gift or curse (A Twilight fanfiction)

Chapter 2

Their growls made me step back and raise my hands even higher. "Wow, easy, I won't hurt you." for the first time in my life I felt fear. Real fear. Not the kind that made me sad and lonely, but the one that had all my muscles locked in place. Without losing my surrendering posture, I inwardly began to list all the ways I could defend myself, should they spring at me. In the end I figured my only chance was to run away and hide, preferably somewhere high.

The two newcomers remained hostile, but the slightly smaller brown one relaxed his stance a bit. He even made a sound that seemed a lot like a chortle. The almost white wolf on his left, barked a short bark at him, but that didn't seem to phase the brown one.

I was right, they were intelligent. This relaxed my stance a bit. "I know I must scare you, but you seem to know what I am, right?"

"Yes, they know." A new voice suddenly rang. From quite a distance, but I could here her, anyway. Immediately I coiled into a defensive position. The wolves responded to me ever so slightly, but seemed to understand I didn't plan to charge at them.

It wasn't long before I could hear leaves rustling and footsteps running. Two, no, three pairs, moving fast.

If I still had a heartbeat, it would rise, knowing I was about to meet new vampires for the first time, because I was sure that's what was heading towards me. The brief exchange of words and growls I had shared with the boy in Seattle all those years ago, hardly counted as a meeting.

Two, three seconds passed and there they were. A brunette, seemingly a little younger then myself, a bronze-haired boy, just as young, but with eyes that looked like they'd seen the world and a huge, burly young man whose age was impossible to read. Fascinated, I used a second to take in their strangely familiar appearances. Smooth, white skin, slightly darker halve moons beneath the eyes, tense muscles that belied the calmness they tried to radiate, while examining me.

For a moment all that was heard was the wind and the quick heartbeats of the three wolves.

"Who are you?" The girl asked, after the second had passed, her eyes a lovely amber. Completely different from the eyes I had seen when I had first opened my eyes to my new live. She talked slowly, at a human pace.

"Ariadne", I answered.

"From what coven are you? We didn't know there were others like us nearby."

I wondered if she spoke like this for the benefit of the wolves. Had they even understood me before? Deciding it wouldn't hurt for me to do the same, I answered: "Other vampires, you mean?"

This time the boy next to her answered: "No, vampires who don't drink human blood."

I scrunched my eyes. "How do you know that?"

The girl cocked her head and pointed at her eyes with sort of a half smile. "The eyes. Didn't you know?"

For five years I had not looked in a mirror and the few times my reflection had been caught in a stream, I had not dared to look at my face. Afraid of the red. The most clear sign that I was no longer who I once was.

Looking at the eyes of the three vampires in front of me, I wondered if maybe my eyes weren't that awful, scary color of the only food I could still have. Before I could ponder this new information, the conversation continued and I stored the question for later.

"Where do you come from?" The girl now asked, her brow furrowed and her eyes crunched in confusion.

"I lived in Northern Canada for the last five years." Would they want to know the precise location? I didn't exactly have coordinates.