-Sophia, xoxo

...°...

My fists spring free from the metallic bands holding them up and the tubes are torn from my arm in a swift tug. A new and foreign power overwhelms every part of me and I slide of the metal plank bed, landing on my bare feet in a graceful jump. The tubes hang loosely from the machine that's begun to beep wildly, and I can feel a flame begin to ignite inside of me as I take several steps towards Liam who begins to back away with his hands up in a terrified surrender. "If you ever lay a finger on Alice," I begin, my voice shaking with rage as I struggle to control the urge to jump at his throat, "I swear that it will be the last thing you do."

My eyes are fueled with anger as I watch Liam continue to back towards the locked door, and my fists itch to punch through that thick glass where the physicists or doctors or whatever the hell they are are all scrambling for their stuff and making a horrified run to get away from me.

"Listen," Liam begins, itching closer to the still locked door with practiced movements of a hunter, but I can still see the way that his hands shake in the air in front of him. Everything about me seems to have gone sharper, and I swear that I can count the near-invisible lines in the tiles of the ceiling. "Listen Emma, we can talk about this okay? There's no need to lash out, or act irrationally."

I tilt my head to the side and narrow my eyes at him, taking another step closer. "I suggest you run Liam."

Without wasting a second he turns around and darts for the door, only to let out a strangled breath when the lock doesn't budge. He slowly turns back around to face me and takes another breath to try to keep the trembles out of his body as I advance on him like a predator on its prey.

"Ah..." I whisper, listening to my voice cut through the heavy silence, thick with tension, "Guess you can't."

...°...

Leaving the torn up hunter - who looks more like a pile of organs and blood now then anything solid - on the floor outside of the cell, Hunter and I run through the long, plain corridors with inhuman speed.

Crash!

Another violent sound booms through the walls as the roof begins to collapse behind us. But at that exact moment, all my mind sees is Emma. I need to find her before the place breaks down completely.

Hunter looks at me for a second and breaks down the first door that we see. A group of hunters turn to us and raise their weapons. Without thinking twice, I slam the door shut again and watch the tip of the lances stick through the door.

"Seriously Hunter?" I hiss, but he ignores me and opens up another door, leading to the exact same scenario.

"How many of them are here exactly?" He asks with a controlled voice as we stand in front of a third closed door. Behind it we can hear voices and something tugs inside of me.

Emma.

"She's in there." I nod towards the door and Hunter goes still, refusing to meet my hopeful eyes and focusing on the only obstacle separating me from my soulmate.

"I know." He whispers, barely audible for me to catch it. I will the confusion to get out of my head. I need to focus on getting Emma safely out of here. I take a deep breath and look back at Hunter with a crooked smile on my face to ease the tension that has unexpected formed. "Third time's the charm right?" He nods at my words.

-Right."

The door breaks down I catch sight of Emma in the middle of the painfully white and sterile room. Behind a glass wall are nutlike tables and chairs facing the room that have been deserted.

She's safe.

My eyes land on the hunter that took her away from me and all I want to do is go over there and rip him open. Suddenly, I feel a hand on my shoulder and hear Hunter whispering quietly.

"You shouldn't be concerned about him right now." And that's when I see the unusual expression on his face.

Hunter looks scared.

I don't care about the large pieces of rock and glass scattered around the collapsing room as I follow his gaze. What I'm concerned about is the crazy flame dancing in Emma's eyes, and how she is the reason for all of this collapsing. Bits of rock and dirt rest in her fisted hands and we both watch her in a trance-like state as she opens them up and let's the debris fall to the now dirty floor silently.

...°...

Something tugs at the back of my head, and I'm reminded yet again of the familiar cord that links me to my beloved. But I can't think straight. My vision is blurred with anger and my mind is set on one precise target: Liam. He is a danger to Alice, and I'm fueled by the urge to protect her as she has done for so many years for me to act upon my thoughts. I want to destroy him.

With one swift and final stride I'm in front of him and take him by the throat, elevating him above me. How? It's not my concern right now, and instead of fearing it, I enjoy the sudden strength I possess and use it in my favor to destroy him, to destroy them.

The hunters and their legacy.

My hand gets ready to finish him off and I tighten my grip, feeling his pathetic attempts of clawing at my hands, gasping for ear. And the weird and slightly scary part is that I'm enjoying seeing him like this, vulnerable, scared, inferior-

"Emma!"

My grasp loosens and Liam falls to the ground like a limp puppet without its strings. I spin around and knock into a rock hard chest. A cold but delicate hand grips my chin and forces my face up to meet his.

"Jay?" I whisper, blinking my way back to reality.

...°...

In an instant, the crazy flame in her eyes fades and finally lets me stare into those beautiful eyes that I know and love so dearly: one gold en and the other a crystal blue. They sparkle in the fading light of the room and for a while, just a moment, we find ourselves in a personal bubble and forget all of the chaos around us; it's just me and her, us.

When my arms encircle her waist and she hooks hers around my neck, I remember how lonely I was without her, my home. Our lips meet and it's exactly like the first kiss we had on that chilly balcony. Except that this time, she seems to be battling to prove me something, to swallow up all of the sadness and grief that she holds towards me.

And then I remember.

I bit her.

Again.

But this time, I nearly killed her.

That realization creates a deep and painful hole in the pit of my stomach and I break apart from her lips, staring at her with sad and sorrowful eyes.

"So, if you're done we could maybe get out of here alive and I don't know... not make out on the way?" Hunter's mocking voice cuts us out of our little bubble and brings me back to reality.

"You guys are already dead anyway." Emma cuts back playfully, to which Hunter bows in mock salute. Something dark coils inside of me at that simple and playful display of affection.

...•...

When I look up at his dazed eyes I frown. Something's bothering him. And when I see his eyes full of sorrow looking back down at me I know. But of course he would feel guilty and torture himself over biting me. The only thing that I believe to comfort myself is that he wasn't himself back in that dark alley. He was a ravenous animal tortured by agonizing hunger. I want to make him forget about that, but something in the back of my mind nags at me and tells me that he won't let me.

-Jay?" My hands cup his face and he gives me a dimpled smile, but it isn't the one that I would have melted over: this one seems fake, as if he's covering up the real emotions behind his eyes.

"We should go." He says shortly, and slides out of my grasp so that my hands fall limply to my sides. I raise an eyebrow but he's already turned his back to me and is making his way to the door. Hunter sends me a questioning look as if saying 'What have you done?', but to be honest, I haven't got the slightest clue.

"I wouldn't do that -if -if I were you..." Liam's shaking voice stops me in my tracks, and his sentence lingers in my ears as he begins to cough out clouds of dust, sending me a look that could kill. But I nearly did kill him. In my defense, none of this would have happened if he hadn't kidnapped me. Actually - and that's the dark thought that makes me stop and listen to him for a second - without my kidnapping by the hunters I might be lying dead in that alley somewhere far, far away, while a weeping Jay is crouched over my lifeless body.

"What do you mean?" Hunter's voice is barely controlled by the evident annoyance in his tone, but I know that that's just the beginning of the process of his rage. I break out of my chain of thoughts and mental images.

"Hasn't your friend told you yet?" Liam rises to his feet with shaking difficulty and puts his weight down on the monitoring machine besides him, that for some reason, was missed by the falling roof. "She has nearly completed the transformation."

-What's that supposed to mean?" Hunter looks over at me and than directs his gaze back to the hunters' leader. Liam manages a cruel laugh.

"Oh, so he hasn't.well, I assume that you know about her talent?"

Who is this he that he's talking about? And what does he mean by our friend?

No reply. Our silence serves as the only answer. He continues with a satisfied glint in his eyes. "Her talent stopped her from completing the transition as a child, so we are only speeding things up a bit now. She originally should have been introduced to the world of hunters as a toddler, but her parents kept our world from her life and dishonored our code. Let's just say that it didn't end very well for them. And it won't end well for your sister either." He directs the last part at me. Hasn't he yet learned his lesson?

I take a step towards him with my hands rolled into fists by my side but Hunter straightens an arm in front of me and stops me. I look at him with annoyance.

"Let him finish." He whispers. Liam looks at us with amusement clear in his eyes. Those eyes wander between Jay, Hunter, me and then back again. He finally breaks out of it.

"Anyway... Emma belongs to our kind. I am the leader of the hunters as she killed my father," His eyes turn hard and his posture stiffens as he speaks those words, "so she belongs in my circle and you can do nothing to stop us from taking her. The process is already finished. She only needs the last straw and then I can assure you, that you will want nothing to do with her. She will be set on killing every vampire that she meets, including you, and including your other bloodsucking friends. The sweet and innocent girl that you once knew will be gone, turned into a killing machine. She will be mine."

"No!" A loud roar comes from the corner of the room and Jay's enraged expression turns his endless eyes into something much more threatening. "She is mine, and will always be mine."

Liam smiles wickedly and sighs, "I really don't care about that thing that you vampires call your beloved, so you shouldn't be so sure about that."

Jay springs towards him but is knocked to the ground by the weight of Hunter's body, pinning him down. "Don't." Hunter hisses at him, fangs bared defiantly. Jay battles underneath his hold but then freezes, utterly enraged, but choosing to endure it in silence.

Liam looks curious for a moment at the intercalation but his face is wiped off of any emotion in a second. He sets his gaze on me and my body freezes. Jay is still pinned down by Hunter but the latter suddenly looks up with shock on his face at something behind me.

"Emma look out!" Jay's voice has me sending him a questioning look but my suspicions are quickly cleared. Before I can turn around, I suddenly feel a sharp sting in my back and my body arches forward, before falling limply to the ground. The last thing I see is a very recognizable face.

"Drake?" I whisper, blinking several times through my drugged daze. I see the syringe that he holds, the blank look in his eyes, and then my vision clouds over.