A/N: Neither Twilight nor Edgar Allen Poe's Masque of the Red Death is mine.

Many thanks to Michellephants for encouraging this and fixing my ridiculous tense issues.

Warning: This will be graphic and gruesome and all together disturbing. It is not a love story nor one of redemption. It will be dark and mature, so consider yourself warned.

It thrummed and sang, whispered and danced.

It seeped into my veins and curdled in my gut.

Pulsating rhythms of its seductive heat made me thicken and drip.

Rushing, pounding, and beating, it called to me.

Drowning in it as it slashed through my insides.

The venom coated my teeth and sharpened my resolve.

It would be more potent to let it ripen.

To let her abject terror wash down my throat with every nimble sip.

Her blood would be mine.

As would she.

Once she begged, pleaded, demanded, and wept for my bite.

And she would.

The only question was how many would die first.

The utter silence of death permeated the air.

The heart sputtered to a lifeless halt, the lungs gasped their final breath, as the brain fired its final synapses.

It was magnificently complicated and gloriously simple.

The last mouthful of pumped blood dulled the mind with ecstasy. The wind seemed to cease, the birds hid, and the grass wilted.

Nature responded to my unnatural existence by turning its head; it mourned for the stain of death on my hands through its stillness.

Even the ominous clouds sheltered the sun from shining on my monstrosity.

I had but seconds to savor the taste and revel in my kill before the sound and the fury would sweep back through me.

Fleeing to the tree against the house, I perched and waited, allowing the drum of long dead adrenaline to pump through me.

Pinpricks of crimson coated the cracks of the pathway to the door, where my present awaited. Clumps of chemically treated brown hair hung from the door panel of a 1960s VW Beatle. Strips of hemp weaved clothes lay tattered throughout the yard. My advance sight could discern the faintest traces of gouges from well-chewed nails against the front door.

I was unsure if she would spot the marks though. I would have to carve them out further in the future. Perhaps leave a message. Assuming that the body didn't speak for itself...

Muscles in my face twitched, curving upward into something I once remembered to be a smile. Even I could recognize the beauty of my gift.

Its artistic value.

Filtered gray light advanced the pallor of the impending blue of her skin. Her already dead eyes dried of all moisture in the desert heat. If I were fortunate, the decadent perfume of her decay would hasten its arrival before she was found.

As ever, blood was my requiem. It was a fine art I had mastered decades ago, learning the depth and breadth of the bites; the perfect placement of each. Even satiated with feast I had just imbibed, the venom filled my mouth at its recall...

A long shallow cut of my teeth across her jugular. A nip at her wrists. A puncture inside her thighs. A killing bite through her chest, deep enough to drink from the superior vena cava, letting it pump each gulp straight from the source of her heart.

The small cuts dribbled blood in Jackson Pollack splatters on and besides the body. Her severed heart, spilled what little I had left undrunk, into platelet rivers. It was mesmerizing to see it flowing around the body, rushing down the steps in a red waterfall, only to pool serenely in a rivet of the concrete.

A roaring engine grumbling its way down the road, filled with stinking filthy minded teenagers pulled my focus from my accomplishment.

She was coming.

My body leaned with its yearning for her, toward the bus. It stopped four houses away, emptying its contents by only one. The one who had narrowed my entire existence to sweetening her ever developing scent. Walking toward me, she smelled of exhaust, cafeteria grease and the odoriferous rank of her fellow students. It overwhelmed all of the pungent overtones that had drawn me to her.

She entered my line of sight, personifying everything about her dull stolid life; her plebeian features, her steady heartbeat, and even breathing. In mere seconds it would all change. All the simplistic aspects of her life would be destroyed when she found what I had left for her.

When she unknowingly would begin to become mine.

Her nostrils flared, recognizing the scent of danger; her faced paled, sensing the palpable feel of death. Hands trembled and her stomach audibly turned over.

She hadn't even seen it, and she knew. She knew what I had done for her.

The offbeat pounding of clumsy feet slapped against the pavement, as my foolish girl ran towards me.

Once again, I was greeted with silence. Her breath and pulse stumbled over themselves, halting at the sight before her.

I had left her speechless, but the sight and smells she emitted were far from lackluster. Under the mask of shock were the telltale signs of horror. Within her wise eyes was the precognition of her complete devastation.

I could bathe in her deliciousness. I could quench my raging thirst with the stench of her fear. I would replay the sound of her breath returning and her racing pulse, as her lungs filled with air.

Her screams would satisfy me in the long days until she walked willingly into my path.

The image of her soaked in blood; it coagulating on her hands, drying in her hair, and coating her mouth as she attemped CPR, would tide me over.

Bella choked on her vomit, tears and mucous washing down her face as she clutched her dead mother's body. The mother who had dared to criticize her daughter's eating habits this morning. Her insinuations had forced my hand. Bella had to know I would never allow anyone to stand in our path.

And she would. Eventually.

Until then, I could wait.

She would arrive shortly in Forks to reside with her only surviving parent.

Surviving for now, that is...

Chapter Notes:

I thought Twilight needed a little more horror, how about you?