Twilight - Waiting for the Sun (James/Victoria)

           The look on his face told me he had already made his decision.

           Glee glistened in his dark burgundy eyes. His lips curled into a confident smirk. His nostrils flared, breathing in the lingering smell of human as the breeze carried it through the woods. I could practically feel the heat of excitement radiating from his body.

           The thrill of the hunt was very much alive in my James.

           But as the bloodlust flooded his veins, something entirely different coursed through mine: fear.

           A feeling of dread gripped me. It first hit me as we walked away from the clearing, when James snaked an arm around my shoulders and murmured in my ear of the exciting game to come.

           It smacked me again when we realized Laurent had abandoned us. Although I wouldn’t mourn the loss of his companionship, his disappearance made me wary.

           And now, as I walked beside my mate through the forest, leaves and twigs crunching beneath our feet, the feeling was suffocating.

           I sighed as I pressed my cheek against his strong shoulder. His fingers twisted in the waves of my hair, holding me against him. I closed my eyes for a moment, reveling in the closeness and the feel of his fingertips as they danced amongst my curls.

           “Victoria,” James whispered my name softly, drawing me back to reality. I knew he could sense my unease.

           He pressed a kiss against the crown of my head, and then used his free hand to cup my chin, lifting my face away from his frame so that our gazes met. Concern mingled with the hungry delight that saturated his eyes. “What’s wrong?”

           “Are you sure about this?” My eyes desperately searched his, hoping I would find even the faintest semblance of hesitation buried within them. I found nothing. “Are you sure about going after this human?”

           He flashed a grin that told me he thought I was joking. His expression fell as he realized the opposite. “Come on now, love,” he purred, tracing the curve of my cheek with his fingertip. “Surely you don’t doubt my abilities.”

           “Never,” I murmured, bringing a hand to blanket his. “It’s the Cullens, James. They’re different. Powerful.”

           James nodded in agreement. “Which is precisely why you won’t be accompanying me on this little trip.”

           Had my heart not stopped beating many decades before, surely his words would have stalled it.

           “James,” his name left my lips in a hiss. My fingernails dug into the back of his hand. “No. I’m not letting you go alone.”

           “I need you here,” he said, bringing the hand twisted in my hair to cradle my opposite cheek. His thumbs traced soft circles against my cold skin. “I need you safe.”

           “You’ll die!” I half-sobbed, ripping my face from his grasp so I could instead bury it against his marble chest. I whimpered as his strong arms wreathed around my body. On any other day, such an embrace would have felt like my own personal sanctuary. But on this day, it felt more like forever slipping through my fingers.

           My hands clawed up his back and I clutched at the ends of his ponytail, burying my fingers in the tangled blond wisps. Tears seeped from the corners of my eyes and soaked the dirty leather jacket he wore. “Please, James. You can’t do this alone.”

           He scoffed, completely incredulous. “Victoria. It’s a human girl.”

           “But the Cullens—”

           “Won’t even find me in time,” he cut me off, cocky as ever. “Relax, love.”

           James pried my face from the safety of his chest and framed my features with his hands. He smiled down at me—that devilish, conceited grin of his—and bent his head to kiss the side of my neck. His mouth formed a path from my neck to my jaw line and from there finally to my lips. I kissed him back hard, desperate, as if my very existence teetered on keeping my lips firmly locked with his.

           He grinned against my mouth. “I’m not going to be gone long, you know,” he muttered, dipping his forehead so it leaned onto mine. “A few hours, maybe. I’ll be back before sunrise.”

           Arguing him was senseless. I sighed and nodded in surrender. “I love you, James.”

          “I love you,” he whispered, smiling at me in a way that betrayed his arrogance: tenderly, with warmth that could surely overheat the sun. He nuzzled the top of my head, and then found my lips once again. “I’ll see you soon.”

           In a flash he was gone, but his presence remained. For a long moment I stood cemented to that spot in the forest, breathing in the sweet scent he left behind. Slowly I sank to my knees on the bed of green. A few rogue tears escaped the confines of my eyes and slid down my cheeks, silently splashing the ground.

           I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was never going to see my mate again.

           Through the night I stayed there on my knees, my eyes unmoving from the horizon. When the morning sun finally crept up from the darkness of night, casting the day’s first golden rays over the forest, my whole body trembled.

           “I’ll be back before sunrise,” the echo of his voice rattled in my mind, mocking me.

           “James…” I whispered weakly, and with all my strength I ran.

           The hours of distance between Forks and Phoenix flew by as milliseconds. Stinging cold and pine trees gave way to sizzling heat and sand as I soared over the landscape.

           Walking inside the dim ballet studio, my steps echoed eerily. Immediately, a marriage of scents assaulted my senses. I could smell James, fresh blood, and the bitter reek of other vampires. But there was a fourth scent, one that made my stomach lurch: fire. The only death sentence our kind could not escape.

           “James?” I called out feebly, my voice so frail it scarcely resembled its usual tenor.

           Stepping forward, I didn’t flinch as shards of glass, splayed across the wooden floor panels, bit into the bottoms of my bare feet. My eyes flitted around the room frantically, searching for any sign of my love.

           I froze mid-step when I saw it: a mound of cinders, still lightly smoldering. Suddenly, the gravity anchoring me to the world vanished. My body went numb.

           In one swift motion I leapt across the room to the pile of ashes on the other side. His smell slammed me and a guttural scream erupted from the depths of my chest, so shrill that the mirrors lining the room shattered the way my heart already had.

           “No,” I sobbed, my fingers grasping at the dust, at him, as if my hands could somehow knit his body together again. “James!” I wailed his name as I collapsed atop what remained of my love.

           For untold hours I laid there sprawled amongst his remnants, my body enraptured with violent quakes, my throat so strained from screaming I couldn’t muster the strength to whisper.          

I took a handful of ashes in my grasp and shuddered at the gritty roughness on my fingers. I closed my eyes and for a moment envisioned his skin there instead, forever smooth and cold, but warm with love against my flesh.

           I drug my quivering fingers over the curve of my cheek and trailed them to my mouth, replicating the path his lips had taken just hours before. Another sob clawed its way out of my aching chest. I would have given all the years immortality had to offer for just one more second with him.

           As I pressed the dust against my tear-streaked face, a chilling notion slowly seeped into my mind. What good was eternity without my beloved to spend it with? My body could live forever, but my soul was dead.

           Suddenly I realized I wasn’t just holding what remained of James. I was holding what remained of me.

           My life no longer mattered, and the lives of others—like the Cullens and that pathetic human girl—mattered even less than that.

           “I love you, James,” I said softly, my voice faltering. “I miss you.”

           I kissed the ashes in my palm and whispered a promise of vengeance to them—to James.

           And with tears in my eyes and hatred in my heart I rose and walked away from the last shred of humanity left within me.