Rae: We're back! I hope people are actually still with us. We're super stoked to be writing this together again! We should be having fairly regular updates from here on out. Thank you to Clare for being our fab beta.

Agora: As always, thanks go out to my darlin wife and the awesomeness that is littleclarestar. Some things just aren't possible without certain people, you know? 3

Disclaimer: We don't own twilight or any of it's characters. We just enjoy making Bella slightly more evil and vengeful.

Chapter 3 - Tracker

EPOV

Falling to my knees, I clutched at my head. The onslaught of images that filled my brain terrifyed me beyond belief.

Why, why, why, why?

That wasn't my Bella. It couldn't have been. It couldn't have been the gentle soul that I have loved and longed for obsessively over the last seventy years.

A million images flashed through my mind at lightening speed. Pictures of Bella as a human - watching her while she slept, running with her on my back, in the meadow, her writhing in pain from James' attack and her lying on the forest floor holding herself together as she sobbed. The last image was so clear in my head, as if it just happened minutes ago. It was an image that played itself over and over and over again. It took all of the self-control I had that day to not run back to her, pick her up and hold her.

She had believed me so easily, believed that I didn't love her, believed that it had been so easy for me to just leave her. It was the hardest thing I had ever done in my one hundred and seventy years on the planet. To this day, it was still the hardest thing that I had ever done. My dead heart clenched, ached and died again as I looked at the pain in her eyes that day. How could she have believed me so easily? So many times I had told her I had loved her, that she was my life, and yet none of that mattered when I had uttered those four words, those four words that equated one horrendous lie.

"I don't want you."

"You..don't..want me?"

"No."

"You're no good for me, Bella."

My body shuddered violently as the memory consumed me. So wrong I had been. In all actuality, it was I that had been no good for her.

After I left Bella, I hated myself. That hate still burned strongly after all of these years. I told myself over and over again that it was for the best, that she would live a much more fulfilling life without me. It was that simple thought that kept me away. Whenever I felt my control slipping, I conjured up mental images of Bella happy and smiling.

I placed myself in exile, roaming the earth just barely existing. I separated myself from my family. I didn't deserve the company of others. I told them not to try to find me. Mostly, that had been directed at Alice. I demanded that she not look out for my future, and definitely not look at Bella's, but I knew it was a useless request. She would always look out for it. I begged her to just not interfere, no matter what she saw. I made her promise. She made me her promise and as far as I was aware, she had kept it. The times I reunited with my family over the last seventy-years were few and far between. It pained me to see the sadness in Esme and Alice's eyes. The pity.

I lived in a dream world, conjuring up images of Bella's future. She was married, had a fulfilling job as a literature teacher. I pictured her with a round stomach, her skin radiant with the happiness of an expectant mother. I pictured her growing old with a human man, in love, holding each other's hands at night while they rocked on a porch swing watching their grandchildren run around in the yard. Those vivid images made the gaping hole in my chest, where my unbeating heart lay, ache and clench. But I had been willing to sacrifice my own happiness for hers. I loved her that much. I told myself it was worth it. She now had the life she'd always wanted.

I contemplated going to the Volturi, to explain to them that I wished to be dead and ask them to grant me that wish. But I could never bring myself to do it. I had made a promise to Bella so many years ago that I would never sacrifice my own life.

"You must never, never, never think of anything like that again! No matter what might happen to me, you are not allowed to hurt yourself."

The emotion she showed was so strong and unyielding that I made a silent vow to her that I would never do anything drastic that would sacrifice my own life. It was moot anyway, Alice would see when I made the decision and come to stop me.

Now, I sit here, clutching my head as I watch images of Bella, as a vampire, flash through my mind like the Rocky Horror Picture Show. The way she seduced the human boy into coming with her, then brutally killing and sucking the life right out of him like some kind of monster. A shudder rippled through my body, causing me to convulse and my stomach turn. If I were still human, I would have vomited all over the floor in front of me. I had never felt so physically ill.

No, no, no, no. It wasn't my Bella. My Bella was gentle, kind and caring.

I could try to fool myself all I wanted, but it wasn't going to work. I knew it had been her. She still held so many of her human features. She had always been breathtakingly beautiful to me, but now.. now she was.. exquisite.

A war of conflicting emotions waged inside of me: shame, happiness, guilt, frustration, confusion, loneliness, elation, love, and anger. I was confused about how she had come to be this way. Her eyes had been blood red and she showed an unbelievable amount of control; she knew exactly what she wanted and how to get it. She had not appeared to be consumed by her blood lust, an obvious sign that she had been living this life for quite sometime. I held questions in my head regarding how long she had been this way and who had done this to her? I was conflicted. One part of me was so happy and relieved to just see her. While the other part was enraged by what she had become - not just that she had become a vampire, but the kind of vampire she had so obviously become. She was an animal. I felt a sense of anger at both myself and whoever did this to her.

You did this to her.

Had I never left her, I would have prevented this from happening. She wouldn't have had to go through the pain and suffering, both from my leaving and her transformation into a vampire.

Now I realized leaving her had been nothing but a waste. She had become the very thing I had tried to prevent. The last seventy years spent suffering, in exile, the abandonment of my home and my family and my life with her, all for nothing. Like a wicked movie reel my mind played out the decades I could have had with her, the days we could have spent in the meadow, in her room, in my home, the songs I could have played for her and the stories we could have shared, the nights I could have spent watching her dream. Alice had been right all along. It had been Bella's fate to become one of us, and no matter how hard I tried, nothing I did could have ever changed that. I was a fool for betting against Alice. A complete fucking idiot.

A mangled cry ripped from my throat as frustration, anger and guilt fully consumed me. Still kneeling on the ground, I dug my fingers into the dirt, tearing through the soil like it was soft dough. I had come into this thick forest in an attempt to hunt for the first time in... it had been.. weeks..? I wasn't entirely sure how long it had been since I last hunted. Time was always irrelevant to vampires, but it was even more unneccesary for me to keep track of time now. I had nothing even worth existing for, and there had been no point in keeping track of time. Hunting was nothing more then a necessity now, a means of survival in the barest sense of the word. I no longer got the joy out of it I once did, hunting alongside my brothers and sisters, my family. Nothing provided me with joy any longer. I only hunted when I could no longer handle the intense burning in my throat.

As soon as the image of Bella flashed in my mind through the thoughts of the human boy, I was incapcitated and unable to move. With a sickening fascination I watched as she mutilated the human boy. There was no hesitation in her eyes, no remorse, no flash of consciousness to give away even the tiniest gleaming of humanity. She had stalked him. She had lured him away from the herd. She had taken him down. He had been nothing more than a hunted animal.

I was no longer in the mood to take down a deer.

As if the decision triggered the unwelcome train of thought, I found myself asking the inevitable question: What was I going to do now? Find her? Talk to her? Would she even want to see me? That was doubtful. Why would she ever want to see me again? I had left her and told her I no longer loved her. I would hate me if I were her. I did hate myself... There was another option. I could run. I could run as fast as I could in the opposite direction and pretend I had never seen her. Even as I thought it, I knew I couldn't do it.

Now that I had seen her again, there was no way I could let her go without a fight. I knew it was selfish, but I couldn't live without her any longer. I'd barely survived for the last seven decades, barely any time in the life of a vampire and yet an unbearable eternity in my mind. There was no way I could spend the rest of my miserable existence without her; especially now that I knew she was still alive. And was just like me. Destined to walk the earth for the rest of eternity.

No, I couldn't just walk away. Even if I wanted to, it would be impossible. I had to at least see her, touch her, feel her close again. At least once. Regardless of the fact that I knew she would not want to see me, I would not give up on this chance. The sheer improbability of the fact floored me, overwhelmed me with its mathematical unlikeliness. That the one time in, who knew how long, I would allow my mind to wander to the minds of others, I would see her. I could not squander this one shot I had to see her one last time. Perhaps she would take pity on me and allow it. Part of her had to still feel for me, right? No, who was I kidding? How could she still feel any sort of passion for me like I still felt for her? I had destroyed her. I was a monster.

Torn by the choices laid before me, I uncurled myself and laid my body flat against the ground, as still as a statue, obviously not needing to move. My mind processed the myriad of ways this could turn out. Because I insisted on imagining all the potential scenarios I allowed myself the small fleeting hope that maybe, just maybe...

I lay there for what felt like days, but what couldn't have been more than a few minutes. I was suddenly overcome by the realization that my decision had to be made, and soon. There was a deadline to my opening, a small window of possibility during which I had to do something. I had already realized I could no longer sit here and contemplate what I was going to do. I needed to act.

In a flash, I was up off the ground and heading out of the brush, towards the city. I brushed the dirt off my clothes, not wanting to draw too much attention to myself and yet wary of the kind of attention I no doubt drew with my appearance. The sun was beginning to set, darkness already enveloping the city. It was doubtful people would even take notice of me, as I tended to stay hidden, lurking in the shadows. It was a complete and utter cliche, but it was for the best. Lurking in the darkness had become my way of life. I wasn't sure I even knew how to blend in with society any longer. I couldn't recall the last time I had even been in a city.

Unsure of where to even begin, I roamed the city, amazed by the life it still held even at this late hour. I had no idea where she would go or what she would be doing. Would she stay here in the city and - the thought made me wince - continue to hunt? Or would she have fled the moment she drained the boy? I obviously had no idea about her habits and had been too engrossed in the thoughts of the human to even take notice of any small details of where exactly they were.

A growl of frustration ripped from my lips as I leaned with my back against the brick wall of an abandoned building, reaching out with my mind to the general vicinity I remembered last seeing her. It had been a crowded party, surely there were others that would remember seeing her. With her undeniable beauty and allure, no doubt they would still be thinking of her. I sought her out in their minds, any lingering thought of her...

What am I doing here? God, this is so stupid...

I can't believe she showed her face here after last week, the nerve of that little...

Oh man oh man I need to get laid tonight, I can't believe it's been...

I can't stand that jackass, man he's so...

Oh my God he's here, he's here! Oh what do I say? What do I...

What did she see in him anyway? That scrawny little grandma's boy had nothing on me. I'd have shown her a great fucking time if she'd had her damn head on straight. What's he got that I haven't, anyway? If she'd left with me I'd have...

I straightened. This was it, I could see his ineffectual human memories of her, his silent fuming that he had been passed over for the unfortunate grandma's boy that had met his end at the hands of the goddess he longed for. I took in his surroundings, blocking his mental ramblings for the most part in favor of passing from one mind to another until I got a fix on the location, flitting from shadow to shadow towards the university until I was standing outside the very bar it had happened in. I inhaled, a thick unfamiliar vampire scent that I'd never come across before filling my dead lungs. It must have been her. It had to be!

I followed it through the bar, ignoring the stray thoughts of the women - and none too few men - that perked at the sight of me. A few registered fear, noting my dirty clothes and my rumpled appearance, shying away from my very obvious otherness, my subhuman wildness. I ignored them all, passing through the bodies and out the back door and into the alley where the scent of blood was still thick and heady. The boy's corpse was arranged carefully behind the dumpster, his glassy green eyes still open, staring up into the sky. I shuddered, averting my eyes, unwilling to accept what was now before me in the flesh. I had seen Bella the vampire through the eyes of a stranger. I couldn't face it now through my own eyes, in my own mind. I couldn't process the actuality of what she'd done. I refused to internalize it before I had a chance to see Bella herself, to speak with her.

I followed the scent as it made its way away from the buildings, weaving through alleys, thicker in dark corners where she might have waited or lingered. My heart was silent, my feet leaving no trace, but my mind thundered with the memories of my Bella. I saw her again and again as I had last seen her, weak, fragile, heartbroken on the forest floor where I left her. To see her again! I trembled with anticipation and no small amount of anxiety. My entire being was focused on finding her now. I had always been such an awful tracker, but her scent was still fresh, heavy with the recent hunt and her victim's blood flowing through her veins. I stumbled after it to the outskirts of the city, to a condemned building where I could hear, almost indistinguishable over the sounds of civilization close by, the sound of ragged breathing. I could barely discern it from my own as I panted, gasping for air that I did not need, stepping carefully over toppled concrete and piled brick to where I saw in the shadows a hunched form curled around itself. Her face was hidden but the cascading brown hair, tinged with red even in the garish city lights, gave her away. She must have been lost in her own thoughts not to have noticed my approach. I wondered if I could speak to her now that I was here, mere feet away from her.

I sucked in a lungful of filthy air and vampire sweetness. Don't be a coward again...

"Bella?"

When the tiny head snapped up to confront me, all I saw were blood red eyes in the face of my beloved. A pitiful moan escaped my lips, and had I been anything but the monster I was I would have shed tears of indescribable emotion. It was her face. It was my Bella. It was my heart and soul and I had no words now that I looked upon her at last.

I hungrily took in the sight of her, her face, her hair, her long limbs as she unfolded herself slowly from her crouch to her full length, her pale skin now powdery white with death. Every detail, from the dust in her hair to the dirt beneath her fingernails, I filed away forever, cherishing this single vision as I had never cherished anything else ever before. I watched her, breathing in greedy lungfuls of her scent, her new scent, so different and unfamiliar and yet still the most beautiful scent in the world to me. I waited for her to say something, to speak, to sob or run away or throw herself into my arms or anything. The moments passed like hours. The hours felt like years. I waited. I stared.

Bella. My Bella...

APOV

I gasped, dropping the vase near the window, sucking in desperate breaths to ease the shock of what flashed before my mind's eye.

"Alice?" Jasper was next to me in an instant, his hands strong and supportive on my shoulders, sending waves upon waves of calming reassurance. I blinked away the fogginess of the vision, clutching the hollow space where my heart once beat.

"We have to go," I whispered, "we have to go right away!" Jasper's hands clenched on my shoulders.

"Carlisle? Emmet?" He swallowed. "Edward?"

"Bella."

That was all I needed to say.