Jane Romilda Whittier whistled off-key as she passed under the streetlight, a little uncomfortable as the orange light temporarily revealed her. Still, it was easier than walking down the middle of the road and dodging cars every few minutes. Sniffling a little and wishing she'd put tissues in her pocket, Jane readjusted her grip on the crowbar over her shoulder.
The next bit of road was nice and dark; a thick morning glory vine had all but eaten the fence it grew on, made it topheavy with greenery, enough to cause deep pools of shadows beneath it. Jane paused in her whistling to breathe, and in that moment, pulled up short.
Still framed by muggy orange streetlamp, Jane couldn't see into the darkest parts of the shadows under the morning glory. But she had heard something, oh yes, she'd heard skittering and whuffling, and a noise like a creature startled. She lowered her crowbar from her shoulder to her side, and cracked her neck and wriggled her shoulders like a prizefighter, before striding into the shadows.
A snarl and a whirl of movement, and Jane let out a yell, swinging her crowbar at the creature. It connected with a satisfying crack, and threw the animal into the fence. Jane drew her arm back to strike again, but before she could hit it again, something had grabbed her crowbar, and was forcing her back, out into the light again.
Jane blinked, and stared up into the furiously twisted face of a scruffy teenage boy in a black hoodie, one hand gripping her crowbar and the other looking as though it was going to grab her by her throat.
"Oh, sorry," said Jane, raising an eyebrow. "I thought you were a dog."
"You what?" growled the boy, sounding a lot like the most recent cinema Batman. "You hit me with a crowbar because you thought I was a dog?"
"I don't like dogs," said Jane mildly. "They eat cats."
"They eat cats," repeated the boy, looking at her like she was some kind of bizarre new deep-sea fish. "So you hit them with crowbars?"
"I like cats," said Jane simply. "Anyway, I said I'm sorry, do you mind letting go of the crowbar?"
The boy started, and seemed to remember that he had hands, before releasing the crowbar. Jane stared at it. Where he'd been grabbing it, the metal was smushed. Not bent, not melted… smushed. Smushed with indents where his fingers had been.
"Well, that's interesting," said Jane, holding the crowbar close so she could inspect it. "Where'd I catch you with it, anyway?"
"Shoulder," grunted the boy.
"Reasonable," said Jane. "And yet you're using your arm perfectly well."
"You should leave," said the boy.
"You're in my way, then," said Jane agreeably.
"I am in danger of doing something terrible to you, if you do not leave," the boy said, hissing slightly.
"Oh, shut up," said Jane. "Do you eat cats?"
There was a beat of silence, and he looked pained.
"No," he said. "Coyotes."
"Well that's all right, then," nodded Jane, brushing past him, re-shouldering the crowbar. "Because there's something in this neighborhood that has been eating cats. I thought it might have been a wild dog or something, but my suspect list just got a lot longer."
"What?" the boy said, catching up to her effortlessly as she walked. "What're you doing, hunting cat-eaters? That's a good way to get dead fast, I'd imagine."
"Well, sure, if you're a cat," said Jane. He sighed.
"No, I mean… wait, just stop. Who the hell are you?" he asked, grasping her by the shoulders and turning her to face him.
"I'm Jane," she said. "My cat got eaten two weeks ago. Vengeance is reasonable. Now who are you, besides the obvious?"
"My name's Max, but that's completely unimportant. You're obviously some crazy person escaped from the nearest hospital, and I really ought to take you back before someone gets worried," he said. "Or you hit someone else with a crowbar. Really? You're going to hit a rabid dog with a crowbar because it ate your cat?"
"Or, you know, hit a vampire with a crowbar because it ate my cat," Jane shrugged, and continued walking. Max was stalled for a moment, then caught up to her again just as effortlessly as the first time.
"Hold on, a what? A vampire? What makes you think a vampire…" he trailed off, worrying. Jane gave him a look that made him feel very acutely like a kindergartener who had just answered wrong when asked what sound a dog makes.
"Your teeth are bright red," she said. "I mean, really impressively blood-coated. I've allowed for the fact that there are dozens of alternative explanations of this. You could be fond of eating raw Red Dye number 40. I could have actually hit you in the head rather than the shoulder, although that wouldn't really exempt you from suspicion seeing as you'd be concussed instead of annoying. You could be one of those emo kids I've been hearing about. But none of that accounts for the fact that your eyes are bright red and you aren't wearing contacts."
"What?" he exclaimed, hand flying to his face before he realized that you couldn't actually confirm what color your eyes are by feel. "But I haven't had human for months!"
There was another span of silence. Jane used it to keep walking, unconcerned, and Max took the time to duck off the sidewalk and slam his head into the asphalt a few times, denting it in the process.
"So. Yes. I'm a vampire," he deadpanned, falling into stride with her again as though nothing had happened. "And you aren't freaking out because…?"
"What's to freak out about?" said Jane. "You didn't eat my cat, you said so yourself."
Max made a small, strained noise like a bicycle brake being slowly tortured to death and rubbed his temples. "Not even the slightest bit of concern that I might decide to eat you instead?"
"Nope. You've obviously already eaten," said Jane.
"No existential crisis at the realization that there are things beyond the scientifically documented in this world? No angst about bearing a terrible secret? No drama? Nothing?" Max insisted.
"Nothing," said Jane. "I am utterly unsurprised."
"You really are nuts. Where are you going, anyway?" Max grumbled.
"I'm still looking for a cat-killer," said Jane. "Unless you've an idea as to who it was. Did a friend of yours eat him?"
"I don't have any friends," said Max bleakly. "There's only a couple of us in the area, and none of them like me much. I'm too young, they say."
"Why, when were you born?" asked Jane.
"November twelfth, year of our Lord nineteen hundred and sixty-nine. I was turned in 1988," he sighed.
"Before or after your birthday?" asked Jane.
"Uh. After," he supplied. Jane smiled a little.
"I'm nineteen too," she said. Max shook his head.
"No, haven't you been listening? I'm not nineteen, I'm forty, I was turned when I was nineteen, so that's the age my body's remained at—you know what? Forget it. I'm not explaining the particulars of my personal timeline to a mental patient," he said.
"You in college?" asked Jane after a minute or so.
"Nah. Never saw the point while I was alive… still don't," he said. "I'm basically a homeless person."
"What do you do in the daytime, then?" frowned Jane. "Are cardboard boxes sunproof?" Max snorted.
"No, but that's beside the point. Sunlight doesn't kill me, but it does… distinguish me from others. It's unimportant. I'm largely nocturnal by choice, either way," he said.
"Same. I can't get hired anywhere, and I don't want to go to school. Mostly I walk," said Jane, swinging her crowbar experimentally, testing to see if it still felt the same in her hand despite its disfigurement.
"Me too," said Max simply.
"Really?" said Jane, raising her eyebrows at him. "No secret gothic bar hideout for vampires and punk kids? No covens in the dead of midnight? No espionage, plotting, murder most foul?"
"No," Max said. "Too much effort."
"Good answer," grinned Jane. "Want to go to the waterfront?"
"Why? Everything's closed, isn't it?" frowned Max.
"The water isn't closed," said Jane in a tone that clearly suffixed idiot to her sentence.
"Oh, well then," said Max. "Why not? What time is it?"
"Little gone past one," said Jane, after checking the sky. Max squinted up at it as well, and then sneered at her.
"You don't know that. You can check the time of day by glancing up at the sun's position, but you can't do that at night. The moon's never in the same place twice," he said.
"The stars are, though," said Jane good-naturedly. "Sure, they change with seasons, but that's what starwheels are for. Idiot."
"I could snap you in my bare hands," mused Max. "And yet I'm not. I think I kind of feel sorry for you. I can't imagine what it would be like to suffer from a mental disorder."
"Neither can I," said Jane, tone dry.
"Oh, come on now. You're a classic sociopath," said Max, grinning. "Here I am, the cold-blooded supernatural killer, and I am absolutely agog at you. What is it, hm? Antisocial? Borderline? Bipolar? Schizophrenia?"
"Nobody's ever bothered to find out," said Jane. "Quite possibly because I'm not actually mentally ill. Although my parents do suspect depression."
Max snorted, and shook his head. "So you only act crazy in front of cryptids?" he guessed.
"I don't act like anything. This is me. The scenario in which I have been presented to you has caused the impression that I have a mental disorder. It's an illusion. I'm just as sane as you are," said Jane.
"Look, kid," said Max. "I'm a vampire. I drink blood to live. It's a biological imperative. I do not consider myself at all well-adjusted. And yet, here I am, not the person going out at nights to crowbar a dog to death for eating my cat."
"Probably because you never had a cat to get eaten," Jane raised her eyebrows at him.
"There was a double-entendre there, but I'm far too lazy to go and fetch it," said Max. Jane grinned.
"Come on," she said. "We're only a couple blocks from the waterfront. Let's go and scare sea lion kids with stories about killer whales."
Disclaimer: Don't own the Twilight universe or it's rather bizarre ideas about vampires.
This will hopefully have absolutely nothing to do with canon characters, seeing as I could barely stand most of them. I just wanted to jump into the sandbox that is Meyer's universe and play around a bit. Story set south of Washington but north of Mexico, along the coast. Monterey, in fact, which is really quite ideal for vampire inhabitation but not as ideal as some places, mostly due to the fact that the streets of Monterey had to have been planned out by a retarded bonobo. Setting should keep me on my toes, seeing as I don't live in Monterey, merely a similar microclimate. I was this close to putting it in Santa Cruz, but that's too campy even for a Twilight fic. I mean, really.
Max and Jane will quite possibly have similar chemistry to Edward and Bella, in that most of their bonding will be an argument over who's got fewer marbles. Only minus the angst.
Oh, and, I don't actually expect anybody to read this story, but feel free to leave a review and surprise me.