AN: I thought I should mention the reasons this story is rated M. There will be action and pretty graphic violence. There will be monsters and horrors from beyond the abyss. There will be graphic sex between women. There will be bad jokes and worse punning on occasion. Continue at your own peril. You have been warned.
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Bella pulled into the driveway of their new rented home. It was a two story white house that had supposedly once belonged to the chief of police. In the four years since they had been on the run they had not stayed in one place for more than a few months. Bella really hoped they would be able to stay in that new cozy house long enough for it to start feeling like a home.
At the front door Bella pressed one of the rings on her hand against the white wood. For a few seconds nothing happened until she felt the untwisting of magic and the lowering of her wards. While Bella wouldn't be slinging fireballs or summoning eldritch creatures from the abyss anytime soon the magic she was good at was still incredibly useful. Anything wanting to get past her wards would need incredible amounts of magical muscle to pull it off. Anyone trying to get in with brute force alone would have some nasty surprises waiting for them. Bella was rather proud of how much she had learned to do over the past four years.
In that time she had really pushed her learning to keep them safe. To keep them safe. Bella knew Victoria was always focused on her and keeping her safe but Bella would be dammed if she didn't keep Victoria safe as well. As unusual as their relationship was Victoria was literally the only person in the world Bella had left. If she lost Victoria too she didn't know what she would do. Bella would do literally anything to keep that from happening. She wouldn't let the Volturi take anything else from her.
After the wards came down Bella inserted the key entered with Victoria right behind her. As soon as they were inside Victoria pulled off the intricate Celtic knot ring she kept on her left thumb. Instantly her eyes changed from a chocolate brown to their natural vampire red. Bella couldn't help but look at them for a few long seconds. Her vampire eyes never failed to pull her in and frighten her at the same time. Bella always wondered if the blood of her victims was what tinted her eyes with such a pretty red color.
"That thing always feels weird after a while," commented Victoria absently as she walked into the kitchen. It was a thing that Bella had enchanted with some difficulty for her protector. It hid some of her more obvious vampire traits like her red eyes and her strangely glowing skin under the sun. It was a great piece of work, the only problems being that Bella had to recharge it periodically with her magic and Victoria said it felt way too strange after prolonged use. Bella had worked on and off on one that would recharge off a vampire's own innate magic but she hadn't had much luck with that one yet.
Bella watched with some concern as Victoria opened the fridge and poured herself a large glass of water. The vampire had once explained that drinking other liquids could take the edge off the vampire's huger for a little while, similar to how a hungry human could fill themselves up on water to make their hunger more bearable at least in the short term. Whenever Victoria drank anything other than alcohol it was because she was getting hungry.
"You need to hunt soon?" asked Bella quietly, leaning against the kitchen counter.
Victoria's eyes flicked over to her and she nodded. "Yeah. I think I'm going to shower and head out," she said holding Bella's gaze. Bella knew Victoria could always feel her discomfort whenever the subject of feeding came up. It had resulted in some rather ill-fated attempts to restrict Victoria's diet when she had been a young teen and it had led to war between the two of them. Now Bella was quietly resigned but still uncomfortable.
"It hasn't even been a week since you hunted," said Bella keeping her voice neutral.
"Being around so many humans all day is bad for my control. I'm going to have to feed more often to make sure I don't have any accidents," she said giving Bella a significant look. Bella's eyes widened at this revelation.
"I didn't know that," said Bella in a quiet voice.
"Well," drawled out Victoria, "if you have such a big problem with it we could always just stop going to school," she said giving Bella a smug little smirk at putting the girl in that dilemma.
"Well if you're hungry you have to hunt. I guess there's not helping that," said Bella with a tiny frown.
Bella thought about it, feeling distinctly uncomfortable. The three rules that were inscribed on Victoria's collar prevented the worst of it. She went over the limitations once again in her head:
You will not harm any member of the Black family.
You will not kill any innocent humans.
You will not disobey Isabella Black.
In theory the three rules along with the default function of the collar should have been enough for Isabella to make Victoria completely obedient and compliant. The actual truth of the matter was that the magic had limits and things could be left up for interpretation.
One of the most obvious that soon became apparent was that Bella could only give one or two 'orders' at a time before the compulsion of the oldest order became ineffective. It also turned out that more complicated orders were easier for Victoria to resist.
'Innocents' was also so vague Bella wished it had been better worded as Bella considered it the most important rule and the only one she herself might be tempted to brand a vampire with. Once during a particular rough patch between them Victoria had exploited this to hunt people she knew would upset Bella, like a mother of four young children who had served time as a young woman for a felony drug conviction. Sometimes Bella found it hard to reconcile all the things that Victoria was, protector, prisoner, predator, confidant, sometimes-enemy, sometimes-friend and someone who placed almost no value in human life.
Still they had come to an understanding and Bella trusted that Victoria only went after murderers and rapists and other violent criminals. But was it really ok if going to school meant Victoria had to hunt more often, leading to more human deaths? Even if the people Victoria went after 'deserved' it that didn't mean that Bella didn't feel any guilt when the vampire came home in pleasant and satisfied mood after a kill.
Was going to school really worth it? How much more often would she have to feed?
"I'm going to hop in the shower before I take off," said Victoria, giving Bella one last searching look before turning away and heading to her room. Bella's treasonous eyes drank in her curved figure as she walked away, feeling a tightening in her lower belly.
She sighed, shaking her head in dismay as she took her books over to the kitchen table to begin her homework. Her relationship with the vampire was already complicated enough without adding in her growing attraction. All it did was just raise questions without any comfortable answers. Bella didn't know if Victoria would even want her in that way, or if it was a smart thing to do, or if that was even what Bella really wanted. All she knew was that Victoria's piecing look and occasional touches were making her insides flip funnily and her chest tighten more and more recently.
Bella did her best to push those thoughts out of her head opened her biology book to start on her homework. She wanted the high school experience and doing homework was part of it. It didn't matter that she could just get a falsified diploma since that wasn't the point. Bella wanted the opportunity to go to school and spend a little time studying something else besides magic for a little while.
She heard the shower start up and tried not to picture Tori naked in the shower. Bella growled a little in frustration. She hated teenage hormones and it seemed like at seventeen they had finally started to hit her like a freight train. It was almost enough for her to wish for an ugly vampire roommate.
Twenty minutes later Victoria came out wearing dark jeans and a black button down shirt. Bella made sure to keep her eyes firmly on Victoria's face but couldn't help but give the woman a quick once over. Once she was out of her teenager outfit Victoria went from looking seventeen to about twenty five which Bella knew had been closer to the age she had actually been when she was turned.
"I'm taking the car," said Victoria while she grabbed the keys. "Make sure all the wards are up. Don't go outside. I've got my phone in case of anything."
Bella bobbed her head up and down. "Yes'ssum. Leave all the doors open, walk down a dark alley naked and covered in twenty dollar bills. Got it."
Victoria gave her a flat look but Bella could see the amusement behind her eyes.
"I know the drill Tori, relax. Besides your power would let you know if there was any trouble. Just go, come home quick." She said trying to give Victoria a reassuring smile.
"My power isn't always perfect with you Bella," she said softly.
When her parents had captured Victoria they realized her power was that she somehow always knew what to do in order to survive and stay alive. The reason it hadn't worked when Victoria had tried to sneak into the Black estate was because it had been covered in anti-magic wards and vampire powers were magical in nature. It was obvious from the start then that while Victoria's ability was powerful it wasn't always perfect.
When her parents forced her to collar Victoria with her own magic it had created a bond between the vampire and her. The default function of the collar was that if Bella died, Victoria would too. Her parent's idea was that if Bella was ever in danger the vampire would sense it and would know exactly how save her since saving Bella was the only way to save herself. It had worked. The only problem was that it seemed sometimes the power didn't take into account how far away they were from each other giving Victoria little or not enough time to react.
"Well even then, still, relax. Get going before I start thinking too hard about what exactly you're going to be doing," Bella said.
"BB, you have no idea what I'm going to be doing," she said in a blatantly suggestive tone before winking at Bella and heading towards the door.
"Put up the wards!" she called out over her shoulder as the door swung close behind her.
Bella stood up and did just that, taking a full minute turn on her carefully applied wards once again. She wondered at that last statement before she decided it was just Tori being Tori. Probably. She found she didn't want to think about it and went back to finishing the last of her homework.
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It didn't take her long to remember she had another bit of homework to do before Victoria returned. Bella got up and went to her room to use her computer. The room was what you would expect in a house you hadn't personalized. Beige walls with no decoration yet, some older but well maintained furniture that came with the house and a double bed. Her things were still half in boxes strewn around the room. It was almost dark out now so Bella turned on the shaded lamp on her nightstand and fired up her laptop.
The more she thought about it the more unlikely it seemed that a coven of at least five vampires was living in tiny Forks and going to high school. Over the years Bella had learned a great deal about vampires and vampire habits from both talking to Victoria and reading works on those wizards who researched them. Vampires overwhelmingly limited themselves to covens of no more than three members. Their nature made it difficult to peacefully coexist with any number larger than that. There were exceptions and there were covens with numbers that were much higher but that was inevitably due to the some vampire's power making it possible. A rare powerful coven out in the middle of nowhere Washington didn't seem to track. It would also be very hard to feed so many vampires in a sparsely populated area without drawing a lot of notice. If a vampire coven chose to stay stationary rather than nomadic they tended to do so large populated cities for just that reason. An extra dozen people missing per month in Los Angeles or New York was unlikely to raise any eyebrows.
She knew the best way to find out if there really were vampires in Forks would be to research people that went dead or missing on a monthly basis and see if there were enough to sustain a vampire presence. Three hours later Bella was breathing a sigh of relief. The number of missing or suspiciously murdered people per month in a radius around Forks was far too low to support even a small coven of vampires. Closing her laptop she wondered if the mysterious Cullens were some other type of supernatural creature. It would be odd but not unheard of. Maybe they were a group of fey masquerading as humans, or kitsune, or shadow spirits or any other of the broad range of supernatural critters that liked to wear human shape. Or maybe they were just a strange group of regular humans.
Feeling relieved that Forks was vampire free Bella stood up and stretched. Vampires in Forks would have been a nightmare.
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"Do you have the information I want?"
"But of course Master."
"Where is she?"
"In the north western United States, most likely Washington."
"Can't you narrow it further?"
"Care to give me a piece of your power? The unwilling magic of another is only worth so much."
"I don't think so."
"Then we have nothing further to say to each other."
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A few hours later that evening Bella stood in front of the stove over a pasta sauce she was making. She was blaring music from her Ipod with headphones on, dancing in place while she stirred her creation with a wooden spoon. She was so absorbed in what she was doing she never noticed when someone entered the house.
Bella jumped out of her skin when she felt someone put a hand on her hip and lean into her from behind. Her skin burned from the touch and her heart started to beat faster. An involuntary sound of pleasure escaped her lips when Victoria leaned in further and rested her chin on her shoulder. Embarrassed by the noise she'd made Bella tried half-heartedly to escape but the vampire easily held her in place against the stove.
Through her pounding heart she realized Victoria had said something. Reaching down she turned the volume in her Ipod all the way to zero. "What did you say?" asked Bella, her voice coming out a little shaky.
"I said," husked Victoria, her breath only inches from her ear, "you looked like a cute little housewife, slaving in front of the stove and cooking me dinner. Too bad I can't eat your stinky human food but it's still a nice image."
Something was wrong. Victoria's words were just a bit slurred and she was acting out of character. Bella couldn't remember the last time Victoria had been this affectionate.
"You don't sound quite like yourself Tori. What's going on?" said Bella quietly, guiltily enjoying the feel of the vampire pressed up against her.
"Oh you know," she whispered in a low voice. Bella could feel her breath against her ear. "Ate some people after a drug deal went bad. They were stone drunk and high as a kite, I swear they were so full of that stuff I don't even know how they were still standing." Said Victoria as she chuckled into her ear.
Bella's breathing sped up. Standing with the taller woman pressed against her and hearing Victoria husk in her ear was turning her on and making her feel guilty. She shouldn't be feeling heat pooling in her lower belly while Victoria was telling her about killing someone. Bella sucked in a sharp breath when she felt Victoria's lips clamp around her earlobe and suck harshly.
"Tori you, you're high? Or drunk? Is that why you're doing this?" said Bella, fighting the urge to just lean back into her vampire and tilt her head back submissively giving Victoria easy access to her neck.
The feeling of fangs scraping against her earlobe made Bella gasp. "I guess I am. The bottle of Jack I had in the car helped out too." Victoria ran her nose down the length of Bella's neck and inhaled deeply. She growled and wrapped both arms around Bella, holding the younger girl so tightly it became almost uncomfortable.
"You smell so good. I want to taste you," she whispered seductively into her ear.
Victoria had never asked to bite her before. It was that fact that managed to get through her aroused haze.
"Victoria, stop." She said quietly lacing a tiny bit of power into her voice.
Victoria stopped moving, stopped breathing. Almost right away she could feel Victoria's intense displeasure and then anger. She absolutely hated when Bella used the collar to make her obey and Bella used it as little as possible. However Victoria was intoxicated and that scared her. An unpredictable vampire was dangerous and Bella wasn't comfortable tempting fate with the limits of the collar. Victoria has never been so blatantly physical with her before. That was proof enough that something was off.
"Please step back," she said quietly and Victoria did so with a slight trembling on her limbs. Bella missed the contact as soon as it was gone.
Bella turned around very aware that Victoria was still in her personal space. Bella was shocked by the amount of loathing in Victoria's red eyes.
"Tori…" she began tenderly.
"You know occasionally I forget that you keep me as a slave. Occasionally I forget that you're the enemy," she said in such a low dangerous voice it made Bella shrink back in instinctual fear. The vampire leaned in just a little bit closer. "I don't think I'll be making that mistake again."
With that Victoria turned and walked away. Bella managed to make it to her room and close the door before she began to cry.
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AN: I know people are anxiously awaiting the Cullens. Don't worry they'll be there next chapter. Promise.