A/N: So The Vampiric Existence of Bree Tanner was boring me. I decided to edit and seperate Bree's story into how she survives through Breaking Dawn and hopefully a second part about what happens years later when the Cullens return. This is Damned. I hope you enjoy it.

Damned
she.s.
Chapter One

Where I came from, I had a life. It's really as simple as that.

Where I came from, I had a family, friends, pets: the whole shebang. I had an older brother that teased me mercilessly, a father who never called, a mother that never took me seriously.

I had a best friend who was gay, another who was in love with said gay friend even though she was a she and a number of blondettes who liked to trip me up in the corridors while their snickering jock boyfriends laughed. I even had a kitten named Olivia, who liked to scratch my arms like they were lottery tickets.

I was Bree Tanner. Almost sixteen. Average. Obsessive about my books. Straight A-B student.

It wasn't a fantastic life. But it was a life.

And it ended on the 23rd of February, a few days short of my sixteenth birthday.

My existence began about 3 days later, although I was told it was closer to four. My...development, I guess you could say, was a little more complex than average.

I can still remember the agony. I can still remember the burning. Most of all, I remembered the sound of it all, from beginning to end. I will never forget it.

There was screaming. I realised later they were mine but it didn't really click until then- all I knew was this total, encompassing pain, a fire that was hotter than the deepest pit of hell. Maybe I was in hell. Maybe that's what this was.

It would explain a lot.

I could feel every excruciating crackle of heat as it fried my body, I could hear the fires plunging through my veins. My heartbeat felt more it came from clockwork instead of will- it was all mechanical, no longer because I wanted to live. All I wanted was to die. To die and have this wordlessly awful pain end.

I wondered what I'd done. I wondered why I was in hell, if that's where I was. The thoughts were like the thinnest of covers, a futile attempt to stifle my mind from thinking over the pain.

When I dislocated my shoulder when I was ten, Jack asked me about my class homework for the week, wondering if I would have enough to time to finish it with all that was going on. He spoke soothingly, softly, curiously and just when I was also worrying about my school project, he popped the bone back into its socket and the pain ended like he'd snapped his fingers.

But this was nothing like that. This was more painful than anything anyone could've imagined in their wildest nightmares.

And there was no stupid older brother Jack to pop the pain away this time.

How could this have come from milk? I was on my way to the corner store that Ms Evans owned. I was on my way, angry with my mother for sending me out when I was halfway through my new book. I was on my way, following the same route I'd followed for years.

My memory of it was painfully hectic. A blur of white flesh. A bright orange candle flitting in the darkness. A cautious 'hello?' on my part. A whispered greeting:

Welcome to the army.

And then a pain jagged slashing open my shoulder, right through my jumper, cutting flesh and bone and spilling blood on the ground.

Then the fire came and I writhed, begging for this to be a dream, for this not to be real. But it was. Oh, it was so real.

How could this have happened? I hadn't done anything worth this. I hadn't killed anyone, stolen anything except pens from my friends. Was that stupid priest right? Was it because of Michael? Because I was his friend?

Michael was gay. When he'd come out of the famous figurative closet, a small section of our community had freaked out, including his grandmother, a few of the students at our high school and the local clergyman, who told him he would be damned to hell for his sins.

I refused to believe that though- Michael wasn't evil. He was smart and kind and funny. He'd told the priest that his only hell would be if Johnny Depp stayed straight and he'd been doing that for years.

But what were my sins? What had I done? Could I take it back, withdraw my errors? No matter the cost- I'd do it. I'd do anything. Just to make it all stop. Just to freeze the flames.

My thoughts were fuzzy around the edges. They did nothing to distract me so I stopped thinking and just waited, writhing, wishing for an end that I was sure would never come.

When the fire finally- finally- began to seep, it was millimetre by excruciating millimetre.

I felt it in the very tips of my fingers; closer to the air surrounding my finger tips probably. But even the smallest measure of relief gave me hope that maybe it would end soon.

The hope was crushed an immeasurable time later when the fire started pooling, leeching its way back to the beginning, to the blood spilling cut on my shoulder. It was a thousand times hotter there and I knew: this was it. It was ending, I was about to die. The end was so close, I could feel dizzying relief mix with the furious pain.

My heart sped up, frantically trying to release itself, to escape this pain. But then it stumbled and stuttered and suddenly, it was no more. Dying. Dying. Dead.

At least, I was right about one thing: I died.

It was only a few hours later that I realised what had happened. I awoke, my brain shockingly clear, my body calm and cold and icy, my breath empty and needless. Riley was the first thing I saw. He was so beautiful, it was heartbreaking. I couldn't understand why such an angel had such crimson eyes.

He told me, after a few minutes and precautionary measures to ensure I wouldn't run. I was a vampire. I was fast and strong and pale and beautiful and undead.

I didn't take the news well at all- the small room I'd been tortured in was tortured in turn, ripped to shreds, tossed like a salad. I screamed and yelled but in the end, I knew the truth. I could sense it, deep in myself. I could feel it, the need, the thirst. It tore at me. It ripped my own soul apart like nothing I'd ever experienced.

It was my nature. My very existence now. I was a vampire. And nothing was going to change that.

Not now.

I met the other newborns soon after that. They were a large group already- at first, I didn't understand why they needed me when I saw how strong and fast all of them were.

"I caught her, I get first bite!"

"What? Are you kidding? She's mine!"

"Screw you, you got first try last time!"

There were so many of them. Riley showed me the burnt out pit where the mass of people were staying and left without a second word. They were all beautiful. Frighteningly hauntingly beautiful, the kind of face that appears every time you blink, imprinted behind your eyelids for the rest of your days once you caught sight of it.

I'd seen my own reflection in the mirror as I had gone to throw it across the room: I was just as beautiful. It made me scared to see my face so changed. I'd always had somewhat of a delicate face but the change made me look even more fine-featured, fairylike almost. I looked older though, more late sixteen than late fifteen and I wondered, if I pushed it, could I possibly stretch it to seventeen?

My hair was long and curly and reached down to past my shoulders in dark wisps of black-brown. My skin was smooth and icy and alabaster pale like I'd never been in the sun before, the original golden tan gone. My eyes were glowing. No longer the soft green I was so used to but a very bright, terrible red colour that was the last straw for me. I crushed the mirror to dust in my finger tips.

The others were raggedly dressed: nothing indecent but there was dirt and rips littering their clothes, like they'd been tearing at each other. Which, as I watched, wasn't such an implausible thought.

There were 23 of them altogether. I counted so quickly I surprised myself. I'd never been one for mathematics.

And each one had a pair of shockingly, horrifyingly bright scarlet eyes. I could see them all so clearly, it almost disorientated me. But not quite.

The thirst was overwhelming, the dry, raw clawing at my throat drove me over the edge. I could feel my muscles tensing, binding and then suddenly I was across the other side of the pit where a number of the others, the other 'newborns' as Riley had called them, were collected around an unconscious woman, her hair matted and her arms bruised from where they'd grabbed her.

One of them, a young man with bright red hair, growled at me as I drew near to the circle of bickering vampires but I paid him little interest. Suddenly, there was nothing that filled me but the sound of this woman's blood as it ticked sluggishly around her body.

It was like I'd just woken up to my subconscious mind: instinct took over and my hazy thoughts were faded as the redhead clawed at me, trying to tell me to back off, collecting the attention of the other three who also hissed. It was clear they all wanted her for themselves but they would protect her together to keep an outsider from their meal.

It barely registered. I didn't even care. I just struck out, stronger than I'd ever been in my whole life. The redhead collided with my fist and went flying while the others tried to pile on top of me. I gripped one's ankle and tossed her aside, taking the other boy with her. I was so strong, so fast. I could feel my lips pulling back over my teeth, furious and feral. I couldn't control this dark corner of my mind which was desperate to taste, to savour this woman's blood.

The last threat was a girl, her hair short and blonde, cut just below her ears and tied back in pigtails. She was slim and average sized, maybe a few inches taller than I was. My brain took in all this at an incredible speed and suddenly she was leaping at me, teeth bared, snarling. I growled, shaking her off and ripping at one of her arms and tearing the left limb off her shoulder.

She hissed, clawing at me with a vengeance. I batted her aside with every ounce of my strength and she flew backwards for a few milliseconds, returning in a crouch, her face screwed up with wrath. We wrestled and finally I tossed her far enough away from me that she hissed but stood away and I fell upon the woman.

She tasted heavenly. I'd never known such a scent, such a flavour, such a sensation. I wanted more. I wanted all of it. I put my lips to her neck, where the ticking of her pulse was the loudest, and, my inner thoughts screaming at me, calling me a monster, sucked her dry.

Once she was finished, once her heart stuttered its last beats, I pulled away, the thirst finally abating. It felt so good, finally for the measure of relief. It was only then that I realised what I'd just done. I'd just killed someone. I'd just drunk from an innocent woman. Attacked other people- no. I corrected myself. Not people. Other monsters.

I turned, slowly, realising that it was quiet in the pit and realised I had an audience. My eyes whirled around, studying each face to a minute detail in split seconds. Each of them was watching me, studying me themselves, trying to guess at what I would do next. A few faces were angry I'd taken the meal. Another few were warily eying me and the other vampires I'd thrown around. Even more were staring with a sort of sadness about them and I realised there was not one other monster around me who was as young as me.

They were pitying me.

I screamed, the weight of what I'd just accomplished falling heavily over my shoulders, crushing me and any kind of conscious I had left. There was an echoed hiss as I flitted away, heaving breaths that were completely pointless, gasping for air, for release from this torment.

I killed someone. I took a life. And it felt so natural for me, so right, so easy. I was murderer, a killer. I was a monster. A freak.

I screeched, inhuman and feral and deranged, clawing at the walls of the burnt out once-warehouse pit, the bricks crumbling away beneath my fingers. No one tried to help me. No one tried to come after me as I banished myself to the furthest corner of the tightly enclosed space, burying myself amongst the faded paint-and-brick work.

Murderer. Killer. Monster. Freak. The words chanted in my mind, parading themselves about, hurling themselves at me.

I kept flinching, remembering that taste, that wonderful taste which had filled me so completely. That was blood from a daughter. A sister, a mother, a wife, a friend, a person. And I'd taken it. I could feel it in my veins- it was thrumming, energizing me.

Powering me with the terrible strength I'd used to kill for it.

I screamed again, wishing something other than these empty breaths would come from me. Tears, gasps, sweat. Anything that would make me a human being again. Anything to remind me of who I was.

Nothing came.

Riley quickly told me of our purpose: we were part of an army, a resistance against a large clan that wished to kill us all. Seattle was their territory and they wanted us all dead and gone so they could have the blood-filled humans to themselves.

He told us all that we were under the command of an unquestionable leader but never told us her name. I wondered then if perhaps it was because if he had, I would've been too tempted to go after her, to tear her apart for making me this way.

I wished he had. I wished she'd died at my own hands. But at the same time, the small part of me that was still partway human was horrified at my own dark wishes. I'd never killed anything before. I'd barely managed to swat flies for God's sakes!

But Riley told us- we would kill or be killed.

He told us it would be easy. Kill the strange Yellow-Eyes coven and we would be fulfilled, given their territory and the blood that came with it. He even brought us a shirt, telling us they carried a human girl around with them, like a pet. That hers was the scent on the red blouse. It was intoxicating: freesias and strawberries and roses blended into a smell that drove me crazy with thirst.

He told us where they were, who they were, speaking of their strange abilities. They had mind readers, future seers and emotion controlling empaths on their side. And ours had the sheer weight of numbers and newborn strength.

Or at least, that was how it appeared. It seemed we were merely average newborns with no particular gifts. Until one day, I heard something no one else had.

It had been months since my existence as a vampire began. I was quickly learning how to hunt with the coven's various members, disgusted with my own weakness but unable to refrain from joining the bloodbaths. The smell was too much.

No one really wanted to talk with me- I think they were all convinced I was a little unstable from my first display in the pit and my exile to the dark, dank warehouse corner for two weeks. That and they were uncomfortable being around someone so young. I knew they didn't think it was right that I was only-a-few-days-off-sixteen going on immortal.

I was fine with that, strangely. I hated myself for what I did at night but I knew that without it, I would go mad and slaughter far more. I tried to keep to the minimum. I really did. But sometimes, it was impossible to stop at just one or two.

In the days, when Riley was teaching the others how to fight and kill, I sat in the corner, clutching at my threadbare jacket, wishing I had my mother's arm around me and my brother's smile to keep me company. The idea of them made me want to weep because I knew I could never see them again.

Jack, my stupid older brother who thought he was so clever, could fix any problem, could save his sister from everything wouldn't be able to shock the human back into me.

He probably wouldn't want to after he knew what I'd done.

Being a vampire was confusing because no one seemed willing to give me a clue as to what the deal came with.

I'd thought perhaps I could kill myself by stepping into the sun but all that had happened was my skin turning to diamonds and throwing bright rainbows across the inside of the warehouse. It horrified me, a clear indicator of how unnatural I was.

Garlic and crosses and stakes...nothing worked. There were no coffins or graveyards either. I didn't sleep at all.

I joined in the fighting practise occasionally, to please Riley, who expected us all to be able to hold our own against the enemy coven. It was during the majority of times where I sat out that I met Sara.

Strangely enough, she was the blonde I'd torn at the first time I'd ever fed. She'd been eyeing me since it'd happened and as much as I tried to ignore it, it didn't work because vampires noticed everything.

She approached me one day while I flicked my fingers in a stray patch of sunlight, admiring the light as it glimmered on my crystal skin. "So you're Bree huh?"

I looked up at her sharply. "Yes."

She raised an eyebrow, her eyes very bright and fresh from feeding. "You're young." She finally admitted, sitting beside me.

"I'm sixteen." I snapped, defensively. It was a half lie. Technically my birthday was a few weeks ago. Actually, it was probably around the time I'd woken up. "You're not much older," I bit back, moodily. I was irritated today. My mood flickered all over the place since the change.

She shrugged. "I'm nineteen. Or I was. I'm Sara."

I nodded once and silence reigned between us for a few moments. I sighed finally. "I'm sorry for ripping your arm off." I grumbled.

She laughed, beautiful and high pitched. "Oh it was nothing. We regenerate too quick for it to be a problem." She informed me. My interest peaked.

"What else can we do?" I asked her, softly.

She shrugged, her blonde pigtails twitching with the actions as she idly watched a brunette vampire- Atham, I think- taken on Riley. He lost miserably. "It's a matter of your past life really. It's our most defining features which we carry on with us. I used to be a dancer so now I'm more graceful than the others and I can bend further before I break. The Yellow Eyes clan have special powers because of their past lives but they were just flukes. Some vampires are just normal: maybe they can run faster or fight better because they were track runners or boxers. But special powers are rarer." She explained.

"How do you know so much?"

She laughed. "I'm almost as old as Riley. I was among the first turned. I used to have a mate who was much older though and he told me about a lot of it. But he died one night, when he went hunting. Riley told me later: it was the Yellow Eyes who killed him." She added on bitterly.

"I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault."

I paused, awkward and scratched the ground, carving a circle into the concrete with my nails. "Does anyone here have a power?"

Sara glanced at me. "No. It's thought that the Mistress might have one but we can't know exactly. Our thoughts aren't safe." Sara smiled, wryly.

"Listen up!" Riley called out, his voice assaulting my sensitive ears. I stood far too quickly and Sara was beside me as we joined the collection surrounding our leader. He eyed us all, his face pleased. "We'll be leaving soon. The Yellow Eyes are already gearing up for war but we're stronger. They've got their little talents but we've got raw power." The words rang out through the air as he drew out the red blouse. The scent made my mouth water.

"They'll have her with them," Riley repeated to us, drilling it through the bloodlust. "Whoever gets to her first can have her. But these Yellow Eyes will try to protect her, protect her blood." I shifted, needlessly but nervous. They sounded old and powerful, these Yellow Eyed vampires. They sounded like they could kill us without even trying.

"Don't be afraid," Riley suddenly added, softer. "The Mistress and I are older than you and more skilled. We will help you. We'll be able to defeat them."

They won't help you.

I glanced up, wondering who had said such blasphemy against our creators. But everyone was still staring at Riley, apprehensive but eager. I frowned. What was that?

"We'll protect you."

They won't protect you.

"We stick together. We will be strong."

They won't stick together.

"We don't desert our own."

They will desert you.

"Sara? Did you hear that?" I hissed at her, turning my head every which way, trying to find the source of these thoughts. They weren't mine. There was a suddenly sting of pain on my shoulder, under my bite mark. It had been stinging every now and then since I'd woken. I thought it was totally normal.

Her brow furrowed. "What?"

"I keep hearing things in my head," I explained in such a low voice that no one but her could've heard. "Is that normal?"

Before she answered, Riley dismissed us finally and Sara grabbed my arm, tugging me back over to the patch of sunlight away from everyone else. It was beginning to set, bringing in the tempting darkness that allowed us to hunt.

"What do you keep hearing Bree?" she asked, studying me.

I bounced on my heels, anxious and jumpy. "I kept hearing little things when Riley was talking. He was saying stuff like..."

"Like what?" she urged me, gripping my arms.

I looked her in the eyes, black to black, the pupils swallowed up by our own thirst. "I kept hearing disagreements. No, not hearing them. I kept feeling them. Like...Like they were my own thoughts, like I was thinking 'the sky is blue'...it felt so real...but they weren't my own." I replied, quickly. "Like when Riley said he and the Mistress wouldn't desert their own- I heard that they would."

I felt foolish as I said it. We'd been created for this. Why would they leave us? They needed us. Sara shook me, growling. "Riley and the Mistress are our creators."

"I know but...I could've sworn..." I whispered and then stopped, wondering if the madness was starting to set in. The feeling of conviction in those thoughts though...it was strangely alien and familiar at the same time...

Sara watched me. "What?"

"It's not true." I suddenly blurted. I understood it. It wasn't true. "Riley won't take care of us." I muttered, so low no one else but us could hear.

Sara froze like a statue of a marble, crimson eyed angel. "What are you saying? Of course he will."

The muscle on my shoulder, where I was bitten, twitched like it had before. "I heard it in my head. Like it was correcting him. And my shoulder hurts when you say that." I murmured, watching her. "You don't believe that, do you?" Sara watched me, suddenly intense.

"Bree, tell me what you hear when I say this okay?" I nodded, telling her to continue and she raised a single brow. "My name is Emily St Claire-"

My name is Sara O'Neil.

"-I lived in Kansas for several years-"

I lived in New York for several years.

"-and I have brown hair and blue eyes."

And I have blonde hair and red eyes.

It was like having a voice over echo back the words in my head. My shoulder itched now and I shook my head, relaying back to her what I'd suddenly just known. As if it were the same ingrained facts like the sky is blue and the grass green. Sara narrowed her eyes at me. "Are you messing with me Bree? Because I will destroy you if you are." She threatened.

I shrank back from her, glaring. "What's going on? What is this?" I demanded.

She studied my face for a lie but found none. My breaths came quicker, instinctively. "You may have a gift after all Bree." She murmured. "I told you lies but you knew the truth."

"So what?" I snapped, freaking out. "I'm a vampire polygraph?"

She glanced back at the coven who were preparing for the night's hunt. The sun was low in the sky, like a magnet with a too-heavy note sliding down a refrigerator. "Bree, it's important you don't tell anyone about this." She hissed to me, eyes wide. "Who knows what they'd do? Our thoughts aren't safe. You can't know the truth."

I nodded, worriedly. "So I'm going to know the truth? Always?" I whispered.

Sara titled her head to the side and looked out at the setting sun. "It looks like it. Come on Bree, let's go get something to eat and then we'll talk more hmm?"

I left it for the moment and tried not to talk to anyone but Sara. I didn't want to correct them on their lies and end up knowing something I shouldn't.

Vampires, freaky powers, coven wars...

My life, I mused as I waited with some eagerness for the sun to set, was far more complicated than it should've been.

My powers were subtle. I practised more and more in the weeks leading up to the war. I spoke to other vampires, asking them about how many others they'd killed or how many humans they'd drained that evening. Things I knew they would overstate, brag about, lie about. I asked them what they thought of the war and I was able to weed out the ones who were nervous, the ones who didn't like to fight but wanted the blood too badly.

I stuck to Sara's advice and kept it a secret. In turn, she asked me to ask Riley things and tell her the answers, the real answers. It was very strange. Sometimes I heard the words, the truths but other times, there was a mere sting on my bite mark, alerting me to the lies.

To be honest, it was pretty cool. As much as I hated it because it made me even more of a freak, at the same time, I had superpowers. It was like one of my favourite books come to life. All the heroes start off normal in those didn't they?

However there were times when I hated listening to them. Like when I asked Hector if he had a family and his truths told me that yes, he did. He was a mean drunk though and liked to beat them black and blue when he was angry.

I stayed far away from him after that. I managed to glean that Riley and the Mistress were working on another plan but that he was being kept in the dark as well to stop anyone from knowing truly what was going on besides the Mistress. I never asked for the Mistress' name. On some level, I knew that this might be handy but I didn't want to know who had made me this way. Something stopped me from asking every time.

Mostly, I hung around with Sara, who was like a guide for teaching me to fight, to drink, to keep a low profile around the humans, how to lure them out. I managed to mesmerize a boy from inside a cinema and draw him away into the alley outside before I drank him dry.

She took me in, like she was the older sister I'd never had. I found myself surprised but ridiculously glad that there was someone looking out for me even if it was probably because I was so young. If pity love was what I could get, I'd take it.

The night we headed out for Forks, it was Sara who ran with me.

And it was Sara who protected me.

I only wished she hadn't died for it.

A/N: Sothat's Bree's first chapter. I promise that these are the last of the flashbacks. Please Review!