The Hunt.

Hopeless

Agreeing to meet Victoria the next day, following a long night of sleep, Bella made her way back inside the dingy bar, and past the bartender, who muttered upon her passing: "oi, you're two minutes late you are, I should throw you back out, I should!"

Ignoring his ramblings, she slowly pushed her way up the flight of stairs to her room. Physically she was exhausted, but mentally she churned with questions that continued to arise with no answers. Rounding the corner, Bella was just remembering how she had slammed her door shut with no keys to hand, when she noticed her door was ajar.

Pursing her lips and trying to calm her paranoid thoughts, she inched as close as she could to the gap in the door and used it to peer inside. As she lay her palm on the door, a soft spoken male voice whispered, "don't be shy. I won't bite."

The voice had a heavy English accent, and therefore belonged to someone that Isabella was not acquainted with. She pushed the door open completely and stepped inside. Having experienced the shock of meeting Victoria not twenty minutes ago, Bella didn't have enough adrenaline left in her to be frightened by this unknown presence.

The moon outlined him sat on the small bed she had been provided for the night, but all Isabella could make out was his thick hair and heavy brows. "Who are you, and what do you want?" She demanded.

The man did not answer right away, instead striving to set Bella on edge by puffing leisurely on the cigar burning between his fingers. When he chuckled softly, it was released in a cloud of white, sweet smelling smoke. "Who I am is of no importance, but what I want is a different story."

Bella crossed her arms in annoyance. "Would you cut to the chase already? The dramatics are starting to piss me off."

The stranger kept quiet in the face of her outburst, and Isabella repressed the urge to sway on her feet. She was so tired that her eyes were weighted and trying their hardest to find closure. The man reached inside his jacket a second later and removed a box of matches. It seemed that his cigar had gone out.

Blinking in succession to stay awake, Bella watched as he struck the match and brought it to the cigar in his mouth. The flame danced across his face, revealing skin heavily scarred and lined. The spike of fear shooting through Isabella's stomach woke her up, straightening her slouch and making her pay attention.

There was an unknown man before her, and this wasn't the time to be falling asleep. Silence stretched between the two of them, and Bella could tell that the stranger liked putting her on edge. Perhaps she had insulted him by her lack of fear earlier on, and now he was trying his best to ratchet up the tension. It was working.

"Your new friend," he finally answered in another cloud of smoke.

Wrapping bravado around her like a well-worn cloak, Bella snorted and tried to push past the unease that stirred at this man's knowledge. She had only met Victoria twenty minutes ago, which meant he knew what Victoria was too. "She tried to kill me, I wouldn't say that qualifies for friendship."

The man barked out of laugh, startling Isabella so suddenly she jumped out of her skin. "Smart arse are we?"

Bella backed away to the window, not willing to present her back to him. "What do you want with-?"

Isabella cut of suddenly as a blur of red hair flooded in from the still open door. Had Victoria come back? Were her and this man working together, and planning to kill her? Why would Victoria do that, when she had every opportunity to kill Bella in the alley? And had she even seen a blur of red come through the door, or was she imagining it?

The stranger had continued talking, despite Bella's abrupt cut off in conversation. "I want a lot of things from that bitch, all of what she stole from me! You're going to help me get it."

Swallowing past a dry throat, her skin covered in goosebumps and her neck prickling, Bella whispered, "what did she steal from you?"

He removed the cigar from his mouth, and attempted to talk. Except blood sprayed through his mouth instead, coating the walls and Bella's face. Gasping and hastily wiping it off her cheek, Bella looked back to the stranger and noticed the spike producing from his chest. Victoria was bent over him, cradling his shoulders like a lover and whispering in his ear.

Whatever she was saying was too low for Bella to hear, or it might have been the ringing rolling through her eardrums that was doing it. She had just watched someone be murdered, and she hadn't done anything to stop it. Looking up again in shock, Bella screeched, "what the hell did you just do!?"

Isabella's mouth was immediately smothered by Victoria's blood soaked hand. "Shh, they're here. We have to get out, now."

Bella gripped Victoria's ice cold, solid arm and pealed it from her face. Victoria must have allowed it, because Bella's strength didn't have even an eight of Victoria's, despite it being better than a human… spitting on the ground, Isabella tried to eradicate the foul taste of blood from her lips and tongue.

"What the hell is going on, Victoria?"

"Someone wants me dead, and now that you've been seen with me, they want you dead too."

"Why come back for me?" Bella demanded, walking closer to Victoria who was stained crimson. "You don't care if I live or die, so why risk it?"

Victoria let out a laugh, but it was dry and humorless. "You don't live as long as I have by working alone," she answered cryptically. "Now come on!"

Following Victoria out of the door, Bella tried to keep up with her large strides. Gunshots rounded off into the night sky, and Isabella flinched. "What's going on, Victoria?!"

Her voice was nearly drowned out by yelling, screaming and heavy rain but of course Victoria could hear her, she just chose to pretend that she couldn't. Bella growled under her breath, frustrated that she was walking into the unknown, and frustrated that she working with a demon. Remember who you're doing this for, Bella reminded herself.

Rounding the corner on a stride, Victoria didn't pause at the fire exit, but rather ripped the chains off and pushed right through it. Running up two more flights of stairs, Victoria broke the door of the hinges as they reached the roof. The weather was awful. Rain fell from the sky in torrents and thunder ominously rumbled in the distance.

Soaked to the bone, Bella swiped her hood over her head in a futile attempt to better see what was happening around her. Gun fire left Bella's ears ringing and terrified screams left her dazed. Enough sanity hung around for her to properly make out the pounding boots coming up the stairway behind her.

"Shit," Victoria hissed.

Bending to pick up the door she had torn off earlier, she slammed it back into its prior setting and manually folded the hinges over so the door was locked into place with curled metal. Pivoting back to face her, Victoria wrapped her hand like an iron fist around Bella's arm. "Don't fall, or I'm leaving you behind."

Isabella was glad Victoria had red hair, because it was her only guiding light on the pitch black roof. "Do you know where we're going?" Bella screamed over all the noise.

"Yes. Here." Victoria swung Bella by the grip she had on her arm and shoved her onto the ledge of building.

"Are you crazy!? I'm not jumping!"

Bella's eyes panned the yawning gap between the edge of the building she was swaying on, and the lip of the building opposite her. Behind her, a tremendous crashing sounded across the roof. When Bella dared to look over her shoulder, it was the door Victoria had crammed back into place skidding across the floor.

Victoria had looked behind her too, but now looked at Bella. "It's up to you. Stay and die, or jump and maybe survive."

With a blur of red, Victoria had congealed from Isabella's side to the other roof. Throwing a look back over her shoulder, Bella saw the heavily armed men running towards her with their guns aimed.

"Fuck it."

Pulling back from the edge, Bella ran as fast as she could, and then jumped. Time seemed to slow on her way over, her arms and legs were dead weights, held up by the air passing beneath her. Her hair and clothes lifted in the wind, and the rain obscured her vision. With a crack of thunder, Bella tumbled onto the opposite roof, colliding with Victoria's hard chest.

With her head pressed into Victoria's chest, Bella took a deep breath and tried to calm her racing heart. While the adrenaline drained from her body, the pain quickly moved in to take its place and suddenly she was screaming into Victoria's skin, because there was a bullet in her hand.

Victoria straightened up and shook her roughly, cutting off her screams. "You can walk, come on!"

Bella took one step, and then two, before she was suddenly colliding with the ground and the world was fading into black. When her heavy eyelids opened much later, she bolted upright and lifted her hand to her face. It hurt to move it, and it was wrapped in a bloody bandage. The room was brightly lit, and had an odd odor lingering in the air.

Through the open doorway a woman appeared, distracting Isabella from her survey of the messy room covered in clothes and disarrayed furniture. "Who are you?"

"I see you're awake," the woman replied.

Bella didn't answer, because she was too busy staring at the woman's bright blue hair. When the blue haired woman started speaking again, Bella continued to watch her hair ripple. "I'm Laike. I'm an old friend of Victoria's."

"Speak of the devil," Victoria said by way of announcement. Her crimson eyes pinned Bella and she grinned.

Bella's face lit up with anger. "Do you want to tell me what's going on?"

Victoria shrugged with nonchalance. "Nothing to tell."

Bella sat up straighter. "Bullshit! Why were you running from bullets? You're a vampire for God sake!"

Victoria's lips thinned. "Maybe I was trying to save you. Look what happened to your hand, could have been your head."

"More bullshit. You told me if I fell you'd leave me."

Victoria rolled her eyes. "Look I'll tell you later. I do have something for you though."

Reaching into her jean pocket, alerting Bella for the first time that she had changed out of her gold dress, Victoria retrieved a patterned bracelet, decorated in silver moons and stars, with the tiniest inscription carved around the edges: my love. Bella's throat tightened and tears sprung to her eyes.

"Where…" she paused, her voice nearly gone with how tight it had closed. She pulled herself together, trying not to show weakness in front of Victoria and her friend. They were vampires, and Victoria was sadistic. She could do anything, at any time and it would all be in the name of entertainment. "Where did you find it?"

Victoria looked at her nails and scrubbed them across her shirt. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you, but it had your scent all over it, and another's…"

With a shaking hand, Isabella placed in on her left wrist, due to her right one being bandaged tightly. "You want to tell me who we're looking for now?" Victoria asked.

Bella shook her head. "I've been looking for someone for years now, and that's all you need to know."

Victoria's lip curled, obviously annoyed at the power play between them. Bella didn't understand why she was still alive under Victoria's eye, and what she could really offer Victoria for helping her. Perhaps being immortal led to boredom, and so Victoria was temporarily allowing the disobedience.

"Something supernatural then? A boyfriend perhaps?"

"Something like that," Bella answered vaguely. Switching topics, she asked: "why don't you start talking? I got shot, and I want to know why."

Victoria laughed and her friend joined in. Annoyed, Bella threw the blanket back and got off the bed. "This isn't a game. People are dead, because of you."

Victoria gave Bella a look that made her insides wither. "Do you want the information my friend has, or do you want to keep bothering me about something that has absolutely nothing to do with you."

Isabella scowled. "This is bullshit. I won't work with you if you're going to keep secrets and get me in shit. I've worked alone long enough."

The red head shot up from her perch on the bed, her eyes wildly alive in the bright room. "I'm getting bored of your whining, Bella. I might kill you now."

Bella shrugged her shoulders. "I've got nothing to lose. Do it."

Victoria stared her down, not moving and so Bella repeated herself: "DO IT."

In the blink of an eye, Victoria's cold hand was wrapped around Bella's throat, and she had shoved her over a dresser, forcing Bella to bend to her imposing body. "You have everything to lose, Isabella."

Bella froze at her full name curling over Victoria's full lips and into her own gasping mouth. She couldn't decide if her lack of breath was the unknown name or Victoria's pinching fingers. "What did you say?"

Victoria smirked softly, her red eyes piercing Bella's brown ones. "I've found something. Something to help you find the supernatural person you're looking for."

Straining against the wood biting into her spine, Bella ground words between her teeth. "How? I haven't told you anything."

The red heads lip curled in disgust. "Yes, you've been most unhelpful. But I couldn't sit and wait around while you slept for three days."

Surprised at how long she had been out, Bella let Victoria keep talking, and tried to pull some much needed air back in through her parted lips when she released Bella's throat. "I found a name, and the bracelet. Wrapped in scent."

Rubbing her sore throat while Victoria sat down and flipped through a magazine, Isabella asked, "what name?"

"Abraham," Victoria answered through the flipping of pages.

Bella's heart pounded in excitement. Nine years of searching and turning up dead ends, and she finally had a name. These past couple of weeks had been especially hard, and Bella had been so close to giving up, to calling it hopeless and living a miserable life. Now she had a lead. It seemed all she had ever needed was the help of a vampire.

"Was there anything else?"

"A location, but I'm not telling you it until I get my end of the deal, Bella. All I need is a little help, like I'm giving you."

"What help? How can I, a simple human, help you, a vampire?"

Victoria lay the magazine down and smirked. "I'll tell you in time."

Annoyed that she was playing games, Bella growled. "How long?"

"Depends."

"On what?" Bella demanded, stomping forward.

Victoria gripped Bella by the chin, her tight fingers guaranteed to leave bruises behind on her fair skin. Isabella's heart tried to calm down from how fast Victoria had moved. "Until I get bored of making your heart pound."

AN: Massive thanks to my beta Cheri!.