Hello, this is Incomparable Insanity, or Kris, whatever, this is not my story and it does not belong to me. It is from some else. I did not even help with anything whatsoever. So yes. This is not mine. After this bold thing from me, the message will not be mine anymore. Double disclaimer. Whatever. This is not mine. Lastly, this 'Strike' person is very much oblivious to the fact that Jasper is the best. Team Jasper! I end this now. Jasper is forever mine. So back off.

--

AN: So you guys have read my first chapter of a new story. If you noticed anything different with the writing style, this is because this ISN"T Incomparable-Insanity's work. This is merely mine, a friend of hers, and I only asked her to post this story for me, since I don't like having to post anything myself. If anyone wants to refer to me, call me Strike. I will accept any and all criticism, just as long as they are justified and right. I'll kick your asses if any of them are in anyway completely biased and pointless.

PS: I don't care if Jasper rocks. Alice rocks harder.

--

Last night I cried myself to sleep
Fearing that we wouldn't meet again.
I lost you once but never again
I think you've changed.

-Emo Side Project

It all began, or ended, if you would prefer, in Monterrey City, sometime during 1868. I was walking along one of the dark alleyways of the city, my mind too full of thoughts of my former fiancée, Marianne, to notice what was happening around me. I just couldn't take my mind off of what whatever gods existed did to take away my Marianne, my wonderful Marianne, from me, just eighteen days after her parents finally relented and accepted that I was a suitable husband for her.

Marianne, so soft, so young, so virtuous, so beautiful, so lively, suddenly vanished into thin air a week ago somewhere in Mexico City during a visit to her parents there. No one ever knew what happened to her. All I knew was that she was on her way to visit her parents when she suddenly, like I said previously, vanished into thin air. Her parents told me via letter that she never even reached their home. Only a few eyewitnesses managed to tell me, us, that she had reached the coach station in Mexico City around twilight that night, and walked away to her parent's house there. That was the last time that anyone had ever seen, or even heard, of her again.

I was coming home from the nearby tavern, after spending a few hours with my friends there, though it was too hard on me to see Mark there, sitting beside his girlfriend, Kate. My heart ached even more for Marianne as I watched the happy couple. To drown out the painful emotions, I drank tankard after tankard of beer, which did the job quite nicely. I stayed with them, along with a few other friends, until it was well after twilight, but still a few hours before midnight. I left them to their own devices then. My mourning mind was buzzing, momentarily numbed by the alcohol I drank.

As I walked through the dark alleyway, contemplating my bleak and dark future without Marianne, I never noticed the people; at least I thought them to be people, who were following silently behind my back. I might have blamed the alcohol for my inattentiveness if I managed to escape, but I know better now. Much, much better, in fact. A sad fact for myself. I never saw them arriving, and the next thing I knew, I was staring into the faces of four, extremely beautiful, people.

In a way, they were all different, but physically, they looked so alike they could have been siblings. They all had the same color of skin: so deathly-white they could have probably passed for dead in the morgue. They all had the same purplish-blue bruises underneath their eyes, looking like they had missed a few nights of sleep. One of them was a brunette, the second had fair hair, and the last two had even blonder hair. One of the blondes was a male, and a tall one at that. The other three were girls. I said girls because they looked so young and small that they couldn't have been older than thirteen or fourteen.

The blonde girl, the tallest girl among the three, approached me and took a sniff at me. "Lovely," she said, "though not as lovely as you, Jasper." She looked at the blonde male, who said nothing, just staring at me like… like I was something delicious. The girl merely laughed, her voice sounding like the delicate tinkling of china glasses. The brunette suddenly said something, or rather, it sounded like she hissed; she spoke so quickly that I couldn't understand what she said. What she said, however, made them laugh again, with the exception of the male.

"And he's just like Jasper, too," the fair-haired girl said in a beautiful soprano voice. "He's just as speechless and stunned as he was." The three girls laughed, and I could have listened to their laughs for the rest of my life.

However, beautiful as they were, some part of my mind, the rational part, probably, screamed at me that something was wrong, and that these people were somehow connected with Marianne's disappearance. I was starting to get frightened, and I was about to run away when the blonde male narrowed his eyes as he looked at me. "I told you he was going to get frightened," he murmured to the other three, turning his eyes towards the three girls.

"It doesn't matter," the small brunette said. "You know what to do, Jasper."

The blonde male, Jasper, just continued looking at me, and suddenly, I had this strange feeling. I was suddenly… calm. Peaceful. Something I wasn't able to feel for the past week. But… there was something wrong with the emotion. Underneath the near-suffocating layer of peacefulness, I could feel my frustration, anger, fear and sorrow roiling just beneath the surface. What the hell was happening? How could I feel so calm when I was so frightened just a few seconds ago? It was as if I was forced to feel this way, with the emotions I was supposed to feel just suppressed for now. Instinctively, I realized that it was the male, Jasper, who was manipulating my emotions this way. How I knew this, I may never know, but it was probably just the way he looked at me. I looked at him and saw those… those…

I jumped as I actually saw the color of their eyes. In the dim light of the full moon, I realized that their eyes were… a deep, dark shade of crimson. I knew I should've gone mad by then, or at the very least, I knew that I should have been extremely frightened by these beautiful, crimson-eyed people. But like before, I was still feeling that exceedingly irritating feeling of peacefulness. I looked at them again, and though I found their eyes still slightly disconcerting, I felt nothing but a peaceful calm.

"Lucy, take Nettie away, would you?" the brunette asked. "I'd hate having to lose another one before he becomes truly useful." The fair-haired girl nodded, and dragged away the blonde by the hand, enthusiastically saying at the same time,

"C'mon! Let's hunt! I heard that there's group are in the mountains. And I'm already getting thirsty."

Nettie nodded; she was beginning to look enthusiastic as well as they turned around to the main street, and ran off towards the nearby mountain. They were so graceful, so beautiful, and so fast. I only managed to blink once before they vanished from my sight.

I know I should have felt terribly frightened by then, but whatever that Jasper guy was doing to me, I was still feeling that irritating peace and calm. Maria then turned to me, a smile on her face as she approached me. "You seem just like Jasper," she said in her beautiful voice. "I have a good feeling about you. What is your name?" she asked me, her head tilted to one side as she studied me.

"It's Aaron Newlands," I said shakily. Even through the forced calm, my voice still sounded frightened and unsteady.

"Then I really hope you live through the next few days, Aaron Newlands," Maria whispered in a barely audible voice, nearing towards me even more. "You seem to be almost as good as Jasper here." She was just barely a foot away from me, and she was still approaching me.

The small, rational part of my mind was screaming, begging, and roaring at me that I should run, fight, or just do anything, just as long as that amazingly beautiful girl was not allowed to get any nearer to me. However, a larger part of my mind was still numbed by that irrational peace and calm. I was unable to move, as if I was frozen to the spot where I stood. Maria looked at me with those hypnotic crimson eyes, and her face leaned towards mine, her mouth partly open, looking for all the world like she wanted to kiss me, as if we were lovers. A small part of me actually hoped she would do just that, while the larger part screamed at me, "What about Marianne?! You're just going to just leave her memory, forget her already for a stranger you've just met, and aside from that, you know nothing of?! LEAVE NOW!" I remained rooted to my place, however, my eyes wide. They must have mirrored my fear, because Jasper was there, and he had a grim smile on as he looked at me and Maria.

"I really do hope…" Maria whispered, and I could barely hear her soft and beautiful voice; either she was talking to me, or she was merely thinking aloud to herself by accident.

Her slightly parted lips were merely a few tantalizing inches from mine, and I couldn't help but slightly part my lips as well. Jasper gave a hard chuckle, and narrowed his eyes at me.

Maria gave a faint chuckle as well, and she suddenly swooped down on me with a movement so fast that I didn't see it, and in the next moment her lips were on my jugular, and I felt a sudden piercing, as if… as if she bit me. It was like… it was like something was suddenly flowing into me, and I felt her… her tongue on the bit wounds.

That was the last thing that registered in my numbed mind before I fell into a dark abyss of unconsciousness.

All of a sudden, I felt a gradual heat, coming from the place where Maria bit me. It felt like I was in a warm room. Slowly, though, it became hotter, and gradually it felt like I was being put straight into a furnace. I lost all my other senses; I didn't know where I was, what time it was, whether it was night or day. I didn't know what Maria and Jasper were doing to me, if they left me alone in the alleyway, or if they brought me somewhere. I couldn't see, I couldn't smell, I couldn't hear, I couldn't feel anything, save for the pain, the burning and unbearable pain. I screamed, and I had no idea if anyone heard me. Anyone, please, hear my pain, help me…