Disclaimer: I thought about crossing out Stephenie Meyer's name on the books and writing in my own instead, but it seemed like a lot of effort just to avoid writing this disclaimer. I still don't own any of the Twilight characters (but Clair is an original).
Notes: First: Many, many thanks to those of you who read, particularly those who left comments - I really love hearing your thoughts, and I'm glad you guys seem to like the story so far.
Second: Finally, some action! (What? No, not that kind of action. Get out of here, perv.) This is another long chapter, but hopefully eventful enough to hold your interest. It's also sort of a celebratory, "my finals are over, I'm free!" chapter, at least in my mind. Not that it's actually uplifting in any way, but whatever. I hope you like it! As always, comments - especially constructive criticism - are very much appreciated.
Chapter Three
My plans for Sunday afternoon consist of cramming for finals while babysitting Joshua and Isaac. I'm sitting at the kitchen table with my French textbook open to the pluperfect subjunctive when the twins burst inside. One look at their faces, completely drained of color and eyes dark with terror, and I'm out of my chair and pulling them to my chest.
"What's wrong?" I demand, pulling back just enough so that I can look into their faces. For a second neither of them speaks; they gaze at each other in mute horror.
"Isaac? Joshua? Tell me!" I beg, resisting the urge to shake them. What could have possibly done this to my brothers?
Finally Joshua whimpers, "I kicked my soccer ball into the woods, and…and when I went in to get it…"
He clamps his lips together. Both he and Isaac have started shaking.
"What? Did you see an animal? A snake, or…?"
Both twins shake their heads.
"Not an animal," Isaac whispers. "A lady."
"A lady?"
My skin prickles unpleasantly; all the fine hairs of my body feel like they're standing on end. The twins wouldn't look like this if they'd run across an average hiker in the woods. My mind races with possibilities – maybe she was hurt…or (my stomach twists unpleasantly) dead. Could that have happened?
I try to sound calm and in control as I ask, "What did she look like? Was something wrong with her?"
Joshua shudders. "Yes," he says emphatically, but doesn't elaborate. Isaac nods in agreement.
"How?" I persist. "Was she hurt? Bleeding?"
"Not hurt," Isaac mumbles. "She was freaky."
"Freaky in what way?" I struggle to stay patient, but it's agonizing to be getting this in such short, slow pieces.
"Really tall," Joshua says, "and wild-looking."
"She had mud and leaves in her hair," Isaac explains. "And no shoes."
"And…and stains on her shirt," Joshua continues in a whisper.
"Stains," I repeat, perplexed.
"Red stains," Joshua says significantly.
Oh. It doesn't take a genius to figure out what he means. I swallow with effort – my throat is dry.
"What was she doing?" I press, still trying to sound calm but suspecting that my voice is rising in pitch.
"Just standing there," Isaac answers. "Holding the soccer ball."
"Did she say anything to you?"
Both of the twins look at me seriously, identical eyes dark and trained intently on my face.
"She wants you to come out," Joshua tells me in a small voice. "She said she wanted to talk to our sister."
"She knows your name," Isaac adds. "Angela, how does she know your name? Do you know her?"
"No. I…I don't know. Okay, listen. We're all staying inside, and I'm going to call the police."
The twins look at each other, blank terror taking over their expressions again. It makes me pause.
"What?"
"Nothing," Isaac says in a high voice, but Joshua throws him a panicked look.
"Tell me," I say quietly.
"She said…she said that if you didn't talk to her, she'd come back at night and…" his voice cracks and he stops talking, his teeth chattering.
"She said she'd do this to our heads, and she squeezed the soccer ball and it burst," Isaac concludes in a whisper. A horrible silence descends over the room. Bile rises in my throat at the thought of some woman – a wild-looking woman who knows my name – lurking outside our house, threatening my brothers…
Bile, I realize, and something else. Anger.
Fine. This creep thinks she can scare my family? Fine. She wants to talk, I'll talk.
"Okay," I say with as much authority as I can muster. "Here's what we'll do. I'm going to go out–" my brothers immediately protest, but I talk over them, "–and I want you guys to call 911 as soon as I walk out the door. The police will be here in a couple minutes. Nothing's going to happen to me in a couple minutes. Understand?"
They nod mutely. Joshua reaches for the cordless phone.
"All right. Give me a sec."
I look around the room wildly, my eyes lighting on the mudroom door. I cross the kitchen and push the door all the way open – bingo: the twins' baseball equipment. I take one of their bats and heft it in my hands as I head towards the back door. Joshua and Isaac watch me with wide, dark eyes.
"How far into the woods is she?"
"Close enough to see the house," Isaac says in a small voice.
"Okay, you guys. Remember – as soon as I'm out the door, make the call."
Joshua poises his finger over the buttons on the phone. I take a deep breath and wrench the door open.
I force myself to stride confidently across the backyard, resisting the urge to hesitate at the border of the woods. I plunge into the sparse undergrowth, trying not to make a lot of noise but unable to avoid snapping twigs under my feet. I slow down as I head farther into the trees, keeping my eye out for the woman.
I step on a piece of black and white material – the remains of the twins' soccer ball. My grip tightens reflexively on the baseball bat at the sight of it. There's still no sign of the woman, but now my surge of bravado is fading and I'm reluctant to keep moving forward.
"Hello?" I call, hoping I don't sound as nervous as I feel. "Anyone there?"
I take another slow step forward, half concentrating on the woods around me, half trying to calculate whether the twins have made the call and how far the police are from our house.
Another step.
A figure drops down in front of me and I shriek, recoiling. It straightens up in a fluid motion, tossing fiery curls over its – her – shoulder. The twins were right; she's not just freaky, she's feral – when she opens her mouth, I'm surprised to hear words and not snarls.
"Why hello, Angela," she says, mocking amusement clear in her startlingly girlish voice. I'm instantly reminded of bells, fountains, music…but twisted somehow. Warped, but still beautiful. She makes no move to approach me, but I start backing up instinctively. It's her eyes. They're black, black as tunnels, as midnight. And her teeth, when she smiles at me, look wet, poisonous.
"What…" I choke. "What – who – what are you?"
Her smile widens.
"Thirsty," she whispers. "Very thirsty."
She leaps forward so quickly I don't have time to register the movement. I'm dimly aware of the baseball bat splintering in my hand, of an iron-hard, ice-cold grip on my neck. I don't hear the sirens in the distance; I don't even have time to scream.
-
When I return to consciousness, I immediately wish I hadn't.
Actually, I don't have the capacity to wish that. Every fiber of my being, every minute bit of my awareness is focused on one thing only: the pain. I see the sky and leaves above me but I don't process them; I hear a multitude of voices around me but don't know, don't care what they're saying. For a minute I try to repress the howl of agony gathering in my mouth, but it's useless. I scream my throat raw as the light above me fades.
-
Sometimes I stop screaming, because it doesn't make a difference. Whenever I hear voices nearby, I beg whoever's there to kill me. I never thought I'd be in a position where death seems like the only escape, but this pain doesn't ease for a moment. I feel like molten lava has replaced my blood; this must be what it feels like to burn alive. I imagine I can smell my skin charring, that I can feel my bones melt and fuse into something impossibly hard, harder than titanium.
It's strange, how the agony strips everything else away. I am defined by this pain; I am pain. I have no name.
Let me die let me die let me die let me die let me die let me die let me die let me die let
-
Sometime after the second darkening of the sky above me, I feel a change. It's in my fingertips – unlike everything else, they feel…normal. No pain. Maybe they've just been burned off. I can't turn my head or lift my arms to check; it hurts too much.
With the sudden, small disappearance of pain comes the capacity to process things around me. I understand now that I'm lying on the ground, that above me there is a sky and the changes in the light are the sun rising and setting. I remember my name.
Angela.
I can understand the words of the others. They talk of thirst, of blood, of a mysterious Her. They wonder who she is, if she will be coming to them. They are disturbed by my pain – it makes them remember their own. All of them have felt it too. One of them is holding my hand, although I can barely feel it. She whispers to me that it's almost over.
As the pain recedes from my hands and feet, I come to believe her.
She introduces herself: her name is Clair. When she tells me her name, I squeeze her hand. It's all I can do.
-
The sky above me is violet when my heart stops.
The pain is concentrated in that one spot; it feels like my heart may explode in my chest as all the fire flows into it. It beats faster and faster, so strongly that I'm sure my whole body must be jerking with every desperate pump.
"Almost done," Clair promises. She sounds relieved. If I weren't so certain I'm about to die, I might be, too.
My heart comes to a halt with a resounding thud. I tense, certain that any second now I'm going to be racing down the proverbial tunnel, but nothing happens. I don't feel like I'm dying, I feel…
I feel like my throat's on fire. I wrench my eyes open with a gasp, hands coming up to clutch at my neck. I dimly register that my skin feels strangely smooth, but my senses are soon overwhelmed by the most heart-wrenchingly wonderful scent that nevertheless increases the horrible discomfort in my throat. It's the strangest mix of hunger and thirst I've ever felt.
"Drink this," Clair's voice orders. She pushes the corner of a plastic bag into my mouth, and the source of the scent trickles onto my tongue.
I don't pause to consider what it is I'm drinking, or to worry about my dignity. I rip the bag from Clair's grasp and guzzle its contents. It's not enough, but as soon as I'm finished she hands me another bag. And another.
The fiery ache eases, and I'm able to concentrate on my surroundings.
"You're a mess; you should wipe your face," Clair's amused voice suggests, and I look up and see her for the first time. I stiffen reflexively, going still like I never have before – I know, somehow, that if I needed to I could stay locked in this position for a week without so much as twitching. I stare warily into Clair's blood-red eyes, but I also note her posture, which is unthreatening. Some previously untapped instinct assures me that she's not a foe – not for now, anyway. I relax and take in the rest of her features.
She's beautiful, but inhumanly so, and not just because of her frightening eyes. Her skin is pale as alabaster and free of even the minutest blemish, and her pixie-cut auburn hair looks softer and glossier than that of models in conditioner commercials. Even in stillness, she appears effortlessly graceful. Her full lips, startlingly red against her white skin, are curved into a pleased smile.
All this observation takes only a fraction of a second; I can't imagine anyone would have noticed the pause between Clair's comment and my movement to touch my face. I touch something sticky and wet and pull my hand away to examine it.
It's easy enough to identify, dripping sluggishly from my fingertips. But I stare at the blood as if I've never seen it before, momentarily unable to accept that it is the source of the irresistible scent, that it's smeared all over my face because I've just drained three bags' worth of it.
A soft breeze pushes my hair back from my face; Clair left and returned with a scrap of fabric – the remains of someone's T-shirt – in less time than it takes to blink.
"You get better at it with practice," she assures me, holding the rag out to me. I take it numbly and scrub my face and hand; the fabric comes away smudged with red.
Stains on her shirt…red stains…
"What happened to me?" I whisper. The sound of my own voice terrifies me, although you wouldn't think such a musical voice could be frightening. It only bears the slightest resemblance to my normal voice.
"You were turned," Clair replies, watching me closely. "The pain you felt? That was your body transforming."
"Transforming? Into what?"
It's strange knowing that my heart should be racing but not feeling it. I'm breathing rapidly, though, air whistling through my clenched teeth. It sounds as loud as a train's whistle in my newly sensitive ears. Something about breathing feels odd – not odd, unnecessary.
"Transforming into what?" I repeat, my voice rising in both volume and pitch. I'm crouched on the ground, and my fingers dig into the packed dirt as easily as if it were butter.
"A vampire," Clair says quietly.
I stare at her for a moment, then burst into shrill laughter.
"Are you crazy?" I demand. "You're crazy. This isn't happening – I'm hallucinating. That's it. All the stress made me snap and now I'm in a mental institution, probably undergoing shock treatments. I bet that's what the pain was…"
I keep babbling, distantly surprised by how quickly the words flow through my lips, much faster than anyone should be able to talk.
"Angela…" Clair begins carefully, but I don't let her finish.
"How do you know my name?" I screech, and abandon any semblance of control. Dry sobs wrack my chest as I curl pitifully into the dirt. "This can't be happening," I moan, "I just want to go home."
Clair edges forward slowly until she can put a hand on my back. She pats me uncomfortably, obviously worried that I'll lash out at her. But I'm too distracted by my apparent inability to cry real tears to turn on my comforter. I touch my face in futile search of moisture; my eyes and cheeks are dry despite my breakdown.
"I know," Clair murmurs soothingly. "It's hard in the beginning, but you get used to it."
"I don't want to get used to it!" I wail. "I just want things to go back to normal! I want to see my parents…and Ben…"
Ben. The thought of him focuses me, and I wipe my eyes out of habit even though there are no tears there. I have to see Ben. Geeky, funny, gentle, normal Ben – he'll snap me out of this. I move to stand up.
Clair's hands are suddenly restraining.
"That's not a good idea. The burn in your throat? That's thirst. For blood – human blood – and it never entirely goes away. If you go looking for your family and friends, you'll only wind up hurting them. Believe me."
Her voice goes flat towards the end of her warning, and the darkness in it momentarily stops me. I get the definite sense that she's speaking from personal experience.
"I'd hurt them?" I whisper. The faces of the people I love appear in my mind's eye; the thought of them suffering – and at my hands – makes me recoil.
"You'd kill them," she clarifies with utter certainty, looking me dead in the eye. I shudder and turn away, lips trembling.
"I wouldn't," I protest weakly, even as I remember the violence and greed with which I guzzled the blood in the bags Clair gave me. "I could never…I love them."
"All the love in the world won't save them once you smell them," Clair pronounces grimly. It's hard to tell when her eyes are such a glaring, terrifying red, but I think there's grief in them, and bitterness. Even so, I have to fight the urge to burst into hysterical laughter again. Vampires? The notion is ridiculous. Vampires do not exist. Period.
I look down at the bloody scrap of T-shirt fabric in my hands and let it drop to the ground.
"Where are we?" I ask. If I'm going to get home, I need to know where I'm starting from.
"Outside Seattle," Clair informs me. "The others are in the city, hunting, but I figured you'd want someone here when you…came to."
"Thanks," I mumble, remembering how she stayed at my side through the pain. Why she would take an interest, though, is beyond me.
"Riley was there, when I turned," Clair murmurs. "I was so confused, and scared…but it was a relief to have someone explain what happened. I know it's hard to believe – we're not supposed to be real – but it'll be a lot easier for you if you try to accept it now."
I just shake my head. I go to get to my feet again, and this time Clair lets me. The sheer speed and fluidity with which I move unnerves me. There's no effort involved; I decide to stand and I'm upright in an instant. It's this impossible grace that makes me doubt my own certainty that I'm hallucinating; I don't know if I could imagine something like this.
"There's something else," Clair says, getting to her feet with the same uncanny combination of speed and poise. "If you go home to your friends and family, they may not even recognize you."
"What?" I whirl around sharply to face her.
"You look different now," she explains simply. "See my face? My body? I didn't look like this before. The transformation kind of…enhances you."
I take in Clair's flawless beauty, and my mind has no effort making the connection between her and the woman from the woods. But hers isn't the only image that rises in my memory…
Edward. Alice. Their exceptional looks, their gracefulness, their sense of…of otherness. The similarities are too great to ignore. I gasp. Clair must misinterpret my epiphany as enthusiasm, because she asks, "Would you like to see yourself?"
It takes maybe a tenth of a second for me to make up my mind (incidentally, I don't remember being able to decide things so quickly before) – it couldn't hurt to know what I've become. Although I can't imagine that the pain I just experienced left me in any condition better than utterly wrecked. I hold out my arm in front of my face, expecting to see a blackened, charcoaled limb, but my arm is smooth, bone-white, and unblemished. I stare at it for a moment, mesmerized by its perfection, its faint luminescence in the moonlight. There are no marks, no freckles – even the scar on the inside of my forearm that's been there since I was nine and bitten by a German shepherd is gone.
My surprise opens up my senses; until now I had been too preoccupied to notice that I'm noticing things that always escaped me before. Although I know it's night, the darkness has no effect on my ability to see – the forest around me is as clear as if it were the middle of the day. I can see the veins of leaves hundreds of yards away as if I were holding them up in front of my eyes. As amazing as the sights are, the smells are equally compelling – a plethora of scents surrounds me, hundreds upon hundreds, but instead of being overwhelmed by them I can concentrate on each effortlessly. The same applies to sounds; I somehow hear all and distinguish between each simultaneously. I inhale, and my eyelids flutter as I taste the air. The act of breathing still seems weirdly unnecessary, but still pleasurable – like opening a window in a stuffy room. I enjoy the play of different traces of flavor on my tongue, then turn my focus inward.
The absence of my heartbeat frightens me. As formidably quick as my mind suddenly is, I can't conceive of a rational way to explain how I can feel so vital, so strong, with an inert heart. But the strength – I've never been athletic, and only exercise sporadically, but somehow I know with certainty that if I had to, I can run a mile in the blink of an eye; I could continue running for days and not tire. It's hard to resist taking off at a sprint right now, just to see whether my expectations reflect reality.
All of this consideration happens incredibly quickly; only a second has passed by the time I answer, "Yes."
Clair turns smoothly on her heel and shoots into the trees like an arrow. I follow her easily, staying a step behind although I itch to go even faster, to test the limits of my new physical ability. In no time we're at the edge of a clear pond, which is presumably to function as a mirror. I glance at Clair, who nods encouragingly, and lean over the water to see my reflection.
Although ripples distort the image slightly, the girl in the water is undeniably lovely. Her skin glows white in the moonlight; her light brown waves are full and seem to stir around her shoulders even though there is no breeze. Her features are gorgeous, elegant; what I can see of her body is lithe as a dancer's and even more graceful. The only imperfect part is her eyes: although they're large and framed by long, thick lashes, the irises glow even brighter red than Clair's – demon's eyes in an angel's face.
Nevertheless, the image captivates me. I stretch out a hand a hold it a millimeter above the surface of the water; my reflection mimics the action, reaching towards me.
"This is me?" I ask, my voice soft with wonder.
"Not bad, huh? So far the looks and the abilities are the only redeeming qualities of this experience, but they're big ones."
For a moment I allow myself to be ridiculously shallow – I picture walking the halls of my high school in this body (although with normal-colored eyes), imagine the awed looks of the snotty girls who barely tolerated my presence until they ignored me altogether. No – I discard that fantasy; their reactions aren't the ones I care about. It's the image of Ben's amazed, appreciative face that truly pleases me. He called me beautiful before – what would he say now?
Thinking of Ben brings me back to the present. My desire to see him burns almost as badly as the pain of the last three days, but Clair's warning keeps me from immediately running to Forks. The last time I plunged into action got me kidnapped and – what was the word Clair used? – turned.
"That woman," I ask Clair now, "the one who…who changed us – who is she?"
Clair shakes her head and purses her lips.
"I don't know. None of us know. We haven't seen her since our last moments as humans."
As humans. The implication that I've been turned into something not human still rankles me. Clair notices and rolls her vivid red eyes.
"Come on, Angela. Could any human possibly have the senses we have, or the strength, or the beauty?"
My mind flashes again to Edward and Alice. My memory of them seems somehow dim in comparison to the clarity with which I observe my current surroundings, as if I'm looking into my past through a dark glass. But even in my imperfect recollection, the Cullens are unmistakably different than the other students at my school. None of the others – I have to stop myself from thinking humans – can compare. But they can't possibly be vampires, not if they're around people almost every day. Carlisle Cullen is a surgeon, for crying out loud! How could he do that if he constantly craves blood? And their eyes aren't red, like mine or Clair's, but tawny, almost golden.
"Maybe they can," I respond, but I sound unsure even to my own ears. Clair doesn't even bother to press her point, choosing only to raise a perfect, skeptical eyebrow. I attempt to bring the subject back around to my kidnapper.
"So no one knows who she is? Not even her name?"
Clair doesn't need me to explain which "she" I'm talking about.
"Not even her name," she affirms. "She has a sort of second-in-command – that's Riley. He's usually there when someone wakes up, so he can feed us and tell us what we are. But Riley's been away with her since yesterday, so I took his place."
"Where did the blood come from?"
"Stolen from hospitals," Clair responds promptly. "A little at a time, so there's something to take the edge off after waking up. Next time you're thirsty, you'll hunt."
"Hunt? You mean people?"
I shrink back from her, horrified. She said it so calmly, as if she were proposing calling out for Chinese food rather than draining someone's blood. She looks slightly perplexed by my reaction.
"Well, yes, what else?"
"That's murder!"
"Trust me, you'll change your tune once you get thirsty again," Clair says dryly. "Remember how bad you felt when you woke up, and how good the blood smelled? Do you think you'd stop and think, 'Well, sure, I'm thirsty, but that's a human life right there' when faced with an actual person? Because you won't."
I stare at her; for a moment I'm too shocked to speak.
"And you don't consider that a little callous?" I ask weakly once I've recovered my voice. She looks down, and suddenly I see that she's more disturbed by this than she previously let on. When she looks up again, her expression is resigned.
"Sure I do," she says quietly. "I don't even like to think about it. But what other option is there? We can't keep taking blood bags from the hospitals – moral conflicts aside, there wouldn't be enough to sustain us for long. What I gave you only took the edge off your thirst – you'll have to hunt before long."
"Then why don't we move around?" I suggest, choosing to ignore the warning about my impending need to hunt. "We could go from city to city so that the hospitals have time to replenish what we take, and that way there'd be enough for us to…"
I don't want to say drink out loud. Clair shakes her head slowly.
"Not an option," she says bluntly. "At least, not for now. There's something we have to do here."
It's my turn to look perplexed.
"She made us for a reason," Clair starts to explain, then hesitates. "I don't know if I should wait for Riley to come back to tell you – he'd probably be able to explain it better…"
"No, tell me," I urge her, desperate, now that I know there's a reason this happened to me, to understand why. "And if I don't get it, Riley can explain it when he gets back."
"Okay," Clair agrees after a brief pause. "Here's what I know: there's a coven – that's a group of vampires," she explains at my blank look, "nearby that poses a threat to us, especially her. They're not like us: they have yellow eyes, and Riley told me that they keep humans as pets. And it causes all kinds of trouble for us, because it disrupts our way of life. Because of their human, the other member of her coven were killed, including her first mate."
"They keep humans as pets?" I repeat, picturing a terrified person chained up and surrounded by grinning, sadistic vampires. "That's…that's sick. Demeaning. Why would they do that?"
"Who knows?" Clair shrugs, although she looks distasteful. "Maybe it amuses them. Because their eyes aren't as obviously different as ours, they even pretend to be human – that's how they capture their pets. The point is, she created us so we could help her get rid of the yellow eyes. After that, we'll all probably go our own way – there are a lot of us, and Riley told me covens are usually small – maybe two or three vampires. That's another weird thing about the yellow eyes – there are a lot of them. Seven, I think."
My body reacts to this information even before my newly quick mind processes it. My muscles tense, and something liquid pools in my mouth – I'd call it saliva, but saliva doesn't burn like this; it feels more like acid.
"Venom," Clair explains, noting my reaction. "Don't worry about it – it's an instinctive response to anything threatening – and the yellow eyes are definitely threatening."
I have to agree with her there – the idea of humans as pets, playthings, offends me both as a former human (for there's no denying it now – I'm definitely not human any longer) and as the new creature I am. To treat humans that way goes against our nature; I know this in some core part of myself.
Still, something about Clair's description nags at my human memory. Yellow eyes…they pretend to be human…they keep a human pet…
"How are we supposed to get rid of them?" I ask.
"We'll lure them out and fight them."
"Fight?"
My reaction is divided here. Part of me, the new part, is unconcerned by the thought of a fight, even eager for it. But the other part, the human part, doesn't like the idea at all. As a human, I remember, I was not aggressive. I didn't argue, I reasoned. I didn't hurt people, I tried to be kind both in action and in judgment, and if people weren't kind to me in turn, I just avoided them. And despite the uneasiness I feel towards the yellow-eyed vampires, it doesn't change the fact that they haven't done anything to me, or that I'm only getting this information third-hand. She told Riley, who told Clair, who told me – maybe some of the information got distorted as it was passed along.
Clair doesn't appear to notice my reluctance.
"Riley says they're still trying to figure out a way to get the yellow eyes out into the open. I think the plan is to use their human pet – they're very protective of her, apparently. Protective enough to fight and kill over her. One of them hardly even lets her out of his sight. But that's part of the problem – how do we get her away from the yellow eyes if at least one of them is always there…?"
Clair falls silent for a moment, considering this, but I've stopped paying attention to her. The pieces have finally come together, and I curse myself for not seeing it to begin with.
Yellow eyes. Vampires who pretend to be human. A human pet, a girl. But what if the human girl isn't a pet at all, but something much more?
The "yellow eyes" are the Cullens. Of that I'm sure. And the human girl…
She can only be Bella Swan.
Beside me, Clair stiffens and looks up, her crimson eyes glowing brighter with sudden enthusiasm.
"It's Riley," she says. "He's back."
Thanks for reading!