Alright, here's the first chapter to the story. Please R & R!! Thanks:)
Twilight characters property of Stephanie Meyer.
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I had finally arrived at the "ghost town" I had heard about from the nomad vampires. It was an old town named Huxberry, completely broken down and destroyed after a large fire had ravaged through it in 1950. Back then, this was the only place in the Pennsylvania farm country with anything remotely interesting to do. After the fire had tore through it and destroyed many of the close packed houses and businesses, no one had bothered rebuilding. Philadelphia had grown in popularity and offered much more interesting attractions. Now, it lay forgotten and rotting away in the hills. Most of the farmers avoided the town; a palpable air of menace surrounded its borders. Mysterious fires never bode well with religious farmfolk.
I walked through the town slowly, reaching out with the fingers of my mind to probe the old, delapidated buildings. It was nearing dark, and it was harder to make out the borders of the ghost town. I felt where my eyes couldn't see, looking for any sign of human or vampire occupants. There was no emotion to be felt anywhere, just the stirring of the wind and the whipping of tattered flags and flyers.
A flock of crows was nesting on the roof of a general store, and I concentrated on a large bird at the end. With animals, it was nearly impossible to tell their exact mood. The colors of their emotions were muted and hazy. But there was a primitive form of an aura surrounding them which gave me some inkling as to whether they were angry, happy or sad. Those were the only real emotions I could feel from anything non-human or vampire.
The wind suddenly picked up and blew swiftly by my face, and I breathed in an unfamiliar scent. It was highly acidic, biting and sharp. I closed my eyes and followed the invisible trail, concentrating all my senses on the origin of the smell. I hadn't expected to find anyone still wandering around in this abandoned city.
My nose drew me to a narrow alley made by two huge brick buildings. I guessed that one was an old pub, and the alley lead down to an underground storage and wine cellar. A few trashcans lined the second brick building. The enclosed space was threatening, but I was drawn in as if puppet strings were connected to my feet.
Ever since leaving Peter and Charlotte, I had been wandering the eastern coast of the United States, battling with my wicked desire to drink human blood. I had stuck close to the wilderness, avoiding big cities and skirting small towns, picking off the occasional dog or cat and men whom the towns would never miss. The homeless were easy targets, but the guilt still pained me. I tried to eat less and less, letting my eyes fade to a charcoal black before I would eat again. And then the thirst would rise up like an angry demon, all-consuming and unforgiving. And I would give in, against my conscience and my very being.
So the prospect of feeling something other than guilt was highly enticing. Following the acidic scent and having a mission offered an out to the terrible sadness. I pressed forward.
My sixth sense picked up a most peculiar mood, one that wasn't angry, depressed or frightened. Rather, the mood depicted a violent confusion, a mixture of quickly changing emotions. The atmosphere changed so rapidly that the colors I saw all blended together, becoming a deep grey. I stopped in my tracks, my muscles tensing. I had to know what this anomaly was.
I was also keenly aware that anything this unstable could be very dangerous. But I was confident in my training and abilities. Clenching my jaw, I turned around and crept slowly into the shadows.
It was now so dark that color barely existed. A large roof overhung the pathway, intensifying the darkness and turning everything into muted shades of black and grey even to my vampire eyes. The ultraviolet spectrum disappeared entirely. Even for my kind, this type of darkness was unsettling. Anything that took away a vampire's senses to any degree was unsettling. I frowned and pressed on down the pathway to find the door to the wine cellar left open. Curiosity drew me on, down three flights of stairs, into the ground.
A strange humming met my ears. It was beautiful, flowing, but extremely erratic. The melody changed keys multiple times in a few seconds and then would abruptly end. A breathy laugh floated up from further down into the ground. I continued to descend.
Then the smell hit my nose. My vision became tinted with red. My throat burned, burned with a thirst so profound that I thought it would turn to ashes. I immediately sped up my pace, going still downward, until a faint light began to pulse from a landing. Here, one flickering, lone lamp hung from the ceiling, throwing off sickly yellow light. The humming was louder, broken periodically by the breathy laugh. I could smell the stranger, too. He was the source of the sharp odor that had burned my nostrils before, the burning of a powerful chemical. All of the clues pointed to one entity... definitely vampire. First off, no human could ever see in this blackness and no human would ever smell so repulsive. Second, the humming was too beautiful to come from any human vocal chords. And third, no human would want to be around so much blood.
I finally reached the bottom, and hovered by a wide, squat door. The wood was chipped and weathered. I pressed my hand to it and closed my eyes. On the other side, the hysteria churned in a massive gray, colorless cloud. Without any more hesitation, drawn by my thirst and curiosity, I broke through the door and fell into a crouch on the other side.
My eyes took in many things at once.
There were other emotional spheres here besides the swirling greyness. Three human females in tattered dresses were chained to the right far wall. Their minds gave off pulses of red fear. They clung to each other in the darkness, sobbing softly. It looked as if at some point in the last week they had attempted to go to a dinner party, perhaps as far away as Philadelphia, but were unexpectently deterred along the way.
And their dresses were stained with blood. The vampire had killed their three male companions and had left them on the ground to rot in their suits. The blood had seeped across the stone floor, filled the cracks in the ground and coagulated. Why hadn't he drunk it? Why was he wasting it? Why were the women still alive?
I simulatenously saw the left corner of the room where the hysterical grey cloud fit tightly around a dark figure. The humming abruptly stopped and a pair of eyes surveyed me with amusement from the corner. The stranger sat at a wooden table, with his hands folded. He was a translucent, emaciated, tattered vampire with wide black eyes. He hadn't eaten in a very long time and I could make out the dried up veins beneath his thin skin and the purple shadows below his eyes. He looked breakable, but I knew better. Starving vampires were extremely dangerous. All of their remaining strength was diverted to the muscles so that they could hunt and save their sorry hides. He would be very strong.
His voice cracked the darkness.
"They...they don't change. I want-I want to watch them grow. And they never do. I get so frustrated. I get so frustrated."
He rocked back and forth then, so quickly that I was certain the humans would not have noticed. I never left my crouch. One of the humans whimpered. They clearly wouldn't beg me for help, when I crouched like a wild tiger in front of them. I looked to be nothing but another threat, not a savior at all.
Tattered hair framed his face and fell across his black eyes. He didn't brush it away.
"Why...why won't they change? I just want to see them grow. None of them grow for me. They always get too weak before I see it, and I'm forced to kill them." He gestured to the three men who were freshly killed.
"You, you don't change. You're a night walker." He nodded at me, to himself. His eyes twitched to my scarred neck and he smiled slowly.
"As are you," I growled back.
"No, no...I am an angel of death. I don't belong in this world."
At that the women cowered further into each other and renewed their sobbing.
"Why aren't you drinking? Why are you starving yourself?" I asked, truly curious. I remained in my crouch. My throat burned fervishly as I smelled the coagulated blood all over the floor and the three humans who fretted in the corner. It disgusted me to be so excited by their predicament, but I couldn't repress the feeling. They were chained there, so vulnerable, their jugulars pulsing quickly.
"I don't need sustenance. I need only knowledge. And when they displease me, I kill them. My creator killed me when I displeased him. And yet, here I am. I am giving them a gift...they are providing the heavens with knowledge."
"You're torturing them." I felt the anger begin to grow. "You're starving them like you're starving yourself. Of course you won't see them grow, when they grow so slowly. But they do grow. They are human. Why don't you...release them?"
It pained me to say it. I ached so badly to drink one of them. It had been a week since I had eaten, and it had been nothing but a street dog. I tried to maintain self control.
"Won't...see it?"
"No, you won't." And now I knew that the source of the swirling greyness surrounding the vampire was madness, pure hysteria. So this was what it felt like. It intrigued me, but also put me on the sharpest edge. I didn't like its unpredictability. The mixing of anger, fear, sadness, happiness. All of the colors with no clear borders. It was maddening to watch them swirl about each other, never focusing on one shade. I shook my head clear of the distraction and narrowed my eyes.
"Release them, or I'll be forced to make you."
At this, the women gasped and stared at me hopefully. The crazed vampire twitched rapidly and then scowled.
"They're my experiment. Not yours. Leave, night walker, or I'll be forced to make you."
My head cocked slightly at the parroting. I growled deep in my throat.
"Don't play games. If you don't release them now, I will tear you to shreds."
He laughed his breathy laugh. And his fingers twitched. And then he lunged with speed so fast that I could barely have been prepared.
His starving, deranged brain had forced his unwilling body into overdrive. His long fingernails dug into my arm as he swung me across the room and slammed me into the stone wall. I felt a sharp jab of pain as my shoulder crunched against the granite. He delighted at the sound, closing his eyes and releasing a keening cry. The women screamed.
And then the bloodlust took over. I pushed off the wall and flew at him, pinning him against the floor and biting visciously into his neck in a dance that was so rehearsed it was second nature to me. His skin yielded easily to my teeth. I ripped and tore at him while holding him down with one hand. He yelled loudly and thrashed underneath me, but even his starving strength was not enough to save him. He abruptly shuddered and then his black eyes clouded over. It was done. But my lust was not satiated. My teeth were still bared, my fists clenching and unclenching. The throbbing in my shoulder only served to further my excitement, the pain coursing through it giving me more fuel, like the adrenaline in a human's veins. I turned on the three women. Where before they looked at me with hopeful eyes, now they were full of fear. The red cloud that surrounded them all was overpowering and growing steadily. I could smell the emotion.
And then, as quickly as it had come, the bloodlust disappeared. I hated myself for letting it get a hold of me, as it had when I was a newborn. I was better than that now. I had dispatched the immediate threat.
I did not want the humans to be so afraid, when they had already seen so much horror. With as much grace as I could muster I walked to them slowly, cringing at their cries of fear. The chains ripped easily from the wall with a metallic screech, freeing them. I looked down at their fallen companions and a pang of guilt shot through me. It was our kind which ruined their lives, which took everything from them. I crumpled, the weight of the fear and sadness crushing me into the ground. I heard their hurried feet on the steps, but I did not look up to see them go. My vision dimmed at the corners. I hated myself.
All was quiet for what felt like a millenia. And then a warm, soft hand caressed my cheek and I startled, shooting back against the wall. The woman froze, her beautiful face a mask of confusion and pity as she watched me cower. She tucked a strand of dirty red hair behind her ear.
"You saved us," she whispered breathlessly. "Thank you, thank you so much. I don't know who or what you are, but you've saved us."
She took another step forward and I saw her eyes sweep my face. She turned her head slightly, her lower jaw falling slack.
"You're so beautiful...like...like an angel."
I laughed inwardly at the preposterous comparison but continued to stare at her face. So trusting and vulnerable, even after she had just seen me tear her captor to shreds. As if I was no longer dangerous. As if instead, I was some sort of celestial being. So naive. So sickening, that my features should draw in her feeble mind even after she had witnessed what I was capable of.
She bent down then, her tattered dress brushing the ground, and leaned toward me. I could smell her sweet scent and I closed my eyes against it. And then suddenly, her soft lips pressed against my own, and I froze.
She straightened up and laughed nervously. "Thank you, angel. Thank you, thank you, thank you."
And with that, she darted quickly from the dungeon and back up to her world.