No Life Kid 16B

Tires crunched over the gravel on the driveway, Zander snapping his blue clamshell shut as he finally came to a stop right in front of his home. The Weatherell House was quiet when he finally entered, a full half-hour away from the Cullen’s little thunderstorm party, pushing the heavy oak door shut behind him.

“Walter!” He strode in, moving as quickly as he could without blurring. “Alex!”

Both of them stood in the main sitting room, the two answering him at once as he entered the space. The furniture had been shifted — heavy chairs pushed back to the windows, antique rug rolled up to prevent slipping.

“Perimeter sweep completed on all cameras, master!” Alexis saluted from where she stood by the massive stone fireplace, flickering orange light changing the color of her long blonde braid. Steel gleamed on her hips, long twin kukri knives sharp enough to shave a ghost. “No signs of nomadic sparkler activity within ten miles of town!”

Zander raised an eyebrow. None?

That… He wasn’t sure if that made sense, especially considering James wasn’t supposed to go all that far. He still wants Bella, right? 

“None, master.” The Scottish Renfield confirmed what she had to say with a quick shake of her head, braid dancing behind her. “But the high-speed motion detectors on the eastern ridge have tracked something moving in the deeper forest.”

“Likely Cullens maintaining their own surveillance.” The older man stood in front of a wingback chair, one that wouldn’t be out of place in a Victorian gentlemen’s club. The table between him and everyone else held a sniper rifle, the thing black enough to fade into the shadows. “Though I have prepared alternative defensive positions around the property should the situation require… escalation.”

Alexis’s grin was wide enough that her canines almost almost looked like fangs. “Oh, we’ll escalate, all right.” R’s rolled like a drumbeat, brogue thick as her bustline. “These sparklers picked the wrong fuckin’ town to threaten. I’ll gut the cunts like salmon.”

“Language, Miss Armstrong.” The butler butled back, pulling a fresh white cloth from somewhere as he wiped dust from the rifle barrel. “In front of the Master, at least.”

“Fuck off, Walter,” Alexis pulled a blade from its sheath with a loud-enough shink. “We’re about to hunt one of the cunts the Master’s been talkin’ about for a year now. Besides, Master lets me have my fun.”

…I picked her for the food and because she was hot. My mistake. Zander pinched the bridge of his nose, the half-psycho Scot too eager to die. For someone who used to be a soldier, why is she more tits than tactics?

Granted, she had plenty of the former so the latter was only relatively smaller.

Regardless, a headache was starting to build behind his eyes, phantom pressure that had nothing to do with biology. “Nobody is hunting anything but me. Recon only. Both of you.”

Alexis’s face fell, sulking brawler replacing the eager killer. “Ah, come on, Master-“

“You more than Walter,” Zander cut her off, a single finger aimed at her chest. “These things would drink you like a Capri Sun. You’re fast, Lex, and plenty strong. But you’re still human, try and remember that.”

“You could fix that any day, Master.”

Zander shut his eyes for a second. Not doing that. There were several reasons why, honestly, and he didn’t feel like losing out on a good chef just to test a theory. “Alex, enough.”

The grown woman slumped back against the mantelpiece, crossing her arms as she pouted back at him.

“Let’s be real…” Zander clicked his tongue, turning back to the butler. “Walter would actually stand a chance, mostly because he has the guns to at least crack their skin.” He shook his head slow. “On top of that, he wouldn’t get in close.”

Walter almost beamed — or whatever the butler version of beaming was — at the negative praise directed his way, straightening his tie. 

“Now, let’s get to work.” Zander ordered. “Set the perimeter alarms, all motion tracker lives. If a squirrel farts within a half-mile, it better be logged.”

“Finally.”

The sole blonde in the room drew one of her blades free again in a blur of motion, the woman testing the curved edge against her thumb. A tiny bead of bright red blood welled up as she lifted her thumb to her mouth and licked it off. “You think I can make glitter if I shave off some of their skin?”

“What did I just say?”

One second he was by the door, the next Zander was inches from her face, air fluttering her blonde bangs.

“”Those knives wouldn’t do shit for dick on marble skin.” He leaned in closer, staring into too-eager green eyes of a woman hungry for more than what was in the kitchen. “I don’t care what you did in Kosovo. This ain’t that. This ain’t even close to that. Your job is backup. Your job is recon. Your job is to make me dinner. You understand?”

She held his gaze as the blood-tie flared, the invisible weight of a heavy chain pulling tight for a single heartbeat.

The knife returned to its sheath. “All right, all right. I hear ya, master.”

Zander blinked at her.

“Oh, right,” she blinked back. “Recon.”

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

Monday morning smelled like normalcy.

Aka wet pavement, stale sweat, and Axe body spray packed three hundred-and-some tight in the hallowed halls of Forks High School.

Across the cafeteria, though, the Cullen table was a study in controlled panic to those that had the eyes to see it. Edward Cullen sat rigid, his back perfectly straight as Bella took his side in a move that had half the cafeteria talking. Neither were eating, both just talking to each other quietly enough that even Zander had to strain to catch it.

Alice was… Alice looked like she was on something, honestly. Eyes were distant, barely even managing to look like she was in the room

Zander also wasn’t as normal as everything else seemed to be. Granted, he wasn’t as bad as the Cullens, but still… it was noticeable.

“You’ve been weird all day.”

Case in point, Jessica Stanley broke his ego with five simple words as she slid into the plastic seat next to him. Her lunch tray dropped with a clatter in front of her as she leaned forward on the table, her bright yellow sweater worthy of a hazard sign and demanding attention. 

“I have?” Two words and question that wasn’t; that was all Zander had to say back, already sucking his teeth as conversation failed him. “My bad, Jess. Didn’t notice.”

“Like, I dunno…” A tater tot met its end, stabbed clean through the middle by Jessica’s white plastic fork. “Not to say you’re not weird, rich-kid-weird, but way more than usual, y’know? You keep looking at the doors. You expecting someone?”

“No.”

“Did you order a hit on someone?”

“N-what?” Zander blinked up through his sunglasses, looking at an already-giggling Jessica as if just seeing her for the first time. “Why was that your second choice?”

“Made you focus, didn’t it?” She giggled again, one hand covering her mouth. “So, you gonna tell me what it is?”

“Just…” Zander shook his head, unscrewing the cap of his thermos as he cooked up a simple enough lie. “Just family stuff.”

He took a sip, the taste of stale copper and old pennies doing little to help the growing static in his head. He wasn’t hungry, not properly. But he was at least a little peckish ever since the Cullen boys had taken his head clean off his shoulders. 

And James and the gang smelling sweet as diabetes definitely made that worse. 

“But you’re an orphan?”

Before Zander could think up another lie — a better one about distant cousins or aggressive estate lawyers — Jessica waved a hand in his face. “It’s whatever.” She rolled her eyes. “You don’t have to tell me if it’s, like, classified, or deep or stuff like that. Just… let me know when you want to talk? I’m a good listener.”

She smiled back at him.

Zander smiled back before taking another sip of the terrible blood. I gotta do something nice for her.

During Physics, the tension finally snapped.

Mr. Molina was droning on about the sun’s chromosphere, but Zander couldn’t find it in him to listen. No, he was focused on the micro-movements of the boy sitting two desks over.

The eternal boy in question leaned across the aisle, Edward not turning his head as he pitched his voice low enough only Zander’s ear could pick it up.  

“Alice sees him near Bella’s house.”

Zander didn’t turn his head either as he sketched a picture of a smiling sun with black glasses in the margins of his notebook. 

“Just outside the range of my senses,” Edward’s soft whisper continued on. “We’re thinking he’s testing the perimeter, seeing just how much he can learn before making a move.”

Zander nodded once, chin barely moving. Yeah… sure. He couldn’t argue with what Alice and Edward knew but he felt like there was something they were missing. Something…

Something about all just felt too clean, too straightforward almost. Maybe I’m just being paranoid. That was true but it was also possible he wasn’t. 

Besides, a vampire who survived centuries as a roaming runter didn’t just circle a house and wait to be noticed by the mind-reader living in the same town. Right?

By lunch the next day, the trap snapped shut.

Alice stiffened mid-sentencee, spine rigid as she snapped straight up in her chair. “Phoenix.”

She said it quietly enough to go unheard in the noisy cafeteria, but the word carried itself across the space anyway. Even with the force of three hundred teenagers, it managed to reach the ears of the only vampire not sitting with her.

“H-he’s going to force her to Phoenix.” Her voice was trembling, high notes cracking. “I-it’s her mother. He has a plan involving her mother.”

The vision was clear. 

It was cunning.

Exactly the kind of sophisticated psychological trap a centuries-old tracker would set. 

And it was pretty much exactly what was supposed to happen.

Zander frowned, pen hovering over his notebook. 

…just not like this, though.

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

“We move now.”

Edward’s voice was absolute as they stood in the deep woods behind the Cullen house. Edward had called an emergency meeting like his pops didn’t lead the family, even managing to get his number to ring him in.

“We beat him there,” Edward paced a tight circle, hands raking through his bronze hair. “Jasper, Alice, and I will take Bella south. We’ll get her out of the state tonight. The rest of you… you continue tracking James here. Make him think she hasn’t left.”

Zander leaned against a massive cedar tree, arms crossed over his chest as he watched panic dictate the strategy.

It was a good plan. It was the canon plan. It was exactly what he remembered reading in a paperback book a lifetime ago.

So why did the hairs on the back of his neck refuse to lay flat?