"How much of my father am I destined to become? Will I dim the lights inside me just to satisfy someone?"
-In the Blood, John Mayer
Chapter Two
EPOV
You get tired of it all after a while.
The black suits, the chasing of prey, and especially their cries for mercy. Nothing about this life is surprising anymore. There is no fulfillment in what we are, just instant gratification that could only be found teeth deep in the neck of a breathing blood bag.
Here I sat, on a throne, watching another group of blubbering humans cry and wet themselves, calling for their mothers in a variety of languages.
It bored me.
Yet upon further analysis of my discontentment, it seemed such boredom was only covering up something much different.
I had first noticed it a few years back, an empty feeling that left me gasping for breath at certain moments in the day. Occasionally an ache would start in my chest cavity where my dead heart had not beat in almost 300 years. It was rather unnerving to my usually impenetrably stoic disposition.
It was for this reason that I was avoiding my maker. One touch and Aro would see. He would see my hardened shell, which made me so valuable, was weakening. There was no room for weakness in this coven and as much as I loathed it, the metaphorical crown that encircled my head was not only a gift of power but also a necessary tool for survival in Volterra.
But even that thought disinterested me as I examined my nails, a bit of dried blood was caked deep underneath the cuticle and I began to pick at it as the screams in the room escalated.
The "court", as we called it here in Volterra, began to split up the group, taking their pick of playthings. I didn't bother to watch, already knowing what would happen. Vampires were creatures of habit and each of my brothers and sisters had their preferred tastes when it came to feeding.
There were the first round picks, which always went to my Father and his brothers, who savored petite woman with pretty faces, a definite Dracula complex if you ask me. They worked fast, dragging their victims back to their chairs, only to slice through their necks and drain them completely before any of us could think about partaking in the meal.
Once finished, they would cradle their cooling carcasses like prize game trophies, watching their children feed.
The guard would step forward next, their strength ranked most valuable to the continued success of the court's operation and they must be kept well fed.
As if any of us would ever go hungry.
These were usually much larger creatures who spent their human lives beating women, one drink shy of alcoholism, and ducking through doorways that barely allowed for their swollen bodies to pass through.
Demetri, Felix and the rest were in charge of rounding up our food. That usually meant that the group was over saturated with tall bulky males who they would have fun pinning to the ground and emasculating as a way of inflating their own egos.
However, the most grotesque feeders were the 'gifted'. A group of us cursed with 'special' abilities beyond the normal spectrum for a vampire. Their victims, the unluckiest of the bunch, became playthings. There was something about watching them use their gifts to manipulate and torture that disgusted me, even though I ranked among them at one point.
Maybe it was because I could hear every thought flowing through the minds of both sides.
Their tastes varied based on their personal preferences for sex, age, and level of attractiveness, but mostly they went for the smallest and weakest in the group.
Jane and Alec, brother and sister monstrosities, had an additional gift of making everyone one in the room cringe during feeding time. They would take their meal to the nearest bedchamber, only to taunt, tease, and share the human both for nourishment as well as for baser sexual pleasures that often made me want to remove my own head and throw it into a blazing fire.
"Edward."
I glanced over at my maker, his crimson colored eyes wide and curious as he looked over at me.
"Yes, Aro," I replied, already knowing where his train of thought was headed.
"Not hungry my son?"
I could see how black my irises appeared through his mind. It had been weeks since I last feed properly.
"Not today father."
It was a lie. My throat was burning, filling up with stinging venom over and over again. However, the rest of my body had no interest in feeding.
"You can't let your food go ignored."
My eyes shot over to the lone human left alive in the center of the large throne room.
She was small and pretty, maybe 16 years old, barely one hundred pounds. Her heart beat calmly in her chest, her head tilted down to the floor. Her mind ran rampant with images of her family, but she stayed quiet. Every once in a while there was one who wouldn't be broken by the terror we tried to inflict on our prey.
"Go and eat Edward." Aro's voice was hard and cold. It was a command, not a suggestion.
It didn't matter to me. I looked back to Aro with eyes just as dead and unfeeling as his own.
"Not today father," I repeated.
He sighed, raising from his seat, the dead girl slipping from his lap, her head making a sickening sound when it hit the marble floor.
He approached me, his hand outreached to touch my own. But I wouldn't allow that. I was done letting him see into my head.
Now, now, my son let me see what troubles you. He called out in his mind.
I quickly moved my body around his, one moment in my chair, the next standing in front of the girl meant for my meal.
She wouldn't look at me and I was thankful for the silence of her mind, the pictures moving languidly through my head were almost peaceful compared to the screams and pleas of all the others that had come before her.
Drink my son. She's dead already, you know that.
I did know that. There was no way this girl would ever see the light of day again…but at least I could make it quick, help her pass into a better beginning than this horrific end.
For a brief fraction of a second, I wondered why I even cared.
"I'm sorry," I whispered close to her ear, bending down so I was face to face with her.
I slipped my cold hands up her shoulders and onto her neck. Had we existed in a different time and place, the movement would have appeared almost sensual.
I took a deep breath, letting her scent fill my lungs. The venom pooled in the back of my mouth rapidly. The baser animal inside me screamed 'bite'.
But I resisted, even as tempting as the promise of true ecstasy to fill me once more was, and in one quick movement, I snapped her neck.
She was dead in the same instant. Her body fell limply into my arms. I pulled her weightless corpse against my chest.
Quite a crowd had drawn in the room as my brothers and sisters completed their feeding frenzies. Their thoughts were quiet for less than a second before chaos overtook the room.
"What the fuck Edward?" Demetri called from across the way.
"You just wasted a perfectly good meal!" Jane cried, her fists clenched next to her sides.
They continued their berating, but I ignored them all, focusing on my father instead who looked shocked, taken back by my uncharacteristically abrupt and disobedient actions.
You should not have done that Edward.
His voice rang through my head clearer than any other manic thoughts running rampant in the room.
I dropped the body of the girl at his feet, her blood chilled and congealing further every second we stood there.
"I wasn't hungry."
His eyes flashed deeply with anger and frustration, but I wasn't concerned. Once again I was bored.
My patience is wearing thin Son.
"I suggest you remove yourself from my sight before I do something I regret." He growled and I could practically see his chest vibrate through his centuries old, paper skin.
"Yes, Aro," I muttered before slowly exiting the room, ignoring the glares I received on the way out.
"Why did you do that?" Esme's musical voice rang out from deep in the library as soon as I closed the door behind me.
"I don't know what you're talking about."
I strolled over to one of the large leather armchairs, throwing my body onto it, enjoying the proximity it had to the fireplace that always blazed brightly when Esme was present.
Do you think I was born yesterday?
Suddenly, she appeared leaning over the railing of the top floor in the vast and expansive library. Her face the warmest and most expressive I'd seen all day. It thawed my insides immediately.
"Should you really speak to your Sire that way?" I laughed. I enjoyed teasing her often; it made me feel almost human. Almost.
She disappeared from her spot leaning on the railing only to appear before me in the matching armchair, which sat opposite my own.
"Please Edward, darling" she rolled her eyes, "you're practically my child."
It was true.
Aro had sent me out with the guard a few decades ago in the 1930s. There was some trouble happening in New York and even at that time my interest in the Volturi was dwindling. He thought some travel and a task would keep my mind from wandering too far from his agenda.
However, it did quite the opposite.
Upon having an ounce of freedom from two centuries confided in the castle, I became very flightily. I slipped away from the group almost entirely unnoticed until Demetri finally realized it has been hours since I'd made a smart comment directed at his intelligence.
I stayed away from the city, looking for a spot deep in the wilderness where not a single wondering thought would slip into my head from another being. This great longing for silence led me almost 500 miles away to Ohio.
I found myself wandering through an expansive network of forest that lead into mountainous terrain with sharp overpasses that few cars seemed to utilize and steep cliff sides that stood under a dark starry sky. I let the silence overtake me, the peace of nothingness almost as euphoric as draining the blood of a human. I could have lain on the rocks and stared for hours, days, years even.
But just as quickly as I found my small slice of peace, it ended. I remember it so vividly, the annoyance that bubbled up in waves at the sound of the first car that passed through the mountainside. My brows furrowed in a deep crease, a litany of curses running through my head.
I was just on the brink of turning and dashing off into the deep woods again, longing to achieve the same delicious silence again, when her first thoughts filled my mind.
Her voice was soft and weak, even in her own head.
Haven't I been a good daughter God? Haven't I served my husband as best as I knew how?
The smooth and calm thoughts were different from the others that I had spent the last two hundred years trying to block out. There was something almost comforting in hearing the demons of another.
Why have you allowed me a glimpse at being a good mother only to take him away from me?
A vision of a pile of flesh wrapped in blue cotton came to my mind, but it was distorted in emotion, even her vision of the past was cloudy. But though the haze I could tell that the child placed into her arms had not survived the passage necessary to start a life.
I have never asked you for anything more than a reason to live my Lord.
From where I stood I could make out her small shadow standing just on the edge of one of the practically jagged looking cliffs. Her skirts billowed in the breeze.
Now you've taken my reason and so I must be done with this world. Forgive me.
I saw her jump from behind her eyes, saw her falling, saw her come in contact with the first piece of the mountainside. Only a second later her vision went black and I stood to watch with my own eyes as she finally landed in a still lump of skin and blood at the bottom of the cliffside. I could smell her in the air.
The unnerving feeling that ran through my body was like nothing I had ever felt before. It was a feeling so…human, something that I couldn't place, never having experienced it during my second life.
Without consent from my mind, my body rushed towards the silent woman who now lay in a pool of her own blood. The monster within me was nowhere to be found even as I pulled her to me, her sweet red fluids soaking my shirt.
Her face was cut and bleeding, her bones shattered in dozens of different places. A trickle of blood ran from her nose and out of her eye sockets. When I had approached her she was in an unnatural position that could only be described as broken. She would not live, and yet her heart still pumped slowly, crawling its way towards its last sputter.
She was a small woman, whose feet were bare and who's hair although now matted in blood was a beautiful rainbow of caramel colored browns and blondes like it couldn't decide which one it would rather be. A small and quick glimpse of my mortal mother's face flashed through my mind, just barely a blur. It was enough.
She twitched in my arms as I held her and suddenly memories from her short life flashed through my mind. The juxtaposition of her innocence to the cruel and abused life that she had lived brought an unexpected growl to my lips. In quick flashes, I became acquainted with her husband, a man with a permanent smell of alcohol on his breath and a thrill for physical violence. His hands wrapped around her lovely neck gave way to softer memories of her standing in front of a mirror, staring at her swollen stomach, a small smile fighting its way up to her lips. And once more a small bundle wrapped up in her arms came into view, the name Malcolm just a whisper in the cool nighttime air.
I should have let her die, but I couldn't help myself. I had finally found someone worth saving.
Esme was done with this world, but I was stupid enough to bring her into mine. A place she never belonged.
As it would turn out, Esme, for the next 90 years, would be the one who did the saving in our relationship.
Aro was furious when I finally brought her 'home'. He did not comprehend why I felt such a connection for another who, as I expressed many times, was not my mate. She was much more than a lover ever could be. She was my salvation, keeping me from getting myself destroyed over and over again. She reminded me that my throne was greater than the unknown of a second death.
She was mine and I was hers, we were some kind of twisted family. Just the two of us. She was a piece of my heart, ripped from my chest and beating wildly while the rest of me remained dead inside.
But often I repaid her gracious warmth and safe embrace with viciousness and cruelty. In the end, I really was no better than her abusive human husband.
"I wish you would tell me what you're thinking dear. Not all of us can read minds you know."
I sighed, leaning forward in the armchair, resting my elbows on my knees, my face falling into my palms.
"I'm losing interest."
She snorted, the sound so human-like that I couldn't help but smile at her.
"I don't know if I've ever seen you interested in anything Edward."
Her mind flooded with dozens of memories centered on my bored looking expression.
Boredom seems to be your default setting Edward.
"That's not entirely accurate Esme," I gave her one of my wicked smiles, "You interest me more every day."
She rolled her eyes but one of her signature warm and inviting smiles found it's way onto her face.
"What is a girl to do with you?" She mocked me.
Just imagine what someone could do with all that sarcasm and boredom wrapped up in one fine male specimen, the poster child of our race really. Now that would be a lucky girl.
Her smile widened.
I opened my mouth to let her know that she would be the only person in my life with whom I would ever allow to do anything with me.
"Not me Edward." Her smile fell as she took on a serious look. "While I love you more than anything, don't you ever wish someone would come along and…peak your interests?" She tilted her head down. If she could blush she would have at that moment.
"What? Like a mate?" I asked incredulously.
She nodded.
"Why would I want that Esme?"
She huffed, "Men don't really ever change do they?"
Her reaction to our banter was strangely serious considering the hypothetical of the conversation. Her mind remained blank to me even as I dug around to see what she might have been hiding under all those smiles and silky locks of hair.
I decided to change the subject before we wandered into a more hostile discussion, which never ended well.
"Why have you cooped yourself up in this dusty library again?"
The subtle ache that pounded away in my chest on random occasions began a painful throb. Esme's eyes slipped down to exact spot I hadn't realized I was rubbing small circles on my sternum where the discomfort radiated. I quickly dropped my hand upon seeing her lingering stare.
You know why.
I sighed, knowing all too well why she kept herself shut up in this ancient library that very few of the Volturi even knew existed. They were often too busy dealing with their bloodlust and anger issues to appreciate the history and beauty of the room.
Somehow we always came back to the same conversations. And I had no desire today to make my dear Esme cry. I had done enough of that for a lifetime, but there was no doubt in my mind that it was only a matter of time before I hurt her again.
I didn't respond to her hushed mental thought, instead simply letting the stirring air around us prick at my skin.
There was something very special held between the connection of a Sire and his creation. Nowhere near as potent or physical as a mating bond, but still a thin line attached Esme and I.
Without trying I could always sense where she was in the castle and when she left in secret to do her hunting in the woods surrounding Volterra. I had a heightened sense of her emotional state as well and many times I felt the need to reach out and hold her, my creation. Like a parent would his child.
She must have sensed my need, moving from her seat to join me on my own. Wedging her lithe body into the small space beside me. I wrapped my arm around her shoulder and she slipped her hand into my free one, her head resting in the crook of my neck.
There was nothing sexual about the interaction, just a simple way we found to connect with one another. Comforting the only way we could.
For all the time that I spent without Esme in my life, there was one thing that I had come to learn. This existence was much colder without someone by your side. As much as she didn't deserve my demons, my anger, the malice that swelled within me, I would never let her go. She was mine.
Edward.
Aro's voice rang out loudly in my mind, slicing through the cloud of contentment surrounding us.
My chambers. Now.
The growl that rumbled from my lips couldn't be helped upon hearing the command from my father. It was always an oddity to me that the only connecting emotions that I ever felt towards my creator were that of dissatisfaction and irritation, maybe even a touch of fear when I remembered he could just as easier snuff me out of this world as he had created me.
Edward?
I gave Esme a sad smile as I slowly untangled myself from our comfortable embrace. Her mind called out in protest to my movement, desiring me to stay for a while longer.
He's always leaving.
I couldn't help but wince at the thought. I tried to keep it from being noticed, knowing that not everything in her head was supposed to be seen by anyone. But it didn't hurt me any less to hear such blunt and honest truths that she would never share with me out loud.
"My Sire is calling and unlike you," I smiled at her again, looking to lighten the mood, "I tend to obey mine."
Not even my forced attempt at humor could wipe away the frown that seemed to be permanently etched on her beautiful face.
"Edward?"
"Everything's fine, don't worry so much…mom."
She finally gave me a small smile at the endearment, but it didn't reach her eyes.
"I'll be back."
I left quickly; unable to withstand the look she was giving me for a moment more.
A/N: A first look at our Edward. I hope you continue to enjoy the story!
