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Chapter Four:

Hunter

"It's because you used up such a huge amount of energy."

It made sense, really.

"How much longer is it going to take me for me to heal?" She wondered attentively, twisting her arm away from Vanessa and poking it experimentally to see if the bruises actually hurt. They did, in the sore-but-not-particularly-uncomfortable kind of way. Like they had when she was human, a few days after falling while riding her bike, or tripping and skinning her knee. thy were healing, in the natural way, as with humans they were always bound to do. She was fascinated by this new revelation but not particularly concerned by it. She had been apprehensive of something far worse—what, she didn't know…just something that could concern her life. Not that she actually had one, but…it was a complicated and irritating thing to think about. She tended to go around in useless circles, frustrating herself to no end, when trying to properly explain her existence.

"I really haven't got any idea," Vanessa replied.

"Yes, but you're older," She sighed. "So kindly make up something plausible so that I don't exhaust myself attempting to come up with far-fetched explanations."

"Technically, honey, you're around the same age as me."

Faye tilted her head to the side, amber eyes pensive, and thought. She had been turned awhile before Vanessa had been...a few months, they'd deduced, had to be the general vicinity at most…then add twelve years to the six she'd been human. She would be eighteen, but seventeen was where the visible aging stopped, where adulthood was said to begin. She was mildly stunned to think that, in the past two years and the manor, she had not celebrated her birthday, or even thought about it.

Just goes to show, She thought, How terrible things were, that i was too preoccupied to notice I'd technically become and adult...

"You're thirty-one, but we're both, technically, seventeen." The words tasted funny. "I don't especially like 'technically'," She announced. "It complicates things."

"That it does." Vanessa laughed. "But what else is the world if not complicated?"

"Devious," Faye replied easily. "But that might be a more accurate description of fate, really…"

"You believe in fate?"

Faye shrugged noncommittally. "I don't not believe in it. If it's there, it's sadistic, and I hope that we have the power to alter it's course with our decisions. If we don't the world is a whole lot darker than I'd like to believe."

"Darker in what sort of way?"

"There's too many ways to accurately explain."

Vanessa said amicably, but curiously, "Pick one?"

"Death." Vanessa didn't say anything, but Faye gave her a small little smile, close to a smirk at her own perverse choise. It was odd, she knew. "Morbid, I know, but it's the one I know best. I'm, unfourtunately, familiar with it." At this sobering revelation, Faye continued, "People, or at least most of the ones I'd known, never get a chance at everything they should have. I mean, my family was torn apart," She breathed deeply, shudderingly, and Vanessa empathetically reached out.

It's okay to talk about them, she comforted, her sapphire eyes earnest and open and understanding. It's okay to remember.

"I used to think that love was what kept everything together," She admitted. "Like super glue." She smiled reminiscently. "But then, when--" She had to shift so that her back was against the corner of the couch, knees up, arms around them tightly. She would say this, because she was strong enough to do it. "--when my dad almost killed my mom--" Her throat closed off and her entire body posture stiffened, rendering her hideously incapable of producing sound for a moment before she dug her sharp nails into her legs, punishing herself for the weakness. "Well, I-- I realized that love isn't this all-powerful force that can conquerr everything." The explinations were coming faster now, like if she purposely rushed them out, tripping over the words in her blind haste, it would come easier. Or at least be less painful. Like ripping off a band-aid quickly, instead of slowly tearing it off the sensitive skin. "You'd think that since he couldn't do it, it'd be different, but...the thought...it was there, and then even after that, Damon killed him." She took a deep breath, fixed on finishing this even if it killed her. She was sure she was bleeding, now. She could almost smell the scent of blood. "He killed a part of my mom, too; a big part of her. She was never the same, and I had to look into her eyes for ten years knowing that it was my fault."

"Sweetheart!" Vanessa exclaimed, engulfing faye in a huge bear hug, rubbing slow cirlces on her back. "That was not your--"

"I can't talk about it," Her voice was blank and emotionless, and from the sudden stiffness in Vanessa's body posture, Faye knew she had surprised her. But she had to be strong. She wouldn't cry; last night had been enough. "I really, really, can't, Vanessa."

She looked into her eyes, and Faye knew that Vanessa respected her words. "Fate," She said. "Is an odd thing."

"Odd and clever and devestating," Fate agreed. "It knows too much and does too little, and sometimes lets too much go free."

"Deep," said a definitely masculine, relaxed voice from the kitchen. Faye looked up to see Jude, leaning up casually against the wall, arms crossed against his chest. He better have jsut gotten there, or she would slit his throat for eavesdropping like that. No one liked a sneak. "Care if I join the conversation?"

"Would you have anything helpful to contribute?"

He smirked cockily, like he knew more than he was letting on. "Possibly."

"Possibly warrants an explanation," Faye said flatly, refusing to be provoked. She wasn't in the mood for irritating riddles. He could take his withheld information and go shove it up his ass. Her bruises would go away soon, either way. She wouldn't kiss the ground at his feet to know what he had to say. "So be a bit less cryptic, the mystery doesn't add to your nonexistent allure.

"I think mystery suits me just fine." "

You would," Faye muttered. "But you and you're overly inflated ego and the only ones, so shoo—" She waved her hand dismissively, like he was a fly buzzing around her head. "—you'd think with your stupid, "superior" intuition, you'd know when you aren't wanted."

Intuitive senses were heightened with vampirism, and once you learned to tune into them correctly, they were of excellent use. And Jude, she assumed --with his visions, or whatever would be the suitable word; predictions of what might happen—should have a better grasp on that than he seemed to.

He remained unaffected. "I know that within the next ten minutes I'm going to frustrate you so badly you'll contemplate slapping me across the face." He grinned. "But you won't do it, now, because at this point you know you'd be proving me right, and that's something you hate doing." He laughed derisively. "See, my decision to tell you this altered the course the next ten minutes would have taken."

"I contemplate physically injuring you more times than not," She replied dryly, not appreciating his comical jab at her complex thought-process. Fate, and the controversial ability to change it, were not funny concepts. She hated him, even jokingly, demeaning her words and belittling her careful scrutiny of something she was exceedingly serious about.

"And more times than not I can tell when you're doing it. Ever notice me casually back away when you get angry?"

"That's just because you're afraid of me. I'm known to be quite terrifying when I'm extremely angry."

He laughed. "You're two heads shorter than me and twenty something pounds lighter. I seriously doubt you could cause lasting damage even if you tried."

"Yes, physically you have an advantage, but with my mystical, bizarre powers to move things with the merest flick of my wrist—" Faye did just that, staring at Jude the whole time, and a book sitting on the kitchen table floated serenely onto the couch next to her, dropping neatly and quickly. "I could easily pick up a…let's say, an axe, or something especially heavy… and whip it at you before you had the chance to hurl yourself out of the way."

"Wishful thinking," He said. "Like I told you earlier, I could simply see you doing it before, and, therefore, prevent the tragedy before it happens."

"See, I don't view that as being much of a tragedy. Besides, how many times have I whacked you on the head with something while you walk by? "

"When I'm not paying attention," He pointed out. "Those were the only times that you've ever gotten me. Want me to count the overwhelming number of your failed attempts? ."

"Then I'll be sure to catch you off guard."

"Planning to kill me with an axe, or—" He considered for a moment. "Whatever other heavy object you might use, would definitely make me notice."

"I could take you even without your attention diverted."

He sighed and rolled his eyes. "You kid yourself."

Faye mocked his airy sigh. "And you delude yourself into believing that. By the way, isn't is possible to consciously block your intentions from someone?" She knew the answer but wanted him to saw it, and shot him a dangerous, I-could-be-plotting-your-muder-right-now-and-you-would-never-know look, raising her eyebrows indicatively.

"It's extremely difficult and, generally, only possible when you know someone would be searching your mind."

"The actual searching of a mind is extremely painful, and easy to detect."

Reading a mind, trying to catch emotions or intentions from it, simply what went on every day between Charity, Chase, Drake, Faye, and Jude, was entirely different than actually searching. Searching left the person vulnerable and openly susceptible to any negative thoughts, past memories, the person might dredge up, and it was horribly painful. Not to mention that the person could jumble things around, throw in a bit of their own opinions, and, in essence, completely change the person into, virtually, the same body with an unrecognizable persona.

"Not always." This tone gave her the impression that he could easily be looking, sorting, analyzing his detailed way through every thought, every past action, any future ones that he could see her doing, and imperceptibly she twitched. It was not a pleasant thought to entertain, though she was 99.9 percent sure that he was bluffing.

"Shut up," she told him exasperatedly. "And kindly leave before I--" She stopped short, scowling deeply, realizing with a stab of defeated bitterness, that she had been planning on threatening bodily harm, particularly a good, hard slap. But the look on his face she gritted her teeth. She hated it when he was right. "Oh, go ahead," She snapped sourly. "Go ahead and gloat, get it over with before a bitch-slap across your vile face is too nice of a punishment."

"I saw that too."

"No you didn't, you narcissistic—"

"On some level," Vanessa, unexpectedly, interrupted. Faye almost jumped out of reaction; she'd actually forgotten that her aunt was there, silently assessing though her calm persona had been. Jude's presence was intoxicating, but like that of a cheap, disgusting beer that she'd chugged too much of that got her intoxicated but left her with a nasty hangover the next morning. He always did have the remarkable ability to leave her with the incredibly repulsive urge to puke her guts out. "This is amusing, but on another, Jude has something important to say, and I hope that you two can get over your petty differences long enough to cooperate. This –as in you two being civil at a time where your lives could very well be in danger-- is bigger than trivial arguments. You should learn that."

"Treachery," Faye muttered mock-angrily, though some secretive, hidden part of her did resent that admonishment, if only a little. Shouldn't her aunt be on her side? She'd known her longer, she was the only mother-figure Faye had left! Obviously, when Faye contacted her rationality, she knew that it made a lot of sense for the woman to be neutral, what with the both of them living in her house and not having a problem with Jude herself. But, childishly, she did wish that at least someone would blatantly take her side instead of standing in the middle of the bickering, holding a big white flag in each hand. She and Jude had co-existed for a very long time, though. Well, without the artfully planned sabotage being too brutal, so far. The boring, spur-of-the-moment kind of tricks ranged from Faye flicking the water glass to tip over so he slipped in the puddle, whipping heavy objects at him with her mind, tripping him as he passed (old school, but very effective), and accidentally flushing the toilet while he was taking a shower. But she'd woken up in the middle of the night to his voice penetrating her mind, singing obnoxious loud songs, spiders (which she was abnormally terrified of) in her bed, eggs in her shoes, among other equally as irritating things.

And those were the most civil pranks.

"I'm sure we can all play nice for a while, and not act like idiotic, hormone-crazed middle-schoolers, right?"

Faye snorted delicately, crossing her legs and looking dignified. "She doesn't know what she's talking about."

Vanessa rolled her eyes at Faye's stubborn rebuttal. "Come on and join the party, Jude."

"Not much of a party anymore."

"I have to say," Jude chirped mock-cheerfully, plopping down between Faye and Vanessa, making an elaborate, noticeable gesture of taking the book Faye had moved with her mind, and carefully setting it on the floor by his feet, "that I've never had the displeasure of meeting someone so oddly cynical. In case I've never mentioned it."

"I have to say that I don't really care."

"And I don't care that you don't care."

"I'm not especially interested in the fact that you don't care that I don't care about whatever you have to say," Faye replied superiorly, smirking bitchily. A small part of her mind, embarrassed at her totally adolescent immaturity, quipped at her to stop acting like a pubescent girl taunting a boy she hated. But, Faye was still in frequent contact with the inner child she'd never really had the chance to be, and so, consequently, she was not very inclined to take the voice seriously. Besides, she did hate him. With a fiery intensity.

"What is it, Jude, that you were going to say?" Vanessa, once again, intervened.

Jude suddenly got serious, and his gaze was penetrating as he gazed, immersed in his own mind, apparently, at nothing in particular. Her words had sparked his reaction. Then, he said, "Well, Faye's bruises are going to fade within the next couple of days, though I don't know why they won't do so faster than that" as if it were only the first in a series of explanations; the one he'd known and made a big deal about. He'd just dramatized it, of course, to get the better of Faye and make it look like he had one up on her. However, he did not elaborate and sat frustratingly still for a frustratingly long time, doing nothing but wearing that mask of intent concentration.

"That is what you made a huge, dramatic deal about?" Faye inquired loftily, after too long of a silence. He brought out the bitch in her, he really, really did.

"No," He retorted, disdainfully, as if she were an imbecile disturbing his attentive, inner absorption with what he was seeing. "Don't be ignorant. That's just what's explicitly clear," he snapped back, emerald eyes flashing impatient intolerance as he was jerked away from his thoughts. Faye was taken back but did not show it. "What isn't clear, though, is what's bothering me. There's something that's off, but it's so vague I have no idea what it is. It's not looking good, though, I can tell you that."

Just like him, really, to act cocky and argue with her when he knew there were bigger matters at hand.

And then, quite abruptly, he zoned out more rigidly than before, and stared at the whitewashed wall across the room as if it were a blackboard displaying a particularly interesting math problem. Faye had witnessed this before, so, only mildly intrigued, she waited impatiently for him to zone back in. This time, he was seeing something more than her bruises fading. When Jude snapped out of the trance, he looked pissed. "Social Services, apparently, has found out that you've got five unaccounted for minors currently living in your house. They're going to be here to discuss what the hell we're doing here, living arrangements, and high school in exactly--" He checked the clock. "Two minutes."

"Who told them?" Vanessa demanded, not worried but irate. It was an inconvenience, not a matter of real importance, just a nagging itch that wouldn't be scratched.

"Someone saw us materialize out of thin air in the dead of night and wondered, couldn't mind their own freaking business," Jude enlightened Vanessa, obviously quite resentful at whoever had ratted them out. "A neighbor, I think, and thankfully, they assumed they'd just missed us walking up because it was dark. Avoids further problems. But now social services is wondering what we are all doing here."

"I thought I brought us into the house?" Faye wondered confusedly. It didn't fit.

"You brought the lot of you to the front doorstep," Vanessa replied. "We'd never used the portal to bring anyone here, only in reverse order. A minor slip up in your mother's—" Faye winced, arm subtly sliding tighter around her stomach to hold it tighter. "—and my shoddy spell work that, apparently," She sighed, intently kneading her temples with her fingers, as if willing away a migraine. "Has screwed us all over."

"Well, I'd say we we're a lot less screwed than before, really."

Suddenly, Jude groaned in obvious irritation, eyes closed tight once again. "They're under the impression that you are illegally housing runaways, and that the proper authorities need to be contacted. " Faye almost laughed. It was, at the very least, half right about that. They had run away-- froma sadistic vampire hell-bent on their death. It was just ironic, was all. "They're calling the police. If Chase can manage it, we're going to have to get him to modify their memories. Or else we're going to have to play along until they leave, because we can't risk any suspicion." He seemed genuinely pissed. "Which is going to put a damper on finally being away from that hellhole we'd lived in for the past few years. "

"It's not really that big of a deal, we could just—"

"SHIT!"

"Would you calm down, Moore?"

"If you'd shut up for one second, Vaile, then I could explain to you the huge, nasty pile of shit we're in, preferably before they get to the door." He was suddenly very, very frantic, his voice sharp and worried. "Is that ok with you?" He snapped sarcastically.

Faye bit back a instinctive stab of fear and let the anger flood her voice. Touchily, she shot daggers at him with her eyes and said tightly, "The floor's all yours, Moore."

He gritted his teeth, looking disturbingly angry, and said, "They're calling the police, because one of them planted the idea in their heads that something more might be wrong." He steeled himself, as if they were nearing, and she noticed that his knuckles were a sickly, gross white. "One of them is a hunter."