Read The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner Online
Authors: Stephenie Meyer
The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner
Contents
Copyright © 2010 by Stephenie Meyer
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced,
distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written
permission of the publisher.
Little, Brown and Company
Hachette Book Group
237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Visit our website at
www.HachetteBookGroup.com
Little, Brown and Company is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
The Little, Brown name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
First eBook Edition: June 2010
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental
and not intended by the author.
ISBN: 978-0-316-12768-4
For Asya Muchnick and Meghan Hibbett
No two writers go about things in exactly the same way. We all are inspired and motivated in different ways; we have our own
reasons why some characters stay with us while others disappear into a backlog of neglected files. Personally, I’ve never
figured out why some of my characters take on strong lives of their own, but I’m always happy when they do. Those characters
are the most effortless to write, and so their stories are usually the ones that get finished.
Bree is one of those characters, and she’s the chief reason why this story is now in your hands, rather than lost in the maze
of forgotten folders inside my computer. (The two other reasons are named Diego and Fred.) I started thinking about Bree while
I was editing
Eclipse
. Editing, not writing—when I was writing the first draft of
Eclipse
, I had first-person-perspective blinders on; anything that Bella couldn’t see or hear or feel or taste or touch was irrelevant.
That story was her experience only.
The next step in the editing process was to step away from Bella and see how the story flowed. My editor, Rebecca Davis, was
a huge part of that process, and she had a lot of questions for me about the things Bella didn’t know and how we could make
the right parts of that story clearer. Because Bree is the only newborn Bella sees, Bree’s was the perspective that I first
gravitated toward as I considered what was going on behind the scenes. I started thinking about living in the basement with
the newborns and hunting traditional vampire-style. I imagined the world as Bree understood it. And it was easy to do that.
From the start Bree was very clear as a character, and some of her friends also sprang to life effortlessly. This is the way
it usually works for me: I try to write a short synopsis of what is happening in some other part of the story, and I end up
jotting down dialogue. In this case, instead of a synopsis, I found myself writing a day in Bree’s life.
Writing Bree was the first time I’d stepped into the shoes of a narrator who was a “real” vampire—a hunter, a monster. I got
to look through her red eyes at us humans; suddenly we were pathetic and weak, easy prey, of no importance whatsoever except
as a tasty snack. I felt what it was like to be alone while surrounded by enemies, always on guard, never sure of anything
except that her life was always in danger.
I got to submerge myself in a totally different breed of vampires: newborns. The newborn life was something I hadn’t ever
gotten to explore—even when Bella finally became a vampire. Bella was never a newborn like Bree was a newborn. It was exciting
and dark and, ultimately, tragic. The closer I got to the inevitable end, the more I wished I’d concluded
Eclipse
just slightly differently.
I wonder how you will feel about Bree. She’s such a small, seemingly trivial character in
Eclipse
. She lives for only five minutes of Bella’s perspective. And yet her story is so important to an understanding of the novel.
When you read the
Eclipse
scene in which Bella stares at Bree, assessing her as a possible future, did you ever think about what has brought Bree to
that point in time? As Bree glares back, did you wonder what Bella and the Cullens look like to her? Probably not. But even
if you did, I’ll bet you never guessed her secrets.
I hope you end up caring about Bree as much as I do, though that’s kind of a cruel wish. You know this: it doesn’t end well
for her. But at least you will know the whole story. And that no perspective is ever really trivial.
Enjoy,
Stephenie
T
HE NEWSPAPER HEADLINE GLARED AT ME FROM
a little metal vending machine: SEATTLE UNDER SIEGE—DEATH TOLL RISES AGAIN. I hadn’t seen this one yet. Some paperboy must
have just restocked the machine. Lucky for him, he was nowhere around now.
Great. Riley was going to blow a gasket. I would make sure I wasn’t within reach when he saw this paper. Let him rip somebody
else’s arm off.
I stood in the shadow behind the corner of a shabby three-story building, trying to be inconspicuous while I waited for someone
to make a decision. Not wanting
to meet anyone’s eyes, I stared at the wall beside me instead. The ground floor of the building housed a record shop that
had long since closed; the windows, lost to weather or street violence, were filled in with plywood. Over the top were apartments—empty,
I guessed, since the normal sounds of sleeping humans were absent. I wasn’t surprised—the place looked like it would collapse
in a stiff wind. The buildings on the other side of the dark, narrow street were just as wrecked.
The normal scene for a night out on the town.
I didn’t want to speak up and draw attention, but I wished somebody would decide something. I was really thirsty, and I didn’t
care much whether we went right or left or over the roof. I just wanted to find some unlucky people who wouldn’t even have
enough time to think
wrong place, wrong time
.
Unfortunately tonight Riley’d sent me out with two of the most useless vampires in existence. Riley never seemed to care who
he sent out in hunting groups. Or particularly bugged when sending out the wrong people together meant fewer people coming
home. Tonight I was stuck with Kevin and some blond kid whose name I didn’t know. They both belonged to Raoul’s gang, so it
went without saying that they were stupid. And dangerous. But right now, mostly stupid.
Instead of picking a direction for our hunt, suddenly they were in the middle of an argument over whose favorite superhero
would be a better hunter. The nameless blond was demonstrating his case for Spider-Man now, skittering up the brick wall of
the alley while humming the cartoon theme song. I sighed in frustration. Were we ever going to hunt?
A little flicker of movement to my left caught my eye. It was the other one Riley had sent out in this hunting group, Diego.
I didn’t know much about him, just that he was older than most of the others. Riley’s right-hand man was the word. That didn’t
make me like him any more than the other morons.
Diego was looking at me. He must have heard the sigh. I looked away.
Keep your head down and your mouth shut—that was the way to stay alive in Riley’s crowd.
“Spider-Man is such a whiny loser,” Kevin called up to the blond kid. “I’ll show you how a real superhero hunts.” He grinned
wide. His teeth flashed in the glare of a streetlight.
Kevin jumped into the middle of the street just as the lights from a car swung around to illuminate the cracked pavement with
a blue-white gleam. He flexed his arms back, then pulled them slowly together like a pro wrestler showing off. The car came
on, probably
expecting him to get the hell out of the way like a normal person would. Like he
should
.
“Hulk mad!” Kevin bellowed. “Hulk… SMASH!”
He leaped forward to meet the car before it could brake, grabbed its front bumper, and flipped it over his head so that it
struck the pavement upside down with a squeal of bending metal and shattering glass. Inside, a woman started screaming.
“Oh man,” Diego said, shaking his head. He was pretty, with dark, dense, curly hair, big, wide eyes, and really full lips,
but then, who wasn’t pretty? Even Kevin and the rest of Raoul’s morons were
pretty
. “Kevin, we’re supposed to be laying low. Riley said—”
“Riley said!”
Kevin mimicked in a harsh soprano. “Get a spine, Diego. Riley’s not here.”
Kevin sprang over the upside-down Honda and punched out the driver’s side window, which had somehow stayed intact up to that
point. He fished through the shattered glass and the deflating air bag for the driver.
I turned my back and held my breath, trying my hardest to hold on to the ability to think.
I couldn’t watch Kevin feed. I was too thirsty for that, and I really didn’t want to pick a fight with him. I so did not need
to be on Raoul’s hit list.
The blond kid didn’t have the same issues. He
pushed off from the bricks overhead and landed lightly behind me. I heard him and Kevin snarling at each other, and then
a wet tearing sound as the woman’s screams cut off. Probably them ripping her in half.
I tried not to think about it. But I could feel the heat and hear the dripping behind me, and it made my throat burn so bad
even though I wasn’t breathing.
“I’m outta here,” I heard Diego mutter.
He ducked into a crevice between the dark buildings, and I followed right on his heels. If I didn’t get away from here fast,
I’d be squabbling with Raoul’s goons over a body that couldn’t have had much blood left in it by now anyway. And then maybe
I’d be the one who didn’t come home.
Ugh, but my throat
burned
! I clamped my teeth together to keep from screaming in pain.
Diego darted through a trash-filled side alley, and then—when he hit the dead end—up the wall. I dug my fingers into the crevices
between the bricks and hauled myself up after him.
On the rooftop, Diego took off, leaping lightly across the other roofs toward the lights shimmering off the sound. I stayed
close. I was younger than he was, and therefore stronger—it was a good thing we younger ones were strongest, or we wouldn’t
have
lived through our first week in Riley’s house. I could have passed him easy, but I wanted to see where he was going, and
I didn’t want to have him
behind
me.
Diego didn’t stop for miles; we were almost to the industrial docks. I could hear him muttering under his breath.
“Idiots! Like Riley wouldn’t give us instructions for a good reason. Self-preservation, for example. Is an ounce of common
sense so much to ask for?”
“Hey,” I called. “Are we going to hunt anytime soon? My throat’s on fire here.”
Diego landed on the edge of a wide factory roof and spun around. I jumped back a few yards, on my guard, but he didn’t make
an aggressive move toward me.
“Yeah,” he said. “I just wanted some distance between me and the lunatics.”
He smiled, all friendly, and I stared at him.
This Diego guy wasn’t like the others. He was kind of… calm, I guess was the word. Normal. Not normal now, but normal before.
His eyes were a darker red than mine. He must have been around for a while, like I’d heard.
From the street below came the sounds of nighttime in a slummier part of Seattle. A few cars, music with heavy bass, a couple
of people walking with
nervous, fast steps, some drunk bum singing off-key in the distance.
“You’re Bree, right?” Diego asked. “One of the newbies.”
I didn’t like that.
Newbie
. Whatever. “Yeah, I’m Bree. But I didn’t come in with the last group. I’m almost three months old.”
“Pretty slick for a three-monther,” he said. “Not many would have been able to leave the scene of the accident like that.”
He said it like a compliment, like he was really impressed.
“Didn’t want to mix it up with Raoul’s freaks.”
