The gunmetal grey palm-sized video camera sat snugly in the palm of his right hand, like a grenade. Sickness ran through me.
"I borrowed this from your house; hope you don't mind…"
The voice was teasing, taunting, waiting for me to retaliate. His words came fully equipped with a cold smirk, sliding from the lips of the man who would be my murderer. I'd never given much thought to a premature death, and neither had I ever thought that I would meet a vampire in Forks. It seemed just another of those unattainable events.
I was dragged from the nullified fantasy of my green home and normal life with the red LED light on the camera blinking into existence. At this close distance, blurred and pixelated, it looked like one of his crimson eyes, staring at me with such blood lust. He laughed. He relished my discomfort, although it was the pain that would be his thrill.
"And… Action."
I knew his name, and I knew his game: Hunter. I didn't even want to think of him as having an identity. He was a monster; the sick thrill of his hunt taken from the pain of a teenage girl. I was his prey, and at his hands my minutes were numbered… Unless Edward came.
Edward.
Just as I thought the name, he spoke it, in a sing-song tone that was surely intended to irritate me. Maybe he meant for me to fight back.
"Say hello to Edward, Bella…"
"No."
I growled, as bravely as I could muster, my back pressed up against the cold, shiny surface of one of the mirrors. Above and beyond his shoulder, I could see my own terrified face reflected back, dozens of times over. With the fear, my skin was almost as pale as his, but the Hunter's was blemish-free.
"Not even a little message to your boyfriend? A pleading cry for help?"
"I said before-"
I was determined not to be broken down and reduced to pleading. I would not play the game by his rules. And so, to take the monster by surprise, I planned to spring. Plotting was safe within the confines of my mind: Even Edward was repelled from my own personal sanctuary, and I was certain that the Hunter had no such gift.
"-No!"
Crying the single word filled with a hateful rage of his heartless sport, I pushed myself away from him, sending the camera sprawling across the highly polished wooden floor of the dance studio. I so wanted it to break, but could not even glance backwards, fixing my eyes on the possible freedom ahead of me, as I made a scared-stiff sprint towards the double doors.
He flew. He must have done. There was no way that he could have got there before I did, and as for clutching my camera again… Impossible. But he reached the door before me, regardless of my protests of impossibility, and snarled. His white teeth were sharpened daggers, gleaming at me with an impenetrable edge to their danger. The grip on the sole of my supermarket-brand sneakers had been worn away weeks previously, and I practically skidded into him with the lack of control.
The Hunter gripped my throat tightly in a single, strong hand, and I feared he would kill me then and there. But my head flew backwards, propelled by the strength that he wielded, colliding with another of the panes of mirror hooked to the wall. He wanted some fun first. The glass shattered and I felt shards of it sting my skin and imbed itself there, a constant dribble of blood dripping from the gash and trickling down my neck, like some sick earring. Then the pain kicked in, and I gasped out loud.
He zoomed the lens of the camera in, closer to me. I could hear the mechanics whirring as he watched the digital screen, tracing the track of blood as it soaked into my shirt.
"Tell him how much it hurts, Bella. Tell him to avenge you."
This time, the words were a command. The Hunter gripped my wrist, squeezing tightly. With all the strength in those cold, smooth hands, he could break the bones. To my pain-delirious mind, his touch felt like Edward's. I snapped out of the trance when he yanked my wrist upwards, spinning my limp form around and pressing my cheek to the mirror, smearing it with blood.
"Tell him."
"No."
"Tell him! Now!"
"No, Edward… Edward, don't!"
I screamed out in agony as his fingers snapped tighter around my wrist, shattering the bone there, and my forearm too. I couldn't think, I couldn't breathe, the pain was so agonizing. It clawed at my whole body, steaming through my veins like boiling oil from my injuries.
Then he dropped me. I collapsed to the floor in a ruffled heap, fighting the stinging tears back from my eyes, though all I wanted to do was weep. I was sure they would be tears of blood.
"Look at her, Cullen."
The words that he spoke were not directed at me, but I wouldn't have listened, even if they were.
"So weak and pitiful. How did you ever fall for a mortal girl? But she so clearly doesn't love you. She doesn't want you to come and help her!"
When he laughed, it chilled me through to the bone. It was a rough, scraping sound, like rocks, although chime-like at the same time. Regardless of how hideous he appeared to me, he was still a beautiful, non-humanoid, and I was exactly as he had said. A weak, pitiful human…
My wrist was cradled in my left arm, clutching the broken joints to my chest, as though that might help me. It did no good. I leaned my head back against the mirror, risking touching the gash with two fingers of my left hand, and pulled them away with blood on the tips.
The Hunter's eyes instantly sparkled with a cool lust as the scarlet clouded his vision.
"Does she taste as sweet as she smells, Cullen? Have you tried?"
With the shortest and sharpest of lunges, he gripped my fingers in his own hand, bringing them to his mouth. His pink tongue leapt out, catching the shivering drips and relishing them, like a shark would with a single drop of blood in the whole ocean. His breath was cold against my skin. The corners of his lips curved into a smile, a satisfied diner in a restaurant, sampling the Dish of the Day, as he returned to face the camera.
"What would you do, Eddie, if I did this?"
He wore black boots, and they hurt, as he forced his toes down, crushing my broken wrist. I screamed in response, unable to retract my hand until he desired for me to do so. My scream faded off into a terrified whimper as he allowed me a little freedom again.
"Or this?"
Without ever letting go of the camera in his hand, his unshaking hand fixing the beam of the recording lens on me at all times, he gripped the front of my blue shirt, dragging me sharply and firmly back to standing. When I was just about standing on my own two feet, he thrust one hand sharply into my shoulder, pushing me hard against the wall.
"Or even this?"
No holds barred, he picked me up with just one hand. Even I didn't think that he was strong enough, my mind failing me, shutting down piece by piece, but I was proved wrong. After a moment, I felt as though I was flying, but flailing. My arms and legs did not move properly, and I certainly was not on the ground. My head hit the opposing force of the wall with a categorically hollow thud, and gasped with what knowledge of my surroundings I had left, as the mirror shattered. Collapsing back to the floor, the pieces surrounded me, like glass snowflakes, but my body rocked and arched in pain, a sharp spike lodged tightly in my thigh. I tried to grasp at it, but I pulled my hands away raw and bleeding.
"Edward…"
I whispered, whishing him to be here. I felt weak, spineless, a coward, above all: That I could not get up and fight back; that I needed someone else here to fight for me. I was weak. I was failing. I was dying.
Propping the camera up on the cylindrical wooden barre, he looped the wrist-strap around it with deft fingers, to hold the article in place. Another spring, and the Hunter was by my side again, fakery in his every expression as he stared down at his prey, with wide, wild, red eyes.
"What would you do, if I changed her, 'ey, Cullen? Would there be even more rage excited in you, or would you like it? Then you could tear your mortal toy away from her home and family, and have her forever."
He paused for a moment, to crouch. His fingers were wide-stretched knees bent as he leaned towards me, taking my unbroken wrist in his strong hands and wrapping his fingers around.
"Just in case you like the sound of that, I won't have the pleasure of doing so. Her blood is an elixir, Cullen. You know I can't resist it. Say goodbye, lover-boy…"
Turning away from his currently fictitious audience, The Hunter dragged his wet tongue across my arm, slathering up for my downfall. He didn't even waste another taunting sneer at Edward's ill-fated presence, before he pounced, knives tearing into my skin in a circle. He sucked, and I could feel the blood leaving my body, though not like a grazed knee. I could smell quantities more than I had ever imagined in the air around me, as he suckled, and I felt myself drop, and weaken.
His bloodied lips pulled away for a moment, the scarlet liquid dripping down his teeth and chin from gorging himself, to look dead into the path of the recording beam. The Hunter dramatically licked his parted lips to the camera, and then returned to feast.
I tried not to blink. I knew there was a chance that I would never open my eyes again, as I gasped with the incredible, torturous pain of his poison infecting the bloodstream that he continued to consume. Seconds left, I thought, only seconds remaining, as I tried to feebly squirm away from him. Yet, as I thought, it did no good. With every ribbon of my blood, he grew stronger, and I grew weaker, until I could barely move. It was enough of an effort to encourage my lungs to inflate and deflate. The movement was shallow enough that I found myself breathing shorter, more rapidly.
Seconds, Bella… My mind muttered, but I could do nothing whatsoever, as my brain began to shut down, through lack of oxygenated blood. My body was dead, and I had half a conscious brain left. With a dilapidated wheeze, my heart gave out, beating its last, and failing to help me whatsoever. My eyelids flickered as I saw my murderer's face looming above me, with ghost-like white skin, and literally blood-red lips. This present moment was my end.
Slowly, ever so slowly, my eyes closed. A final whisper of breath snaked from my lips, which he gratefully inhaled. A drop of my blood cascaded from his animal-like jaws, dripping in rivulets onto my eyelid.
I felt nothing.
He stood up straight, clicking his back into position, and stalked forwards, keeping his eyes hidden from the camera, and stopped recording. Blank movements of careful, hesitant feet crossed the ballet studio, slamming open the cupboards where the old television lay. Connecting the wires with no more than a moment's thought, setting the tape on a loop, a picture sprung into life. The Hunter stepped backwards, content with his work. He watched for a mere moment, before the shadows swallowed him, and he returned to the dark gloom, from whence he had come. He wanted to be followed.
Two words sparked forth the lack of silence in the dead room. They were to be the beginning of the end.
"And… Action."