This is my first fic in ten years and I am rusty. I've been wanting to read a fic like this one but couldn't find it, so I figured I better nut up or shut up. This is Twilight if it was more morally grey.

All characters belong to Stephenie Meyer and all that jazz.

PROLOGUE

The soft whisper of feet hitting sand was the only warning of her approach in the darkness; it was not heard over the murmuring of the newborns in the abandoned halls.

She waited, counting her breaths almost as if she were calming her heart rate. When she received the signal - a lit cigarette in the distance, the smoke curling in the air like a serpent's tail - she glided into the open door and up the stairway. Once she reached the main floor, she paused at the entrance into the colossal space to observe. The smell of viscera - thick and wet, slithered through the room, permeating every other smell. Overhead, fluorescent lights creaked in the desert breeze, casting ominous shadows over the creatures that writhed and circled each other aimlessly, some of them slathered in red streaks, their chins dripping with drying venom.

Using her shorter stature to her advantage, she ducked her head and blended in with the help of the man outside, slipping seamlessly through and leaping once, twice over detached limbs, drained dry. She held her breath until she reached the chipped window panes along the western wall, the smell still stinging her lungs. With her back against the cold brick, she counted the creatures before her - nearly forty. This was much larger than they had anticipated, especially so soon.

Turning on the balls of her feet like the graceful dancer her mother wanted her to be, she peered through damaged glass at her side and into the moonlight. His rust-colored eyes nearly glowed in the darkness against his pale face; she lifted her hand in a gesture like a musician before playing his most famous oeuvre.

The man tipped his hat for her, flicking the butt of his cigarette onto the ground and stomping on it with steel toe boots.

The muttering in the room turned to low hisses, and the hisses grew into a cacophony. The surreptitious, preternatural stillness that hid her presence shifted abruptly. Fighting broke out as the newborns clattered over each other in fear. Across the expanse of the desert, the man winked at her.

With a snort, she blended into the darkness again and stood guard, observing the infighting and counting the seconds until the older and more experienced would arrive. The older members of the coven came within a minute, pushing into the crowd with dignified movements, revealing their age and control.

There were four of them. They did not see her in the blackness, even as the red headed leader peered around the once abandoned factory floor, looking for a source of the sudden violence.

She knew. The woman in the darkness stared at her, watching her eyes scuttle around the room, shift to look outside. But the cowboy would not be there as she expected him to be.

It was an expert dance - one he and the redhead had been locked in for decades. His new partner, however, was just as skillful and just as gifted as she tracked the redhead from the shadows, her movements more graceful than the way the redhead now jerked with rising panic.

The two males and two females shouted at each over the gurgling of the damned, attempting to create a plan to regain control. A monstrous ripping noise broke the scout's concentration, and a head rolled across the floor, venom pooling at her feet; she did not move, she did not flinch. Her ochre eyes darted toward the noise, surveying - the now thirty-some newborns, far more than she had expected and far more than truly feasible without someone gifted - too easily manipulated into frenzy. When she glanced up again toward where the redhead had stood, she met her bright crimson eyes and smiled with all her teeth. Whipping her gray hood down, making her chestnut hair and heart shaped face visible, the assassin stalked her target - the taller woman observing those around her with keen eyes, her pale skin shining like a beacon under the fluorescents.

Her sire specifically requested for this female to be taken out despite the cowboy's protests. They were far past conducting a simple scouting mission and they could not allow this many vampires to threaten them.

With skillful movements, she crossed the splintering wood floor like a ghost, still clinging to the shadows.

The female she had been watching had been shoved by the one with flaming red hair into the fray. The assassin froze, her eyes trained on the redhead, who scoffed, glaring once at the assassin before fleeing the room and likely the abandoned factory, her red hair whipping out behind her, a cascade of matted curls. The assassin let a sigh out through her nose just as a newborn, his white arm torn from its socket, stumbled toward her drunkenly, eyes rolling around frantically in his head.

Just as the only other skilled female in the room moved to subdue a twitching newborn about fifteen feet ahead, another dead at its feet, the assassin decided to pounce - partially to avoid the one who was now stalking her albeit without much skill. A high pitched shrieking noise emanated from where her small hands curved under the target's jaw, soft and swift like a lover's caress. With one precise pull, the head was divested from the target's body, light dimming in the female's crimson irises.

The scout smirked as the body fell; venom dripping down her palms, staining the cuffs of her sweatshirt black. Pirouetting, she lobbed the head in her hands at the stalking newborn, momentarily stunning him as he clambered over body parts soaked in sticky venom.

She moved to dispatch him swiftly, her hands practiced as she leapt over him and tore into his throat with her teeth.

She would take down anyone else who got in her way.