Disclaimer: I own nothing except the new characters.
Ten minutes later we were on the outskirts of town. Funny. It had taken Todd a half an hour to get us here two days ago.
Amelia parked the car, quickly getting out and moving into the forest. I followed her. She moved deliberately, slowly so I could keep up as we climbed over fallen tree stumps and bramble.
Suddenly she stopped, turning around to face me. "Why did you come?"
I stopped too, leaning back against a tree. "I thought you wanted me to come?"
"I did . . . But you shouldn't have."
"Now you're just being contradictory."
"This isn't funny Daniel."
"I never said it was."
She glared at me. "Don't you get it? Don't you care what I am?"
I shrugged. "What are you?"
If possible, her glare deepened. "I want to hear you say it."
I smiled. Of course. "A vampire."
"And it doesn't matter to you?" she said, surprised and slightly angry. "I'm a monster."
"You don't look like one to me."
She frowned. "Doesn't it bother you that if I wanted to, I could break you in half?"
"Nope."
"Doesn't it matter to you that you couldn't run?" Before I could blink, she was standing right in front of me. "I could catch you before you even took a step."
"I'm not running anywhere anytime soon."
Amelia stepped forward again, closer. It took all physical strength to not pull her flush against me. "Don't you care that since the first day I met you, a part of me has been dying to drink your blood."
I tilted my head slightly up so my neck was visible. Call me crazy. "Go for it. . . ."
She shook her head. "Why?"
"Because I lov –"
"Don't say it. If you say it, I'll never be able to leave."
I took her cool hands in mine. "Then stay because I don't care. I absolutely, positively, without a doubt, love you."
Amelia finally smiled. "And now you're stuck with me."
"So how did it happen?"
When we realized that we weren't going to go back to school, we walked through the forest hand in hand until we got to a clearing where we laid down in the grass.
I still couldn't believe this was happening. I had a . . . well, I wasn't too sure what to call her. Girlfriend sounded childish. Whatever we were, I was really happy here.
Amelia sighed. "It's a horribly long story. I don't even know where to start."
"The beginning's always good."
She laughed lightly. "Well . . . my name was Amelia Bockhart."
"Knew it."
Amelia rolled over onto her side so that she could face me. "Do you want to hear my story or not?"
"Of course." I grinned. She smiled back and all was forgiven.
"I was born 1915 in Northampton, England and around 1917 ballet came to Europe. When I was four, a woman named Miss Borsawisk opened a dance studio in the room below my family's loft. I could hear music floating up from the studio and sometimes, I would sneak downstairs to watch the dancers. One day, Miss B caught me and told my parents who told her how, at night, they'd find me dancing in my room. We weren't poor but we certainly didn't have enough to put me in dance lessons. Miss B said she saw potential in me and would give me lessons for free if I kept the studio clean.
"And so my lessons began. I'm not going to tell that I was a natural. I wasn't, not for a long time. When I first started dancing, I was clumsy and awkward and my little sister, Adeline used to make fun of me, but I started earlier than most girls did so I had a good amount of practice. By the time I was six, I could dance almost as well as the ten-year-olds. When I was eight, I preformed as Clara in the Nutcracker for the teens performance for Boxing Day. By the time I was ten, I had done five more famous dances, including Petrouchka and The Rite of Spring, maybe not as the lead but in some pretty important parts.
"I became popular by the time I was thirteen and Miss B was soon taking me to dancing auditions with up and coming dance companies. When I was fourteen, I performed in Sleeping Beauty as Aurora, the youngest to perform that part at the time. People came and paid a lot to see me dance and I was able to get my four person family out of our one person house."
Amelia's smile fell and I rolled over onto my side now so I could take her hand.
"There was a man. His name was Victor Valinksky. He started attending my shows when I was fifteen. He'd leave flowers and gifts after every performance. Adeline joked that I had an admirer. I was so enamored by him too and I had never met him. I just knew that after every show, there'd be some sort of trinket with the initials V.V. written on the card.
"When I was sixteen, I finally met him. He was everything I thought he'd be and more. He was beautiful, tall, pale, and handsome with the most gorgeous brown eyes."
"Good think I'm not the jealous type," I said, though part of me was jealous of this Valinksky character.
Amelia smiled though, reaching over to run her fingers through my hair. "You wouldn't have had anything to be jealous of if you were. . . . He begin to court me, privately however because he was a good five years older than me not that that was scandalous at the time. It was nineteen thirty-one after all. He told me he loved to watch me dance and I convinced myself that I loved him. He was perfect in my eyes, could do no wrong.
"On my seventeenth birthday, I was scheduled to perform Stravinsky's Firebird. Victor wanted me to meet him outside after the show. I remember he took my hand and he said, 'I want you to dance for me, only me, forever.' I said yes. He took my wrist . . . and he bit me."
Amelia sat up, getting to her feet and walking over to a near tree. I sat up too, watching as she climbed up to sit in a low branch.
"When I wake up, three days later, I was like this and locked up in a cage. When I realized I was hungry for blood, I freaked out. Victor explained everything as if it were normal, tried to feed me blood and I tried not to drink it. I didn't even make it a month before I gave in and I hated myself for it. And then, when I realized there was no way to fight the hunger, he made me dance for blood. Occasionally he'd take me outside, when I'd refuse to dance, and we'd go right past the theater to where my dad would be sitting, waiting for me to come back. And Victor would threaten to let me kill him, my mother, and Adeline. I couldn't even speak to my family."
"For fifty-three years, Victor kept me locked up. I watched my family grow old and pass on without me as I became stronger and saw wars pass. Victor discovered that I was very good at compulsion, getting people to do what I wanted them to do, and he used that to his advantage for money and blood."
"Have you ever used that on me?" I asked, getting to my feet.
She smiled. "Yesterday was the first time. You said no."
"Oh. . . ."I moved closer to her. "Does that mean something important?"
"Edward says it does. He says I shouldn't try to chase you away."
I grinned. "Smart guy. Are – are all the Cullens vampires?"
Amelia nodded. "After I got away from Victor, he continued to chase me. I spent the next twenty-three years running from him, teaching myself to feed off of animals. I met the Cullens in Forks, Washington. I was hunting and ran into Jasper, we almost fought but Edward stopped us. I've been living with them ever since."
By now I was standing right below her in that low tree branch. I climbed up on the trunk so that I was closer to her, my head about level with her neck. Her nose flared slightly and I noticed that she stopped breathing. "What do I smell like," I asked, curious.
"Seriously?" she said, surprised. When I nodded, she smiled. "You smell like vanilla, strangely."
"I'm not sure whether that's a good or bad thing."
"A little of both, I suppose."
"So are we okay? Are you going to try to chase me away?"
Amelia's smile widened, as she ran her fingers through my hair again. "Are you going to run if I do?"
I smiled back. "Probably not."
"Then I suppose I'm stuck with you," she whispered, leaning down to press a kiss against my forehead.
And that's all I could really hope for.
A/N: So it's been a while. I'm really sorry. Hope you guys like this. See you next time.
