I haven't been able to write a story in a while because I've been really busy with school and a lot of other stuff. I've been working on this one for a while though so I hope you like it! Please review and tell me what you think, positive or negative.

Chapter One

"An unjust peace is better than a just war."

- Marcus Tullius Cicero

"The humans are back. Bryce was patrolling earlier and he said he saw them - a bunch of them - heading our way." My head snapped up and my eyes narrowed as Andrew, my second-in-command, came skidding to a stop in front of me. I stood up quickly, pushing the chair at the same time so it skidded backwards and tipped over. I ignored it, moving out from behind my desk.

"What are they playing at?" I muttered, my thoughts dark as I slipped past Andrew into the hallway. I stalked down the hallway and into the lounge, where a couple dozen vampires were relaxing, talking to each other, and messing around. "Get up," I said as they stared at me in confusion. "Break's over." I left Andrew to explain and swept out of the building. I scanned the forest. I couldn't see anybody but I knew they were in there, waiting for the right moment to attack.

I knew exactly what their game was. They would wait in the forest in hopes that we would come in after them, and then they would used their expertise at hiding and setting traps to attack us. Well, that wasn't going to happen. If they wanted a fight, they would have to come to us. I could play their little game, too. I sat down cross-legged, leaning against the building, and relaxed my muscles one at a time like I had been trained to do. I might be here for a while; humans tended to be pretty stubborn.

"Jace? What do you want us to do?" Andrew appeared on the porch with the other vampires behind him, looking confused. He must have been surprised to see me sitting there so calmly, as if we were in the middle of a period of peace rather than one of war.

"Nothing." I didn't have to look up to see the shocked expression on his face.

"Um...what?"

"The humans want us to go in there so they can have the advantage. We're going to wait here and make them come to us. They're fired up and ready for blood; it won't be long now." I closed my eyes, feeling the late summer breeze teasing my skin. After a few seconds passed and I said nothing more, I heard Andrew turn around and go back inside. I could feel the disappointment rolling off him in waves, but I didn't get up to go explain. He would understand later.

I opened my eyes again, staring out at the woods spread out in front of me. Come out, come out, wherever you are, I thought ominously. I knew the humans would come eventually; they were too impatient to wait for long. The only question was when.

About half a hour later, I heard rustling in the woods. Then the first wave of humans appeared, racing towards me. I watched lazily as they drew nearer. "What the hell are you doing?" Andrew yelled, leaping past me to meet the first few humans. I watched as he dispatched the first two humans, then turned on the next ones. Out poured all the rest of the vampires.

At first it looked like the battle would be a pathetic defeat for the humans, but then the second wave appeared. Finally I yawned, stretched, and launched myself into battle.

I barely had to exert any energy. A couple of the humans knew what they were doing, but the majority were soft and ill-trained, as if the hardest thing they had ever done was lift a bag of flour. Honestly, that was probably not far from the truth. Humans had always been used as servants - they simply weren't suited for fighting.

As I snapped the neck of one human, I spun savagely to face the next one. Then I paused, confused. There were no more humans in the clearing, just vampires. Bodies were strewn all around the clearing, and it took a second for me to figure out that we had killed all of the humans. Or almost all of them. I saw a couple humans disappearing into the woods. I set off after them; I enjoyed a good chase every once in a while.

The wind lifted my spirits and I increased my pace to a brisk jog. I knew I could easily catch up to the humans when I wanted to, but for now I was humoring them. The humans split up, and I followed the one that ran to the left.

I had to admit, the human was fast. He was always just ahead of me as he led me on a wild chase through the woods. Finally I decided to quit humoring him and just end this already. I put on a burst of speed just as the human stopped; for what, I didn't know. I was completely unprepared for what happened next. As I drew closer, I realized the human had picked up a fallen tree branch. Before I could slow down or stop myself, he took a swing at my head. The branch connected with a loud CRACK,and I paused, dazed. Good thing vampires had thick skulls.

I was a little more cautious in my next approach. I constantly kept my eyes open for any openings or opportunities, but the human was good about keeping himself well-defended. He didn't strike me as the fighting type, though. He was small, lithe, with a large hat covering his hair and casting his face into shadows. I could see bright, cornflower-blue eyes watching me warily from beneath the brim.

The human brandished his stick in front of him and I decided to test him a bit more. I feinted to the right, then at the last second shot to the left. He stayed with me the whole time.

I paused, thinking about how to approach this. Sure I could take the human, but I might not escape completely unscathed. Suddenly Andrew appeared behind me, breathing hard as if he had just sprinted all the way here.

"All of the humans are dead," he panted. I hadn't taken my eyes off of the human, and I saw pain flash briefly across his eyes. Then it was gone, replaced by sheer determination. "Do you need help?" Andrew's lips curled up in amusement.

"No," I snarled. Andrew ignored me and moved around to flank me. I felt a brief flash of annoyance but then pushed it aside. I would deal with him later. We approached as one, I from the left and he from the right. The human brandished the stick first at me, then at Andrew, obviously unsure of who would be better to attack first. On my unspoken command, we both leapt at him. He managed to get in a good blow to my shoulder but then the branch was knocked from his hands and he was down. I pinned the human down with my body weight. He struggled, but we both knew I had at least fifty pounds of muscle on him. I was the stronger of both of us.

"Are we going to kill him now?"

"No." I made a split-second decision. "I want to keep him around for a while. He's the only remaining human; maybe he can be of some help to us before we dispose of him." I got up, while still keeping a firm hold on his arm. He thrashed around but couldn't get free. As I pulled the human up with me, his hat fell off, revealing his face.

"He's a girl!" There was a look of astonishment on Andrew's face. The human in front of me was indeed a girl. When the hat fell off, her hair, which had been bunched up underneath it, came tumbling down her back in dark blonde waves. The bright blue eyes I had seen earlier underneath the hat glared defiantly at me, set in the middle of her pale features. Her face was not unscathed, though; she had a days-old bruise on her right cheekbone and there were deep hollows under her eyes from lack of sleep. A small trickle of blood was making its way down from her lip, where it had probably gotten smashed against the ground in our scuffle.

"What's a girl like you doing fighting vampires like me?" I asked roughly. "Are they so desperate for people that they started sending out their women and children to fight?" I grabbed her chin and pulled it upwards so that she was forced to look at me. She didn't answer, only cast her eyes downward, refusing to look at me.

"We can question her back in headquarters. She's the only one of her friends left alive, after all." Andrew smirked, and I began pulling the girl backwards out of the clearing. She struggled all the way back to the building, and managed to pull free once. I grabbed her arm in an iron hold and Andrew took the other, and we continued through the forest. When we were almost back she let her body go limp, falling towards the ground. Instead of letting go of her like she probably hoped we would, we just dragged her all the way back. Her toes scored trenches in the earth as she struggled to find her feet again.

"You got one?" Bryce, one of the younger but higher-ranking vampires, was standing on the front porch. He stared as we drew closer with the girl between us. "Did she do that to you?" I could hear the laughter in his voice, and I could only imagine what the side of my face that had gotten whacked with the branch looked like right now. The bruise would probably be gone in the morning, though.

"Open the door," I ordered, ignoring his question. He hurried to pull the door open, then stood aside as Andrew and I pulled the girl inside. Bryce closed the door with a loud slam behind us.

"Who is that?" Vampires were beginning to gather in the front entryway, and it was starting to get a bit crowded. I saw the girl flinch away as a vampire got a little too close to her.

We weaved through the crowd, Andrew and I still with firm grips on her arms. We didn't trust her one little bit. Finally we reached the "interrogation rooms" as we called them (they actually weren't more than empty rooms with two chairs and a table) and I unlocked one of the doors while Andrew held onto the human. We pushed her inside, then followed her in there.

She moved behind the table, keeping it between us. Her eyes watched us warily, wondering what we were going to do next. "Sit," I said, pointing at a chair. She shot me a look of disgust, as if to say "Yeah, right". "You can either do it yourself or we can make you." I dangled a pair of handcuffs I had picked up earlier. Her face registered shock, and then she slowly lowered herself into one of the chairs. "That's better." I slid down into the other one. "You can wait outside. I'll be fine." Andrew hesitated, then left the room.

"What's your name?" I decided to start with the easiest question. She glanced quickly at me, then away. "They only get harder from here," I warned. She still didn't answer. "I know some methods of forcing you to talk." I watched her face intently, but besides a tightening of the eyes, it remained neutral. "Very well." I sighed, then before she could react I pulled her hands behind the back of the chair and cuffed them there. I stood over her, making sure to seem as menacing and imposing as I could. She couldn't move away from me.

"Wh - what do you want?" Her voice cracked.

"I already told you what I wanted." Her lips pressed into a tight line and she looked away from me. "Are you thirsty?" I changed approaches, hoping to catch her off guard.

"No," she said in a guarded voice, but her eyes told me differently.

I moved away from her and over to the door. "Get me a glass of water." I opened the door and spoke to Andrew, then closed it again. I stood facing the girl, watching her as she grew uncomfortable under my gaze. Then Andrew returned with the water and I set it on the table in front of her. "You can have some water if you tell me your name. That's not too much to ask, is it?" She glanced at me, then away. Her mouth stubbornly stayed closed. "Very well. I'll come back tomorrow after you've had some time to think." I picked up the glass of water and made as if to leave the room.

"Wait." I paused and turned around to look at her. She looked disgusted at herself as the next sentence came tumbling out. "My name is Aly."

"See, now that wasn't too hard," I said, my voice dripping with sarcasm. "Here you go." I slid the glass towards her.

"Um..." Aly glanced pointedly behind her at the handcuffs binding her hands. I produced the key out of my pocket and unlocked the handcuffs, then swiftly caught them before they hit the ground. She massaged her wrists before reaching for the glass of water, and then downed it in less than ten seconds. She glanced warily at me and I saw her eyes flash towards the door.

"Don't even think about it," I said warningly, moving directly between her and the door.

"Thank you for all of your hospitality," she put all the venom she could into that one word, "but I really should be going now." She tried to step around me but I stepped with her.

"Not so fast." I propelled her backwards into the chair, which she fell onto with an ungracious thump. She sprang immediately back up, but I was quicker than her. "You can remain sitting or I would be happy to put these back on," I said pleasantly, holding up the handcuffs. She glared at me, folding her arms unhappily across her chest as she sat slowly back down. "We're not done with the questioning yet."

"Fine. Why didn't you kill me with everyone else?" There was raw pain and emotion in her voice as she asked that.

"Would you rather I killed you now?" I was toying with her; there was no way I would consider harming a hair on her head until we got everything we needed out of her. "Besides, I'm the one who's supposed to be doing the questioning."

"Too bad," she snapped, and I felt my lips twitch upwards involuntarily.

"You're very insolent. As far as I remember, you're my prisoner, not the other way around. You don't know the half of what I could do to you right now," I said darkly. Aly shuddered slightly.

"You're insufferable," she said after a few seconds of welcome silence.

"We're getting nowhere with this. I'll come back later after you've calmed down a bit."

"Don't bother!" She called after me as the door shut with a clang.

I hope you liked this first chapter, sorry it was kind of short. The rest of the story will be from Aly's point of view (take or give a couple chapters).