We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming to bring you this chapter w/o the detective duo
Riley and Bree are alive here cause fuck SMeyer and fuck canon

Seattle is a good city to hide in.

There's too many bodies, and not enough people paying attention. In the near constant cloud cover, the thunder rumbles as he walks past another crowded bar lit with hanging bulbs, the laughter of its patrons spilling onto the sidewalks. Too many bodies, he thinks again with a grin. And not enough common sense either, as he seamlessly follows a stumbling woman past the turn. Young women, they shouldn't be alone like this. Especially in such a time.

"Grant?" She slurs upon finally seeing him, courtesy the lights of a passing car dimly illuminating his figure. "This you?"

"Who else, sweetheart?" He offers his shoulder, which he takes a drunken step towards, him steadying her light frame. "Come on, let's get you out of here." He walks them down to a cool, dark alley, the moon lighting their way forward. She's slurring and muttering nonsense, but that is just par for the course. "You good?"

"Pu-puh-pukey."

"Of course," he mutters quietly enough for her to not hear and sits her down on a crate, fishing out a bottle of water, some crackers and some ibuprofen. Once the bile is out of her system, he slowly feeds and hydrates the girl until the colour is back in her face.

"Thank you."

"Everytime," he smiles at her, "this is the least I should do." And he's learned why the hard way, he thinks as he sinks his teeth in her throat, draining her body as quickly as he can and leaving a personal touch for the cops to find.

After all, her blood wouldn't taste nearly as good with all that alcohol in it.

Riley smiles at his supervisor as he enters the office.

An evening to early morning shift is not the most lucrative time for most people, but it works out perfectly for him. He arrives at the early twilight and leaves before the crack of dawn, giving him plenty of overtime to earn as well at times. His supervisor is a kind woman with kids and the graveyard shift was really taking a toll on her family life, so when the local emergency room had a spot for a licensed blood bank worker for the night, he was more than happy to take the job.

"You're a darling, Adam," she says, looking at the lemon muffins he set down. "Bree make these?" He nods, pushing the container towards her.

"For Jason and his team - I heard they scored a record number of home runs in the last t-ball match."

"If the record is five, you mean," she laughs, picking up the tray and heading out. "Thank you so much - I'll let the kids know!" He nods, settling into the seat and logging in to check the records. His work as a specialist means he doesn't have to physically interact with any humans, and he's gotten way better at controlling his thirst now. The job pays pretty well for two people who don't really need to pay for groceries, with the added benefit of him being able to take home expired blood for themselves. There's always enough for Bree and him left at the end of every two or three weeks, and when they fall short there's more than enough fauna for them to hunt. They sometimes go on hunting runs just to blow off steam and camp out, and he feels a twinge of hurt and longing everytime they collect around a small campfire and look up at the stars. This is something he did with his dad, and Bree never got to with anyone. But they're making up for lost time now.

Oak Harbor is a small town, with not much going on except hikers and tourists who often stop by for the national parks. The population isn't anything compared to Seattle, but it's easy to get lost in this city and build a new life all over again. Him and Bree mostly keep to themselves and for anyone that asks, they ran away from their abusive parents a while ago. Not that anyone out here asks them that anymore. They have their own place that Riley finally purchased last year and a car he's paying off, and while having pets for them is difficult, Bree maintains a great front garden. She's taking online classes and plans to get a degree at some point, and despite their thorny history the Cullens have been more than welcoming to them. They offered to help Riley and Bree secure a place in a pretty good public university in the Midwest, but he and Bree are happy here. Maybe when they have to relocate, they'll think about it but for now, they have years ahead of them.

He's going through the packs of blood received by donors; it had been one of the donation drive weekends, so the townspeople had turned out in droves to donate. It's surprising for him, being able to be around blood rather easily - practice makes perfect, I guess. There's a light burn at the back of his throat, but it's weak enough to be successfully ignored. Riley takes his time sorting through the packs and accordingly storing them; there is a fair bit of work to do, but he has always been meticulous. There's the faint chatter of ER staff milling about the front room, the hum of the vending machines and the slight buzz of the fluorescent lights, and he works in peace to these familiar sounds, humming a tune as he hoists box after box into their places.

"Hey Adam, see the news?" It's Ava, one of the first people he met when hired. He walks out to the reception, where she's pointing at the screen to his left, a CNN reporter with a somber face reading the news. "Apparently, there's a new serial killer in Seattle. There had been a bunch of girls going missing in the area but no one was sure why; they've connected those deaths due to some markings found on them."

"This is some Ted Bundy shit," Michael, one of the EMTs comments. Upon Ava's questioning look, he points at the TV. "They all look the same, don't they? Plus, they're all like young and college aged or college going."

"They're calling him the Seattle Nightstalker," Ava adds.

"How do they know he's only killing at night?" Riley asks, intrigued. "They estimate time of death for the victims or is this just some random nickname given to him?"

"The estimated time of death for all of them has been put between ten PM to pre-dawn, so I guess that's what the media is going off of," Michael chimes in, scrolling through his phone. "It's gonna be all over the Washington Post by morning."

After discussing other less-macabre topics, they all disperse and Riley goes back to his desk, logging in the donations and the information left by the pathologist. Some of them have to be shipped over to Tacoma, and he gets to printing the stickers for the bags required to be tagged. The rest of his shift goes uneventfully, and once the clock strikes five, he picks up his bag and heads out into the pitch-dark Washington morning. It's a lot more different than the fateful night that changed his life forever, but it has the same heavy, suffocating feeling. Bree gives him a light wave when he gets home, sipping from a Starbucks travel mug as she watches TV, and he changes and joins her on the couch, in peaceful silence. She switches the channel to a news one, the thin ticker tape at the bottom of the screen still running the same old details about the Seattle murders.

The details of the murders paint grisly images in his head, and Riley discovers something new - vampires can feel shivers run down their body.