No Life Kid 11 (Patreon)

Wow. He clicked his tongue, sunglasses sliding down his nose as his eyes roamed the walls and decor. The movies… the movies held back, honestly. 

With the context that vampires lived here, the Cullen estate made perfect sense once you took your first step inside. I mean, like go full gothic with it at his point. Not this modern basic sad. He wasn’t trying to be mean about it — right now, at least — but the whole place looked less like a home and more like a display case for people who didn’t breathe. 

The place was aggressively tasteful and painfully modern on top of that; not to mention excruciatingly clean, without a hint of dust to be seen anywhere. Right now, though, what it lacked in dust in the air, it more than made up for with the kind of tension that usually preceded a police raid.

Zander Cray stood in the center of the Cullen’s living room rug as the silence stretched. Heart not beating, he was almost as still as the vampires around him, barely fidgeting at all as he held his hands in the pockets of blood-splattered denim. With a hum, he settled back on his heels like he was waiting for a bus that was ten minutes late. So, am I going to talk first or…

All around him, the "vegetarian" vampire clan known as the Olympic coven arranged themselves in proper Renaissance style, the psychic pixie to his left damn near vibrating as her small hands clutched her boyfriend’s bicep. The Texan looked like he’d played bloody knuckles with a woodchipper and lost on points, his left arm still only technically attached a good five minutes since it had come clean off. 

The limb was firmly on at the shoulder, but from the way he held it — stiff as a plank — Zander didn’t doubt the marble flesh was still knitting itself back together.

Gnarly.

Big Bear Boy was slumped on the staircase, Emmet pressing one heavy hand against his ribcage. The pitbull version of a vampire caught his eye, offering a grin that was half-grimace, half-respect.

And in the corner, naturally, was Edward; the brooding wonderboy’s jaw locked tight. Being real, as hard as he was glaring, Zander felt he might be down a head again if the guy had telekinesis instead of telepathy.Rosalie wasn’t looking all that different, being real, her own glare more subtle but he didn’t miss the fact that her eyes didn’t leave him for a single instant. 

Apart from Emmett and maybeee Rosalie, it was the two parents of the Cullen clan that managed anything approaching calm, Esme and Carlisle composed even after inviting an unknown into their abode. 

Carlisle’s got centuries of practice, sure. Zander’s eyes slid from the blond doctor to his brunette wife. But what’s your excuse?

“It cannot be stated enough that I owe you an apology.” A smooth voice derailed his train of thought, Zander’s attention snapping back to Carlisle as he sounded off with that practiced tenor that had probably delivered a thousand bad diagnoses. Daddy Dearest stepped forward, hands clasped in front of him. “My boys…” Said boys all winced even with Carlisle’s voice as low as ever, “They acted against my wishes and nearly provoked a war over a misunderstanding.”

Zander tilted his head, the blue lenses of his glasses sliding down just enough to show the skepticism underneath.

“Misunderstanding?” The word rolled out of his mouth slow, Zander chewing on each and every syllable. “They ripped my head off, Doc. Tried to turn me into a mantle piece, even. That’s one hell of a way to say ‘hello neighbor.’”

“You were going t-” Edward stepped forward, the words clipped and fast.Unfortunately, as they both knew well, Zander was faster. “Chillax, Eddy.” Eyes still on Carlisle, the black vampire shook his head. “I drooled a little during a date, like the barest bit of salivation here. And y’all moved in like I was about to drain the entire town dry right there.”

Zander let out a snort, a slow grin sliding across his face. “Even if I went a couple weeks without any sip, she’d be fine, man.” Probably. He knew that might have been pushing it by more than a little bit, but he wasn’t gonna admit that any time soon.

The reaction was immediate, almost every vampire in the room twitching at that. Esme, on the other hand, leaned forward slowly. Her face, heart-shaped and soft in a way that stone shouldn’t be, crinkled with concern. 

Zander fought the urge to frown. Weird.

“A couple of weeks?” Her voice was warm as only a mother’s could be, Zander wondering if she practiced that or if she just naturally spoke in the same sort of tone that made you wipe your feet before you came in the house. “Your… your feeding pattern? Is that safe for you, I mean… you are a newborn, right?”

Newborn… right, right yeah. Zander nodded at that, tipping an imaginary hat her way. He wasn’t even being sarcastic about it, the raw sincerity wafting off the vampire mother almost contagious in its niceness. 

The kind of nice that survived getting turned into a monster, apparently. He’d have to be a real dickhead not to respect that. “You’d assume correctly, Madam Cullen. About the newborn thing, anyway.”

Carlisle frowned, a serious look sliding onto his face as his tone became oddly professional all of a sudden. “That seems… an excessive amount of time, especially for a neonate. The thirst should be debilitating.”

“For your kind, maybe,” Zander shrugged, eyes roaming to the nearest armchair. He stared at the white leather for a second before sparing a glance down at his blood and mud-stained denim almost considering… “I don’t even really need to feed. It just helps take the edge off.”

He tapped his temple. “As you’ve guessed, I’m a bit of a vampire fetus, technically. Meaning teething issues are a bitch-and-a-half.”

Emmett grunted, the big vampire shifting his weight on the stairs. “And if you don’t feed? What, then when you go feral? Hulk out?”

“Nothing that crazy, bro.” Zander waved one hand his way, as funny as the idea of a vampire Hulk was. “No losing control over here. I just get kinda dazed, a bit less sharp upstairs. Kinda like being sleep deprived, which is bad when you’re operating heavy machinery.”

Blue eyes slid over to Edward, the Cullen still glaring his way. “No going crazy though, if that’s what you’re worried about. I got discipline.”

“But tonight, with Jess-” Edward interrupted again, clearly unable to help himself. “I saw what she didn’t notice, through her eyes. You were ready.”

“Tonight with Jessica.” Zander offered Edward a smile they both knew wasn’t real, even with the latter’s mindreading entirely useless here. “I was in a car with a very pretty human Capri-Sun and I drooled a little. That’s it. No loss of control, no danger to her, and no fucking reason for three idiots to ambush me in the mountains to try and use my head like a hackysack.”

The silence hung there, tension as sharp as fangs before Jasper broke it first with a too-strained sigh. “We thought you were a threat to the humans.” 

Zander raised an eyebrow his way. Speak up, man. Honestly, if his hearing wasn’t as strong as the rest of him, he’d barely be able to make out the drawled vowels Jasper was stretching out like taffy as he murmured into Alice’s shoulder. “You… you smell like blood.”

Gold eyes turned Zander’s way as Jasper continued on. “Not just hunger. You smell like death, like dozens… hundreds of victims. It’s on you.”

Zander looked at the soldier in the room, the strategist, the one who knew what it meant to pile bodies. His eyes didn’t narrow even as his thoughts did; well aware that if both Edward and Emmett had the mind of their brother, the fight of a few minutes ago would have been much harder than it already was.

“Because I drank dozens dry, that what you wanna hear?”

It clearly wasn’t as Edward crouched instinctively, lips peeled back from his teeth as a hiss left him. 

“Again, man, Imma need you to ease up.” Zander stared his way, even as his eyes rolled behind the glasses. “Put the teeth away before you hurt yourself. None of them were even close to innocent, okay?”

The statement hit the room like a wet towel, confusion rippling through normally unmoving faces. This time, the Madame Cullen was the first to split the tension and silence both. “...what do you mean?”

Zander closed his eyes for a second, a sigh slipping free from a face that no longer wore a smile. “I hunt monsters, Mrs. Cullen.”

He opened his eyes, a hand raised to his glasses as he pulled them free from his face. “Rapists, murders, and pedos; the big three. And sometimes they hit all of the above and prove they’re not worth the blood pumping in their veins.”

His eyes itched, water stinging his ear ducts as his pupils responded to his thoughts and threatened to slit. “I eat monsters. They stop being monsters.” Thoughts of the hunt and all the ones he’d fed on flooded his mind like their blood had flooded his veins, blue dots twitching with each syllable from his lips. 

Jesus Christ… Shapeshifting was annoying enough, sure, but even more so when he couldn’t control it. “Everybody wins. Except the blood bags, obviously. But fuck ‘em.”

Carlisle and Esme exhanged a look, husband and wife sharing silent conversation built up over a century. “Perhaps,” Carlisle turned back to face Zander, “we can help with your supply issues if the hunger raises a problem. I have access to banked blood. It would remove the need for your… hunting.”

Zander blinked blue eyes once before a short sharp bark of a laugh slipped out. “Sorry, sorry, not… not laughing at you, Doc.” He shook his head, waving the hand with his glasses over at the blond coven leader. “Like, I appreciate it but I’ve got plenty of the stuff with my own connections. Besides, that’s fast food. Don’t work long term anyway.”Carlisle tilted his head. “Would you mind elaborating?”

Zander stood up straight, adjusting the collar of his coat. “Uh, well, they just don’t work long-term like. Whatever it is I actually need in the blood, the life, the soul, the spark, whatever you want to call it…” He sucked his teeth, eyes aimed out the window. “It dies not too long after the blood goes in the bag. Within two weeks, I'm gulping down red Gatorade and calling it a meal.”

Carlisle blinked, the action deliberate and slow. “I… see.”

“Besides,” Zander grinned, showing teeth that he knew were definitely sharper than they had been a minute ago. Again, shapeshifting was a bitch. “I’m in it more for the pest control. The meal is just a bonus.”

“Pest control?” An icy voice chose that moment to melt.

Zaner’s gaze flicked over to see the only other blonde in the room, Rosalie Hale standing by the window with her arms crossed and something in her eyes. Curiosity? Maybe. She clearly liked the idea of dead bad guys, at least.

“Pest control.” He smiled her way.

“You take such pride in it.” Edward Cullen took a step forward, tearing Zander’s attention away from his ‘sister’. “It’s not even a matter of hunger to you.” He hadn’t moved from his corner, but he might as well have been pacing. “You’re taking human life.”

“Haven’t most of us?”

Jasper’s voice was quiet even as the Texan in him made a reapparance, drawl slightly more obvious as he looked at the floor. “Apart from Esme and Carlisle, do any of us truly have clean hands here?””

Zander nodded slowly as he turned back to Edward. “That’s a good point, though. But yeah, I am a killer, just like most of you. Only difference is nobody bit me.

Alice gasped, a sharp intake of air. “Then, how could you possibly—”

“Because I’m not like you.” Zander cut her off with a grin that showed far too many teeth, the canines itching in his gums as they grew in his mouth. “And when I say not like you,  I mean I died in 2003 in a basement club, choking on the blood of people who got murdered by a couple of sparkly boy-band vampires who thought they were gods.”

The silence in the room was dead; so absolute you could have heard a heartbeat, if anyone had one.

“Sparkly… boy band…” Emmett broke it with a whisper and a wide smile.

“Except instead of staying dead like a good little victim,” Zander snapped his mouth shut for a second as he tried to force his teeth to ease up, “I told the pearly gates to go fuck themselves, pulled in all that blood, and I became something better.”

He tapped his chest.

“You became a vampire by… drinking human blood?” If Carlisle could go any paler, he would have.

“Absorbing,” Zander corrected. “Not drinking. All the blood on the floor came right to me, after my throat was ripped open by one of those glitter-skinned assholes.” He shook his head, looking at all of them but especially the mother and father in the room. “No offense.”

Emmet was still grinning even as he nodded. “None taken.”

Zander nodded his way. “So, when I say I’m not like you, I mean it. I’m not a Cold One. I don’t sparkle, I can make my heart beat, and I’m not made of stone.”

“And what is that, exactly?” Edward demanded again as he took another step forward, Esme shooting him a look. “Your kind.”

Zander raised an eyebrow. “Y’all are a European breed. All the same strengths and weaknesses. Me?” He spread his arms wide, dried blood falling off his jacket. “I’m all-American here. Human-made. All soul and raw potential, Eddy.”

Carlisle stepped forward, golden eyes searching Zander’s face clearly looking for the lie where there was none. “And why are you in Forks?” The Cullen patriarch asked the question, the only one that really mattered to the safety of his family.

Easing his gllasses back on, Zander offered a shrug. “Why is anybody in Forks, Doc?” His mouth opened again, grin returning with teeth flat as they were at the start. 

“A quiet life. And the rain helps with the complexion.”