Colliding Meteors

Chapter 1. Taken

AN: This story, my first ever, was originally published at the end of 2008 and was completed in the spring of 2009. Credit for God of War and Peter Knows SHIT goes to...me.

Seriously, I am amazed at what this story and it's characters has inspired over the last few years. Especially when this was such crap to begin with. I am cleaning it up without taking away the essence or the character portrayal as I repost. Let's face it, people that shit...needed some help. Still rather read the original? Google that bitch.

This story starts just after Edward left Bella. I've posted the first part below as reference. Please remember that this story is AU and I have manipulated some of the story line from both Twilight/Midnight Sun.

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(Pages 74-75 of New Moon by Stephenie Meyer)

Sometime later, the rain woke me up. I don't think I'd really fallen asleep, I was just lost in an unthinking stupor holding with all my strength to the numbness that kept me from realizing what I didn't want to know.

The rain bothered me a little. It was cold. I unwrapped my arms from around my legs to cover up my face.

It was then that I heard the calling again. It was farther away this time, and sometimes it sounded like several voices were calling at once. I tried to breathe deeply. I remembered that I should answer, but I didn't think they would be able to hear me. Would I be able to shout loud enough?

Suddenly there was another sound, startlingly close. A kind of snuffling, an animal sound. It sounded big.

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*B*E*L*L*A*

But just as soon as I heard the snuffling, it stopped, and I could only hear my breathing. My breathing was labored, and the thought occurred to me that perhaps the damp forest floor and the rain was not doing wonders for my health.

A fleeting thought, really, as my curiosity was also piqued momentarily because of the silence the forest had taken - no wind, no leaves rustling, no noise whatsoever. Time seemed to stand still. The stillness and the quiet in that brief moment, however, was short lived.

Something growled.

It was a quiet and low feral growl, from an animal somewhere behind me, and its growl started to get louder and louder as it approached until it was directly behind me. So close, that if I had the energy or the willpower to reach behind me and touch this animal, I could. Some part of my mind told me that it wouldn't be wise to do that.

My heart stuttered in my chest, and the growl that was beginning to elicit sheer terror out of me went silent. The hairs raised on the back of my neck. It was directly behind me.

I didn't move, and I realized that I was holding my breath. I could hear the voices calling for me again - much closer, but still far away. I inhaled just slightly, and as silently as possible, and that was it; the end of my numbness, and the end of the stillness.

The air was whipping by my head, so cold it burned the skin of my face, and my ears. I could feel my eardrums pulsing and popping from the air flow. I was no longer on the forest floor. My eyes were still closed - I was not able to open them at the force of the wind hitting my face. Something was wrapped around the right side of my neck, crushing and gripping me all the way into my chest. I wondered if my bones would snap.

Pain. Crushing Pain.

Breathing through my nose was the only option. I couldn't open my mouth - maybe because I was too stunned or maybe it was because of the velocity at which we traveled. I felt like I was falling, but not, because I wasn't falling down - I was moving forward. I guess it was a few seconds before it sunk in as to what was going on, and the something hard that had my neck in a vice grip like a football was not a something, but a someone. I was being dragged.

Judging by the way I was being held, it was not the someone who I had been following into the forest in the first place.

My feet were dragging along the fast moving ground, hitting tree roots, rocks, and whatever else lay on the forest floor. The pain was terrible. There was a burning sensation in my shin and right foot. I felt branches whipping by my lower legs, ripping my jeans.

I started to scream, the pain and the burning excruciating, and I felt my boot being ripped off - my sock the only thing cushioning my foot from the terrain it was dragging along, and it was being torn and ripped away gradually.

It was then that the thought occurred to me to bend my knees and hold my feet up, but even this action was painful. With the velocity by which we were traveling, it was incredibly difficult to keep them up. Survival mode had somehow crept in and I was able to get my left arm and hand to push on the my assailant's back, trying to push myself free.

Brett Favre, Joe Montana, or whoever this fucker was tightened their grip and I felt a pop in my right shoulder. I screamed in agony. Even my leg being snapped under James did not hold a candle to this pain.

Dear God, please let me die.

The pain was so terrible that my mind finally gave up. I sighed in relief, knowing I was only heading into unconsciousness, or maybe death.

Edward leaped into the air off the shore line, probably some thirty to forty feet. He tucked his legs into his chest curling his arms around them. He spinned his body gracefully, turning some somersaults before he straightened out his body, pointed his toes, and tucked his head in for a dive that any Olympic diver or spectator would envy.

He entered the water about fifteen feet away from Alice and I. We were sitting on the lower rocks by the edge of the shoreline of a clear mountain lake miles away from home. July was proving to be a nice, warm, sunny month, even for the Olympic Peninsula, leaving the Cullens to carry out fun time in the most remote of places.

Charlie had allowed me to go on this weekend trip with the Cullens, knowing I would be in the parental supervision of Carlisle and Esme. Alice also begged him into submission. There were promises made that no funny business would occur between Edward and I, as we would be sleeping in separate tents - the girls in one, and the boys in the other. Yeah, right.

Charlie needn't have worried in the first place. Edward and his hands never roamed too far. We shared a boatload of wonderful kisses, and sometimes he would lay on my chest with his ear over my heart. But even then, you could tell it was only to actually listen to my heart, and not to get a quick nuzzle in uncharted territory.

Occasionally, he would accidentally brush one of my breasts, sending my nipples into eruption mode and wonderful chills through the rest of me, but he would stiffen and move away from them as quick as possible, ending any progress we could make towards...more. I was still trying to rectify this issue - I figured if sex wasn't an option, we might at least make it to second base. He could play with my boobs all he wanted and I could get felt up by Adonis. A girl could dream.

I was daydreaming about his hands...and his mouth...when Alice started gagging and seemed to be trying to hack something up. Like a hairball.

"Alice, are you okay?"

She gave me a wary look and took a couple of deep breaths. "Bella, please, try to remember that when you think of trying to do something in your future that I get the visual firsthand, and the last thing I need to see is my brother lapping at your nipples like a kid with an ice cream cone." She started giggling.

I looked at her with horror as the blood pooled in my cheeks. It was then that I realized that I prayed that Edward hadn't heard that, but when I looked out into the water he was just ten feet away, giving me a crooked grin and one cocked eyebrow. The topaz in his eyes had all but disappeared. The blackness that enveloped them was a look that I rarely got to see - a look of longing and hunger. I could feel my whole head and the pit of my lower stomach just burst into flames.

Edward didn't say anything. He ducked under the water and swam towards his brothers, who were out in the middle of the lake. Alice giggled a little more while she enveloped me into a hug of reassurance and love. She truly did understand my trials with Edward, and I loved her like my own sister.

"I'm sorry," she whispered in my ear with her bell-like giggle, "I completely forgot he was still here. Come on then, Bella, let's get wet and cool you off!"

With that, she leaped from her sitting position into the air some twenty feet, and landed out in the water a few feet away. I, of course, was so equally graceful. I jumped up from my sitting spot on the rocks, took one step onto another rock, lost my balance, and gracefully went sprawling into the abyss, forgetting the fact that maybe I should have tested the water first.

Sure, vampires couldn't feel the cold, but for the graceful human, it took my breath away and I went flying out of the surface and into the air, trying to catch my breath, and only to sink back down into the water. I was instantly shivering - my legs felt as if a hundred needles were poking me, and my arms started to get heavy...

I woke up drenched in water. My legs were submerged in the current of a cold stream, and a cold arm had my neck in a vice grip. I tried to catch my breath while it felt like a thousand knives were stabbing at my legs and foot. As I gasped for air, I was dragged back onto shore and dropped down flat on my back. My head hit the ground hard. I couldn't move. I didn't want to.

I opened my eyes, looking above at the clear night sky. I managed to take some deep, wheezing breaths to calm down, and tried to raise my arms from my sides. I felt excruciating pain shoot up my shoulder and into my neck and back when I moved my right arm. I was able to bend my left elbow, and I slowly managed to pull my upper body up on my forearm.

I looked out in front of me and saw the stream that I must have been partially submersed in bathed in moonlight. On the other side of the stream, a small meadow was before the tree line. Rising farther in the distance of the tree line was a sight I wouldn't have expected to see if I was still in or around Forks. Mount Rainier.

I immediately began to panic, and I realized the danger of the situation - I was not alone. I looked off to my right and behind me as far as my neck and shoulder would allow, and saw nothing. I slowly started turning my head to the left, and I saw the monster that was responsible for this. It really should have been no surprise that this had come to pass.

She was crouching not three feet away with glowing red irises and a contented look. With her greeting, you might have thought we were lifelong friends.

"Hello, Bella."

I took a much needed breath and exhaled, realizing that this would be my end. Somehow it didn't seem so bad. I looked into her eyes, seething with hatred and vengeance, and said the only thing I could.

"Hello, Vicki."