Never before had any of his prey captivated him the way she did.
Her silken hair, her stormy eyes, her tiny frame… They all called to him, made him want her in ways her scent did not. He couldn't bring himself to kill her, not yet.
When the other one vanished with her, he tracked them. He was, after all, a tracker; it was what he did. He followed at a carefully calculated distance, always alert for the slightest change in her scent, which would signify the beginning of her transformation. When none came, he was relieved. No one should have the pleasure of sinking their teeth inîto that milk-white flesh but him.
After weeks of meticulous planning, he caught the weakling while he hunted, pathetically draining animals to survive.
"Tell me where you're hiding her," he hissed roughly, holding him against a tree by the neck. "I know you have her. Where is she?"
"Please," the other man choked out. "Please, don't hurt her."
"I'll do whatever I like with her," he snarled, to scare him, but he knew exactly what he wanted her for, and it was certainly not painful. "Where is she?"
"There's a cabin," the man gasped. "About twelve miles west. W- What do you want her for?"
He smirked, cold satisfaction settling in. "Me."
The thin plume of purple smoke wouldn't be visible to the naked human eye from twelve miles away, he reasoned as he ran. The girl would have no way of knowing that anything was amiss.
So why was she running around screaming and throwing herself when he arrived?
He paused before he entered, listening intently. Perhaps he should have looked into her medical condition a bit more thoroughly… But then he heard words.
"No, no, no! I should have gone after him as soon as I saw it, and now it's probably too late… Oh, and then he'll get here, and the fire will start! No, no, I can't, I can't take it…"
Eyes narrowing, he opened the door to find her huddled on the couch, sobbing hysterically. She hadn't heard him enter, and so he made his way quietly toward her shaking form. When he placed a cold hand gently on her shoulder, she stared up at him, gray eyes huge. Then she screamed.
"You!" she wailed. "Oh, you've killed him! And now you're here to kill me, and oh, the fire…"
He blinked at her, unnerved. "How did you know?" he questioned in a low voice, taking a lock of her short black hair in is fingers, as he'd longed to do for months.
"I saw it," she sobbed wildly. "The visions told me so."
Visions? Well, she was even more special than he'd first thought.
"The fire won't kill you," he said slowly. "It'll hurt, but it'll make the visions easier to handle. Do you want that?"
"Please, please!" she cried, clinging to him now, her skirt soaked through with tears.
He smiled. Done. "You'll have to do just one other thing for me, though. Is that okay?"
"Anything," she wailed. "Anything. Just make it better, please."
"As you wish, dear," he answered smoothly, then whispered his demand against her neck just before he bit:
"Stay with me."
Once again, I'm guilty of writing about James instead of working on my multi-chaptered fics. This one is James/Alice, in case you didn't catch that. My friend Molly wrote a really epic one; you should read it when she gets an account. ^.^
I own nothing. Except a bunch of T-shirts and posters. And books. LOTS and LOTS of books.