"I don't understand why we're out here. I thought you wanted to wait until after the talent contest to reveal ourselves."
"We're not revealing ourselves, Jane. What we're doing is gauging to see if she's really worthy. Let's see how she interacts with us," Alec finished, proud of his on-the-spot excuse.
"Interact with us? Why would we let her do that? We might as well change her tonight if that's the case."
"Why? Bella was recognizably special based on her reaction – or lack thereof – to our kind."
"Yes, but the Cullen's eyes are bronze ours are red, don't you think she'll see the difference?"
"Jane, it's Halloween. Have you not noticed how many "vampires" are out that have red eyes?"
"I still think we should keep our distance."
Alec nodded in response and they continued following the girls at a safe distance. Jane was beginning to get bored, and found pleasure in testing how far she could make her pain stretch. Seeing children and adults randomly double over from a "mysterious" sharp pain was really getting on Alec's last nerve, but to save face he said nothing.
"How much makeup did you have to use to look human Peterson?"
Alec focused his eyes over on Aiyanna and Lark. Lark's siblings were a little ways away from them going up to a group of houses while she and Aiyanna were on the corner. Currently they were being slowly surrounded by a group of 3 guys, Lark was trying to get them to shut up and go away, and Aiyanna simply stared straight ahead. "Jane," Alec tried to say nonchalantly, "Why don't you get those guys who are attacking our mark?"
"Certainly," Jane smiled.
All three guys were brought to their knees immediately. Every time they tried to get up, they were quickly brought down again. Lark and Aiyanna looked at them strangely as they eventually limped away. "Well…that was…different," Lark quipped.
Aiyanna chuckled as they turned to check on the kids. They were okay, still a few houses down from them, and thankfully totally unaware of what had just happened. "Are you all right miss," came a velvety voice from behind her.
Aiyanna turned around and gasped. It figures a gorgeous guy would take notice of her after she'd been humiliated. He was dressed all in black and stood a little over a head taller than herself. Almost immediately she felt an attraction to him; so much that she began walking towards him. However, she didn't notice she had taken a few steps until Lark grabbed her arm and pulled her back. "What the heck are you doing," she whispered fiercely in Aiyanna's ear, "he looks like a freak, look at those eyes!"
Jane came up behind Alec and smiled satisfactorily to Alec at the sound of Lark's observation. "I'm…I'm fine. Perfectly fine. Nothing new ya know?"
Alec flashed a crooked smile and Aiyanna sighed aloud. Jane snapped to attention, not appreciating this peon fawning over her brother. This little girl was weak, nothing more than a bleeder – how could she possibly think her brother would look twice at the likes of her?
Alec surprised his sister by taking a step closer to the "bleeder" and bowing slightly he introduced himself, "My name is Alec."
Jane's eyes grew wide with anger as she slowly turned her head to stare at her brother. 'What on earth is he doing,' she thought.
Lark's bad feeling increased and she kept trying to pull Aiyanna back, but it wasn't doing any good. Pretty soon Aiyanna and Alec were in their own world talking about this and that and nothing in particular, while Jane and Lark seethed a few feet away. Jane forgot to act like she was breathing, but it didn't matter because Lark hadn't even noticed she was there, and concentrated all her energy on staring a hole into Aiyanna. Moment by moment Jane grew angrier, and began to question why he wanted to come out here in the first place.
Lark couldn't help but worry, they didn't know this guy from Adam and here they were talking like old friends. Slowly worry turned to anger: with all the things Aiyanna put up with at home, how could she even think of being interested in a guy; especially a guy this smooth. Guys like him are only after one thing, and if Aiyanna didn't listen to her and kept this up this guy was going to hurt her…and who was going to have to pick up the pieces? 'Me, that's who,' Lark thought bitterly.
"Come on Lark, Aiyanna…let's go to the next block," Lark's youngest sister declared.
As Lark approached Aiyanna to get her to leave she saw Alec bow again and heard him say, "I hope to see you again, mio cuore."
Aiyanna blushed as he backed away into the night, and joined the excited kids and an extremely quiet Lark as they ventured to the next block.
Alec had to search around a bit for Jane, but eventually he found her almost a half a block away from Lark's house. As he fell in step with her Jane spoke without looking at him, "Tomorrow, Lark is changed and Aiyanna dies."
A/N: "mio cuore" is Italian for "my heart"