A/N: Hello again lovely readers… cricket TT. oh well. I pretend I'm famous. Boohoo. :P Read and review, if you exist out there!!

Disclaimer: I don't own Twilight, whee. 

To meh reviewers:

Atthisvelocity: Oh, thank you so much x3. Yes, I love Jasper and no one writes very good fanfiction about him! It's so sad! I will do mah best :D

MishyFish: meh. :P read for youself, missy.

Angelius Cullen: wow thanks haha :D yay hugs I will most def check out your fics

-Bad Day-

The forest loomed ominously on either side of Sasha as she sprinted towards her destination. Having lived in the Big Apple for so many years, she was used to the sky being slightly cramped by tall buildings- but the concrete jungle was nothing compared to the very real one.

Frowning slightly, the vampire reminded herself of the reasons she'd chosen to up and move to Forks, of all places. Well, the first and most obvious was that she couldn't stand New York anymore. Secondly, she needed a place that was constantly under cloud cover- dark, rainy- i.e. not sunny. Therefore, the west coast, being as far as New York as possible, and the general Seattle area being what it was weather-wise… it was perfect.

Then came the problem of living arrangements. Sasha was for obvious reasons a city girl, and had originally wanted to live in Seattle- but had realized with the paltry sum she had accumulated, there was no way she could rent an apartment there for long while searching for a job. As well, she was tired of dealing with the mosh-pit of humanity night in and night out- it was time for a reversal. So she had picked the tiny town of Forks.

Small. Obscure. Dark. Rainy. Gloomy. Creepy. Perfect.

And although she had caught a whiff of something that smelled DISGUSTING as the taxi had passed the Indian reservation of La Push on her way into town- probably beach-goers littering or something- the air was clean and nature was thriving here. It was a nice change from the pollution of the city.

Sasha slowed down before she reached the edge of the forest, brushing herself off needlessly as she walked to her apartment building. She climbed into her jumpy rental car- a Toyota 4-Runner- and urged it onto the highway for Seattle.

"Time to look for a job." She yawned widely as the ocean coast flew by on one side, the forest on the other. Again, she didn't notice a white Volvo following stealthily behind, pushing 110 mph.

--

After only thirty minutes of talking to the (drooling) foreman of the construction site in downtown Seattle, Sasha had secured a job overseeing the site. She had explained to the foreman her "condition", and he had taken her on for night shift. She rolled her eyes as she turned her back and walked away from the crowd of slightly bug-eyed men. Catching one of them whistling at her, she had given him a vicious uppercut; that had shut the rest right up.

'And now,' she mused happily, 'to go home and relax. There ought to be a good movie on…'

Reaching out a slim hand to turn on the radio for the drive home, Sasha noticed something odd in the corner of her eye. There was a small piece of white paper sticking out of the glove box. She frowned slightly and lightly pinched the end of it, pulling gently until it slithered free intact. Her crimson irises deepened and her pupils shrank suddenly as she let out a quiet snarl.

Do not think your presence here has gone unnoticed. As of today we are watching your every step- do not think that we are incapable of doing this. Make no mistake; we are what you feared us to be. If you feed within the city limits of Forks, we WILL put an end to you.

On an attempt to be at peace, we invite you to our home for refreshments this coming Saturday, if you last that long.

We will be expecting you.

The note ended with an address printed in fine gold script. Sasha stared at the note, reading over and over again, comprehending less each time. Who would threaten one such as her?

Then it hit her with the force of a train, which she brushed off as quickly as she would a train- there were others of her kind here. But why would they threaten her, and then invite her for… refreshments?

Locking her eyes on the road ahead, Sasha's quick mind whirled. It must be their established territory, and she was trespassing- so the motives behind the threatening were purely animalistic. But inviting her over for refreshments? As a peace offering? Most of the other vampires Sasha had met were anything but peace-loving.

She fingered the lacy pattern of scars just beneath her jaw line, becoming more and more furious with herself by the second. Of course there were already vampires here. This was the perfect place for them to live in the U.S. Why hadn't she thought of that? Had she forgotten that she was not the only vampire in existence? Hadn't the war proved to her that some areas of the country were literally crawling with others of her kind?

Chewing her lip angrily, the dark-haired vampire bounced treacherously over the gravel road leading back into Forks. Some people thought they had bad Mondays, but this one pretty much took the cake. And the worst part was, her first day of school was tomorrow.

--

On Tuesday morning, Sasha rolled out of her apartment feeling oddly confident. She had thought the note over again and again, and realized the situation wasn't as bad as it could be- the other vampires could have just offed her as soon as she had set foot on their land, and they had just made her aware of their presence. So there was no threat of surprise attacks. As well, they had only said she couldn't feed within the Forks city limits- they hadn't said anything about Seattle!

Wearing a clingy black mid-thigh length dress over a pair of cherry colored leggings with her usual black peacoat and combat boots, Sasha swung out of her truck onto the dust of the parking lot at the high school. She walked gracefully to the front building and sought out her first class- English. This should be a breeze. She had only been speaking English for what, 170 years?

An hour and a half later, she made her way to history class. This one should also be a piece of cake (she chortled to herself over that one), even more so than English. Thanks to her perfect memory, she knew exactly every detail of the past few centuries.

Lunch was a different cup of tea entirely (she really had to stop making these human food puns) - here a HUGE room of humans stared at her, as opposed to only a small group in one classroom. Damn.

The tables full of humans stretched all the way to the back. In a way, Sasha mused, it really was a cafeteria. Mentally conking herself on the head for making another food joke, she made her way over to a secluded-looking table on the left side of the large room.

After about twenty-one minutes of studying the ceiling tiles (there were exactly 784.5 in the room, not counting light fixtures or the ones with food dripping off of them from last lunch's food fight) Sasha laid her head down on the table heavily with a dull thump.

"Uuuuugh. Eternity in a human cafeteria… how existential…" she mumbled against the plastic of the table, her squashed nose making her voice sound like an old crone's. However, though it was momentarily squashed, the nose was doing its job.

Sasha almost shot out of her chair as a foreign scent registered in her brain. But she kept her head down and her eyes closed, searching with her heightened vampire senses.

Yes, the weird smell was emanating from the opposite side of the room. How could she have missed it? She sat up carefully, making sure she was looking fervently at her notebook for at least five minutes before she slid a surreptitious glance across the room.

Sasha almost dropped the notebook. Right across the room sat not only the two angel-boys she had encountered the day before, but two other eerily beautiful ones- a male and a female. The girl was tall and willowy, with gorgeous golden hair waving down her back. The young man was big- he could have been a body builder, but for his almost oppressively handsome face. Both had tawny golden eyes.

And, next to the slim boy with the copper hair, was seated another girl. She was fair and frail looking, with long dark hair and large brown sentimental eyes. There was obviously something between them. However, she did not have the fierce beauty the others held.

They all held trays, but none of them ate except the dark-haired girl. They stared straight ahead, seeming to communicate without words.

Suddenly it all made sense, like an infuriating jigsaw puzzle had jumped into place of its own volition. The golden-eyed creatures were vampires… exactly how, Sasha didn't know, but she'd deal with that later. The dark haired girl, however, was a human. They had the signature smell, but different in some way. It was… musky. She hadn't been able to smell the two boys yesterday because of the way the human scent of the school had overwhelmed her- she had failed to pick the elusive vampire scent out.

They must have sent that note to her. Sasha had half a mind to march over there and tell them what she thought of them in the loudest subhuman-hearing voice possible.

'But then again… the big one looks dangerous. And the tall one…' Sasha barely held back a snarl of surprise. This was MUCH worse than she thought.

Eyeing the pattern of frosty scarring that encrusted one side of the tall, blonde vampire's neck and jaw with a few half moon shapes scattered around his eyebrows and temples, that obviously continued down under his shirt, Sasha simply disappeared from her seat, running so fast she had gone invisible. She skidded into the girls' bathroom, which was blessedly empty, leaning over the bathroom sink and closing her eyes. If she had been physically able to throw up, she would have. Shaking, she unbuttoned and took off her coat.

The same light, lacy scarring that resembled a multitude of delicate crescent moons covered the outer sides of her forearms, biceps, and shoulders, lightly dusting up her neck under her jaw line, especially concentrated in the area where her jugular vein used to be. The red-eyed beauty in the mirror raised a trembling hand to touch the pale smattering of the half-moon shapes that curled like a mysterious tattoo around her earlobes, and the three or four above her eyebrows.

She never thought she would see that scar pattern on another person… thought she had escaped all traces of that part of her past.

Apparently she was wrong. Terribly wrong.

Sasha closed her eyes and remembered.

--

"Captain? Captain Baryon?"

Sasha closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose between her fingers, as she'd seen many of the officers do.

"We'll discuss this later, Private," she said in a tone that meant the end of the conversation. "Go to your barracks."

"Yessir," said the private nervously, snapping to attention like a salmon. He then marched stiffly out of her cabin.

Sasha rolled her eyes before she could stop herself. She was tired of dealing with all these fresh recruits- they didn't know their canteens from their sabers!

"I'm going on patrol," she called out to her commanding officer. He nodded briefly, intensely studying a map of the area.

Ducking out of the cabin was a relief. It was swelteringly hot in that little room, and out here it wasn't much better- but it was quite lovely in comparison. The muggy south Texas air was cloying and filled with mosquitoes- not a problem to a vampire, however.

After taking refuge under a gnarled mesquite tree for a moment, Sasha took off, her short hair ruffling around her ears. Minutes later, she stood beside a crumbling orphanage in El Paso, her gray confederate uniform unruffled. She couldn't decide which uniform she liked better- doing reconnaissance for the Union would do that to a girl. Not that they knew she was a girl, of course.

She paced out into the street, blending perfectly with the other rebels in the crowd. Everything seemed to be in order here. The drunken bar fights seemed to have subsided much since the last month she had visited.

'Pity,' she mused, 'I didn't feel guilty feeding from the underbelly of this city. I may have to find other sources of sustenance.'

Suddenly she felt a small warm hand tugging on her own. Casting her eyes down behind her, she saw a tiny girl, half starved to death, with a pleading look in her large black eyes.

"Por favor, capitan, ayudanos! Estamos muriendo de hambre y de enfermedad…"

Sasha knew enough Spanish to understand the words 'hunger' and 'sickness', and of course 'dying'.

Curiously, she allowed the little girl to lead her into a dark alleyway. Whatever was back here, it couldn't possibly be scarier than her.

The alleyway eventually widened, and then culminated into a dead end. It was here in the darkness that they stopped, and the little girl turned her large eyes on Sasha once again.

"Where is your family, dear one?" she asked the girl.

The tiny ragamuffin suddenly grinned widely, showing a mouthful of sharp white teeth, and spoke in a disturbingly mature voice. "Right here."

It was then that the first set of snapping jaws closed around her slim neck, grating on her stony cold skin. Sasha howled in pain, shattering the silence of the night

--

Sasha gritted her teeth, remembering how many scrapes she'd had to rip and tear herself out of as a rogue vampire in the Deep South during the American civil war. Every clan had wanted her for their own- but she was far more interested in her missions for her human officers than slaughtering other covens for a few square feet of blood territory.

She'd never wanted to be reminded of that hellish place again, but the beautiful young man with the scars had sent her back.

One thing was for sure, however: whatever the hell lay in store for her on Saturday, it would be a surprise. No matter what she did to prepare for it.

She growled behind her fangs. I hate surprises.

A/N: Phew! Heavy stuff there, dear readers. :D Please REVIEW. I give you twinkies.