-The Twilight Saga and all its characters belong to Stephanie Meyer. No profit is made from this work of fiction, and no copyright infringement is intended. This story is AU.

Living in a World of Black and White

By PopTop38

Part 1- Mortal

Chapter One- Dark Secrets veiled in Lies of Light

The encircling air of the forest was hair-raisingly cold, sinking through my tattered leather jacket and flimsy shirt until it settled into my shivering bones. We can't stop…not now.

Winter, both beautiful and sinister, was approaching around the corner with a charming grin and a blood-stained dagger held behind its back. It glows with an ethereal beauty, keeping you charmed with coy smiles and pretty words…until that frosted knife concealed between eager fingers finds its way into your chest. Before you know it, your skin freezes over and you're lying still with body heat radiating from you no more. Pretty poetic, huh?

You see…living on this earth for eighteen years has taught me many things. One of these particular lessons was learning the true nature of the seasons. In all honesty, it has taken me only three years to figure out that underneath the loveliness of its sculpted looks, winter hides a cruel nature. It kills anything and everything indiscriminately while it laughs in callous glee.

Unless, of course, you're clever enough to avoid its vicious games. Which, nowadays, isn't a very easy feat to do.

Dying leaves ranging from a crimson red to a sunny yellow fell from their short branches onto the mercilessly waiting ground below. It was a stunning sight, compared to other areas where the Grays roamed around with their dreaded curse.

Speaking of which, they should be making their appearance soon if the odd silence is any hint.

"Shouldn't we be heading back to the camp before the Grays start crawling out?" Mike asked in a fear-tinted whisper, speaking what I was worried about as if he read my very thoughts. His pale blue eyes darted around to gaze at the endless shadows that extended towards us like sinister claws. The thin streams of light that guided us was fading along with the weary sun, dragging a reluctant night to take its place while it rested.

Another precious day…wasted.

Annoyance and anger welled inside my chest at the thought of going back to the others…empty-handed, again. With each passing day, we were losing members of our group to starvation…or worse. Betrayal. Not that I'm blame them completely. When you find a chance to leave this familiar hell known as hunger, you do whatever you can. Even if that means feeding those closest to you to the beasts of the vicious world.

Too tensed to keep my emotions reined in, I whirled on the blonde hair boy beside me with a sharp hiss. "You want to stand in front of Jason and tell him that we don't have any food to give again?"

Mike flinched back, an expression of shame taking over his look of fear as his shoulders slumped over. A sigh, irritated with a hint of guilt, trailed out from behind my cracked lips. Seeing this blonde, baby-faced boy give up with such a defeated appearance always made me contrite. The look just reminded me so much of…No! Don't think about him, Bella. Remember what Jason said…it wasn't your fault.

"Listen, Mike," I began with an awkward tone, not very familiar with gentle words or any sort of apology. Judging by the surprised look that appeared on his round face, he wasn't used to it either.

"I know you're worried about a Gray attack. So am I, believe it or not. But the others want us to come back with a deer, or at least eight rabbits. If you can magically get eight, non-Gray rabbits to hop in front of us, fall over and die, then we can leave right now."

Mike glanced down with his bottom lip puffing out in a pout, an obvious sign of his helpless frustration. His large hands gripped tighter on the crudely made bow between his roughened palms as well, risking a chance of painful splinters embedded in his fragile skin. Without looking up, he mumbled enviously, "I bet if we were vampires, we could do that. It would be so easy."

Before it even crossed my mind, a groan of disgust echoed from out my throat. Here we go again. Another little chat with Mike on how being a heartless bloodsucker isn't the greatest thing in the world like how they wanted us to believe. Honestly, I rather be torn limb from limb by a Level 4 Gray than get Converted into an emotionless vampire.

And Mike knew this, so why he kept bringing up said subject in conservation was beyond me.

"Not now, Mike," I answered behind grounding teeth. Crouching down slightly, I moved forward with the steady silence of a mountain cat. I didn't really care on whether or not he was following me. Though if I was him I would stay close, especially since evening was dwindling and would soon turn into pitch-black night, which allows the darker creatures on the earth to rear their ugly heads.

Stalking through the overgrown ferns and plant life at my feet, my ears were perked for any sound of a lone animal unfortunate enough to still be alive. A relatively sane deer was rare these days, and even if one appeared, it probably would be thin and scrawny. Not enough to last a group our size for two days. It would be better than nothing though.

However, as if a superior being above spotted us from the heavens and felt some form of pity, a soft snort that sound suspiciously like a deer traveled to me from straight ahead. Immediately, my body dropped to the cold ground as I crawled forward, flat on my stomach. Where I was gave me a nice advantage point. A small rise, tall enough to give me a clear sight of the clearing below, but short enough to keep my scent downwind from the approaching creature.

Ignoring the persistently curious questions from Mike, I gazed over the side to see what was shuffling about. The sight before me brought out a burst of shock and disbelief. No fucking way.

It was a deer.

A full grown buck, for that matter. Healthy and big, with a wide assortment of meaty muscle on his bones. His dark eyes scanned his surroundings as he sway his large head around with the cautiousness of a sane beast. In fact, the only thing that concerned me about him was the giant rack of sharp antlers standing proudly on top of his head that I'm sure he wasn't afraid to use in a deadly situation.

"What do you keep staring-" Mike's question was cut off by the sound of his amazed gasp.

Like me, his wide eyes focused on the buck with a growing hunger. Both of us knew what a reward it would be to take down that buck and bring it back. The meat would be enough food for everyone, the fur could be made into more warm clothing or blankets in preparation for the coming winter, and the antlers would be perfect for more weapons. Yep, that buck could really help with our survival if we killed it.

Glancing up, I frowned at how little light we had. "Okay, we better be quick with this. If we take him down, we still have to carry his heavy ass back to the truck before the Grays pop out the ground," I whispered with a quick glance at the forest floor.

That's one thing about Grays. You never know where they're at until one shoots out its lifeless hand and wraps it around your ankle tightly, pulling you down into the darkness of the earth before you can even scream. God, I should really stop hanging out with Paul and Jared so much.

Lifting my own wooden bow, I pulled it back while lining it up with a pointed arrow. My heart pounded in rhythm of the breaths that I took. Almost like he felt my gaze on him, the buck craned his head around until we were staring straight at each other. The world seemed to slow down around us, waiting for him or I to make a move that would determine who would win this small battle of survival.

Suddenly a piercing blaze appeared in his steady stare, and that's when I knew he was ready to bolt away to freedom. Without wasting another second, I let my pulsing fingers release the arrow with a razor-sharp whish. It raced forward with the unstoppable speed of lightning until it stabbed….

Right into the fuckin' tree behind the buck's head.

"No," The horrified word, cold and harsh as a winter's bitter wind, slithered out my throat in a soft tone. Mike hung his head in disappointment.

The buck, realizing that he had a chance to run, tossed his head up in a mocking action of arrogance and then began to leap away into the shadows.

That's when my fury, snarling and rattling in its steel chains, lunged toward my unsuspecting shock and tore the weak emotion to pieces with unsheathed claws. The battle was one-sided due to the intensity of my anger, which was boiling over in steaming waves. Not even an inch of its hunger satisfied once done, my raging fury took control over my body's actions with a rumbling growl.

Livid to the point of insanity, no thoughts froze my actions as I stood up, reached in the back pocket of my fading jeans and took out a sleek pistol that gleamed a vivid silver in the pale moonlight.

"Bella, no! That's only for emergencies!" Mike shouted, jumping up in front of me to grab the handgun.

It was too late though.

Hesitation and caution was in the far back of my mind as I started shooting at the buck with the recklessness of a madman. My vision was rimmed crimson and dark, keeping firm attention on the moving form. Eerily silent in his escape, the buck dodged every flying bullet with wild grace and then disappeared in the cavernous mouth of darkness.

Rigid and emotionless, the scent of gunshot residue trailed up my nostrils. It floated around my brain, alongside something else…something that smelled strangely familiar. Glancing down, the cold gun in my hands dropped at the exact time that I let loose an appalled cry.

Collapsed on his thin legs at an unnatural angle, with his usually emotional eyes glossed over in dead silence, Michael Newton gazed up with his jaw slacked in an unnerving stillness while crimson flowers bloomed over his cream shirt.

Three small holes dotted his skinny torso: two in his chest and one in his stomach.

The bittersweet scent that puffed from the unfurling red flowers reminded me of rusted metal and crushed rose petals.

"Oh, God." Shining in the tall grass, the pistol seemed to glare up at me with accusation clear in its chilled metal eyes.

All of it combined together made my ice-cold stomach heaved until I was hurling up nothing in the grass behind me. That was one blessing of not being able to eat, I suppose. No food, no vomit.

"Bella," A raspy voice, stained with barely hidden agony, silenced my weeping heart. Wiping my trembling mouth in an absentminded manner, I turned around with a fearful slowness. Mike watched me, watery eyes hooded as his sky blue pupils flickered with the dying flames of life. Though every small shift of his weakening body seemed to pain him, he reached out to me anyway with a shaking hand.

Cold all over, and not just because of the diving temperature, I kneeled down beside him and placed his head in my lap. He closed his eyes once I began to pet his sweat-damped hair.

"I'm so sorry, Mike." The words repeated in my mind like a chant.

"Don't…be," He choked out, his throat bubbling up with scarlet foam. "I wanted…to die anyway. I…I was just too afraid…to do it myself." My horror of hearing Mike's wish to die took over my horror for what I did to him in an instant.

"Mike, why would you want to….," I trailed off the question when I noticed that his chest had stopped rising for breaths. With a heavy heart and rolling stomach, I raised two fingers against the pulse of his neck. Nothing beat underneath them.

Feeling like I was going to be sick again, I lay Mike on the ground quickly and stood up with tears trailing down my face. Numb, I backed away from the now corpse of one of my fellow humans. We may not have been close, but to know that I took a life of another human being, accident or not, was downright unbearable. It made me no better than a vampire.

It took much effort not to scream out the emotions that were rushing through me, but pure common sense told me that doing so would end in my death. Buzzing with sudden awareness, I smelled them coming long before one appeared. Grays had a very unappealing odor of spoiled meat and sewage, and since they don't bathe or anything, well…it tends to be a pretty strong odor.

Trained in these type of situations, I glanced down at Mike sorrowfully before climbing up the nearest tree up to the top branch.

That's when they appeared.

They shuffled out from behind the trees with their fleshless noses flaring at the scent of blood in the air. There were at least three of them from what I could see. Two males and a female, all Level 2s.

The male Gray on the left was horrifyingly bulky, his muscles rippling each time he unconsciously flexed them. Long scars were etched into his chest, possibly from past battles with other Grays. A button shirt hung limply from his shoulders, stained and ripped, while his tan Khaki shorts had holes dotted in them. Surprisingly, he still had a head full of shaggy brown hair on top of his head, though he might be losing that soon enough if the disease is still spreading through his body.

The other male Gray on the right was less muscular than his companion; he was leaner and built more for speed, if judging by the length of his lanky limbs. Like most Grays, he was missing chunks of his flesh in several areas.

And the female Gray in the middle was smaller than both of them. However, she gave off the sharp aura of a leader and seem to be the one who called the shots in this little group. Clothed in a torn frilly pink dress, you would think she was a little human girl from a distance if not for the unnerving yellow claws she had on her fingers where her nails used to be.

Small, but confident, she observed the area with her silver-gray eyes until her blurred gaze landed on Mike. Clacking her broken teeth at the two male Grays behind her, she stalked over to Mike with her nose sniffing the scent of death surrounding his corpse.

Hissing softly, she dragged her sharpened claws down his face and then pierced them into his cheeks until he began to bleed again. Mike's body didn't even twitch. Assured that he was dead, she called out to the hulking Gray with a toss of her head and a commanding bark. Immediately, he trotted forward with a grunt and grabbed Mike's body by one of his legs.

Satisfied, the female pulled her thin lips back in a scary version of a smile and then whistled to the other Gray who had been licking up Mike's blood that had pooled onto the grass with a shockingly long tongue. Traveling side by side, with Mike being pulled behind them, they slithered their way back into the darkness from where they came with soft noises of excitement that made my mind shiver in disgust. Something told me I would hear those sounds again, as another part as my frequent nightmares.

It took a few moments for me to gain back my senses. Cold, inside and out, I painfully made my way down the tree I was in with a low grunts. Refusing to think about what I just saw, I grabbed my wooden bow and, reluctantly, my gun from off the ground. Then I ran back to the truck that was right outside the woods without looking over my shoulders for any Grays following me. It's not like I wouldn't deserve it…

Seeing the familiar red exterior of the Toyota truck, I slowed down and got out the keys from the back pocket of my jeans. It felt weird not to have Mike climbing in the passenger seat beside me. "I'm so sorry, Mike. Really, I am."

Wiping away the tears that slid out from the corner of my eyes, I tossed my bow and pistol in the back seat, and then started the truck. Immediately, the engine roared to life, making me flinch back into my seat. The sound most likely attracted some Grays nearby, but it didn't matter since I was already racing away.

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Forks.

The place where I was born and still reside during these troubling times.

Due to its small size, it's pretty much invisible on the vampire radar, which is a huge blessing since that means no weekly blood-taking from us. However, it's also a curse since that means that we don't get weekly feedings or protection from the Grays like most vampire cities do. We're completely on our own out here.

Just…surviving. Joy of joys.

Pulling up to the edge of town, I slowed the truck down and looked around at the sad ruins of a town that used to be livelier. Stores that used to be in business were now cold and empty, their windows broken with the remaining glass hanging from the frames like the frightening teeth of a monster. The shelves had been cleared out of food long ago, while the money in the cash registers just lay uselessly with dust growing on top of it. Oh, the bittersweet irony.

A few cars lay abandoned on the side of the road as I passed by them. It makes you wonder where their owners are at. Most likely scenario is that they're Grays now, wild and thoughtless, though there might be some chance that they escaped during the madness of that faithful night. Either way, they were gone and some of those cars looked like they still had some juice in them. Maybe I'll bring that up with Jason once I get back to home base.

Out of nowhere, the thought of that buck that got away from me appeared in the front of my mind. Anger immediately flooded my body, which was quickly taken over by guilt and shame. I should have just let the buck go, not shoot at it like a reckless kid. Damn it, Mike. Why didn't you just stay down while I was shooting?

Sensing a slight headache flared near my temple, I took a deep breath and stopped all the thoughts and memories from turning me into an emotional mess again. This wasn't the time or place for it. There would be time for grieving later once I was alone in my room. Right now, I just had to focus on what I was going to tell the others about him being missing from my side.

Already feeling the tension and stress of the coming shouting and cries of horror, I parked the truck in front of the place we consider a safe house. It wasn't anything special. Just the old high school back when learning was still legally allowed. It was a crumbling ruin now. During the chaos of that night, it had suffered a fire on the right side of the building.

Charred and hazardous, we blocked it off for safety reasons. No need to be over there if any Grays happened to find their way into town.

The property surrounding the high school was like a grassland; long strands of yellowing grass blew in the breeze. Wild vegetation crawled through the damaged windows and roped around the sides of the structure like a giant, green anaconda. Spaces in the parking lot were fading away as well, leaving cracking asphalt in its place.

Basically, our place of shelter had the appearance of every other building in town. Hollow and abandoned.

Except it wasn't.

Hopping out of the truck, I grabbed the bow from the back, but left the pistol there. Someone else can get it. I can barely look at it.

I released a weary sigh as I made my way up the stairs to the front doors. Silence greeted me along with the choking scent of dust. Familiar enough with the halls, walking through the dark halls was as easy as walking through it during the day. Casually, I made my way to the gymnasium where everyone was mostly gathered. Being separated into different rooms didn't appealed to anyone so we chose the gym to be our gathering room.

As quiet as I could, I pushed open one of the gym doors and peeked inside. Once again, silence greeted me. Everyone seemed to be asleep. Either tucked in sleeping bags or wrapped in thin blankets, they slept the night away as a couple of chosen others did the nightly patrol.

"Welcome back, Bella."

My body immediately tensing up at the familiar deep voice, I spun around on my heels, only to gaze up at the powerful, wine-red eyes of the leader of our group. Dressed in dark blue jeans and a black t-shirt that showed off his physique, his auburn brown hair hung in wavy strands down to his shoulders in a distractingly handsome way.

"Jason," I said in a soft voice as I closed the door from behind me. He smiled with a sly twinkle in his gaze, glancing from the door to me.

"I'm guessing Michael has already gone back to his sleeping bag?" He asked with a playful tilt of his head. Though his tone was light, his words made my heart grow dark. Looking down at the floor, I swallowed and shook my head slowly.

"No…he hasn't," I whispered in a tone that wiped the smile off Jason's face. Clearing my throat, I continued, "Actually, there's something I have to tell you…about Mike."

Jason crossed his tanned arms with a calm expression and asked, "Should I wake the others for this news?"My mind instantly flinched at the thought of telling everyone else. The gasps, the cries of horror, the anger. I shook my head quickly.

"No, I think it would be best if I told you first." Jason narrowed his eyes, but didn't question why. He simply waved his hand for me to continue. So, taking a deep breath, I went straight to the chase and said,

"Mike is dead."

To my shock, no anger or surprise morphed Jason's expression. Composed as he always seemed to be when in these type of situations, he took a step forward to lean against one of the gym doors. "Gray attack?" He questioned with a raise of an auburn eyebrow.

About to reply with a "no," I stopped for a second and thought about it. If I told Jason that Mike was killed by me, accident or not, then I would most likely lose the trust of not just him, but everyone else as well. That, and I might have to reveal the truth about Mike's suicidal thoughts and then he would probably be seen as nothing more than a coward who deserved to die anyway. In the end, it would not do any good in telling the truth about what really happened back in the woods.

What happens in the dark…stays in the dark.

Thinking about it, I decided to veil these dark secrets with lies of light.

"Yes, he was killed by Grays…while trying to protect me," I choked out with a barely concealed sob. Jason eyes widened in surprise then, but he said nothing as I continued telling him lies of how Mike bravely distracted the three Grays by shouting and shooting at them with the emergency pistol as he gave me time to escape. By the end of my tale, I was crying and shaking with the heavy emotions crushing down on me.

Caringly, Jason enfolded me in his arms and let me cry away the feelings on his chest. He rubbed my back with the gentleness of a loving big brother, which managed to make me feel both better and worse. After a few moments, the tears dried up and the sobs died out. I pulled away from his arms.

"Feeling better?" He asked with a sympathetic smile.

"Yeah," I answered, wiping my tear-stained face with the bottom of my hand.

Nodding to himself, Jason suggested in a considerate manner, "How about we tell the others the bad news in the morning? Prepare for the reactions and everything." I nodded, and hugged him thankfully, which he returned.

"Get some sleep, Bella. Something tells me you need it," He whispered in my ear before letting me go. Deciding not to reply, I opened the gym doors from behind me and walked in the spacious room. Jason watched me go, his eyes carefully blank as he held the door. With a shiver, I went to the sleeping bag in my personal corner, took off my shoes, and promptly climbed inside the fabric cocoon.

All the while, Jason's gaze, deep and penetrating, watched me with the intensity of a vampire.

So, what do you think? Good enough to continue or just too plain confusing? I know it's a lot for the first chapter, but I like to start off my stories with a bang! By the way, this story is going to start off Teen and might move on to Mature, unless it needs to be Mature now...

Anyway, leave your thoughts and feelings in a review, please, and if you can, tell me what you think about Jason. I've been working around on creating characters of my own and he's my first one that I've put in a story. Besides that, enjoy the rest of your day or night!