The fine mist of crystalline dust began to mix with the cold rain, falling slowly and staining the green grass.
The sound of thunder ceased gradually, leaving a tense silence in the open field.
The Cullen family remained frozen in their defensive positions and their extraordinary senses were immediately assaulted by the smell.
It wasn't the smell of blood, but the pungent stench of burnt venom, the unmistakable aroma of death.
That smell made even the stoic Jasper tremble slightly.
The only survivor of the trio, Laurent, had fallen to his knees.
His shoulder, hit by the first arrow, was not healing and the flesh kept emitting a constant smoke while the acid continued devouring him, causing him a pain he had never imagined possible.
He looked up at Lief.
There was no longer caution in his eyes, only absolute terror.
"W-What... what kind of thing are you?" he stuttered, crawling backward, "You... you a-are not a human... YOU ARE THE DEVIL!"
While brushing the dust off his jacket, Lief, upon hearing such slander, looked at the vampire with an expression of disbelief.
"A leech that drains innocent people, you have the audacity to call me the devil?" he asked with a dry smile, closing the distance between them with slow steps, "The irony is very great, don't you think?"
Feeling death approaching with every step of those heavy boots, Laurent went into total panic.
"No... don't kill me, please!" he begged, raising his uninjured hands in a pathetic gesture of surrender, "I swear on my life! I will never set foot on this continent again! I will go to Europe, to Asia, wherever! I will tell everyone that this is your forbidden territory! I-I beg you, let me go!"
"..."
Listening to his words, Lief stopped a meter away from him.
He tilted his head with narrowed eyes, seeming to seriously consider the proposal.
"Really?"
!
Laurent saw a ray of hope and nodded frantically.
"Really! I swear! I can swear before any god, old or new!"
"Mmm..." Lief nodded, seeming to reflect.
Slowly, he raised his left hand to eye level.
"The problem is that I hate liars."
And he snapped his fingers.
Clap
The ray of hope on Laurent's face froze forever.
The next second, a relentless compression force collapsed his physical structure from the inside.
Just like James moments before, Laurent's body exploded without warning, turning into a cloud of dust that the breeze took away instantly, erasing centuries of existence in a blink.
The clearing fell silent again.
After finishing the job, Lief dusted off his hands with satisfaction.
Immediately after, he turned slowly toward the Cullens and Bella, and with a smile that he considered charming, he raised his hand to wave.
"Hello, gu..."
Fiuuum
The air broke with the sound of bodies moving at supersonic speed.
It was neither a conscious nor a spoken decision.
It was their most basic instincts, the same that makes a deer run when it smells the wolf.
Carlisle, Edward, and the rest of the family reacted in unison. Edward grabbed Bella, hoisted her onto his back, and the entire Cullen family disappeared into the thick of the forest in less than a second.
"...ys."
Lief stood with his hand raised and the word half-finished in his mouth, blinking at the now completely empty baseball field.
He scratched his head, looking toward the darkness of the forest where they had disappeared.
"Why run so fast? It's not like I was going to kill them," he murmured, feeling offended by the lack of courtesy.
He walked toward where he had thrown his crossbow, picked it up, and slung it over his shoulder.
"Well..." he added, shrugging as he walked toward his motorcycle, "At least I wasn't going to do it today."
...
At the Cullen house…
Edward burst into the house, holding a pale Bella in a state of shock, and almost ripped the door off the frame as he closed it behind him.
The rest of the family followed him, each one with indescribable physical tension.
The panic of having narrowly escaped a disaster and, what was worse, of having been outmatched by a completely unknown entity.
"Carlisle!" shouted Edward.
Carlisle and Esme, who hadn't participated in the game and had stayed home, moved instantly upon hearing the noise.
"What happened? Did Alice's premonition come true?" Carlisle approached immediately, holding Bella, whose feet barely touched the ground. His touch, calm and professional, was comforting, although his expression was grave.
"Worse..." Edward whispered, taking a deep and unnecessary breath to try to calm the storm inside him.
The image of James exploding wouldn't disappear from his mind. "Three nomad vampires came, one was a tracker, he smelled Bella...."
He recounted what happened at the speed of thought. Describing the danger Bella was in, James's aggression and, then, Lief's appearance.
When he described how Lief had immobilized and pulverized Victoria, and how James had exploded into a mist of ash after a simple punch, horror was reflected on Carlisle's and Esme's faces.
"A single punch..." murmured Emmett from the side, his body tense and his eyes fixed on nothing.
Brute force was his domain, and the ease with which Lief had killed had left him completely shocked.
"There was something attached to that arrow... something like... a judgment."
"His arrows," added Jasper, "There was something attached to those arrows... something that transcended him... a judgment."
"H-He knows... He knows we are here!" Alice hugged herself trembling, "He knows everything! He wanted us to see his power."
Rosalie didn't say a word, but her fists clenched so hard that her knuckles cracked.
As vampires, creatures that had always been in control, for the first time in centuries they felt the icy chill and the humiliation of being treated as prey.
"Mmm..."
Carlisle began to pace back and forth in the living room, thinking at the maximum speed his intellect allowed.
A mysterious individual capable of blocking and manipulating the mind, who possesses unknown weaponry and has the ability to instantly kill a vampire with a snap.
Lief Connor had already far surpassed all the knowledge he had accumulated throughout his existence.
"We must get out of here!" shouted Esme with a hysteria rarely seen in her. She approached Edward and her children, her voice laden with fear, "Right now! We can't stay, he is too dangerous!"
"Leave?" Carlisle shook his head with bitterness, "Where to, Esme? We know nothing about him, but he seems to know us perfectly. We don't even know if he acts alone and fleeing hastily will only confirm our weakness and, if he has a long-term plan, fleeing now will only make it wors—"
Ding-Dong
The crisp and melodious sound of the front doorbell resonated through the glass house, cutting the conversation with a brutality that surpassed any thunder.
Instantly, all sounds in the room vanished.
The Cullens' movements froze and panic seized each of them.
It was him...
'He found us!'
Alice's body trembled violently as her eyes went blank and her gaze pierced the wall.
She could see the figure standing behind the door.
The man had one hand resting calmly on the doorbell button, while with the other he carried on his shoulder the black crossbow with which he had just massacred three vampires.
And, facing the family's evident panic that he could smell from miles away, he wore a wide and friendly smile on his face, like a neighbor coming to ask for a cup of sugar.
"He..." she whispered. "...is at the door."
________
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