Vices and Venom (Twilight Fan Fiction)

Chapter One: The Funeral

Jacob's gaze followed Edward's, causing the shifter to sigh, relaxing slightly. "Would you like some time alone?" He asked. Although it was clear the alpha did not sympathize with the vampires, he did understand the weight of their loss.

Edward snapped out of his haze, then shook his head. "No. There's nothing left for me here." He looked at Alice, then motioned with his head for them to leave.

"Hey, Cullen!" Jacob called after them, and I shifted slightly in the shadows.

Edward looked at him once more, knowing what his question was before his asking. "We don't plan on coming back anytime soon."

"I can't believe you still have this," I exclaimed, sitting in the front seat of the 1963 Chevy pick-up. "How does it even run?"

Jacob jumped, crashing into the doorframe of the truck when he heard my voice. His dark eyes shifted between my face and the freshly covered grave.

"Halston."

"How?"

This time I looked in the direction of my grave. "I had to die eventually. No time like the present, right?" I gave him a small smile, watching his mind connect the dots and his face shift to disgust.

"They turned you into a bloodsucker?"

It was my turn to turn away from him. "No. Today was the first time I've seen any of the Cullen's since they left Forks. I didn't choose this." My voice was smaller than it had been in years as the memories from that night threatened to pull me into the darkness.

Something in my voice must have made him backtrack because his face softened. "Why didn't you tell me?"

I threw my hands in the air, "because of how you're fucking looking at me right now Jake! You hate me based on something I had no control over." It was the truth, this was why I had never told Jacob what happened to me. I knew he wouldn't understand.

I would rather you be dead than one of them. His voice from all those years ago drifted back into my mind.

"You don't smell like them." He offered but I could see the conflict in his eyes.

"Well, I guess that's something." I slammed my body back into the leather seats of the Chevy and rolled my eyes at his attempt to lighten the mood.

"You also don't look like them. Your eyes are the same violet-blue, and your skin doesn't cast rainbows in the sunlight." I hadn't noticed but the sunlight had broken through the gloomy day and was now directed on us.

"There are other things that are also different compared to other vampires, but I'm not really in the mood to get into the semantics," I muttered, thinking about how different it was for me when I woke up outside the asylum.

"You didn't come around after Charlie died."

"It was easier for me to fade into the background after his accident." My mind drifted to where I was when I got the call that Charlie had been shot on the job. It wasn't fatal but the stress the wound put on his body paired with his high blood pressure was too much for his heart. I stayed with him for a week before he passed away. I think I hated the Cullen's the most in those moments, but I was also thankful they weren't around. I would have forced them to save him, even if it meant turning him into something he would hate. It was selfish, and I was selfish. In honesty, I was still selfish after all this time, but as I continued to age, my appreciation of autonomy increased with it.

Jacob was different as well. Charlie's funeral was the last time we were together. While he had barely aged more than a day, his eyes were older. They told the story of someone much older than the skin he wore. From my understanding, Jake wasn't immortal, but so long as he remained in touch with the wolf inside him, he would be untouched by time. I wonder how they explained it to the others on the Reservation. Perhaps they were too scared to ask questions because the truth was worse than what their minds could conjure up. With the Cullens gone, the children on the reservation were not impacted nearly as much by the shift.