Seconds later, the smoke dissipated into the air. On the ground, Kiersten twitched. Alec lurched forward before the effects of his gift could wear off completely, and before his brain could catch up with his body and force him to overthink the situation. He grabs a silver key off of her jeans, snatching it through the belt loop. Normally, we'd be able to break down the door, but there is no need to make more unnecessary noise.
Within seconds, the door swung open. Exhilaration pulsated through my body. This was nothing like when I'd broken down the wall. Before me, though an empty, damp corridor, marked with but a few gaslights was freedom.
"Hurry." Alec hissed. Tamsin started to come around. Her fingers curled and twisted, grasping for something unreachable. Perhaps, something that didn't exist at all.
We darted through the door. He snatched the key from the lock and allowed the bars to swing closed again. It wouldn't deter them for long, but if metal bars had been able to keep us in place for months, then they'd be slowed down, at least for a few moments.
Alec leads the way, and I follow suit. My chest rising and falls heavily. I know I need to breathe so hard, but it's a human habit that I couldn't shake, especially with adrenaline coursing through my veins. At the end of the corridor, we reach a dead end. I twist around, looking back, side to side, for some other option.
"Up." He instructed, gesturing towards the ceiling. "We're going to go through there. It'll lead to the feeding chambers."
My stomach twists. "We'll end up right in the middle of the guard."
"Not likely. They only feed twice a month, and only on Fridays. We have a small chance that we'll come up to an empty room…." His eyes trail down the corridor. A low sound fills the air. Scraping. Metal on stone. "Go."
He motioned for me to go up ahead of him. Bits of metal jutted out from the wall, remnants of an old sewer system that the castle had either installed or been built around. I grip the metal, hoisting myself up towards a manhole cover. Bits of gold and yellow filter through the tiny finger holes. Daytime.
Alec, right behind me, I cautiously lift off the cover, pushing it to the side. Relief runs through me. The chamber is empty.
Abandoned. The scent of blood lingers for weeks. The smell isn't detectable to a human, but for a vampire, it's enough to unsettle someone who hasn't fed in months.
But, for a place that had been used for routine feedings for thousands of years, it's oddly pristine.
I lifted myself through the hole and sit back on the marble floor.
"You said….you said this was used for feeding, right?" I asked, my voice soft. I scan the room and stand up. Alec comes moves to stand behind me.
"This is… odd." He admitted, looking around the room. It smells like a cleaner, as though someone had come in with bleach and formaldehyde and scrubbed every bit of blood from it. "Aro's always kept the castle in good condition, but with this room, he never had it cleaned beyond disposing of bodies and having the blood cleaned up. It always smelled like old, rotting blood."
"Lovely," I grimaced, scanning for the exit. "Well, we don't have time to dwell on Aro's thought process. Do you know how to get out of here."
With his hand, he gestured towards a set of carved, double doors. "Heidi brings humans through there when we feed. There's just a small hallway beyond the door and then it opens up on the street.
I furrow my brow. "How have more humans not found their way into the castle? I mean, if it's just on the street."
Shaking his head, he led the way to the doors and pushed the right one open for me.
Beyond it, the hallway was lit brightly, I assumed for the benefit of the humans that walked it to their deaths. Aro didn't need one of their meals to get lost because they weren't able to follow the others.
A smaller, wooden door, barely tall enough for a man of average height to pass through sat at the end of the hall. With quick fingers, Alec worked to unlock the many chains and locks that held the door firmly in its frame.
When it finally flung open, a burst of wind and sunlight brushed against my face.
It had to be close to noon. Fortunately, we had stepped into an abandoned alleyway. When the door closed behind us, I saw why no one just wandered into the castle at random times. The brick of the wall hid the door. I imagined that we'd actually come from underneath the jewelry shop that flanked the alley. With thousands of years of to add and redesign, it was no surprise that the castle had several levels that lay beneath the streets of Volterra.
"We need to figure something out," He murmured, looking up and down the alleyway. Ahead, it opened into the main streets. Given the time of day, I wasn't surprised at all to see the streets hustling with thousands of humans. Their scent wafted in the air, swirling about...dancing around me like someone untouchable. "We'll get out of the city as quickly as we can. We'll stop in Ravenna to hunt. It should be night time when we get there."
"Perhaps. If it's still broad daylight, I still play to feed." I pressed my back against the brick, venom pooling in my mouth as a couple passed close to the mouth of the alley. "I don't know how you aren't…"
He ran a hand through his hair. "If we feed here, they'll be on us before we can blink. I don't like the idea of going through the town, but… I don't know if we have much of a choice."
"Backstreets?" I suggested, motioning to the other end of the alley, which led to more alleyways, twisting and turning in nearly a thousand directions. Humans would get lost too easily in a place like that. Compared to the hustling, bustling town square, the back streets were barren. A few people, residents, I suspected, came and went down the street that connected perpendicularly with the one we'd come out at, but other than them, no one…
"It'll take longer to get out of Volterra, but I think it's worth the risk." He answered, tugging down the scraps of clothes they'd left him with.
No wonder he wanted to go through the backstreets.
"Here," I began, tugging my shirt over my head, leaving me in a basic tank-stop. Before Audrey had gotten it torn, it was just a simple, oversized T-shirt. It had a ton of holes in it now, but it came down to my knees. "It should work, just for a little while, right? I know you don't want to wear my clothes, but…"
"What about you? You don't have much on without it." He murmured, his eyes moving to my own clothes. They weren't much, but everything that needed to be was covered.
I shook my head and pressed the shirt into his hands. "I'm fine. It's not that feminine. It won't be that bad to wear for just a while, right?"
Shaking his head, he pulled the shirt over his head. It reached a few inches below his hips, appropriately covering everything that needed to be concealed.
"When we get to Ravenna, we can break into a shop after hours- after we feed," I suggested. He gave a quick nod, smoothing the fabric of the shirt down. I doubted that either of us would be able to stop from snatching the first human we came across when we got out of Volterra, but for now, I was content to stick with the plan that we'd come up with moments ago.
"Yeah," He replied, swallowing venom that had pooled in his mouth. He had that same, desperate look that I'm sure I'd worn from the second we'd come out to the streets. "We've stood around for too long. We should get going."
We did. He led the way through the labyrinth of streets, frequently changing directions so that it took us longer to get out of the city, but it helps to throw off anyone who might have gotten a glimpse of us We're fast, still. Faster than any other creature on earth, but without feeding for months, my own body feels slow, like I'm dragging a dead weight.
Nevertheless, we're out of Volterra within fifteen minutes. He found a path leading right into the woods surrounding the city, and we start north towards Ravenna.
"Alec…" I began, reaching to grab his wrist. "I don't know if I can wait. How can you stand it?"
Scoffing, he snatched his hand out of my grasp. "You're going to wait. They can already follow our scents- not to mention the connection Demetri's web has to everyone. Do you really want to add a trail of blood for them to follow to catch up with us?*
My hand dropped to the side. "I understand. Still, I don't… we need to hurry up."
Taking the lead now, I followed my instincts towards Ravenna. Even for a place that I'd never been before, I felt as though I had a general idea of which direction to go. Most of us did, though. All vampires had heightened senses, and direction technically was a scent. I wasn't a shock that we could navigate significantly better than any human.
Sunset had fallen when we'd arrived at the edge of the city. A sprawling sight before my eyes, Ravenna had stunning architecture and gorgeous mosaics.
"It'll be dark, soon." He murmured, keeping close to the side of the buildings. The streets weren't as congested as Volterra's main roads had been, but humans still roamed about them. Tourists doing late night shopping or headed to dinner ambled back and forth, their senses of direction befuddled, warped. Locals, too, frequented the shops, though they clearly had more knowledge of how to maintain themselves.
We didn't stay long enough to pay much attention to anything.
Once the sun went down, the hunt was on.
Alec snatched a businessman coming out of an office, a cellphone pressed to his ear. Always a mistake.
He had him dried and dead within seconds, but even the blood from a full-grown human couldn't change his eyes more than a fraction of a shade.
My prey was another man. I didn't bother with making notes of his description. He could have been one of the British Royal family and I wouldn't have been any wiser. When I came across him, he wasn't anyone of importance.
He was food. I wanted more when he ran dry, but Alec restrained me. Our hunts had to be careful, cautious. We couldn't just murder someone whenever we felt like it.
Aro had to have been informed of our escape by now. I wouldn't be surprised if we were recaptured by the end of the day.
Only an hour or so later, when the shops closed, Alec picked the lock on one clothing store, and swiftly stole a pair of jeans and a dark blue button-down shirt for himself, and a pair of jeans and a green hoodie for myself.
Blood certainly helped me feel better, but clothes, too, made an immense difference.
We left Ravenna behind, the victims of our hunt disposed of in dumpsters.
"We'll get to Bosnia before sunrise, at this rate." I grinned. We'd slowed our pace. Always faster than a human. Even at a walk, we covered more ground than a human could in a car going sixty miles an hour.
"Yeah," He answered, playing with the buttons of his shirt. "I just… I don't know. I don't know if I can handle it… if s-she isn't...if something happened to her."
"Don't think about that," I commanded. We had come to a stop in a forest somewhere in Slovenia (Slovakia?), mere hours outside of Bosnia. We had little to go on as to Jane's exact location, but Alec was her twin. He could find her with his eyes closed, just as I was certain that I'd be able to find him.
Most vampire's tended to have, at the very least, a faint ability to find those they were close to, even if the search was intercontinental.
"What if it's true, though?" He breathed, jaw tight, eyes fixated on a small spot on the ground.
I shook my head. I didn't want to think of what the chances that we'd find her alive would be. We'd come this far. It would be an insult to Jane, and to ourselves, to just give up.
We pressed on. Eventually, we crossed into Bosnia. Technically, I knew the name to be Bosnia and Herzegovina, but we'd referred to it so often as simply 'Bosnia,' that to refer to the place by its full name.
"Do you know where to head, now?" I inquired, a few moments after we'd entered the country. Compared to other places, the borders between the two countries appeared relatively peaceful.
"South. Towards Mostar." He answered after at least a minute of silence. "I don't know why. I just keep picturing it in my mind."
"I'm sure you're right." I took a moment to collect myself, glancing around at my surroundings. I'd never found the need to travel to Bosnia until now, but somehow, the image of a city I'd never gone to pop up in my head. "You guys have a connection of some sort, don't you?"
"I guess." He answered, more or less guiding our journey south towards Mostar. "I mean- I can't hear her thoughts, but we've always known when the other is hurt. Like another type of sense."
"Do you think she's hurt?" I asked. Perhaps I'd been foolish to suggest that she might be alright. After all, what did I know? I knew Audrey wasn't the type of person to leave any of her victims alive.
I followed his motions for half an hour, mindlessly moving through forests until a sharp screech filled the night.
"Fuck. Fuck. Fuckno fuckfuckfuck…" He panted. My eyes landed on the subject of his parents.
I couldn't recall what she'd looked like before, when Audrey had oh-so-kindly allowed her to come and visit months ago, but the body we'd come upon was barely recognizable as a person, let alone someone we were supposed to know.
Still, Alec would have been able to identify a pile of ashes as his sister.
He dropped to his knees next to her mangled form, hands shaking as he searched for a place to touch that wouldn't cause any more damage. From a distance, I could see her chest rise and fall, breaths coming out in sharp, trembling gasps.