Prey: Jubilation and Regret
A/N: There was a bit of confusion with the last chapter and clothes changing. Yes, Amanda can alter the appearance of her clothes, but (And I'm sorry if I forgot to include this in any explanations) not the smell of the sewer. After a while, the fibers of your clothes absorb the smell, no matter how clean you keep them. It's also the same way with general wear and tear- she may have mad skills, but appearance changing cannot strengthen the fibers of the material. Besides, it takes a lot more concentration to change clothes than her appearance, and she's not fully comfortable with her powers yet. You get better with time at whatever supernatural gift you have. I'm sorry if it's been a while since posting- I've had no internet access. And, just to clear up concerns of the nitpickers, Amanda isn't forgetting her human life because, like Rosalie, she;s holding onto it with all ten fingers.
Disclaimer: Stephenie Meyer concentrates her efforts on producing addictive supernatural romances, not silly fanfiction that requires lengthy author's notes.
Amanda was sleeping.
Not really, but when you sit on a park bench, not really doing anything for a whole night, things look suspicious.
She was trying to pull off the look of, "Young artist needing inspiration turns to the closest thing to nature there is in the city and has just been sleeping on a park bench for this very reason." She had a mop of shaggy black curls that attested to this very fact. Young artists always seemed to have shaggy mops of hair. It was almost a contradiction for an artist to be a clean-shave, well adjusted person.
Amanda was peaceful. Not many people went into the park at four AM, so she was relatively undisturbed. However, good things don't last, and at 5:56, Amanda realized that her luck may have changed.
She smelled blood. She was about to stop breathing when she noticed something. It wasn't human blood. Sitting up, she looked in the direction of the smell, and saw a deer. It was pretty, graceful and lithe in its movement. It looked absolutely delicious, Amanda noted. Certainly not to the degree of a human neck, but this time she didn't have to bear the revulsion in killing a human being. She didn't really think- she was suddenly in the forest, mouth firmly clamped on the neck. A rush of sweetness filled her body- she hadn't known blood could taste so good.
"This is what comes from an all-rat diet. Anything- even human food- would taste good in comparison." Amanda looked at her shirt, and cursed herself for her haste. There was blood spattered all along the front, and it was dripping down her chin. She'd never had to bother before- rats only have enough blood for a single mouthful, and the mess was minimal. Now, there was a real jugular to rip open, big veins that pumped excessive amounts of blood through the system.
She looked at the deer, which was clawed and mangled at the neck.
"Being a newborn sucks." She growled. Amanda cursed herself again, this time for not asking the Cullens about survival as a newborn. But then again, she never thought she would need it. She thought she could maybe bury the body, and no one would see. Once again, Amanda was faced with the frustrations of newbornness.
She had only meant to tug at the roots of the tree, to hide the spot of burial, not uproot it violently, swinging it into other trees nearby.
In an effort not to be seen, she dug a hole as fast as she could, which created a dusty, muddy mess that coated her hair and clothes, already blood soaked. She would need to get some new ones out of the pack until she could wash these out.
Amanda heaved the body into the hole, covering it up as best she could. She tried to replant the tree, but her efforts were in vain. She eventually resorted to laying the tree on top of the hole, even though it looked a bit suspicious.
For a moment, she wished that she was back in her sewers, her nice, smelly, predictable sewers. There, her only challenges were finding enough rats and avoiding the occasional worker or policeman, or, in rare cases, a David. Sidetracked for a moment, she wondered just how and why he had gotten there.
As if summoned by her memory, the familiar scent of a certain mysterious person drifted over. David? She thought. With alarm, she heard his footsteps. How could he have gotten so close? She was glad that she had just eaten- her self control was better than it had ever been. She was able to dash away from the scene without so much as a backward glance at what other vampires might have considered prospective prey. She made sure to visually efface traces of blood and dirt from her body-
She stopped once she had reached her former apartment. Why was this David person always around?
Well, she thought grumblingly, not always. But even from the two times she had been near, their proximity never seemed much of a coincidence. She thought quickly of her options. Her paranoid hunter mind- left over from her human days- dredged up the unlikely possibility that he was looking for her.
How ludicrous, Amanda thought. Still, this didn't stop her from proceeding as if this were the case.
She changed her appearance behind a trashcan, going bubblegum blonde, a golden ringlet ditzy girl. Utterly unsuspicious. She procured a cell phone from the bin, and after a quick rub on her jeans to get rid of the filth, talked to someone named "Brittney" animatedly about Brad, who was just a Hotty McHott Hott from Hottsville. She would've thrown up, or started laughing if her life wasn't on the line.
She darted into her apartment, where she darted into the lobby bathroom, becoming her lawyer.
The Lawyer was a part she had played many times as a human. Really, it was just "Amanda Post" dressed in a sharp suit, with glasses and a short wig to give her a bob. She pulled out some sunglasses from her bag- she had no actual glasses, and she hoped that they would do. She put on her Authoity voice, and told the manager of the lobby that because Anna Gregorson was now presumed dead. She was the lawyer, Mrs. Fineman, and she was to divide the Gregorson estate among those listed in her will.
No one questioned her, and she was handed a room key for the penthouse suite. Marching herself into the private elevator, Amanda was relieved to recall the absence of security cameras or windows. She let go of every manipulation on her appearance, and let herself be a vampire Amanda. She sat down on the couch of the apartment, exhausted from the numerous changes. It took quite a lot out of her to do so many things at once. She had a massive headache, and wished there was a pill that would work on vampires for such things.
She discarded her clothes in a stainless steel trashcan, burning them so as to destroy evidence. The last thing she needed was for the police to find a freshly bloodied shirt in a supposedly untouched apartment. She changed into something fresh, that was covered in the scent of Human Amanda. She couldn't shake this feeling that David was looking for her. She noticed a rats nest in the corner of the room. Of course. When the scary vampire hunter is a vampire in the sewers, trying to regain some last bit of humanity (away), the mice will play. Thankfully however, she knew some great pest removal techniques. In a few short minutes, the only rats in the apartment were burning bloodless corpses in a trashcan. She ran a hand through her hair, frustrated at her general condition. She was a vampire, and acting on the assumption that David was following her, with an uncanny way of following her, there was not much that she could do.
Then, Amanda had a wild thought. She was good at those. "If David is following me, (For whatever reason) perhaps he knows that I am a vampire." This was a very disturbing thought, but she had a possible solution. "Perhaps, he has some electronic tool that scans body temperature. It would make sense that a heatless mass the size and shape of a human would appear very suspicious. Perhaps..." She concentrated very hard on raising her body temperature. This would be the most difficult illusion yet. She felt her temperature slowly rising until she was roughly room temperature. She couldn't force herself any higher. She stood completely still, hoping that if she registered on whatever radar he had, she would seem to be a statue. She must have stood that way for hours before she finally relaxed. She wasn't out of the woods yet- but she couldn't quite leave. There were vampiric scum to eradicate, after all.
...
"Another?"
David winced. He knew that he was a disappointment. But it seemed like victory was constantly slipping through his fingers. "I don't know what's up with me lately." he mumbled. David couldn't meet the eyes of the older man, who was shaking a photograph at him. "You still don't have it, do you?" The man shook his head incredulously. "You, of all people." David was not listening. He was simply staring at the photo. Nothing was said by either party for a while. David finally spoke. "It isn't normal. They don't- they're not supposed to respond like this!"
...
Amanda was soaking in a hot bath, trying a more archaic method for evading capture. She simply didn't have the energy She rubbed some coconut shampoo into her hair, wondering idly whether it would be a good way to cloak her scent. She was being paranoid, she knew that. Why should she, from two meetings, decide that she was in danger from a mere human?
Because, a voice in the back of her head told her, It's this kind of thinking that's kept you alive for eighteen years. Remember Edward Cullen? He DID read minds. Trust your instincts.
Amanda shivered slightly, despite immortality and hot baths. After so many years of being a hunter, it was a disquieting feeling to be the prey.
A/N: The best thing you can do for me is to review!