Prologue
I watched the family inside the grand house with the glass walls, they were sitting in the living room, barely moving, the only sign they were alive was the careful movement of their mouths when they spoke. They were like statues, beautiful, perfect, as though crafted from stone. One in particular had captured my attention – Edward Cullen – bronze hair and a chiselled jaw, he was just my type, but I was trying not to look at him for too long, because this was no ordinary family and I was no ordinary girl.
My name is Bella Swan and I am a Vampire Hunter. Highly skilled and impervious to the powers that bloodsuckers possess, I am a deadly weapon.
The Cullens were my latest assignment. The organisation I work for, the Consortium, they needed someone to get close to the Cullens to find out what threat they pose to humanity. I had been watching them for about a week now, learning about them, reading their profiles from a folder I was handed when I left the Academy. They seemed to live a quiet life, but the Consortium said that the Volturi - the closest thing vampires have to a royal family - want to acquire at least two of the Cullen clan, and that makes their coven either very powerful or very dangerous. It was my job to find out which, and if I discovered that the Cullens pose a threat, I was instructed to take them out one by one.
It sounded straight forward, maybe the easiest assignment I have ever had, but things were about to get complicated. I was about to fall in love.