Chapter 2
I closed up early to make a welcome basket for our new neighbors and carefully packed the two basket full of goodies onto my custom snowmobile. I checked the small bed I'd attached to the back so I could deliver my store goods to homes if they ordered online and nodded with approval when I was sure the baskets were secure. My hands slipped into the familiar feeling of my unusually thin gloves as I recapped the place where they lived from the information I got from a helpful customer/neighbor. It was still light out when I reached their main house and I nervously knocked on their grand door. Just a few moments later a beautiful woman opened the door with a younger woman peaking out from behind her. I froze when I saw her, the woman seemed unfazed by my reaction and spoke.
"Yes? May I help you?" She was stunningly beautiful, though that term undermined the goddess like glory that surrounded her, but her beauty only served to frighten me. She's a vampire. The pale, marble-like skin, the inhuman beauty and grace, their attractive voice and smell. Immortals. Not human. I forced myself to calm down and act natural. I casually looked over the smaller woman behind her and saw similar features between the two, the shape of their faces and eyes, but the eye color was wrong and the skin color was different.
"Yes, hi, my name's Athena Ortiz. I own the local book shop in town and I wanted to officially welcome you to our small town." My smile was strained as I tried to inconspicuously continue looking at the blond, curly haired girl. She was also inhumanly beautiful, not as much as the taller dark haired one, and her eyes were a chocolate brown, not a golden topaz like the first or the crimson red I was used to which threw me off kilter. What really confused me was the young one's skin which was creamy and rich like a human's yet she had a vampiric grace to her. Who are these people?! I held my voice steady as two more entered at the doorway, both male one vampire and one human, but still inhuman in a way.
"And who's this?" The young man with the tousled bronze hair seemed casual, but his grin seemed strained almost forced on his face, he also had strange topaz eyes. The odd vampire woman took one basket and made the tan, taller man grab the other.
"Sweet! She brought goodie baskets!" The nearly seven foot tall muscular man seemed excited and completely at home with these vampires which confused me even more. He must be Jacob Black. I didn't have a chance to fully recover when the brown haired vampire answered the bronze haired one.
"She's the owner of the local bookstore. She's welcoming us to the neighborhood." Her smile at the bronze haired man was so filled with love that I felt like I was intruding just by looking. Then she quickly turned to me and made a sweeping gesture to the inside of their home. "Would you like to come in? It's cold today and there's still a little time before it gets dark." I took an obviously threatened step back and I'm sure that I visibly began to shake. All but the bronze haired one looked confused at my reaction. The bronze haired one took a grave and deliberately slow step forward. The desperately repressed memories began to come back in a flood. Felix. Jane. Aro and Caius. Dionysus. My eyes widened in fear as he took another step forward with what looked like grim caution?
"No..." I unwillingly remembered Felix and Jane standing over Dionysus, my half brother, his glassy eyes staring blankly in my direction, his limp and pale deformed body bruised with what looked like hand prints. Used. Abused. Forced. RUN.
"No don't run. Please calm down. We're not who you think we are." My eyes flickered in painful disgust and fear towards the vampire bronze. The dark haired woman looked at the bronze, uncertain and cautious as the others were now.
"Edward?" So he's Edward then she must be Bella and the younger one Reneesme. The thoughts of their identities sounded far away in my mind as if someone had spoken them softly from across the room and I just happen to hear them. What I realized now was that the bronze knew what I was thinking. Like Aro. He can read minds. This coven is the one the Volturi are always going on about. I'm doomed. My knees buckled and I felt the darkness drape itself over my eyes as I fell. Darkness, the sweet nothingness of darkness.