Prologue

"Emma get up!" the twenty-two-year-old brunette shouted as she burst into her best friend's bedroom.

The blonde sat up slowly in her bed and blinked a couple times while she tried to figure out what was going on.

Finally, her eyes fell on her highly agitated roommate and she asked in a sleepy voice, "what is it, Talia?"

Talia let out a deep huff and marched over to the bed, easily pulling the other woman out of bed with just one arm, "we have to get out of here!"

Emma was pulled to her feet and felt herself suddenly beginning to wake up, she inspected Talia's face and considered whether she had ever seen her so flustered.

"Hunters!" the brunette almost screamed.

"What the hell are you talking about?" the blonde shouted back in frustration.

Talia opened her mouth to reply, but a loud crash sounded throughout the apartment and she let out a huff, "I will explain after we climb down the fire escape."

"But…" Emma began only to be cut short as she was dragged over to the window.

"Please, Emma," the brunette begged as she pulled the window open, which brought a cold blast of air through the room, "we can come back later to get your stuff."

"Okay…" the other woman replied as she quickly pulled some shoes on.

Talia let out a sigh of relief as her friend did was she was told and it wasn't long before they were both down the fire escape and running down the street at full speed.

Five minutes later, they both collapsed onto a bench in the local park and Emma looked at her friend questioningly, "hunters?"

"Trust me, Em, you really don't want to know…"

"Trust me, I do," the blonde retorted, though a part of her still believed that this was either a dream or a prank.

"Vampire hunters," Talia finally sighed.

Emma raised her eyebrows and crossed her arms, "you know, if you wanted to prank me, you could have at least given me a coat…"

"This is a prank," the brunette argued and rolled her eyes when she saw nothing but disbelief from her very human friend. After a moment of thought, she looked around, deeming the park to be empty, she opened her mouth and brought her fangs down.

The blonde's mouth fell open and she stared blankly at the woman she had been living with for over a year, "why would a vampire advertise for a roommate?" was all she could think to ask.

Talia rolled her eyes again and blew out a breath of frustration, "because it doesn't mean that I'm rich."

"But…don't vampires have clans or something like that…"

"Some do…but I'm not one of them…" she sighed, "I'm really sorry that I didn't tell you earlier, but I honestly didn't expect us to actually become friends…"

"Charming," Emma mumbled, "you could have just left me at the apartment, I didn't know anything so what could they have possibly done to me?"

"My brother does not take prisoners."

"Brother?" the gaped, "you told me you had no family."

"He disowned me when I was turned…hunters who are infected are expected to end their own life, but I just couldn't do it…so I became a vampire and he has been hunting me since. He didn't want me tarnishing our family name," Talia explained. "He would have done anything it took to see if you knew anything and I wouldn't be able to take it knowing that it was all my fault…"

Emma tilted her head and shifted closer to her friend, "it's fine, Tali, I'm right here."

The brunette smiled slightly and was about to hug the other woman to say thank you for taking this so well, but she was stopped when she heard the crunching of boots on the icy grass.

She quickly shot up from the bench and stood in front of the blonde, "don't you think that you're wasting your time, Damon?"

The blonde behind her leaned to the left slightly and her eyes fell on the three heavily armed men coming towards her. The leader looked to be a male version of Talia and Emma quickly gathered that they must have been twins. His face was a mask of anger and she guessed that there was no longer any familial love left in him for his sister.

"I think that protecting the legacy our parents built is well worth my time," he sneered, which was accompanied by the sound of him unsheathing a sword.

"But you such limited time, and you have already wasted three years of it on one vampire, I'm not sure that mom and dad would be that proud," she retorted, desperately trying to make him angry, knowing that it usually made his aim less perfect.

"I wouldn't say that they would be too proud of the monster you became, Talia," he shot back.

"Run," the brunette whispered other her shoulder.

Emma just shook her head and Talia ground her teeth in frustration, she was beginning to wish that she hadn't made friends with someone so headstrong.

"Would you really kill your own sister?" she tried.

Raising the blade in his hand, he smirked slightly and shook his head, "of course not, but my sister has been dead for three years."

Talia considered her options, she could certainly fight him, in many ways, she had always been the superior hunter of the two of them and her vampire abilities only made her stronger. Unlike Damon, however, she knew that she could never take her brother's life, she knew that she had gone against everything she had ever been taught simply because she wanted to evade death and if their roles were reversed she was sure that she probably would have done the same as him. That, however, didn't change the fact that she had no interest in her life ending after spending so long on the run.

In her deep thought, she failed to notice that her brother was already in front of her, at least not until she felt herself being thrown to the ground.

The brunette's eyes widened and she watched as everything seemed to go into slow motion.

Her mind finally caught up with the fact that it was Emma who had caught her off balance and thrown her to ground, and the reason for it became evident as Damon's sword was ran through her chest.

As her best friend crumpled to the floor, she tried to take a calming breath, which failed, as she jumped up to her feet. In her rage, she felt her fangs protract of their own accord, and she knew that her eyes had probably turned blood red by the fact that her brother's two goons stepped back in fear.

Damon stared at his sister for a second, taking in the image that he had refused to even try and imagine since the day he had lost her, and he quickly brought up his blade.

At the sight of the blood covering its surface, Talia growled in anger and rushed forward in a blur of movement, a split second later, Damon was disarmed. The brunette threw his sword to the ground, ignoring the pain she felt in her hand when her skin touched it, the burns wouldn't take long heal anyway.

"She was human," she growled.

"She was protecting a monster," her brother spat.

"She only just found out!"

Damon's face fell and he looked down to the bleeding blonde, but he quickly shook his head, "she still made the decision to give her life for yours…"

Talia clenched her fists, she could tell that the two hunters he had brought along must have been fairly new considering how terrified they looked. She imagined that every higher member of their order was sick of his three yearlong hunt for a single vampire. It did mean that she only had one true hunter to deal with and right now, he looked completely terrified.

"Since you're my brother, I will give you this one chance to leave, but I guarantee the next time I lay eyes on you, you will feel pain beyond anything you could ever imagine."

Damon opened his mouth to say that he would leave until he had done what he had set out to do, but he realised that there was no way he could draw another weapon before she could tear him apart, so he just nodded and turned around, already planning how he would go about find her again.

Once the vampire was satisfied that he and his fellow morons were gone, Talia fell onto her knees and moved Emma's pyjama shirt aside to look at the wound.

She detected a very shallow breath and her head snapped to look at the blonde who was looking up at her through heavy eyes.

"What the hell, Swan?" the brunette exclaimed.

"I think…" Emma coughed, "the words you're…looking for are thank you…"

Talia just shook her head in exasperation and said, "you are not dying, Emma."

The young woman took a couple more heaving breaths and shook her head, "being stabbed with a sword doesn't tend to end well, Tali."

The brunette closed her eyes in frustration as the blood continued to gush from the wound no matter how much pressure she placed on it and she realised that Damon must not have used an enchanted blade. She assumed that it was because he no longer had any support for his quest, which meant that Emma had been stabbed with a sword that was probably more deadly for humans than for vampires. She assumed that her brother must have had some way to finish her once he had stabbed her, but right now, she had something far more important to think about.

"You not dying," she repeated.

When she got no response, she began shaking her head, refusing to look over at her best friend's pale and unmoving face.

Bringing both of her hands over the other woman's heart, she began CPR, not even thinking what she could possibly do next since this would be pretty difficult to explain to a paramedic.

As she pushed, she said, "come on, Swan, just listen to me for once. You can't be dead."

Once she counted to thirty, she was about to lean up to breath some air into her mouth, but she felt her arms drop in defeat when she saw Emma's face.

Taking a couple of unnecessary breaths, she made her decision, "I'm sorry, Em, but I'm not letting you die for me."

With that, she leaned forward and pierced her friend's neck with her fangs and blinked back tears as she leaned back up on her heels and brought her own wrist up to her mouth. After a moment of hesitation, she bit down and allowed her own blood to drip down onto the blonde's neck. Once she was convinced that it was enough, she rose to her feet and easily scooped her friend up in her arms.

She was sure that she would rather not be laying in a park when she woke up as a supernatural creature.

A/N I hope you guys enjoyed :)

I need to thank QueenApples, my beta for helping and PerditusFic who was immensely helpful with all the vampire lore XD

Let me know if you're interested in more