Mine, Eternally: Stephenie Meyer owns all things Twilight.
Prologue
Hushed whispers attack my ears from all sides, not vicious in intent or content, but harsh sounding in the silence of the still evening; tense, excited, full of anticipation and impatience. I pay no attention.
The distant skyline is darkening; night is rising. Like a black dawn, shadows are stretching across the sky. I wonder why humans always refer to the night as something that falls, as though clumsy. Or regard it like a heavy curtain that was dropped from the heavens, hiding the very best of some unknown magnificence behind its dark folds. To me, the night is so much more than an intermission between sunlit days, a closed curtain to ignore and turn away from. It is the greatest part of a play; haunting, romantic in a way no novel could ever properly describe. Almost poetic in its slow moving grace, it rises like smoke from the fire that is the setting sun, and the stars shine like embers caught in the wind, refusing to die out.
It belongs to me, I think greedily, selfishly, as though the night is something that can be conquered and owned. It belongs to me because my nature gives me the right to claim it, as well as the arrogance to do so. Edward always said we were selfish creatures, vampires. And I know now, by the overwhelming ease at which I dare claim something as eternally beautiful and untouchable as the night, that he was right.
The whispers around me, an indefinite tangle of strident sounds running together without any rhyme or reason, become suddenly clear as my gaze leaves the horizon. Sounds uttered without shape become words spoken with meaning, but before I can decipher their significance, the words become shouts yelled in enthusiasm and jubilance, and lose all meaning beyond the obvious.
The hunt has begun.
Let the night rise, I think. Let our prey fall.