-Chapter 12: War Games and Meta-Humans-

The last newborn snarled at me and crouched down in preparation – its muscles were taught and ready to spring. I smiled widely at the girl – she looked to be about seventeen or eighteen, with dirty blonde hair – and motioned her forward. She narrowed her eyes at me and flitted toward me.

She was intelligent – much smarter than her fallen coven mates. She planned to feint left and go for my side when I moved to block. As she shifted her weight and leaned to my right, I brought my right fist back to show her I was falling for her maneuver.

The moment she tilted and dove for my exposed left side, I leaped up in the air and rotated my fist, swinging it down on her mid-air form and blasting her into the dirt. She struggled, attempting to turn over and grab anything she could reach, but I planted my knee in her back and grasped her neck with both hands.

Her thoughts were frantic, then. She knew what I had done to her friends – how they had all attacked me at once and yet still lost – so she knew what was about to happen to her.

And yet, she fought on.

It was refreshing. All the specials I had killed in my human life had either fought-then-begged, or just begged. None of them went down swinging like this little spitfire, and I found myself smiling an honest smile at how right it felt.

I squeezed her neck harder with my right hand and brought my left one to her face. Lightning fast, I jammed my hand into the newborn's mouth and held onto the roof of her mouth. The girl bit down. Hard. I gave a small chuckle as a whimper escaped her throat – I wouldn't be surprised if she cracked a tooth or two.

"Goodnight," I whispered as I yanked my hand up and toward me, prying her head off like a sardine can lid. I dug my fingernails into the forehead of the detached head and pushed until I cracked it open. "Fucking Caius," I snarled as I dropped the skull pieces, the marble-like vampire brain thudding to the floor in a mess of venom. "This would be a whole lot easier if I still had my knife."

I picked up the brain and shook it off to clear the lingering venom. I pried the two hemispheres apart and started dragging my fingers down each groove and bend – one side at a time – mapping the structures and searching for the ability I suspected the newborn had. After a few moments I found the sweet spot – toward the back of the right hemisphere.

I closed my eyes and went into a trance-like-state, allowing my own ability to hum and whirl, connecting the synapses and following the new path I had discovered.

It wasn't a great ability, but it was one that I didn't have yet: tracking. Though it was nowhere near as powerful as Demetri's – or the late James', for that matter – it was useful all the same; at least until I could get Demetri's ability. It was more of an instinctive tracking power; not quite a pull in the correct direction as much as a pronounced knowledge of what to look for in able to find whoever I was looking for.

I kicked the skull pieces of the newborn into the large pyre I had built and surveyed the area. No sounds and no thoughts, just the wind whistling against the stone outpost in the dead of night. The fire burned hotter for a moment as the flames licked at the flammable vampire head, and then settled back into the smoldering blaze. I blew out a breath of relief and sat down on the ground.

I wasn't physically tired, but this routine was getting a little bit ridiculous.

In the two months since I've been down and around Mexico, I've come across three newborn covens. I say coven instead of army, not only because of the small number – usually only five or six – but also because they all lacked an adult vampire leader. Newborn vampires don't just create themselves – well, present company excluded – but none of the little demons I destroyed knew anything useful.

That was more than a little suspicious.

As far as the Cullens knew, the newborn army days were over in the south – as well as pretty much anywhere else. Victoria's had been a freak occurrence, and she wasn't very good at it anyway. But these groups of newborns – they didn't stir up trouble. They kept their kills small in number and fed on the right kind of humans to avoid suspicion. Someone was teaching them correctly, I just couldn't get a name or face from their thoughts.

I couldn't get a read on the future, either. I could see myself just fine, as well as Ryan and the Cullens, but the immediate future surrounding southern North America was murky at best. I had never had trouble seeing a vampire before, but clouded visions seemed to follow these newborns wherever I found them.

They were mostly female, too. Of the three covens I destroyed, one had all females and the second and last only had one male. While I wasn't sure what this meant – if it meant anything – it was noteworthy. Sex ratios for humans living in this area were pretty much even, so the odds say there should be an even split in the distribution of newborns as well. But there wasn't, and I wasn't sure why.

After I did a quick double check to make sure there were no vampire parts lying around, I blasted off into the night sky and headed further south.

Mexico City was rather…large. It was actually enormous, and I kicked myself for never coming here before now. The sun was just now setting over the horizon and I had had to duck into cover after dawn to prevent myself from giving everyone on the ground a light show.

I took a running leap and flew up onto one of the many, many skyscrapers. The sun may be setting, but this city was just now starting to come alive. The disgusting scent of cooked beans and bread floated in the air over the smell of human blood that seemed to seep into everything. Ethnic music could be distantly heard as well.

And faintly, the scent of vampires wafted in the wind.

I took off into the air again, this time flying high – higher than any human would be able to see in the night sky. I looked down and scanned the alleys and dimly-lit areas, searching for anything with pale skin and red eyes. A distant, Emmet-induced part of my mind was reminded of how much this view looked like one of the old Grand Theft Auto games, and I fought back the smirk that started to form on my face.

As I neared the east side of the city, I started to pick up the thoughts of newborns – and Volturi? I frowned at the thought. Weren't the Volturi assholes supposed to be for order and justice and all that?

I shook the pathetic thought from my head. Of course they were bad news – of course they were behind this newborn population boom. They were evil dicks. But what where they doing? Why were they here, apparently creating small covens of newborns?

I banked to the left and landed softly on the very outskirts of town, staying over a mile away from the group's position. From their thoughts, I discovered about six newborns and two Volturi guards. This was more than the other covens, but I wasn't sure if that was because the city was so much bigger or because the Volturi were overseeing them.

One of the newborns caught sight of one of the guards and I had to bite back a snarl. It was that fucking bastard, Felix. He was just as big as he always was, emitting an intimidating no-fucking-around aura that had the newborns ducking their heads.

The one positive I found, as I peered at his face through thoughts, was the vertical scar that was embedded into his left eye. To the newborns, the scar made him look more dangerous. To me, it was a small victory – a show of my abilities, even as I was outmatched and outnumbered.

Next to him stood an equally-massive vampire – Santiago, I learned from Felix's thoughts. He was more elongated than Felix, taller and leaner, but still ripped with muscle.

They would not be leaving here alive.

I took off into the sky again and flew level with the tree tops, careful to stay downwind so they couldn't catch my scent. When I got within sight of the group, I sucked in a silent breath. There weren't just vampires down there.

Hybrids.

Three half-human, half-vampire hybrids were scattered throughout the three newborns – who were all female, I noted. The Halflings were physically about two years old, so they couldn't have been born long ago. Well, at least I know why I couldn't get a clear vision of the future. Nessie wrecked Alice's and my visions, so three would completely eclipse our abilities.

And then it hit me.

Hybrids were strong, sure, but not as strong as full vampires. They had human weaknesses like the need to breathe and their pumping hearts. They couldn't be put back together again if they were dismembered – as far as I knew – so there was only one real reason for the Volturi to be interested in them.

They intended to use them to block Alice's visions – to attack and destroy my family without warning. Of course, I already knew this from Caius' little speech, but seeing the preparations was something different.

The familiar red haze that I thought I had gotten over in my early weeks as a newborn surged back, full swing, and I dive bombed Santiago. Less than a half-second after I smashed into him, he was in pieces on the ground. The newborns, hybrids, and the lone Volturi guard all turned to face me – the vampires crouching low and the hybrids scrambling behind the newborns.

"Impossible," Felix breathed out, his ruby eyes were dinner plates and pure shock and fear rocked his body as he took in my new form. "You were dead. We killed you." Felix's memories flickered back and forth through my last moments as a human, trying to find the instance where I was bitten. There was no such memory.

I could almost feel my silver eyes darken and turn onyx. I smiled without teeth as most of the rage filtered from my thoughts. I was in control again and this wouldn't be a fast death for the giant guard.

And though no words were spoken, Felix's inner predator recognized mine in that moment, and the look on his face said all his thoughts didn't need to. He had attacked me and helped kill me, and now I had come back. And he knew, even with his newborns, he would die tonight. His jaw clenched and he nodded; he crouched down and signaled me with his thoughts for me to begin.

And so I did.

Without raising a hand, I mentally flipped him off his feet and into the air, where he struggled to get a foothold but found none. His thoughts, now, were angry. He had expected me to fight him – really fight him, fist to fist. Felix offered me no fair fight the last time we met, so why should I offer him one now? I unleashed Jane's power on his mind and he howled and wailed in agony, causing the newborns and hybrids to flinch and back away.

I extended my hand and – for show – slowly began to clench my fingers into a fist. Felix's voice raised an octave as his skin began to crack and splinter, sending beads of venom falling to the ground – sizzling on contact like acid rain. My fingers met my palm and Felix's body parts started to flake off, starting with his fingers and toes and working up toward his torso. Within seconds, he was nothing but a puddle of venom, sprinkled with vampire dust.

The newborns froze for a moment, but the second I took a step in their direction they hissed and scattered – not one daring to fight me. I caught one of them and decapitated her quickly, pulling off her limbs afterward and leaving her dismembered body on the ground.

Newborn number two had grabbed one of the hybrids before making a run for the city. Her thoughts were protective of the child, though most of her mind was focused on escaping me. I flew after her, since she was faster than me on foot, and wrapped my arm around her neck in a choke hold. The hybrid dropped to the ground and rolled several meters before hitting a tree and sitting up to watch the newborn and me fight.

I crouched down with her in my hold and she lost her footing, falling into me as I squeezed and twisted. Her head popped off with a quick metallic rending sound and rolled a few feet. I ripped her body apart, too, and eyed the child – who had tears streaked down her face as she stared at the disembodied head of her…mother? The hybrid thought of the newborn as her mother?

I took a step toward the child, but was stopped by the frantic thoughts of the third newborn – which I had obviously let escape me. My new tracking ability let me know she was heading east, away from the city and into the Mexican desert. I abandoned the child and few after her.

The blood is mine, now. No one to stop me. No Volturi and no others. Just me!

The thoughts repeated in her head as she ran further and further. Quickly, I figured out why. Screams and wails started bubbling up from the run-down building as I caught sight of it from the air. It was too large to be a house – too rigid and structured – but was too small to be a factory.

I touched down a hundred meters from the building and was instantly saturated with the scent of fresh human blood. It was free flowing – not merely the scent that all humans carried – and varied greatly in aroma. I snarled as my eyes turned obsidian, my form shaking under my effort to control my thirst. I flitted forward and crashed through the already-destroyed door, following the thudding heartbeats and screams of panic from below.

The basement door unhinged and slammed into the frame as I burst through it – shaking the foundation of the ramshackle and causing pellets of dust and debris to rain down upon my head. My snarling cut off – as well as my breathing – as I took in the scene.

It was straight out of a horror movie, with floor and walls almost painted with blood and the bodies thrown about – some with their limbs missing. That was only the surface, though. My eyes widened as I took in the real evil that had once taken place here.

Lining the cleanest walls were hospital beds with IV drips, heart monitors, and other hospital equipment. There were four occupied, each with a still-warm human corpse chained to the bed railings. Some of the heart monitors gave the all-too-familiar flat line beeping sound, while others were smashed to bits.

They were all females. And they were all pregnant.

And suddenly, everything I had seen in my months in this place made sense. These girls – some looked to be only fifteen or sixteen – were pregnant with hybrids. Only, they weren't dying after the birth – they were being turned. My mind flickered back to the largely-female newborn covens; the mothers didn't have hybrids with them when I destroyed them, and there was no scent lingering on them, either.

"The Volturi must have been at this since they found out about Renesmee," I whispered, still holding stock still and glancing around the gory room. I wanted to be disgusted by what I was seeing, but the darker part of my mind reminded me that not so long ago it was I who did terrible things to young girls for my own purposes.

A snarl and the sound of rending metal snapped me out of my mental processes, and I bolted toward the sound as I remembered the newborn I was supposed to be killing. Through a long hallway that seemed to extend further out under the ground than the building's dimensions, I entered what used to be some sort of holding area. The newborn was crouched down low amongst the chaos of mangled human bodies, sucking the blood from an elderly man – who appeared to be the only one left alive – as he struggled to escape.

I flitted behind the newborn – who was so enraptured with her meal that she couldn't focus on me – and grabbed hold of her arms, pulling them behind her back. She detached from the man's neck and hissed, trying to break my hold and bite into me. I gripped her arms harder and planted my foot against her back, and pushed hard.

The screams were much louder than they would have been outside, since we were in such an enclosed area with no windows. The newborn flopped on the floor and attempted to flee, not seeming to understand she didn't have her arms anymore. I moved to block her path, though she couldn't even get to her feet, and placed my feet on either side of her neck. She struggled and squirmed and tried to flip herself over.

I gritted my teeth, and with a jerk of my hips, twisted ninety degrees to the left and effectively snapped her head off. What remained attached to her torso relaxed on the ground, going still. I sighed and took a step back to assess the carnage.

The human bodies in here, about eight in number, weren't all female – and like the newborn's last meal, weren't all young. I took note of the reinforced bars that had once sealed this room from the outside and nodded to myself. This was the cattle pen – where blood was harvested for the hybrids and their mothers.

I bent down to pick up the newborn's head, when I stilled. Before, with all the blood and screaming humans, I had blocked out – to the best of my ability – my telepathy and pathokinesis, but now that the building was silent and without life I allowed my gifts full reign. I had expected there to be no thoughts or emotions at all, since this place was so isolated and the newborn had slaughtered everyone here. But there wasn't nothing.

It was profound, the amount of emotion and thought that was present in the room with me – and indeed, it was in the room with me, whatever it was. Fear and revulsion, panic, loss, and disbelief were some of the many emotions flowing through the air. The thoughts, too, were frantic and disjointed in their density, and I briefly wondered how on Earth I could miss them.

Is that? But…no. Ben is…no. They're all dead. What if she…no, they never see me, the girl's mental voice rang clear in my head.

I dropped the head and stood erect. Never saw her? How could a human hide from a vampire? Then again, she was alive – seemingly in the fucking room with me – and had been spared the newborn's frenzy. I took a slow step further into the sea of bodies and the panic doubled.

"Who's there?" I demanded to the room. No audible response; not even a heartbeat, and I was sure whoever was here wasn't a vampire.

The girl – wherever she was – was thrown into absolute panic. It was nearly catatonic, the level of which she feared me discovering her. I closed my eyes and focused on her thoughts, trying to get an idea as to where she was hiding.

In her mind, she was gripping her withdrawn legs to her body and trembling. Her eyes were looking right at my silhouetted form, as her vision wasn't developed enough to see as clearly as I could.

She could see me? I opened my eyes wider, but still caught no movement. I could literally feel her blood pounding in her head from her thoughts, but there was no heartbeat in the room with me. How is she doing this? No normal human being can hide from a vampire in a closed off room.

The thought caught in my mind. Normal human? What if she wasn't normal?

I'll admit I was a bit upset at myself for letting this of all things slip my mind. How could I forget the existence of supers and meta-humans when I, myself, was one? I smiled softly into the dark.

This girl could turn invisible – cloak herself from all the senses. It wasn't a mental trick, either, my Divinium-hard skin and Bella's shield prevented any shenanigans. This was the real deal – the real-life invisible woman. My ability bubbled and snarled, demanding I take her and her power, but I pushed the urge down and calmed my thoughts. It was getting easier all the time.

"I'm not going to hurt you," I spoke softly into the room this time, though I wasn't sure if I meant it. "You can cloak yourself. It's how you managed to stay alive all this time, right? It's how you hid from that newborn and it's how you're hiding from me, even now." I walked further, still, into the room, making sure to adjust my path so that I neared the girl's hiding spot in the corner of the room.

"Look," I said when I realized she still wasn't coming out. "I don't know how much you know about vampires, but I don't sleep and I don't get tired, and I happen to be blocking the only door out of here. Even if you make it past me, you'll never outrun me and this place is very far away from the city."

Speaking of the city reminded me of where I was: Mexico City. But, this girl wasn't thinking in Spanish; she was thinking in English. I sighed and considered how unlucky the poor girl must feel, coming to Mexico and being imprisoned by vicious vampires. I pushed a wave of reassurance mixed with lethargy at her, and her form flickered and melded in and out of existence – kind of like the Predator movies.

I pushed again – more this time – and her form was completely reveled.

She was hunched into a ball like I saw through her mind, with light brown hair and a fair complexion. She was dressed in rags, which at one time resembled a t-shirt and jeans, and had no shoes or socks on. Though she wasn't standing, I could tell she would be much taller than I was, with a skinny, lanky build. Splattered on her skin and sticking in her hair was the all-too-familiar crimson red of blood.

And even though she didn't have her glasses on, I recognized her immediately.

"Angela Weber?"

End Notes: So, this is a really long chapter, compared to my others. I honestly had no idea how far I went over my usual limit until I was finished.

So anyway, how about Angela? What do you think?