Rosalie Hale
[Author's Note: Please review. I love reviews. I used to only write Buffy/Faith fanfiction back in the day and one of my longish stories had like 100 reviews and it was so fun reading them. And I'm sorry ahead of time for any spelling errors or whatever. I'm writing these in quick succession and then publishing them after only reading them back once. I've already got this whole story lined out.. So hopefully I'll actually finish this one. Maybe! ;) Anyways, read on!]
Rosalie Hale jogged through Olympic National Park with her brother Edward Cullen. They were side by side, enjoying the way the wind blew back over their angelic faces. His short auburn hair ruffled with the whip of the air and her soft white blonde hair twisted out behind her head in a swirl of curls. It was late afternoon and the sun was high in the sky, the canopy of extremely tall trees filtering the light. Occasionally, in thinner expanses of foliage, the sunbeams extended down to the siblings, causing a brilliant glimmer that twinkled on their smoothly marbled skin. The skin of killers..
The female vampire cleared her mind of trivial details and focused intently on the sounds around her, bypassing the rapid beats of animals hearts and checking for a human pulse. "No one?" she asked her brother silently. His natural talent was to read her mind and as long as she directed her thoughts..
"No one," came his hissed response, "It's just us. No humans."
Rosalie reached over and squeezed his lower arm beneath the rolled cuff of his pearly white dress shirt. "Find me in twenty?"
He nodded and the female turned and bolted in the opposite direction of him. In seconds, the siblings were miles apart and Rosalie stopped herself at the edge of a stream. Hunting had become nearly second nature for her. She still hated to do it, finding the nature of it rather barbaric, but she'd gotten good at it. With a superhuman talent for charm and emotional control, Rosalie also had the ability to heighten or loosen her own senses. She filtered out the other sensations of the mind and focused solely on finding the heartbeat of her prey of choice. In this case it was a deer, and immediately Rosalie found a group of them grazing languidly up ahead where the stream drained into a forest pool. She climbed a tall pine, found them visually about a hundred yards east and quickly settled on her victim; a tawny doe speckled with brown spots. Closing her eyes, the vampire listened only to its beating heart, letting the metronome of the sound become the soundtrack to the venom now surging inside of her. She leapt from tree to tree and then, in a fantastic show of grace, she dropped down on the creature and sunk her teeth into its throat. The other deer scattered, but this one beneath her only sank to its knees, accepted its fate and released one last, retired cry.
Moments later, having nearly drained the beast, Rosalie slowed down her feeding to enjoy the last of the blood. Her hunger, considerably more in check than it had been before, faded to near unimportance, allowing her to focus on more than just her thirst. But that's when she picked up on something she hadn't noticed before and she immediately abandoned the rest of her meal. Edward's comment had led her to fully drop her guard. No humans, he had said. But there was a human, Rosalie was sure of it. She heard the human's heart beat, smelled the scent of its skin, heard the blood pumping through the human's veins..
The winds shifted and Rosalie, still poised in a crouch by the deer had to steady herself to keep from losing her balance. She closed her eyes, breathed in deeply and mouthed in exasperation, "Good God." The aroma spread all through her and she once again felt venom pooling in her glands. She was full of deer blood but somehow more hungry than she'd been in the entirety of her second life. The blood of the human was the most delicious smell she'd ever smelled, the most excruciatingly, mouth watering aroma of her 107 years on Earth. She couldn't move, afraid she'd lose her handle on reality and go mad trying to get at the delicacy somewhere nearby.
She could hear her- Rosalie could tell it was a woman- approaching. She was practiced in her usage of stealth, treading slowly and carefully through the forest. But even expert level stealth was no match for Rosalie's heightened hearing, her unmatched perception. It had only been the distraction of the hunt that had allowed her to get so close. If she'd been in her right mind, she would have picked up on this delicious human right away.
Slowly, the vampire rose, twisting slightly towards the direction of the scent, eager to see her. She was poised, ready. The closer the human got, the more on edge Rosalie became, until she could see the silhouette at the edge of the clearing and her body was absolutely tensed into insanity. Then, for a single instant, she saw the sparkle of a beautiful pair of brown eyes accompanied by the snap of a twig, and she had hurled herself up high into the trees above her. The large group of birds that had been using the tree as a haven took off in succession, screaming in alarm, the blonde having infiltrated their base so suddenly.
The human woman, short, petite, slender, with long chestnut hair covered by a ranger hat was directly below her. She held out a long rifle, the strap hanging limply beneath it. She was breathing heavily, her heart rapidly pumping in her chest. She was scared, curious, hesitant, but it only took her a few moments to work up the courage to approach the fallen deer. She went to it, inspected it with gentle hands, and gushed a soft statement of condolence. Her words were irrelevant, but her voice. It was the most beautiful voice that Rosalie had ever heard, the sweet femininity of it like the soft ringing of a bell. She continued to speak, this time communicating with someone else via a walkie talkie, someone else that was miles and miles away. She herself was all alone.. The rifle would snap with a squeeze of Rosalie's hand leaving the brunette open to the full effects of Rosalie's charm.. She would beg the blonde to taste her.. To empty her..
A hand fell on her shoulder then and Rosalie stiffened in response. She knew immediately that it was her brother but his sudden approach still caught her off guard.
"Rosalie," he whispered, quiet enough that only she would hear, "don't do it. Don't give in."
"Her scent," Rosalie argued inwardly, her eyes magnetized to the human woman's back as she inspected the deer for wounds. "Never in my life have I smelled someone so-"
"Remember who you are," Edward prompted, softly, patiently. "Remember what you stand for."
The blonde closed her eyes, willed herself back into control, trying to recall her boundaries, her loyalties, her rules. She didn't feed on humans. She had never, she would never.
"Good," Edward soothed, squeezing her arm. "Just leave her alone."
The brunette gasped as she came across the wound on the beast's neck. The quiet sound of her contact buzzed on her hip and she retrieved the device and muttered back a response. Rosalie crept closer, out of Edward's reach, needing to just see her once, see her face, draw her attention, understand what it was about her..
The park ranger stepped away from the deer, fumbling with her weapon, swinging it widely with worry. And then she looked up and for the smallest moment in time, their eyes locked together. She had warm, amber eyes, more brown than yellow but warm and inviting nonetheless. They were almost like a dark golden bronze, like the bells in her voice.. Rosalie was stunned, her body tingling with anticipation, nearly her entire being telling her to jump, collide, drink. She had a split second to make a decision, a decision she would likely think about for the rest of her existence. She bit her bottom lip, willed herself into control, and then slipped back on the branch, back to Edward.
"Let's go," he prompted in a pressing hiss. "Let's get out of here."
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