A/N:Hey, thanks for those reviews and here's the next chapter! Okay, I'm just going to say that for this chapter, Elizabeth has some sort of short-term memory loss, because she fainted the day before. So, she'll be less focused on thinking about Marcus's speech. More like she won't think about it at all, lol. Happy reading! And yes, I want reviews in return. - MissMei92
THE TALE OF ELIZABETH CULLEN
Elizabeth, don't do this...Elizabeth...Elizabeth...Elizabeth!
I jerked upright, my heart pounding until it hurt in my chest. I was breathing very heavily and I shivered from the cold sweat running down my back. I was inside the bedroom from before, on the bed. Someone had thoughtfully tucked me in beneath the covers. It'd been him. He'd told me not to do it. But I didn't know what it was. Oh, Colin. I fell back against the bed and dropped back into a dreamless sleep, his voice echoing in my head.
I stretched and yawned. It was...wait, what time is it? I looked around for a clock, since the room had no windows, so I couldn't see if it was day or night, right now. No clock either. But the room was bright. The white fluorescent lights hanging above were a stinging bright.
"It's 9 a.m.," I heard a harmonious voice say absently. I whipped my head around in the direction of the voice, whose owner I could have recognized from miles away. Nikolas was sitting on the powdery white sofa in the corner, facing the blank, lifeless television screen. I didn't say anything. I couldn't think of anything good.
"Boy, you sure do move a lot when you sleep, don't you? How do you get any rest like that?" His voice was joking. It made me laugh. He turned around and glanced at me. His now-burgundy eyes twinkled. I however, gulped. That color meant he'd just fed. I tried not to show my discomfort at the thought and tried to be bubbly.
"Oh, I manage somehow." I said laughingly. I threw the cottony quilt off and stood up. I'd never felt so exhilarated as I went to sit by him on the sofa. I'd always felt to be older than I looked and now my mental and physical ages were on the same key. I could act like the adult I truly was. My new-found beauty had sort of boosted my confidence and emboldened me. He seemed surprised by my action, obviously thinking I was still 12 on the inside.
"Did you stay up all night, just watching me?" I asked him, keeping eye contact with those burgundy eyes of his. He nodded.
"Yes, I did. You know the drill. Vampires can't sleep." He said in a low voice.
"Then, why can I sleep but I can't cry?" I asked, not really wanting the answer. I half-knew why anyhow.
"You're only half-a-vampire re-mem-ber?" He replied, splitting the word on purpose. I smiled.
"Yes, I remember. Oh, and do I have any other clothes which can fit me around here? Or do I have to go shopping?"
"Yeah, you do." He picked himself up and walked over to the birch wood closet nearby. He tapped it lightly.
"It's all in here." He sat back down on the sofa, and I thought he looked like he was thinking about something very hard.
"Oh," I blinked, "...just one more question, are you my babysitter?" I tried to keep a straight face. It was strange how prone to laughter I was with him around.
He laughed, of course. "You could say that, I suppose. I'm more like the guy who makes sure that you don't end up slitting your wrists. Not like it could kill you anyway." He meant it as a joke, but somehow I felt a slight twinge of pain shoot up me when he said it.
He didn't notice and I didn't want him too. "Do I get breakfast then? I mean, I know I'm the only one here who probably needs to eat food." I giggled lightly.
"Oh, yeah. Right. Breakfast. Hold on a second," He dashed out of the room and when he didn't come back after a total of 5 seconds which I counted), I locked the door and changed into the first items of clothing that I saw. A light blue lace miniskirt and a blue cardigan.
I then browsed through the rest of the clothes until Nikolas came back, knocking twice on my door. I answered and he said that 'yes, breakfast was ready, but...we had to go out to get it.' I laughed again.
Nikolas took me along a different side corridor and we emerged into another reception room where there was an elevator. The receptionist surprised me, by being very much human. She smiled at me and I smiled back, but I couldn't help wondering how a human could work amongst human blood-sucking vampires like that. She seemed quite old, in my opinion. Her auburn hair had started to whiten.
We went up the elevator and were soon transported to a basement level area, where a waiting Mercedes-Benz had been parked. I sat in the front seat, beside Nikolas. We drove out of the basement and to my surprise or rather disappointment, the sun wasn't shining outside. Nikolas can't go out into the sun. We drove along the cobblestone road until we reached an asphalt paved one, but not before I managed to get a look at the city of Volterra. It was so...old-fashioned. The streets were exactly the kind of thing you'd think of when you thought of Italy. Brick-covered buildings, houses with laundry hanging out the windows in the back alleys, everything concrete towering over you like you were surrounded by fortress walls.
Nikolas was silent while he drove. I didn't want to bother him either. But a certain feeling crept inside of me. A happy feeling. But I shouldn't be happy. I shouldn't. How can you be happy while Colin is in a half-dead state? I gulped and swallowed the lump in my throat, closing my eyes, while becoming a frozen statue in the seat.
Nikolas noticed my stiffness. "Elizabeth, are you alright?" He said, and I noticed his accent suddenly sounded very much like...Colin's. I was going crazy. You're hallucinating, Elle. Stop being such a freak.
"Elizabeth, please say something." Now this was ridiculous. Because the way he'd just said that phrase was exactly how Colin sounded whenever I'd pretended to be mad with him. I opened my eyes and threw him a wary look. My heart nearly dropped into my knees.
His eyes weren't red nor burgundy any longer. They were honey gold. I blinked and rubbed my eyes. "Nikolas?" I prodded, unsure, like a kid whose parent was having a fit at them.
"Elizabeth, I'm sorry. I had to. I didn't want to hurt you...but it was for the best." My heart dropped to my feet. It wasn't Nikolas speaking any longer. It was Colin. My dear, sweet Colin.
"Colin?!" I yelped, my heart lunging up back into my chest at vampire speed. Was it really him? Was it really my Colin?
"Elizabeth, you must do as they say. But be wary of the blood." The possessed Nikolas spoke to me, with the intonation that only Colin could give. It was so cryptic. Just like the dream. Just like everything else.
"Colin. Why do you always do this? Why must you speak in riddles?" I whispered sadly, feeling like sobbing but being unable to. The emotion was horrible because I couldn't let it go.
Nikolas turned towards me, and those golden eyes which were not his looked at me, anguish filling them. "Because...I can't."
The honey faded slowly, as I, sobbed without any tears for him not to leave me, not again. The burgundy remained.
Nikolas stared at me and my pained look, the expression on his face was confused. "Why are you..." He searched for the word, "...sad?" He settled for a word which could only border at the mildness of how I was feeling at that moment.
I just shook my head and turned away from him. I couldn't bear to see those eyes which had held Colin's in them a moment before. My heart thumped and did jumps from the bottom of my diaphragm to the top of my throat. I felt so uneasy. I closed my eyes and dozed off.
When I woke up, the car had stopped and was parked by the roadside. But there weren't any cafes nearby. Or any buildings for that matter. All I saw was countryside. Green, flowering meadows with tall, pine tree forests encircling them. What were we doing here?
Nikolas wasn't inside the car anymore. I unbuckled my seatbelt and stepped out of the car, my foot stamping down on some wet grass. The sun was shining more around here and Nikolas was kneeling nearby on a red-white checkered cotton blanket, spread out with a food basket, beneath the shade of a huge oak tree. A picnic. For breakfast, well, more like brunch now.
"Elizabeth, come here and listen!" Nikolas waved at me and I saw he was trying to get a radio connection on his...I didn't know what that was. Must be something new they developed while I was asleep for 2 years. I sighed playfully and strode over, careful to avoid the muddy areas. I plopped down beside him, pretending to be annoyed.
"Nikolas, what are..." I didn't get to finish my sentence. Because at that very moment, another Mercedes passed by on the highway nearby, a black one, and I saw, through the tinted windows, ...my parents.