Disclaimer: All recognizable characters from Twilight or New Moon do not belong to me, they belong to Stephenie Meyer. BUT all new characters and plot belong to ME!

Those With a Different Perception

Chapter 13 Don's Punishment
Bella's POV

The weekend in Venice flew by as if it had only been a few hours. With the sightseeing with the family, the shopping with Alice and Edward, and the extra time I had to spend with my new bike, the thought of having to kill other vampires completely left my mind for those two short days. Little did I know that those two short days were my last few days of bliss for a long while to come. Although Aro did tell us that it would all become second nature after a while, I knew the sights and sounds I was soon to witness on the first day on duty would forever remain in the depths of my mind. Where they chose to remain, in the lower depths of my memory or skimming the surface, were up to them; the only thing that I could do would be to bear with my new duty.

It wasn't until the third day after our return to the castle did I have to remember what my new duty was. Putting good use to my free time, I was lying on my stomach reading the fifth book I had in the library on the Italian language, when a sudden knock came from the bedroom doors.

"Bella, Edward, I have something to tell you," Demetri said from behind the closed doors. I stood up quickly to open the door for him.

"Come in, come in," I said lightly after I opened the wooden doors for the stern-looking, cloaked guard with a light sac slung over his shoulder.

"It's about the run tonight. It's a little bit sudden but that's how it usually goes. I thought that you should be a bit more prepared than you are for it. I brought you a couple of things that you and Edward might need. Where is the boy, anyways?" Demetri asked, putting down his bag on the office desk in the study room.

"He's out hunting with Emmett and Jasper. He'll be back in an hour or two. What did you bring us?" I asked curiously trying to peek over his shoulder into the bag.

"Well, there's a cloak for you and one for Edward, a couple of lighters and matches for each, two plane tickets to London, England for tonight, and I was planning to teach you two a few fighting lessons but since Edward can't be joining us for an hour or two, you and I will be starting the first few lessons alone," Demetri said, smiling to me as he finished taking out the contents of the bag and putting it out on the table.

"F-f-fighting lessons?" I choked out. Although I had adjusted to becoming a vampire and successfully managed to not defy the impossible by breaking my bones, I knew that trying to teach me how to fight would definitely end up with Demetri trying to pull out his own hair.

"Don't worry about it. It's just standard procedure. For now, all you and Edward will be needed to do there is read the vampire's thoughts. Most likely, the rest of the group is going to take care of the rest and if we don't, Judas would definitely do the honors. I just don't want you two to be unprepared if anything was to go wrong," Demetri smiled and he walked over to my side and put a hand on my shoulder. "Now come on, beautiful. We only have so many hours before the run to finish all those lessons I planned."

As we finished lesson after lesson, I thought about how well the relationship between Demetri and I was doing. In less than a year, Demetri not only stopped hating me, the headstrong guard found a liking to me. Demetri had become more and more like an uncle in my life, rough and tough on the outside at times but completely protective of me.

Edward came back from his hunting trip and joined us in the lessons. By the time we had to arrive at the airport, Edward had finished twelve out of twenty lessons and I had finished them all. We got onto the plane only to discover that the group consisted of only a few guards, certainly not all from what Aro had thought the day that he told us about being enforcers. Occupying the entire first class section on the plane with a few empty chairs were Demetri, Judas, a vampire by the name of Nikolas, another vampire by the name of Catherine, Edward and me. Demetri had told Edward and me about the new vampires before we met up with Judas and the rest at the airport. Nik was a new guard who had the power of freezing vampires and Catherine had the talent of tracking other vampires by their scent. Throughout the plane ride Nik had been oddly quiet as the rest of us talked casually as though we were just going on a simple vacation.

"Demetri, why are there so few of us going on the run?" I asked Demetri curious of why our numbers were so few.

"We don't need an army to take down a rebellious soldier, beautiful. The enforcers are divided into groups and the groups take turns going on runs. Each group consist of vampires that the run requires," Demetri said lightly as he loaded a gun. "The bullets are covered in a special acid that we're testing. It doesn't kill the vampire, per say, but it does give them something to scream about," Demetri noted happily to my questioning look.

The rest of the plane ride was a quiet one. I sat there looking out the window, with Edward's hand in mine, thinking of a very peculiar thing. Although I had been nervous, anxious, and mortified of tonight's run, sitting there in the first class seat of the luxurious plane was when I realized that it wasn't that big of a deal. Maybe the procedure was a little bit extreme, but Volturi has its reason for not wanting a rebellious vampire to blow our secret to the world. I was merely there to ensure that we are kept away from the poking and probing of humans. An odd ease came over me then, when I realized that my duty wasn't completely unjustified and cruel. Like Aro had said, there has to be someone to punish those who deserve it.

Feeling the plane slowly decline broke my train of thought. I looked out the window only to see a thick blanket of moist cloud watering the plane's windows. A few more seconds passed as we sloped down further and then was when I saw London for the first time. The streetlights illuminated the entire city, making it look magnificent and majestic from the plane's view. It was around 2:30 in the morning in London yet there were still a number of cars in the streets and people walking here and there with their umbrellas covering them from the drizzle. The plane had a wonderful view of the European city.

"So who's the vampire tonight, Demetri?" Judas asked casually.

"Some guy named Don. He tried pulling a stunt earlier today. He walked into clear daylight as the clouds separated for a minute. Was sparkling for a couple of seconds before a vampire there pulled him into a car a drove away. A source told us about the incident. Said that Don lives somewhere near the pier too," Demetri said reading off a small piece of paper he pulled out from the inside pocket of his cloak.

"Seems pretty easy. Does Don have a talent or anything?" Judas asked leaning back into his chair with ease.

"Not really. The guy just wanted to get caught, by the looks of it," Demetri said, unconcerned with what he was reading. "Tonight's going to be a quick night."

It only took us a few minutes to locate where Don lived once we got to the pier. It turns out that the rather young, "thirteen year old" feminine guard that was with us, had been a part of Volturi as long as she had been a part of the enforcers, a full 150 years. Along with being a guard, she mastered her talent and found that tracking other vampires had come easily to her.

Without knocking or anything, Judas barged into the tiny, unstable house only to find a very sexy vampire sitting on a couch in the living room with his eyes shut. The vampire had a very nice build, muscular and tall, covered by a plain dark turtleneck and dark pants to match. His facial features were also eye-catching with a handsome smile.

Looking around the room, I noticed that not only was it a small, cramped little house, it was hardly lit with any light whatsoever. Only furnished with a simple couch, coffee table, and TV, the living room looked quite unused except for the few picture frames placed on top of the TV but it was too dark to see the faces in the pictures.

"I didn't think that you would come so quickly," Don said, with his eyes still shut and hardly taken by the fact that Judas had torn down his door.

"What's wrong with you, asshole?" Judas barked, now gripping the vampire's neck in a strong hold.

"Don't you get it? I want to DIE!" Don yelled back with passion and anger filling his voice now.

"Why?" I spoke for the first time since I came into the cramped house. I knew that some vampires, such as Edward, would have chosen a different way of existing, but I didn't think that that would be a reason to want to die.

"Because now that she's gone, there's nothing worth living for," Don said slowly as Demetri gestured for Judas to let go and Judas complied.

"Victoria," Edward said quietly as he held me tighter to him with the mention of her name. "She ... left you for another vampire, another coven in North America a couple months back."

Eyes from all over the room looked up to Edward, giving him look after look of pure dumbfounderment and questioning from those who didn't know what he could do or didn't know who this Victoria was. Edward only looked back at Don who looked as though he had been thrown into a pool filled with the most grotesque piranhas, each equipped with daggers and harpoons, firing at him as soon as he came into contact with the surface of the water.

"Do you know her, mind reader?" Don asked a few minutes of emotional torture later.

"Yes," was the only answer that came from Edward.

"I tried! I swear I did! I tried forgetting about her, I tried not doing anything rash, I tried letting her go ... I even tried finding her, I tried talking to her, I tried getting her back! Instead, I ended up not only losing her but my best man too!" Don screamed at Edward, but it was really Victoria that he was screaming at, the Victoria that would never come back to his side, the Victoria that left him for something better.

"Alright, now that everything has been cleared up, how about we just burn you?" Judas said before he threw a lit match in Don's direction. The entire couch slowly burned away to ashes along with the miserable Don who didn't fight to live any longer. With the light from the flames I looked around the room to find that I was now able to see the faces in the pictures on the TV. The pictures were filled with a pair of people, happy people, together. In the biggest picture frame on the TV, a red haired woman had her arms draped around Don's neck and chest, both of which were happy. The red-haired woman was the same woman that I had faced nearly a year ago - Victoria.

"I was hoping for more action than that actually. The run tonight was practically pointless! The poor guy could have just lit himself on fire! Didn't need us to come all the way to London to do the honors," Judas mumbled on the plane ride home.

"Calm down, Judas. At least it was a quick one," Demetri scowled at Judas like only how a father would. "Anyways, Edward, who exactly is this Victoria?"

"About a year ago..." As Edward retold the story of what happened between Victoria and me, I thought about what had happened tonight. Why would Victoria just pick up and leave Don for another coven? From the pictures and how horribly Don reacted to her departure, I would guess that she would be happy enough to stay. What would persuade her to leave Don after being so happy with him? What's the connection between Don losing Victoria and Don losing his best friend? Could Victoria really be the true vampire behind all the poisoning acts?

More and more questions filled within me that wanted so badly to be answered, all of which I had little intention in finding out the answers to very soon if I had to face Victoria to get the answers. Knowing that I was safe from practically anything that would cause me any harm, still didn't kill the fear within me, the fear that I would have to possibly one day face Victoria. Even though it was only a possibility, I knew better. With my luck, any possibility could become a reality in less than a blink of an eye.

A/N - Alright I finished this chpt on Monday morning ... very early morning. I just thought that I would be able to kill two birds with one stone by waiting until Saturday to post it - more readers have the opportunity to see Those With A Different Perception on the updated stories list and my beta would have a chance to edit it.

OK. So after I wrote about Don and Victoria, this is what I'm thinking of her personality. James was he true love. No one else could compare to the raw, rough, evil vampire. So now that she's without him, no one could ever take his place in her dead heart. She mainly joins coven only to ditch them when she finds something better. Don thought that he would be able to take James' place if he made her happy enough to see that he was the only one who would truly love her. Victoria thought otherwise when a new coven rolled into town, whisked her off her feet and moved back to America after Don tried talking Victoria into coming back to him.

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