Rising: A Life and Death fanfiction

Prologue Part 1: First Scent

18th November, 2012.

I couldn't. This was it. Never again would I be so selfish to take the life of another to sustain myself; fifty years of murder had to end - I would find a way, no matter how long it would take.

I slowly slid down to the floor, gripping my face in my hands as a held back the tidal wave of emotion which I knew would come; it hadn't gotten any easier, despite countless years of trying, to distance myself from what I was doing. From what I was.

I had to get away, I didn't care if the Volturi would end me for leaving my latest so visibly and inexplicably drained. Let the media speculate, I'd be long gone before they'd find the body. Besides, if I allowed myself for the monster to persuade me it was okay, I would inevitably succumb. But not this time. I pledged there and then that I would deny the seemingly bottomless thirst that had dominated my... existence for the past five decades.

I pushed myself up and forced myself not to look at her, sprawled across the pavement in the shadow of a dumpster, her bag spilling onto the street. I couldn't bare to know a name, to add yet another to my expansive list of atrocities.

Even worse, if I saw her face I would see everything: every insignificant moment of her life, laid before me like the pages of a book - only this was a thousand times worse. Not only would I see, but I would feel. And that included the bloody end.

I wasn't too sure why I could do this, sometimes we are reborn with new powers and there is yet to be a plausible explanation why. I can't recollect having anything like this in my human life, but then again I can't remember much from my human days; our human memories fade over time, it's like trying to see through muddy water or hear over a crowd. Eventually the memories completely disappear, leaving behind only a brief concept of beginning - some of us forget it all.

I wasn't certain what I actually could remember, the specific memories that I had seemed too vivid and I had a feeling that they were just a product of my overly active imagination.

What I did know, however, was this: My name is Eamon Joseph Dale, and my parents had been Jeremy and Victoria Dale. I was British, and I'd grown up in a small town in the English countryside. I think I had a sister, although that was where the details became fuzzy. There was only one human memory that I could remember completely, and it is the same for all of us: our transformation.

I'd been out late, it must have been past midnight because even the pubs had closed for the night; I don't recall exactly why I was out late, but I was heading home. I'd decided to risk getting beat up by taking a short-cut through the forest park between the town centre and my neighbourhood; I'd normally felt safe there, my town was as small town as they came, but on that night I had a strange sense of foreboding. The forest seemed too quiet, I hadn't yet seen any deer or hares like usual and I couldn't smell the foxes either, which was very bizarre for rural England. The forest was too still, as if it was holding its breath, and that made me uneasy.

I never saw my creator, all I knew was that I was snatched from the trail in the depths of the forest. I was taken to an abandoned farm shack on the other side of the country and was left to burn. I thought I'd gone to Hell, and I'm pretty sure I yelled a lot, but no one could have heard me.

When I awoke, I was alone with the raging thirst that gripped me and the electrical zing of my new strength. I destroyed the entire shack by accident, when I flung open the door and took the entire wall with it; my brain registered this with little interest, I was already on the hunt and I cared for nothing else - not that I knew it. The wonder of my newfound strength and senses came later, after I'd committed my first murder on an unlucky hiker and swum to America to escape justice.