Thanks will be here this time because the end of this chapter deserves it. Thank you to: mariananininha, Ella (Leah deserved a friend! She was stuck with a bunch of teenage boys who treated her like crap, and a man who wouldn't stop (or couldn't) thinking about how much he loved her, but how he loved her cousin more and was meant to be with her all along... And she couldn't talk to her friends, poor woman!), BmBmDooDoo- Doo- Doo- Doo (thank you!), Love. Fiction. 2020, and souverian for your reviews!

Chapter 18

Carys almost stayed in on Thursday night, as she had done the night before. As much as she desperately wanted to find actual living proof of vampires, and as sure as she was that she now had a small enough grid to search that she might soon find it, she had stopped just short of leaving her hotel room twice before finally managing to.

Carys knew what had almost stopped her. It was the same thing that distracted her while she stalked the area throughout the night.

Leah hadn't texted back.

While that would not have usually been a cause for concern, Leah, having been cooped up in her house for days with no way to excise her rising emotional tension, had become ill that morning. It added insult to injury, and she had called Carys around ten in the morning, waking her in the process, to say that both she and Seth had come down with a raging fever; their visit to Port Angeles on Friday would need to be postponed.

They had planned to meet there while Seth and Sue went clothes shopping. Carys would need to return to Forks that weekend if she wanted to keep her job, and Seth was growing out of his clothes faster than ever, so Sue wanted to stock up on enough to get him through to the summer.

Around one in the morning, Carys lowered her camera (which she had been using more like a pair of binoculars in the deserted street) and reached into the pocket of her jeans to remove her phone.

Hope you're both okay, she texted. Just before it sent, she paused and added, Did Seth convince Sue to let you have whiskey in your hot toddies?, knowing he had likely failed in the endeavour.

Returning her phone to her pocket, Carys sighed and took up her camera again, lifting the sight to her eye. She swept the area, then lowered it and walked on. When she caught sight of an alley, positioned between two tall industrial buildings, she walked quickly across the street, stood in the mouth of the alley, and scanned. She was about to move on when she saw a flicker of movement and adjusted the lens.

Her mouth dropped open, and she barely suppressed an excited squeal. Before she knew it, she had taken two steps forward.

Yes! she screamed to herself.

The flicker of movement had come from a broken mirror, lying discarded to one side of the end of the alley. She supposed she should have called it an alleyway, as the mirror gave her a glimpse into the small street running parallel to the one she had just left. She adjusted the lens again and then clicked the shutter a few times.

Carys lowered the camera to check the last photograph she had taken, zooming in on the image.

It featured three crouched figures, feasting on what looked like a... She thought she was going to be sick. It was a body. She retched once, twice, five times overall before she regained control of her involuntary rush of queasiness. Keeping herself silent was harder than she hoped.

Eventually, she raised the camera again and felt her heart thump harder in her chest. Her eyes unfocused as she registered what she saw. The vampires had been joined by another. A large rip down the side of his jacket, coupled with his height, identified him.

Riley.

Forcing her eyes to focus, Carys drifted closer still, just in time to document the vampire roll his head back over his shoulders and snarl. The other vampires cowered in fear at the display. Carys held her breath and pressed the shutter-release over and over, thanking herself for having had the forethought to choose a camera with nearly silent buttons.

Riley began to speak. He stood for a few moments, legs wide and arms tightly folded, face contorted into a monstrous grimace. Then he clenched his jaw shut, and slowly enough for Carys to see, let his arms fall to his sides as he strode unhurriedly towards one of the vampires - the one who had returned to the lure of the mangled body.

Carys held her breath and continued to press the button over and over again, as quickly as she could.

Riley hauled the vampire into his arms. He dropped his head back again, adjusted himself so that one arm wrapped around the vampire's chest, and avoided its teeth as he gripped it by the chin. The arm he used to restrain her upper body, for Carys realised the vampire was a young woman little older than Leah, received the brunt of her desperate attempts to escape. She clawed at him with savage despair, ruining the sleeve of his coat and ripping nail thick slivers from his hardened flesh.

Carys bit her lips together in an effort not to scream; Riley stared down at the female vampire, waited a moment, and then tore the bottom half of her jaw clean off. Carys lowered her camera. She didn't need to see any more of the vampire's mutilation. That was it. She had enough.

She had proof.

Carys felt her heart slow. A familiar rush of near ecstatic relief filled her, and she sighed as she was released from the grip of her anxious need. A second later, her blood chilled again, and she bent over, pressing a hand to the wall as sweet spit pooled in her mouth. She had just witnessed two murders. One human, one vampire.

Rearing to standing when she realised nothing would come up, she gasped for air. There was little doubt in her mind that the female vampire was well on the way to being destroyed - if she had not been already. A brief check of the mirror with her camera, while she half-slumped against the wall, showed the vampires had disappeared. Along with the body.

Too far away to see whether or not there had been any blood left behind, Carys let her camera drop through her fingers and fall again to her chest. She turned so that she could prop her back up against the wall, and was in the middle of sinking down to her haunches when two men passed close enough on the other side of the street to see her.

She felt a shiver of awareness and looked up half a second before they began to catcall her from across the street. Her first thought was annoyance, but then fear flickered to life when they checked the street was still empty.

"Come party with us," one called again, using what he might have thought was an enticing tone. "We'll make it worth your while."

Carys stood up, shaking her head. Her feet felt frozen in place. Her tongue was momentarily glued to the roof of her mouth.

"I think she wants us to come to her, don't you baby?" the other said, laughing as he elicited a vicious grin from his friend for his efforts.

Carys shook her head again. Her voice was infuriatingly weak to her ears when she called back, "No. I'm going home now. You should go on."

The second man rubbed his hands together; the first had the look of a prizewinner, a salacious glint in his eye. They shared a look. Mismatched heights, one might have been at eye level with Carys, the other a little shorter. They were both stocky; they appeared strong. Carys' mind flashed, her body screaming at her to run. She stepped towards the mouth of the alleyway, having to walk towards them to reach the closest route to safety.

The pair watched her, waiting until she was almost clear before they reared forward together, racing towards her, half bent at the waist to aid their starting speed.

Carys ran as fast as she could, heart racing, lungs burning, every muscle screaming at her to stop, her only conscious thought to turn left when she came to the end of the darkened street. She ignored it all, ignored everything but her instincts, and pushed herself harder, ran faster, flung herself around the corner to the right instead, threw her hands out to propel herself back off the wall she nearly collided with, and pushed on.

She didn't know how much she had in her, but whatever she had needed to get her just that bit further; far enough ahead that the snarls that began to fill the night air behind, above, and to the left of her would find their prey elsewhere.

Elsewhere, namely, the two men still chasing her, ignorant to the growing tempo and volume of the snarls that began to now fill the rooftops to both sides of the long, narrow street as they hunted their prey, determined to catch her, shouting at her to stop and come back, laughing at her fear; ignorant to the fact that she was now far more afraid of what was above her than behind her; equally ignorant to the fact they too were now prey and the predators that had caught wind of their strong, fast pumping hearts and ragged breath were far more powerful than they could imagine.

For Carys, sprinting ahead, her lungs protesting each and every panting breath, less and less air entering her bloodstream, a stitch knotting low in her side and stabbing painfully as if it would soon rip open, the knowledge that she was now leading those men to their certain deaths was less onerous than the knowledge of what they were now shouting they would do to her if they caught her.

She just had to be faster. Faster. Faster! She screamed at herself in the knowledge that if she was going to survive, she had to play by the same rules as a bear attack: outrun the others.

She clutched her camera to her waist with one hand to stop it from slamming heavily against her ribcage and spurred herself on. The snarls reached a crescendo; the men behind her slowed, searching the edges of rooftops fearfully for the source of the sound; Carys came to the end of the street, followed her instincts again and turned left this time, bursting out onto the wider, well-lit road; screams echoed through the air behind her for a moment or two before they suddenly cut off.

Carys winced, tripped, caught herself at just the right moment, and carried on.

Rather than slow, she ran harder, in case the vampires followed her scent as well. She hadn't thought of the threat of humans that night; she'd been blinded by the fact she might finally observe the vampires she'd discovered and gain a better understanding of their numbers.

Carys came to the end of the road, slapped her hand against the corner of the brickwork to help her turn, and lost the last of her breath as a snarl ripped through the air behind her.

A body made of stone slammed into her from the front. Red eyes flashed, impossibly white teeth glinted and shone in the darkness. Her feet had lost purchase on the ground when she'd been tackled, and suddenly, there was nothing below her. The little she could see over the vampire's shoulder sped by in a blur as he ran.

She expected the pain that slammed into her when she was thrown to the floor and razor-sharp teeth sank into her flesh, but neither came.

Instead, when she was released in the middle of another alley, far away from where she'd been before, she was dropped unceremoniously to her feet and left to stumble back against the wall, sinking to the floor when her legs gave out.

The figure came towards her again, sauntering forward as he twitched his sleeve and came into the dim light of the street lamp. It illuminated his face enough that she could see he was handsome, tall, broad-shouldered, his long rich-blond hair hanging low against his neck and shoulders.

He was far more in control of himself than the others she'd seen that night, far more composed, and yet his eyes glowed, dark-red with hunger.

Carys pressed back against the brickwork, eyes wide, forcing herself not to focus on the pain or the way her palms burned where she'd scraped them, trying to compel her subconscious mind to answer the question: Friend, or Foe?

The vampire crouched low before her, a slow grin wreathing his face as he flashed his teeth once again.

His low, musical voice sounded strangely proud as he said, "Oh, your family's going to be so angry, aren't they, Mrs Cullen?" the instant before his hand darted towards Carys' neck. She flinched, letting out a keening cry of terror, and the vampire stared at her with the same expression she might adopt when seeing a puppy in pain. He paused, his hand stopping just short of her skin.

"Are-are... Is this?" Carys struggled to fill enough of her lungs to speak. "If-please. Don't do this to him."

"I'm sorry?" queried the vampire as he shifted closer, cocking his head to the side. Carys struggled to form a coherent thought, eyes blurring with tears when his hand reached for her neck once again, and he snapped... The strap holding her camera in place.

"Wh-what?"

Taking a step back, he unfurled himself in one fluid motion, straightening to his full height. "What in God's name are you talking about?" he asked distractedly. His attention was firmly fixed on the camera, which he turned over and over in his hands, before lifting it above his head as if that might help him to better examine it.

Carys, despite herself, felt a bubble of laughter rise up and catch in her already straining lungs. It made her wince with pain. She was about to be murdered by a vampire who had more interest in her camera and the evidence she had collected than he did her blood. He clearly didn't know how to use it. A small frown of concentration crossed over his face as he stared at the buttons.

Carys summoned what little strength she had left and slowly pushed to her feet. It took a couple of attempts to manage it on shaking legs. Her teeth chattered - not from the cold, but from shock, fear and horror.

"Are you playing with me?" a timid disembodied voice asked, and Carys realised with a jolt that it belonged to her. The vampire looked up from the camera, his frown deepening. The dark street hid the expression in his eyes. Catching herself against the wall when her legs began to buckle, Carys explained in the same low, thready voice, "I thought... Don't you-isn't that what vampires do? Make it... Make it quick?"

The vampire pressed his lips together. His eyes widened, and he shook his head.

"You're at no risk of dying by my hand tonight," he said, as if it might reassure her. Ruining any chance of that, he shrugged and cooly admitted, "You may wish I had, however, when your head's being ripped clean off in a minute or so. How the devil does this-? Which one turns it on?"

Carys shook her head, cowering against the wall. She wasn't sure why, but when the vampire thrust the camera under her nose, she raised one shaking hand and pressed the button to change to display mode. Tilting it so that he could assess the screen, the vampire nodded, flashed a hungry smile, and turned his back on her while he strode unhurriedly to the other side of the alley.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," he told her, stopping in his tracks when Carys turned her head and tried to plot a route to run. "I think," he went on, spinning on his heel so that he could languish against the brickwork, "It would be better for you to stay exactly where you are for now. I'm incredibly thirsty, and I'd hate to have to explain why you're completely drained before he gets here."

Carys cried out, "When who-!?"

Riley, of course, her mind shouted at her.

The vampire cut across her. "Patience." Glancing up, the smirk dropped from his face, replaced by a serious expression when he promised, "Won't be long now."

Carys wished she could see his face more clearly, to work out what he might have been thinking. Instead, all she had to go by were his words and tone. Neither gave her much.

It wouldn't be long. It wouldn't be long!? She tried not to think of Carlisle, and how he would find out she had died from a piece of himself being ripped from his chest. It wouldn't be long until her head was being ripped off. Did he mean that literally, or was he referencing what the change felt like? Carys glanced at the end of the alley again, and admitted there was no hope.

There was no way she could outrun a vampire.

She wrapped her arms around herself and focused on slow breaths.

In and out.

In and out.

The vampire watched her from his position by the opposite wall. Carys could feel his gaze on her, boring into her as if he too wanted to suss her out. She lifted her head to stare back at him. Half in shadow, she knew he could pounce at any moment, but he would appear relaxed to anyone else, as if he was simply waiting with her. He had abandoned the distraction of her camera, though he continued to hold it up before him, ready to return to his occupation the instant the other arrived.

Collecting herself, she straightened, rolled her shoulders back, and lifted her head, meeting his gaze with a show of defiance she truly did not feel. She wanted to scream, or run, or try to beg him to let her go. Even if she could control her trembling legs or find her tongue again, it would be futile. She knew that much.

Steady footsteps echoed through the alley.

Carys' breath quickened along with her pulse, and she dropped her gaze to the ground despite wanting to face her death head-on.

I love you, she chanted over and over in her mind. A single tear slipped down her cheek. She ignored it. I love you, I love you, I love you, I'm so sorry.

The footsteps came to a halt just out of view, and Carys closed her eyes.

"I love you, Carlisle," she whispered aloud. "So much. I'm so sorry."

A snarl rang out through the alley. It was a low, animalistic sound that had Carys' eyes snapping open on a gasp as her heart stopped.

"Oh?" he asked icily. "Then perhaps you'd care to explain just what the hell you thought you were doing running through a horde of newborns, woman."

A/N: If you need me, I'll be burning in the pits of hell.