AN: Thanks for your patience! I generally have pretty bad writer's block, so I think I did this one well--I had a bit of inspiration from a tidbit of information that Google gave me when doing "research" for this story (I have not yet been to Philadelphia). Enjoy!

The road widened a bit as we left the snarls of the city traffic, and I glanced at Alice again, confused. "Where are we going?" We had been driving for nearly twenty minutes, and she had to know that my thirst was gnawing at me, burning my insides. It was worse than any human hunger I'd ever known, but then again, vampires felt everything many times more strongly than humans. The car, for instance--I could feel every spring in the seat. I was glad it was solid, but I was even gladder that the driver could see the future enough to prevent traffic accidents. Indestructible I might be, but a crash would mean fresh blood, and that would mean--I closed my eyes in pain and put my head against the glass of the window, feeling the waves of heat coming from it.

The wind started to gust as we turned off the highway. The sky was a mass of roiling dark gray clouds with a greenish tinge, and the light was very strange, even more unearthly to my vampire eyes; I never tired of watching thunderstorms come up. The car was very warm. Alice's humming stopped, and I glanced over at her to see the grayish-green light playing eerily over her pale features. She was staring in awe up at the enormous clouds through the windshield, slowing the car a little to better see them. "They're incredible, aren't they?" she breathed, eyes luminous in the growing dimness. A frown creased her forehead. "The rain might make hunting difficult, though."

"Hunting?"

She turned and smiled at me, looking bewitchingly beautiful in the light of the storm. "Wharton State Forest. We're going to the Pine Barrens."

We turned onto another road and I watched as lightning streaked across the angry sky far above the car. The heat was intense, and Alice smiled. "You can roll down the window." I almost jumped--she had nearly read my mind. I smiled sheepishly at her and rolled it down, only to be hit by a wave of muggy air. "When is the storm going to break?" I asked. It was unpleasant to say the least.

"Soon," she replied, eyes on the road ahead. We were entering a more heavily-forested area, and something about the light felt off, even though pre-storm light was generally odd. I put my senses on full alert as the trees closed around us. Thunder shook the air, startling me. I didn't want the rain to come just yet. Something told me that we needed to be able to see.

Alice pulled the car to a secluded spot and stopped the engine. "I took a back road," she explained to me. "The rangers won't find us, not right now. They won't be out in this storm. We've got plenty of time." She opened the door, and the muggy air floated in. It was very dark in the clearing, and my eyes took a moment to adjust.

"What are we hunting, exactly, ma'am?" The word slipped out. She giggled, then composed herself. "Deer. Bears. Whatever you can find."

"You don't hunt humans, then?"

"No." She frowned, and something passed over her face. "I did once. When I--when I woke up." She looked away. "I'll never do it again. I'll never be that thirsty."

"What--" I stopped and clamped my mouth shut. Distress was radiating from her, almost like a scent. Distress and horror. I looked away and decided not to ask.

Thunder boomed overhead and I looked up at the sky. The light was dimming quickly. "We should go." She nodded, her eyes unfocusing as she dropped the mask of humanity. Before her consciousness went, she said, "Keep close. We'll share. This isn't a good place." Then she shot off into the forest, me right behind her.

The Pine Barrens, with underbrush everywhere and stilted trees on bare soil, needles jabbing into the air and gleaming dully in the dim light, was the most desolate place I'd seen since traveling across the wastes of Texas. The ground was sandy under my feet and the trees loomed crazily around us, blocking my view, a hundred trees in every direction, light filtering through. The muggy air seemed to go away as we plunged into the forest at top speed, and I shivered as the coolness of the forest hit me. Alice sprinted ahead, faster than I'd expected, and I let my senses take over somewhat. I smelled her targets long before I saw them--a herd of deer near a small stream. I also sensed something else, something unfamiliar, but fleeting, and I focused on Alice's trajectory as the wind picked up and the temperature dropped even further.

We came upon them at the stream, and Alice was very fast--she snapped two of their necks before they knew what had hit them. I went after a large doe, tackling her and relishing in the fact that all she could feel was fear and panic, not the anguish and horror that I had been used to for so long. Nothing human. It made me almost enjoy the taste of her blood.

I wiped my mouth and looked up at Alice, who had drained one of her kills and was looking at me expectantly. I grimaced a little, but nodded. She gestured to the other deer, and I did not hesistate for more than a second before I leapt on it ravenously. It was still not nearly enough, and it tasted strange and unnatural after a lifetime of human blood, but it was food, and I was starving.

The wind was howling in the trees now, and as I lifted my head, blood dripping from my mouth, the unfamiliar sensation crossed my mind. It was almost like a scent, but it was nothing I had ever smelled before. It was close. I frowned, trying to focus on it. Alice looked perfectly unconcerned, perched on a rock like a dancer, and I realized that my senses must be more attuned than hers, as I'd lived among very dangerous vampires for so long. "Alice--" I began.

In the forest, somewhere off to our right, something screamed.

Alice stiffened, and her face went paler than I'd known was possible. "Oh God," she whispered.

"What is it?" I strained my senses to the utmost, letting the monster in me take over. Something was indeed there, and there was something incredibly...wrong about it. Disturbing. It didn't smell like any animal I'd ever encountered. Or human, for that matter. And it was very close. I could smell it over the hot blood of the freshly-killed deer.

Alice made a tiny noise, and I felt a rush of fear from her. Vampires didn't feel fear. The...thing screamed again, even closer this time. I whirled and looked through the trees. It was very dark, but I could make out a faint grey shape approaching quickly.

"Get back to the car," I snapped to Alice. "NOW."

She didn't move for a moment, and I grabbed her hand, scooped her up off the rock and took off running, dragging her behind me. Sticks snapped behind us as something came tearing through the underbrush, screaming like a wounded animal. I risked a glance backward and saw a white shape moving at an incredible speed. I cursed loudly.

We hurtled along the trail back toward the car, and in a split-second decision I broke off into the trees, yanking Alice's hand so hard that if she had been human her arm would have fractured and praying that the beast couldn't smell us as well as we could smell it--I suspected it had heard the noise of us hunting. We were running parallel to the trail, and I saw what I was looking for: a ditch. I pushed Alice down into the dirt and dropped beside her, covering her body with mine while I waited, thankful I didn't need to gasp for breath as a human would. She lay absolutely still, her eyes huge, and a second later I saw a giant white shape race by, crashing through the underbrush. It screamed loudly, the sound echoing eerily through the pines. I kept my head low and listened for a few more moments. The sounds faded into the distance, then disappeared much sooner than they should have, the crashing coming to an abrupt halt. "We need to go," I muttered to Alice.

We walked cautiously now, our vampire senses at their peak. Lightning split the sky above us, and above the howling of the wind I heard the familiar scream, but it was somewhere above us this time. My head snapped up and I saw the shape of a strange creature, almost dragonlike, wheeling in the storm, its screams echoing with the hunder. Circling. I scooped Alice up in my arms--she was too shocked to protest--and sprinted for the car.

"Give me the keys," I hissed, nearly tearing the door off in my haste to get her into the car. She shoved them into my hand and I leaped over the car, jumping into the driver's seat and revving the engine before ripping through the grass and back onto the road at seventy miles an hour, near the end of the speedometer. The screams above us became more frenzied as we neared the edge of the forest, and I saw something white hit the road behind the car just before we shot out of the trees and onto the main road to the highway. I floored the accelerator and got up to 90, ignoring the red blinking light on the engine's heat monitor and the protest from the RPM dial; the car had probably never been accelerated that fast before. I didn't let my foot off the gas until we could no longer see the Pine Barrens in the mirrors, and even then I went at least 20 over the speed limit.

When I was sure we had lost the thing, I pulled over into a field. I got out and opened the door for her, then, without thinking, gathered her roughly into my arms and held her against me, my chest tight with the feeling that if I were human, my heart would be racing. Her body was trembling. "Alice," I murmured, "are you all right?"

"Yes," she whispered.

"What was that?"

She laughed a little shakily. "I'd forgotten there were worse monsters than me out there. I should have gone somewhere else, I'm sorry. I should have--"

"Shh." I felt a little awkward; comforting women was not exactly my specialty, having dealt with the equivalent of criminal psychopaths for the last half-century, a term that included my boss and maker Maria. "We're okay."

"It was the--the Jersey Devil. The people here think it's just a legend or sightings of a crane or bear or something, but it's not." Her eyes were focused over my shoulder at the direction we'd come from, and her emotions were a crazy mix of fear and curiosity and something else. "It's the child of the Devil. It lives in the Barrens. I didn't think it would--" She clung to me. "Jasper, don't let go of me."

"I won't." I'd almost lost her, right after I'd found her. "I won't," I vowed again, fiercely.

She looked up into my face as the storm finally broke above us, the wind and rain lashing at our bodies. She smiled radiantly, seeing my decision in my eyes as much as in her mind, as I bent down and set my mouth on hers. Her body melted against mine as she kissed back, soft, incredible lips pressed against mine as she tangled her hands in my hair and pulled my head down even closer, and I was lost.

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