Shahrazád's Ghosts


Chapter 6: Aro Part I


2178 A.D.


A minor contingent of Volturi guards was the first sent to investigate the rumors rumbling from the central Sahara. With the evolution of human technology, any missteps by erring vampires could have disastrously global ramifications if not dealt with immediately. The Volturi had been forced to expand their guard to include a full-time host of computer analysts and web security specialists to constantly filter the World Wide Web for potential security threats and leaks. A team stood ready at all times to be dispatched to deal with vampires who were so careless as to be caught sparkling on someone's iPhone camera or caught hunting by a hidden security camera.

It was a headache, really. It used to be so much simpler, back in the day when vampires could really be vampires. All the apex predators of the human world were required to do was avoid eyewitnesses and properly dispose the body. How Aro longed for those days! Now, Aro had to ensure all newborn vampires were properly registered and trained before being unleashed. Even the veteran vampires were required to attend compulsory trainings in basic cybersecurity and virtual identity protection. It was a new age, a new era and the even the most unwilling and obstinate of the "Old Guard" of the vampire world had to conform to the changing landscape. Aro despised the new requirements, but the contagion of information that occurred through "going viral" could be just as deadly to the vampire world as Ebola was for their prey.

Actually, it was not so difficult with the new vampires. It was the old ones who gave him the biggest headaches. If it was hard to "teach an old dog new tricks", then trying to change the hunting techniques of a vampire old enough to remember when the Pyramids were built was about as effective as teaching a dead dog to roll over. Yet, to keep their secret and ensure both their livelihoods and their existence as a species, all had to adapt.

It had led to one of the largest migrations in vampiric history, according to their elite team of Volturi historians. So many vampires avoided the well-populated urban areas in favor of the isolated rural extremes that they created another problem: the inexplicable rise in numbers of mysterious rural disappearances. This led to the panic of their rural prey who responded with more cameras and more computerized sensors and more investigations and more attention. In urban areas, it was the very anonymity granted by the large population which could obscure their hunts into the realm of "unsolved cases" and "cold trails." These could just as easily be attributed to a neighborhood lunatic or the next human serial killer or gang-violence. The heavy reliance on rural prey was much more difficult to hide or explain away.

Hunting had become so complicated that it had led to a dramatic decrease in new sirings and an increase in territorial conflicts between covens. The former was only problematic in that it meant less opportunities for the discovery of new "gifts" and made Aro's work ever so much more tedious, but it also meant less paperwork, less troublesome newborns to track down and force to sit through a training they had no interest in sitting through, and less of an all-around thorn in his side.

The rise in territorial conflicts, well, that was a bother. Those wars involved as much ego as necessity and led to typically rational beings behaving like boorish imbeciles in the quest to best their rivals. Inevitably, their rash attempts to claim territory and oust their competitors would lead to some sort of imprudent exposure. Then, a large clean up team from Volterra would have to be dispatched and then, oh the paperwork! The executions! The internet scrubs, and all the bribes or hacks required to expunge the incident from government and media databases! Aro was rather tempted to end half of the vampire population himself...or simply remove the internet from existence...if only he would be able to rid himself of a small fraction of the irrational nuisances he dealt with on a weekly basis.

Take this week, as an example. Already, an ignorant newborn in Ukraine had leapt from a thirty-story building in broad daylight. The idiot was captured on fifty smart phones and gained nearly a thousand views on YouTube within twenty minutes. In Paraguay, an ancient Incan vampire was caught red-eyed disposing of a body in a river by a hidden security camera. Then, in upstate New York, a vampire tried to steal new clothes from someone's clothesline only one of the jackets was personalized to the owner's name and high school swim team. It was then identified in cameras across the U.S. whenever the cretin failed to turn on his technology-inhibiting tracker on his Volturi-provided phone. How any of these idiots passed training was beyond him, but one thing was for certain, they would not be given another chance to fail.

But each led to months of work and so many expenses and so much attention to possible landslides of ramifications. It was truly a constant exercise in inglorious tedium these days and no longer the titillating empire building of his younger days.

Then there was the case in Niger.

"Sir, there's been a new incident," Rocky had said, grimly displaying a Facebook livestream on his computer stream for Aro to see. Sure enough, a newborn Aro had never seen before was walking through a small road in Agadez, sparkling like a disco ball for all the humans to see. Aro sighed.

"Do we have her on file?" Aro asked.

"No, sir. And we have received no documents of new sirings with any newborns that match her description in the last year."

"Of course we haven't. Send a second team to track down the irresponsible imbecile and bring back his head on a platter for me. I am not feeling magnanimous today. You know what to do."

"Yes, sir."

Within three hours, the two teams had been dispatched. The second team could find no traces of her sire anywhere across North Africa. The first team was a bit more successful. They, at least, captured their quarry, but then they ran into another obstacle.

"Sir, we have a problem," came Felix's call, once the miscreant was apprehended.

"What is it?" Aro asked.

"She has a gift."

This peaked Aro's interest and he sat up in his chair and leaned forward on his hands, already feeling as giddy as a schoolboy on holiday. "Tell me!"

"She has some kind of shield. Demetri cannot place a tracking on her and Jane cannot penetrate it. We have her in chains. Would you like us to continue with the execution?"

"NO!" Aro said, too loudly for the entire room of guards turned to stare at him. "I mean no. Please, bring her in! I would like to meet this one."

"As you wish."

The team, as per their protocol training, brought in the erring vampire. It was not often that they came across one with an obvious gift and Aro's ire at finding out of the disposal of three such individuals, without consulting him, had been the impetus for the creation of such a protocol. He was all the more thankful for it when they brought in the newborn.

She was a lovely creature, all dark hair and elegant features and a mysterious silence over her mouth as well as her mind. He could no more get her to speak to him in full paragraphs than he could extract a single thought from her mind. She was as silent as a grave and she answered in single sentences out of fathomless and impenetrable eyes, lips curved into the very slightest of maddeningly impenetrable smiles.

Aro was entranced.

"My dear, please tell me your name."

"Wendy Moira Angela Darling," she answered. "But you may call me Darling."

"Delightful. And who was your sire?"

"What is a sire?"

"The vampire who turned you from human to vampire."

"He had many names. Some called him Edward. Some called him Bran. Some called him Masen. I called him Peter."

"I see, and where is this Peter?"

"Neverland, I presume."

Aro sighed. Either she was mad or she was mocking him or she was an idiot or she was the product of a mad man, or possibly all of the above. He was not used to lowering himself to such debates or even using verbal communication at all. He was woefully out of practice for this interpretation of kinesics.

"My dear, please be serious."

"I am serious."

"Very well. If you insist. You have committed a grave aberration of our laws, my dear. Did you know that?"

"They told me," she said, with a glance back at where Felix still held her chains in his hands and towered over her with a gleeful grin.

"Yes, yes. In these cases, it is our unfortunate duty to bring a swift end to such dangerous breaches of our laws, but I am willing to make an exception. It appears that you have a very unusual gift. How would you like to join our guard here in Volterra and learn to use it? You will receive a generous stipend, learn from the most gifted of tutors, and have access to all the benefits of the most powerful coven in the history of vampires. Oh, and you will avoid facing the consequences of your actions."

She stared at him through those bright red, expressionless eyes, glanced back at Felix one more time, and then she nodded her head once.

"Very well, Felix - get her to Oralia and have her registered at once! Then, for the sake of all of Volterra, get her into the 'Welcome to Vampirism' course immediately!"

She finished the initial courses quickly, but it took years for her to complete the Volturi guard trainings. It did not take long to realize there were more things "strange" about her than just her name and her origin. For one, she refused to feed with the rest of the guard. Absolutely and completely. Once it came time for feeds, she vanished and would not emerge until it was all over and her newborn eyes eventually gave way to eyes that were as golden as the eccentric philanthropist Carlisle's had been. When questioned about this, she only shrugged and said she "liked it better."

Secondly, she formed no social connections in Volterra. Vampires, by nature, were social creatures. Even the nomads preferred to travel in pairs or small covens and they were as territorial as they were social. It was very unusual to have a permanently solitary vampire, but this one refused any and all attempts to include her into relational bonds with other vampires. It wasn't that she was disliked or antisocial, it's that she was as ambivalent as a shadow and nearly as immaterial. She drifted through social settings as unnoticeably as a sprite with nary a sound or ripple to let the others know of her presence.

Typically, it was a simple matter to amend such a predilection in Volterra. Between Marcus' attunement to recognizing bonds and Chelsea's ability to form and cut bonds, in a matter of days, she should have been easily folded into the large and intricate web of relational connections that was the heart and soul of the Volturi. Except her gift was immune to Chelsea's influence.

And what a marvelous gift it was turning out to be!

"I don't like it," Caius groused. "We cannot tell what her motivations are because you cannot read her thoughts. We cannot control her loyalties and bind her to us. What guarantee do we have that she won't betray us? She has no mate to use as leverage to keep her or make her obey. She does not appear to have any ambition or pride which would encourage her amiability and loyalty. She is immune to all deterrents, save that of physical force. She is dangerous, Aro! If she wanted, she could neutralize all your assets in a moment, and then where would we be?"

"Then we will just have to ensure that she has no reason to turn against us," Aro responded. "There are other ways to gain someone's loyalty besides threats and force, Caius. Have you forgotten the extent that flattery, charm, and an offering of friendship can gain?"

Caius gave a dubious eye roll and grimaced. "And if that fails?"

"You old pessimist!" Aro cried. "Always considering the worst-case scenario instead of the wonderful possibilities! What if she agrees? Caius, which of our enemies could hope to cross us with a shield such as this on our side? How many battles could be shortened by neutralizing so many gifts at once and how many losses could be avoided?"

"I beg to remind you, brother, of how easily the opposite could be true. I believe the risk outweighs the benefit. Since we cannot be sure of her loyalty, she is too dangerous to be allowed to live. My advice is that we end her at once, before she grows any more powerful...or any more ambitious and aware of her potential influence."

"Oh, bah. Hers is a defensive gift and not an offensive one. If she does turn on us, which I doubt she would, all it would take to neutralize her would be Felix' muscle and she'll crack like a porcelain teacup. She is a tiny waif of a creature and we have nothing to fear from her."

"That is where I beg to differ," Caius groused, but he did not interfere in any way other than to subtly glare at the woman and watch her more carefully than all the others.

The third surprise about the woman came from Marcus' observation that she was not as entirely unsocial and isolated as Aro first assumed. Marcus' gift showed the lingering traces of a mating bond, initiated but not fully consummated. The bond was now severed, but its effects remained, influencing her and clinging to her like flies on a corpse.

"Her sire must have also been her mate," Aro mused when he discovered this. "I wonder where he has gone? He must be dead or she would have left to find him by now. She does not seem the sort to kill her own mate out of a temper or a fight, but then again, who can really tell these things? She wouldn't be the first newborn to react so and then regret it later."

Marcus gave a dispassionate grunt but did not answer.

It was unusual for any in Volterra to be able to keep secrets from Aro and normally was unpermitted. While the rest of the guard submitted to weekly "visits" with their lord and held out their hands at the slightest glance for Aro's perusal, Darling was essentially exempt. She, also, was required to attend a perfunctory "visit", but instead of rifling through her mind and memories with a touch, Aro was forced to sit her down and ask her about her week and her thoughts and her emotions. She remained as reticent as ever, but Aro tried ever harder, his curiosity burning within him like a flame on pine needles. He tolerated her enigmatic silence as long as she performed well in the guard.

And she did. Fantastically so. Better than he could have imagined. Her shield was unparalled in the history of the Volturi. Never before had their been a shield so impervious to mental attacks or which could cover so much geographic space.

Aro was delighted. So much so that she was elevated through the ranks much faster than was typical for new guards. This made some of the long-term guard grumble and complain, but Aro ignored them all. He wanted that shield in his inner circle, protecting the most sacred parts of the Volturi from threats, and providing him more immunity from attack than he ever dreamed possible.

He did his best to win her favor the old-fashioned way. He intentionally courted her good-opinion through gifts and invitations to social events and long walks through the gardens around Volterra. He publicly praised her and asked her opinions on matters of importance. All the behaviors which would have made other vampires preen and gloat like a peacock only resulted in the slightest of smiles and even fainter expressions of thanks, but no more. She neither gloated over her rivals (of which there were many and of vicious jealousy) nor did she ask for any favors from Aro. She seemed to be oblivious of the fact that she was treated preferentially at all, regardless of how Aro tried to make her notice. She simply did as she was told, day in and day out, without drawing any attention to herself or so much as requesting for an increase in pay or an elevation to a courtyard view in her assigned quarters.

Aro hoped that meant her loyalty had been earned and she would agree to stay.

And she did. For nearly a century, Darling wore the grey cloak of a Volturi guard and silently stood watch over all the innermost workings of the court of the vampire kings.

Oooooo


One day, half a century or so into her stay in Volterra, Aro taught Darling the rules of chess. It was during their weekly "visit" and instead of prying information out of her unwilling mouth, he decided to teach her to play a game. She rarely participated in any activities or games or competitions. In fact, she seemed to take very little enjoyment in anything at all and Aro wondered if it was a lack of exposure or a lack of interest. When he did see her doing anything, it was reading, but then she only read one book. Over and over and over again. She carried with her everywhere she and that was all she ever read.

He brought her to the balcony of his private quarters, his ivory chess pieces older than the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Chess did not spark her interest immediately. She politely agreed to play and quietly listened to a summary of the rules. She indulged him and tried her best and she even kept up with his quiet stream of small talk as they played. It was not until he had nearly achieved his victory that something caught her attention. Despite having lost most of her pieces, one of her pawns successfully crossed the entire board.

"Very good, my dear," Aro said. He placed one lean finger on the rounded top of the pawn and gave her a gleaming grin. "This little pawn can now become anything you want it to be. Pick one of the pieces you thought lost and exchange it."

She looked surprised, but then she fingered the various pieces she had lost. Her hand finally fell on her queen.

"Even this one?"

"Even that one."

Her eyes grew wide and she picked up the carved game piece and held it before her.

"But the queen can move in any direction. It is the most powerful of all the pieces," she said.

"That she is - but she is not the key to the game. That is still the king. Despite all the queen's power, she is not the piece that will determine if the game is won or lost. That honor belongs to the king. She may protect the king, she may capture her enemy's king, but in the end, the battle is determined by the king."

She considered this carefully. A light "v" appeared in her forehead while she rolled the chess piece around between her fingers. Then she made a sound Aro had never heard her make, despite all her decades in Volterra.

She laughed.

"All the pawns start off exactly the same," she said. "Identical, weak, insignificant. They are nothing but decoys for the more important pieces. But if one knows how to survive and can make it to where the king dwells, the pawn can elevate itself even to the status of queen."

"It is marvelous, isn't it?" he responded, enjoying her glee, though not quite understanding its source. He was conscious of the fact that this was the longest cascade of words to have ever fallen from her pretty lips at once.

"But, that is not enough, is it? To win the game, she must conquer the king," she mused.

"You are catching on wonderfully!"

Darling placed the queen onto the board and rose.

"I thank you for my lesson, Aro. It has been most informative."

"Ah! You are not leaving so soon? We have not completed this game!"

"I believe I will need to contemplate this game more before I am ready to play again," she answered, coy smile dancing on her lips.

"Very well, my dear. I will welcome your challenge again at any time!" He hoped he had finally stumbled upon something which captured her interest.

"Oh, I will be back to play again soon, Aro. Very soon," she said. Then she swept out of the room in a shadowy grace and they never played again.

ooooo


As suddenly and as silently as she had slipped into the vaulted fortress in Volterra, the shield slipped out from their grasp again. No amount of pleads or promises, bribes or blackmail would convince her to stay. She had made up her mind and would not be convinced otherwise.

"I am grateful for everything," she said. "But I wish to move on now. If I am dissatisfied in all I see outside Volterra, I assure you, I will return."

"My dear, what will we do without you? You have been invaluable! You are welcome back to our family anytime!" Aro crooned, his mind already calculating ways he could "encourage" her to return sooner rather than later.

Caius only managed a false smile and a forced semblance of polite well-wishes when she left. All the while, he plotted in his head how to keep track of her movements and ensure her intentions remained harmless. Marcus, however, was genuinely sad to see her go. It was not often that he bothered to notice any of the guard, let alone grow attached, but he always had a soft spot for vampires who had lost their mates. Since this one could not even benefit from the false consolation of Chelsea's gift, he felt for her all the more and had made unusual efforts to notice the silent shield and to try to draw her out of her silence. Not even his efforts could do more than bring a few sentences out of her from time-to-time, but it was more than most bothered to accomplish.

And just like that, she was gone. Aro didn't even have the benefit of her thoughts to tell him where she planned to go first or the tracking of Demetri to be able to know where she traveled to. Such a valuable asset…just wandering! What a tragic waste of talent!

Ooooo


It was with wistful longing that Aro thought upon his lost Darling over the years that followed. He had come to depend on her presence and grow complacent in the protection her gift provided. He sighed to himself whenever he thought of her and then contented himself with his pet project of discovering, training, and developing other splendid specimens for his guard.

The first inkling of things being "not right" came through rumors and whispers. A nomad passing through Volterra had heard from another nomad, who heard from another nomad, how there was a vampire haven somewhere in the expansive sands of the Sahara Desert.

"Once you have been, you will never wish to leave again," was all that was told, without a single crumb of useful information about who or what or why or where. So, Aro chalked it up to another round of "Fountain of Youth" and "Prester John" myths and promptly ignored it...until an incident in Alexandria brought it up again.

There, a vampire was caught robbing a bank. This was an unusual situation for many reasons. Nomads had no reason to require such a large amount of currency. They kept no homes, their belongings were minimal, and their only real needs were sustenance and their coven. They needed to hunt. They needed to mate. They needed to keep their territory and coven safe. All other aspirations and motivations drew from these sources. Yet this vampire behaved in a half-crazed desperation to obtain human currencies. When caught for questioning, it became ever more puzzling.

For one thing, the vampire's mate had lost touch with him ten years earlier. For a vampire to be separated from his mate for that length of time was unthinkable. For another, the vampire looked positively ill. His hands shook, he begged and pleaded for "just another day in Neverland" and despite the black, hungry eyes, he refused to drink anything provided him.

"What is Neverland?" Aro stormed.

"It's a literary reference to a book written in...," Rocky began till Aro's glare cut him off. "I did not ask for the etymology of the term. I want to know why this vampire wishes to return there so badly he is willing to expose us all and end his own life to get there?"

"We don't know," was all that Rocky could say.

It was awful to admit that Aro couldn't figure it out, either. From the man's thoughts, he could gain only the barest hints of useful information. The man had lived as a perfectly normal nomad for three hundred years until the day he found his singer. The body of his singer had barely gone cold before he received an anonymous tip that he could "have his singer again." He was instructed to bring the teeth and femur of his victim, and leave them in a locker at a train station in Aswan.

He complied. A note within the box informed him of both the prices and conditions of the services offered and told to return in a year's time. The terms were simple enough. In return for a rather high monthly payment and a vow of secrecy, the vampire could have as much of the blood of his singer as he desired. The man readily agreed, still tasting the euphoria of his singer on his lips.

Exactly a year later, he returned to the same train station. A note in the same locker directed him to an isolated part of the train yard where freight containers stood waiting to be filled. There, a sound proof, entirely opaque container waited for him, laced with the slightest scent of the blood he craved more than anything in the world. It was in this manner he was transported. He did not see another sight until the crate was opened in an underground vault in a single occupancy room with no windows and no signs of any other life.

To any vampire in their right mind, the notion of being locked away in such a small and isolated enclosure would have set their instincts aflame and they would have run away. However, he could think of nothing other than the paradise waiting for him there.

Neverland delivered. Oh, it delivered.

There, waiting for him when he arrived, was a replica of his singer, perfectly copied, and sleeping soundly on a bed. He had never been so happy in his life. From that time on, he did not leave that closet of a room. While he never again received a human replica of his singer, he never required it. At the push of a button, a little drone delivered bottle after bottle of blood so delightful no other blood in the world could ever compare. And it was his. It was all his. He forgot all about his mate, his coven, the world outside, the existence of the sun, and even his own name. The vampire's entire world could be stored in a glass bottle and why leave his small room when there was nothing else worth living for outside its walls?

The answer came in the form of an "insufficient funds" notice slipped under his door, followed by an unwelcome wake-up call in the moonlight. He thought he came with a small fortune, but he could not remember how long he had been there or how it could all have vanished. All he knew was he had woken from an especially indulgent feed, only to find himself deposited in an unknown location with a second "insufficient funds" notice pinned on his jacket.

He was distraught. He was desperate. He was driven mad with desire and he did what he first thought of. He robbed a bank, in broad daylight, without thinking twice about why he was doing it.

Obviously, there was little else that could be done with the man but relieve him of his misery and give him the due punishment for his transgression. But that left Aro with the bigger problem...what exactly was happening at Neverland? And what did they need to do about it?

"I should think it were quite obvious," Caius said. "Someone has figured out a way to unnaturally replicate the blood of singers."

"The marvel! Who would have ever thought it would be possible?" Aro mused, half-entranced, half-horrified by the idea. He, like so many in the hall with him, immediately fell into a reverie, remembering their moments discovering their own singers, and all imagining with equal desire what it would be like to stumble upon that again.

But to have unhindered and continuous access?

"It's unnatural," Caius hissed. "Look at what it did to this pathetic soul? He was driven mad! I say we find out who is doing this and end it before it causes us more problems."

"Oh, Caius, of course that would be your conclusion! But is it to follow that because this one vampire was driven mad, that the same would occur to all others? This is unprecedented, untested! We know nothing about what opportunities this could create! How can we judge it to be worthy of destruction until we have more evidence that it is truly dangerous?"

"You are playing with fire, brother," Caius responded.

"And you are quenching a cooking fire for fear of being burned!" Aro said, clapping his hands in delight.

In quiet moments, when he considered the unfortunate vampire's story, something came to mind. He had heard of "Neverland" before.

It was high time he sought out his Darling again.

oooo


Author's notes: I did promise you Volterra. Now you have it. Or, at least the first part of it.

I have loved, loved, loved all your observations on the last chapter! Thanks so much for making this so fun!

A few notes to explain my headings: first, when I put a date at the heading of a chapter, it shows the date the chapter begins, not necessarily the date it ends with or which dates occur throughout. Next, when I put (Edward) or (Bella) behind a character name, it is to let you know the character is a clone and not a completely new character. So, despite all Michael's pleas that he is "not Edward," he is, in fact, still a version of Edward and not a completely unrelated character (like Aro or Rosalie).