Hello Readers! This chapter is dedicated to Damien, the protagonist, and Rhydian the love of my life who both share June 6th as their birthday. Apologies for any weird spelling errors. We no longer have our tablet and I typed this entire chapter in the notes app of my iPhone, which has the most stubborn autocorrect. -Tristan
"I know Marina has been sneaking into your room at night," Demetri said awkwardly. "How?" was all Tiago had to say. "Why else would she be shielding herself from me?" Demetri grimaced before continuing.
"As guards we need to stay professional in our relationships with each other so there is not any unneeded tension if a relationship were to fail. When we go on assignments, we need to curb the romantic displays of affection especially in the presence of others. What I am trying to say is that you two need to tone it down. You are just kids. You literally have eternity, so maybe take it one step at a time. First and foremost putting the brakes on sharing any beds," Demetri felt strangely embarrassed talking with Tiago who just stared back at him blinking terrified that he was in trouble.
"Yes, sir," Tiago whispered. Demetri did not seem to hear him.
He quickly brushed past him racing out the office door, "I smell blood." Tiago followed behind him catching the scent of dhampir blood as they neared the stairs and made their way to the training room. His heart felt like his heart was leaping out of his chest fearing Marina was hurt. Please just be a simple thing like maybe she tripped and scraped her knee, he prayed.
He and Demetri entered the training room to find Heidi kneeling next to Marina shaking her as she lay unconscious on the ground. A pool of blood haloed her pale hair. "She's not waking up," Heidi gasped as Demetri kneeled next to her. "Tiago get a towel and tell Joham to bring down a med kit," Demetri ordered and the boy ran upstairs. Demetri looked around at the room trying to figure out how this had happened. Her knife lay a little less than a metre from her right hand. The tip of it was coated in blood. He smelled it trying to memorize the scent and figure out who it was. It was an unfamiliar dhampir. Was Marina potentially the next victim of the killer than had been tearing their family apart. Literally and figuratively. Blood droplets traced a trail that he would later track.
Tiago and Joham soon ran down with several other Volturi members following behind. Joham carefully rolled the girl over as he assessed the damage. "Her skull looks bruised. Someone must have come in and either pushed her or thrown her on the ground knocking her out," he explained as he cleaned up the blood and prepared to stitch the back of her head up. He waited though as his scientific curiosity watched the skin slowly knit back together like it had with Subject Two. He quickly searched for his watch to time how long it took her to heal but for some reason he could not find it on his wrist or in any of his pockets. Perhaps he left it lying next to Subject Two when he was observing its healing abilities.
"What are you waiting for? Is something wrong?" Demetri asked quickly not understanding why Joham stopped. Why was he just watching his little girl bleed out onto the stone floor?
"Shhh," Joham said eerily holding up one finger, transfixed by the rapid heeling. He could see the blood clotting as if it was magnetic. His vampire sight caught these miniscule silver glints in the blood that would have been missed have been missed even with a microscope. They had the same colour as vampire venom. He pulled out a cotton swab and took a sample hoping to test his theory. By the time he was done the wound had already scabbed over and was shrinking. Had the subject's father not been present, he would have happily taken a scalpel and cut her back open to see how a living hybrid compared to a dead one.
Demetri was growing impatient. Why was Joham just sitting there, taking samples, as if his daughter was some lab rat? She could be seriously injured. But no, Aro's experiment came first. He looked to see Eleazar shaking his head as well sickened by the coldness of the situation, "I am going to go upstairs and see if there is anything in the freezer we can use as an icepack to decrease the swelling." Demetri was thankful Eleazar was good friends with Dr. Cullen. The vampire moved quickly stopping only to ask Donovan and Joan, who were sitting talking at the small table, if there was something similar to ibuprofen that dhampirs could take for when Marina woke up. Donovan said to just double the dosage and Joan offered some from her room that she kept.
Demetri carefully picked up Marina to move her to her bedroom where he met Eleazar. As soon as he tried to set her down, his daughter jolted awake screaming and thrashing. "He's going to kill me," she sobbed as Demetri slowly set her on the bed and tried to calm her down. "Who is? Did you see his face?" Demetri hoped he could now hunt down the killer. Marina just shook her head, even though it felt like it was caving in on itself and made her vision blur, "I couldn't see his face. I was only able to track him with my gift. That was it. I couldn't hear him, couldn't see him. Just out of nowhere he charged me and pushed me to the ground. I grabbed my knife and tried to fight back but I couldn't see him. I just remember him grabbing my hair and that's it."
Demerit carefully helped her swallow the pain relievers, washing them down with some blood from the fridge downstairs, before she fell back asleep. Tonight had been a wake up call that no one was safe right now. His daughter had almost become the next victim potentially of the killer that still haunted these hallways. It had been too close. The false sense of security the Volturi brought was wearing thin and for the first time the realization that this place might be the most dangerous place for them had sunk in. The fact that he was thinking in terms of 'them', 'us', and 'we' was still an adjustment for him. Despite his mature and formal nature, he still was only physically in his mid to early twenties. Had he been human he would be finishing college, working minimum wage jobs, and scrambling to pay for a too small and too expensive apartment while boggling over how to be an adult. Now he was a father and had to think of what was best for his daughter. Looking over at her, it was hard to imagine that she was still only four months old living in an eight year olds body and thinking with nearly an adults mind. But still he had to take care of her. And this left him with only one option.
He would have to work quick before he chanced making contact with Aro or Marcus realizing his shifting loyalties. Which in his mind seem preposterous because he had always placed his child first before his work. He traced Felix walking down the hallway close by. "I need you to watch Marina for five minutes to make sure the killer does no try to finish his work," Demetri said hastily as he continued to his room and office without breaking stride. In his office he found five different copies of his passport, quickly forged one for Marina, and grabbed an atlas. In his room, he packed a backpack that would not stand out lightly with his clothes before filling it with as many bank notes as he could leaving room for clothes for Marina and a couple lighters. Slinging it over his shoulder, he went to find Heidi.
"You can do this. Don't be a coward. You have known her for over a thousand years, the worst she could do is say no," Demetri tried to motivate himself to what he had to do next.
"Hello Demetri," she said, "Is Marina doing-"
"I am leaving at dawn with Marina and I wanted to know if you would like to escape with us since you are very important to me and are like a mother to my daughter, and I think have been in love with you since I met you!"
Tiago felt his heart pounding as he forced his feet to take him back down stairs. He had been waiting outside her room when he heard her awaken, screaming about the killer attacking her. How she tried to fight back with her knife. He had seen Demetri grab his passport. He and Marina were leaving. He needed to find the killer and destroy him. That way he wouldn't lose her. He took a deep breath trying to think how a person would even 'track' someone by scent. He had never had to do this before. But he was half vampire goddammit. Half predator. He could do this. He stepped alone into the room where Marina had been attacked. The room Damien had died in. The room next to where they had found his Father's remains in the incinerator. The blood had not yet dried and dust lay unsettled. Take another deep breath. He smelled the sweetness that made him feel bubbly and warm inside. Fresh like snow. Marina's scent. He looked to the bloodied knife on the floor. A new sweetness made his nose itch and hair stand on end. It was the sweetness of diluted vampire venom, the same rushing through the roof of his mouth. It was male. A male dhampir as Marina had guessed. Despite her inability to see or hear the stranger she still must slashed him good with her knife. The blood droplets lead him out of the training room and down the hallway. To Damien's room. Tiago's brow furrowed. Damien was dead. He breathed in the scent again. He felt confused. The scent was similar to Damien's once put side by side. Perhaps the killer was trying to hide using Damien's scent. The blood droplets were thinning as the attacker had begun to heal. The traced back out of the room. Tiago followed them further down the hallway, past the incinerator. He didn't know why but he stopped for a minute staring at the coals as images of skulls danced in the heat rippling off the walls. "I'm going to make your proud, Dad," he croaked out. He kissed his fingers before placing them on the wall below it. Tiago went further down the hallway. He could feel his heartbeat rattling against his teeth as he forced them to stop chattering nervously. You can do this. He breathed the scent on again, focusing on the small droplets of blood. There was no more lighting past this point. The air was stale from centuries of no circulation. He felt like he was breathing in dust. You were born of dust and to dust you shall return. He felt the pupils of his eyes expand searching for glimpses of light to guide him. Slivers even. He stopped when he felt his hands brush against a wall. Feeling the cold stone, he frowned. A dead end. He moved his hands blindly feeling the wall around him. He banged his fist now frustrated. But the sound stopped him, freezing him in his tracks. The wall was hallows behind it.
Joham returned to his lab excited to look at Subject Five's blood sample. He had not noticed the silver flecks before in his research. He quickly extracted a couple comparing them to vampire venom to find them to be almost identical. He tried adding the flecks from the test subject's blood to human blood to see how it reacted in comparison with vampire venom to human blood. The vampire venom and human blood reacted as it always did, the venom aggressively overtaking the human blood like a virus possessing a host. But Subject Five's did not react the same in how the blood remained unaffected. Perhaps the venom pouches he just now discovered in hybrid blood where a nonreactive form of the vampire virus that worked to heal these creatures the same way venom could heal a human during transformation.
This new discovery only fed Joham's curiosity as he turned to Subject Two lying on the observation table staring up blindly at the overhead light. Joham grabbed his knife ready to begin slicing open the creature again. Making the first cut deep, he watched in glee as some remaining blood leaked off its torso and onto the table before splashing onto the floor. It began to heal again, this time slower than the day before perhaps finally hitting a limit. Joham, now looking for the venom dots, found them working with its blood to knit the wound back together. Wanting to test another theory, he searched through his supplies to find that he needed. A sample of a bacterial infection. Taking a swab he generously dotted it along a freshly made cut. The area instantly became red and inflamed as he watched the bacteria eat away at Subject Two's flesh. Then his theory was proven true as Joham watched the venom capsules in the hybrids blood stream attack the infection, eradicating it in less than a minute, before slowly starting to heal. Joham tried again, but sadly it took even longer to heal as if whatever source that was regenerating the body was shutting down. Making another several centimetre deep cut he realized that the subject's body was not bleeding as much. It looked paler and even more corpse like now that it was almost depleted on blood. Lucky for Subject Two it was already dead because there was no way for it to survive with such blood loss.
Taking a step back, he swore he heard his watch ticking. Teasing him as it remained lost. He began listening for it, trying to see if he had set in in a drawer or on a counter somewhere. It got louder the closer he was to the body. Looking around it and even under it, it still remained missing. Frustrated by his uncharacteristically recent habit of losing track of things, he left upstairs to try and find it.
Where could his watch have gone? He hated losing track of time.
Eastern Europe
"No, I am not going to let you take them away from me!" The vampire screeched before his body buckled and collapsed on the ground falling prey to Jane's gift. "Not the answer I want. Try again," was all she huffed impatiently.
The five of them had no idea how they were going to get seven Immortal Children, all under the age of twelve, and their stubborn creator halfway across Europe when getting there had been treacherous enough.
Roman, Asya, and Kotsya watched from the side lines trying not to bet bit by these ankle biters as Alec concentrated on keeping a Mist barrier up so that if anyone tried to run from inside the circle they would lose all their senses and control over their bodies. Like a bug zapper for the world's largest mosquitoes.
"My master's just want to talk to you. But you will need to come with us. The more you cooperate, the more…comfortable…the journey will be for you and your mistakes," Jane smiled coldly. She knew they were going to die regardless. She was just disappointed it would not be by her own hand. Finally the older vampire agreed not realizing the hidden lies in her words.
"Out of curiosity, where did you take these kids," Jane wanted to know in case there were any police or missing children's reports they would need to clear. One of the less obvious things about turning children that made it all the more complicated and illegal was that people tended to notice if a child went missing than an adult. If an adult goes missing, there might be a police search for a week or two. But if a child goes missing, its broadcasted nationally and appearing in every newspaper and makes it impossible to do things like crossing borders.
"Random places. Hard to remember where each and every one of them came from. Most are local or from the surrounding area," he curled up back on his side shaking in agony since he displeased Jane with his answer.
"He's telling the truth," Roman said, his English improving with more use. Jane turned to see him kneeling down talking to one of the children. Jane couldn't make out what they were saying, "Do any of them know English?" Roman shook his head no, "Most are farm kids. Don't teach English in more rural schools. If they even were in school." That explained why none of them were doing what Jane and Alec were telling them to do.
"Can you translate?" Jane asked, dawning on her that maybe their acquaintance with these three strangers was not as random as it seemed. Her nephew once again had sensed when to time things perfectly. Roman began relaying the message that everyone was to follow them to Italy. It was going to take a miracle to get everyone there. A few miles into the walk back to Volterra, a young girl tried to bolt away only to have Alec surround her in his Mist stopping her.
"Good job, Cowboy," Kostya smiled, giving him two thumbs up. He was so quiet it was easy to forget he was there. Alec threw him two thumbs back before pausing. He look out their borderline prophecy that had been guiding their quest.
Cowboys
And so the five of them started marching them on the trail of tears to Volterra fearing what "Old King's Court" meant and what trials it would inflict. Hopefully since it was the last thing on the list it meant they were close to completing their quest Alec tried brain storming with Jane hoping to mentally prepare for what they could be facing. Jane just shrugged and tasered another kid trying to run after the scent of humans in a nearby town. Alec asked their new friends who seemed as lost as they did. It wasn't until Alec even mentioned the last item on the list that they realized it had even existed. "You mean someone predicted this?" Asya snapped, "Predicted us meeting? Of everything?" She began to grow even more distrustful of the twins. They needed to just go ahead and kill these Immortal Children. Why were they walking them all the way back? Alec quickly stopped talking not wanting to reveal too much to her. Roman tried to break up the glaring contest between the two as he strategically ran between Alec and Asya. "So are we just tracing the path back to how we got here?" he asked.
Alec pulled out the map, "We have been running for about two hours. We are just about to hit Moldova and we should reach Romania before sunrise where we will regroup and find shelter with the remaining hours of darkness."
"Vampires in Romania… oh the irony," Jane laughed taking up the rear.
"What the hell do you think you are doing?" Hadley shook Damien from the perch, "The rabid almost had you by the throat. You're lucky I was coming to talk to you." Damien was still reviewing everything he and just seen. "Yes, thank you," he said feeling numb. At first he thought it was just the normal after effects of using his power for too long. But that didn't make sense. He was dead and no one else seemed to experience the same burn out he did. He still felt off. A strange pain made him double over. Hadley caught him as he collapsed on his knees. "I think something is wrong with my body," Damien panted. It felt like he was getting stabbed over and over as something clawed inside him. He pawed at his shirt trying to guess and feel where the sensations were coming from. Hadley helped to pull his shirt off as a raw scream ripped through Damien. "Fuck," Hadley gasped. He watched the white scar lined tear their way down the younger boy's chest. "Someone is messing with your body in the real world. You are getting cut open I think. We need to find a way to wake you up before you get trapped here forever," the older boy explained. Damien took deep unneeded gulps of air forcing himself to calm down. Eventually the pain subsided but the scars remained. The ticking feeling be had felt earlier still remained like a whisper of a heartbeat. Tick Tock. Tick Tock. Flashbacks to his first major vision with the subway bomb hovered over his vision as the Ticking mocked him insidiously.
"How do I wake up?" Damien needed to know now. Hadley shook his head, "You think if we knew we would still have as many here as we do now?"
"Come on. You are a Harvard graduate. The smart guy. Has there been any theories potentially? From anyone?"
Hadley froze. How did this kid keep knowing about him? He really was starting to think this boy might be his little brother potentially.
"There were theories once. A friend of mine, a witch had played around with some. She had this theory that some part of us still stay intact, welded to our bodies. When our bodies were destroy that final piece was released. Which is why we are able to come back to life. For the most part. Sadly my body is nothing but ash so that part of me is trapped here forever. But if there was some way to gain control from this side, that would be preferable. I've heard of cases where dhampirs focused on the sensations rather than pushed them away and they were able to repossess themselves," Hadley started speaking so fast Damien had to stop him to keep up.
"Wait you know about witches?" Damien asked.
"Do you?" Hadley's expression darkened defensively, "Do the Volturi know anything?" Damien read the flashed of color around Hadley to see that he was scared. Damien shook his head, "No, just me. Sorry I got us off topic. Please continue."
"As I was saying. Next time you start to feel any sensation, latch on to it and focus on it and nothing else."
And so they waited. The never changing atmosphere of where ever they were trapped made it impossible to keep track of time. Damien continued training, occasionally he would join the older Dhampirs and venture past their main camp into the unknown hoping to find others trapped here as training practice. Damien could feel the disorientation, confusion, and loss of self from the Rabids. He could feel himself slipping away with them as well. He would forget things, like the name of Enzo's father and his uncle. He would forget what pieces of art hung in the halls of the Building. Endings to movies, titles of books. And in return these would be replaced with this overwhelming Thirst. This instinct for violence. At first when he practiced, he would flinch when using other dhampirs as tools for training, but now he felt himself jumping at every opportunity without hesitation to fight something. To hunt something. To let his wilder instincts run free. When he first awoke he thought the others who were here were wild with out logic, pointlessly fighting amongst each other. Now he understood it. And still he was amazed, while still terrified and not trusting him, that Hadley always stayed in control. He broke up fights, kept the peace, brought order. He loomed over those choosing to follow him with a constant eye. But he also treated everyone equally despite some having abilities and some not. When something disrupted their safety, he protected his flock. He made sure everyone was united. He had Aro's desire for leadership and need for order, but fortunately lacked the self-ambition that required worship and him cruel impatience. Damien was finding himself respecting Hadley more and more each day.
But Hadley, like Damien, always seemed to be keeping himself at a distance from the rest of the group. Despite him being here as long as many of the others, and some even longer, he didn't seem to be suffering under the same sort of confusion and memory loss as everyone else. When Damien asked him about it, he just shrugged and said he was lucky. He was lying.
Damien decided to keep an even closer eye on their leader. Following at a distance, he watched Hadley sneak off alone into one of the caves every so often. Hiding himself around a bend where he could not be seen, Damien watched the young man take out a wrinkled worn piece of paper with desperate chicken scrawl.
Then Hadley began to recite to himself, "My name is Hadley Isaac Aberdeen. I was born in Mississippi in June 1921. My father is Aro Volturi, a vampire, and my mother was Lorraine Aberdeen. I was rescued by Donovan and Elijah to where I lived in New Orleans until 1940, when I moved to New York. I have a sister named Evangeline, who I do not get along with. I fell in love Moira when I was seventeen, but she betrayed me after seeing a vision of me changing the plan to destroy the Volturi. I became a lawyer after graduating Harvard in 1944. I practiced in New York and helped protect the New York division where there were clashes with the human world to help preserve our secret and our lives. I became their leader in March 2005. When a coven showed the Volturi that dhampirs exist, we planned to attack and start destroying them earlier than expected. This back fired and I died December 22, 2015. Jane and Alec, my own siblings, were the ones who killed me after Donovan used me as a scapegoat for the entire plan. I will not forget this." Then pulled out an old black and white picture of what must have been Hadley when he was very young, Donovan, Moira, and the dark haired girl he had seen before that must shave been Eva. They connection now made sense and she was also one of Aro's children that he did not know he created. All four posed in front of a Christmas tree. Folding both up, he placed them in his coat pocket and left the cave. He continued this ritual routinely.
That was how he stayed focus. He found a way to write things down and used them to remember everything as well as a visual cue that would prove the letter to himself. This kept Hadley in control of himself.
This boggled Damien. Hadley's life had been tragic, his death even more so. Wouldn't it be easier to forget everything and lose yourself? Damien himself was finding maybe he didn't want to leave. He could easily see Johan continuing to take him apart and eventually make it so he stayed here permanently. He could stop fighting it and forget who he was. Forget everything Cauis and Aro had done to him. Forget the Volturi. Forget it all. He could stop being Damien.
But that would mean leaving everything behind. To Joan he would be another person she cared about he would have to leave behind. To the DeLeales they would never know why he suddenly disappeared, only to be forgotten like an imaginary friend. To the other kids, since Aro no longer was entertained by his gift he would turn his greed towards them, perhaps now inflicting this on Marina or Olivia or even Tiago. And to Alec he would be just another Son to bury. Even though he hated that Alec was always gone, he didn't want to cause him that much pain. Thinking he and Jane were dead had been the worse emotional experience of his life. He couldn't do that to Alec.
Finally a weird ripple tore through his body. This burning in his throat. It was like the normal whispers of thirst, this was raw and real. He tried focusing on it the same way he focused on his gift, letting the sensation guide him. He felt his head spinning and body slump feeling heavy. Damien locked eyes with Hadley as everything went black.
Thirsty. His body was burning and he needed to extinguish whatever dry heat was tearing him apart. Thirsty. This odd feeling of being 'empty' was driving him crazy. He didn't even have enough energy to shiver despite how cold he felt. He tried to open his stinging eyes cringed at the too bright operating light above him. Everything was red in his vision. His veins rubbed together like sandpaper trying to force whatever blood was still lingering in his veins to keep pumping. Damien felt like he was sleep walking as he tried to sit up, swinging his numb legs over the side of the table.
Thirsty. How did he get into the hallway? It was dark at least, the night relaxing his sharpened hunting eyes. He felt something clawing inside him, an animal trying to claw its way out. He felt weak, he needed blood. He found himself crawling eventually, forcing himself to keep moving; he was so fucking thirsty he couldn't think straight. Normal, cohort thoughts were impossible. Instinct was not.
Red. His vision was a rippling red and a thick liquid forced itself down his throat. A deep growl vibrated through him as he tore into another plastic package, ignoring half of it spilling across his face and down his bare chest. A sigh bubbled out as his chest stopped aching, healing much quicker. More he needed more. He was still too empty. So thirsty.
He felt so high. This warm energy flowed through him as he ripped through the thin packaging. His head spun as if he was drugged. All he could think about was how red and how wonderful it all was. The emptiness was fading away. His gift only added to the feeling. He could feel the fresh blood flow into every vein and capillary as his heart beat faster and faster. His tongue could taste the savory and sweetness as the scent made his mind glaze over, intoxicating his surroundings. He could hear the monstrous sounds breaking free from inside him as they were broken up with breathless pants. Had it not been for the vibrations resonating against his drumming pulse, surely he would have believed that a wild animal had broken into the Building.
Gone. It was all gone. His lips curled in an inhuman snarl as he tore through the fridge. The shelves crumbled under his maddened searching. His body grumbled in protest. He needed more. The paper was nothing against his razor like nails. He didn't think as he devoured the raw meat, humming as the feeling as the gore and juices flowed down his insatiable throat. The raw flesh drove him even more wild, unhinging what was left of what humanity remained in the creature.
"Damien?" a voice gasped.
Damien opened his eyes to find himself covered in blood, laying on the ground, fresh cuts ravaging his body, sunlight leaking though the kitchen window, and his body shaking uncontrollably. He raised his hands to his face, blood caked under his nails, blood still slick on his face, the rust like liquid cracking on his body, the kitchen littered with chunks of unidentifiable raw meat, chairs smashed to splinters, the fridge door torn off and thrown. And Olivia kneeling above him.
"Your eyes," she reached out uncharacteristically tender, holding his blood covered cheeks," They were red. Like vampire red. But now they are fading back to green." Then she hugged him. Really tightly. Damien hated the way he felt his stomach growl at the sound of blood rushing through her throat. Her sweet scent. She was hugging him so close his lips were practically at her jugular. No one would notice. He wasn't venomous. The creature's lips peeled away from his sharpened teeth, craving more, something fresh. Damien caught his reflection in metal sink. His eyes glowed red again like a vampire. Like a demon.