Authors Note
Twilight is a story with potential. The world is interesting. And while yes, there are many problems with the book, they're essentially harmless, and at the very least entertaining. All the same, I've had writers block for my original content. So I'm challenging myself to re-write Twilight, and do it better. Expect many changes – but also for some things to stay the same. Just a warning there will be disturbing imagery in this chapter, and probably in the future as well. These are vampires.
One: Those who Sow the Wind
The door wouldn't open.
And worse yet, the sky seemed to have unzipped itself and was dumping torrents of rain on my head.
Son of a bitch, I thought. The perfect end, to the perfect day.
I looked up at the boiling mass of bruised purple clouds, and the lighting flashing within, and attempted to squish myself under the narrow awning over the front door. It really only barely counted as one, and with my backpack in front of me (in a vain hope at keeping the books and papers inside dry) I didn't fit.
"Son of a bitch," I said aloud this time.
If my phone were working I'd call Charlie, my dad. But dead it was, namely because I'd tripped and fallen into a puddle that felt more like a pond this morning, and gotten the delicate brat of a thing soaked. It was currently in a bag of rice Angela had helped me get from the Foods teacher, sitting in my backpack.
I let out an aggravated little scream and kicked the door. All that accomplished was me swearing like a sailor, and jacking up my foot.
Charlie was a cop. His front door was far sturdier than my toes, or my woefully sodden sneakers. Mournfully, I exed the newest Discworld book from the budget I'd made for new purchases, and added a pair of goulashes to it instead.
"At least there's the truck," I grumbled, turning around and splashing across the lawn toward the lovely old monster of metal Charlie had gifted me with. That much made me smile. Charlie was a good dad. Certainly better than some of the father's I'd heard my friends talk about back in Phoenix.
I was fumbling the keys out of my pocket when someone laid on their horn on the road, making me jump, and sending the keys sailing out of my hand to land somewhere in the yard.
"What the fuck!" I shouted, peering around the truck and spotting a shiny Volvo sitting like a toad a few feet away. Through the torrent, I couldn't see into the windows. But I knew who was inside nonetheless. I'd seen him and his family climb into the thing earlier in the day.
What the hell would Edward want from me?
I'll be frank. I wasn't in the best of moods. So rather than handling this like a mature adult, or wondering how the hell he knew where I lived (Even if that answer was obvious, I still should have considered it) I stomped across the yard and ripped open the passenger side door of the car.
"What?" I growled to a surprised face. His black eyes were like pinpricks in the shadowy interior of the car. Only the faintest glimmer of light touched them, making him look weirdly... inhuman.
"Are you alright?"
"Not particularly, no," I snapped dryly.
"Do you want a ride to the police station?" Something about his tone was a little off. But it didn't really register. He'd been a major factor in how my day had gone wrong so we weren't on the best of terms. Or really any. It wasn't like he'd actually spoken to me.
"Why are you here?" I might have been emotionally over charged, tired, wet, and cold, but I was still the daughter of a cop.
"To apologize." His body language said 'blush' but his cheeks were as pale as ever. Maybe he was sick?
"Thanks," I replied, disinclined to actually accept it. It really had been a bad day. And I was pretty sure I had PMS too, which was making everything far more intense. Harder to ignore.
"You're soaked," he pointed out.
"Yeah," I agreed. And then slid into the car and buckled my seat belt. The seat began to warm up, and I was totally grateful the guy had parents rich enough to invest in a car with butt warmers in a car for their teenaged son. "I lost my keys somewhere in the yard, and the door wont open. You take me to the police station, and we're all good, though, 'kay?"
Edward nodded, and began to drive. Streetlights winked on one by one as the darkening storm came at us harder, and steam was starting to rise from my clothes from the deliciously warm air in the car. I let out a contented sigh, and might have let myself fall asleep if I'd known him better.
Instead I turned to peer out the window. It was raining so hard I could barely tell where we were. Just that there were plenty of trees. Nothing looked familiar.
And the car remained silent. But there was something in the silence. Something that made the skin on the back of my neck crawl, and my heart skip a beat.
I counted backwards. It had been nearly ten minutes. The police station took maybe eight to reach. And the car was only accelerating. Really far too fast given the weather.
I turned my head to look across the seat, to look at Edward, the faint silhouette of a man, lit only by the glow of the instruments on the dash.
"How..." my voice trailed off as lighting flashed, and threw the world into pale blue light, making everything look flat. Two dimensional. In the light, I could see Edward was smiling.
No. Not smiling – barring his glistening, perfect white teeth.
I shouldn't have got into the car with him, instinct screamed. I shouldn't have got in the car!
Rationalization replied with; he's a high school student. We're fine. He's just –
Even rationalization couldn't come up with something to combat the newly discovered tension in the car. It was so thick I was choking on it. Or maybe having an asthma attack. I'd had that when I was a kid. And truthfully, I'd never felt smaller. More like the butterfly someone pins to a rectangle of cardboard.
"Don't be scared," he said, his voice a low throbbing purr. "We're almost there."
I blushed, and could feel the heat in my neck and the rest of my body. I felt naked, exposed with just the sound of him talking.
Predator, my gut said.
I tried to swallow around a dry throat, my hands clutching spasmodically at the seat as I spied the odometer. We were going nearly a hundred miles an hour in a thunderstorm.
Tree's whipped past us, blurring into dark shapes like skeletal reaching hands. I would have jumped out of the car if I thought I might survive it. Hell, I was considering it anyway –
but no, logic whispered. As long as there's a chance, you wait. He can't do anything while he's driving.
And – maybe he wouldn't do anything at all.
Thu-thunk – the car hit and ran over something. A tree branch? Anything was possible in the madly swaying forest – and whatever it was, it seemed to be the final ingredient for disaster. The car began to spin, to skate across the pavement like it was too light to touch the ground.
No traction.
Hydroplaning, I though with horror.
It happened in an instant. We crashed into a guard rail and plunged into darkness. Glass shattered, a tree branch pierced the windshield, going straight for Edward's face and –
and.
Darkness.
Rain pattering on metal.
Distant thunder.
Birds cawing.
The sensation of flying.
"Oooh," I groaned, trying to open my eyes. Or to bring my hands up toward my head. Wait – up?
I looked to bleary eyes at the word, and found the sky muddy and pinned with trees. My arms dangled limply above me. My legs had pulled up too, and were half bent, knees close to my stomach.
It was luck that kept me from screaming. Along with spying the first fingers of pale gray dawn in the sky below.
Trembling hands came into view, with torn finger nails, and several of the fingers themselves awkwardly bent.
Beyond them, to my left, there was Edward. Or what should have been him. His head looked like a shattered block or marble. The tree branch I'd spotted earlier bored directly through his forehead and out the other side of the seat.
I cried out and weakly went for the latch on the seat belt, causing a rainfall of shredded yellow foam to fall past my head, into the dented roof. Moving my hands took time. I could hardly feel them as anything more than burning hot agony. It was like trying to maneuver two gloves full of soft, hot sand. Only each time I tried to press on anything pain would lance through them and make me whimper. It was like having rotten teeth where my bones should have been.
I'm alive, I thought dazedly. I'm …
A strangled gasp.
What I was was light headed. Suffocating. About to pass out again probably.
Not with the dead man!
That was what finally got me over my skittish fumbling. I stabbed my broken hands at the latch for the seat belt, and dropped into the top of the car with a strangled scream of agony. The world had gone gray and fuzzy, and vomit was rising up my throat. I crawled through broken glass, out of the car, and emptied the contents of my stomach on dead leaves instead of myself. Then nearly passed out on top of it. I managed to roll at the last second, and the darkness claimed me again.
When I woke again, it was the cold rain on my face, and a hideous metallic shrieking. Consciousness slammed into me this time, and with a strange clarity I watched the totaled car rock from side to side – and saw the metal of the undercarriage ripple.
There's something alive inside.
There was nothing alive inside.
Just Edward's corpse.
I'm hallucinating.
The car split apart like a blooming flower, and birthed the man who should have been dead. His face was –
wrong.
Lopsided, shattered. No longer perfect. One one eyes was lower than the other, dropping out of its socket. And he was coming for me. No longer a handsome devil, but some lurching creature from a child's nightmare.
I turned onto my stomach and scrambled onto my feet, away, away, through the sudden flames of agony, and the taste of blood thick in my throat.
"No, no, no, no, no -" I cried out hoarsely. "No! You can't!" But he could. And he would. Powerful hands closed around my arms, and wrenched me backwards.
Snap.
An inconsequential sound, like someone breaking a pencil.
My left arm went numb.
And I looked up into the black eyes of my murderer with helpless terror, tears falling, screaming sobs erupting as he bent and tore into my throat.
This pain was no greater than any of the others in my tortured, abused body. In fact it was almost kind. Warmth flowed out of me and cold rushed in to fill the gap. But each drop of burning blood on me was wonderful, wonderful heat.
A long sigh as exhaustion crept in along the tunnels my eyes had become.
Sleep. Sleep now.
I was whisked away, to the sound of my fathers voice as he sang a lullaby. My mothers hand was cool and smooth on my forehead. Family. We were together.
I'm sorry, Dad...
