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I would probably never get used to all the green. The emerald moss that coated every surface and dripped down in its excess. The dark needles, almost black, sticking out from the branches all the way up, to blot out the already meager light. The carpet of feathery ferns bursting from every corner, heavy with dark patches of spores. It was dark and alien, but at least out here I didn’t have to put on an awkward smile and pretend.
A fat water droplet splashed down onto my head, somehow dodging past layers of needles and moss to land precisely on my bare forehead. It wasn’t even necessarily raining; when it wasn’t, the absurdly tall trees picked up the slack, showering everything below them as though it wasn’t already waterlogged enough. There hadn’t been a clear day since I arrived in Forks.
Not that I had to go out in it. The walk had been my brilliant idea. Even the loggers that passed through town, mostly big, scruffy men in heavy raincoats, huddled together at the gas station, warily watching the ever-gray sky. At the diner, they crowded around a little table in the back, talking in hushed voices about getting out of this “dismal place” and back to relatively sunny Seattle—that is, until Charlie, or one of the other locals put a stop to it with a glare.
It was a mystery to me; how Charlie could stubbornly love this place even more than he loved his wife and daughter. At least the woods were honest, unlike my bedroom in Charlie’s house that hadn’t changed in ten years, as though Renee had never left with me at all. At least the trees didn’t try to hide what this place really was.
The half-light suddenly dimmed, and I shivered, drawing my thin sweater tighter around my shoulders. It had been almost too warm for Phoenix, but here, in the cold and damp, it was practically nothing. It was still too early for sunset and not dark enough for my eyes to be playing tricks on me, making up their own patches of light and dark to make up for the uniform blackness.
“The forest plays tricks,” the loggers had said, before Charlie had cut off their complaints.
A shiver ran down my spine. I cupped my clammy hands in front of my mouth and tried to warm them up with a huff of air.
My breath caught at the sound of something rustling in the bushes. A stick cracked underfoot—but not my foot. I froze.
There were mountain lions here. Charlie had come home late for dinner a week or two ago because some hikers had been mauled. “Probably just a mountain lion or a bear,” he’d said. He would have mentioned if it was somewhere nearby, wouldn’t he?
I peered through the lush greenery—the perfect screen for a predator. It was probably just a bird or a squirrel rooting around in the undergrowth. A mountain lion would have to be pretty desperate to take a bite of me anyway; I was all skin and bones, barely a morsel for a bear.
“All you have to do is make noise,” Charlie had said when he saw that I’d gone a bit green at the thought. “Make yourself big and loud, so it’s clear you’re more trouble than you’re worth.”
As though any self-respecting lion would be afraid of me. Maybe if I shouted at least someone else might come and find out what happened to me, even if they were too late to scare away the mountain lion.
I just got out half a tentative sound—there probably wasn’t even anything there. And then my voice caught in my throat as I saw her.
She was impossibly beautiful; skin like the stormy sky, hair was like wildfire, like the red rocks of the desert, and eyes even redder than that—like glistening pools of blood. Even more graceful than a mountain lion, she perched on a low, mossy branch, so elegant I hardly even noticed that she was stark naked—her skin suited her better than any clothes. She was beautiful and terrifying and I stood frozen, my heart pounding and lungs shuddering, transfixed by her scarlet eyes. If she had lunged for me, I might not have made a sound, just surrendered to the inevitable.
But she did not move. She could have been a miraculous statue, except that in an instant, she was gone, though I could have sworn I never even blinked.
I stumbled back through the woods in a daze. I would have tripped over my own feet on flat ground, I was so preoccupied, scanning the woods for a lick of fire-red.
By the time I made it back to Charlie’s house, it was late.
Even Charlie was back already, standing in the dark kitchen sipping a late night cup of coffee. “Bells! I thought you were already up in bed.”
I pushed past his concern and went up to my room.
For nights afterward, I dreamed of blood.
It trickled and gushed through my dreams in delicate drops and violent spatters and the desperate pulsing of my heart.
I gasped awake in the middle of the night, the sharp taste of salty-sweet copper on my tongue and my lungs heaving.
The heavy, musty scent of rain seeped in through the open window. I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and pushed myself up with a groan. The smell was bad enough with the window closed, that was why I never left it open.
Crimson eyes stared back at me out of the darkness.
I started at the sight, rapidly blinking awake, but when I opened my eyes again, they were still there. It was the beautiful woman with wildfire hair and stormcloud skin, draped in sheer, ethereal white. She crouched in the corner of my room, her eyes fixed on me, and her thin lips twisted slowly into a smile, bearing perfect white teeth.
I opened my mouth, to say or do what, I never knew, because before the thought was fully formed in my mind, she had me pinned to the bed, her hand over my lips with an impossibly firm grip.
All I could do was let out a muffled yelp.
“Hush,” she breathed into my ear, her soft voice like light honey. “I would hate to have to cut your delectable song short before I have the chance to savor it.”
I struggled to speak beneath her hand. Her skin was perfectly smooth, but as unyielding as thick leather, or even precious stone.
Only when I lowered my voice did she remove her hand enough for me to whisper, “Who are you? What do you want with me?”
That elicited another sharp smile and she caressed my cheek with her long nails, so delicately that I didn’t even feel the pain blossoming beneath her touch until she had already withdrawn. “You bruise so easily,” she murmured in delight, as though she hadn’t heard my question at all.
Her wet, rough tongue followed, tracing over the path her fingers had taken down my cheek, and I almost jumped back in shock. But she held me firmly in place, one hand at the back of my neck and her other arm around my waist, like manacles.
“Yes, I’m going to enjoy you.” Her tongue rasped around the sensitive lobe of my ear. “Don’t fear my pet, I wouldn’t waste one so delectable as you, and you won’t suffer long.”
I had no time to respond or even begin to process her sinister words as her lips fell upon my neck sucking and rasping with her tongue. I let out a gasp as she worked the sensitive skin in ways I could never have imagined. Her hand trailed down the plain of my stomach and across my hip, leaving a trail of fire in its wake.
“I am sure you will make a wonderful vampire.”
All coherent thought vanished as she plunged her teeth into my skin and the delightful burning rose to a fever pitch, and then all I knew was inconceivable pain searing throughout my body.