A/N: And here is Chapter Four- this one is one of my favourite chapters. Enjoy, and if you do, leave a review...

Chapter Four- Ghosts of the Past

Arianna POV

It was agonizing to wait till six thirty. I wanted to get out, and I wanted to get out immediately. But I knew Alec wouldn't have told me to leave exactly then without a good reason. It would be a poor way to repay the risks he took if I went and got caught.

I was worried about Alec, but there isn't anything I can do about it, and that really pisses me off. I knew that if I tried to find him in this huge castle then I would get caught for sure. All I could do was follow his orders, and he knows it too. Stupid masochistic idiot probably planned it so I would have to leave before he did.

I could hear all the people in the castle moving to the throne room, I couldn't help but wonder what they were doing. Aro said something; I couldn't quite make out the words. There was a moment afterwards that no-one moved or said anything. In that brief moment of silence I could hear heartbeats. Why would humans be in the castle?

I grabbed the key and the cloak Aro gave me and opened the door. I threw the cloak on so that if I ran into anyone, hopefully they wouldn't see my face. Looking cautiously around the hallway, I began to walk to the window. I looked out; of course I've got to be on the top floor of the castle. It's one thing to say I'm an immortal vampire that shouldn't be hurt by jumping off the top floor of a castle. It's quite another thing to actually throw one's self off the top floor of said castle.

I took a deep breath and swung my leg over the railing. I may never have jumped, except, right at that moment I started hearing the screams coming from the throne room. They were killing people. All it took was that, I decided that I would rather be dead than stuck in a castle with them.

I jumped over and started to fall.

I ran my hand down the side of the wall as I fell, too afraid to let go of the wall, I figured I could always grab onto something to stop my fall. Of course I wasn't expecting a hand to shoot out and grab me.

With the speed I was falling the gesture would have ripped my arm out of its socket if I was a human, but, being a vampire, it didn't even hurt a little bit. I hung there for a few seconds, held up by the unknown hand before whoever it was pulled me back inside.

The unknown hand belonged to a tall man with dark hair and red eyes. His gift was dark black and billowed around him like a storm cloud. He smiled at me, but it was less of a smile and more of a 'you are so busted' look. "Now you wouldn't have been trying to leave, would you?" His voice was warm and smooth, it was a compelling voice, the kind you would expect a hypnotist to have.

"No!" I shook my head back and forth.

"What were you doing then?"

"Trying to see if vampires could turn into bats if they were pressured to do so." See, I am an idiotic, harmless child. You should let me keep 'playing'.

His smirk grew to reveal perfectly white teeth. I automatically took a step back. "Sure you were. I think we need to have a little chat with Aro." Damn, I guess he doesn't think I'm a harmless child.

His voice changed tone. "Walk." I felt myself being pushed out of my body and the man's gift taking over instead. I tried to struggle against it, but my body just kept going without my consent. I could feel his presence in my mind like a warm, dark, cloud. I tried to push him out of my mind, but nothing happened. "Stop fighting it, it just makes it harder."

My response to that was to stop fighting, he had such complete control of my mind that I had to follow even that order, and I couldn't do anything about it. He took me to the throne room; it was almost empty this time, only a small group of other people were there. He released the control and I stumbled forward.

As soon as he let go I felt the burning erupt in the back of my throat. My hand flew to my throat. In my room there had been nothing to feed off of, and the man had kept it in control when he took over my body. But now there was nothing to control it and it roared up like a monster. I looked around and started inspecting the people in the room. Anything to distract myself from the inferno in the back of my throat.

There was a medium height man with blonde hair, he glowed a greenish brown. Aro and Jane were both there as well. There was also a tall woman with midnight black hair, she glowed a deep violet, and a small blonde haired girl that gave off a hypnotizing blue light. Felix and Demetri were in the group too. Wow, all my favourite people in one room. Do you think we'd get lucky and have a nuclear bomb dropped on us right now?

Aro glided towards us. I hissed and took a step back. Afton grabbed my arm to stop me from bolting.

"What is it Afton?" He threw a look at me and you could tell he had guessed what happened.

Afton shrugged. "She was trying to leave, master. She was almost gone too. If I had been a second later I wouldn't have even seen her." He held out his hand to Aro. Aro took it and nodded his head, understanding.

He turned to look at me. The look he gave me was less than friendly. He took a step towards me. I began to hum, trying to block his gift, it would just make him angrier than before, but it would stop him from finding out about Alec's involvement for a while.

Of course, I hadn't been excepting what happened. Afton changed his grip on my arm so I couldn't move an inch; Aro lunged forwards and jammed his hand into my neck, crushing my windpipe. That hurt. I tried to breathe, but all that came through was a thin stream of air in a whistling sound. Aro smirked. "That's about perfect, enough so you can still feed, but you definitely won't be able to anything else for a while. Especially sing." He pulled a vial of a clear substance from his pocket. Afton yanked my head back and Aro poured whatever-it-is into the cracks that now riddled my throat. "That will keep it from healing until I decide to wash it out. I told you there would be consequences if you tried to escape."

He gestured for Afton to follow, and the two of them marched me down the stairs. Of course... this castle has a dungeon area. Why not? It wasn't your typical dungeon though, it had steel doors that were about four meters thick each, with diamond and titanium layers in between. If you looked into the rooms the walls, ceiling and floors were the same as the doors. Not even a newborn vampire (I don't really count as a newborn, I have super strength for me, but I'm such a midget compared to the other vampires that my newborn rush is probably normal). Aro grabbed my hands. He sighed. "Afton, go grab Alec, it would appear he needs to join her." Damn! I tried to snarl, but all that came out was a little hissing noise.

Aro laughed viciously, "That cracks me up every time. Please, do keep trying to talk." He shoved me into the room and slammed the door shut. A four meter thick door can make a huge boom.

I sat in the corner of the room. It was tiny, about the size of a closet. My throat hurt in so many different ways it was not funny, the first and most obvious problem was that it was filled with cracks and tiny fissures, which hurt like hell, then there was the fact that the crap Aro poured into them made them hurt even more. And even after all that my throat still managed to be a raging inferno from thirst, how that was possible I didn't know.

I tried to pull the hideous cloak around me like a blanket, the room was so cold and hard I needed to get warmth from whatever I could. Even the cloak that represented pretty much everything I hated. Yeah, you know your life (or death) sucks when.

I heard footsteps coming down the hall. There were three pairs of them. I heard the door swing open; it was Aro with Alec and the small blonde girl from the throne room. They pushed Alec in and closed the door again.

"Lovely," he muttered under his breath, sitting up and looking at the wall they had just thrown him into, "I definitely need to get a new family." He looked at me, "You must have made quite an impression, Ari. Aro only ever throws people he thinks are completely untameable in here."

I couldn't answer of course, but Alec didn't know that. It was too dark in her to make out anything other than body-shape, even with super vampire sight. A human would have been totally blind. He waited for a couple of seconds before coming over to me. "Ari? Ari? Say something please? Hell, can you move? Please don't tell me Afton put you in a coma..."

I sat up and took the cloak out from around my neck, and pointed. "Ummm..." he tried to guess. "There's something wrong with your throat? You're really thirsty?"

I shook my head and grabbed his hand, lifting it up to my destroyed throat. He snarled softly, realizing what had happened. "Oh I am going to kill Aro," you could practically feel the rage boiling off him, "no-one should ever do this to you."

I shrugged and grabbed his hand again. He groaned, "please don't tell me they hurt you somewhere else?" I pushed his hand down to the floor, there was a thick layer of dirt. I moved his fingers so that he was pointing at the ground and used his hand as a pencil so he could feel what I was writing.

How can Afton put me in a coma?

"He uses his creepy brain-washing trick and locks your mind within itself, it lasts about a week before your mind can break the cycle and get free, but during that week you aren't going anywhere- there are quicker ways to get out of it, but I wouldn't recommend those unless you're really desperate. He can make it trigger if you try to do something like use your gift and he's set it to go into a coma if you do that, it only works once if he sets it to trigger though. He and Aro only use it if they're desperate. Normally they use other ways to immobilize you." He paused for a second, "Anything else... love?" he was being careful, I could tell. He didn't want to screw it up. But if he felt the same way I did he didn't really have a choice- the bond was there and it wasn't going anywhere.

You could practically feel him blush after that word love slipped out, but he never tried to deny it. Strange, but in the dream on the plane he called me love too. So far it had all proved to be true. Hopefully the rest of it would be true too.

Did you mean that last part?

"Yes," the answer was quick, but you could tell he meant it. Finally.

Good.

I snuggled up against him. I was rejoiced, I wasn't alone anymore. And strangely enough, you could feel the happiness coming off him too. Amazing how even the dankest prison cell can be nicer if you're with someone you love. "I never thought this would happen. Not in a million years."

What?

"Most of the vampires turned our age never find a mate, we can develop family bonds, but we're just not old enough to find one. Even though we're mates we won't be able to do the things normal mates do. It'll be almost closer to a very brother-sister bond than a mate-mate bond."

We can have more fun because our minds aren't clogged up with all that sex.

"I never said we couldn't have any fun Ari, just that we can't have sex." He chuckled. We were sat still for a few minutes, enjoying the moment. Well... enjoying the moment as much as we could considering that we were being held in a steel plated room underneath a castle against our will by a three-thousand year old psychopath.

Alec?

"Yes, love?" You could tell he really liked that nickname. I bet he doesn't use my real name again for a year or so. I don't really mind though.

Tell me a story please.

"What story would you like?" well... given the current circumstances I think it would be a good idea to know more about him.

Yours, if it's okay with you.

"It is I'm warning you though, it's a fairly long story. I'm about a thousand years old." I shrugged. The longer the better, it would give us something to do. Besides he'd been present for everything that had happened in my life, it's only fair I get to know his.

"I was born here in Italy, though it wasn't known as Italy at the time. I lived in a tiny village about an hour away from here with Jane and my parents. Jane wasn't the same then as she is now; she was more free spirited and wild, and a hell of a lot nicer. She was a little bit like you actually, except more open to corruption, Aro turned her into the psycho bitch we know today. It was the middle of summer and there was a visiting priest in the village, he was a strict catholic who believed strongly in burning anyone who he considered to be 'susceptible to witch craft'.

"He saw Jane and me and immediately decided that we were the spawn of Satan. He declared that we were witches and that we were to be burned at the stake as soon as possible, lest our town face the wrath of god. And who were our parents to stand against god?" He laughed bitterly. "Aro had been watching us for a few years, he had planned to wait until we were older before he turned us, but the priest forced his hand." His laugh got even darker.

"I don't know if you've noticed yet, but Aro doesn't react well to people who force him to do things."

I looked around the cell we were in.

Yeah... I did notice. We're kind of locked in a pit underneath hell after all.

"I thought you might have." He paused, re-gathering his thoughts. "They were tying us to the stakes when he got there. The entire guard started slaughtering the village, at the time there was no need to keep the secret of our race; Aro had killed everyone out of sheer spite. He started to change Jane and me immediately; we were so close to death. We had been locked somewhere similar to this for a week without food and water. Another hour even and we would have been dead.

"I woke up after Jane did. She had taken to Aro with a vengeance. To her he was the ultimate father figure, the best protector on the planet. I was less likely to trust him. If I had been even a little bit more willing to trust him I'd be where Jane is now. But I was the calmer of the two of us, the one more likely to think things through. I realized that there were quite a few reasons not to trust the demon-man

"My gift, when I'm not being forced to misuse it, is meant to take away harm- to stop pain. Unfortunately it rarely gets used that way. It- when Aro's not trying to get me to get me to kill people with it- matches my personality perfectly, I hate hurting people. I'm shocked I've managed to keep that attitude under the current circumstances. You'd think that after so much killing I'd become numb to it, but I haven't. I wish I could try out the Cullen's lifestyle, but Aro will not let a guard go around with golden eyes. He thinks of them as the enemy.

"So I was naturally suspicious of Aro. After all, he kept killing stuff, and trying to get me to kill stuff too. I couldn't stand it. Jane couldn't understand why I didn't like it, it seemed perfect to her, her personality was changing quicker than I could believe. She was always wild; you could tell why the priest immediately tried to burn us. But that freedom of spirit had morphed into pushy evil. We started fighting more often. Her need to kill things instantly triggered a negative reaction when it collided with my personality.

"The final straw was when I ran away for the first time. Demetri and Afton dragged me back to Volterra, Aro was angry with me. Jane thought whatever Aro did so she was angry too. She thought I was an ungrateful, spoiled brat. I returned the favour by thinking she was an evil, twisted monster. After that I can truthfully say that we could easily kill each other.

"Aro delivered an ultimatum to me then. Either I could stay and do what he told me in Volterra, or he could cause huge disasters that would destroy millions of people. I didn't believe him, I hadn't yet grasped how evil he was. I didn't think it was possible for one person to hurt that many people. So, I tried to run away again. I didn't want to be used like a weapon of mass destruction anymore.

"They caught me, of course. I managed to last about a year before they dragged me back again. Aro then proved that he had meant what he said. He caused the first crusade, the first one itself killed hundreds of people. But the ripple effect itself caused even more damage. I never tried to run away again for five centuries.

"Those five centuries were probably the worst days of my eternal life. I wasn't joking when I said Aro was using me like a weapon of mass destruction. I had to pretend to like Jane in public too. I still do. We both hate that. The only thing we can agree on now is that we hate each other

"Aro continued to gain power, he may be a twisted bastard Ari, but he is one powerful vampire. No one ever stands up against him." I could feel Alec grinning, "well... no one except you."

You know, somehow I think you've stood up against him a time or two too , it takes a lot to make him want to kill someone as much as he does you.

Alec laughed. "Yes, but that's beside the point. Now where was I... As I said, Aro was gaining power. It was getting to the point where I believed that the amount of trouble that he was causing was equal to what would happen if I ran away again. I realized that I had to get away from Volterra soon. The Romanians had just fallen; the Volturi became the most powerful vampire coven in the world.

"So I tried to run away again. Demetri caught me again, but I lasted three years this time. Age was making me wiser. Aro started world war one, because of that. Aro kept on gaining power, I was starting to get nervous, if that continued than there wouldn't be anyone powerful enough to stop him. I tried running away again; I lasted six years that time. Take a wild guess what war Aro caused that time?"

World War Two?

"Yep. I waited for a chance to run away again, biding my time. Then the Cullens started becoming very, very threatening to Aro. Their family was growing quickly. Word was that they had created an immortal child.

A what?

"A young child or infant that has been changed into a vampire. They are considered to be the greatest taboo of the vampire world. Turn a child and the first vampire you come across will kill you. Aro took the fact that the Cullens had created one as an excuse to kill them. He and Carlisle Cullen had been friends once, even though they were total opposites. Carlisle Cullen is about the most peace-loving man that you'll ever meet, but he and Aro were both very inquisitive and that held them together for a few decades. After a while they parted ways.

"Aro gathered us all together, the entire guard, the wives, and a whole group of witnesses. And we went off to slaughter the Cullens. The Cullens stood their ground; they had gathered a group of witnesses too. It was less like a group of witnesses and more like and alliance, though. They were powerful, even more powerful than we were. Aro was furious when he got back. Everything was chaos for a while. I took the opportunity to run away again. I figured anything to tip the balance into the Cullen's favour would be good.

"I managed to stay away for seven and a half years, another new record. When they finally managed to drag me back the changes were obvious. Aro is planning for war Ari, that's why he grabbed you. The guard has grown to about twice its original size. Aro is gathering an alliance of covens as well. A few have gone to join the Cullens, their alliance is reforming- not just a group of witnesses, but a battle ready group of warriors."

What next?

"Our world is quietly preparing for war Ari, the only question is what side do we want to be on?"