Title: The First Gate
Characters/Pairings: Carlisle, Sulpicia
Author's Note: This one-shot was requested by Sand n' Sable, who asked for something about Carlisle and Sulpicia, with a T-M rating. This could be considered an outtake from A Thousand Stairs. I hope you enjoy :)
The title of the story is taken from a verse from the Bhagavad Gita which, roughly paraphrased, states that, "hell has three gates- lust, anger and greed."
The palazzo seems barren of late, the air too still and stifled by a sullen summer. Carlisle, accustomed to the mists and grime of London, treats the sun's intrusion with befuddled curiosity and casts envious glances at the Volturi as they revert to the garments of an earlier time. Dressed in the garb of Rome burned, his peers resemble heathen gods, flame-eyed and capriciously, madly glorious. This feral beauty startles him; his prayers grow more fervent and he studiously spends his days in solitude.
.-.
There is a chamber buried in the warren of the palazzo, dusty and disused, where mortal maps are kept. They are insignificant when placed beside the works of immortal cartographers, but Carlisle is curious regardless. There is something to be said for silence and loneliness, ensconced in a castle of the damned. He catches himself straying there when proximity to the ruling triumvirate begins to chafe and the only companionship he seeks is that of dust-motes and honeyed, lazy light.
.-.
His surprise is absolute when he finds Aro's mate curved in the room of maps that is habitually his. She is not here to read or hide; a still-mewling girl writhes miserably against her grip, and Carlisle recognizes a servant who has proven herself negligent.
"Ah, Carlisle. Please, do not allow my presence to divert you from your scholarly inclinations," Sulpicia purrs, pressing crimson kisses against her victim's blood-beaded throat. There are carmine stains fluttering down her front, innocent and lovely as butterflies.
His eyes linger at the sticky swell of her breasts for a moment too long.
"I apologize for the intrusion. I was not aware that this chamber was used for the purpose of feeding."
"Oh, my dear," Sulpicia trills, filling the hollows with her crystalline laughter, "the scent of spilled blood is such a temptation, and our newest guards do not have your resilience. That is why I skulk in corners."
The human in her arms is still now.
The humming of gnats tangles in strands with the lilting voices filling the piazza, the softness of sound lending some gentleness to Sulpicia. It is then that Carlisle makes the foolish error of stumbling, of treating this chthonic goddess as a confessor.
"You overestimate my capacity for self-denial, my lady. I admit that abstaining is more than difficult." His words are tremulous, begging for reassurance that his path is correct.
She laughs once more, and Carlisle is suddenly envious of Aro for possessing the love of this burning, blazing creature, whose splendour is wild as a forest fire. "Have you never considered surrendering, if only a little? Surely you know that a bit of prayer and repentance will buy you peace of mind after the matter."
"It is not that simple—"
"I did not wish to initiate a debate of theology," she says. "It was merely an observation. Please, sit."
Too gracious to refuse, Carlisle perches at her side, watching with a fawn's startled eyes as she lets the still-warm corpse tumble out of her grasp. Fine rivulets of crimson swirl away from the girl's throat, a steady tide lapping at his perfect shoes as the scent winds like ribbons.
He moves his attention away from the sun-haired beauty before him, from the thrumming, gasping temptation of blood on frost-pale flesh and looks to the vaulted ceiling, to the cracking parchment that warns of monsters in foreign lands. Amidst uncharted waters, he drowns in the dark currents of want that usually remain tightly dammed against his chest.
"Have you come across the term hubris during your extensive reading?" Sulpicia asks, giving him a scarlet smile, her eyelashes peppered with ruby.
He shakes his head, a child confronted by a conundrum.
"Your faith speaks of denial and chastity of the mind. Mine, long ago, told parables of men who defied their nature, who over-reached and grasped to become the gods. Their sin was hubris, and for this, they were destroyed." Her gaze needles him with accusation, though something else winds through those bloody eyes; he is not the goal of her game.
In a cat-quick motion, Sulpicia's fingers blossom in bright tangles on Carlisle's shoulders as her mouth catches his. The first instinct to flee coils through, breathless and demanding, before the blood on her lips seeps in.
The madness falls then, in a heartbeat and a thunderclap, stripping his sanity away with impossible ease as his hands wrench through the woven snarls of her hair, revealing her flecked throat to his mouth. He laps at the spilled, pooling red with a hungry tongue, teeth scraping her collarbones as her palms guide him, down and down. Her tunic is only held by pins; the cloth unravels in spider-silk sheets beneath his eager grasp.
She is impossibly, gloriously lovely, a heathen goddess of bone and marble beneath flimsy linen, and the blood of her untidy kill has seeped through, marking her breasts and belly with smeared, gleaming stains. He moves his mouth, too dark upon the wintry canvas, onto the filigree of her ribs and her garnet-petaled nipples with lust-darkened thirst, until her skin shimmers like hoarfrost in the tawny light.
When his gasps fade and the blackness ebbs from his eyes, Sulpicia runs arched nails through his hair, now unruly as her own, and whispers, "What a pretty picture you make, my sweet, fallen Carlisle. I shall be sure to—ah, think of this fondly." The triumph on her countenance is not intended for him, and the surety that he is merely a pawn in an unfathomable game carelessly played between this woman and her night-haired mate seeps into his mind.
The magnitude of his transgression tumbles around him like a rain of iron.
.-.
Days pass before he shyly steps in open halls once more, but the alien aureole of crimson has not quite been erased from his honey-gold eyes, while Sulpicia's victorious smirk dogs his step, the sort of ghost that cannot be shaken.
Yet Another Author's Note: I've always thought that something cataclysmic in nature persuaded Carlisle to leave Volterra. Perhaps the Volturi decided to get underhanded with their attempts to make him drink human blood.