Shahrazád's Ghosts


Chapter 18: Aro Part II


2415 A.D.


After the discovery of the crazed vampire who gave his life in pursuit of "Neverland," Aro searched for Darling. Oh, he searched. If she was in any way connected with this mystical vampire haven, then he wanted to know about it. He had made half-hearted attempts to inquire into her whereabouts in the century since she last dwelt Volterra, but it was not until the last two decades that Aro began his search in earnest. Even with the benefit of the world's most gifted vampires, Darling proved as difficult to find as a single grain of sand in the Sahara.

When she was first discovered in Niger as a newborn, her origins were a mystery. Did she travel to Niger from some other locale or was she sired there? Who, exactly, was her sire and why was she abandoned to find her way as a newborn? He decried, not for the first time, the cruelty of the fates which led to the effectiveness of her gift. It was the efficacity of her shield that so delighted him, but it also drove him nearly mad. Why could she not simply spill her secrets and so sweep away the mystique surrounding everything that was Darling?

No, he did not know where to look for his lost Darling and so he began where she was first discovered.

"Go find that duplicitous little coven leader. The Carthagian. You remember the one? They typically keep such tight records of their covens that they border on being obsessive. If she is in his territory, he should know it. If she was sired anywhere in his territory, he should be able to clear up the mystery of her sire," Aro barked out to his hand-chosen team gathered for this task.

It was not a difficult assignment and required carrots rather than sticks and so he sent the lovely Heidi as his diplomat. Jemma, a vampire gifted at discerning truths from lies, came to assist with interrogations. Both were accompanied by Alec, just in case the head of the North African covens gave them any difficulties. Aro doubted his "old friend" would prove overtly troublesome, but he preferred to err on the side of caution.

On the surface of things, the Carthagian gave them all an extravagantly warm welcome and proved himself all bright smiles and a willingness to be of assistance. He immediately welcomed the Volturi guard into his Tunisian home and spent hours talking about all matter of minutiae within his coven – more than any of them wished to know. He did not allow his visitors to inquire into their purpose until they had been with him nearly two full days and their patience had almost run out.

"What is it that brings you to visit my humble home?" Augustine finally asked the trio. "Are the Volturi brothers finally missing my company? It has been too many years since I welcomed them into my home."

"We came to inquire into a matter which we hope you may shed some light on," Heidi explained. "Some years back, our guard was dispatched to deal with a transgressing vampire in Niger. She was a newborn with no sign of a sire. She had a rather impressive gift and so she was welcomed to join our guard rather than face the due punishment for her crimes. She served with us quite faithfully for many years, but then she went her own ways, about a hundred years ago or so. Now, Aro has heard rumors of some mysterious happenings which he believes she could provide information on and so he is seeking to find her whereabouts so he may question her himself."

"I see. Niger, you said? Well, the only females in that region are Aisha Miriam al-Sani and Fatuma al-Ibrahim. Which is it that you seek?"

"Oh, neither of those, I believe. This one we assume to be American, based on her accent and speech patterns. She goes by the name of 'Wendy Moira Angela Darling.'"

In Heidi's thoughts, Aro could see it all. He recognized the careful flash of recognition on Augustine's face and the sharp glimmer of calculation in his eyes. He rubbed his hands through his blue robes and before he clapped them together.

"Ah, yes! I have heard of this 'Darling'! Stories have travelled far and wide of this one – eh, eh, it is little wonder Aro wishes to find her again! The only shield powerful enough to best even his magic fingers! How could he have let her go in the first place, that is what I wish to know? Such a gift should have been treasured and kept near. I hope the regret does not taste too bitter on his tongue!"

"Be that as it may, we are here wondering if you happen to know where she is."

"I would travel even to Volterra and back if I could set my eyes on such a vampire! When you do come across her, you must inform me of her location so that I may seek her out myself! Perhaps, she could be interested in ruling over the majestic lands of the Maghreb rather than the dank, musty dungeons of Volterra."

"Do you happen to know who her sire was? Aro assumed her siring must have occurred somewhere in your territories, since she was discovered in Niger, but we cannot find any evidence to support it."

Augustine carefully stroked his fingers through his beard. "Tell me, what is it that you know of her sire?"

"Darling did not give us much information. She said he sometimes goes by the name of Edward or Bran or Masen or Peter. She also said he lives in 'Neverland.' That is all she ever said of him."

"Neverland? It is a strange name. You believe this 'Neverland' is somewhere in the Maghreb?"

"It is the most logical place to start seeking for it."

"Too true, too true. Why search far away from Volterra in the Americas when you could start searching so close to home here in the Maghreb?"

"Can you tell us anything about her sire?" Heidi pressed.

"You believe he is American?"

"Yes."

"We do not receive many Americans here. Our neighboring coven in Egypt receives more."

"We plan to speak with them next."

"Very good, very good. They have a new coven leader, were you aware? Amun met an unfortunate end, some years back, and his mate is now the leader. They have a new pair of vampires with them, I believe. Kebbi would give you a proper welcome and give you any information you seek. She has many tales she can tell you about how Muhammed and Aisha came to them and the challenges the pair have given to her coven! Why, I do not think even a full month would be enough time for such tales!"

By the time they returned to Volterra, nearly a week had passed and the trio knew more about the "customs of the Maghreb" than they had ever wished to know. Not wishing to be entangled in another long week of stories or the necessary etiquette of hospitality presented by the Egyptian coven, the Volturi guards returned straight to their master with all they had learned.

"Of course, if I ever hear about the exact location of this Neverland or how precisely this Darling is involved, I will inform you," Augustine told them in parting, his manner as engaging and full of charm as ever.

Aro was furious.

"What did you learn? Nothing! Nothing!" he yelled at the trio.

"He did not know anything about her," Heidi protested. "There wasn't anything to find out."

"You don't know that! He dodged your every question like a master dancer avoiding the toes of a fumbling novice!"

"He spoke nothing but the truth," Jemma said. "I tested every statement he said and there was no deception in any of it."

"Because he spoke nothing about it at all, the viper! He knows. He must know!"

Aro promptly dismissed his guards and plotted again how he could find Darling.

Oooooo


The various teams Aro sent to scour the Sahara came up with very little information. When they crossed paths with vampires on their way to Neverland or back from Neverland, they knew nothing of which direction they traveled to reach it. When they followed the trains or convoys that these "guests" claimed as their transport to this mysterious vampire city, the guests never seemed to stop travelling. For weeks, the guests travelled back and forth with no clear destination. It was not until the Volturi guards left to hunt that the guest would suddenly vanish and arrive where ever it was they were to go.

Aro tried to send a guard member as a "guest" to see if this could garner more information. This, also, failed to bear any fruit. The guest never arrived and was led on a wild goose chase across north Africa until finally being deposited in Morocco. Not even Demetri's tracking skills could be of assistance because at some point on their journey, each "guest" vanished from his range and he could not discover them again until they were far outside of Neverland. It was as if the very ground swallowed them up and no one could find them again. Neverland had its own means of swallowing up even parts of the Volturi. Already, he had lost nearly a dozen minor guards and he could not figure out how they had been contacted or where it was that they had gone. However, one day, they would vanish and never be heard from again. The finance department was in uproar after having lost so many accountants and clerks and Aro did not know if he would ever recover from the loss of his favorite resident artist.

The final blow came the day that it was Marcus himself who disappeared. One day, their near-catatonic brother was in his usual chair, and the next, he was gone. Demetri could only track him as far as Tripoli and then he could not find Marcus' mind again. It was too much! How could Neverland lay a claim to their loyalty that outstripped even Chelsea's influence?

Aro tried to glean information from any of the surrounding covens. Rumors and legends abounded, some terrible and some fantastical, but what they all shared in common was an astounding lack of useful, practical, geographical and biographical details.

The covens of the Sahel, Okavango, and Kalahari were entirely ignorant of anything involving Darling and Neverland. The covens of the Great Lakes and the Horn seemed to know more than they would speak out loud, but Aro preferred to avoid those covens as much as possible and did not send more than a quick and cursory messenger to question them. The Egyptian coven decried Neverland as a "place of curses" and said they "wished to kill its leader" themselves, but they knew no more than any of the nomads Aro had discovered. The covens of the Arab peninsula and north Mediterranean claimed they had heard of Neverland's greatness in terms even more awe-inspiring than even Aro had yet heard. They were so drawn in by its tales that Aro feared lest more questioning would only make cause those covens to pursue Neverland for themselves, rather than assisting the Volturi.

Aro sent three more emissary attempts to the two-faced, arrogant Carthagian. These attempts gained little fruit other than a long explanation of the mating habits of sea turtles and the seasonal migrations of swallows. When not even a "conversation" with Jane could pry out the location of Neverland from the old vampire, Aro finally gave up sending his guard to Tunisia and decided he would need to speak with his "old friend" himself.

This would require leaving his beloved Volterra and organizing enough guards and transport for such a journey. Aro despised leaving the safety and familiarity of his home. It was his fortress and his safe haven and his seat of command. Why should he be the one to trouble himself when his "old friend" should be the one to come to him? Thus, he sent an "invitation" to Augustine asking the chief of the North African covens to come to Volterra at his first convenience.

"Once my various obligations have settled, I would be delighted to visit my old friends in Volterra again," Augustine wrote in reply. Those "various obligations" must have been serious, indeed, because five years passed and Augustine still had not come. Two more summons to Volterra were met with as equally pleasant and affirmative answers, but not Augustine arrived.

That meant that Aro would just have to go to Augustine.

Oooooo


It was early in 2414 when he received his first communication from Darling. On the front gate of Volterra, a new vampire waited patiently with a notecard in hand addressed to Aro.

"To Aro, a gift from the Mistress of Neverland," was all that was written on the card in a rough, inelegant script.

"I am Michael," the vampire informed the guards who met him. "I have been sent to speak to Aro."

Aro was delighted to find the young vampire was a true telepath, one able to read the minds of everyone in his geographical vicinity without physical contact. By grabbing hold of the vampire, Aro could tap into this gift and also hear the thoughts flit around the room around him. It was like a conductor finally hearing the performance of a full symphony, after an entire lifetime of hearing only solo performances.

"I don't like it, brother," Caius groused. "We should end him before he can serve the purpose for which he was obviously sent."

"And what purpose is that?" Aro asked.

"He is a spy! He is gathering information for his mistress!"

"I agree! I wonder, though, what information this mistress requires? Why send us such a gifted servant, one who could be of such benefit to her, and leave him at our disposal instead? What does she value so much she would willingly part with this Michael to achieve it?"

"Whatever it is, it cannot be to our benefit."

"Oh, no doubt, no doubt. But, brother, is in not better to allow the spy into our ranks so that we may also spy on his mistress and try to glean her motivations? What better opportunity could we have for learning the plans of this mysterious rival?"

Caius frowned deeply and made the full weight of his disdain apparent. "He is not safe. He knows how to hide information from you but none of us can hide information from him. Tell me, brother, what do his thoughts tell you of his origins and his coven?"

"Nothing!" Aro said. He threw up his hands in fascinated bafflement. "His thoughts reveal naught but a single set of chambers and a few hallways without windows! His mind is entirely overrun with a fixation on a woman. A human woman. She raised him from first consciousness until the day he left and he is thoroughly besotted with her. But he has no recollections of childhood or growth or anything of the outside world or anything remotely human. Either he lost his memories through some tragic injury or during the change or he has a means of suppressing his memories."

"And the woman?"

"Oh, she is as curious as he! She is young and apparently has dealings with another vampire. This vampire she referred to as 'Peter' and she did not fear him. Yet, this Michael has never met him or seen him. And Michael cannot read this woman's thoughts. She informed him it was due to the special makeup of the barrier separating them and if he left that room, he would be able to read thoughts. Truly, once he left that room and was led through a series of tunnels, he began to hear thoughts of others, just as she promised."

"It is not natural. It is a trap of some kind."

"Oh, we are in agreement, brother!" Aro said. "I simply wish to know who it is that has set the trap before I do away with it entirely."

"Do not tarry, brother," Caius said. "Keep track of him at all times and do not grow complacent. Even a fool can prove useful in the hands of a wise man."

Aro agreed and he set out as many of his guard as he could spare to keep an eye on the young Michael.

Oooooo


"Confound it all, what does he do?" Aro shouted at Clarence. His guards had trailed and watched this Michael for nearly a year and they had not come up with any useful information. Not a single bit. Rarely did Aro allow himself to become so flustered that he freely displayed anything but the most controlled and contrived of emotions. Yet, this new puzzle had the capacity to push him over the edge into violent shows of frustration.

"He, uh, collects leaves," Clarence replied. It was a redundant reply since Aro had already seen Clarence's memories of his charge, but he spoke aloud for Caius' benefit.

"Leaves?" Caius asked, unimpressed and incredulous.

"Yes. He travels from tree to tree and he presses leaves into a notebook. Then he looks up each variety in the library. He also looks at them under a microscope. He spent nearly a month cataloguing oaks."

"You cannot tell me that this elusive 'Mistress of Neverland' sent her minion halfway across the globe to gather intelligence on the foliage of the Italian countryside! He must have a purpose! He reads minds, for God's sake, who is he speaking to? Who does he spend his time with?" Aro shouted.

"My lord, you are able to access his thoughts better than any of us."

"He must have another gift! He must be able to confound my gift in some way or another! His thoughts reveal only that he misses his mate and is consumed with only the most mundane and trivial of pursuits."

"He spends a great deal of time conversing with Angelo, the cobbler," Clarence added in a vain attempt to appease his master. "They, apparently, both enjoy the study of trees and he has requested that Angelo repair a pair of boots he is particularly fond of."

"Angelo is a human! He is as harmless as a fruit fly!"

"Yes, my lord. He also visits the vineyards in the countryside. He inquires regularly about the growing of grapes and has purchased his own potted grape vine to keep on his balcony."

Aro grit his teeth in frustration and pulled on the edges of his hood.

"Does he still insist on his most unnatural diet?" Caius asked.

"He does! He refuses to hunt and eat! Where does he get his supply of bottled blood? Bottled blood? Who has heard of such an aberration? Yet, without fail, he obtains it twice each month," Aro said. "Demetri, what have you discovered?"

"Very little, my lord," Demetri responded. "I cannot track it."

"What do you mean you can't track it?" Aro asked, quietly seething.

"Just that," Demetri responded. "He buys the blood from a human shopkeeper near the city gates. The human shopkeeper receives a supply twice a month from a man on a bicycle. This man works for a winery in the hills just north of the city. The winery receives the shipment from a trucking company that makes deliveries of wine bottles between the winery and Livorno. Livorno receives boats, cruise ships, and ferries from across the Mediterranean. It is entirely handled by human beings and not always by the same ones. We think the crate may arrive on a cruise ship, but we are not sure. There is no telling at which Mediterranean port city the crate is loaded onto the ship nor who organizes it from its origin."

Aro ground out his teeth in irritation and considered sending a guard on each and every cruise ship to find out. Caius was no longer even surprised. The fair-haired vampire only stared at the ceiling and plotted his own means of questioning the spy.

"What about his movements? What does he do after he receives his shipment?"

"He drinks it. Then he comes back into the city. Occasionally, he wanders around the Berignone Reserve and he is especially fond of the ruins of the Dei Vescovi castle, but other than that, we cannot find him doing anything suspicious."

"It doesn't make any sense! We know someone sent him here for a reason! What is it? What possible use does he have? There must be someone who meets up with him or follows him! Have you found any traces?"

"Nothing. Not a single trace," Demetri answered.

"Six more months, Aro," Caius warned. "Then we end him. It's too dangerous."

"As you wish, brother," Aro said. He knew Caius was right.

oOooo


Clarity struck Aro like a thunderbolt one afternoon and he could not understand how he had not seen it all before. The connection was so obvious. Of course, he had known Darling was connected with this Neverland. Of course, he had known that this Michael was connected to both Darling and Neverland. What he had missed was the very obvious connection between them.

"Bell raised me and Peter raised her," Michael had said.

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

"Darling has a mate, but the bond is unconsummated and still in its fledgling stages," Marcus had observed.

That was it!

Whoever this Peter was, he was the one in charge of everything. It was Peter who had sent Darling to Niger, in hopes of getting her captured by the Volturi. He must have sent her as a spy and what a perfect spy she must have been! Gathering their secrets for years without anyone being the wiser! It had worked so well with Darling, Peter was trying it again.

It was Peter who had built the vast empire of Neverland. It was Peter sired Darling and then used her as a puppet to hide behind so none would know of his machinations. More than than, Peter had discovered a way to initiate, but not complete, the mating bond with Darling to make her more pliable to his demands. It was brilliant! It was marvelous! It was formidable! Never mind Darling. If Aro wished to tap into the empire they had formed, he would need to find this Peter.

But he did not even know what the vampire looked like.

Masen. Why was the name Masen familiar?

"We have cross-referenced every scientist involved in cloning for the past 500 years," Rocky had informed Aro. After it became obvious, sixteen years ago, that someone was manufacturing the blood of "singers," Aro had tasked his research team to investigate every vampire and human scientist who had ever dabbled in cloning. "There's a Hans Adolf Eduard Driesch who worked with sea urchins. Ian Wilmut and Keith Campbell cloned a sheep. Shoukhrat Mitalipov worked with Rhesus monkeys and humans…" Rocky had informed him. Apparently, there was an exhaustive number of scientists around the world who had dabbled in the science of artificially reproducing organisms. However, one name in that list now niggled his memory, for the first time becoming more important than Aro had first realized.

"There's a Dr. Anthony Masen, from London. This one raises red flags because he came out of nowhere," Rocky had said. "None of the other scientists in the field had worked with him before and most of his work cited findings from radical scientists over a hundred years before his time. He just showed up in London one day with absolutely no memory of his past. After a supposed bout of amnesia, he unearthed his own notes which revolutionized the entire field of organ regeneration and revolutionized organ transplants. He could never explain how he came to his conclusions or how he had learned all he did. His memory never returned. He died around 2250 and he left no descendants."

Rocky showed him a photograph of the man receiving the Nobel prize for medicine. He had been a large, grey-haired old man by then. His previous height was hunched over like a tree under too much snow and his bleary eyes showed evidence of too many years of study. He was obviously human and obviously dead by this time and so Aro let it go. This Dr. Masen was one of so many leads and he quickly was buried back into the interminable piles of irrelevant information and silenced by more pressing concerns.

It tickled his mind now, though, in a way it hadn't then.

"Some called him Masen." Darling's words flickered through his mind like fireflies and Aro called Rocky again.

"Rocky, search for anything you can find on that geneticist from London, that Dr. Anthony Masen."

"Yes, sir."

Oooo


Spread out before him was all the books, articles, and newspaper clippings Rocky could dig up about the scientist. He had everything from his medical records to his Little League team wins to the recipes his wife's restaurant was most famous for. Aro flipped through all that was before him, most of it irrelevant and entirely unhelpful and he nearly threw it all into the fountain next to him. That is, until he came to the man's earliest passport photo.

It was dated to 2177, just before Darling first entered the Volturi, and the face staring back at him was so strikingly familiar that he had to pause and take a closer look.

If the skin were a few shades paler and the eyes were red rather than green, the man would look exactly like Michael. If Aro didn't know better, he would say this was a photograph of Michael when he was still a human.

How could the man have been so similar to Michael? Either, they were close relatives or twins… or exact genetic copies. It could be no accident that this Dr. Anthony Masen made his fortune in artificially reproducing organs. How much more difficult would it be to recreate an entire human being? If this process was overseen by a brilliant mastermind, who happened to be immortal, why it was only a short leap to then turn some of those clones into immortal servants.

Aro's unbeating heart thrummed with the delicious possibilities this created. What could be achieved if the true secret of immortality was truly his?

The question remained, though, was this Anthony Masen the source of this revelation or a product of it? Did a wandering vampire happen upon the research of this scientist or did a wandering vampire utilize one of his creations for his own purposes? How was Darling involved in this?

One thing Aro knew for certain – Darling must be connected to this somehow.

Aro's investigations into the family of Anthony Masen proved much less fruitful. He found no records of extended family, despite the claim that he married his "sister-in-law". His wife, formerly known as "Elizabeth Slayer", had grown up in rural Washington before relocating to study abroad in London. In her early thirties, she became a chef. She was a large woman who habitually wore heavy make-up and thick glasses. However, Aro could find absolutely nothing useful about her, so he turned his attention back to Dr. Masen and his doppelgänger.

"Rocky, I need you to run a facial recognition search on Michael's face. Let me know of any where his face shows up, both in current databases and historical archives."

"Will do, boss."

It was just possible that this was a trail of breadcrumbs that could lead Aro straight to Neverland.

Oooooo