C H A P T E R F I V E — G I N G E R
It's funny how when your snack pack has a city tag, no one goes looking for them.
Ellis Townsend.
Donovan Wright.
It's been forty eight hours and no one has filed a police report.
Aiden Barnes.
Michael Elliot.
It's been three weeks and no one's posted a flyer.
James Welch.
Mitch Parker.
It's been a month. These are not the types of names you'd find on a milk carton.
..
The bass rattles my brain inside of my skull. I can't think beyond moving my feet in front of me. I can't think beyond sipping the drink in my hand.
What I'm here for is beyond thought, beyond feeling. It's been a while since I've had to rely solely on instinct.
Mainstreaming doesn't require these skills. The close attention to detail, the total recall, none of it is necessary in normal society. The sense of smell rendered useless, unused in search for prey. Humans don't have to look further than their pantry or a grocery store or JIB (Jack in the Box) or McDonalds. Humans, they make it so easy with their dulled senses and intuitions. A people so entirely rooted in science, they tended to ignore their baser instincts. Things like intuition were persecuted, people who showed an abstract view of world committed and institutionalized. Having everything handed to them, having everything they'd ever need an arm's length away has made them sloppy.
Most humans brush off any bad vibes that permeate the air surrounding me in favor of basking in my good looks and natural perfume. Men especially are known to be perfectly willing to ignore their nautre in favor of fulfilling a more baser instinct. In a society in which sex among acquaintances is natural, hunting is made even easier still.
This is what I'm banking on for my fill.
Humans had everything that they needed at the tips of their fingers; I needed to reach a little further than that.
Seattle. Port Angeles. Olympia.
It's amazing what you can get a human being to ignore, to disregard. It's amazing how a human being will follow me into the dark.
..
It's ten o'clock on a Friday night. Movie night. Me and Roman would sit in the way back in the theatre in Port Angeles and throw popcorn at each other and make out.
I try not to think about Roman Duda, something that I've been doing a lot of recently.
..
Tonight's flavor of the week reminds me of Edward Cullen. With his messy mop of bronze sex hair and green eyes and strong masculine jaw.
He will die slowly.
Painfully.
..
Sunday's were shopping night. We'd travel to Port Angeles. Roman holding my hand in his so that it wasn't on his crotch. He'd buy me frilly lingerie under the condition that he could see it on me first. With my boobs popping out, my ass hanging out, I had never been more in love with him.
I try really, really hard not to think about Roman Duda. It seems that when I'm alone I can't think about anything else.
..
The striking resemblance to my former flame is what pulls me to him. It is not, however, the strange looks that keep my attention. But rather the entrancing scent.
My nostrils flare. My lips pull up into a snarl. My mouth waters.
Swallowing the liquid in my mouth. Rubbing my legs together. A fleeting thought runs through my mind, before I can stop it.
Is this what my scent was like to Edward Cullen?
The liquid ambrosia pumping through this sack of meat tempts me like nothing else.
I can't decide whether his scent is more akin to heaven or hell.
Not that I believe in either.
Eventually, in what seems like forever, though only a few minutes have passed since I have laid eyes on the doppelganger of my ex and laid out his fate, I decide it doesn't matter.
Heaven or hell. The origin of my meal is irrelevant. This man's blood will gurgle from his throat into my mouth.
..
Ever since Needy ditched me for her boyfriend, Ben, it'd gotten harder and harder to simply exist.
Since she started throwing around words like succubus and demon and vampire (the latter of which hurts more than anything else) we haven't really been talking.
It was like one day we were like the g-string shoved up the ass of a two cent stripper and the next I'd given her an STI.
..
My thigh is between his legs, pressing up against him. My lips plant open mouth kisses on his neck, my teeth nipping flesh. Teasing.
Apple's and cinnamon explode in my mouth. I wrap my legs around his torso.
A group of drunken frat boys interrupt my feeding, but leave seconds after. Obscene comments, cat calls, and whistles thrown at me and my companion are the only acknowledgement made that we even exist.
This is the best part about feeding in Seattle. My mouth is guzzling this guy's life out of him, and people don't glance twice. I'm not sure whether it is my appearance and the fact that my face remains completely human looking during the feed, inhuman beauty aside, or that the people of Seattle really couldn't give a fuck if I eat Seattleites as long as it wasn't them, but either way I've never been bothered.
A throng of rats swarm around the alley. Around my feet. Around my happy meal with fries and a drink. Around my lasagna with teeth.
Take a homeless man off the street and no one notices. No one notices if you take a single guy who was just hit hard by the recent economic hardships and is currently unemployed and living in a shitty neighborhood either. No one notices, anything, anyone… period.
A piercing scream distracts me from my hunt, from my current meal on wheels. I drain him out quickly and drop the body.
Glancing briefly at the way the pack of mice scatter to let his body fall to the floor before they swarm and attack the leftovers, I head towards the commotion.
This is my territory. Seattle, Forks, Port Angeles. Mine. Mine. Mine.
I am seething at the thought of another hunting in the territory I have claimed as my own. These are my humans. This is my blood bank.
..
Honestly, nothing should shock me anymore.
But the sight of flaming red hair?
Of all the things I expected to stumble upon, the red headed bitch ranks low on the list.
And her victim? It's like that dream I had of me and Edward and my Grandma only it was me who was wrinkly and old and gray. It's like looking into her face but seeing my own.
I'm waiting to wake up. Waiting for Charlie to rush into my room and shake me awake. Surely this must not be real.
When Victoria lays eyes on me, she drops her victim to the floor. Pausing momentarily to admire her work, the way that this doppelganger of mine suffers as the venom takes hold of her system, she offers me a wide smile.
"Isabella Swan," she coos, "it truly has been a while hasn't it?"
I can tell that she doesn't want an answer. I don't give her one.
She saunters towards me, glancing once more at the feeble Bella Swan bleeding over one of the endless alley's that Seattle fosters, before pausing millimeters away from my body.
"Where is your precious Edward?" She wonders, tapping her finger to her mouth in a dramatic display. Her untamed fiery red hair flows untamed behind her back and spills onto her shoulders.
This question is also rhetorical and she continues on the conversation before I can even contemplate how to tackle that question.
"Oh, silly me," She exclaims, her eyes comically wide. "He left you." She moves her hand to her head, tapping her pointer to her temple. "I remember. You weren't good enough. The pathetic little human pet finally discovered her true worth didn't you?"
She pauses momentarily, but pushes through the silence I was never meant to fill.
"It would be hard not to. Considering that Edward Cullen left you in the forest with those things he hunts. Left you like an animal. Like a meal."
She twirls around me, her eyes roaming over the supple planes of my body.
"My, my, my, but if he could see you now. You've certainly filled out." She purrs, running a finger along my arm and leaving gooseflesh in her wake. "Certainly he wouldn't have left this Isabella Swan, would he?"
Her other hand snakes behind my back, using my ass as leverage to pull me flush against her rock hard body. "There is something off about you," she murmurs into my ear, tapping a finger to her chin, cocking her head sideways.
"Are you going to tell me?" She purrs while her dirty fingers tuck a strand of hair behind my ear.
I figure that this question, like all the ones that she has previously asked of me, is rhetorical.
In the next instant, faster than any human could blink, Victoria pins me, face first, against the grimy stone walls of the alley. Her knee pressed against my back, my left arm pinned threateningly against my back, her teeth bared against my neck, I figure that maybe, maybe, her question wasn't rhetorical.
In the same moment that she's handing my ass to me, she growls into the skin of my neck, "or am I going to have to guess?"
This question is in fact rhetorical. If the bitten, mani-less fingernails of my captive and their close proximity to my open mouth are to be interpreted correctly.
Victoria, because this night hasn't been fucked up enough already, begins to pepper kisses along my neck. She moans, open-mouthed, into my flesh and digs the fingers of the hand that isn't restraining me onto the underside of my jaw, turning my head so that we're FTF.
"I'd wanted to kill you, so badly, for what your Edward had done to my James. But I think keeping you would be much more agreeable for me. And to think, I'd almost gone to Laurent. He surely wouldn't have exercised the same control. He wouldn't have been able to stop himself from killing you. And you, Isabella Swan, you're too damn good to go to waste."
With those words in mind, her grip on my arm goes lax and she drops her knee from its position on my ass. Instead of keeping me under wraps with brute force, Victoria decides to shock me into submission by shoving me against the wall and grinding against me. Her teeth nip at my lower lip, gently requesting admission into my mouth.
Really, I should be running in the other direction, for as strong as I am and as fast as I can be, I have never, ever, been up against a vampire. Especially one that really wants to just my bones. But instead, lost in a haze of lust, I wrap my legs around the vampire's waist and entwine my hands in her thick, untamed hair. My back arcs, as Victoria presses against me in a delicious way.
My Edward Cullen wannabe lunch pack has made me hot and bothered, and maybe, I decide as Victoria's tongue makes its way down my throat, this is just what I need to take my mind off of things. Of Edward Cullen. Of his human doppelganger. Of Roman Duda.
All good things come to an end, however, and I am reminded by this when I hear the subtle whimpering of my own human doppelganger. I wonder how many other brown eyed, brown haired girls were disappearing in Seattle. I wonder how many other Seattleites walked right past Victoria feeding from these girls and honestly not bothered to give a shit beyond throwing catcalls and whistles.
It's in this moment, that I realize as fun as this is, as great of a prospect as hanging out with Victoria is shaping out to be, I cannot let the sacrifices of these girls, these Isabella Swans, go unpunished.
The hands that are entwined in Victoria's hair twist sharply and with a resounding crack, her head separates from her torso. Her arms are removed just as easily; as are her legs.
I take the lighter that I've kept on person since discovering my god like healing abilities, since I discovered how truly more than human I was, and run my thumb along the device, igniting the flame.
I take a moment to admire the lidded eyes and slightly parted mouth that adorn Victoria's face. Her eyes are clouded over in a film of desire, the irises milky. Her visage forever frozen in a lustful expression.
With a slight ping of regret, I drop the lighter onto the pieces of her body. Watching as her expression melts as her flesh cracks and is consumed. Watching as purplish smoke billows from her ashes.
I turn towards the girl, this human version of me, now that the threat Victoria may have posed is rendered null.
The girl, she's smoldering, inside and out, and looking into my mask, my flawless mask, and crying and screaming and afraid she's going to die. To her credit, she has managed to keep from screaming until this point.
My hands are on her mouth to silence her. My lips are on her neck, sucking and drinking, but not draining.
When all traces of the venom are gone from her system, my insides burn as my body sorts through the foreign substance and heals my body.
Her doe eyes are closed and she moans in her sleep. I lift her into my arms, pausing only briefly to retrieve my lighter from against the pile of rubble that used to be Victoria.
Then, snuggling her lithe body into my chest in a protective gesture, I carry her to the hospital.
..
I have been trying endlessly to forget about Roman Duda.
Pirouetting off my bed, my foot snags the discarded pair of pants from last night. A light coating of blood and venom were not what the designer intended in regards to the carefully distressed jeans.
I fall to the ground with a thud, my hands smacking against the floor and dislodging a slab of wood.
Newton really knows his shit. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction indeed.
For the first time since I can remember, I am not thinking about Roman Duda. At all. Not even a little.
Instead I'm thinking of Edward Cullen and what a fucking asshole he is.
Underneath the floor of my bedroom where I cried for Edward Cullen, for the parents that I never had but had wished for mercilessly, for the sister and best friend that had been forfeit, for the brothers and even Rosalie, Ice Bitch that she was, that had been made unavailable to me, was the place in which the confirmation of their love for me had lived.
I jump up from the floor, rummaging through the drawers in my nightstand in search of my old walkman. I place the CD that Edward had made for me for my birthday inside of it.
The backs of my knees bump into the purple comforter covered mattress, and I let myself fall backwards onto the bed. My hair splays out on the pillow. The other mementos forgotten on my bedroom floor.
I know in this moment that I will do everything in my power to contact Edward Cullen.
He might have been a complete and total douche, but he was my asshole.
And I was completely and irrevocably in love with him.
..
I'm sorry this was out soo late. I'm really bad at posting in a timely manner. This chapter was my longest to date though, so maybe that will make it up for it? Partially?
The next chapter is halfway written already so it should be out soonish… maybe.
THANX to everyone who reads and reviews, I LOVE YOU…
Since I've made you guys wait so long, I am going to spoil you, if you don't want to know what is in store for these characters than don't read:
The Cullen's might not be making an appearance anytime soon, but there might be a different clan of Veggie vamps in the area in the future…. And this clan might be housing a succubus of their own. So basically Bella as a succubus stuff, as it pertains to Through the Trees, will be explained since there are differences from JB in order to fit more with the story. So any confusion as to Victoria's actions will be explained then.
There might be a little bit of Jacob in the foreseeable future… since he might take it upon himself to protect our little succubus from these visiting vamps, even though she certainly doesn't need it….
But anyways, this AN is long enough… Love you guys. Read and review! :D