Chapter Three
A Ghost
Lena stood in the filthy restroom of a tiny petrol station. From the other side of the mirror, a demon stared at her, murky beyond the fingerprints smudging the glass.
The ghost of a girl stared back at her, a figure Lena felt she only vaguely knew. An ashy quality mellowed her umber skin, the familiar red undertones nowhere in sight. Tight ringlets sprung from her scalp - too neat, too perfect. Her full lips, once dry and cracked, were now waxy.
Her black eyes dipped to her neck, where a nasty purplish scar covered the base of her throat. Two crescents which clamped over the muscular part of her neck. The bite.
She was branded.
Lena wrenched on the rusty tap, and patted warm water against her cheeks. Closed her eyes and imagined they were her mother's warm hands holding her face.
Someone pounded on the door.
Lena's eyes snapped open, her head whipped around, and she growled quietly from the back of her throat instinctively.
"Would you hurry up?"
She swiped her wet hands against the front of her sweatpants, and straightened up. Plastered a fake smile on her face, and marvelled at just how pretty an expression it was on her now.
She opened the door, and rushed past the plump woman and into the woods.
Her scent chased her, and while Lena was tempted, she wanted to hold out for something better. Something that would run, that she could chase and tear apart at her leisure.
The decadent smell of her blood mingled with the woods, until it was masked entirely. The woods did not smell comforting. Damp, grassy, with traces of animal droppings.
Lena didn't like it at all, but it would have to do. She couldn't stay in Europe after what she did. Considering her skin had developed some odd reflectivity she found quite blinding, there was no better place for her than Forks, Washington. Droll, wet, with little sunlight and few people.
She could pick them up one by one. Snack until the entire town disappeared.
A smirk graced her lips. What a brilliant idea.
Wind whipped against her skin as she ran through the woods, leaping over gnarled roots and loose branches with an ease she never would have dreamt possible as a human. She continued uphill. The incline grew steeper and steeper and the air cooler and thicker. She couldn't hear anything anymore - no cars, no chatter, no footsteps.
They were hiding, then. That was fine. Half the fun was in the hunt.
She breathed deeply.
A strange smell flirted with her senses, something unidentifiable. There was the sweet warmth, the comforting smell of blood, but something else. Light, air, almost empty.
It didn't make sense. How could something smell empty?
Her confusion only led to curiosity, and her curiosity burned in the back of her throat until it became unbearable. She launched forwards.
Some ancient part of her brain took over, and her body moved without command or direction. Run, hunt, chase, kill, run. No other thoughts circled in her mind. There was no hesitation, nothing but the delightful imagining of her teeth sinking deep in the soft neck of her supper, and the aching in her throat she knew only blood could quench.
She needed this. She hadn't killed in weeks.
She had to have this.
She pushed herself forwards once more, and sprung out from the woods. Landed, light-footed, and skidded in dirt and leaves into a clearing.
A small grassy space, far from civilisation. Trees lined the edges. On the other side of the field was a rocky outcropping, which must have led down to a ravine. The jagged edges of mountains and cliffs peered out through the fog beyond.
Trapped.
Lena smirked, straightened up from her crouching position, and appraised her prize.
It was a girl, pale and petite, with an abundance of curly hair spilled down her shoulders. She stood still, so perfectly still. Lena saw herself reflected in the wetness of her glistening eyes.
Terror.
She could smell it on her, beneath the sweetness of her skin. Bitter, sharp, tangy.
Lena drew a deep breath and hummed in delight. Saliva pooled in her mouth. The girl smelt so good, and she was absolutely ravenous.
"Hello, little girl." The words felt clunky, English still an untamed beast.
She hesitated. Eyes slid to the side, panicked as she searched the trees for an escape.
Lena lazily slinked closer. Unworried. There was no way she could outrun her, though she wished she would try. What a fun way that would be to spend the evening.
"Hello." She offered a small uncertain smile. Her voice was light and soft. Weak. She sounded weak. It would be easy. So, so easy. "Are you a friend of my grandfather's?"
Lena tilted her head. Stupid. This girl truly had no idea of the danger she was in.
She said nothing, and continued forwards. She was done with this game. Dreadful manners, playing with her food. Her mother would be ashamed. Lena didn't feel bad. The burning in her throat was only getting worse, and it begged for her attention.
The girl took a large step back once Lena was before her, kicking a pebble. The rock skittered off the precipice behind her. Lena heard it land. She heard everything, now.
"Who are you?"
Lena smiled.
"A ghost," she said. Then, in a flash of flesh, reached for the girl's neck.
Her hands wrapped around her warm throat with enough pressure to keep her still. Her pulse thummed away beneath her fingers, quick and erratic, like a hare. Lena fixated on the sensation, eyes trained on the very spot she knew her artery passed through, feeding blood - delicious, warm blood - to her naive little brain.
"My family will kill you," the girl rasped.
Lena blinked, eyes moving slowly to her face.
The girl stared at her, bug-eyed. Why was she trying to threaten her when she was so clearly terrified?
The human's hand moved to her face, and rested lightly on her cheek.
Lena frowned as the warmth of her palm seeped through her skin. Confused, but not concerned. She posed no real threat. She was only human, after all.
"They'll kill you," she said, and showed her.
Although her eyes remained open, Lena could no longer see the field, the girl wincing when she twitched her fingers. She knew it was all there, knew it just as well as she knew her name. But something covered up reality. A hallucination which demanded her attention.
Lena crouched low to the ground, surrounded by eight others like her. Monsters who snarled, mirrored her position, readied themselves to spring at her. Four men, and four women. Growls ripped through the clearing, the symphonic humming of a swarm of wasps.
All at once, they leapt at her with the synchronicity of a single soul. Each individual merely a limb of a much larger beast working to take her down.
Lena was strong and agile, but no match for eight. They overpowered her easily, pinned her down against the cool damp soil.
A man and woman stared down at her.
The man was tall and slim, coppery hair a mess. "In all my years, I've never met someone so eager to perish."
Lena frowned, and struggled against the hands holding her down. She squirmed, but couldn't free herself from the steely grip of her assailants.
The woman was shorter. Willowy, with dark brown hair and milkish skin. She sneered at her, spat venom in her eyes. "You'll pay for what you did."
The two circled around her like birds of prey, and then together, in the same second, leapt at her. They sunk their teeth deep into her shoulders, and pain - that familiar awful burning - radiated deep within her. The hands holding her down twisted and pulled, and her limbs were ripped from her torso.
Lena screamed in agony until her throat was raw.
The monsters showed her no mercy.
The dream faded, the girl's face reappearing before Lena's eyes.
She blinked - once, twice.
A witch.
"You saw what they'll do to you. Now let me go," she ordered.
Lena could have laughed.
The way her voice shook and her hands trembled didn't go unnoticed. Stupid for her to demand anything, let alone think Lena would indulge her.
She slapped her hand away from her face. Two dry cracks echoed down the ravine and bounced off the mountains, milliseconds apart.
The girl cried out. A wonderful sound.
She tried to stumble back, but Lena grabbed her roughly by the throat. She hadn't appreciated her mind games, and she certainly didn't appreciate her trying to escape.
She lifted the girl up onto the tips of her toes, and brought her face close to hers. Snarled.
The sound was met by hissing.
Lena whipped her head around.
Two men were by the treeline, one crouched and the other upright. While she was yet to meet anyone like her, she knew in an instant that they were the same. Ghosts.
She recognised them both from the girl's spell.
The one crouching was the copper-haired man who circled her like she were prey. His lopsided smirk was nowhere in sight now, though. Rather, his face was filled with a deep sort of anger, which skewed his eyes and mouth and pulled on the muscles of his face, transforming him into a demon.
The other was blond and pale. In her hallucination, he held down her leg, and tore it off, too.
He lifted a hand when his accomplice went to move, keeping him from coming any closer.
"I'm Carlisle, and this is Edward," the blond introduced. "And she"-he gestured to the girl clawing at Lena's hands-"is with us."
Oh, a claim?
Her eyes slid from the men to her meal and back again. The thought of handing her over played on her mind for a fraction of a second, before she dismissed it entirely. Lena had already gone to such trouble. There was no way she was going to give up this delicious little thing just like that.
Her fingers twitched around the girl's neck. She stared at Carlisle - a strange name - and waited to see what he would do.
She hadn't expected a smile. He took a measured step forward. "Do you have a name?"
She hesitated. "Lena."
"Well, Lena, could you do me a favour and loosen your grip on her, please? She's turning a little blue, and my son is growing antsy."
"Why?"
"She is my granddaughter," he said.
She didn't move.
"Lena, I know there's a part of you that's still human, a part of you that knows this is wrong."
Human? No, Lena was a monster. All monster.
She had no pulse, no need to breathe. There was nothing human about her now, not even a shred of common humanity left somewhere deep within her.
She liked it that way.
"Let her go," Edward snarled, "and maybe I'll think twice about tearing you apart and burning you to ashes."
Lena looked towards the other man, saw the severity of his threat on his face. He would do it, she realised. If she didn't let go of this girl - this sweet-smelling, delicious girl she had gone to all this effort to capture - he would kill her.
She might have been afraid, if she didn't know already that it was impossible for her to die.
"Then what will I eat?" she asked.
"Animal blood," Carlisle said. "Our family does not feed on humans. Perhaps you would be interested in trying it."
She screwed up her nose, the thought itself unappetising, as if something inside her knew it was wrong. Humans, she thought. She was supposed to eat these warm, fleshy, weak humans.
Lena pressed her cold nose to the girl's neck, smirking when she flinched and tried to gasp out one final plea around her restricted airways. She inhaled deeply, and sighed when the sweet scent of her blood rushed through her. Her eyes rolled back into her skull of their own accord. Gums and throat aching, she knew what she was meant to do.
It was only natural.
A growl ripped through the air, and seconds later a heavy weight collided with her with a loud clap, not unlike thunder. Lena's grip on the girl was lost, fingers slipping from her neck as she was knocked backwards. She sailed through the air some distance, the coppery crown of her assailant's head pressed against her stomach, and landed at the edge of the trees.
With a snarl, she flipped him over and pinned him down.
That girl was hers, and she had been so close.
She squeezed his wrists, satisfied only when she heard the popping and snapping of something deep inside. She let go, but it was a mistake. In an instant, she was on her back.
Edward leaned over her, grabbed a fistful of her hair, and slammed her head against the earth beneath her.
"I should kill you!"
He couldn't. She was already dead.
Unafraid, she grabbed the hand threaded through her hair, and pulled. He released her, and Lena crushed his fingers in her grip, then yanked.
His fingers snapped off with ease, as if breaking off from an old statue. There was no blood, just bone and muscle and tendon peeking out from where his palm and fingers should have met.
His other hand wrapped around her throat and squeezed. Though there was no need for her to breathe, she felt the pressure building in her skull. Something dark and unfiltered glimmered in his eyes.
Just as quickly, he was off of her. His weight remained though, some phantom pressure pushing down on her which she wrestled with for a moment longer to rid. The blond - Carlisle - held him by the back of his shirt, and was speaking by his ear.
Edward cast her one last look, snatched the digits from her hand, and sprinted away.
Her gaze turned to Carlisle.
He looked down at her with something like pity. Then, held out his hand, palm up.