AUTHOR'S NOTE:

Hi everyone! So, we've been creeping around FanFiction for a while now, reading through the massive amounts of stories that are out there in our spare time, and WOW there are some fuckin' amazing stories! Anyway, we thought we'd try our hand at this writing business. So, to be clear, this is our very first story, meaning we would love and appreciate any feedback that you have for us, good or bad. We will never hound you for reviews or hold chapters hostage until we reach a certain number of reviews (c'mon now, that's just cruel), but remember that we welcome and value your opinions!

On to other news, this chapter is being posted on a Saturday, but after today, we will start posting chapters every Sunday. We are both fairly OCD, so you can rest assured that we won't deviate from this schedule or fail to post unless it's absolutely necessary. However, if Eddie and Jazzy show up at our door and want us to tie them up and play with them, you guys will take a back seat. Sorry! I'm sure you'd all understand

Also, major WARNING here… this will be a GRAPHIC, dark and twisty, MATURE story!!! So, if you're not 18 or older, please PLEASE find your entertainment elsewhere. When we post a chapter that is particularly graphic, we will warn you at the beginning of the chapter so that you can skip it if you like. We will also include a basic summary at the bottom of the chapter so that you won't miss out on any major details or events. Pretty nice of us huh? Yeah, we thought so too

Playlist for Chapter One: We Might Fall by Ryan Star, Dying Young by Ten Years, and So Long, Goodbye by Ten Years.

Disclaimer: Stephenie Meyer owns all things Twilight.

Chapter One

EPOV

Nails on a chalkboard.

Screaming masses being slaughtered.

Pulsing drums that rattle teeth.

I struggle to grasp what the sound is and where it is coming from. I don't open my eyes in fear that the noise is right in front of me. My memory is cloudy and it takes me a few moments to realize that the noise is coming from me. More accurately, the noise is coming from inside my head. It is throbbing with an intensity that I have never known before. Slowly reality comes back to me in brief flashes.

Screeching tires.

The smell of smoke.

Three massive men.

Black masks.

Blinding pain.

The van.

The events of what happened suggest I have been attacked and kidnapped. I decide I should open my eyes to try to figure out exactly where I am. When I open them I regret making the choice to do so.

There is a blackness that surrounds me and fills my entire being with a sense of dread. It is icy and damp. The room isn't very large, maybe ten feet by eight feet, and is entirely cement and stone. The only trickle of light seems to come from a stairway in the corner that leads upward, meaning I must be in some sort of basement or underground bunker. The air is hung with the smell of evil and death, which linger so strongly that I can almost taste it.

I glance around the room quickly trying to find a way out before I realize that my hands are raised above me. I quickly pull on them and find them bound in cold metal. Looking up I find myself chained to a wall wearing two metal cuffs. Pulling with all my strength on the restraints gets me nowhere except bleeding and exhausted.

I need to get my breathing under control and try to figure out a plan to get out of here. My eyes have adjusted and I can see a little more clearly now. Another glance around the space and I find I am not alone. Ten feet in front of me, chained to the wall across the empty space, hangs another person. She is limp and hanging by her arms from the same chains I find myself in. Her arms are stretched above her and the tops of her hands look swollen and purple, I assume from the lack of circulation. Even if she is alive, I doubt that she will ever regain full strength in her hands. Her dark brown hair hangs down her back with her face pressed into the cement wall. She is skinny. Too skinny. She has no shoes or socks on and her feet are dragging on the ground, though not supporting her weight. Her knees are bent at the crook, almost at a ninety-degree angle. Her toes are curled underneath her feet, and I can see her heels are black. She is eerily still. I can't tell if she is breathing. She is the death that I smell. The clothes have been torn from her body so that she is only wearing a white tank top with underwear and no pants.

Her body is covered in bruises and scrapes from what I can tell. There is a large gash on her calf and dried blood that runs down to the ground forming a small puddle under her foot.

Panic starts to set in as a finally realize the magnitude of the situation I have found myself in. I can't breathe. My lungs won't work, and I am gasping for air that won't seem to come through my mouth. There is a weight pressing on my chest, and I feel like I am going to explode from the inside. Desolation weighs upon me and I fight again to try to free myself from these shackles. I start to lose what little oxygen I have left in my lungs, and I feel all the air being sucked out of this room. I am hot and extremely thirsty. My heart is beating so rapidly that I fear it is going to send me into cardiac arrest. Then it hits me… I am having a heart attack. I know it. I am having a heart attack and my father isn't here to help.

Wait… my family. They will find me. Alice will have a vision, and Jasper will track my scent to find me. This thought process calms me down and allows me to realize I am not having a heart attack, but simply a panic attack. I laugh at the irony of my brother being a psychologist with no one to practice on but me. Yet here I am, having a panic attack and he is not here to help. Jasper always tries to "psych me" but gets frustrated that I am perfectly healthy. Well, except for the fact that my family consists of a bunch of vampires.

I start to take deep breaths and find the air cool and refreshing against my scorching lungs. I am willing to bet that Alice saw what happened and who captured me and they are on their way right now. More deep breaths. My father would never let anything happen to me. In the unfortunate event that something does happen, he will change me. It is earlier than planned, but maybe it is better this way. Exhale.

I never thought I would, or even could, be kidnapped, seeing as how I live with the world's most dangerous predators. That is something that happens to poor people who can't afford to go to court to get custody of their children. It happens to irresponsible teenagers who run away and make the wrong kind of friends. It doesn't happen to adopted children of wealthy, powerful vampires.

"Ughhh."

I whip my head around to face the girl who just whimpered.

"Hello. Are you awake?" I whisper to her. I nearly ask her if she is alive. She was so still. I have never seen someone be as still as she was, except for my vampires.

She doesn't answer but just barely groans again.

"Hello. Can you hear me?" I ask more loudly.

Again she doesn't respond but she starts to move. Her feet, which were tucked under her and hanging on the ground, start to move slowly and she tries to pull herself up by her arms. She fails and falls back down with the chains making a clanking rusted sound. Her left leg, the one without the gash, lifts up and she places her foot flat on the floor. Her knee is bent and she stands up dragging her other leg along. The mental exertion greatly outweighing the physical as the girl struggles to come back to reality. Finally after what seems like a few hours, she manages to get her right foot flat on the ground and she is standing. She flexes her purple fingers, and I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding.

I decide to keep quiet because I don't want to scare the hell out of her and I wait for her to turn around. However, she makes no more indication that she is going to turn around and places her forehead against the wall and lets out a deep sigh. She continues to wiggle her fingers trying to get the blood flow to return to them. I never was one blessed with patience.

"Are you okay?"

She jerks her head around startled at my voice and her eyes meet mine.

The look in her eyes will never leave me, even if I live to be 1,000 years old. The depths of darkness that are locked into her eyes will forever be burned into my memory. She holds so much despair and the brown in her eyes looks lifeless and black. I can't look away, but there is nothing more I want in this moment than to break the hold of her eyes on mine. I feel myself drowning in a sea of desperation and the panic returns. It is not human to look the way she does. Bound and suspended from a wall, chained like an animal, and to have eyes like hers. She is soulless with orbs that let me see into her depths.

She opens her mouth to speak but no sound comes out. She tries again. She closes her eyes and releases her spell on me. I quickly dart my eyes down. That was a mistake. My eyes drag down her body. Her tank top is dirty and very thin, allowing me a perfect image of her petite body beneath. Her panties are blue and white striped, clinging to her hips in the most sinful of ways. They are that boy cut that my sister Alice claims to love so much. At the thought of Alice, my chest tightens and I look away. I squeeze my eyes shut and try to stop the moisture from building up and spilling over. I will not allow myself to cry in front of this girl.

"W-what's your n-name?" She cracks out. Her voice is barely a whisper and sounds broken from weeks of not being used. I wonder when the last time she spoke was, the last words uttered from her full cracked lips. I open my eyes to find her staring at me. Once again, her eyes mesmerize me as she captures my gaze.

"Edward. What's yours?"

"B-Bella."

"Bella." The name sounds light on my tongue like it belongs there and I have said it everyday for a hundred years. "Where are we? And how long have you been here?"

She shrugs her shoulders. Apparently she doesn't know the answer to either question, which only frightens me more.

"The last date I remember before I was taken was June 10th."

My heart drops for her. I don't know if I should tell her that today is July 20th. Would she want to know that she has been here over a month? I decided to leave that choice up to her. I know I would want to know.

"Would you like to know what today's date is?" She nods her head. "It's July 20th."

She sucks in a gust of air and bites her bottom lip. For a moment I think she is going to cry and I look away trying to give her what little privacy I can. When I chance a glance back to her face, she is composed with a black mask of indifference. She hasn't shed a single tear. She must have recognized the expression on my face.

"Don't worry. I am okay. I won't cry." She barks out a humorless laugh.

She seems stronger than I am because I am ready to fall to my knees and let it all out, and I have only been here for a few hours.

"How did you get here?"

I roll the question over and over in my head, not entirely sure myself. The flashes that I received earlier come floating back.

"I was at an old record store in Port Angeles. I had just bought a part for my record player. I remember it being bright out, and I was alone." What I fail to mention is the fact that I was alone because it was sunny and my family can't go out into the sun. "I was walking back to my car when I heard a car roar down the street and slam on its breaks." I can clearly remember the smell of the burning rubber from the car's tires.

"I looked up to see a van stop about five feet away from my car." My gut told me to run in that moment but I never got the chance. "Two men jumped out and the next thing I knew I was on the ground shaking..."

"Taser." Her voice holds no emotion.

"What?"

"They hit you with a taser. It is one of their favorites."

"Is that how you got here?"

She shakes her head no, but makes no other effort to respond to my question.

"What do you mean, one of their favorites?"

She takes a deep breath and seems to consider how to answer my question. This frustrates me. I don't want her to lie. I want her to tell me exactly what is going through her head. I want to know every detail of what the hell is going on.

"Bella. Look at me." She glances up through her eyelashes. "It looks like you and I are in this together right now. So I need to know exactly what is going to happen. Don't sugarcoat anything for me. Please Bella?"

She seems to deliberate my words for a bit longer before making her decision with a small sigh. "The taser is their favorite because they seem to find humor in watching the person writhe in pain… at least, that's the only conclusion I can make. I know they've tasered me," she pauses for a moment as her strong façade seems to waver slightly before she quickly regains it, "…they've tasered me more times than I can remember. I always recall them cackling in the background like I'm their means for entertainment, which… I guess I am."

She glances up at me through her thick eyelashes, reading my face for how I'm taking her news thus far. I guess she decides I can handle a little more so she continues.

"I wish I could tell you exactly what's going to happen and what to expect, but… I can't. I think I've been unconscious a lot while I've been here, so I only remember bits and pieces."

I take in a deep, shaky breath as her words start to fill me with anxiety, fear, and desperation. She looks away from me, allowing me a moment to take in what she's said. I muster all the strength I have to stay in control of my emotions. This girl in front of me, I can only assume from her appearance, her empty brown eyes, and where we are, has been through hell and back… and it's not over. I can't break down, not now.

I attempt to swallow my consuming fear and change the subject. "So, do you go to Forks High? I don't think I've ever seen you around…"

Her eyes come back to mine, and she lets out a small chuckle. "No, you wouldn't have seen me around at Forks High because I go to school on the rez."

"Oh, so are you a member of the Quileute tribe? You're a bit paler than most of them." My confusion apparently renders me rude, did I really just call her pale? I mentally smack myself, though she doesn't seem to have taken any offense by my comment.

"No, no. The Quileute's would never let me claim membership to their tribe, not that I'd want to." There was definitely some sort of emotion lacing that last comment. Hate maybe? I'm not sure. "I actually live at the group home just outside the rez, but they make us go to school on the rez since it's much closer than going all the way to Forks High."

"Group home?"

"Umm, yeah… it's like an orphanage basically." I could tell she wasn't going to elaborate more, and I certainly wasn't going to push her. My heart broke for this girl shackled before me… not only had she been taken, held against her will for over a month, beaten, and God knows what else, but her life prior was apparently no cake walk either. How much can one person take? No wonder her eyes look more like bottomless black holes than beautiful chocolate orbs.

She interrupted my musings by diverting the attention from her to me. "What grade are you in?"

"I'll be a senior in the fall…" assuming I get out of here I thought, but didn't say.

"So, that makes you, what… 17?"

"No, I turned 18 in June."

"Lucky… I can't wait to be 18." She looked completely envious of me.

"Um, yeah I guess being considered an "adult" is pretty cool. It doesn't feel any different though."

"Well once I'm 18 I won't have to stay at the group home anymore. I can be on my own." There was such conviction in her tone. I should have put two and two together, but I guess the stressful situation wasn't helping my thought process any. Of course she couldn't wait to be 18.

"How old are you now?"

"Sixteen. I'll be 17 in September."

"Not too much longer to wait then huh?" The look in her eye told me 14 months seemed excruciatingly far away.

She scoffed. "Hmph, the time can't pass fast enough for me." Her eyes dropped to the floor, and I looked away as well. I wondered what made her so ready to leave the group home. Was it really that bad? Did something happen to her there? God I hoped not. She didn't deserve it, or any of this for that matter. I know she was pretty much a complete stranger, but being forced into this horrific situation with someone, you kind of form a bond whether you want to or not. I felt myself already caring, so I pressed her, not sure if she'd answer or if I'd like what I'd hear.

"It's really that bad there huh?"

She looked back at me, chuckling slightly, though it was utterly devoid of emotion. "Let's put it this way, Edward, all the bruises and cuts you see on me aren't from the pack of mutts that put us in here."

Her eyes were locked on mine, and as if it were possible, my heart broke a little more for her, the ravine deepening the more I learned about her.

BPOV

As different emotions cross his inhumanly beautiful face, I wonder if I have said too much. I don't know this person and surely don't trust him. This could be a move in the game Jacob and his gang are playing. For all I know Edward, if that's even his real name, is one of them and just trying to trick me. I chastise myself internally for giving away such personal information. Even if he isn't a part of this ploy, I don't need to bother him with my pitiful existence of a life by relaying my sob story.

"What sort of things to do you do for fun?" I hope this is a distraction and something not too personal because we need to get away from the line of questioning that had just taken place.

"Umm…I play piano?" He made it sound like a question. Hasn't anyone ever asked him what he did in his spare time?

"That's cool…" I see him smirk and try to hold in a laugh. This irritates me to no end. "What is so funny?" I practically sneer at him without meaning to. I guess it has just been too long since I have had a conversation with someone, and the fact that he is laughing at me isn't the way I wanted it to go.

"Nothing." He is struggling to contain his laughter. The chains above him are shaking from the jerking motion of his broad shoulders.

I glare at him. I have been told I can have a pretty mean face when I am truly upset, and I hope this tactic succeeds in forcing him to tell me what the hell he thinks is so goddamn funny.

Obviously I was wrong.

He lets out a bark of a laugh that echoes around the room. Then he is doubled over the best he can while being chained to a wall. He is laughing so hysterically that I start to wonder if he came from the psychiatric hospital a few towns over. Five minutes pass and he is finally able to regain some of his composure. He takes deep breaths as he tries to calm himself. A giggle slips every few seconds. Finally he looks up and his emerald eyes hold my gaze. A blush creeps upon his cheeks and he begins to stammer.

"Oh…Bella…I am sorry! I wasn't laughing at you! I was laughing at the circumstance I have found myself in, chained to a wall, across from a half naked girl who is asking my what I like to do in my free time. I guess I am in shock."

For the first time I realize I am half naked. I look down and try to reposition myself to the side so he can't see anything. My entire body is ablaze with the thought that he has seen me in my underwear and tank top for the past half hour, and God knows how long before I woke up. I want nothing more than to crawl away and hide. He notices my distress and abruptly rushes to fix his slip. It wasn't a good idea.

"Oh! I mean not that I was looking! Well…obviously I saw and have been looking at you… but not in that way! I mean, I don't even know you. You are beautiful, and I am a man but…oh god…" He groans out.

Now it is my turn to start laughing. He looks at me, panic-stricken for a moment, but then joins me in a fit of giggles.

All of the sudden I hear heavy footsteps coming from the stairs right outside the door, silencing any noise coming from both of us. We even stop breathing. I risk a glance at Edward, trying to find some way to comfort him. Edward jerks his head towards the noise and I notice he has started to shake.

"Don't make a sound and don't speak unless spoken to. Please Edward… don't fight back. It only makes it worse and…" My whisper is cut off by the sound of the keys in the lock. It only takes a few seconds, but my world stops spinning as I hear the lock mechanism turn and the pop of the door being released. All of the sudden we are thrown into blinding light from the outside world. I clamp my eyes shut and turn my body away from door, burying my head into the crook of my arm.

"Well, well, well. From the sounds of it, you two sure are getting along nicely. I feel a little left out." I recognize Jacob's voice laced with sick humor and malice. "Can I join the party? I promise we'll have fun."