A/N: Sorry it posted funny before!
I'm terrible, I recognize that about myself but I write best when procrastinating on school work and I'm back in school! Haha, for those still here, bit of a plot propelling chapter more than an actual plot chapter, though pay attention to Sam's thoughts, I'm thinking about making her character a bit more insightful (and getting into her head to contrast Eliza's POV) more often.
Jane moved like a dancer during the height of a performance, she all but leapt with each step as she propelled herself forward. There was still so much Sam had to learn, she was realizing, for the newborn had been foolish enough to ask Jane why they weren't taking a car on the way to find prey. Car s could be traced, specific highways set, degrees of plausibility in place. Taking the human route meant being held to human standards. It was still strange, no longer considering herself human, considering herself an other.
So they ran, fast and fleeting, blurs in motion, she had learned that some "ghost" pictures had originated with a vampire running so quickly in the background that the wisp like apparition is nothing more than the cameras attempt at capturing the split moment they were there. They ran for three hours, god knows how many miles (the Cullens had gently suggest she learn kilometers and what not but she had more important things on her plate), until finally they skid to a stop outside of a looming building in a large city, the building shaking ever so slightly from the bass of the music within. Jane had ran her ragged to take her to a night club?
The smaller vampire did not speak, simply nodded for Sam to follow her, which she did dutifully until they were at the top of a set of stairs, a private VIP lounge of sorts but one with a large panel of a double-sided mirror. They could see out but no one could see in. For club goers, it was a chance to watch the dancefloor, have some fun playing voyeur for the night. But Sam knew what it's true purpose was the moment the woman allowing passage upstairs all but fell over herself to let them pass. This was a vampire owned establishment, a hunting ground. Large, tourist city with a club with no cameras and easy access to a food chain with heavy deniability of where they disappeared from, it was the scene set up for an episode of Criminal Minds, yet she found herself the killer.
"What are we watching for?" Sam asked after a long breath of silence, both women standing still as statues before the view below. Jane's eyes darted from face to face, scrutinizing every little movement the humans made. The silence stretched until Jane finally pointed to a corner of the club, away from the pulsing music and pouring of drinks. There, in the corner, was a woman struggling to stand, giggling manically, weight being supported by two men. Their body language is all confidence, as Sam stares at them the music and background noise and all her vampiric hearing focused only on the trio.
"I reaaaally should get…" The woman hiccupped, words slurring despite the cute British accent making them rather crisp, "back to my hotel." She blinked, as if it were too bright despite how dark it was in the club. Her head rolled suddenly, into one of the men's chest and he hoisted her up into his arms and made what she assumed to be a joke in another language, the local one based on the reactions of those who heard him.
Jane did not need to guide her anymore, her instincts were clear, honed in, target set. Sam stayed in the shadows until they turned down a street, heading to their car by the look of the parking lot down the road, a section of dirt with a few cars in makeshift lines. It was all but pitch black, the men struggled to see as they talked between them, tone baudy and proud. She waited until they opened the car door and sprawled the woman across the back seat before she struck. Jane followed in quick order, she had years of feeding in a pair and moved effortlessly, cleanly slicing into his neck and drinking deeply.
But Sam was still so angry, at the men for thinking they could take that woman simply to have her. Yet it was more than that too, she was so angry, all the time, a simmering rage that had Jasper actively avoiding her as to not boil himself in her steam. She felt the mate bond, felt the tether to Lora, the need to be with her, to have her, it was overwhelming at times, all consuming, made worse by newborn mood swings yet she was still so angry at Lora for doing this to her.
She had left her life behind, her parents, her friends, her fiancé. Sam admitted that looking at Eliza filled her with a thirst of blood more than of a carnal urge, it was a fire that had been thoroughly put out the moment Sam had woken as a vampire, thirsty and desperate for Lora to hold her despite the overwhelming nature of her maker and mate standing before her. Sam had accepted her former life was lost, understood it was a necessary evil because the Volturi would not stand for the secret of vampires to come out and if she shared her fate with her friends, they would would share it as well. It was a shared tragedy of all vampires, the shared grief of humans lost to them.
Yet then she was summoned before these three kings, these all powerful beings in her new world, just to find her former flame being kindled with the power of a trinity mate bond. Learning the easy way what Sam had to by dying.
The blood dripped warm across her face as she pressed painfully down on the dying man's body, forcing the fleeting beats of his heart to pulse his blood further. She had accepted giving up everything, the universal truth of it, yet Eliza would not share this fate. Eliza, who's family had not bothered to share the existence of their true selves with her or that of vampires, would not have to lose her kin when she became a vampire. Her friends would fade but her indirect descendants would be able to know her, her world would not implode when her heart stopped beating, it would extend. It was a twisted irony, she supposed, Eliza had been so worried about her mom knowing neither of them wished for children, what would she think, knowing that Quileute blood would live forever in the form of venom?
"Newborns are so…messy." Jane looked down her nose at Sam, mouth clean save for the corners of her lips while Sam was fully coated in a thin layer of carnage across her cheeks and chin. She paused for a moment before dipping into the car and checking on the passed-out woman, mouth further curling downward. "How do the Americans say it? She's been roofied? Drugged?"
It was Sam's turn to merely nod, the woman's heartrate was steady though Sam no longer felt the primal thirst, the need to pounce. When Jane picked up the body, slung rather comically over her shoulder considering how burly the now dead man was, Sam copied and they flitted to the back entrance of the club and disposed of them in boxes she was uncomfortable to see had been prepared for them.
"Men attack women, women attack men, vampires inherit the earth." Sam mused, though Jane did not seem to appreciate her Jurrasic Park reference. There was still bitterness within her, turning now to the thought of how Esme would look at her, so sweetly maternal and disappointed. It had been made clear to both her and Lora: their coven did not consume human blood in any form, freely given or taken. Lora had been around for nearly a hundred years, though being a vampire was difficult for even elders with the world as it was now. They couldn't just take whomever they wished now, the world would take notice. Where a newborn could cause carnage and only be known within a few miles then, now would be found within moments, whether from a phone call or even a traffic camera. Big brother was watching and without the money to buy off the police and grease whatever wheels would need to be greased, there was a short lifespan for a vampire in a first world country.
"We should return, the masters will not be pleased with a prolonged absence." Sam would never be completely comfortable with calling anyone master, let alone with the casual ease that Jane did. Though, everything Jane did seemed calculated, almost robotic if not for the natural method of her movements. "Though, they might yours." It was flat, simple, the truth. She was not wanted before and certainly not now. Turning into a vampire had been a burden on everyone: the Cullens, who argued though eventually agreed that leaving a newborn to be feral would mean certain death; Lora, who despite the mutual, fierce passion between them, had also felt the weight of another presence after years of isolation and now even Eliza, who she had made peace with accepting the end of their relationship, though not the sight of her former fiancé intertwined with three men.
"Perhaps I shouldn't return then." She replied flippantly, shoulders rolling back as she stretched unnecessarily, more out of human habit than anything, a nervous tick. "Leave them to their polyamorous happy ever after."
Were her eyes deceiving her, or did Jane just smirk? Sam would never believe a smile but perhaps a smirk, because there was definitely a flash of teeth at the very least. "I have yet to decide which I dislike more, newborns or newly made mates. Both are so…overflowing." The petite blond raised a hand to clasp on her shoulder, almost comforting. "But as sure as the waters of the sea, all ends up calm in the end, Lady Athenodora has assured us of it."
Jane spoke with such surety that on the entire run to the palace, Sam focused on it, tracing her mind back, startling herself with how vivid her vampiric memory was. Athenodora was not the mate of any of the kings and if her tale was true, she had no true coven left, so why was she so important within the Volturi?