Hey everybody. Thank you for taking time to read my work - I really appreciate it. As you know, I own nothing of this series (to which we all owe Stephenie Meyer great homage). While I sincerely hope you enjoy the history I gave to Bree, I know that it's not perfect and I'm sure some of my facts are wrong. But what is fanfiction if we are not allowed to take liberties with the work of another?

Thanks again! -L.Q.

My story is one of the shorter ones ever to happen in vampire history, and yet for some reason I am compelled to tell it, such as it is

My story is one of the shorter ones ever to happen in vampire history, and yet for some reason I am compelled to tell it, such as it is. Mine is not a happy story: there is no romance, other than the hot blood my new beginnings thirsted for; there is no supportive vampire family, for the one who made me was less of a parent to me than my human one, and the others like me were no siblings; and there is no happy ending, for I commemorate my brief existence from an afterlife—not the afterlife, but one I have chosen temporarily which will allow me to write down my small history before I pass on, so it will not be lost forever. I can't tell you why I want my life heard, and I can't tell you that it will mean anything to you, anything at all. But I know that if, for the brief instant when I pass from this afterlife to the afterlife, I leave my story untold, my last thoughts will be of regret, remorse, and hatred. I want to pass on at least content. I want my last thoughts to be peaceful. And they won't be, I know they won't be, unless this past is out of me so I can prepare for my next—my third—end. You can understand that, can't you? So please, I ask you: listen to me, allow me to expel the memories of my life from my final death. I never wanted to live with these recollections and I certainly don't want to die with them! Do with this history what you will, it doesn't matter to me. All that is important is that it's not a part of me anymore, and I can move past it without ever needing to look back. For once in my life, I'm looking forward, even if what I see is death.

My name was Aubrey Michelle Richardson and I was born in 1992 in Seattle to people whose names I never knew, and adopted by Jeannie and Donald Richardson as an infant. I was their only child, the product of years of trying and failing to have a family. They trekked through a long process to get me. Jeannie was unable to bear children and adoption was their last hope. I know that my adoptive parents always loved me, but even as a child I was determined to be rebellious. In retrospect, I can't tell you why I was so angry all the time. I was taken to counseling for anger management after I assaulted my peers in elementary school at the age of six. I was like that all my life: I didn't have any natural instincts other than to hurt those around me, often violently—an excellent choice for a vampire whose creator knew she would not live very long.

Whatever Jeannie and Donald did for me, it was either wrong or it was never enough. I was determined to make their lives unnecessarily hard, and I am sorry for that now. Whatever they asked me not to do, I would do it, deliberately. As a child I left things out, I made messes. But not the messes every child makes. I would go through the drawers and empty them, breaking things and throwing them all around our small house. Whatever had the grave misfortune of touching my hands would meet almost certain obliteration, like the most terrible Midas touch ever: I would get into my father's liquor cabinet and hurl the bottles against the wall. I had this intense, overwhelming need to destroy. Nothing was if it was not broken in our house. I frustrated my parents with my anger and my bullying, my breaking and my awful behavior throughout my life, and I don't know why I was like that. There were times when I terrified them—and loved it. Therapists couldn't help me. No one could help me because I didn't want them to help me. I wanted to be a nightmare, and I was one, for as long as I can remember.

I think a lot of it was, of course, due to my liking girls and not boys. I'd known all my life, though I had never been able to articulate what I was feeling. I never knew what to do with my feelings. When I was in the third grade, I developed a crush on a girl named Molly Andrew. I tried to kiss her one day at recess and she rejected me. I had never known what that was like before; I'd never experienced rejection. It was new, and it sucked. Not knowing what to do with those feelings, I punched her in the face, and broke out two of her front teeth (which, when later questioned on my behavior by a therapist, I said she deserved for being a little bitch). She started crying and screaming, of course, with bits of her teeth in her hand and blood streaming down her face. My parents thought we were fighting over some sort of childish game. What they didn't know was that, in my own way, I had decided I loved her, and I didn't want them to see how much it hurt me that she didn't love me, too.

My entire childhood was a tumultuous, passionate, miserable, and dreadful. No one wanted to be around me, not even my parents. I was sure I could see in their eyes when they looked at me that they didn't want me, not anymore. But what I couldn't see was that they loved me still, loved me more than I had ever deserved. I told myself they hated me. They wanted to return me from wherever it was they got me. They thought they were saving me from something, giving me a better life, and yet they had failed. No one wanted me. By the time I was a teenager, I didn't want me, either.

I was completely out of control by the time I was fourteen. I drank mercilessly on a regular basis, and if I wasn't drunk, I was experimenting with drugs and my own sexuality. I couldn't tell anyone that I was gay—I didn't know how. I tried to be with girls, but most of them were just experimenting, like I said I was. My friends—that is, the people I got drunk or high or rolled with—drove recklessly around town, irresponsible and inconsiderate. We actually broke into buildings and stole things. We were that group of pierced, dyed, and unbelievably angry teenagers everyone hates. That year, one of the girls I'd been "fooling around with", Mandy, started to respond to me. We started "going out", as it was called. I was fifteen then, she was almost twenty-two and a high-school dropout. Jeannie and Donald hated her. Not necessarily because she was my girlfriend, but because she was so much older. They thought she should have been much more responsible than she was, like she should have been setting a better example for me. They didn't know that she was also my drug supplier, urging me to try new and illegal things. Most of the things I stole, broke, or smoked was to impress her. I really liked her, and I thought she really liked me. I might have loved her, then.

It was around that time when a bunch of my friends decided they were going to squat in an abandoned apartment in one of the shadier places in Seattle. They begged me to go with them, knowing I had only just turned sixteen. I was reluctant, but they pleaded and pulled so hard. Mandy threatened to leave me, and that almost drove me insane, like she knew it would—I didn't know it then, but Mandy manipulated me into doing things for her that she didn't want to do herself. She wasn't really even a lesbian, she just wanted to control me, and she knew I was crazy enough (about her, but also just in general) that I would do anything to keep her from leaving me. So I agreed. One night, screaming at my parents over something probably minute, I told them I hated them and that Mandy, my friends, and I were running away. I think I wanted to see what they would do, and I know that they cared. But they didn't believe me, and that only infuriated me more. So I did it. That night, they slept as I threw my belongings into a bag and jumped into Jason's car, stealing away in the cover of dark. I never said goodbye, and that was the last time I ever saw my parents.

Seattle was alright for the first few weeks. I got an odd job distributing and putting up flyers for a tiny hovel of a nightclub—they didn't care if I was too young to actually be in the nightclub. Life there was a constant struggle for food and money, and most of us were almost never sober. I didn't mind so much and I told myself I didn't miss Jeannie and Donald, who had never loved me anyway. I wasn't sure if they had issued a search for me, so whenever I saw a police car I would hide, and if any came walking near I bolted. None of them ever chased me, so I figured my parents didn't care where I was. I still don't know for sure if they ever did issue a search, but something in my heart tells me they did, and I wasn't human for long enough for anyone to ever find me, there in the darkness of myself.

A few weeks later, I came home from work and found Mandy—my Mandy—and one of our housemates, Jeremy, in bed together. The rage I felt was incredible. I started going around, screaming and breaking everything, stepping over needles and spoons and trash, vomit, shit, and destitution. I wandered into the open streets. I started to run, faster, faster. I ran until the sky got dark. Of course I, being young and unfamiliar with the city's streets at night, got lost. I was lost for days, walking away from everything, like I did with all my problems. From Mandy. From Jeremy. From everyone, everyone but me, away from all I knew to be real.

One Thursday night I found myself somewhere dark, an industrial sector of the city, starved and dehydrated, exhausted. My feet were blistered and raw, and it was dark now. I was a sixteen-year-old girl alone and without money, broken-hearted and wanting—waiting— to die. I should have been suspicious when a group of strangers appeared out of nowhere in the dark, but I wasn't. I thought they might have had drugs. And if they didn't, they might be prepared to kill me. I was not afraid. Not like I should have been.

They could probably see that I was young and afraid, lost. They could see I didn't think I had a home to return to. When I came up to them, they actually said hello. It wasn't until I was closer that I saw…how…absolutely unbearably beautiful they all were. It was like being hit with a battery ram to my very core. They were the most beautiful creatures I had ever seen: their skin was chalky white, their eyes glowing red. Every single one of them—each was more breathtakingly striking than the last, so much so I almost stopped breathing. I thought my heart had ceased to beat. I stopped where I stood, unable to make my feet move. They all turned and looked at me, each casting a calculating, smoldering gaze in my direction. There were seven or eight of them, I think, each one with the same excruciating beauty. It was painful to look at them, but it was agonizing to turn my eyes away.

"She's perfect," came a voice like murderous silk from one of the tall angels, but I couldn't tell which one. My brain couldn't differentiate between them just yet. It was an unearthly attractive male voice, like nothing I could ever remember hearing…

"Very good, Riley," came a second voice. This was different from the first: it was a woman's voice, and it made my knees weak with desire. "Tell me, what do you see? Tell me why she's perfect, Riley." The woman's voice was thick with lust and mystery, like she was asking her friend—or student, it seemed—to describe her rather than me.

"It's in her eyes," the one called Riley—who I could now see had golden hair— replied quietly, his own voice sultry and beautiful—if a voice can be beautiful. The female voice purred—she wanted him to go on. "Look at them. They're empty. This one's gone and gotten herself lost, and I'll bet she's homeless, too—look at the state of her. She is one who is ready for death. She's been waiting for us, like we've been waiting for her." The woman purred again, louder this time, like her ecstasy was building. It was now I realized they were really talking about me—these beautiful beings were talking about little Bree Richardson. It was also now, as the stunning things fanned out around me, that I realized it would be futile to run.

The other creatures beside them stirred in the dark, and I saw that they were coming closer to me. The woman stepped out into what little light an old street lamp cast down, and I could see her long, fiery red hair twirling and twisting like red water around her. She was a vision, a true vision. Her face was too beautiful to stand, cat-like and angular. Everything about her radiated desire for me. If her hair wasn't quite so vivid, wasn't so much like a movie or a dream, she would have reminded me of my Mandy…

…who wasn't my Mandy anymore. I felt myself drop to my knees, but my throat was too dry and closed for speech. One of the beautiful things chuckled. A new voice spoke, low and almost erotic.

"Oh, she's ready, I think. Her face tells me she wants to die. Let me bite her, Victoria—let me"—

"No, Victoria, I haven't gotten one this young yet, and Carlo has"—

"She promised me the next one would be mine!"—

"This one belongs to me! I'm so thirsty, you really have no idea"—

"Stop it." Two words. The rest of the group fell silent as death. "None of you are to touch her. Did you not hear a word Riley said? We're not going to kill her. Riley is going to change her." I saw the blond boy's garnet eyes light up in his face; he event bent to kiss the woman, who let him. I wondered if this was against some kind of code—clearly the red-haired woman was Riley's superior, was he allowed to kiss her like that? But I didn't want his lips on me. I wanted hers—

I suppose I stretched a hand towards her. I couldn't speak, but I tried, and managed to cough a little.

"You…" The deep, erotic voice chuckled again, but it was a higher, sing-song female voice who spoke, laughter in her words.

"I think she's one of those, Victoria. See the way she's looking at you?"

"Hush, Anna. That doesn't matter. Riley, I want you to take her." They all looked at me then, and I sensed things would be very different after tonight. Stranger, darker, more twisted—I was dead inside; what they did to me now, I didn't care. And nothing was the same after that.