Wow! so it's been a few years, huh?

I had started this story near the end of my high school career and posted the last chapter after graduating. I started this account when I was maybe 14 years old, working and writing my way up to feeling confident enough to post online. It's crazy to think that the last time I updated this chapter was when I was heading into college. And now I'm...still in college five years later, unfortunately. I am hoping to be done this upcoming semester though! but i wrote a book, i found the woman i think I'm going to marry. the sun has risen. i will endure.

Something in me had clicked today, I don't know if it was a vampire I had seen on social media or what but I was hit with this sudden longing. I missed this fandom, I missed these girls. Re-reading this story was a lesson in growth. So much of it was cringe, overly dramatic, bad. and yet there were still so many of you assuring me that you did love this story and you wished to see it continue. I know is not as popular as ao3 is, but i still hold it near and dear to my heart. i want to keep writing this story. it had meant a lot to me at the time and means a lot to me now. i hope you can also recognize the growth in my writing lol.

They find a body.

In the early morning of a dawn so cold, it had been a jogger who had found her in the middle of one of the hiking paths. Into the news reporter's microphone, he speaks of the frost that had gathered amongst her limbs, the almost peaceful twist of her face, the blood against her neck, against the trees, smeared all over her naked body. Isabella watches the boy's eyes widen, shell-shocked. He'd only been back in Forks for the weekend, coming home from college in the city to see his family before finals week. And now, Isabella thinks, he will never be the same again, never be able to sleep without seeing her body behind his eyes, without seeing that dead corpse of her face everywhere he looks.

The Chief of Police had held a city-wide conference a mere thirty minutes after the news had broken across the entirety of Forks. He is calm in front of the camera, poised when he needs to be, compassionate and fierce in his promise to identify the girl and the cause of death.

Jacob whistles, bringing his fingers up to his mouth, gnawing on his nails. Isabella knows him well enough to know him speechless, at a loss. She knows the gears turning in his head, can guess what he's thinking about before he develops the conscious thought to piece it all together himself.

This was a vampire attack. Grisly, sophisticated in its violence, sadistic. He'd left her there, dumped in fields so overgrown, like trash. Like she was worthless. Like she hadn't just fueled his body with life, given him the ultimate sacrifice.

Isabella rubs her hand down her face. "I need to get over there," she says, "find out what I can. Smells, markings, anything."

Jacob snaps his head up in surprise, the pieces having finally fallen into place. "You think this was a vampire attack?"

"I know it was. The blood everywhere, the only wound to her body around her crucial arteries. He left her naked in a field. My guess is this was a hunt gone wrong."

The newscaster speaks, her own alarm clear across the screen. Forks has never dealt with something like this before. This was someone's daughter, someone's girlfriend, someone's everything and now she is gone. It is sobering when humans remember their own mortality, when they recognize it could have been one of them. Isabella leans back into the couch and crosses her hands across her body, not for comfort, but to mirror Jacob's body language.

There is a selfishness there, too. The victim is almost already forgotten by now, her face now reimagined as somebody else. The growing concern is never please catch whoever did this, it is, please catch whoever did this so my daughter doesn't become her, so my wife isn't her in the future. Humans won't, can't, comprehend that this is them, this has always been them. It doesn't matter who or what or when or how. They will succumb to the hunt.

They throw the picture of her now clean face up on the screen. Washed away from dirt and blood, Isabella can tell that this girl was young, not a day over twenty-three. Dark hair, delicate features. They flash a tip line underneath the photo.

"You can't go there," Jacob says. "That's Quileute territory. The wolves will eat you alive." He scrapes his hands over his face. "God, they probably think this was you."

Isabella throws her hands into the air. "You're kidding me."

"No," he pushes himself to his feet, frantic now with motion, hurriedly searching for his truck keys. "No, I'm not. That's exactly what they're thinking." He runs to the door, shoving his feet into his boots, hands grasping for his jacket. "Look, here's what I need you to do exactly, okay? I need you to go to school, I need you to stay there all day and then I need you to come home. Do not go anywhere else. Do not do anything else. Got it?"

"Yes," Isabella murmurs, eyeing the growing panic in his eyes. "I got it."

"Okay, good," he only seems slightly mollified. "Can you try to be less—" he gestures at her, "vampiric today? Like, seriously."

Isabella throws her hands up into the air again before letting them fall, slapping against her thighs.

/

The creaking silence of Forks High is ominous. The school seems impossibly darker, shadows casting shapes, coloring moods. Isabella wouldn't have to be a vampire to be able to taste the fear against her tongue, to feel it encroaching into her limbs. She—sees things that are not there, a pale figure hidden amongst the student body, running away when she refocuses to look.

There are hardly any students at school today, perhaps more than sixty percent missing from attendance rosters today. The school admin hadn't canceled classes based off the recommendations from the police department. They are sure it's an animal attack.

The remaining student body doesn't feel the same.

It is Mike Newton speaking loudly at the lunch table that clues her into the current gossip.

"Look," he says. "Ten women in the past three months have disappeared out of Seattle. Early twenties. White. Dark hair. They all went missing either from Seattle U's campus or just a mile or so away and eventually were recovered in a park, or near the lakeside. They found one girl in the Bellevue Botanical Gardens."

"And," Eric supplements, "Every single one of them have been found naked, a wound in their neck, with most of their blood drained. It is the same exact MO, Angela. The FBI are in Seattle now investigating what they clearly think is a serial killer. You can't just ignore this."

Angela puts her hands up defensively in front of her. "I'm not ignoring this, guys. I just don't think it's probable. A Seattle serial killer, yes. When does that shit-hole not have some criminal at large? But here in Forks? Please be serious. The police have already laid out why they think it was an animal."

During his press conference today, the Chief had been quick to shut down any and all rumors regarding the Seattle serial killer, dubbed the "Vampire Killer" due to the conspicuously placed holes in the neck of each of his victims, draining their blood. He'd said the homicide unit and CSI found no human evidence. The only identifiers were the jogger's shoes and a carton of cigarettes five feet away from the victim's body. What they saw was consistent with a wolf attack, the bite mark in her neck having nearly decapitated the victim.

But Mike and Eric aren't the only ones who have been able to put two and two together to arrive at a very final four. Laid next to all the other victims, this poor girl looked identical to all the others.

It had been lunch time when PD alerted the public that they were able to land a positive ID on the girl. A Laura Palmer, twenty-one years old. Originally from Oklahoma, but here at Seattle University on a scholarship for basketball. She'd been last seen at a bar in Capitol Hill, only a few miles outside of campus.

It was this that cemented public opinion. And the frenzied flesh of fear encompassing the school only deepened, worked to suffocate.

It is all Isabella has been able to think about. And she thinks about Bartholomew.

Bartholomew and his red, red eyes, red like blood, red like anger and grief and hate and loss. She thinks of his smile, slow and slipping, toothy, revealing. Once he had told her he wanted to marry her. She had laughed and laughed and laughed.

And then he was gone, Jake had killed him because he slipped, because he fucked up.

When the day comes that Isabella fucks up and feeds from a girl, will Jacob be her end, final and resolute? Will he be merciful as he rips her limb from limb, will he kiss her goodbye as he holds her head in his hands? It is not a question of if it happens, but when it does.

This is who she is, it's what she is made to do, perfectly crafted to be an instrument of evil, to be predator, to feast from the flesh and life of the lord to come.

She can only hope he kills her quickly.

A hand at her shoulder. So warm it burns.

She sucks an involuntary gasp down her throat, tasting the lilac on the back of her tongue. She hadn't noticed anybody walking up, too lost in the thought of it all.

Alice doesn't move her hand, keeping purchase on the sharps of her shoulder, fingertips gently ghosting over the lines of her collarbone. Isabella feels Alice's pulse thrumming through her palm, the delicious smack and pull of the veins contracting. Her mouth waters. She swallows it, opens her mouth. "Alice," she says, twisting her body to face her fully. The cafeteria is mostly empty now, she hadn't even heard the bell go off. "Sorry, I didn't notice you."

Alice frowns, worried lines appearing between her brows, teeth coming out to bite at her bottom lip. There is a darkness to the slate of her eyes, muted under the dim light of the cafeteria. There's something—off about Alice today. She doesn't smile, she doesn't laugh or bat her eyelashes prettily in Isabella's direction. She turns her body inwards, shoulders caving in, posture bent and protective of herself. But her hand doesn't leave Isabella. It curls in, fingers tracing over that bone of her collar, feeling it underneath her hands. She draws them up, playing with the trapezius under the cloth of Isabella's shirt, thumb pressing slightly inwards, digging into the muscle there. It is only when she reaches the crook of her neck that she stops herself, seemingly realizing in alarm what she was doing.

Alice rips her hands to her side, holds her wrist like an apology. Alice's eyes flick over Isabella's face, mouth opening, closing, opening again. "You looked…really upset over here. I just wanted to come check on you."

"Did I?" Isabella breathes in, breathes out, feeling the acute pain of loss spread through her chest. She now knows what it's like to have Alice touch her, to feel the warmth and velvet touch of her hands teasing the proximity of her chest, knows about the strong surety in the muscles of her fingers. She no longer knows how she is going to live without that touch. She forces herself to blink, look away. "I'm so sorry; I was lost in thought, I think."

Alice moves to sit down in the chair next to her, more distance between them but not so much distance as to not be able to feel the heat radiating off her body. Alice's eyes never leave her face, forever tracing in earnest the contours of her eyebrows, the shape to her mouth. Isabella knows Alice watches her, stares at her in secret. She just can't comprehend why.

"You're thinking about the girl they found." It isn't a question, but a statement, asking for acknowledgment that she's right about being able to read Isabella, looking for a confirmation of her theories and thoughts. If she's right, she is one step closer to understanding someone who refuses to be understood. And Isabella understands this want. It is human nature to spot the pattern in mysteries and to subsequently want to solve them in a way that's easily digestible.

So Isabella gives that to her. It isn't the truth, not really, but it also isn't a lie. How to tell a girl you barely know that you think of your death daily? That it will be, inevitably, at the hands of someone you consider a brother? That you crave blood and have been so, so strong for so many years, but strength always has an end. And in the end, Isabella is still that girl somewhere in some Slavic, Eastern European village who had loved, once, and who had lost it all in a day. She was born weak. She had died weak. And she was reborn into a crippling weakness disguised as a deity.

One day she will die having been too weak to save herself from her own doomed prophecy.

In truth, she waits for this day like a sacred feast. Waits for it like the day of the Immaculate Conception. Both in fear and in anticipation, in wait, in wait, in wait. There is always something beautiful about self-actualization.

Isabella wants so badly to be good, has hinged her entire un-life on being good. But she was born with the devil singing hymns of sweet divine in her ears.

This is probably not the best admission.

"Isabella?"

"Sorry," she shakes her head, looking down away from Alice's now rising concern. She looks at her nails and decides to bring them to her mouth, chewing on the already frayed edges. "I didn't get much rest last night. And—you're right." She looks back up into Alice's gaze, watching how those silvered eyes track her still. "Seeing that poor girl on the news today…it was a shock." She shakes her head, disbelieving. "I had never expected that, not here." This part isn't a lie. "And it's just all so terrible, really. The people survived by her will never be whole again. They will never again know what the feeling of home feels like."

Alice blinks rapidly, mouth dropping only slightly open. A few seconds pass. It feels like an eternity to Isabella, watching Alice pick her thoughts carefully, thinking of the exact way she means to phrase them. Finally, she says, "Do you know what it feels like to not be able to go home again?"

"Yes," Isabella whispers back. "Yes, I do."

Alice's hands reach out between them, bracelet skimming over the plastic. But she stops, pulls back. A conflicted look crosses her face, that bottom lip stuck between her teeth again.

Isabella remembers to blink. "And how are you feeling about it? Do you think it was an animal?"

"I think it was an animal all right," Alice sighs, looking like she decided to dismiss whatever she was thinking of. "Not of the wildlife variety, but some monstrous, sick man. I hate to be a part of the fear-mongering, but my brother—Edward—saw online, on some internet forum, that this killer leaves notes about clues of where he's going to leave the bodies next. A code-hacker had figured out that it was here, saying you'd find the body right where he left her this morning."

Isabella feels her brows furrow. "He's posting it online?"

At her question, Alice nods. "Sick, isn't it? According to some of these letters, he's painting himself as responsible for multiple kills all across the nation, spanning even as far as New York City."

"And how did your brother find all this out? He must be incredibly smart to be able to find these underground forums online."

"Edward? Smart?" Alice huffs a laugh. "No. Reddit is a very popular place with the True Crime forum having well over three million followers. He just has very special interests, and this case is kind of now viral national news. It's all over TikTok."

Three million followers? Reddit? TikTok? This conversation is making Isabella feel so impossibly old. She and Jacob try their best to keep up on the current trends as to not be rendered obsolete, but technology had advanced far too quickly for either of them to keep up. The only reason Isabella has a smart phone is because their provider sent her one. For free. It had been too much to keep her old flip phone on their servers, or something like that.

"But," Alice continues, "the school just sent out an email about canceling classes for the rest of the day. Didn't you get the email?"

"Email?" Isabella asks, confused. "Oh, no I—" she pats her pockets. "I must have left my phone at home today. I don't know what I was thinking."

Being in Alice's presence is so utterly disarming. And how ridiculous she sounds now! The world's most prolific, dominant predator resolved to disorganized mush in the face of an eighteen-year-old girl with a pretty smile. Isabella would be more scandalized if she weren't already so deeply enthralled by the way Alice's scent calls to her. She feels her teeth in her mouth, she feels the sharpness of her fangs behind her teeth, throbbing in her head. The pounding makes her nauseous.

The concern flashes over Alice's eyes again. "Well, that's probably not the safest thing you could've done, especially today." She pauses, sucks in a breath. She says, "I didn't see your car in the parking lot. Jacob dropped you off today?"

No. She had walked (run?) through the forest this morning to see if she might pick up a foreign scent. But she only ever smelled herself. "Yes," Isabella nods. "The body was found on Quileute ground, so the tribe is working with the police to search the area for any evidence. Jake was called in to help."

"So," Alice says slowly. "You don't have your car to get home, you don't have your phone to call Jake to come pick you up, and there's a serial killer hiding out—probably—somewhere in the area looking specifically for pretty brunettes just like yourself." She sighs with her whole body. "Isabella Swan, what in the world am I supposed to do with you?"

Isabella can't help the smile that comes to her face, pleased that Alice had just implied she was pretty. Alice sees her smile, ducks her head, blushes.

Isabella has to stop the rumble that comes to her chest.

/

In the end, Alice decides she's taking Isabella home. Isabella had stuttered out a protest, but Alice was hearing none of it, silencing her with one sharp look.

"I feel like I deserve some sense of autonomy here," Isabella points out, following behind the much shorter girl. It wasn't that she minded the offer. It was just the thought of being alone with Alice in a car, close together, close enough to touch, sent her neurons spinning. It was getting harder and harder to ignore her base instincts. Harder, still, when she pulls up the image of Alice dancing in her cheer uniform, lithe body twisting, sweating under the gymnasium lights.

Lord, have mercy, Isabella thinks, slamming her teeth into her tongue. Christ, have mercy.

"Look," Alice says, leading her up to a very yellow car, opening the passenger door. A clear indication that Isabella should step in, immediately. The leftover students who hadn't quite fled the campus yet sit and openly gawk. Isabella feels their eyes on her like maggots, burrowing into her skin. "Under any other circumstance, I would accept your denial. You're crazy if you think you're going to walk home, even if you only live a few minutes away."

Alice's car is decidedly low to the ground and incredibly intimate with its claustrophobic cabin. If she shifts, she can almost feel Alice's shoulders brush against hers.

The silence is so incredibly loud in the car as Alice shifts between gears, working to get her car up to highway speeds. In this quiet, Isabella can hear the furious beat of Alice's heart, the rapid thumping of the meat and flesh against her ribcage wall. It's fear, Isabella thinks, something acrid pooling into her stomach. Something like guilt. She's scared to be in a car alone with me. All humans have a natural aversion to her, the way an insect might know a poisonous plant from the edible ones. It had just seemed that Alice's response was delayed.

Her eyes sting, venom welling up in her throat. She doesn't mean to. It doesn't matter how widely she smiles, or how delicate she turns her mouth so as not to flash her teeth. She is a monster, no different really from the vampire leaving the bodies out on display.

She swallows and stuffs her hands between her thighs, slouching down. Tries to make herself smaller, invisible, less threatening. Alice was giving her a ride out of the kindness of her heart; it's the least she can do to appear as non-monstrous as possible.

She presses her body against the door, shifting as far away from Alice as she can.

Outside, it had started to rain.

"I'm sorry for being quiet," Alice's voice suddenly breaks through the fog, sounding a little hesitant. "I just can't stop thinking about this serial killer." She goes quiet again as she flicks her turn signal on, revving up to pass an eighteen-wheeler. "Imagine if I hadn't seen you still in the lunchroom, and if you had walked home and this, this monster got you?" Alice's body shakes, her voice trembling. "I don't know what I would do with myself if your face appeared on the news, dead and cold. I—" she swallows thickly. "I just wouldn't be able to live with myself."

Alice turns down her neighborhood street. It shouldn't surprise her that Alice knows where she lives, but she still finds the closeness of this town alarming.

She pulls into the driveway, turning to Isabella to face her fully. "Promise me that, until this asshole is caught, you won't ever walk home by yourself. Please? I will always give you a ride home if you need it."

Isabella catalogs the desperation in Alice's face, the stern set to her jaw, the incredible warmth in her eyes. She hadn't been scared of her, Isabella realizes suddenly, shocked all over again. She had been scared for her.

Alice's honeyed breath washes over her face, makes her dizzy, makes her own breath come fast to her chest. "I promise," Isabella murmurs, voice lower than she means it. Her tongue flicks out of her mouth, tasting Alice's breath against her mouth. She becomes a moan. Becomes an ache. Becomes a highlighted beacon of want. Isabella inhales again, taking down the sweet ambrosia of Alice's blood, that reliably delectable heart.

Alice's eyes trace the line Isabella's tongue leaves against her lips, eyes widening slightly. Her own mouth mirrors the same movement, slow, deliberate, before pressing her lips together so tightly her mouth bleeds pale.

Isabella looks to the perfect spattering of freckles across Alice's fine nose. Watches as her eyelashes flutter, listens to the quick stuttering of her breath. Skin so perfectly smooth, tanned even under a constant cover of clouds. It's when Alice finally tears her gaze away from Isabella's mouth that she makes eye contact again, gold and grey meeting together, falling like puzzle pieces, that her heart stops altogether, missing a beat before rapidly restarting.

"Has anybody ever told you," Alice stutters, "that you are so impossibly beautiful?"

"No," Isabella answers softly, distracted. It would take nothing now, Isabella muses, to lean forward slightly, to take her hand to caress softly down Alice's face, tilt her chin upwards, exposing the access of her neck. She could press open mouthed kisses along that smooth column of flesh, feel her pulse under her lips, collecting her, tasting her into her mouth. Isabella could so easily suck at Alice's neck until the girl became a writhing thing of pleasure, compelled by the vampire in her. She could make Alice beg for her touch, to dip low and slow down into the waistband of her pants. She would grip Alice's short hair, gripping near the base of the skull, to kiss down her chest and suck her through her shirt while her other hands moves in harmony against Alice, fingers dipping into her, gathering her wetness against her fingers.

It all plays out in Isabella's mind in such a perverted, rapid fashion. But she can't stop the thoughts once they enter her mind. She would make Alice beg to come. She would ask her if she wanted to be a good girl.

I want to be your good girl, Alice moans, hips thrusting, aching for release, grinding herself against Isabella's hand. I want to be your good girl. Please. Please. Fuck me harder. Harder. More. More.

Isabella would fuck her harder, setting a punishing pace, and after Isabella would lick her fingers clean, tasting Alice's sweetness.

And then she would bite into her neck, finally tasting her blood.

A rumble comes to Isabella's chest before she can stop it. She feels her fingers flexing as if prepared to grab, thighs pressing tightly together to relieve the pressure building up inside her.

Never before has she ever, ever wanted someone so badly. It makes her crazy, it makes her lightheaded, it knocks her disoriented.

At the sound coming from her, Alice's eyes close, briefly rolling into the back of her head. And then she's leaning in, eyes locked on Isabella's mouth, want so clearly present in her eyes. Her mouth is so close, so nearly there. Isabella closes her eyes, not moving away like she knows she should. But Alice's mouth is a blessing she's not willing to give up, her touch a prayer she knows she can no longer live without. She waits for the touch of divinity again, she waits for the prayer.

It doesn't come.

Isabella opens her eyes to find that Alice has moved away from her, hands covering her face. There's a blush that seems to cover her whole body. She struggles to control her breathing.

After several long moments, Isabella brokenly whispers, "I'm sorry, Alice, I shouldn't have—"

"No, no," Alice interrupts, eyes wide and glassy. She swallows thickly. "I shouldn't have, Isabella. I'm better than this. This isn't how I wanted things to go." The girl nervously wrings her hands in her lap, unable to maintain eye contact with Isabella the way she normally does. "I wanted to ask you to hang out, to maybe go get dinner. I'm not some Mike Newton who ravishes girls in his pickup. I'm better than that." Alice takes another deep breath, calms herself down. She flicks her hair back, smoothing it down with the palm of her hand. Another wave of lilac and honey rushes to meet Isabella's nose. "I'm a good southern girl, not some trumped-up football player who doesn't respect women."

"You don't have to…" Isabella trails off, short-circuiting. "You mean like a date?"

Despite her fluster, Alice laughs wholly, freely, her smile appearing like the sun through the clouds. "Yes, darlin' exactly like a date. Here, give me your hand." Alice takes Isabella's hand and rifles through her center console, appearing with a pen. She scribbles something against the back of Isabella's hand. "Here's my number. When you find your phone please text me."

Stunned, Isabella nods. It's the only thing she seems to be capable of right now, her mind still mottled with the images of her perversive lust. Would Alice's moans sound like that? Would she fall apart in her hands? "I will."

"Okay," Alice unlocks the door. "I need you to get out of here before I do something we both regret," she says half-joking, half-serious. "I'm only human and the good Lord knows I'm trying to be a good girl."

Good girl. Isabella's breath hitches in her chest again, and before she can stop it, she blurts, "What if I don't want to be good?"

Alice closes her eyes, breathes deeply through her nose. "Isabella please."

Isabella opens the door, stumbling out the only way a four-hundred-year-old vampire can, and leans back down to see Alice smiling at her, amused. "Goodnight, Alice." She says her name softly, devotion clear.

The smile grows. "Goodnight, Isabella."

/

Long after Alice's car pulls out of her driveway, Isabella rushes upstairs, noting that Jacob wasn't home yet.

She lays herself down, wasting no time unbuttoning her pants. And she indulges in a sacrilege she has never before taken part of. But the inexperience doesn't stop her from reaching her hand down under her underwear, feverish with movement.

When Isabella comes, she thinks of Alice's mouth. Thinks of her neck.

thanks so much for reading 3 i was hesitant to even post this chapter after all these years because it has been so long, but i know i always go back to fanfics of years past and wish they'd update. i don't want to be the stereotypical author who never finishes their stories. let me know your thoughts! thanks guys, lots of love 3