Author's note: Hi everyone! It's been a very, very long time since I've used this site, but I figured I'd share this little project I've been working on...an OC-centric Twilight fanficton. Yes, Twilight is among my guilty pleasures, but I know I'm not alone there. I really like the characters I've created for this fic and have had fun melting them into the world of the books. Please don't be afraid to leave a review, as I really do love hearing feedback on my work, even fanfictions. It would mean a lot!

I feel that it is only fair of me to include a trigger warning - this fanfiction includes mentions of self harm, suicide, drug use, abusive relationships, etc. If any of these offend or upset you, I would recommend choosing something else to read. I rated this fic T because I feel there are many books/stories including these topics aimed towards teens, but I understand these topics can be upsetting.

Disclaimer - I do not own the Twilight franchise. I'm only a fanfiction writer.

chapter one - blood

Everything was heavy. Too heavy. Heavy enough to feel like it was dragging me down to the bottom of the ocean and not allowing me to breathe. And instead of putting up a fight, instead of trying to swim back to the surface, I was letting it take me. I didn't want to be here anymore. I didn't want to deal with my mother, I didn't want to watch my father go to jail, I didn't want to watch myself become my mother, the person I hated the most because of what she'd done to me…..I wanted out. And I was going to get out the only way I knew how.

My breath hitched as locked myself in my mother's bathroom. She didn't know. She wouldn't know. She was already nearly comatose on the sofa in the lounge after drowning her shallow sorrows in half a bottle of Vicodin and her favorite pinot grigio. My father was at the office, staying late with his lawyers to try and figure out how to get out of his prison sentence. Rosa, Maria, Ana and Paulina, our maids, wouldn't know either. They weren't allowed to come anywhere near my mother's lounge or bathroom. She was too scared they'd discover her dirty drug habit. They already knew.

I flung the door to the medicine cabinet open. There were too many orange bottles with labels I didn't care to read, some empty, some full, some caught in between. I don't even think my mother knew how many pill bottles she had or all of the kinds of drugs she'd stashed over the years with her habit. I didn't care either. I knew any of them would do the trick - I wanted something to numb me up a bit before I did it, and a handful of any of these drugs would work perfectly.

So I grabbed the bottle in the middle of the cabinet, causing several others to spill over in the process. Didn't matter. Nor did it disturb my mother outside the door. I opened the bottle, poured the pills out into my shaking palm until I couldn't hold anymore, and shoved them all down my throat. I took water from the sink into my palm to get them all down, which was easier than I had expected it to be.

I flung the shower curtain back, already started to feel dizzy from whatever I'd just ingested. I knew time was running out, so I hurried as I set the plug over the drain on the plug and turned the water on. I grabbed one of my mother's shaving razors and expertly broke the actual blade away from the plastic. I'd become good at doing that, with all the coke parties I'd been to, a surprising number for someone my age. I shut my eyes, counted to three, I slit my wrists. Not across like most people thought, but up along my forearm. It was hard to stitch you up that way.

I fell into the bathtub, dropping my arms into the water, watching the blood flow into it, staining it crimson. The immaculate bathroom swirled before me as my vision blurred from all the drugs and all the blood leaving my body. I couldn't feel a damn thing, just how I wanted it. I was finally dying. I was finally getting out of this stupid, vapid life for once and for all.

A loud BANG! Erupted from somewhere behind me. The window. Had a bird flown into it?

Using what little energy I had left, I looked over my right shoulder through my hazy eyes. It was a man. A tall, well built man with dark skin as clear as porcelain and eyes as red as the blood draining out of my body. His nostrils flared as he knelt beside the tub, his expression changing from that of a bird of prey to a father watching his child in pain.

I didn't know the man, and normally I would've screamed or ran or hit him or something, but I was minutes from dying. I didn't have it in me. I sat completely still, wondering if he was some sort of hallucination created by my dying brain. But as I felt his ice cold hand cradle my cheek and his teeth sink into my neck, I knew it was all too real.

The soft late summer wind ran its fingers through my hair as I looked over Manhattan. I'd lived in Manhattan nearly my whole life, minus the couple of years I'd lived in New Orleans, and something about New York still drew me in. It wasn't the same as it had been. Giuliani had changed a lot of that. Killed the club scene, made a lot of the good artists go elsewhere or find a new trade. There were more tourists now than ever, crowding Times Square. If only they new the old Times Square, the one you didn't go to unless you really had business to do. Or, in my case, if you were attending an outlaw party. But that was a different story altogether.

Behind me, the metal door to the rooftop of the building opened. I didn't have to turn around to know it was a repairman. The loud jingling of the toolbox he carried was enough to clue me in, as was the smell of oil on him.

I stood up from where I was crouched on the edge of the apartment building only a few blocks from where I lived, turning to face him. He was thirty, perhaps, and either Hispanic or simply darker featured. He was shocked to see me. That was understandable. I assumed he didn't see many apparent teenagers hanging out on the top of buildings that were supposed to be restricted. And if for some reason he did, I was pretty damn sure the apparent teenagers didn't have bright red eyes like I currently did.

"I….," the man faltered as I approached him. "How did you….?"

I didn't answer the question. I didn't need to. What I needed was his blood. And that was easy to get.

In one swift lunge, I tackled the man to the ground, causing his toolbox to fly into the metal door he'd come through. I bit into his neck without further thought. I'd done it enough times to be calloused to it, killing humans to feed my thirst. To me, it was natural. It was as natural as anything, though I knew there were other vampires out there who had some sort of guilt about feeding on humans.

Within minutes, I'd completely drained the man's body of blood. It wasn't the best I'd had. I could tell he was a smoker, by his scent and his blood. As mediocre as his blood tasted, it did the trick. The burning sensation in the back of my throat was quenched. It'd be about another week before it came back and before I needed to do this all over again, but for now, I was okay.

I lifted myself off his now dead body and looked down at the man I'd just killed. Because I had touched him, I knew everything. His name was Eddie Gonzalez. He had an ex-wife and a kid, a son he didn't get to see much since his ex remarried. He had been a promising basketball player in high school but he had to drop out because he knocked his girlfriend up. His dad died when he was twelve from a heart attack and his mother lived with his aunt in the Bronx. He loved hard rock music. Guns 'n' Roses was his favorite band.

Sighing, I grabbed the pocket knife I stashed in my the pocket of my leather jacket. I made a clean cut across his throat, so it looked like that had been his cause of death rather than a vampire bite. I knew in the long run that it didn't really matter, but it would make the death look less out of place. Most vampire killings were classified as wild animal killings by humans, which didn't make much sense in the middle of the concrete jungle. The cops and the family could more easily understand a lunatic with pocket knife and a penchant for throat slashing.

I wiped the knife on the his shirt.

"Hope you get a nice funeral, Eddie," I said to the colorless corpse.

I got to my feet and shook my head down at the body. Humans.

I turned my back to the body, and with one leap crossed to the next rooftop, taking in all the sounds and sights of a Manhattan evening as I went. Vampire senses meant every sense of mine was heightened and it was even more intense after a feeding, at least in my experience.

I leapt rooftop to rooftop until I made it back home. It was a penthouse in the Upper East Side, one that my coven had owned and periodically lived in since the seventies. It had become a passion project for my adopted mother, Elisabeth, who loved designing and decorating the rather impressive space. Right now, everything was ultra modern - clean lines, light colors, minimalist furniture. She'd even put in bigger windows to let more light in, which was convenient for me. I preferred windows over doors. I think that was part of Elisabeth's reasoning. That, and the thing about letting more light in.

"That was quick," Elisabeth said, right on time as I shut the window behind me. "You usually take much longer when you go hunting."

I shrugged, tossing my jacket into the nearest armchair. "Easy find tonight."

She nodded, looking me over as if she knew something I didn't know and didn't want to find out.

"Is Nevaeh still up?" I asked.

"Oh, goodness, no," Elisabeth said. "It's nearly ten-thirty."

"On a Friday," I reminded her. "No school tomorrow. She should be allowed to stay up however late she wants."

Elisabeth narrowed her eyes. They were golden, as she went hunting yesterday with Samuel, her husband, and for all intents and purposes, my father. The two of them were the leader of our little coven.

"Still, I like her to be on a schedule during the school year," Elisabeth said.

Nevaeh had just gone back to school last week. She was now in the fourth grade. I could've sworn Samuel and Elisabeth had adopted her a week or so ago, and now she was a full fledged little human with a mind of her own. And she was better at drawing than anyone I'd ever come across in my life. I hated to think that in just ten years she'd have to become a vampire, like me. Like the rest of us. It wasn't what I wanted for her. But it was the deal.

"You were fast tonight," came the voice of Samuel.

Samuel was the leader of our little coven. He'd changed all of us, except for Anna. That had been Jesse's doing. I loved Samuel for being the father I never had, but at the same time I couldn't help resent him. I had wanted to die that night. But he saved me. He made me into something that could never die. The longing for dying hadn't changed in the twelve years since. So much else had changed, but that…..that had stayed the same.

"I was too thirsty to be picky," I said.

Samuel chuckled. He walked to Elisabeth, setting a loving hand on her waist before kissing her temple gently. I took a seat in one of Elisabeth's new armchairs. I knew something was coming. I could feel it.

"We need to have a talk," Samuel then said in his low, even voice. He sat on the sofa across from me. Elisabeth promptly left the room.

"I figured," I said. "Elisabeth was acting too weird."

Samuel said nothing. He was preparing himself to tell me whatever it was. The longer he took, the more agitated I became.

"Just say it," I nearly demanded.

"You're moving," Samuel said.

I looked into his eyes, which were golden. Through the years, he'd experimented with the "vegetarian" diet, which meant feeding off animal blood rather than human blood. He was in the midst of one of his experimentations right now. He was getting moose and mountain lion blood delivered to him from a vampire connection in Canada. There were bags and bags of the stuff in the fridge. It didn't appeal to me.

"What does that mean?" I asked. "I'm moving? You're not? The rest of us aren't?"

"No," he said. "You need to move for your own protection. Temporarily, most likely. But it is necessary."

I narrowed my crimson eyes. "Why? What the hell does that mean? Protection from what?"

Samuel released the equivalent of a sigh for a vampire. "Because Bastien is coming to New York."