So I know it's been such a long time! I got my first review in a long time, and I've been so busy! I haven't been keeping up with this story, but if people out there are still interested, I will do my best to do just that. (:

Hope you guys like this chapter! Review and let me know what you think? I'll do my best to get the next chapter up within a reasonable time if I get at least one review. (:

"I would do anything for love."—I'd Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That), Meat Loaf

"Value the people who sacrifice their something for you because maybe that something was their everything."—Unknown

"Cleo, look out!"

And just like that, it all came back to me. The mad reality of it all was that I was here by choice, in a sense. I was and wasn't all at the same time. The bad men had forced this on me, particularly this bad man, and this was how I chose to deal with it. How I chose to deal with the emotions I couldn't handle that came with the awful things they did.

Maybe I could've just been normal, a normal vampire. You know, drink blood to survive, prey on the "normal" human? I hated that, though. The thought of drinking blood made me cringe in disgust, and maybe that was because of how it all happened.

These monsters had plagued this city for too long, though, and it was about time someone put an end to the madness. Who better to do it than a vampire hunter? Well, more accurately, I should say two vampire hunters and some weird messed up hunter hybrid . . . .

That's really where it all began. My entire life, the first sixteen years of it, was spent completely and utterly oblivious to anything and everything even remotely supernatural. I didn't think human genetics could be altered. That, to me, was just a bunch of science fiction.

And yet that's where I found myself, mostly human with part hawk in me—enough hawk that I had wings and no more. My entire life had become this weird supernatural science fiction story, but it wasn't a story. It was reality.

I remembered back to that day with a shudder. So many raw and agonizing memories, so many things I had repressed . . . it wasn't okay, really. They had made me a little project to feed off of, and I hated it. Vampires had done nothing but hurt me, so I might've had some biased feelings.

Well . . . all vampires except for Jasper, but he was a rare exception.

Despite the current situation I found myself in, I was somehow able to get lost in my own thoughts. I was a bit scatter brained at times, and unfortunately, it was getting the better of me then, too.

Kurt—the man who had been the first to destroy me—yanked me up off the ground and bit down on my neck, sucking the blood right out of me. If I could've screamed, I would've, because it hurt like hell.

That kind of described what venom in my system felt like. Hell singeing through every tiny piece of me. I had experienced this once before, but the human side of me still remained. Apparently, I had to go through it all over again.

Uh oh.

Before he could get all of the blood out of my system, however, Rose and Alice were too close, so he ran off.

Alice turned to chase after him, but she stopped. Rose was the first by my side, and she was panicking. On my knees with my heart racing in my chest, I felt myself choking. The world was fading around me, enough that I couldn't quite make out Rose's beautiful face. As a matter of fact, despite how many times I had seen it for myself, I couldn't remember exactly how it was supposed to look.

"What's . . . happening?" I choked, and a piercing pain shot through to my head, which made me curl up into a ball on the ground in pure agony for a moment before I was able to sit back up and try to get a grip on my surroundings.

Alice immediately took something out of her pockets, and it probably took me longer than it should have to realize she was calling someone.

"Carlisle?" she murmured, her voice muffled by the ringing in my ears. "We have a situation. Get Jasper down here immediately, please. Well, Cleo was bitten in human form, and—well, I know he's not really that great with control, but what other choice do we have?"

"Alice, you can't be serious!" the oh so perfect and oh so irritating voice of Edward exclaimed.

This can't be happening. No, no, NO!

"Go . . . away," I groaned.

I felt myself being pulled into someone's arms, though my legs were becoming more unstable by the second. Honestly, I would love to say that if I didn't recognize Edward's voice, I wouldn't have known who was holding me, but I knew better than that. Actually, despite our current quarrel, I didn't mind being here in his arms. It made things a bit better, actually.

The hell fire was ripping through my arms, moving down into my legs now as well. It was probably a good thing that the heart was the last thing to go, but I hated this. I hated it the first time, but I really hated it this time. What would it do the second time around?

Edward surprised me when he put his lips by my neck and began sucking the blood right out of me. Rose and Alice were now yelling at him to stop, and I guess I understood. Honestly, I had lost enough blood already, but he wasn't stopping.

Not until the raging fire was out of my system . . . .

I could feel it gone, could feel the relief of clean blood again, but I don't really remember what happened next. The world around me went black before I could even utter a sound of relief.

The room I woke up in was a familiar one—mine. My head was pounding, as to be expected after having most of the blood drained out of me, but my heart had stopped beating. That was a little surprising, considering I seemed to have enough blood back in my system to at least function properly . . . mostly.

The first thing I noticed was Edward sitting beside my bed with a dark look in his eyes, and I couldn't help but retaliate with a roll of my own. I guess I understood why he was so bitter, but really, it was his fault in a way, too. If he wasn't so insistent that I couldn't do it, I wouldn't have fought so hard to prove that I could.

Still my fault, of course.

"How could you do that?" I asked, when he noticed I was awake and started to speak. I didn't wanna hear him yell at me, tell me how much of an idiot I was when in fact he was the idiot. "Are you a vampire?"

He let out a breath. "No, Cleo, I'm not."

"You risked your last piece of humanity like an idiot," I said, and I frowned. "Why would you do that? Jasper could've made it."

He scoffed. "Maybe, maybe not. The process is different for everyone. It wasn't a risk I was willing to take."

"But you were willing to risk becoming a vampire yourself?" I asked.

"You just don't get it, do you?" he whispered, and my eyebrows rose. His eyes were full of so much pain, but I didn't look into them. His thoughts were probably as scattered as mine, and my head hurt. Deciphering them would only make it worse. "I love you, Cleo. Don't make me say it more than I have to if you're gonna pretend it doesn't mean anything to you."

"That doesn't mean you should throw everything you've built over the past century away!" I exclaimed. "You've tried so hard to keep yourself from becoming a vampire, and you just threw it away like it meant nothing to you."

"It doesn't when compared to how much you mean to me!" he yelled back, and my eyes slowly widened. "There was no guarantee you would've made it. It coulda killed you, and I'm not letting you die! Be mad all you want, but if anyone was the idiot, it was you."

This was a bigger deal than Edward was allowing it to be. For him, this was a matter of heaven or hell. He thought that vampires were damned to hell, that they had no soul that could be saved, and with that belief, he was willing to throw himself to hell . . . .

"Why were you there anyways?" I snapped. "It was supposed to be the three of us."

He rolled his eyes. "Oh, hey, you're welcome for potentially saving your life."

"Stop it."

"You stop," he retorted. "It was my choice to make. I'm not apologizing for it. It wasn't your humanity at risk. It was mine. I chose to risk it to keep you alive. There's nothing wrong with that. Maybe next time you'll listen to me when I say you shouldn't go."

I let out a very sarcastic laugh. "Yeah, right, not if you keep telling me I can't do it. I'll just go prove you wrong again."

"And who knows?" he said, voice bland and impassive. "I may just lose my humanity next time. Good plan."

The thought of punching him so hard his jaw snapped off its hinges actually came to mind, and for a second, I enjoyed it. Of course, I felt completely guilty after that, but I didn't stick around to revel in it. I stood from the bed and tried to walk off into the living room when instead I nearly ran right into Rose.

She didn't let me through, however. She did the exact opposite.

She turned me around and forced me to go right back into my room, where she shut the door and held it closed.

"You can't come out until you get some talking done!"

That little whore.