20 / 2 /16

Disclaimer: "Twilight" is the creative property of Stephenie Meyer. I only claim ownership over the subsequently altered plotline and characterisations, the Venatorum lore, and all additional characters including "Izzy," Alexa, Tobias, and Raphael.

A/N: No comments from me since my author's note in the Preface was sinfully long. XD All I will say it that there is going to be a fair amount of fantasy violence in this, particularly when it comes to the Venators and Vamps butting heads, so tread carefully if you're sensitive to that kind of thing.

Beyond that, suffice to say that this story starts just a little different to the original…

Chapter 1

- Sunshine & Sabres -

The Seven Laws of the Venatorum

I. You will never reveal your nature or the natures of your brothers and sisters to an innocent.

II. You will never compromise the secrets of the order, through word, act or deed.

III. You will never refuse your help to any mortal who requires your protection.

IV. You will never allow yourself to be corrupted by those you hunt.

V. You will never turn your blade on those you are sworn to defend.

VI. You will hunt only those beings who kill, mutilate, or transform mortals against their will.

VII. You will work to defend the mortal race, and all those within it, until the day death comes for you.

If you happened to have been in downtown Phoenix, Arizona on the 13th of December, just off the corner of Van Buren Street at about 5:30pm, you might have seen something freaky.

Five stoned teenage boys — their pupil's the size of quarters from way too much pot — sprinting headfirst out of a darkened alleyway, screaming like their pizza-stained hoodies were on fire. If you were lucky, you might have even caught them gibbering something about cold stone monsters, crazy people with swords, and a headless body with no blood lying dead in an alleyway.

If, however, you had stumbled upon the scene just a few minutes early, and had the presence of mind to look up, you would have encountered something very different.

Two young Venators — or as the younger members of our age old secret society like to call us; professional monster hunters — sat on the edge of a rooftop together, their legs dangling casually over the edge into the alleyway below. A box of glazed ring donuts sat between them on the ledge, and the pair of them were lazily enjoying them while sitting in the late evening sun, their sheathed sabres slung casually over their laps.

One of the two teenage hunters was Tobias Grimm, though to the rest of us in the Arizona branch of the Venatorum, he went by Toby.

He was a big guy, both vertically and horizontally, and built like a brick teddybear, with dark mahogany skin, a short buzz cut, vivid green eyes, and a wide toothy smile that could light up a baseball stadium. I'd known him since I was a toddler, and even then he'd always been like he was now; happy, huggable, and more than capable of cheerfully kicking the crap out of you if you offered him threats.

He also happened to be my one of my hunting partners.

The other roof loiterer was me, Isabella Swan, though no one who knew me dared call me that to my face.

To all the world outside the Venatorum, I looked like a regular almost-seventeen-year-old girl. Average height, slender build, with reasonably pretty brown eyes, and dark brown hair pulled back into a long, windswept braid. I wasn't unpleasant to look at or anything, but I wasn't really anything special either, which suited my line of work perfectly. The only things that did give a clue as to what I really was were the sinewy whipcord muscles under my pale skin, a lot more scars on my arms and legs than any normal girl, and last but not least; the sheathed tactical sword I currently had slung inconspicuously across my lap.

"Izzy?" Toby's rolling Georgia baritone pulled me from my wandering thoughts as I watched the last of the sun sinking below the horizon.

"Mmm?" I said, tiling my head toward him with a mouthful of donut, but not looking away.

He shook the box to donuts right under my nose.

"Last one. Wanna snatch it up?"

I swallowed and looked down to see one glazed ring donut sitting by itself in the box. Smiling, I shook my head and patted my belly.

"Nah, you go ahead. I've near stuffed anyway."

Toby gave me a lopsided grin from his perch on the rooftop next to me, wigging thick, dark eyebrows playfully. The gesture might have almost looked flirtatious on anyone else, but not on him — my hunting partner, and surrogate badass broadsword-swinging brother. I'd simply known him far too long to be capable of admiring his good looks in that way.

"Come on, Iz. Think of it as an early birthday gift. Celebratin' you finally becoming one of the big kids."

Big kids. Well, that was one way of saying finally becoming an adult monster hunter.

I pushed the box away gently with a slightly brighter smiled. "Really, Toby, if I have one more I'm gonna end up puking right in the middle of the hunt."

He laughed and took the box back.

"It would give the vamps something to look at, and smell," he said with a rumbling chuckle. I grinned too, but couldn't quite bring myself to laugh along with him. He saw the look that must have flickered in my face and stopped, giving me a perceptive look through dark green eyes. He set the box down and turned to face me properly. "Alrigh', out with it. What's eating you, girly?"

I threw up my hand in a mock surrendering pose.

"What? Nothing. There's no eating going on here," I jerked my chin at the lonely unclaimed donut still in the box. "Literally."

Toby plucked it up and held it about three inches from my face, wiggling it suggestively though his face was serious.

"You never turn down donuts, and you've got that frowny look you get when someone holds bacon under your nose." His wide mouth twitched in a wry smile. "Or when the Boss Lady gives you a grilling for 'insubordination'."

The Boss Lady — otherwise known by her longer and more pretentious title; the Branch Commander of the West Coast chapter of the Venatorum. She was the top dog in charge of running the entire supernatural surveillance operation throughout the western US, and the one we all answered to. She was tough, wicked smart, and while she wasn't cruel or unkind exactly, she had been known to occasionally make grown men — both mortal and supernatural — cry like little boys.

She was also my mom.

I sighed, relenting to my partner's insatiable prodding. I took the donut, broke it in half, and handed the larger piece back to him.

"She keeps asking me what devision I'm going to choose," I said eyeing my own half in contemplatively.

"And?" Toby asked through a bite. I picked a small piece off mine and nibbled on it.

"And it's my seventeenth in two weeks, and my Choosing."

Toby just looked at me, pretending he didn't know what I was talking about, and still chewing.

"Again I say. And?"

I pursed my lips in mild impatience.

The Choosing within the Venatorum was what the rest of the world liked to think of as a coming of age ceremony, or maybe some screwed up version of a debut. Every Venator went through it once they hit seventeen. Only, instead of being presented to polite society and enjoying a big party afterwards, we had to choose which devision within the Venatorum we wanted to specialise ourselves in. It wasn't supposed to be an easy decision, and while there were only three divisions to choose from — Hunter, Sentinel, or Alchemist — they were each wildly different, and changing once you'd made your choice was a difficult process.

Each division liked to believe it had a long convoluted philosophy on what it really meant to specialise in their class, but in simple terms they really boiled down to the following:

Sentinel was the devision that kept the peace between humanity and the benevolent factions of the supernatural world. They fought only when they had to, and were usually the ones called in when a situation needed a delicate touch — like negotiating intra-species banking restrictions with stroppy leprechaun ambassadors.

Next up was Alchemist, the lore keeping faction of the Venatorum. They were responsible for keeping all the order's histories, records, and secrets stretching back centuries, and I'd been told there were some secrets in their keeping that would send a historian into a fit of apoplexy. They were also the ones responsible for building and crafting all our weaponry and gear, and guarding the secret to our combat abilities — the Elixir.

And finally, there was Hunter, which was pretty much exactly what it said on the tin. They were hunters, supernatural law enforcement, SWAT, Black Ops, exterminators, and James Bond all rolled into one and tied up with a red bow. They were the people who were sent in when some supernatural nasty started killing off humans, and the Venatorum knew the normal human authorities were way out of their depth.

I already knew full well which one I was going choose when my seventeenth rolled around, which division I belonged to. There was just one tiny problem…

"And," I went on, still picking at my donut and eyeing Toby with impatience, "my mother has been hinting that I should think about taking Sentinel instead of Hunter when I go for my Choosing. She keeps saying I'm still too undisciplined and impulsive to pass the induction tasks for Hunter."

Toby stopped chewing for a second, he turned away from me to look out at the setting sun, swallowed and looked uncomfortably at the remains of his donut.

"Don't take this the wrong way, Iz. But… she might have a point there."

I stopped picking at my donut and turned to stare at him very slowly. He looked at me sheepishly, and it would have looked comical on a guy his size at any other time.

Toby had been in Hunter for almost a year now, and he'd been my hunting parter since we were kids. We'd gone through training together, been through the same classes together, even gone through our Initiation Hunt together. He might have been more experienced, being a year older and having already gone through his Choosing, and had pounds more raw strength than I did — but give me a training sabre and a sparing ring, and I'd take him down inside a minute.

When it came to skills we were almost evenly matched, and he knew it. Not once had he ever expressed doubts over what division I should choose when my time finally came too. Or that I might be choosing wrong.

"Well, this is new," I said a bit stiffly, twisting to face him, feeling my eyes go a bit hard. "Go on. Tell me how exactly I'm more qualified for Sentinal's posse of diplomats than you and the rest of the Hunter squads?"

Toby held up a placating hand to me, his expression conflicted.

"Hear me out, Iz, I'm not questionin' your mad skills, and they are mad for the record. You're the best out of any of us with a blade. But there's more to the induction than winnin' a few fights and leading a few hunts." He pointed to the two sabres I had cradled in my lap — only one of which was mine. "If it were down to just swinging a sabre, there'd be no issue. You'd pass easy, and your mom wouldn't be so riled up."

I opened my mouth to argue, then closed it, rolling his words around in my head as I continued to look hard at him.

"Alright," I said finally, popping my half of the donut into my mouth in one bite, and said through my mouthful; "tell me then. What is it that makes it so hard? You passed, didn't you?"

Toby's cautious expression at my reaction vanished into a wide, playful smile.

"Yeah I did," he said, raising his arms with a grin and flexing into a bodybuilder's pose, "but I'm a machine, so it obviously goes without saying."

I choked on a laugh and a couple of donut sprinkles.

"Oh, sure, obviously," I giggled. Toby grinned at me, then his expression faded back into thought. He didn't look worried this time, but there was a tinge of shadowy brooding to the expression that I'd always hated seeing on his normally happy face.

"Hunter isn't just the fighting and hunting devision, Iz. It's the devision that's responsible for protecting all of them," he gestured with a wide hand out to the people bustling down the parking high street, "from the monsters they don't know are out there. It's easier when you're still just a trainee to just focus on taking down the big-bad-monsters, followin' someone else's orders and all that. But the Hunter tests are designed to make you understand what that crap we learned in the Barracks really means."

He turned away from me to look out at the darkening sky just as I had a minute ago, and I watched him. The dying light made his green eyes gleam despite their slightly haunted look. "They force you to start thinkin' about everything that could go wrong, and who could get hurt if you don't do your job. All the people who's lives depend on your choices, and the lives that could end up ruined if you screw up even a little."

I stared at him, unsure of what to say.

I'd always known hunting monsters was the easy part of what we did, weird as that sounded. Understanding why we needed to hunt, the realities of the supernatural world, and dealing with the fallout once the monsters were gone? That was something totally different.

It was why I wanted to join the Hunter division, rather than the political peacekeeping Sentinels, or the research and knowledge guarding Alchemists. You had to be just a little bit nuts to become a Hunter — and after the things we'd all seen growing up, a lot of us trainees already were.

I know I was.

To me, hunting monsters wasn't the scariest part, it was seeing the fallout after the monsters were dead…

The image of a terrified little girl in a dirty flower patterned dress and no shoes, crouched in an alley way, screaming in terror as she saw the light die in her mother's eyes. The monster that had killed her lay dead too, cut into six pieces, burning to ashes. But it didn't matter. It was too late. It was just one memory of many since my Induction Hunt four years ago.

Way too many.

"Would you have done it any differently?" I asked quietly after a long moment, the both of us just staring out into the darkening city. "Chose a different division, if you could go back and choose again?

Toby thought about it for a moment, his thick, dark eyebrows pinched. He shook his head.

"Honestly? No. I know my place is out here, in the field, with a sabre in my hand." He looked at me with an ernest but faintly pleading look on his face too. "But she might be right about you though. Sentinel might be the right place for you, Iz, if you gave it a chance."

I half sighed half snorted.

"You're kidding right? We both know Sentinels are supposed to be people pleasers, keeping the rest of the supernatural factions happy and pacified. My idea of diplomacy involves showing up with a pie in one hand, a sword in the other, and asking which you'd like first." I held up my sheathed sabre and wiggled it for emphasis. "I'm not a Sentinel, Toby. I'd probably get thrown out for mouthing off to a some Fae lord or Shaman ambassador on my first day."

"Sometimes a bit of good natured smart-mouthin' is good for a situation, especially if it involves prancey Fae lords," Toby replied smoothly, with a little tinge of humour creeping back into his expression. He took a deep breath, let it out in a long exhale, and looked out over the darkening skyline, resting an elbow on his knee. "I would change one thing though, if I could."

I looked at him curiously.

"What's that?"

"Things bein' so simple again."

I almost spluttered out a laugh at that, but caught it.

"Neither of us are even legally aloud to drink yet, and we've both been trained to kill the most dangerous creatures on the planet since we turned four," I smiled, shaking my head. "What part of that is simple?"

Toby smiled, but it didn't quite reach his eyes.

"I said it was simple, Iz, not easy," he said quietly, smiled again, and clapped a big hand to my shoulder. "And it is simple, but once you make the Choice, it isn't really anymore. You should enjoy that while it lasts."

I sighed heavily, unconsciously clutching the two swords in my lap just a little tighter. "Yeah, I was afraid you'd say that."

A warm arm wrapped around my shoulders and pulled me sideways into a strong hug.

"Don't sweat it too much. You've got another two weeks to think it through. You'll choose right." He gave me a rib creaking squeeze. "Now shut up and eat the rest of your stale donut."

I chuckled, and held up the remains of my half and looked at him with slightly more honest smile than before.

"You know, maybe I'm just sentimental, but I was kinda hoping you were planning on more to mark my pivotal advance to adulthood than one extra pastry."

Toby grinned at me, flashing vivid white teeth against dark skin. "One extra stale pastry, and a deadly monster hunt in a dark alley, coming up then."

We both burst out laughing at that, and Toby pulled me into another one armed hug.

"I meant what I said, Iz. You are ready, even if you can't see it yet. You'll be ok," He said quietly, resting his head on top of mine and rubbing my upper shoulder. "Once we get this job finished we'll make plans to do somethin' for your birthday. Maybe get out of the city for a bit. It's been ages since we all went campin' in the desert together. I know Alex and Raff will be down for that too."

That got an honest laugh out of me, and I relished the feeling of momentary lightness it brought.

"I like this plan," I pulled back and looked at my team mate and childhood friend with honest gratitude. "Thanks, Toby."

His arm tightened around me in a squeeze with another flood light smile.

"Any time, Iz," he said softly, then looked down sharply as something on the building opposite us caught his gaze. "There's Raff."

I followed his gaze down to see our squad mate, Raphael Sforza standing just a few floors down on a fire escape. He was a tall, lean guy our age — though not quite as muscled or imposing as Toby — with rich olive skin straight from Tuscany, curling dark brown hair, and matching dark eyes that had a constant touch of charming wickedness to them. He looked up and spotted us, grinned, held up two fingers, and then pointed to the father end of the darkening alleyway below us.

"Two of them," I translated aloud and Toby nodded, standing up.

"Just like we thought there's be. A matching pair causin' all this trouble."

He helped me up and we both started strapping our sabre sheaths onto our backs. I eyed Raphael's position over the alley way dubiously as I finished with the last buckle that clasped across my chest.

"He's a bit low down there, isn't he?"

Toby gave me a playful look as he finished with his own, stuck his finger in his mouth, made a very deliberate popping sound as he pulled it back out, and held it up to the air in front of him.

"Breeze is comin' in from the West. We should all still be good from up here for another few minutes, provided Alex doesn' take too long. Come on."

He jumped down onto the fire escape below us and started climbing down the ladders until he was level with Raphael on the other side. I followed him, stopping on the level just above, where we'd left one of our gear bags sitting in the shadow of the building.

I quickly unzipped it, pulled out a compact tactical crossbow with a locking mechanism and scope fixed to the top, a set of barb-tipped bolts, and a few coils thread-fine wire that looked like spun black cobwebs. I started loading the bolts into the crossbow with quick, practiced movements, attaching each one to the end of a coil, and looping it through the locking mechanism. On the platform opposite, I spotted Raphael slipping extra knives into sheathes on his leg, and he threw me a cheerfully wicked grin and a wink.

"Last hunt as a 'kid', Izzy," he reminded me in the tone of someone talking about a great upcoming house party, rather than setting a trap for monsters in a dark alley. He pulled out a couple of small smoke grenades with purple labels on them, and tossed one over the gap to Toby, his grin widening. "Lets have some fun with it."

Toby caught the smoke grenade with one hand, and I returned the grin, though with a little less psycho in it.

"Stick to the plan, guys," he grunted, reaching up to his neck and pulling a long chain out from under his shirt. On the end was a vial pendant about the size of a walnut, crafted entirely from adamantite — the semi-translucent black metal that all our weapons and gear were crafted from, though it appeared more akin to stained black glass or carved obsidian than metal.

The sigil of the Venatorum had been etched in painstaking detail onto the face of the vial pendant — a blooming fruit tree, with a serpent on one side, and a sword on the other.

Raphael and I mirrored him, pulling our own identical vial pendants out from under our shirts and a jackets. We each uncapped the stopper, the familiar sickly sweet scent of Elixir — the crux of the Venatorum's strength — hitting my nose like brandy mixed with turpentine.

Raphael raised his vial in a little toasting gesture.

"Bottoms up, ladies and gents," he chimed, and we all knocked our doses back in one short, synchronised gulp.

The thick black liquid burned stronger than any kind of alcohol as it went down, and I heard myself hiss in momentary discomfort as it scorched the back of my throat. Below me, Toby's jaw clenched with the same sensation, his neck muscles standing out as the mixture hit all our systems at the same time.

Every muscle in my body abruptly burned like it was on fire from the neck down, my blood roared in my ears, and my nerves screeching in protest as every one of my internal barriers and inhibitors came down in a rush of adrenaline. It only lasted a moment, but it always felt like longer.

As the burning subsided, I opened my eyes to find the world slowing down around me, every one of my senses sharpening until it was like I was viewing the entire world's details through an HD lens and surround-sound speakers. I could smell the rancid day old take-out in the skip below us, hear the argument a woman was having with her husband on the street round the corner, even count the tiny scars dotting the back of Toby's neck.

In among all that, a single sound suddenly stood out in the barrage of other noises coming off the nearby street, my newly hyper sensitive hearing picking it out like hearing a familiar voice in a crowded room.

The clicking sound of heels on pavement.

"Here comes our girl," Toby whispered through a wry smile, his voice almost inaudible and his form perfectly still below me on the fire escape. Had it not been for the Elixir roaring through my veins and senses like nitrous through an engine, he would have been way too quite to hear.

A girl not much older, but a lot smaller than me appeared at the corner of the alleyway below.

She was only a couple of months older than me, but much shorter, barely clocking in at 5'1. Petite and pale, she had a cute heart shaped face, wide hazel eyes, and an enviable mane of strawberry blonde hair. She was also currently dolled up to the nines for a night out partying on the town. Staggering into the alleyway from the darkening street, she wobbled on her impossibly high heels, and made a feeble little crying sound as she hurried further into the alleyway. She was throwing fearful little glances over her exposed shoulder, and throwing in the occasional hiccuping sob of fear, and a clumsy stumble into the wall.

I cracked a tiny smile at Alexa Whitechapel, my best girl friend's impressive display.

It was a good thing she enjoyed playing the bait so much on hunts like these — she was a way better actress that I was.

Two more figures appeared suddenly at the mouth of the alley, almost too fast to be seen, even by my currently supercharged senses. One man and women, both of them young, and both of them pale, and both beautiful almost beyond believability, despite their shabby clothes and mussed hair. They looked like an exceptionally attractive pair of hobos, but they weren't.

They were both vampires.

The light of the street outside the alley illuminated their faces just enough to see their bloody red iris glinting like rubies set in marble. They weren't newborns, but from the brighter red shade of their eyes and the self confident swagger of their movements, they were still young in vampire years. Less than five, maybe even less than two.

"There she is!" The female vamp with tangled dark hair chimed with a laughing smile, her voice poisonously sweet, "I was worried you'd left us behind for a moment, honey."

The blond male turned with a faint smirk to his female companion, stroking his hand lovingly down her back.

"Why don't you take this one, sweetheart," I heard him purr into her ear, his red eyes still fixed on a violently trembling Alex, "I know how much you love the ones that scream…"

The dark haired female's mouth stretched into a wide, cherubic grin, and she sauntered forward on bare feet, lazily reaching up to drag her finger tips along the ally wall. Her nails left jagged gouges in the concrete.

Alex stumbled backwards, falling off her heels to the ground beside a nearby skip, whimpering in terror. It was a calculated move to get herself into just the right position under the fire escape, and the three of us watching the scene from above knew it.

"Pretty little thing, aren't you?" I heard the female vamp purr, too lullingly soft for a normal human to hear.

She was less than five feet from Alex now. Toby and Raphael kept perfectly still, waiting like coiled springs, their eyes fixed on the vamps. I took aim at the female's left eye through the scope on my crossbow…

And the damned wind chose that exact moment to change direction.

Both vamps froze, the female in mid stride, both inhaling suddenly as our scent blew straight down the alley over them. The girl's face contorted in look of sudden confusion, and she looked straight up…

My brown eyes met her ruby ones through the scope the exact moment I squeezed the trigger.

It all happened fast. Too fast for a normal human to see it as more than a blur. Then again, we weren't normal humans.

The bolt from my crossbow tore through the air straight at the female vamp's face. She moved, liquid smooth and fast as air — but even the fastest creatures on the planet still have mass and inertia to contend with, and she didn't get out of the way fast enough.

The black metal bolt missed her face and tore straight through her left shoulder instead, the barbs coming out the other side and sinking like talons into the muscle and bone of her left arm joint. She screamed in shock and sudden pain as the wound smoked and hissed, the adamantite reacting violently with her flesh, and at the same time, Raphael and Toby dropped their smoke bombs. The alleyway exploded into a cloud of thick, dark grey smoke that roiled with the almost overpoweringly pungent scent of burning incense and molasses.

"Lucy!" The male vamp yelled, blurring with preternatural speed forward into the fog of smoke and his wounded mate.

The second the plume hit his face his whole body convulsed in a spasm of rage and sudden confused fear, his inhuman instincts suddenly screaming at him exactly what that smell was — the scent of burning vampires.

If the male vamp had been a bit older, he might have managed to get himself under control in time. However, he didn't get the seconds he needed to regain control of his body from his supernatural fight vs. flight reflex before Raphael flew off the fire escape and landed on his back with his heavy hiking boots. The shock more than the weight knocked the vamp flat to the ground, and without giving him a chance to figure out what was happening, Raphael unsheathed a curved black-bladed dagger from his belt, and plunged in into the base of the male's neck.

It didn't kill him, not even close, but it was enough to incapacitate him just long enough for Toby and I to vault the railings at the same time. We landed in the centre of the swirling smoke plume like a pair of cats, our backs to each other. The female vamp was still shrieking in confused rage and pain, spinning and flailing with her unwounded arm at something through the smoke. Toby rushed through the fog to help Raphael, and I whirled to find Alex back on her bare feet again, her ridiculous high heeled shoes gone, and a wickedly long black knife in her hand.

God only knew where she'd been hiding it in the tiny black party dress.

Her faux fear had been replaced with a look of almost manic excitement, and she danced gracefully with Elixir enhanced reflexes and speed out of the way of the furious vampire's bone-breaking but completely untrained blows. The vamp took a swing that would have crushed her throat if it connected, but Alex spun out of the way in a blur of orange hair. Her long knife raked across the female vamp's unwounded shoulder, and the black blade left a long cracking gash in stone-like skin. The wound hissed and smoke like oil hitting a skillet, and the female vamp howled in renewed pain she didn't know she could feel.

"Alex!" I shouted, dropping the crossbow by the skip and threw the second sword I'd been keeping over the convulsing vampire girl's head.

Alex caught it almost without looking, and in one joint movement, we both unsheathed our blades — her blocking the vampire's advance, and me blocking her retreat.

The razor sharp adamantite of our sabres glimmered like shards of blackened glass in the dim light of the alley, and the female vamp took a short but foolish second to just stare between us, her red eyes wide in uncomprehending fury. She couldn't understand what she was seeing. Two supposedly normal humans — able to move fast enough to dodge her supernatural speed, boxing her in like a pair of wolves cornering a bear, wielding weapons that were somehow able to slice through her supposedly impenetrable skin. She was young, but still old enough in her undead life to know that shouldn't be possible.

I guess even unlife is full of surprises.

With barely half a second's pause, Alex spun her slender, straight bladed sabre in a pinwheeling motion that was almost too fast to see, advancing on the female vamp. The vamp snarled and tried to take an open handed swipe at her neck with her uninjured arm. Alex dodged to the side, and I spun, swinging my own blade in a sweeping under hand strike, aiming for the vamp's lower back. She saw me just in time and blurred to the left just as the tip of my blade caught her side, leaving a long hissing gash along her rib cage. Another scream of rage blasted from her throat, and her arm suddenly swung wide in an arcing flail directly at my head.

I ducked sharply, but not quite fast enough. The blow clipped my right shoulder, and my bones rattled as my entire upper body was sent into a tailspin. I fell more than dropped into a roll, landing on my uninjured shoulder, and came up with my blade to take a swipe at the vamp's hamstrings. She was finally figuring out that there were two of us, and one of her though — and we were both much faster than we looked.

The female vamp jumped straight up, pulling her legs up like she was hopping a skipping rope, my blade missing her bare toes by half an inch…

And giving Alex the perfect opportunity to swing her slim blade down in a vicious overhand strike while the vamp was still in mid-air.

The black adamantite cut through the her hard skin like a hot knife through ice, slicing through her shoulder joint and straight down through the bone. The agonised scream that ripped from the female vamp's throat as her left arm came away from her body was five times louder than before. It blasted through my head like a shockwave, and I took an involuntary stagger backwards, as if someone had just knocked me over the head. Out of my peripherals I saw Alex do the same, her hand coming up to cover her ears, and her eyes going out of focus, our heightened hearing taking it's toll on our balance.

The female vamp was still howling in agony, spasming and clawing at the spot where her left arm used to be. Her air began to run out, and the sound died to something torturous, but bearable, and my eyes widened as I saw the opportunity Alex had jut bought us with her strike.

"Switch!" I shouted suddenly, and Alex and I reacted with near instantaneous speed, thanks to years worth of practice being drilled into us.

She ducked, and I dove, the pair of us blurring past the flailing vampire, just fast enough to avoid her bone-crushing one-armed swings. I went headfirst into a roll out of the dive, narrowly missing a vicious stomp kick from the vamp that left a foot long crack in the concrete right where my neck had been.

I came up out of the roll and spun just in time to see the female vamp — now nearing insanity with pain and rage — crouch to spring at me, and behind her, Alex levelling my discarded crossbow at her from less than five feet away.

In one smooth movement, she aimed, and pulled the trigger just as the vamp lunged for my throat.

There was a soft snap and a whizzing noise as the bolt and attached wire fired, then a loud crack like breaking stone as the bolt went straight through the vamp's right ankle and out the other side.

She screamed again, in pure, stunning pain this time.

"Heads up!" Alex yelled, and hurled the entire crossbow up and over the lower rung of a fire escape above us.

I caught it, rammed the locking mechanising into place under the nearby skip, twisted, and pulled hard on the end of the cable with all the strength of my upper body and hips. The nigh unbreakable adamantite wire screeched against the metal of the fire escape as I pulled, and the female vamp was unceremoniously pulled off her feet and dragged across the ground. Her fingers gouged trenches in the concrete as she tried to pull herself away, but preternaturally strong as she was, she was simply too slight and lightly built to contend with my body's hyperactive Elixir driven strength.

I heaved her up off the ground in a few long strides and a grunt of effort, jerking the wire lock into place and leaving her dangling upside down in mid air by one ankle. She shrieked in rage, swinging madly with her one remaining arm, dark hair flying and teeth bared, trying to use her inhuman strength to somehow free herself. It didn't work — she couldn't break the wire, and she was too far away from the wall to swing and grab something. Supernatural speed and strength could get you a long way, but when push came to shove, even vampires couldn't argue with the laws of physics.

She was trapped, and she was only just starting to realise it.

Blood thirsty rage turned to shock, then realisation, then sudden, crippling fear in her crimson eyes. The eyes of a creature that killed other people to keep itself alive, and enjoyed it.

Her pupils shrank to the size of pin heads as she watched Alex and I move into her front view from upside down, sabres in hand, and flat, expressionless hunting masks in place. I'd seen the look in her bloody red eyes a hundred times before. We all had.

It was the look of a predator that had thought it was stalking prey, only to come face to face with a group of poachers.

"N-no!" She stammered, suddenly sounding far less dangerous, and far younger than she looked.

We both knew better.

The monster — the one that had just moments before had been intent on murdering and draining my team mate of every drop of her blood — didn't get the chance to utter another plea. Alex's took two swift steps forward, twisted her upper body, her arm and blade a blur, and the female vamp's head flew clean off her shoulders and straight into the side of the skip with a loud bang.

Her body stopped struggling instantly, and though we both knew she wouldn't be completely dead until her remains were burned to ash, she couldn't do anyone harm anymore.

The sound of concrete breaking jolted Alex and I out of our short moment of relief following the fight. We both spun just in time to see Toby spin out of the way of a punch the male vamp had aimed directly at his face, missed, and sent straight into the wall, leaving a crack the size of my leg in the cement. Raphael twisted nimble as a dervish past his hunting partner, his curved sabre coming around in an executioner's blow to the back of the vamp's neck.

Raphael wasn't anything near slow, but the male vamp was way faster than his female counterpart had been.

He jerked his head down at the last second, and Raphael's sabre sliced into the alley wall, stopping it dead and holding fast. Before Raphael could do anything to react or try and yank his blade out of the wall, the vamp whirled in a blur and backhanded him straight across the face.

That was the real bitch that came with the Elixir we all had coursing through our veins.

It was the crux by which we mere humans were able to contend with all the supernatural nasties — like vampires, ghouls, and werewolves — that plagued the rest of humanity head on. It turbo-charged our reflexes, magnified all our senses, and sent nitrous into our muscles. It brought down all the natural inhibitors that our bodies set up as safety limits, making just one of us stronger and faster than five fully grown thugs put together. That combined with an entire childhood's worth of training, and the four of us teamed together with sabres in hand, we would have been enough to give a small army pause…

But underneath all the preternatural strength and speed, the fact was that we were still mortal — the original glass canons.

We were no less invulnerable, and no less breakable than any other vanilla human walking the earth.

Raphael tried at the last moment to twist with the vampire's blow, taking it on the shoulder, but he didn't react in time. His face jerked to the left, and he went flying, slamming straight into the opposite wall of the alley with a crash. The shock of the impact blew out a window, showing the alley with glass, and his limp form crumpled to a heap on top of a pile of cardboard boxes.

"Raff!" Alex yelled, sprinting bare-foot without a second's hesitation across the glass covered ally towards her squad-mate and boyfriend. He didn't get up, but I could see his chest still rising and falling with unconscious breaths.

Thank God, he was still alive.

I didn't get a chance to let out the breath I realised I'd been holding before the male vamp's head snapped around towards Alex, looking for a moment as if he was going to go for her too.

He didn't get the chance to even think about it.

Toby slammed his huge straight bladed sabre into the vamp's side in a bonebreaking horizontal swing. If the vamp hadn't moved when he did, he would have been cut in half. Sadly, he just managed to escape by rolling forwards away from Alex and the unconscious Raphael, coming up on his feet with a smoking gash across his back and rage on his face.

He moved to take a blurred lunge at my teammate, and froze.

His ruby eyes fell on the headless body of his mate, still hanging upside down by one ankle from the fire escape, and his snarl of fury melted into shock, then confusion, then blinding, insane rage all in the space of a second. He took a shuddering step forward, his pale body tightening with the urge to rip Toby to bite-sized pieces. I stepped up next to him, my faintly smoking sabre coming up into a guard beside his, the both of us facing down the vamp, two to one.

The male vampire halted, disbelief waring with bloodlust for control of his face. He wanted to kill us. He wanted it so badly I knew he was literally having to battle with his instincts to think beyond the impulse. The monster in him wanted our blood, but the remains of the rational person he'd once been knew that he had just walked into something he wasn't prepared to handle. Him, or his mate.

His hands and teeth clenched and unclenched, stone grinding on stone. He took one last look at the unmoving body of his partner, gave one last half furious half distraught snarl, spun, and took off down the alley at breakneck speed…

Straight for the main road full of people.

"No!" I heard myself shout, lunging forward into a sprint after him.

"Izzy, wait!" Toby bellowed behind me, but I was already moving too fast to stop or think.

There wasn't time to think. All I could see was the look of wrath that had been etched onto the male vamp's face at the sight of his dead mate. I knew all too well that if he made it out onto the street in his current state, to hell with drawing unwanted attention to himself, or breaking the laws of secrecy that all supernatural beings unanimously abided by.

He'd just lost his mate. He'd start killing people.

I tore after him, the sound of Toby's shouting dying away as I focused on my target. He was fast. Faster than a normal vamp I'd seen or fought before, but as I charged after him I saw a slight crookedness to his gait, lurching to one side with every other stride. Raphael or Toby must have got him leg at some point — I could see the wound smoking very slightly on his upper calf.

It didn't slow him much, but it was enough for me to start gaining on him. We took a corner at full speed. He stumbled very slightly to the left on his wounded leg, and it gave me half a foot on him as we kept running…

One foot, two, three…

He was almost at the mouth of the alleyway. I could see the streetlights and hear the bustle of the commuters returning home from their work, and teenagers going out to meet their friends.

My teeth ground and my stomach twisted with dread. I wasn't going to make it in time…

Something black and moving fast enough to be just a blur flew over my shoulder, slamming into the fleeing vampire's lower spine with a cracking sound. An adamantite kukri knife — one of Toby's.

The vamp's legs went out from beneath him, crashing to the ground with a sound you'd normally associate with rockslides rather than falling bodies. The vamp hissed, trying to get up, flip himself over and take a swipe at my face, but I was already on him. I jumped on his back with my heavy hunting boots, throwing all my weight behind a vicious stomp to the half-healed base of his neck where Raphael had stabbed him.

It didn't matter how supernaturally strong the creature beneath me was thanks to his marble-like vampire body. The adamantite knife buried in his back was keeping his broken spine from healing itself and getting his legs working again. That combined with my weight moving at high speed behind it sent the vampire flat to the ground again. His inhumanly flawless face scraped the floor of the alley, leaving scratches where the diamond-like skin gouged the concrete. Before the temporarily dazed but still furious vamp had the good sense to try and throw me off again, I planted my foot in the small of his broken back, grabbed him by the hair, pulled back, and jerked my blade horizontally across his exposed throat.

His head came away from his shoulders with a sound like gravel on glass.

The vamp's body went instantly limp, collapsing forward to the ground like a puppet with it's strings cut just fifteen feet from the shadowy mouth of the alleyway. I was breathing hard, my heart still racing, I staggered instinctively back away from the lights and the passing people who had no idea how close they'd just come to coming face to face with a real life monster of the night.

"Izzy?!" Toby's near panicked voice came from back down the alley.

"I'm ok!" I called back, my chest still a bit tight with adrenaline as I stared down at the remains of the male vamp's body. "I got him!"

A clanging sound came suddenly from behind one of the nearby bins, and I spun in reflex, my sabre raised in a defensive guard…

Only for me to come face to face with five pairs of wide, terrified human eyes.

Specifically, eyes that belonged to five teenage boys, probably just a few years younger than me. They were — or at least, they had been — crouched behind a set of nearby bins, the hoods of their jackets up, and smoking what could only be weed if my nose was any judge. Their spliffs were still lit, but none of them seemed to care anymore. They were all staring at me, their pupils dilated to the size of quarters, and their mouths hanging open like they were catching flies…

And I was stood there before them, in my dark grey hunting gear, my smoking sabre raised over my head in one hand, and the severed head of a decapitated vampire clutched in the other.

Oh, crap.

Slowly and as carefully as I could, I lowered my arms, opening as many fingers as I could manage in a peaceful gesture without dropping my weapon or the head. The last thing any of them needed was to see a vamp's head go bouncing like a damned soccer ball.

"Kids, stay cool, this isn't what it looks like…" I said in a voice I would have normally used with spooked animals. I had to keep them calm long enough for Toby to get here and help me subdue them — then at least we might stand a chance of getting a cleanup crew over to wipe their memories. If I could just keep them calm…

The smallest one of the boys — God he barely looked twelve years old — made a gibbering sounds that grew quickly into a high pitched, horror movie squeal of terror.

That did it. They all started screaming.

I knew full well how to handle rabid newborn vampires, hungry ghouls, and even berserk werewolves.

Dealing with a bunch of hysterical teenage boys all higher than a blimp full of helium? That I was not prepared for.

They ran out of that alley like their hair was on fire, pushing and shoving at each other in their desperation to escape. One kid even fell headfirst over one of the bins, spilling half rotting fish over himself and barely slowing down as he skidded out onto the street after his friends.

I just stood their, stunned, and unable to quite believe what had just happened.

I'd just been seen. I'd just been seen killing a supernatural creature in front of five juvenile human kids. Stones, hysterical kids who no one would likely believe, but that didn't matter.

It was the first law.

It was the first law of our order. And I'd just broken it wide open.

Dear God, I was screwed.

I barely realised Toby was there at my side, shaking me by the shoulder until his hand clasped the fingers that I still had gripping the severed vampire's head by the hair.

"Izzy, let go. It's done," he said gently. I had to make a conscious effort to unclench my hand, and Toby took the head, tossing it into on of the empty bins the boy's had knocked over.

"They saw," I rasped quietly, my hands still clenched on my sabre's hilt. I should have put it away, but I couldn't focus on anything else other that what I'd just done. "I couldn't stop them. They all saw…"

"I know," Toby answered just a quietly, softly. He quickly picked up the body of the male vamp by the ankles, and with less effort than it should have taken any normal person, he loaded the body into the bin along with the head. I stood there watching, unable to make myself move.

"Raphael…" I managed to get out as he set the bin upright again, "Is he…?"

"He's ok. He's dizzy but awake. Alex is burnin' the other body now." He turned to me with a serious but also slightly pained look on his face. "Light?"

I shook myself firmly, forcing myself to get a grip. I slid my sabre back into the sheath on my back, and took out a disposable Venatorum issued lighter out of my back pocket, flicked it to life, and tossed it into the bin.

The vampire's body caught fire instantly, catching light like incense, and filling the air above with a noxious plume of sickly sweet smoke. No one on the street bothered to look too closely into the dark alley as we just stood there watching the body burn — to all the world, just a pair of homeless teenagers warming themselves by a trash fire.

I felt my arms fold and curl in around myself, the smell of the smoke doing nothing to help the suddenly sick feeling growing in my belly.

"The first law," I croaked, shaking my head watching the flames. "I just broke the first law, Toby… I'm done."

Toby didn't answer immediately, and he didn't deny it either. There was no point. We both knew what it meant.

He placed a larger, gentle hand on my shoulder, and I didn't have to look to know his expression was even more pained now.

"I'm sorry, Iz, but we've got to call it in."

I swallowed and nodded, not looking away from the burning body.

"Just do it."

He took his hand off my shoulder, and out of the corner of my eye, the light of a mobile phone screen flared to life. I listened to the line at the other end ring once, twice, then someone with a familiar female voice picked up.

"This is Tobias Grimm checkin' in for Phoenix Squad 13…" Toby said solemnly into the receiver, his tone giving nothing away even though I could hear the worry in it. The woman on the other end said something and he nodded, "Yes, ma'am, all four of us are alright. One minor concussion, no casualties … No, both vampires have been disposed of…"

The woman paused and said something else. I heard Toby swallow, and shut my eyes tight.

"Be advised… we have five human male witnesses missin'," he said very quietly into the phone. Silence fell on the other line, and it was a good few seconds before she spoke again.

Toby sucked in a deep breath before answering one more time.

"They escaped the scene ma'am… I'm sorry… they saw everythin'."

A/N: Like I said, not quite the same kind of opening to the original. :)

Now, without further rambling from me, on to the next chapter…