Disclaimer: Twilight belongs to Stephenie Meyer. If I were Stephenie Meyer, I would not be writing fan-fiction.

Chapter One: Escape

I turned and really ran for the trees, suddenly positive that Diego's presence here was just another of Riley's lies.

And if Diego wasn't here, then he was already dead. This fell into place for me so easily that I thought I must have known the truth for a while. Since the moment that Diego had not followed Riley through the basement door. He'd already been gone.

I was a few feet into the trees when a force like a wrecking ball hit me from behind and threw me to the ground. An arm slipped under my chin.

"Please!" I sobbed. And I meant please kill me fast.

The arm hesitated. I didn't fight back, though my instincts were urging me to bite and claw and rip the enemy apart. The saner part of me knew that wasn't going to work. Riley had lied about these weak, older vampires, too, and we'd never had a chance. But even if I'd had a way to beat this one, I wouldn't have been able to move. Diego was gone, and that glaring fact killed the fight in me.

Suddenly I was airborne. I crashed into a tree and crumpled to the ground.

I ran. I was still thinking about how Diego was gone, but I knew that I could never win this fight, so my survival instincts took over and now my body was running on autopilot. Turning my back on the other vampire was probably a stupid thing to do, but I used my strength to push myself faster.

I wasn't running in any particular direction but away. After I was sure that I could no longer hear the sounds of the battle, I stopped to get my bearings. Fred had said that he would wait for me in Vancouver. That he'd leave me a trail in Riley Park.

I was wondering if he really would wait for one day, when I realised that all the while I was running, I hadn't heard anyone tracking me. I thought that maybe, the other vampire had taken pity on my plight and let me go, but I soon laughed the thought off. It was far more plausible that he had been distracted by another one of us.

I started running north, and my thoughts turned to Fred — anything to keep them from focusing on Diego and Riley. I couldn't afford to be slowed down by grief or anger.

I thought about how Fred had been overlooked, underestimated. Diego and I had required some sort of trigger before we became suspicious of Riley and Her. Fred hadn't needed that. He'd sat quietly in the corner and come to all the right conclusions himself. And something told me that his plan to leave wasn't a recently developed idea.

As I thought of them, I realised that we had been losing that battle. Losing bad. I remembered Riley, lying to the end, and came to the conclusion that neither he, nor Her had ever had any intention of fighting: we'd been doing their dirty-work for them. I felt pissed. Really pissed. I thought of how much they'd both manipulated and used us and I saw a haze of red. It took all of my control not to try and hunt them down. It felt like I was tearing myself in two: on the one hand, I really wanted to rip them apart — exactly as they'd done to Diego. But on the other hand, I needed to find Fred. All I'd known in this short second life of mine, was the intricately tangled web of lies, manipulation and deceit that I'd been held captive in. Fred had never really been a part of that, yet he was still something familiar that I could hold on to. He'd help me deal, I knew that much.

I sincerely hoped that the dark-cloaks caught up to them. Riley, and our creator, that is. They deserved any death that they got, be it painful and slow, or sudden. I was rooting for slow and painful.

I'd been running for a while, now and I came to a stop. Tracking the girl had made me thirsty, and for the short amount of time while I'd been away from her scent I'd been able to distract myself from the thirst. But I couldn't ignore the burning any-more — Riley's teasing of 'dessert' had done that much to my limited self-control.

I took a deep breath and looked around at my immediate surroundings. I was surrounded by trees and green – apparently I was in a forest. Not surprising as this was Washington. I looked at the ground. It was soggy, and covered in wet mud and leaves; my years-old, falling-apart Converse shoes were caked in them. I took them off and decided to run barefoot – it would be harder to tack me without them, anyway. The air was thin here... so I was apparently up a mountain, too. It was still daylight, so I couldn't exactly go looking for something to eat (or should that be drink?) yet. The kind of people that Riley had taught us to feed off weren't the kind that came out during the day. I couldn't imagine feeding off a normal human being – one that wasn't part of the dregs of human civilisation. It'd be so unfair to take one of their lives, they had opportunities, they were going somewhere, they deserved to keep their lives. The guilt would kill me. I don't think that I could live with myself.

So hunting would have to wait. I could put it off; I could wait; I just had to put it to the back of my mind, think about other things. If I believe it's easy, it will be. Yeah, you keep telling yourself that. I shook my head to clear the annoying voices out of it. I checked I was running in the right direction, and took off. It was weird how being a hunter now meant that I could do that easily. When I was human I could barely tell which way was north. I wouldn't have believed I was me, if I saw myself now. Though, that may be mostly because of the vampire thing.

By the time the sun was setting, I realised I had to find civilisation. I needed to feed. With that thought, the thirst came back full force and then some. It was all-consuming and raw. I could feel it like fire burning, the focal point in my throat, spreading through my chest – it was crippling and I had to stop all movements. It heightened my hunter senses, which I'd been dutifully ignoring because it would be difficult for me to hunt in the daylight. It wasn't long before I caught someone's scent. I could smell drugs and alcohol in their system. I tracked the scent to the back alley outside some run-down club. I found them bent over, leaning on the wall next to a pool of vomit. It was disgusting, but my mind didn't register that: the thirst took over.

I didn't stop with them. I drained about three others – more than I had in a while, as my self control was usually better. But Riley had teased us with the girl, and we hadn't fed before that. After I was done disposing of the bodies I set off once more for Vancouver.

oOo

This was it. I wasn't far now from Riley Park. I hope Fred waited like he said he would. He said he'd wait twenty four hours then leave a trail. It'd be better that I find him before the twenty four hours are up. I don't want to have to spend the beginning of my new life tracking Fred. I'd be alone. Of all the things I'd been in this short second life of mine, I'd never been alone. That was one of the main reasons I preferred it to being human – when I was human, I was nearly always alone. But I didn't think I needed to worry; I knew that I could count on Fred. Not quite like I could trust Diego, but I knew he was a friend; he wouldn't let me down. I stopped that line of thought almost instantly. Comparing Fred to Diego felt wrong, somehow, like I shouldn't be doing it. And the second I thought of Diego a sharp, searing pain shot through me, which made me pause. I shook my head to clear it, an old human habit of mine, and carried on.

As I'd gotten nearer, I'd slowed down to human speed; but as I started up again I caught Fred's scent. I couldn't help it: I ran at full vampire speed tracking it, first around the perimeter, then inside. First I'd followed his scent up a tree: he sat there for a while. Then I tracked it down and eventually caught sight of him. He was sitting alone on a bench. Practising his 'talent'. I never really know what to call it. But I could tell he was using it by the way that no one was around him. They just walked right on by, in a weird kind of arch, away from the bench like they didn't want to go anywhere near it. He was reading, with his eyes cast down, and the wind was blowing my scent away from him, so he hadn't noticed I was here, yet.

I walked over to him. I'd ever quite understood why I could get near Fred when he wanted to keep people away. I'd think about that later; I walked over to him, and as soon as I got in range of the 'gift' he was projecting he looked up from his book.

He looked a little surprised; I don't think he expected me to make it out of the battle ground alive. His eyes darted from me ad around the rest of our surroundings.

"Where's Diego?" He asked, his tone flat. He must have known and accepted the truth long before I had. So I just shook my head and sat down beside him.

It was awkward. Well, for me anyway. So we just sat there, watching the world go by. After a while it was less awkward, and when it was dark, Fred spoke.

"I didn't think that you'd make it out of there."

I looked at him, and realised I'd have to tell him about the rest of Riley's lies. I nodded, and said "It was close," thinking of the blonde, yellow-eyed vampire.

And so I told him of the strange blonde who let me go, and the epiphany I'd had moments before he'd caught me. This lead to the story about how Diego and I found out about the sun, and how we actually sparkled in the sun every day of the year. Fred nodded his head at this one; the lie Riley had told us wasn't very believable.

I spent hours just explaining everything I had discovered with Diego, and what our theories were. Fred had said that it didn't matter now; the yellow-eyes would win the fight and we'd escaped. The only thing we had to be wary of was the dark-cloaks.

That, really, had been the only shock for Fred. He, like me, would never have guessed that the supernatural would be governed by higher laws – laws higher than the unnamed redhead who controlled Riley and the rest of our coven.

When the sun began to appear over the horizon, the light caught in Fred's golden hair, and his skin glittered – just like mine and Diego's had, proving that Riley had lied. He must have noticed the light having the same affect on me, as he got up moved to the shade of the trees. He climbed the one I'd followed his scent through earlier, and sat on one the higher branches.

"So what do we do, now?" Was my question, as I seated myself on another branch that was level with his.

He looked at me and laughed, "Anything we want!"

I started laughing too, at the look of sheer joy on his face. Freedom was a foreign concept to us, Riley had kept us firmly under his strict control. We had that now. And as long as we avoided the dark-cloaks there would be nothing to stop us from doing whatever we feel like.

This is my first Bree Tanner story, so R&R and tell me what you think. This will only be a short story – maybe ten chapters, or so.