—

Chapter 2:

—

Days to come Bella remained on the lookout for any hint of hood or red hair. Peering through the rain-spattered windows of her truck, to and from school. Eyeing the wet sidewalks, the empty shopfronts. People with umbrellas or in rainslickers, wandering through the streets on their own obscure purposes. She had begun to believe that the woman had left the area. Abandoned her hunt. Yet even so she pulled up outside her house every afternoon with something like fear in her heart. Crossing the lawn in the rain and ascending the stairs inside with her hair damp and her ears straining to hear any noise at all above the rattle of rain on the roof. Wondering if when she opened her bedroom door she would find the woman again waiting to finish what she started. Only for relief to flood her veins like a shot of heroin as the room was revealed to be empty. Dropping her bag by her desk and releasing the breath she had been holding. She hadn't felt this alive in months and the irony was not lost on her.

—

That night at the local medical center a shadowy figure scaled the tall chainlink fence at the rear of the premises. A shade that swung up soundlessly aside from the slight metallic rattle of the gate before dropping down again on the other side, landing in a crouch on the lid of a dumpster stamped with a sign that warned of medical waste. She paused there for a moment, peering out from under her hood. The rain had ceased and there was no activity at all. The asphalt was still wet and she made a splash in one of the puddles as she hopped down from the dumpster and crossed to the service door.

Inside was quiet. A distant hum of machinery. The ring of a phone down the corridor and a receptionist's soft voice as she answered. Victoria turned and went up some stairs. The corridor was dim and painted peagreen and there were stacks of linen and doors with bedridden patients behind them. She went on with her head down. She passed a nurse but the nurse mistook her for a visitor and merely glanced as she went by. Victoria hated to leave a witness but there was no help for it. The most the nurse would be able to identify was a person in a hood.

Further down the corridor she entered an empty doctor's office off the main bloodbank. She paused in the doorway to make sure it was empty and then she moved over to the desk and swept her hand across it, brushing aside all the paperwork, the mouse and keyboard, a wire basket of folders. Knocking it all to the ground with as little rancour and noise as possible. She then tipped over a bookcase, spilling the dusty volumes onto the floor, and she yanked down a display skeleton as well and tore it apart, glancing toward the door to make sure no one heard or came to investigate. When she was satisfied with the damage she'd done she filled the pockets of her hoody with bottles of painkillers and other pills, to disguise the break in as the work of a common junkie, and continued into the main bloodbank.

The chamber was cold and the refrigerators all had lights inside that illuminated their contents, row on row of blood bags hanging from racks behind glass doors like a room of organic mainframes. Victoria found a smaller refrigerator and set it on a stainless steel bench before turning back to the larger refrigerators and reaching directly through the glass, casually, carelessly, the glass breaking up and raining down on her wrist without leaving so much as a scratch. She filled up the smaller refrigerator with as much as it could carry and then she closed it and locked it and stood there glaring at it, ashamed alike of what her feeding habits had degenerated too and for her inability to kill that girl. She still didn't know what had come over her but it didn't matter. She would come for the girl again soon and next time there would be no pleading and no second thoughts and no easy death. Next time she was going to bathe in her blood.

A noise came from the outer office. Someone had stumbled upon her crime scene. Victoria had a fleeting thought to kill whoever it was as an appetizer but the investigation would be endless. Instead she yanked the cord of her small refrigerator out of the wall, causing its contents to go dark, and hefted it up as if it weighed nothing. It was as large as a washing machine. She then bumped open the far door with her hip, snapping the steel bolt it was locked with, and disappeared into the corridor.

—

The next day at school Bella was sitting with Angela in biology. The classroom was quiet, everyone bent to their notebooks. Angela glanced at her, watching her lean to the microscope, and something in her friend's face must've bought Edward to mind.

"You and Edward first met in biology, huh?" she asked in a quiet whisper.

"Yeah."

"Did you ever hear anything from him after he left?"

"No."

"Still can't believe he dumped you like that. Without even telling you where he was going."

"Me either."

"Guess he was just an asshole. You're probably better off without him."

Bella smiled at Angela's attempt to bolster her self-worth. It didn't work, though. She could still remember that day she met him. How he had kept his nose averted from her scent and how embarrassed that had made her. Only to later find out how close he had come to tearing her to shreds right there in the classroom from the sheer desirability of her. Looking back, she kind of wished he had. It would've been better than being dumped.

Angela was watching her in concern. "You okay, Bella?"

"Yeah. Why?"

"You've just been really weird lately. Even weirder than normal."

"I'm fine."

"You know, me and Jess were planning a trip to Port Angeles. You could come if you want."

"Nah."

"You sure?"

"Yeah," she said. Then she glanced at her friend and chuckled at the expression on her face. "It's alright, Ange. You don't have to try and drag me around everywhere you go. I'll be alright, okay?"

"If you say so," Angela said, but she seemed more concerned than ever.

It rained again that afternoon and by now she had pretty much quit watching out the windows of her truck as she drove home. It had been over a week and it didn't seem important anymore. She figured the woman was long gone and not coming back. The fear had faded and all that was left was a strange and sullen disappointment, as if her very survival had proven to be nothing but yet another indignity she was forced to put up with. Lacking the courage to commit suicide, being murdered would've suited her just fine. She could still remember the feel of those fingers in her hair as the woman took a grip to snap her neck. One sharp twist and it would've all been over. A broken neck to go along with her broken heart. But even that small convenience was denied to her. Like everything in her life, teased only for a moment before being taken away.

That night her father was late coming home from work and the phone rang while Bella was peeling potatoes in the sink. She wiped her hands on a dishtowel and grabbed the receiver off the wall.

"Hello?"

"Hey, Bells, it's me," said her dad. "I'm gonna be a bit late tonight, but you go ahead and eat, alright?"

"What's going on?"

"Oh, nothing much. There was a break in at the medical center, that's all. Second time in the last three months. They trashed the place and took some pills. Or she did, I should say."

"She?"

"Yeah, looks like it was some girl. After the last break in they installed some extra cameras. Strong girl, too. She absconded with an entire refrigerator full of blood. Just carried it out like it weighed nothing."

Bella was standing there with a knife in one hand and a half-peeled potato in the other. "Blood?"

"Yeah, it's pretty strange. Blood and drugs. Could be some kind of cult thing. Satanists. You never know with these junkies. Anyway, I gotta get back to work. I'll pick up something to eat on the way home."

"Okay. See you later."

"Bye, Bells."

Bella hung up the phone. She stood there, listening to the rain. Then she went back to the sink and continued peeling the potatoes.

Over the next few days she was again on the lookout, reinvigorated in her vigilance. She knew now that the woman was still in town. Somewhere. Resupplied and waiting. But she never saw her and soon she began to have doubts. What if the robbery at the medical center was only one last score before leaving town for good? What if it wasn't even her? She pressed her father for details on the case but they hardly seemed to be investigating it. All he could tell her was that the suspect was female and strong enough to lift a two hundred pound refrigerator. Vampire strong.

On the fourth day while driving home from school she turned north and took the road to the old Cullen house. She couldn't explain why and she had no idea what she hoped to find. It took an hour to get there and it was still mid-afternoon. She pulled up in the driveway under a sky of pure white overcast and got out. Dead silence. No wind. Not even a bird in the forest. She approached the house, crunching in the gravel, and stepped onto the porch. The door was heavy oak with a brass knocker. She didn't know whether to knock or not. Instead she leaned to one of the panes of glass and looked in. The glass was thick and warped and she could see nothing but darkness inside. She turned and looked at the yard. The hedges, the picket fence. The mailbox. All of it shadowless and still in the windless silence. Bella turned back to the door and almost reached for the knocker. But she didn't. She went back to her truck and opened the door and across the street she thought she saw something disappear behind a tree. A glimmer of red. Like a nymph hiding in the woods out there. She froze with the door of the truck half open and then she got in and drove home.

In bed that night she chided her cowardice and decided to go back the next day. She had nothing to lose and she needed to know.

It was a Saturday and she drove out in the morning after making some excuses to her father. It was before lunchtime when she arrived and this time she sat in the truck for a long time before she got out. The bravery she had musted up the prior night seemed to be failing her. It was one thing to long for death from the safety of your bed, it was another to come looking for it in the cold light of day. But she told herself the woman probably wasn't even here and got out her truck. She looked across the road behind her at where she'd seen movement in the forest yesterday but there was nothing. Only trees.

Once again she went up to the door and looked through the panes of glass but again there was nothing inside but murk and darkness. She considered knocking on the door but it felt too embarrassing. Instead she tried the doorknob and she was surprised as the door simply swung open. Creaking. She froze at the sound, waiting to make sure nothing would follow it. Then she entered. Into this familiar house where her boyfriend once lived. Empty aside from the skeletal furniture. No more paintings on the walls of the corridor. No more flowers on the sideboards. The livingroom was on her left through an archway. The curtains were closed and it was very dim. She looked at the couch, remembering how she had almost lost her life there only a week ago. She tried to picture the same scene now or something similar, questioning how prepared to die she really was if she did indeed find that woman here. She turned and continued down the corridor.

Rounding the corner into the kitchen she found something that froze every bone in her body.

A refrigerator full of blood.

It was sitting on the kitchen counter like any other appliance, plugged into a socket over the phone. She stared at it as if she didn't understand it. The door was glass and she could see the bags of blood inside it, each stamped with a hospital label. Also on the counter were a dozen pill bottles that seemed to be discarded there. She picked one of them up. It's label was blank but the pills inside were Percocet. Painkillers. She put the bottle down and there was a sound behind her. She spun around. There was no one there. But there had to be. The woman had been living here. Victoria. Was she here right now?

Bella went back out into the hall. On her left was the front door and her truck outside. On her right was the stairs.

She went up the stairs.

The upstairs corridor was even darker. It even seemed more silent somehow. Bella crept like a catburglar, stepping on her toes in her boots. She opened one of the bedrooms. Bare and empty. She continued down the corridor and opened the next one.

The curtains were open and the room was filled with light. There was a doublebed against one wall with a bare mattress on it and a dresser against another wall with the top drawer open. Hanging from the corner of the drawer was a bra. She went over and looked into the drawer. It was filled with clothes and there were clothes on the floor too. Socks. A black hoody that seemed familiar. She didn't touch any of it. She toed the pile at her feet with her boot, as if to check there was nothing nesting in it, and then she turned around.

In the corner of the room was a small colony of red kerosene cans. She looked at them. The sides of the cans were stamped with the words:

Highly Flammable

At first she couldn't understand what a vampire would need with kerosene. Fire was the only thing that could kill a vampire and there was only one vampire in town that she knew of. She thought about that. Then she wondered if maybe this woman might've intended to use the kerosene on herself.

Suddenly it felt like she had been here too long and she had to go. She couldn't remember if the bedroom door had been closed or not when she came in so she just left it open, hurrying down the hall, not bothering to keep quiet. She knew that the woman wasn't home or she would probably be dead by now.

She came trotting down the stairs without incident and left through the front door before climbing into her truck and starting it up. The engine coughed and chugged and finally came to life. As she pulled out of the driveway she looked back at the house in the sideview mirror and she thought she saw something in the window of the bedroom she'd vacated, a shape there, a person, something haunting the upperlevels. Then she turned out into the road and the house only grew small behind her.

—

Victoria grabbed her hoody off the floor of her room and threw it on and then she went out into the corridor and leapt down the stairs in a single bound. She came out of the house just in time to see the rusty red truck disappear around the final bend. At first she stood there. Then she scowled and threw up her hood to cover her hair and leapt across the road like an animal and into the woods.

She followed the truck all the way back to town, keeping to the forest, moving on all fours, weaving among the tree trunks and leaping from ridge to ridge like a panther, black, feline, predatory. It was early afternoon when the girl got home. Victoria came strolling up the sidewalk with her hands in her pockets, watching the girl enter through her front door, and then she turned and went up the driveway, past the police cruiser parked there, and up the side of the house. The girl's bedroom overlooked the backyard and Victoria spent the rest of the afternoon sitting in a dead flower garden under her window, waiting for the father to leave. He never did. By darkness her anger at the invasion of privacy had cooled but she still didn't go. By and by the back door flapped open and the girl came out into the night with a bag of trash. Victoria sidled into the shadows to watch. The girl was wearing a sleeptank and sleepshorts with a loose robe over it and she was barefoot and half hopping from the cold, disposing of the trash bag and then rubbing her arms as she hurried back to the warmth of the house. Victoria watched her from the darkness. The robe was thin and blue and flowing all around her and her legs in those shorts were entirely bare and very white and soft looking. The sight of her made her throat burn and she wanted to leap out right now and pin her to the lawn and rip off her head before a single scream came out of her. But the girl made it inside and the screendoor clattered again and the moment passed.

Victoria slunk back to that space under the window. It wasn't the first night she had passed here. The dirt under her was rounded from all the hours she had sat in this dead flower bed. Beneath this girl's window like a deranged lover. She leaned back against the wall of the house and looked up at the sky. Black. No stars. No moon. A spider crawled over her face and she did not brush it away. She thought about how weak and pathetic this girl going to bed above her was and the thoughts made her angry at herself and she could not account at all for why she hadn't killed her yet.

—

The next day was Sunday and Jessica came to pick her up in her mother's car together with Angela. Bella had agreed to go with them to Port Angeles after all.

The weather had turned off clear and the sky was a pale blue when they got there. The sun was directly overhead, a bright yellow dot in a brighter part of the sky, and yet no heat at all from it, as if it were fake or only an illusion of sun. They spent the day strolling the market at the pier, Jessica and Angela all excited and bubbly, Bella tagging along like something at gunpoint. Jessica had wrapped a bright green sari around her jeans and Angela was wearing a pair of large sunglasses she had bought that she would likely never wear again. Bella was at the next stall over, examining a display of hunting knives. They had ones that were plain and utilitarian, with black handles shaped like grips and flat chrome blades, and then they had others with more artifice to them, with handles of ivory or leather or darkwood with brass inlay, blades that were curved or doublesided or chased with etchings of flowing scrollwork, daggers of damask with a feathergrain in the folded steel, and even little Japanese knives with blades so finely polished they showed the heat treatment of the steel in a pale wave along the edge. Bella took one up and tested it against her wrist there in the middle of the crowded market, wondering if she could do it, why not, who would care. Then she set the knife back and moved on with her friends.

They were there all day and their final stop was a book store. The streets were dark as they came out onto the sidewalk, chatting, carrying bags. Bella carried nothing. They were saying it was probably time to go home and Bella nodded and looked back down the road for no reason.

Standing under a streetlamp on the corner was a woman in a black hoody.

Bella stared at her. Then she turned back to her friends.

"You guys go ahead," she said. "I'll meet you at the car."

"Where're you going?"

"I'll just be a minute."

They looked at her for a second, not pleased at her morbid behaviour all day, and then they glanced at each other and went on, muttering under their breath about how they shouldn't have even bought her.

Bella went the other way, toward that hooded figure on the corner. The streetlamp cast a thick yellow light that seemed to be soaked up by the black fleece of the hoody. The hood lifted slightly as Bella approached and Bella's heart missed a beat.

It was her.

Bella slowed and came to a stop. The woman unleaned from the streetlamp. Under the hood was a pair of ruby red eyes and several locks of orange hair that brushed against her pale cheeks and a smirk that seemed to suggest she had allowed Bella to spot her. Bella didn't know why she would do that but she wasn't afraid. Not this time.

"You don't need the hoody anymore," she said. "I know it's you."

The woman pushed back the hood, revealing the orange flare of her hair which seemed more fire-like than ever under the heavy glow of the streetlamp. Bella was amazed for a moment at how beautiful vampires could be—this one in particular—and said:

"What are you doing here?"

The woman didn't reply. She seemed relieved to have her hair out in the open and now she tossed it left and right, like a woman in a shampoo commercial, before fluffing it with her fingers. Then she looked at Bella.

"I notice you haven't told anyone about me," she said. "Not even your father."

"What would be the point?"

"Nothing. But most people would've panicked and told him anyway."

"The less he knows, the less danger he's in."

"What about the danger to you?"

"Do I look afraid?"

The woman again did not reply to that and even Bella was surprised at her own boldness. She looked away from those red and dangerous eyes and saw the winecolored canvas awning of a restaurant across the street with an inviting warmth in the windowglass beneath. She turned back to Victoria.

"Anyway, you don't have to stalk me," she said. "Come on."

Then she turned and crossed the road. On the opposite sidewalk she looked back. The woman was still standing under the streetlamp and after a moment she turned and followed Bella.

The restaurant was half empty. Dim. Warm. Classical piano in the background. They were seated at a table for two by the front window. The tablecloth was white and a red rose stood in a small vase between them beside a candle in a candleholder.

Victoria sat with a certain elegance, an elbow on the tabletop, her chin braced against her knuckles. Eyeing the girl across the table alertly as if it was the girl herself who was the danger. Bella looked around at the interior of the restaurant and turned back to Victoria.

"Edward once followed me to Port Angeles too," she said. "Before we hooked up."

"Is that so?"

"That was when he first told me about vampires. He was always worried about how dangerous it was for us to be together. I guess it never occurred to him that it would be even more dangerous apart."

The waiter came and placed a plate of linguine with basil pesto in front of Bella before asking Victoria if she had changed her mind. Victoria replied without taking her eyes from Bella that no, she hadn't.

Bella took up her fork and poked at the pasta. "I know it was you who robbed the medical center," she said. "They got you on camera."

"How do you know that?"

"My dad told me."

"What else does he know?"

"Nothing much. Just that someone broke in. I thought you should know. So you don't get caught and hurt anyone."

Victoria sighed and turned to look out the window. "I suppose it was a mistake to rob the same place twice. I should've went out of state."

"If vampires can feed from blood bags, why do they kill humans?"

"For the thrill. Obviously."

"But you haven't been feeding from people in Forks?"

"Have you seen any murders in the paper lately?"

"I guess you didn't want police looking for you before dealing with me."

"You guess correctly."

"Have you been killing people anywhere else?"

"Not lately."

"How come?"

She sighed again and turned back to Bella. Her eyes landed on the rose in the vase and now she plucked it out and touched it to her nose. "Without James, the thrill is largely gone," she said. "Dining alone is never much fun." She took the rose away from her face and smiled. "Wouldn't you agree?"

"I don't know."

"But you must. After all, here you are. You would rather dine with your own murderess than dine alone, would you not?"

"Not really. If it wasn't for you, I'd rather just be alone."

"And what makes me such an attractive dinner companion?"

"I don't know."

The woman snorted at that, as if the girl had said something unintentionally funny, and slipped the rose back into the vase. Bella continued eating, embarrassed now, as if beginning to realize she might be out of her conversational depth.

"So what happens now?" she asked after a while.

"What do you mean?"

"Are you going to kill me?"

Victoria didn't answer. She looked at the girl as if thinking about it. Bella shrugged under the scrutiny.

"I'm just wondering," she said. "Because if you are, I should probably clean my room or something."

"If you're dead, what does it matter?"

"I wouldn't want my dad to find some of my stuff."

"Then I suggest you get your affairs in order. Before it's too late."

"Does that mean you're still going to kill me?"

"Do you want me to?"

"No. Of course not."

"No?"

Bella didn't answer. A frown had grown on her face and she had stopped eating. Victoria smiled and leaned both elbows on the table.

"You are a peculiar girl, Ms Swan," she said. "You have a loving father, decent friends, no issues at school. The only injury you have to resent is the fact that your boyfriend left you. And yet here you are, so eager for death that you'll sit down to dinner with it. Are you honestly that pathetic?"

"No. It's more than just Edward."

"What then?"

"Why should I tell you?"

"Do you know what I think?"

"What do you think?"

"I think you're just pathetic."

"Well, fuck you then."

Victoria smiled some more and leaned back and tapped her fingernails on the tabletop, her eyes bright with amusement and sparkling red. Bella glared at her and pushed away her food.

"It's your fault Edward left, you know," she said.

Victoria didn't reply. Bella continued to glare at her.

"He left because he blamed himself," she said. "For putting me in danger and exposing me to things like you and James. If you had never come along, he never would've left."

"Well, that's very unfortunate. But you'll have to forgive me if I don't have much sympathy for you."

"Why not? I feel sorry for you."

"Then you're a fool."

"I'm a fool then. I don't care. I know how you feel. I feel the same way. I know how much it hurts when you lose someone you love. How could I not feel sorry for you?"

"You think you know how I feel?"

"Yes."

"Then you are one very arrogant young girl. James was my mate. We were together over three hundred years. Do you honestly think your paltry schoolgirl crush is anything similar to what I have experienced? To what I have lost?"

"Yes. I do."

Victoria snorted and shook her head. Bella realized maybe she had gotten carried away and backpedalled a bit.

"All I mean is that I know what it's like when you lose something you can't live without," she said. "Edward wasn't only my boyfriend. He was a vampire. He was perfect. He was like a god to me. Do you have any idea how lucky I felt just to be with him? To be his mate? He was going to turn me into a vampire just like him and we were going to be together forever. I believed that. I truly did. And now…now he's gone."

Her eyes were swimming and she used a napkin to wipe them. Then she looked up again.

"You think you know what heartbreak is," she said, "but I'm the one who's sitting here waiting to die. You're just the one who wants to kill me."

Victoria didn't answer. She was watching the girl, not with sympathy but at least with patience. Bella blew her nose on the napkin.

"You had three hundred years, but I had nothing," she said. "That's the worst thing. It was taken from me before it even started. Now I can't see the point to anything ever again. Everyone thinks I'm crazy for being so depressed over a highschool fling and I've never been able to explain why. This is the first time I've ever been able to talk about it." She wiped her eyes again and looked up. "Did you love James?"

"He was my mate."

"Tell me about him."

"I'm not sure the details should be heard by such young ears."

"What do you mean?"

"To put it frankly, I was his bitch."

"O-oh."

Victoria smiled slightly. She lowered her eyes to the rose in the vase and she spoke very softly, wistfully. "James was a very aggressive man. Very confident. When he wanted something, he would have it. No matter what. In many ways, I suppose I was just another of his victims. One that he kept, rather than killed."

"And you were cool with that?"

"Oh, yes. I took great comfort in the purity of his intentions. It was simple. Stable. It seemed to be the thing that I had always been missing. It gave me purpose. To be his. I'd never been a terribly independent woman. All I ever wanted was a mate."

"And you called me pathetic."

"Touché."

"But you did love him?"

"Yes. I admired his strength. He was a very strong hunter. He craved strong prey. He rarely met a vampire he didn't want to destroy simply for the fun of it. My only worry was that his games would lead us to danger."

She had spoke while gazing at the rose. Now she sighed and sat back in her chair.

"I suppose I always knew it would come to this," she said. "Either both of us dead or just one. But not a day goes by where I don't wish it had been me instead."

"I guess we're both pretty fucked up, aren't we?"

"Perhaps."

"Are you going to kill me?"

"I would like to."

"But are you?"

Victoria looked at her. Bella looked back. Neither fear nor heartsink in those large dark eyes. Nothing but perfect helplessness to whatever may be required of her.

Then there was a tapping at the window beside them. They both looked and Bella was shocked to see Jessica and Angela waving at her from behind the glass.

"Shit," she said. "It's my friends."

They were coming around to enter the restaurant. Victoria had already rose from her chair and she was taking money out of her pocket. She left a few bills on the tablecloth and smiled at Bella.

"Till we meet again," she said, and then she turned and left just as Angela and Jessica came up.

"Who was that?" Angela asked, glancing back.

Bella didn't answer. She was watching out the window and she saw the woman cross the street, flipping up her hood as she went, before disappearing into an alley and the darkness from whence she came.

Jessica picked at the plate of pesto with her bare hand. "Jeez, Bella, we've been waiting forever for you. What are you doing here? And who the fuck was that redheaded chick?"

"No one, just someone I met."

"And what, you bought her dinner? Are you that depressed over Edward you went lesbo?"

Bella glanced at her and then she checked the money on the table and rose from her chair. "Come on, let's go home."

—