Sorry this took so long, but it's been a busy few months, children, and I couldn't get back to this one. But hey, you forgive me, right? Anyway we're almost done, so maybe I'll get these out faster. Maybe.
Newborns…newborns…terrible strength and bloodlust and fury, fueled by the blood still burning in their veins, the last remnants of their humanity being devoured by their new vampire bodies. Bella had both seen newborn vampires in action, and lived through the experience herself in the last few years. And was well aware of just how dangerous they could be. Case in point would be the gun-wielding newborn pinning her to the cold, wet Washington forest floor, her bright red eyes burning with fury from her camouflage paint streaked face. The newborn pressed the dangerous-looking black pistol she held in her hands down harder unto Bella's granite-hard forehead as the older vampire tried to take her measure.
"Don't try anything stupid, Cullen." The newborn growled, her sickly-sweet vampire voice carrying uncharacteristically hard edge.
"I wasn't…" Bella started to protest, but the newborn carried on as if she hadn't spoken.
"This is a Fabrique Nationale Five-Seven pistol. It's loaded with military grade 5.7 millimeter ammunition; it will punch through what used to be your skull and bounce around inside like a pinball, erasing anything you've known and everyone you've ever loved. It won't kill you. It will just unmake you."
Bella froze; what she knew about guns and bullets couldn't fill a page and mainly consisted of careful gun safety lessons from her father. The newborn could be lying. The newborn seemed to be undoubtedly insane. But for all Bella knew everything she'd just said was exactly true; and the mere thought terrified her. She looked away from the newborn, afraid to meet her eyes, afraid that a mere gaze might provoke her somehow.
"Please. Don't." she whispered.
"Name?" The newborn demanded, Bella hesitated, trying to remember how to speak, taken off guard by the sudden demand, "Name?" the new born repeated, angrily.
"Bella Cullen!"
"Good. Where's the rest of your family?"
Bella's closed her eyes, not wanting to answer the question, unwilling to put her daughter and husband in danger. The newborn sensed her hesitation, and Bella heard a metallic *click* as she cocked back the hammer on the sleek pistol, "Is Jasper Hale there?" the newborn asked, taking a different track, as if she sensed Bella would never betray the rest of her coven.
"W-what?" Bella was taken off guard by the demand,
"Jasper Hale."
"Yes…he's with us." Bella answered to confused and frightened to think of a lie.
Just like that, the pistol was gone. Bella blinked, hard, and slowly began to sit up; when the newborn didn't stop her, she got to her feet, carefully. She stopped cold when she got her first full view of the newborn; it was a young woman, or at least it seemed to Bella to be a young woman; her hair had been drawn up under a dark green bandanna, her face was covered in camo-paint, the light and dark greens done up in a grotesque imitation of the Joker's make-up from the latest Batman film. She wore bulky fatigues patterned with black and green tiger stripes, while a heavy black equipment vest bound her torso; its pockets brimmed with magazines of ammunition and olive drab spheres that Bella could only assume were grenades. A holster was strapped to her left thigh, and the heavy pistol was resting in it. The newborn had exchanged it for a stubby black rifle with a short scope mounted on the top. Something larger and heavier hung on her back, covered in a heavy canvas case.
"Then I'm the least of your family's problems, Cullen."
House looked carefully out the back window, his cold blue eyes sweeping the tree line with a concentrated focus rarely seen outside of his medical practice.
"Close the shutters." he curtly ordered the half-breed vampire sitting in the overstuffed chair in front of the impromptu medical musings he'd scribbled on the wall,
Renesmee hopped lightly to her feet, but made no move to do as the human doctor asked. House turned to glare at her in annoyance,
"Sooner might be better."
"What's this House? Another trick?" she demanded, her clear, girlish voice thick with suspicion.
The human ignored her and limped heavily over to a row of switches on the back wall and began to flip them at random, turning lights, ceiling fans and stereo systems on until he found the right switch and heavy steel shutters began to slide down across the massive windows that covered the back of the Cullens mansion.
"Distraction?" Renesmee asked, her dark suspicion not doing enough to cover the worry in her voice,
"Yep. I'm locking myself in here as part of my brilliant plan to escape."
"This isn't funny, human."
House tilted his head to the side and favored the small half breed with his most vicious glare before answering;
"You really would fit the uniform well, Eva."
"I…what?"
"Just shut up, sit down and wait for something dramatic to happen."
Finally convinced of the half-crazed humans sincerity, Renesmee hesitantly asked;
"H-House…are you going to tell me what's going…"
"No." House rapped pn the inches thick steel plates and huffed, gazing back at the simple wooden doorway and assuming the general idea was to use the steel plates to funnel attackers to the easier to access front end. Or these people had no concept of how fortifications were supposed to work.
The human doctor briefly met Renesmee's confused gaze before calling,
"Oh Johnny Reb…"
Bella drove with her eyes straight ahead, not daring to even glance at the newborn and her arsenal; it had been tense, of course, getting her away from the wolves but they had learned to be wary of the warlike demon that had fallen into their midst, and had let her and Bella go with a minimum of canid posturing and growls. Bella on the other hand was still of two minds about her charge; the typical newborn savagery didn't seem to be anywhere present in her behavior but the calm, assured lethality was more akin to something she's expect in a green beret or something, not, from what she could guess, was a girl of no more than nineteen. Bella mashed the accelerator down a bit harder, but whatever the stranger had loaded into the Volvo from her wrecked pickup truck was slowing the sleek silver compact down to an insufferable degree.
For a vampire at least.
The newborn didn't speak.
Unable to take the tension anymore, Bella blurted,
"Could you tell me one more time, please?"
The newborn glanced over, and with no emotion at all, recounted the tale she'd related to Bella in the forest; she was from Texas. That was all she could remember after she'd spent three solid days in nightmarish agony before waking up in a storm drain on the U.S.-Mexican border, throat burning with a need for blood. She found herself surrounded by others in a similar condition, watched over by a trio of older beings with duller red eyes. They were in charge, as had been made quite clear to her through a series of savage lessons. The newborn didn't elaborate on that too much…
The leader of the trio had been a woman, Maria.
The same Maria who had turned and used Jasper.
The Maria who was even now raising a coven of newborns to wipe reclaim her lost love.
Bella was still unclear about how the newborn had escaped, the bright red eyed girl had only said she'd developed an intense hatred of her abductors and Maria in particular, and that she knew she needed weapons to defeat them. She'd gone home to fetch her arsenal and come straight to Forks.
Bella asked the same questions she'd asked in the forest;
"How did you break away?"
"I'm good at slipping away and their opsec sucked ass."
"How did you remember where home was if you have no memories?"
A shrug and; "I just did. Didn't bother doing anything but hitting my gun room. No trip down memory lane."
"Why do you have that much firepower and how do you know to use it?"
A shrug and silence.
Bella made the turn into her driveway without slowing, the Volvo kicking up a storm of gravel in its wake as it slid across the ground before taking off up the winding drive; Bella didn't make far, however, before she found herself facing Jasper through windshield as the blond vampire leapt unto the hood with a light step an hunting tiger would envy.
"Who's this?" he demanded,
Just as Bella blurted,
"Maria's coming for you!"
The new born sighed,
"I'm going to have to run through that whole story again, aren't I?"