CHAPTER TWO:
BIRDS OF A FEATHER

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THEY VISITED HER ON the third day, or so Jia believed they did. Time seemed different now. No longer confined to the mortal coil, she did not feel the sting of it like the humans they killed. Jia merely existed, motionless. She didn't sleep. Didn't eat. Only burned and maimed to sedate her pain. It was a bleak few days that Jia counted by the changes in the slate grey sky. She scratched lines into her alleyway walls, the only morsel of hope she allowed herself to feel. No matter how motionless she became, she knew the world was turning. That she wasn't entirely alone.

Finley came around sometimes. His eyes were bright red, his mouth forever tinged a teasing crimson. Jia slipped several times — control was so easy to lose, especially when she didn't know how to resist — but Finley was different. He seemed... out of it; there was no Monster and Finley in his body. Just a vampire wearing his face. His heart knew Jia, though, and he'd come to sit with her whenever he was coherent enough to notice her absence.

"Aren't you scared, Fin?" she couldn't resist asking on the third day, right before they came.

The Finley Swan she knew would've been petrified. He'd only been a part of her life for two years but to Jia, with her new concept of time, those two years were a treasured lifetime. He was the first person she met at Lohman's Musical School in California. A boy who played the piano, who told stories of sorrow through every whimsical note. Fortunately, some God must've been looking out for Jia, for this wonderous boy was paired with her for her first ever project and he stuck around afterwards like gum on her shoe (said lovingly, of course.)

That Finley would've never thought to harm someone, even himself. Jia searched for him in this Finley's face and came back empty-handed.

"Are you?" he retorted, tracing the newest scratch she'd added to the wall using her fingernail. "I think you are. You haven't even realised it yet, Jia, but every time you leave this alley, you disappear. Literally."

Where are you? A phantom Finley screamed for her all the way back home. He stood in the shadows of an empty road, running from the boy who was not a boy, only to find his friend was not where he left her.

"I'm not scared," he said, and for just a second, she swore she saw a flash in his eyes. A scrap of a lie. "If I'm scared and burning like this at the same time, there'll be nothing left."

That, Jia understood.

She was living it.

An impossible war of bloodlust and the terror behind it.

She could never find a moment's peace in her own head, and time now seemed endless, eternal, damning.

When Finley went back into the lot, muttering about a friend he'd made in one of the other boy-monster's named Fred, Jia sat and waited as afternoon slipped into night. That was all they could do when the revolving door of humans dried up. Jia —human Jia — would've said fuck that and dragged Finley away by his hair if she had to. She wouldn't have stuck around like a sitting duck.

But really, if she thought about it — which was all she could ever do with her mind running a constant marathon — where would she go? Home would never accept her. She was the enemy. And as much as her family felt like strangers, the thought of feeling the burn around them was worse than the fear Jia knew how to describe.

So no home. Finley — her only other person — was right there with her, so he wasn't an option either. Jia had no one. Just this group of vampires like her, mindless things like Fin, and a world full of humans she feared to invade.

Somehow, despite her new senses, she failed to hear the woman coming. Though just one look at her red eyes confirmed she wasn't a woman. She moved on silent feet, hair bright auburn like Finley's. She was older than them both, mid-to-late twenties maybe, but the smirk on her face told Jia she was much older than that. She was time's greatest defiance. Jia already hated her.

"Hello, Jia," she sang her name like a taunt. "Why are you hiding?"

She had the boy who wasn't a boy with her. The one who did this to Jia. To Finley. This one was around her age, sandy-haired and pale-skinned. He wore all black like a villian out of those crappy mafia movies that Elis liked. Jia didn't hesitate to swing a punch at the infuriating smirk on his face.

The prick barely dodged it, of course, and he reared back snarling like a rabid animal. The woman beside him merely scoffed and put a hand on his arm. He melted like hot butter, turning to stare at her with heart eyes. "Now, Riley, she's only young. Don't let her get to you."

"You did this to me," Jia exclaimed. Her chest shuddered with anger and something else. "Why? What do you want from us?"

Even then, when everything between her and Finley was fractured and gathering dust, she thought of her best friend. Jia was almost as loyal as she was pessimistic.

The woman observed her for a moment. Jia wondered how stupid it would be to punch her too.

"You don't like this life," she commented then, moving around Jia like a hunter herding its prey. "You have so much potential and you know it. Yet you sit and wait in this alley and you sulk like one of them."

Suddenly, she was invading Jia's space, gripping her chin and forcing her to look through the alley opening. There were a few other vampires nearby, some curious why their leaders were talking to the newest of the bunch, others hoping for their next meal like animals kept in a pen. Jia, as she resisted the woman's touch, caught a glimpse of a girl only a few years younger than her. She was small, dark-haired and curled up in a ball with her arms around her knees. She was watching Jia with curious red eyes, the most coherent of the group that Jia was yet to see.

"Riley tells me you disappeared on him when he changed you," the woman gestured to the boy, Riley, who was scowling at their close proximity. As if Jia would be interested in this woman. "But from what I've seen, you can't control it. I can help you."

Jia swallowed thickly. First Finley, now them. You disappeared. Jia had grown up in La Push hearing stories of the Cold Ones. How they ravaged their village, how the Third Wife sacrificed herself to save her lover and the pack of men, Quileute men, who could shift into wolves. These wolves were the only things that could harm the Cold Ones, their teeth tearing into their marble flesh. At first, it seemed straight-forward. But some Cold Ones had gifts. Already unnatural enough, the world now gave them powers to use and abuse.

Jia couldn't have a power. She wasn't even supposed to be a Cold One. And yet...

You disappeared.

If Jia had a heart, it would be pounding like a war drum, threatening to beat right out of her chest. She wished she could hear it, to never take it for granted again.

"And what would you want from me?" she asked as, at last, the mysterious woman released her and stepped away. Back to prowling around her, gazing at Jia like she was some animal in a circus. "If you help me... control it." That word. Maybe, just maybe, if she played her cards right, she could find a way out of there. "Why am I here?"

"We're at war," the woman said solemnly. It amazed Jia how quickly one mask slipped into another. Gone was the curious gleam, the alluring smile. Now she just seemed sad, the tragic heroine of a story yet to be finished. "With a family I believe you know."

Jia paused. Contemplated it. She glanced at the young girl from before. She was gone from her spot now, instead looming over a body one of the others had dragged in from a nearby street. Quickly, Riley disappeared to scold them, leaving Jia alone with this woman. She really needed to learn her name.

"I'm listening."

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THE FLESH OF A vampire tasted nothing like the flesh of a human. Jia learnt this the hard way as she latched onto the nameless boy's wrist. With her teeth buried in the hard marble, he howled up a storm, rearing back to the sound of crumbling stone. His backside hit the floor and Jia stood over him, spitting out a chunk of pale skin that he glared at with blazing eyes. He couldn't see where Jia was but he could hear the slide of her tongue against her teeth as she made sure no skin had gotten stuck. He screamed as he ran for her but Jia merely stepped out of the way, allowing him to fly past her. She pressed her foot into his back, invisible hands poised to snap his neck.

"Nice try," she sang in his ear. He struggled, injured arm twitching as a wave of dark hair fanned around his face. Jia's features pieced themselves together one-by-one until her opponent could make out the hooked curve of her smirk. "But you're dead."

With that, she stood up and offered him a hand, not that he accepted it. As he scrambled to his feet, desperate eyes seeking out Riley's approval for a do-over, part of Jia wondered if this would be the next one to attack when her back was turned. She'd only been training for a week but in those seven days, she'd gained enough composure to switch on her invisibility whenever she wanted. It malfunctioned at times — particuarly, Jia noticed, when emotions were high — but Victoria was right. As much as she hated to admit it. Control was hers so long as she fought for it.

"Who's next?" Riley called to the crowd of onlookers. In response, the nameless boy stomped away like a petulant toddler, shooting one last foul look Jia's way like it was her fault he couldn't accept defeat. Jia watched him go then turned to the rest of the crowd. She recognised several that she'd beaten, including Bree.

Bree Tanner was only fifteen. Finley befriended her the same day Victoria and Riley approached Jia. She was the girl who watched them from the edge of Jia's alley, far too young to be seeing the horrors of the world, to be one of those horrors. Jia didn't understand Finley's attachment at first; however, through his haze of bloodlust, she sometimes caught him staring at Bree like she was a ghost back to haunt him.

Jia knew that feeling. When Riley had dragged the two girls together and declared Bree her first opponent, she'd hesitated. Bree didn't fight back, curling into a ball the second Jia body-slammed her to the ground, teeth poised at her throat. Riley had shouted at Bree until he grew tired of her terrified whimpers, marching off to find Victoria and another way to release his anger. Bree had turned to Jia, and it was like seeing Collin for the first time.

The sterile scent of a hospital room. The beeping of her mother's heartbeat monitor. Jia, at the age of seven, was too small to clamber up onto the bed. John had lifted her so she could see the baby in her mother's arms. Himari smiled, a rare but beautiful sight, her picket-white fence life set in stone. Collin was tiny and insignificant, but Jia had run a finger down the side of his face, skin smooth and breakable, and known it was up to her to protect him.

"Little Baby," she'd nicknamed him, and Himari was so proud...

Bree wasn't a baby, but she was defenceless. Before Jia and Finley, she stuck to Fred — or Freaky Fred, as the rest of them had taken to calling him. Like Jia, he had a power. She could sense it the second she left behind the alley and Finley introduced her. None of the violent vampires went near him, not even Victoria and Riley. He repelled who he hated but let a few close enough to know him. First Bree, then Finley, and now her.

Jia knew when it came time to fight the Cullens (the legends really were true about them) that Fred had a chance of holding his own, but Bree... Jia knew she wouldn't last a second on her own. It was up to Jia — and Finley, provided he was coherent enough to seek his own control — to protect her.

"Really? No one?" Riley scoffed at the silent crowd. The violent ones had already tried their luck and failed; all that was left were the weak or the ones who stayed out of the way. "Pathetic."

He grunted a dismissal Jia's way then disappeared. Most of the tension left with him, but some of it lingered in the wary eyes of the others as they watched Jia approach where Bree was sitting with Finley, Fred not too far away from them.

"That was luck," Finley grinned as Jia dropped down opposite him. "He should've won."

"He?" Jia rolled her eyes at his teasing. "You don't even know his name, Fin."

"Neither do you."

Jia shrugged. "I won. Again. You owe me... how much now?"

When Jia first emerged from the alley, something between her and Finley healed. He wasn't the same boy she knew but Jia soon stopped searching for him. Instead, she grieved in silence, burying him next to her old self in the heart she didn't need anymore. They never discussed fear again, instead letting the simple things linger in the spaces between them.

"Five dollars on Bree," Finley had said when Riley first declared their fight.

Jia had snorted incredulously. "Seriously?"

His grin was teasing despite the serious tone he spoke in. "Yes, seriously. I reckon you're underestimating her."

She wasn't but it was the thought that counted. Ever since, Finley had wracked up a debt as long as his arm; part of Jia believed it was his way of pushing her. Giving her something to prove.

"I think we're leaving soon," Bree murmured. She'd gotten used to Jia and Finley's antics, as they had gotten used to hers, and Jia knew she wasn't saying this for no reason. "I overheard Victoria tell Riley about first light."

Jia frowned, sharing a look with Finley over Bree's bowed head. First light. It was already late, the sky one ominious dark cloud looming over them. Just the thought of home filled Jia with dread.

This was it.

This was the moment.

"If I die—"

"Don't," Finley interrupted Bree with a disgruntled frown.

"Please," she insisted. "Just look after Fred? He was there before you were. I don't want him to get hurt."

Jia hadn't even noticed Fred's absence. Somehow, when she turned to look, he'd disappeared into the shadows. She couldn't see him anywhere. Had he used her moment of dread to slip away unnoticed? Merely magnified it with his gift and she'd been none the wiser? She wanted to search for him but Bree was miserable.

Miserable and unsurprised.

Wherever Fred was going, he had told Bree about it.

"Okay," Jia said, letting Bree grip her hand gratefully. Her skin was smooth like Collin's; in the darkness of night, Jia could pretend her eyes were brown not red. "We promise."

But Jia had a horrible feeling that she'd never see Fred again.

That despite Victoria's promises, every newborn in this lot would be dead in a matter of a day. Their bodies returned to wherever their souls had gone when they were bitten.

All of a sudden, it seemed pointless.

Promises and fear.

Just like that, control was gone again.

Jia would forever be stuck in that alley, the walls closing in, even as, true to Bree's word, the army made a move at first light.

Until her body joined her soul in the dirt.