'Rosalie.'
Only it wasn't. The torso was too lithe, the hair too long, the jaw line too sharp. Rosalie was the very definition of feminism – who… whatever was out in the tree was not her. It was wild, a predator.
'Besides,' Bella thought, 'Rosalie hates me.' She certainly wouldn't to be in the tree outside her window… in the dead of night… in the pouring rain. 'But if it's not Rosalie…' Then, just as quickly as she had imagined Rosalie, her brain supplied her with the only other possibility.
Victoria.
Bella couldn't stop the soft "oh," that fell from her lips, nor the rapid increase in her heartbeat. Cold chills raced through her stomach and arms, her muscles tensed in anticipation. She could hear the individual raindrops hitting the windowpane, feel the scratch of the wool blankets as they pinned her to her bed. Her body was coiled, tapped into survival mode, prepared for action.
'Only, there would be no flight or fight,' Bella's mind whispered. 'You can't outrun death.' And death was exactly what was waiting for her. Proudly it stood, perched outside of her window.
It had come for her.
Time slowed – or adrenaline made it seem so. Bella watched as her window was opened, watched as the rain began to fall on her windowsill and floor. And then, as it always was with the supernatural, the vampire was inside. No slow, awkward entrance, no fumbling, no push or pull. She simply was inside, standing at the edge of her bed, dripping rainwater onto her floor and looking every bit the immortal monster of children's nightmares. Pale and dark, blanketed in a hood of shadows.
Except Bella didn't remember Victoria looking like this. The hair was shorter and lighter – falling in loose, wet curls to the vampires' shoulders. Where Victoria had been wiry and fluid, like walking smoke, this vampire stood solid and erect, formidable in her svelte form. The jaw was more angled, the shoulders more square. Bella stared at the vampires face as a sculptor would – critical, assessing, memorizing.
Lightning flashed outside, momentarily lighting up the room. Eyes flashed gold, Bella's breathing stopped.
"You're a vegetarian…" she started, and then drifted off into confused silence. She tried to push herself up into a sitting position, but with the realization that this vampire was not Victoria the adrenaline had quickly left her body, leaving her limbs feeling like jelly. Struggling, Bella managed to push herself up onto her elbows.
The female tilted her head to the side and stared at her, face unreadable. Her eyes then slid from Bella's and observed the room.
"Do you have a bag?"
Bella blinked. "I…uh, what?" She shook her head in bewilderment.
The vampire looked at her again, unimpressed. "A bag. They hold things. Most humans possess one."
Still mystified, Bella decided to go along with current set of events. "Yes, I have one. I keep it in my closet."
The vampire nodded, already opening the closet door and pulling it out. "Get dressed. Grab your essentials."
"What for?" Bella asked, voice rising in volume. She forced her legs and arms to work, kicking at the blankets until she freed herself. The vestiges of panic were returning, she had no idea what was going on. A strange vampire was in her room, packing her bag full of clothes, ordering her around.
That same vampire was now standing with a bag hanging from her hand and glaring at Bella. "Do you want to die?" she hissed, taking a few steps towards the bed. For the first time Bella noticed the dirt that was smeared on her hands and jeans. Even the dark wool sweater the vampire wore seemed to be stained with something dark.
"Of course not!" Bella yelled back in confusion.
"Shh!" the vampire countered, head turning towards the door.
They both listened for the sounds of Charlie waking. A minute passed. Two.
The pale vampire turned back towards Bella, who stood and crossed her arms, unrepentant for being loud.
"Who are you?" Bella asked, "What are you doing here? Why are you packing my bag?" Bella swore she saw the female vampire's eye twitch, but it was hard to tell in the darkness. She couldn't be sure.
"I'm Tanya, from the Denali coven."
Silence.
"Alice sent me."
More silence. Tanya's eyes narrowed. "She didn't tell you I was coming?"
Bella felt her throat constrict as emotions overwhelmed her. Closing her eyes, she swallowed thickly. "I haven't heard anything from any of the Cullen's." She took a ragged breath and let her eyes wander the room. "Not since they left," she told Tanya.
"You have no idea why I'm here then?" Tanya asked, moving from Bella's closet and coming to stop at the foot of her bed.
"Why would I?" Bella asked. "As far as I know the Cullens have no intention of ever returning or contacting me."
If the vampire heard the waiver in her voice she thankfully ignored it. Instead she sat down heavily on the bed next to Bella, deep in thought. "I think I've messed everything up," Tanya told her, groaning. She pinched the bridge of her nose between her thumb and index finger. "I told her I wasn't going to interact with you, I actively planned on not interacting with you."
'Another vampire that wants nothing to do with me,' Bella thought ruefully. 'I should find a way to market my ability to drive away the supernatural.' Sighing, Bella looked over to where Tanya sat on the edge of her bed. "Look, why don't you just leave then?" She shrugged her shoulders, "The Cullen's…"she drifted off for a moment before taking a deep breath. "The Cullen's are gone and they're not coming back. Just leave and we'll pretend this never happened."
Tanya gave Bella a slight smile. "Oh, it's far too late for that," she told her. Sighing, Tanya shook her head ruefully. "I'm afraid that I've forced you into a more dire situation." She carefully watched the human's face. "Are you aware that there's a vampire who wants you dead? Someone who isn't a Cullen?"
Bella's eyes widen for a fraction of a second before her whole face fell. "Oh," she said.
Tanya nodded, pursing her lips and looking out the window. "If you stay here you'll be killed."
Bella was silent for a moment, processing everything that had happened, everything she'd been told. She couldn't say that she was surprised that Victoria wanted her dead, or that she was coming for her. Her options were hopelessly limited. Leave with a stranger, one who was somehow connected with the vampires who had abandoned her, or stay and die.
"If I leave what will happen to my father? Will she kill Charlie?" she asked, turning her head to look at her door, as if she could see Charlie through the wood and drywall that separated them.
Tanya sighed. "I'm not Alice, I can't tell you with 100% accuracy." She heard the human's pulse and breathing pick up. Quickly, she sought to calm her. "But…I don't think she will. If she believes you're dead she'll let him live to suffer."
Bella swallowed thickly as tears began to stream down her face. "I'm never going to see my family again, am I?"
Tanya tried to convince herself that she shouldn't be, that she wasn't, fascinated by the girl's pain – but she was. The raw emotion was enticing; it sparked something deep inside her, resonated somewhere. She drank in the girl's expression. "No, you probably won't," she whispered hoarsely, guilt for enjoying the spark of emotion within herself affecting her voice.
Bella nodded, oddly feeling empty. Numbly she looked around her room, squinting to see everything in the dark. Memorize it. Freeze it. It seemed the culmination of her life had reached its pinnacle. 'Wasn't this what you always wanted?' her mind replied snidely. For one terrible second all the rash things that had lead her to this point seemed ready to crash down over her and sweep her away into an emotional tidal wave. She squeezed her eyes shut, breathed in deeply through her nose, and slowly released the air from her mouth. "How do we do this?" she asked, looking at the darkened shadow of the vampire at the foot of her bed. "Charlie won't believe that I'd run away. Even if he did, he'd think that I'd head towards the Cullens. That scenario wouldn't end well for anyone."
The room lit up with light from outside for a second, allowing her to see Tanya's eyes locked on her own, sizing her up. She watched the vampire lean down, heard the sound of something rough scraping against cloth. It took Bella a full second to recognize what the curved gleam was reflecting off of. Her insides twisted painfully as adrenaline began pumping through her veins.
"It's not going to look like you ran away," Tanya told her, palming the kukri knife. She tossed Bella's bag next to her. "Pack quickly. Don't take anything that anyone would notice was gone."
Still eyeing the knife, Bella nodded. She tried to keep her hands from shaking as she began stuffing some clothes in her bag. 'This is really happening,' her mind kept repeating. 'You'll never see your parents again, this strange, knife wielding vampire may kill you, and none of the Cullen's will ever have the chance to change their minds about abandoning you.'
The last thought stopped her in her tracks. It wasn't Edward her thoughts were preoccupied with; it was her parents, all of the Cullens. This had been the first night when she hadn't thought of how impossible life seemed without him. 'Well, that's great. I stop thinking about Edward just when a vampire comes to kidnap me.'
A cold hand on her shoulder snapped her out of her thoughts. Her head turned to find Tanya so close she could feel the vampire's breath on her check. "Are you ready?"
She'd forgotten how alluring vampires were. Tanya smelled of campfire and rain, her voice was controlled and soft. Bella felt dazed and shook her head to clear her mind. Out of the corner of her eye she saw her picture frames glinting from the nightstand. There was a picture of her and mother, one of her and Charlie, a few with friends. Bella worried her bottom lip between her teeth as she contemplated whether or not she should take them.
The hand on her shoulder squeezed imperceptibly, or so she imagined. Clearing her throat, Bella turned away from the photos and looked back up at Tanya. "I'm ready."
.
.
.
Tanya reached over and grabbed the book bag from Bella's hand. The human's heart was pounding, blood roaring through her veins despite the human's most controlled exterior. Tanya felt herself reluctantly impressed with how the human was handling the situation. It wasn't normal, but she expected no less from a human that had fallen in love with a vampire. Attraction was one thing – that was a natural part of the predator/prey relationship. But a human falling in love with a vampire? She'd never witnessed such an event.
Walking over to the window, she threw the bag outside and onto the lawn below. Tanya let her eyes look out over the forest as her mind raced. Was this the right choice? Would Alice, Carlisle, approve?
She felt raindrops hitting her face. The rain was beginning to let up. If she still planned to have their scents wash away she needed to get going. Nodding to herself, she turned back to the human.
Bella.
She walked up to the girl and gently grasped her arm. Lifting it, she gently ran the tip of her index finger over the outside of Bella's forearm.
"A clean cut," she told her. "It will go between the muscles, down to the bone. You'll bleed a lot, but nothing fatal."
The human swallowed noisily. She seemed to have gotten paler. "Won't the blood be too much? Carlisle was the only one who…"
"I am three times older than Carlisle," Tanya interrupted, pulling Bella closer to her. She brought Bella's wrist up to her face, gently running her nose over the human's pulse point. The predator in her smiled in satisfaction as the girl began to sweat. Softly she spoke, lips moving against Bella's skin. "It has been 600 years since I last fed on a human. I will not fall upon you like some beast."
Wide eyed, Bella only nodded.
Tanya gave her no warning or extra time to prepare. One second she had been holding Bella's wrist to her mouth, the next she had let go as blood began to bloom from the long gash on her arm.
For a moment the human simply stared as blood began to pour from her arm and drip onto the floor. She seemed almost fascinated by the white of her own bone.
Tanya caught her eye as she raised the knife to her mouth, slowly running her tongue along the length of the knife. "Mmm," she moaned, flashing Bella a feral smile. "Tastes like spring."
The next second she had to drop her knife so she could catch the fainting girl.
"Great," Tanya muttered, shifting the girl awkwardly in her arms, watching as her head rolled to the side. "Figures you'd be squeamish."
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Off in the distance a wolf bayed.
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Sometimes I just want to blow my brains out after I write. :/ Never try to impress a woman by writing her a story, friends.