"We're leaving."
Edward's voice was different now. Harder. The polite businessman mask had slipped, revealing something much more dangerous underneath. He stood by my door, no longer clutching his hand, but I could see tension in every line of his body.
"I'm not going anywhere with you," I said, backing toward my kitchen. Maybe I could grab a knife. Maybe I could—
"Miss Chen." Edward's golden eyes locked onto mine. "Other parties know where you live. They'll be here within the hour. You can come with me willingly, or you can explain to them why you're still breathing when they arrive."
"What other parties?"
"People who don't share my... restraint." Edward straightened his suit jacket with quick, precise movements. "People who solve problems with fire instead of conversation."
"Fire?"
"It's remarkably effective at eliminating evidence." Edward walked to my window and peered down at the street. "Unfortunate accidents happen all the time in old buildings like this one."
The casual way he said it made my stomach turn. He wasn't just threatening me anymore. He was threatening everyone in my building. Mrs. Patterson, the college students on the fourth floor, the young couple with a baby on the second.
"You bastard," I whispered.
"I'm trying to keep you alive." Edward turned from the window, and I could see something like frustration in his expression. "Whatever you think of me, whatever you believe I am, understand this: I am the only thing standing between you and a very painful death."
"Why should I believe you?"
"Because if I wanted you dead, you'd already be dead."
The simple truth of it hit me like a physical blow. Edward was right. He'd had dozens of opportunities to kill me. Last night at the docks. This morning when I woke up. Right now, in my own apartment. But instead, he was offering contracts and making threats about other people.
"What do you want from me?" I asked.
"Answers." Edward moved closer, but stopped several feet away. "You did something to me when I touched you. Something that shouldn't be possible."
"I didn't do anything."
"Your skin burned me, Miss Chen. Not metaphorically. Literally." Edward held up his right hand, and I could see angry red welts across his palm and fingers. "I heal quickly, but this..." He flexed his fingers experimentally. "This is taking longer than it should."
I stared at the burns, trying to make sense of what I was seeing. Human skin didn't do that. Human contact didn't leave marks like those.
"I don't understand," I said.
"Neither do I. Which is why we need to leave. Now." Edward moved toward my bedroom. "Pack light. Essentials only."
"Where are we going?"
"Somewhere safe. Somewhere we can figure out what you are."
"I know what I am. I'm a reporter who saw something she shouldn't have."
Edward stopped in my doorway and looked back at me. When he spoke, his voice was softer than before.
"Miss Chen, normal humans don't burn vampires with their bare skin."
The word hung in the air between us like a live wire.
Vampire.
I'd suspected, of course. The superhuman strength, the glowing eyes, the way he'd moved faster than anything human could move. But hearing him say it out loud was different. It made everything real in a way that seeing it hadn't.
"That's impossible," I whispered.
"Is it? After everything you've witnessed, is that really the most impossible thing you can imagine?"
I opened my mouth to argue, to insist that vampires were fictional creatures from movies and romance novels. But the words died in my throat. Because Edward was standing in my living room in broad daylight, very much real and very much not human.
"Pack," he said again. "Five minutes."
I stumbled toward my bedroom in a daze. Vampire. Edward Cullen was a vampire. A real, actual, blood-drinking monster who ran a tech company and apparently owned half of Seattle.
My hands shook as I threw clothes into my duffel bag. Jeans, sweaters, underwear, whatever I could grab without thinking too hard about it. My laptop was already gone—probably confiscated along with all my other evidence—but I grabbed my backup hard drive from behind my dresser.
"Four minutes," Edward called from the living room.
I stuffed my passport and emergency cash into the bag, then hesitated at my jewelry box. My grandmother's ring was in there, the only thing I had left of my family. But opening the box meant taking time I didn't have.
A sound from the street made the decision for me. Car doors slamming. Multiple engines. Voices speaking in languages I didn't recognize.
"They're here," Edward said, his voice sharp with warning. "We're leaving. Now."
I grabbed the jewelry box and shoved it into my bag, then followed Edward toward my front door. He moved differently now, like a predator tracking prey. Every step was calculated, every movement precise.
"The stairs?" I asked.
"Compromised. Fire escape."
Edward led me toward my window, the same one I'd climbed through earlier. But instead of opening it, he simply pushed his palm against the glass. The window shattered outward in a shower of sparkling fragments, leaving a perfect hole just large enough for a person to climb through.
"How did you—"
"Questions later. Move."
I climbed through the broken window onto the fire escape, trying not to cut myself on the remaining glass. Edward followed behind me, moving with fluid grace that made the rusty metal structure look sturdy as concrete.
Below us, I could hear voices getting closer. Footsteps in the stairwell. Someone was climbing toward my floor, and they weren't being quiet about it.
"Down," Edward whispered, guiding me toward the ladder.
We descended quickly, my sneakers slipping on the wet metal rungs. Six floors felt like sixty. By the time we reached the alley, I could hear shouting from my apartment above.
A black sedan waited at the mouth of the alley, engine running. Edward opened the passenger door and gestured for me to get in.
"Your car?" I asked.
"One of them."
The interior smelled like leather and something else I couldn't identify. Something clean and cold, like winter air. Edward slid behind the wheel and pulled away from the building without turning on the headlights.
"Shouldn't we call the police?" I asked, then immediately felt stupid. "Right. They work for you."
"Not all of them. But enough." Edward turned onto a side street, finally switching on the lights. "The ones who don't work for me work for people much worse than I am."
"Worse how?"
"They collect rather than negotiate."
I didn't want to know what that meant.
We drove in silence through downtown Seattle, past Pike Place Market and the waterfront, heading toward the hills that surrounded the city. The car was warm, but I couldn't stop shivering. Everything felt surreal, like I was living inside someone else's nightmare.
"Where are we going?" I asked again.
"My home. It's secure."
"Secure from what? Other vampires?"
Edward glanced at me, something that might have been approval flickering in his golden eyes. "Among other things."
"How many of you are there?"
"In Seattle? A few dozen families. Worldwide?" Edward shrugged. "More than you'd expect. Fewer than we used to be."
"What happened to the rest?"
"Hunters."
The word sent a chill down my spine. "People who hunt vampires?"
"People who hunt anything that isn't human." Edward's voice turned bitter. "They've been very thorough over the centuries."
"Are they the ones who were at my apartment?"
"No. Those were my kind. Vampires who think you know too much to live."
"But you don't."
"I think you're something else entirely." Edward turned onto a winding road that led up into the hills. "Something that shouldn't exist anymore."
I was about to ask what he meant when my phone buzzed with a text message. I pulled it out, expecting another creepy message from one of Edward's fake contacts.
Instead, it was a photo.
My apartment building was on fire.
The entire sixth floor was engulfed in flames, black smoke pouring from the windows. Fire trucks surrounded the building, their lights painting the evening sky in reds and blues. I could see people on the street, my neighbors standing in small groups, watching their homes burn.
"Oh god," I breathed. "Mrs. Patterson. The students on the fourth floor. Did they—"
"Everyone got out safely," Edward said without looking at the phone. "I made sure of that before we left."
"How could you possibly know that?"
"I have people watching the building. They confirmed all residents evacuated before the fire spread."
"You knew this was going to happen."
"I knew it was a possibility." Edward's grip tightened on the steering wheel. "I told you, Miss Chen. Fire is remarkably effective at eliminating evidence."
"They were trying to kill me."
"They were trying to erase you. Your apartment, your belongings, any trace that you'd ever investigated my company. If you'd been inside..." Edward trailed off, but I could fill in the rest.
If I'd been inside, I would have died. Another casualty of an unfortunate electrical fire in an old building with questionable wiring.
"Who were they?" I asked.
"The Volturi. The closest thing our kind has to a governing body." Edward turned through an ornate iron gate that opened at our approach. "They don't appreciate humans who learn too much about our world."
"But you do?"
"I find you... intriguing."
We were climbing a steep driveway now, surrounded by thick forest on both sides. Through the trees, I could see lights in the distance. A house. No, not a house. A mansion.
"Edward," I said, my voice barely above a whisper.
"Yes?"
"What did you mean when you said I shouldn't exist anymore?"
Edward parked the car in front of a stone steps that led to massive wooden doors. When he turned to look at me, his golden eyes were serious.
"Hunters were nearly wiped out three hundred years ago. The last known family was destroyed in 1724." Edward's voice was carefully neutral. "Their bloodline was supposed to be extinct."
"Supposed to be?"
"Your reaction to my touch suggests otherwise." Edward reached toward me, then stopped, his hand hovering inches from my arm. "May I?"
"What?"
"I need to test something. It might be unpleasant for both of us."
I should have said no. Should have demanded answers first. Should have done anything except nod and hold out my hand like an idiot.
Edward's fingers brushed against my wrist.
The reaction was immediate and devastating.
Edward's eyes rolled back in his head and he convulsed like he'd been electrocuted. But this time, instead of pulling away, he grabbed my wrist tighter. His grip was iron-strong, inescapable, even as his whole body shook with what looked like agony.
"Edward!" I tried to pull away, but he held on. "Let go!"
Then something impossible happened.
I felt it too.
A burning sensation that started where his skin touched mine and spread up my arm like wildfire. But it wasn't pain, exactly. It was... recognition. Like my body was remembering something it had forgotten, something buried deep in my DNA.
Images flashed through my mind. A woman who looked like me, dressed in clothes from another century, holding a silver blade that gleamed with its own light. Men with fangs and red eyes, screaming as they turned to ash. Fire. So much fire.
And through it all, a voice that sounded like my own but wasn't: Hunter's blood. Hunter's blade. Hunter's fire.
Edward released my hand and slumped back against the driver's seat, breathing hard. His face was pale, paler than before, and his golden eyes were wide with something that looked like terror.
"What was that?" I gasped, cradling my hand against my chest. My wrist felt like I'd stuck it in a campfire.
"Genetic memory," Edward said quietly. "Your bloodline remembering what it was created to do."
"Which is?"
Edward looked at me with an expression I couldn't read. Fear, maybe. Or awe.
"Kill vampires, Miss Chen. Your family was bred to kill vampires."
End of Chapter 4