The Lure by Camilla

Chapter 2 - Angelo's story

Bella

"No, this is not a sordid story of pedophilia, don't worry." Angelo went on, "If any, it was I who seduced Don Mario. I was almost sixteen, and he was still quite young. He was a fantastic man, good, understanding, handsome. My schoolmates and I played soccer in the parish grounds and he coached us. I fell in love with him, made my awkward advances and got the prize. For a while we were very happy, despite his strong sense of guilt, but eventually we were discovered.

The Church is very careful of scandals. Don Mario was sent away, but not in shame. In fact, he got a promotion. In Latin they say promoveatur ut amoveatur, which means that you are promoted so as to better remove you. He disappeared from my life and I was left to face the music.

Have you any idea of what it meant to be known as un frocio, a faggot, in a small provincial town so many years ago? The whispered words at my back, the direct sneers in my face, the catcalls, the sick jokes recited in a loud voice while I was passing by. Then a particular gang in my school widened their hate range, targeting my parents. They could not stand it. Nothing in their upbringing and culture had prepared them for this. They were ashamed. 'It would have been better if you were dead,' my father told me, while my mother cried."

Angelo's voice trembled. For a while he was silent.

"So I left home," he continued, "I was still under age, but my parents did nothing to find me, nor did they alert the police. I went first to Rome and then to Milan. I was good looking even as a human, and I had no money, so I took the easy road: I became a prostitute. But no dirty toilets for my encounters, oh no. I was attractive, very attractive, so I could pick and choose my clients and name my price. Due to this I lived comfortably, if wildly. However, I had been noticed and my potential assessed. One night I followed a pale client to his country house. He was an emissary of the Volturi and he changed me.

You both know how the experience is, so I'll not dwell on it. After my newborn period I was brought to Volterra and Caius explained what they wanted from me. Mind you, I wasn't particularly sorry for the change, since my human life had not been pleasant. Now I was beautiful like the angel my name signified, I was strong and eternal. And I could have my revenge. I returned to my hometown, giving a wide berth to my parents' house, and looked for the members of the school gang that had tormented me. No one survived.

Then my training started. I studied languages, since I would need to travel to many countries to do my job. Finally, one day I was told to go and exert my talent, armed with contact lenses. If I had been attractive before, now I was impossible to resist. I did not only seduce men easily, including some that did not think that they were gay, but I affected women too. This was particularly true in the case of couples turned on by threesomes.

At the beginning I found that I could control my strength, but not my blood lust. I was incubus or succubus as circumstances dictated, but none of my lovers left my bed alive. I became adept at disposing of bodies unobtrusively. Of course that was not what was expected of me, so I gradually learned to keep my thirst in check. After a night of hot sex I would tell my preys that I had to go back to my job in a museum of Volterra. However, they could come and visit me there, but secretly, because in the Museum they didn't know of my sexual preferences. Almost all came, so irresistible I was. I gave directions to a supposed side entrance of the museum and once they got in, Alec took over, keeping them in a blank void until we had enough specimens collected and the feast could start.

Many years passed in this way. The problem with controlling the thirst, however, is that one has time to think, and I liked less and less what I was doing. Since I didn't kill my preys immediately, I got to know them, to see them as people. And I was luring them to their death. Plus, I had loved Mario, but after I lost him I had not loved anymore. The void in my existence began hurting me. The sex part was often great – OK - but not enough to fill me.

While I was still struggling with those thoughts, an unexpected visitor arrived in Volterra.

It was you, Edward, asking to be destroyed. You certainly did not notice me, hidden in the shadows of the thrones' hall, but I did notice you and I was fascinated, and not only by your beauty. Seeking death because the human girl you loved had died, that was unheard of. Learning from Demetri that, after Aro had denied your request, you had tried to provoke our reaction in order to be punished, was amazing. Then it came out that the human girl was alive, and that your adopted sister - sister! - had come to Italy with her to try and save you. This was something incredible. Plus, the human girl had the power to resist Aro and Jane talents, your sister saw the future and you read minds. You spoke of your coven as of your family - family! - and the members of that family had amber eyes because they did not kill human beings but only animals. All the events of that fateful day burned themselves in my mind. Another world was possible, and my perception of reality turned upside down.

We spoke of you for months afterwards, speculating on what was going to happen. When Jane came back from Seattle we learned that the Cullen coven was so powerful that they had destroyed an army of 20-odd newborns and two mature vampires. It started to look frightening and I was not surprised to hear that Aro was planning to come and swipe you out. After the Alaskan female, Irina, came and gave us a pretext, the expedition was decided. I was not happy at all with the decision, but I was under orders, so I had to go with the others.

When our two groups faced each other in the clearing I felt a strong compulsion to switch sides; I would have died in the attempt, probably, and I had not the gut to do it. In any case, as imposing as our army looked, things were not going so well on our side, despite Aro's play-acting.

Shitless we all are by definition, but many of us were very, very scared. First of all, the wolves. Enormous brutes at your command, with fangs that could tear through our bodies. Then there was your wife, now a powerful vampire and totally self possessed, despite being a newborn, capable of nullifying Jane and Alec's powers by shielding everyone in your group. For me it was not so much fear, it was longing… it was so clear that you were lovers and friends, that nobody was under orders and yet you were prepared to die for each other. And you, Edward, had even a real family now, not an immortal child but a hybrid little girl, a beautiful bambina.

Well, your sister arrived and there was no battle. Stalemate!

In the months that followed I daydreamed of leaving Volterra and coming to Forks, asking to be taken in. But I was alone, and you were paired, and very traditionally, at that. Would you have accepted a gay vampire in your midst?"

Chapter endnote

What will Edward answer to this?