.

She grabbed me before I saw her, her ice-cold fingers creating a vise around my wrist as she dragged me, with all the speed of a vampire, further into the woods. My feet barely touched the ground during those terrifying minutes.

Then she stopped abruptly and allowed me to drop to the ground. It was only then that I was able to focus on her, and what I saw should have scared me. I was too far gone for that, my mind already starting the process of shutting down.

"Hello, little one," she cooed at me in a high voice, her teeth bared in what some might have thought was a smile. I knew better.

"Victoria," I whispered. It didn't seem enough for her that I knew her name, though. She reached out and grabbed my face, her fingers digging into my bones until I heard several cracks.

"No screaming? What a pity. I would have liked to tell him how you screamed," she told me in that same high voice. I guess she wasn't just trying for a baby voice before. How strange to hear a voice like that coming from what I knew was a vicious killer.

"But then, maybe you'll tell him yourself, when you're ready," she whispered with a little giggle, bringing me closer. I felt her cold breath on my neck, and then all I felt was the pain.

I remembered what it felt like to have vampire venom in my blood. I was expecting that, from the moment I first saw her. I expected to feel myself drift away in the pain, like I had before when I was almost drained dry. It wasn't like that, though. She dropped me almost instantly. I was aware of nothing but the pain for what felt like a very long time. The forest was so dense that it was unlikely my screams were heard. I'm sure I did scream, although I don't remember that either, not at first. There was just the fire trying to eat me alive.

When the fire began to ease just a bit, she knew it. She knelt next to my head and stroked my hair, murmuring, "You and your boyfriend just had to kill my James. Now you will be something he can't stand, since he obviously prefers humans, and as for you, I'm going to take away everything you ever loved. James told me where your mother lives, and I already took care of your father while you were...away. I'll tell your mother you said hello." She giggled again and then was gone. I was alone in the forest again, writhing from the fire inside of me.

I felt it really start to ease in my fingertips and toes first. Then it began to recede, like a wave. I was relieved at first, until I realized that waves have two parts. There's the nice shallow end, and then there's the swell. The fire lapped deeper into my body, leaving my arms and legs, my head, and invading my chest. The white-hot flames licked at me, threatening to destroy every part of me. The fire swelled into my heart, and my heartbeat raced, too fast to really be mine, to be human.

And then there were no heartbeats.