Chapter 1: The Game Begins
I could feel the excitement, the adrenaline pumping through my body. We had been hunting in this town for days and had barely found enough to tide the three of us over. We'd had to share for the past three or four meals now, and I hated sharing, even with Victoria. I could never seem to get enough...
A slight breeze blew through the woods, and I could feel it on my skin. But it wasn't the breeze that stopped me in my tracks. Little things like that did not faze me anymore; it had been years since I had been turned and my heightened senses had long since mellowed, all except for one; there was a human nearby. I found out not long after I had become a vampire that it was my destiny to be a tracker; I was born for it, in a way. Every hunt had an exciting new game for me, and for Victoria, but it was often too easy, and I had a feeling that this would not be much different. Tracking was actually beginning to become monotonous, and I longed for a real challenge.
This scent was particularly strong and appetizing to me. it seemed to draw me closer to it, to be calling to me in its own way. My throat ached and burned with a kind of thirst that I hadn't felt since I was a newborn, and that was decades ago.
"Victoria, get Laurent. We're moving ahead. There's nothing here, but there's at least one human a few miles from here," I told her. Then, as I sniffed the air again, another scent caught my attention. Our kind was also near. I just hoped that they didn't get to the human first, because if they did I wasn't sure how I would be able to control my actions.
Suddenly I heard the crack of thunder in the sky above us. Then, further off, another thunderous sound, but it wasn't the storm that caused that one. The others, our kind, were playing baseball. They were probably so distracted by their game that they didn't even know there was a human nearby, which was for the better. This meant that there would be no confrontation. We would just have to make sure we stayed clear of that area.
At that same moment I realized that I had lost the scent of the human. It must have already moved on. We had been hunting too close to town lately; people were beginning to suspect, and the last thing any of us needed was to be figured out. The people were smarter than we gave them credit for. Oh well, maybe we'd have better luck later.
Laurent and Victoria came to join me then. Laurent looked overly eager, and Victoria just looked annoyed. I knew where this was going before Laurent even had a chance to open his mouth: he wanted to join their game. I took no interest in this, but I decided that since we had lost dinner for the time being, I'd humor him.
"All right, we can stop for a while. But I don't think any of us will last much longer, so it can only be a short game."
"Fair enough," Laurent agreed, "a little time is all I want. You never let us have any real fun." He smirked.
My definition of fun compared to Laurent's were two very different things. I loved the hunt, while he favored recreation. It was always so puzzling to me...his thirst always seemed to come in second to the need for contact and attention. He was the most "human", if you will, of all of us. He never ceased to puzzle me.
Victoria just rolled her eyes and absently put her hand in mine. That being said, maybe there was one thing that came in second to the hunt, to tracking. I loved Victoria (as much as is possible for creatures like us to love); she always kept me from completely losing control. In fact, she had kept me from exposing us all more than once because I foolishly pursued humans that were more trouble than they were worth. But I did love a challenge.
We arrived at the clearing within a few minutes. Since this had been Laurent's idea, he took his place at the front of us, for I really wanted nothing to do with this in the first place. Let him have his twenty minutes of false glory, it made no difference to me.
The eight others that we met in the clearing looked alarmed upon our arrival, but they had assembled themselves in such a manner that it was clear they had known we were coming. The one at the front, the blond one, introduced himself as Carlisle. They all greeted us warmly, save for one. The one at the back was acting strangely territorial, and he and his mate were the only ones that said nothing to us, and they did not look happy when Laurent eagerly asked if we could join them. They eagerly agreed, but when they all moved aside to take their places again, I caught the familiar scent...
...and realized that there were only seven others. The eighth one was with them, but she was not one of us. She was human.