AUTHOR'S NOTE: Another chapter! This one is less violent than the one before it. Let me know what you guys think! Reviews are like water to a writer.

Stephenie Meyer's holding all the cards, I'm just peeking over her shoulder.

Chapter Four:

As soon as I got back to my room, I began peeling my clothes off. I'd taken everything with me once I'd cleaned up the alley and threw Dylan's body in a nearby dumpster. I remembered that part of town from my human youth. There was so much shady activity in the area that one more body wouldn't really be a surprise. Especially when that body turned out to be Dylan Moreno's.

Leaving the clothes, minus my beloved jacket, in a pile right beside the front door, I crossed the room and started the shower. I still had his blood on my bare skin and traveling through the veins in my body. A glance in the mirror revealed my eyes turning back into the bright crimson they'd been when I'd awoken. All the time I'd spent diluting the color with animal blood had been ruined in one night.

With a sigh, I climbed into the shower and threw my entire body under the scalding spray. I couldn't feel the temperature as I went through the motions of bathing. My hair was flattened against my skull once I'd lathered shampoo and conditioner through it, and the scent of my body wash was vaguely detectable once I'd rinsed the soapy residue off me.

My head was just a low buzz of thoughts as I shut the water off and toweled myself dry. I didn't bother with my hair, I didn't care how it would dry. The last thing I was concerned about right then was my appearance. I'd just killed my first human, using the term loosely, and it surprisingly didn't bother me as much as I thought it would have.

Maybe it was the connection Dylan Moreno had to my past. A few blank spots had been filled in as I fed off him in that alley. But it wasn't enough to complete the puzzle now driving me crazy. I just wanted to remember. I was sick of not having the entire story. Even though the Cullens had told me that not all of my memories would ever be recovered, there were some that I just needed. The blank spots in certain areas made me feel empty, almost hollow in a weird way. There were things that I wanted to remember now, even though I'd just wished to forget when I'd still been human.

The saying: be careful what you wish for had a scary truth to it.

I didn't pay much attention to what I put on once my skin was dry. I wrapped my ruined tank top up in the towel I'd used and tossed it into a corner of the room once they both had been dropped in the plastic bag from the trash can. I'd have to replace the liner tomorrow, but it wasn't high on the list of things to do. Not when I had no idea when I would be checking out of this hole in the wall.

Plopping down on the edge of the bed, I just sighed and let my head fall back as my eyes closed. I'd actually done it. That was the part I just couldn't believe. I'd actually taken another person's life and there wasn't a single part of me that felt grief.

He deserved it. The monster I shared a body with crooned in my mental ear. He was the final straw, you know that. Just think of what he could've done if....

If.

My stomach clenched so violently that I was sure I would've thrown up all over myself if I were still human. What would have happened if I stayed with Jason? If our daughter grew up and his friends began targeting her? Granted, it was probably too late to start thinking of all that. But I now knew how Esme had felt. She gave birth right before Carlisle had found her. She'd told me that right after I learned of having my own daughter. Her little boy had only survived the first few days of his life before passing away. The agony of burying him had propelled Esme into taking her own life, but she only ended up falling into the arms of Carlisle Cullen. In their human lives, none of them had been able to achieve their happily ever afters. That only came to them in their vampiric existances. Carlisle had only hoped for the kind of love he found with Esme. Esme had been searching for it long before her heart stopped.

Thinking about the love between my vampiric mother and father hurt almost as much as thinking of Edward did. I hadn't thought I would miss them as much as I did. Or make so many comparisons.

A low groan filtered past my lips as I sank sideways on the bed, my legs curling up toward my chest as my thoughts continued to run rampant. Why had I decided to leave again? Yeah, because I wanted to come here and find answers. But now that I was thinking as logically as possible, what had made me decide against asking one of my family members to come with me? The answer was suddenly staring me in the face with it's hand raised, ready to slap me silly.

I didn't want to pull my family apart. There were probably a few members, like Alice or Esme, that were furious with me leaving. Even if they would never admit it, I would always know better. Plus, how could I impose on them so much that I took them from their soulmate? Edward was the only one who wouldn't leave a lover behind, but I'd been trying to get away from him. At the time, it was just too hard to be around him, knowing there was a strong possibility that the crazy dance we'd become entangled in would pop back up. And that was something I didn't want, I was sick of rotating in proverbial circles with him.

There was also another reason now facing me; I could've never killed Dylan Moreno if one of them had been with me. The revenge I was suddenly so bent on seeking would have been ruined by their presence. I wasn't entirely sure they would have stopped me, but they would have encouraged another path. Another means of achieving what I wanted. There was no room for compromise in me anymore. I was sick of doing what everyone else wanted.

But still. It hurt to be so alone. I'd become too stubborn to admit that I needed my family.

I lost track of time as I lay there, letting misery and grief swallow me whole. I was constantly walking away from things and I had no idea how to stop that. How do you break your worst habit in the blink of an eye? There's no possible way, not without a long amount of time trying.

My hand twitched against my stomach, wanting to stretch toward the phone I'd destroyed earlier in the day. That'd been a stupid thing to do, I was just surprised it came back to bite me in the ass so soon. And there was no way I could get out and obtain a new phone. I hadn't salvaged anything from the device, even though the numbers programmed in were already burned into my unforgetting mind. I just wanted to hear their voices right then, to listen to them talk. I'd never thought I would crave a simple conversation as much as I did right then.

Hell, I'd take sitting on the couch with Edward in tense silence over what I felt now. But that big, brick wall was standing right in my way. The monster trying to control me seemed to be leaning against that same wall. She wanted the revenge I'd put into motion earlier by killing Dylan.

I lurched to my feet blindingly fast, grabbing my jacket and room key. I'd only bothered with shoes, easily feeling the denim of the jeans I'd thrown on after my shower. A plain tee shirt was hidden once I had the jacket on, but I didn't really care if anyone was going to look at me. I had to do something. I had to get out of this damn hotel room. I would end up driving myself nuts if I kept this up.

Once I left the hotel room, I just began walking. I'd glanced at the clock before leaving, noting the time as about two hours from dawn. I'd have to be back inside then. As I walked, I began to wonder when the authorities would find Dylan's body. Maybe it would be the guy that ran the dumptruck scheduled to pick up trash from the location where I'd dumped him. Ha, that'd be quite a surprise!

The tiny voice in the back of my head thrilled at all the possible ways Dylan would be discovered. What would they think when he was found? How would Jason react when he learned the news of his best friend's strange death? And it would most certainly be cited as a murder. I'd slit his throat, after all. Of course, that was just to disguize the big gapping hole my teeth had left but still. There was no way anyone could be talked into Dylan committing suicide. Not after all the damage I'd inflicted.

Maybe it would just be chalked up to another random mugging. The police wouldn't find any of my DNA or fingerprints on the body, they wouldn't find his wallet either. I wanted him to be found and named 'John Doe'. It felt oddly fitting to me, especially given how I'd woken up to this new life. I hadn't had a name either when I died. Dylan Moreno wouldn't get one either. Not until someone recognized his autopsy photo and identified him.

I had plenty of time to wait for the fallout. Piper North was still missing, but pressumed dead. The search for me had been given up when Jason left Hanover and came back to Valdosta.

I eventually realized where I was and frowned as I came to a stop in a vaguely familiar residental area. I glanced to my right and felt air stick in my throat. I'd ended up right outside my parents' house. Without any thought or compliance between my mind and body; I streaked across the lawn and darted around to the backyard.

The house I'd grown up in was nothing special. If my memory was right, the house had belonged to my grandparents. When my father married my mother, the house had been given to them and my grandparents moved to Florida. I couldn't understand the attraction or desire for old people to relocate there, but that was what Matt and Patricia Reaves had done. The house was brick, a faded brown as a result of too much sun exposure. The lawn was kept clean by my father, the only domestic thing he did for my mother. The fake shutters that capped the large window in front, as well as a couple in the back, were painted white to offset the bricks. But even that color had faded with sun exposure and neglect. It was one story, so I wouldn't have to worry about detection while I scaled a second story window.

Just like it had in my childhood, the window that was once mine had been left open. There was such a wide arsenal of guns within the house that Bill Reaves would probably beg people to break in; just so he could pop off a round or two justifiably. I pushed the window easily, smiling in relief when it didn't groan or creak under my minstrations. I slipped silently into the room, which was now bare and unfurnished. They'd erased all traces of me when I moved out at the age of sixteen.

The only thing I remembered about the day I got married was that I was legally an emancipated minor. My parents no longer wanted me around, the burden they never could get rid of. But that was only because my mother had refused to have an abortion. Alicia Reaves believed having a baby would hopefully stop the violence her husband subjected her to on sporadic occasions. It wasn't until after I was born that things got so much worse for her, then eventually me.

As I walked through the narrow hallway that led me to their bedroom, I felt an old familiar tightening in the muscles of my back. My body was drawing on old postures that I'd thought I would never need once leaving my family home. But it all came rushing back to me as I slowly made my way through the house. All the beatings I'd watched my mother endure, all the funiture he'd upend when it wasn't in the positioning he wanted. I even stopped by the bathroom door when one particular memory gripped me.

It'd been in the spot I was standing in now that my father had hit me for the very first time. I was in charge of drawing my own bath that night, but I'd gotten distracted. I was only six at the time and my parents feared I had ADD. Ha, I just had a low tolerance for candy bars. Something I learned at school, through a friend. But I'd left the water running in the tub, gone to get something else. By the time I got back to the bathroom, the bathtub was overflowing and coating the tiled floor with water.

I glanced over my shoulder, toward the kitchen area, as I remembered Bill Reaves charging down the hallway toward me. I hadn't had enough sense to hide from him, I'd been pretty confident with the idea that he'd never raise his hand to me. He was always so doting with me during the first six years of my life. I was his little princess.

All of that ended that night, over ten years ago. Bill Reaves caught me by the neck, picked my six-year-old little body up and threw me into the tub, screaming the entire time about how stupid I was and that I was ruining the house he worked so hard to keep in order. It took two weeks for the bruises on my arms and legs to completely fade.

I forced myself to go on once the memory came to it's conclusion. I reflected on the time I'd spent crying and being taunted at school for showing up with bruises as I slipped into my parents' bedroom. They were laying side by side in bed, Alicia curled into herself with her back facing Bill. He was stretched out in the bed, taking up a majority of the king-sized mattress. Alicia had barely a foot of bed to lay on, she was so close to the edge.

A million different senarios ran through my mind as I watched them sleep. The low thuds of their pulses ignited my thirst, just like I thought it would. But I managed to surpress it by cutting off oxygen to my lungs. I didn't dare breathe as I stopped at the foot of the bed and stared at them curiously. What would my mother do if she woke to find her husband's dead body still laying beside her? Would she feel relief? Would she be glad that the brutality was finally over?

I crossed the bed to her side and frowned at what the light reflected back to me. Fresh bruises on her wrists and one shadowing the underside of her right eye. She couldn't lay on that side, not with her face pressing into the pillow. The bruise was too deep, I could tell that just by looking.

"Oh Mama," I breathed and silently dropped to my knees. I'd always thought she was a strong person. She had to be as Bill Reaves' wife. But now my mother just looked frail and defeated. She'd been broken by the man laying next to her. Losing him would only kill her, she couldn't survive without him and his abusive love anymore.

I turned and walked out of the room before I could lose my resolve. I'd long ago let go of the pain my parents had inflicted on me. My revenge didn't lie with them, they'd been saints compared to the world that surrounded me when I married Jason and concieved his child. Only those in that world would see me again for the last time. The day I got married was the day Bill and Alicia Reaves no longer considered themselves parents.