A Little Wicked

14. Threat

CHAPTER XIV

THREAT

It was absolutely silent in the woods that night, except for the sounds of the cold wind blowing through the tree branches as well as occasional thunders announcing that could rain at any moment.

As humans slept peacefully in their homes, feeling protected by their locked doors or even guns in their drawers, in the forests surrounding this quiet city they thought they knew so well, there were dangers far beyond their comprehension, dangers in which they thought there were existent only in horror movies... They didn't even dream that while sleeping at that moment, seven vampires were standing like statues in a spot of the woods, vampires they saw every day in their work or study places.

Lucy, a nurse at the Forks hospital who was just taking a nap between her shifts, could never have imagined that Dr. Carlisle Cullen, a brilliant doctor and extremely kind man who she saw daily, was actually a three hundred years old vampire. Jessica Stanley, volleyball athlete and future Forks High School Prom Queen, could never have imagined that the Cullens, the weirdest, most beautiful teenagers in the entire city, drank the blood from brown bears and deer every weekend.

But there they were.

All seven, aware of any sound or movement that might indicate the approach of an enemy they didn't expect to meet - and to be honest, had even forgotten her existence.

"Are you sure this is where you saw her?" Carlisle asked Alice.

Everyone looked at her with different kinds of apprehensive expressions.

"Yes... At any moment she'll come." She answered with complete certainty, staring straight ahead and concentrating on keeping her mind focused in case she had a vision.

Edward kept his mouth shut in a thin line, his face a stoic expression. If Alice's vision was correct, Victoria would run through that part of the forest near the Calawah River at any moment, a move that was strange if they think carefully about it.

Jasper, with extensive experience in battles and battle strategy, has come up with two possibilities.

The first is that Victoria could be conducting a reconnaissance of nearby areas, a common thing to do when planning a tactic to attack enemies.

The second was that she was deliberately trying to draw the Cullens' attention to announce her presence or to lure them to a certain location and surprise them with an attack from her "army". This second option was worrying simply because they should remember that there was a group of newborns led by her, an army of vampires who were at the height of their physical strength but totally out of control, like wild animals.

As he waited impatiently, a part of Edward's mind remembered for the hundredth time the visions Alice had shown him — not exactly visions of things that would happen, of a future probability, but things that had already happened and were occurring.

.

Rain.

Lights blurred by water.

Distant sounds of car horns and sirens miles away.

She was hiding in the darkness of an alley in Seattle's industrial district near the pier. In silence she watched with her hunter's eyes a potential prey, but this time with a different purpose.

The first thing she felt was his scent being amplified by the damp rain air, a scent that made her mouth fill with venom and her throat burn with thirst.

She ignored her instinct. That wasn't what she was there for.

Human eyes were too weak to see well in those conditions, but she could. She saw that he seemed like a good choice: tall, athletic, apparently healthy. He was perfect for her purposes.