My friends and I had a discussion of what may happen if a vampire from Twilight came across Claire from 'Heroes'. There was a difference of opinion, but this was my theory.

As usual, I own nothing. Certainly not Twilight and definitely not 'Heroes'. I just like to play with them a bit.

He didn't often allow his tracking to lead him away from Victoria and Laurent, but sometimes he just wanted to enjoy the hunt on his own. They understood this because all of their kind bristled at being in close quarters for too long. Even the others relished a lone hunt now and again.

His original target had been a slender boy, caught in a growth spurt that made him spindly. He moved as though his arms and legs had doubled in length faster than he could develop the experience to know how to use them all. If he lived to adult hood he would probably be close to seven feet in height.

If he lived to adulthood, which was unlikely with James planning to make him into a meal.

But then it seemed as though the boy would live, because James caught another scent on the wind. One that was sweeter and more compelling. It was like classic roses mingled with the bittersweet aroma of fine, dark chocolate. And just as quickly the boy was forgotten as James sought out the source of the mouthwatering aroma.

He found it dressed in a cheerleading uniform that covered the torso completely but left much of a pair of shapely legs open to admiration. There were twelve girls in all, but he cared only for the one on the end with the waist length blond hair and the oval face. His skills were more than good enough to pick her out of the lineup as dinner.

The practice was late for young humans. Late enough in the day that he could come to almost the edge of the dense patch of woods near the practice field without fear of being detected. He watched them move in the fading light, a smile tugging at his lips as he watched the girl the others called 'Claire'. Cheerleaders were, in his way of thinking, by and large a vapid collection of characters, but there was something amusing in the way she behaved when compared to the others.

The other girls went through their moves with careful concentration. There was a strict, regimental way to their movements. He knew it was because they were ever conscious of how a mis-planted foot from a dismount could sprain, if not snap, an ankle. How a wrongly placed hand in a long line of back flips could severely damage a wrist, elbow or shoulder. The care could be seen behind their wide, forced smiles.

Not so with Claire. She threw herself into her movements with a complete and utter lack of fear. She moved as though she thought herself to be invincible. Indestructible.

Immortal.

His smile turned into a full grin. Maybe, if he could restrain himself well enough, he wouldn't devour her completely. If she was this bold in life, imagine how she would be in unlife.

And if he was unable to stop himself before he bled her dry… oh well.

Practice broke up and the girls started going their separate ways. He watched as his prey took a cell phone out of her backpack and pressed a pre-stored number. Her voice drifted towards him on the air.

"Dad, it's Claire. We just wrapped up. I'll be home soon." There was a pause. She trapped the phone between her ear and shoulder as she zipped up the pack and slung it over one shoulder. "Oh, don't do that. Tell Mom just to leave me a plate on the stove if I don't get home by the time you're done. I just want to stop by and drop some books off at the library before I head in." Another pause. "I will. And I love you, too."

She closed the phone and slipped it into an outer pocket of her pack she could just barely reach without unshouldering it again. One of the other girls asked if she wanted to ride with them and she turned them down, stating she would be fine walking.

She was making it too easy.

James waited until the last car was out of sight before he began to follow Claire. She moved with a pace that was quicker than most humans, but he did not detect any fear in her scent as it drifted behind her. She was just in good physical condition and young. It was nothing for her to move briskly.

He smiled as he shadowed her steps, already deciding to strike when her home was within sight. Her anguish would be all the more sweeter if she could see perceived safety just a few yards away as he held her neck to his lips.

She did stop at the library as she had told her father. James waited as she ducked inside, but she did not come back out directly. Sniffing the air he did not detect her scent returning as though from any other door, so he summoned up a bit more patience. After another forty minutes she exited the building, zipping her backpack over a new selection to replace the book she dropped off. That must have been why she told her father not to hold dinner for her. What a studious, obedient child.

The pursuit resumed. Claire ignored the appreciative looks from the few men she passed; seemingly unaware of how they admired her. Or perhaps she just didn't care. Some of them looked less than trustworthy, but again she appeared to be without fear. Not even a hint of the nervousness a normal girl should have been feeling when alone at night.

This observation pricked at something in his mind. The area they traveled through was not dangerous as human areas go, but it certainly wasn't entirely 'safe'. And human parents, the kind of parents that would have a pretty, popular daughter, would normally be quite obsessive over her safety. Why would Claire's parents let her walk home at night through such streets? It didn't make sense. Did they not realize just how fragile their child was?

Or perhaps they weren't 'good parents' and didn't care. Perhaps Claire wasn't the 'All-American Teen' that she pretended to be, but was in fact a wild, rebellious hell-raiser that normal humans would like to see as little of as possible.

And perhaps he didn't care, because she was going to be dead in a short while.

She was moving at the quick pace of hers again, but it was no trouble for him to keep up. It was easy to tell when she was drawing close to home because as she rounded another corner she slowed to a more casual speed. James zipped ahead of her so he could watch her face. He noted on which house her eyes focused as she made to leave the sidewalk to cross the deserted road.

And he made his move.

James was a blur as he darted from the cover of shadows cast by a nearby building. He wrapped one arm about the girl's waist and continued moving until he could pin her back against the rough bricks of another house. It all took less than a second to accomplish and he was still able to pull back the force so that he did not injure her as they reached the structure.

Claire gasped in surprise, her eyes going wide as she looked at her attacker. James' lips turned up into a grin. "Hello, Claire."

This was the part where she should have screamed or called out for help. Only, she did neither. She was clearly surprised, but her brow furrowed as she looked at him. "Who are you? What are you?" Her eyes moved over what she could see from this angle. "Some kind of speedster?"

He tilted his head. That was not the reaction he had anticipated. Was she simple, or was this more of her oddly strong fearlessness? Perhaps being direct would get the response he was searching for. "I'm the one who's going to kill you tonight, Claire."

She blinked, and then arched one honeyed brow. "You're gonna kill me?" She didn't look impressed.

James' brow creased even as an amused smile touched his lips. He stroked her waist lightly with the thumb of the hand resting there. He didn't have to hold her tightly. His reflexes and strength would be enough to catch her before she could bolt the slightest fraction of an inch. "Doesn't that scare you?"

The girl rolled her eyes. Actually rolled her eyes! "No, not really." She shook her head at him. "Look, you're wasting your time. Trying to kill me is only going to irritate me a bit, but it's going to totally piss off my father. Then he and the company he works for will come looking for you, and they'll find you, and then they'll throw you in a hole so deep you'll forget what the sun even looks like. So how about you go back to wherever it is you came from and I'll forget we ever had this conversation?"

He didn't know whether to laugh or to growl. This Claire was either very good at hiding her emotions or she lacked the intelligence to realize when she was in true danger. "Perhaps we should ask your father about that. Call for him. I'm certain we're close enough for him to hear you."

That got a reaction out of her. She frowned briefly and a flash of fear in her eyes. Ah, so that's what she was afraid of. She seemed to care little for her own safety but she did care about her family's.

James' grin grew wider. "Call for him."

"No."

He lifted the hand from her waist and traced it over her jaw with a teasing pressure. "Call for him, and I might let you live." It was a lie, of course, one she clearly didn't believe. He saw the muscles in her jaw flex. He heard the sound of her teeth clenching together as she locked her mouth shut to keep silent.

He smiled again. His hand flew from her skin and gripped the arm furthest from him. A quick movement and the bones snapped. "Call him!" The command was a hiss between his teeth. Surely this would make her cry out for help.

But she didn't. There was the slightest flinch when her arm snapped, but it seemed more out of surprise than it seemed to be out of pain. He squeezed more tightly, but noted that her body did not seem to be having the typical reaction to an acute break. The tissues did not seem to be swelling rapidly to protect the broken bones. Her skin did not seem to be paling from the shock.

He moved his hand again to grind the broken limb against itself, but the girl only gave a low, emboldened chuckle. "Is that the best you've got?"

Now he was angry. James snarled and jerked the annoying human from the wall. In the same motion he used his grip on the broken arm to spin her around so that her back was to him, facing her in the direction of her home and her family. The other hand reached up to grab her hair and yank her head to the side. He sunk his razor sharp teeth into the soft skin of her neck, her scent of roses and chocolate swirling around him.

The venom paralyzed her as he began to drink deeply from the bite wound in her neck. The taste of her erupted on his tongue, rich and decadent. Any fleeting thoughts he might have had about pulling back before killing her were forgotten in the pleasure of her blood. He clutched her more tightly as he drank. The life-giving blood journeyed down his throat and into his gullet.

And then something went very, very wrong.

As Claire's blood reached his stomach, he felt the beginnings of a violent, piercing discomfort. It was like a burning cold knife cutting through his insides. At first he did not know if it was real, and then he wasn't certain of how he should react. And then he could no longer ignore it.

James threw the still breathing Claire from him so that he could clutch his stomach. A fruitless and too-human motion, as though he might try to gouge out his abdomen in an attempt to stop the pain. He was barely aware of his meal falling onto her knees on the pavement, her own pain growing as the venom began to spread through her.

Claire took several panting breaths, holding herself up with one arm as she clutched at her neck with her other hand. James' mind was too confused with pain to register that she was now using both arms without trouble. He tried to speak, to demand to know what she had done to him, but he could not get the words out. Another shot of burning pain ripped through him, causing him to scream out in agony as his back bowed.

And now Claire screamed. He heard her cry out in her own agony as the venom sent fire through her veins. He heard her scream for her father still inside their home. He was aware of very little after that, consumed by the torment that was quickly pushing all rational thought from his mind.

The pain continued to grow and surge. At times he thought it no worse than the pain he could remember from when he was changed from a weak, pitiful human into a vampire. Other times he would have sworn it was far worse.

It drew on for what seemed like an eternity. James was unable to recognize anything, though as a vampire he should have been able to concentrate on multiple things at once. He was no longer aware of the asphalt under his body. No longer aware of the air on his skin. No longer aware of anything else.

And then, after forever, the pain began to recede. Bit by bit he started to become aware again, though it was a muffled, uncomfortable type of awareness. The pain continued to retreat until it had faded completely, but still his senses were not up to strength.

His throat felt dry, but it was not the burning fire he was used to feeling when hungry. He swallowed a mouthful of venom, only it didn't taste or feel like venom. There was a steady beeping somewhere off to his left that was starting to bother him and his joints felt oddly stiff. He tried to move to sit up… and found that his wrists were somehow restrained.

James flexed his body upwards as much as he could and looked down at his arms. He appeared to be in some kind of bed, like what you would find in a hospital. Each wrist was captured in what appeared to be a leather cuff that was fastened to the shining metal railing of the bed. He frowned and gave a sharp tug to break free, and found himself firmly secured.

He scowled and he tried again, and again was denied satisfaction. Refusing to believe what appeared to be happening he began to struggle against the bonds in earnest. The beeping to his left started to pick up in pace as the metal railing of the bed rattled.

The sound attracted attention, which arrived in the form of a mature woman with coal black hair pulled back into an elegant up-do and dressed in a business suit. Her intrusion into this sterile, unfamiliar room gave James pause. He continued to flex his wrists against the restraints without any greater success. "Who are? What have you done to me!" He shouted the question in anger.

The woman gave a little smirk he recognized. It was so much like his own smirk whenever he was closing in on a kill. "Who I am is the least of your worries. And, in all fairness, you did this to yourself. You should have been more careful in you bit." She came up even with an elevated tray and began to push it along with her steps, slow and unconcerned.

James watched her cautiously as she continued to speak. "I hope you don't mind, but as you were incapacitated and unable to give us any answers, I had one of our telepaths poke around inside your head. We learned that your name is 'James', but that you no longer remember your surname. Very sad, that."

His mood darkened and he gave a growl. At least, it was supposed to be a growl, but it wasn't as intimidating as what he was used to. His voice seemed disturbingly plain and uninteresting all together. "What have you done to me?"

"I told you, James, you did this to yourself. You did it when you picked the wrong girl to feed on." The woman seemed torn between amusement and anger. "You hurt her, by the way. Claire, I mean. It took her body almost five hours to purge itself of the poison you introduced into her blood stream, but she recovered in the end. Not comfortably, of course. She hadn't felt pain on that scale in… well… I doubt she ever has."

So Claire had survived his attack. She should be on her way to becoming a vampire now. The venom would change her body over but a few days, and then she would be enslaved to the thirst. A newborn causing carnage and terror everywhere she walked.

It would be glorious. He would need to get past this minor irritation so that he could watch his creation. It would be amusing.

But, what had this woman said about Claire? "Purged the venom?" How was this possible?

The woman's smirk returned. "Yes. Purged. She won't be turning into a vampire any time soon. And yes, we know that vampires exist."

She turned her eyes nonchalantly to something on the tray at her elbow. "Claire is a… special person. We've experimented with her blood in various situations. It's been used on people dying from illness or injury, pulling people back from the very edge of death. But it never occurred to us that it might even be able to touch something like you. Or rather, the thing you were."

A strange feeling started to grow in him. Was that… fear? He had not feared anything since his conversion, because he had been the thing that was to be feared. Stubbornly he pushed the hateful emotion back down and snarled as much as he was able in his current, unfamiliar state of being. He jerked against his bonds again. "Release me!"

The stranger arched a sable brow. "Release you? But the restraints are for your own protection, James. We feared that you might become… suicidal once the full weight of recent events settled in."

His eyes narrowed. "What events?"

Her smirk turned into a satisfied smile as she picked up the item on the tray by her elbow. He could now see that it was a hand mirror, which she now turned towards him and held over his face so that he could see.

"Like I said, we never thought that Claire's blood, as potent and useful as it is, would have the ability to… cure one such as you." Her voice was practically purring as James gaped at his reflection in the glass. He was staring at pink cheeks, less-than-perfect skin and blue eyes. Human eyes.

The horror of the truth pressed into him as the cruel stranger with the mirror spoke again. "Welcome back to the World of the Living, James."