The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner by Stephenie Meyer

He let that sink in for a moment. I could tell the idea was shocking to several of the
     vampires in the basement. The enemy was Raoul—or if you were with Raoul, the enemy was Kristie. The enemy was here, because
     the whole world was here. The thought that there were other forces out there strong enough to affect us was new for most.
     Would have been new to me, too, yesterday.
    “A few of you might be smart enough to have realized that if we exist, so do other vampires. Other vampires who are older,
     smarter… more talented. Other vampires who
want our blood
!”
    Raoul hissed, and then several of his followers echoed him in support.
    “That’s right,” Riley said, seeming intent on egging them on. “Seattle was once theirs, but they moved on a long time ago.
     Now they know about us, and they are jealous of the easy blood they used to have here. They know it belongs to us now, but
     they want to take it back. They are coming after what they want. One by one, they’ll hunt us down! We’ll burn while they feast!”
    “Never,” Kristie growled. Some of hers and some of Raoul’s growled, too.
    “We don’t have a lot of choices,” Riley told us. “If we wait for them to show up here, they will have the advantage. This
     is their turf, after all. And they don’t want to face us head-on, because we outnumber them and we are stronger than they
     are. They want to catch us separated; they want to take advantage of our biggest weakness. Are any of you smart enough to
     know what that is?” He pointed at the ashes at his feet—now smeared into the carpet and unrecognizable as a former vampire—and
     waited.
    No one moved.
    Riley made a disgusted sound. “Unity!” he shouted. “We don’t have it! What kind of a threat can we pose when we won’t stop
     killing each other?” He kicked the dust, sending up a small black cloud. “Can you imagine them laughing at us? They think
     taking the city from us will be easy. That we’re weak with stupidity! That we’ll just hand them our blood.”
    Half the vampires in the room snarled in protest now.
    “Can you work together, or do we all die?”
    “We can take them, boss,” Raoul growled.
    Riley scowled at him. “Not if you can’t control yourself! Not if you can’t cooperate with every single person in this room.
     Anyone you take out”—his toe nudged the ashes again—“might be the one who could have kept you alive. Every one of your coventhat you kill is like handing our enemies a gift.
Here
, you’re saying,
take me down!
”
    Kristie and Raoul exchanged a glance as if they were seeing each other for the first time. Others did the same. The word
coven
was not unfamiliar, but none of us had applied it to our group before. We were a coven.
    “Let me tell you about our enemies,” Riley said, and all eyes locked on his face. “They are a much older coven than we are.
     They’ve been around for hundreds of years, and they’ve survived that long for a reason. They are crafty and they are skilled
     and they are coming to retake Seattle with confidence—because they’ve heard the only ones they’ll have to fight for it are
     a bunch of disorganized children who will do half their work for them!”
    More growls, but some were less angry than they were wary. A few of the quieter vampires, the ones Riley would have called
tamer
, looked skittish.
    Riley noticed that, too. “This is how they see us, but that’s because they can’t see us
together.
Together, we can
crush
them. If they could see all of us, side by side, fighting together, they would be terrified. And that’s how they’re going
     to see us. Because we’re not going to wait for them to show up here and start picking us off. We’re going to ambush them.
     In four days.”
    Four days? I guessed our creator didn’t want to cut it too close to the deadline. I looked at the closed door again. Where
     was Diego?
    Others reacted to the deadline with surprise, some with fear.
    “It’s the