Chapter 1: Captured
6 Years Ago
The trees blurred past me as I ran as fast as I could, darting over and under the overgrown brush of the forest in northern Italy. Charlie and Renee were somewhere behind me, but I didn't think about that much. The feeling of the wind in my face and the scenery flowing around me like a comfort blanket was the only thing on my mind. When I wasn't outside, that was the only place I wanted to be. Charlie said it was in our nature, with what we were, to enjoy nature more than civilized society.
We were actually on a month-long vacation, travelling across Europe, and I couldn't think of a time when I was happier than I had been the past week, running across the continent and seeing the actual world, instead of what humans have made it. What they considered the world consisted of all of their cities, made of cement and steel and other things they only had because they took them from nature. What I was seeing, the trees, grass, flowers, sky . . . that was what makes the world as I saw it, not what humans put into the world. The comforts of a home were not lost on me, but I was just as happy outside in what felt like my more natural form as I was inside in my human form. I was probably happier outside, if I thought about it.
Dad let me choose where we would spend our vacation this year, and neither he nor my mom tried to change my mind when I told them I wanted to travel. I could see my mom itching to get away just as much as I was, so I knew this would be good for all of us. Charlie took his vacation time from his job as Police Chief of a tiny not-town called Forks in Washington State, and mom was a freelance photojournalist, so she was on vacation whenever she didn't have a story. When she found out what I wanted, she made sure she didn't have one, Especially since the last week happened to land on my eighteenth birthday.
Bella, slow down, dear, my mom thought to me. I mentally sighed and she giggled. I could see my dad rolling his eyes at my response.
I sat by a nearby tree to wait for them to catch up, and looked straight above me at the immense canopy. Birds, snakes, chipmunks, squirrels, any kind of tree climbing animal seemed to live in the enormous holm oak tree next to me. The size of the black-barked tree reminded me of the reason I loved nature so much, how everything we could every possibly need was provided for us by the Mother. It was a shame how people thought their existence was so much more important, and in thinking so, determined that destroying the homes of those who existed on this planet first was justified since it was in the name of human comfort.
I sat there staring up at the interactions of the animals above my head until a pair of foxes appeared through the underbrush. Their fur was a deep blood red with swirling lighter and darker shades covering their small bodies. My parents walked over and sat down next to me, and looked up at what had caught my attention so strongly. We watched together for a few more moments before my dad brushed my side with his tail to get my attention.
We're getting closer to a small human town, the one with the vampire castle. Volterra, or something. It's only a few miles in our current direction, so we need to decide what we want to do. Sight-see, or investigate? Charlie asked, looking between me and my mom. I looked at her too, and shrugged my red furry shoulders.
Are you wanting to shop? I asked. Anything she bought so far we had sent back home. We couldn't really carry it around with us. Seeing three red foxes running around with backpacks on might stretch the limits of what people are willing to believe was just a trick of the light.
Sure, if you don't mind. You can check out the area around the castle while you wait, my mom said, knowing I wouldn't be too inclined to join her. Shopping was not my forte, and mom had finally accepted that not too long ago. We both looked at dad, and he nodded.
I guess I'll join your mother, make sure she doesn't buy us out of house and home, he teased, looking at mom. She raised a paw to whack at him, and he jumped back, a wheezing laugh coming from his throat. She threw her ears back and turned her head up and away in indignation. Dad cautiously walked over and liked her face in apology. She stayed still for a moment before giving in and licking him back.
Okay, okay, I said, laying down and covering my eyes with my paws. Can we get going now? They laughed at me, walking over and licking my face at the same time. I jumped over them and ran, hearing them start after me. I slowed down and we ran together to the edge of the forest, pausing to let my mom and dad shift back into human form.
It was always amazing to watch someone shift, rather than just feel it happen to yourself. Mom's coat retracted back into her skin as her bones fluidly flexed back into the structure she needed for human form. Her dark brown hair fell in waves down to the middle of her shoulder blades, while what was once her fur sprouted again to take the form of the clothing she had been wearing when she was last in human form. She immediately hid the tattoos that covered her skin, the swirls and twists that showed as different shades of red in our fur, and smiled down at me. I looked at her left collarbone, imagining the tattooed lines that came together to form a dove about the size of a half-dollar in that exact spot. My dad had a shield-like mark on his bicep, and a fox's head was on the side of my thigh. I also had a small heart on the right side of my neck. I loved the marks that came with being what we were, and hated having to cover them up whenever I wanted to go somewhere in human form. I usually left and that would be covered by my clothes, and some random ones here and there to make myself feel better.
My mom looked to only be in her mid-thirties, but she was really in her late fifties. She refused to tell me her exact age, but she did tell me how she stayed looking young. It was something about being able to freeze the aging process at will for her true form, but making gradual shifts in her appearance every now and then to fake actually aging. It allowed for her and dad to stay in one place longer. My dad was actually in his early sixties. Charlie shifted to his human form, and I thought about how happy I was when my parents told me we didn't shift back without clothes, like werewolves did. Otherwise, that moment would have been completely mortifying . . .
The only things we had in common with them were the shifting, of course, telepathy, and an alpha. Our telepathy could be used no matter what, where theirs was only in wolf form, and our alphas were the males with the strongest dominance. My dad was our alpha, so my mom and I had to listen to everything he said in command form with the alpha voice. If someone else was to come along and tell me to do something, and his dominance was stronger than my dad's, I would have to listen to whatever he said until someone even more dominant came along. Dad said there was an exception to that, something about mating bonds that didn't allow for that to happen, which was why mom would only ever listen to his commands, and that mating bonds could only be made if the female willingly gave herself to the male. A forced mating could never form the bond, whether the female gave herself or not, and neither would it allow the female to carry that male's offspring. The emotions had to be there, the willingness to let the male close, and not just because it would minimally improve the situation. I was still unmated, so he still had reign over me. The only problem I could see was that my dad wasn't a very dominant soul, and he knew that. As soon as he found my mom, he made sure they didn't come across any other male shifters by taking her somewhere deep in the country, and he . . . expressed his dominance over her. I'll just say that it wasn't long after that I was born, especially since our kind are actually only pregnant for about a month, and we usually have a litter of whatever animal we were last. The babies stay as whatever animal their parents had last been for the first eight weeks, and then slowly gain the ability to change into the form of a human toddler. My parents happened to be wandering around as wolves at the time, but my two siblings went missing only a few days after we were born. Apparently, something got in the den while my parents were nearby and got them, but couldn't manage to grab me, as well. Dad said it smelled human, but it couldn't have gotten away that fast. The three of us were napping, so my parents had taken the time to be alone, to talk without worrying about how much we understood. Mom and dad searched and searched for days, tracking their scents all over the upper West Coast, but the trail went cold. They had to give up, to focus on what they still had, as devastated as it made them. I was the only one left, so my parents usually had a cast iron cage around me at all times. I was older now, though, so they lightened up a bit. And by a bit, I mean they let me go about a quarter of a mile from their sides, instead of four feet. They felt it was quite the jump, but I couldn't agree.
"Belllllaaaaa," Renee said, waving her hand in front of my snout. I shook and blinked before looking up at her. "We're going to go. Meet us behind the castle in a half hour, okay?" I nodded and stood, twitching my tail in goodbye before shifting to the form of a domestic cat, my skin rippling with the changes that needed to be made between forms. My fur turned black and became slightly shorter, my tail losing its bushiness. It was getting towards twilight, so I gave myself a large white spot here and there to help myself blend in. The tats I would normally have as a human left dark grey marks in my now black and white fur, camouflaging me even more.
I ran across the small clearing and slipped around the wall and into the small city, sticking to the shadows and the little alleyways scattered throughout the buildings. A few kids ran up and tried to pet me, and I slinked between their legs, making them giggle. I ran down the main street, avoiding feet and more sticky fingers, before I finally reached the front door of the castle. Unlike near the gate to the city, there were no animals by the castle. The ferals and pets I had passed warned me as I ran, trying to get me to turn back, but I already knew what the danger was. I knew the sun was setting fast, which made me more careful than if it had still been out, but I was determined to check out this building. I only had until the sun was completely set before I had to meet my parents, so I walked around the side of the castle, looking up at the monstrous walls towering over my head.
The entire castle was made from old, aged brick, the grey dulled down by the constant sun. Windows broke through the flat surface every so often, telling me there were at least four floors that I could see from this wall. I could hear movement, but nothing alerting me to someone approaching. I climbed one of the few trees next to the castle wall and peeked into the window directly across from one of the higher branches. It looked like an overly furnished bedroom, the pieces antique but well taken care of. The doorknob suddenly turned and I jumped, almost falling off the slim branch. The vampire looked at me curiously as I regained my footing, and approached the window. She was a small blonde woman, and looked pleasantly surprised to see me so close. I puffed up my back and tail, trying to act like a feral cat, and she smiled.
"Oh, are you scared, kitty?" she asked, her voice mesmerizing to my heightened hearing. My heart was trying to beat its way out of my chest as I continued to look at her. She smiled wider when I took a step back, showing her white teeth. She leaned forward and braced her head on her fist, still staring at me curiously. "You should be, little kitty. I could kill you right now, and you couldn't do anything to stop me."
Quite the sadistic bitch, aren't you? I thought to myself, still backing up until I bumped into the trunk of the tree. Something like suspicion flashed through her eyes and I jumped down, my own curiosity about the castle sated by fear for my life.
I darted over to the wall, trying to make it harder for her to keep track of me, and ran around to the back of the building. The sun was almost completely set by now, and I sat down under a bush to wait for Charlie and Renee, changing my coat again so I was completely black. I perked my ears, listening for any sounds of movement, but there was nothing but the rapid beating of my heart. I laid down and rested my chin on my paws, waiting the last few minutes before my parents were supposed to show up, and took a deep breath to calm myself.
I almost choked on that breath and yowled loudly as someone roughly picked me up by the scruff of my neck. I dangled from their grasp, trying to claw at any part of them I could reach, and my captor turned me so I could see them. I was met with a pair of blood red eyes and teeth like white razors. He was stocky, very wide in the shoulders, and had short brown hair above a deathly pale face. I yowled, hissed, and spat, trying once again to make the vampire let go, but he just chuckled.
"I hear you were peeping into Chelsea's room, little kitty," he said lightly, like he couldn't believe what he was saying. "If you wanted inside so much, you should have just walked in the front door. I guess I'll just have to take you in now. You can be my pet, until I get tired of you, that is," he continued, like it would be an honor. I hissed again and swiped at his face. He just laughed louder.
"Felix? What is so funny?" another male voice said. The vamp holding me walked towards the wall and turned in the direction of the front door, where a tall, slim vampire dressed in all black was standing. His eyes were just as red as my captor's, not making me feel any better about the situation I was in. His hair was black and he flicked his head to the side to get it out of his eyes as he walked toward Felix. "What are you doing?" he asked, like he was talking to a child.
"Apparently Chelsea saw something from little kitty here with her power," Felix said, raising me up in his grasp to emphasize. I growled and swatted at him again, looking at him from the corner of my eye. "She asked me to get it so she could make sure." Well, that confirmed the suspicion I saw in her eyes before I jumped down. I kept struggling, trying to wiggle out of his stone grasp, but didn't feel like I was making any progress.
"And what do you plan to do with it?" the second vamp asked, humoring the first.
"Well, Demetri, I was going to take it to her and see if Aro would let me keep it in the castle as a little toy. If not, I'll just kill it," he said, turning me to face him again and giving me an evil grin. "It'll be entertaining either way, just not as long if I have to kill it." I struggled even harder, feeling one of my claws rake his skin, and he yelped. I felt smug as I continued my efforts, knowing my claws were actually strong enough to hurt him if I could get a hold. Another perk to being similar to werewolves.
Bella! My parents' voices screamed through my head at the same time, making me wince.
No! I yelled back. Stay back!
But it was too late. They darted through the brush at top speed, both of them going for Felix. I morphed into a fox, trying to shock him into letting me go before Charlie and Renee could get too close, but it was too late. Demetri had both of them by the arm and twisted them until both Charlie and Renee were on the ground in pain. I yowled loudly, trying to get him to let go of them, but all it did was draw attention to my new form. Both of the vampires looked at me in shock, my parents' faces masked with sorrow. All three of us knew what my desperate act would lead to, and now my parents would be brought into it too. Demetri confirmed our fears, looking at me, and then to Felix.
"Bring them to Aro. Immediately."
The two vampires dragged my parents into the castle through a back door, and I stayed hanging from the hand Felix wasn't holding my mother with. He learned his lesson about my claws, holding his arm out so I couldn't get to his side with them. Charlie and Renee kept trying to turn to look at me, but Demetri yanked on their arms until they turned back around. Charlie tried just before we entered the castle, and Demetri yanked even harder, my dad's shoulder emitting a loud pop as it dislocated. I snarled loudly, but my fox form couldn't emit the type of anger I was hoping for as my dad held in a yell of pain.
Bella, stay calm, my dad thought to me, his alpha voice ringing in my head. Don't let them know who you are, don't tell them anything, no matter what happens. Especially, don't show them any more of your forms. If they are not higher in dominance than I am, I want to keep them in the dark as much as possible about us. They may guess that you have a human form, Bella, but nothing else. Don't show them anything else. I let him feel my understanding, not able to think in coherent sentences at that point. He mentally sighed as I felt the telltale tingle that meant the order was in effect.
Bella . . . if in fact they are stronger than I am . . . there's nothing I can do to keep you safe. We love you, baby, he thought, and I whimpered. I could feel his sadness at the possibility of losing me, and my mom felt the same. It's always been a possibility that a male would come along and be stronger than my dad, but never in any of our wildest dreams did we think that male could be a vampire.
