N O T E: PLEASE READ!!!
Some of the text included in this is from Breaking Dawn. I do not intend, nor do I ever, to use it for my own purposes other than helping me to create this chapter.
Disclaimer: The Twilight Saga and all characters included in this belong to Stephenie Meyer.
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Warmth burst from my hand, a tangible feeling so delightful and tingling. It spread in my hand which had previously been in pain from its wound.
The warmth in my hand grew hotter. The heat was so real it was hard to believe.
Hotter.
Uncomfortable now. Too hot. Much, much too hot.
The burning grew—rose and peaked and rose again until it surpassed anything I'd ever felt. It was painful, agonizing.
It spread throughout my body like a wildfire, lit on dry prairie grass. Rain wasn't coming; even if it did, I doubted it could be enough to stop the flames now.
It was going slowly, too. Each beat of my heart pushed it a little farther, but it was lethargic, slower than the blood that flowed through my veins.
James, snapping my leg under his foot. That was nothing. That was a soft place to rest on a feather bed. I'd take that now, a hundred times. A hundred snaps. I'd take it and be grateful.
If only it could be that kind of pain now.
The fire blazed hotter, and my screams rang out around me in the open forest, desperately asking someone to end my life to stop this pain. It was an awful sound, one of misery. It matched up my feelings exactly.
I begged for someone to kill me now, before I lived one more second in this pain that was growing worse the whole time.
Through the pain a voice came.
"But dear child, you'll be stronger." The person who condemned me to this unthinkable torture. Aro. Aro of the Volturi.
If I was sane, I would've wanted to claw his heart out, to make him pay for what I was suffering now. Rip it from his chest so he could go through the same thing I was going through.
But I had no rational thought, only the burning in my mind.
I was being buried alive in the flames that were chewing their way up from my hand, spreading with impossible pain through my shoulders and stomach, scalding their way up my throat, licking at my face. They were everywhere, all at once. The amount of pain in my body was incomprehensible, unfathomable. There was no possible way it existed.
But it was, and it was torture.
All I wanted was to die. To never have been born. The whole of my existence did not outweigh this pain. Wasn't worth living through it for one more heartbeat.
Let me die, let me die, let me die.
And, for a never-ending space, that was all there was. Just the fiery torture, and my heart-wrenching shrieks, pleading for death to come. Nothing else, not even time. So that made it infinite, with no beginning and no end. One infinite moment of pain.
Worse was yet to come.
The fiery pain doubled. In an instant, it grew hotter, consuming my being and forcing pain-filled screams out of my mouth.
The endless burn raged on.
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It could have been seconds or days, weeks or years, but, eventually, time came to mean something again.
I flew and swam over the land and through the water, and onto land again. The distance stretched out behind me. Even though I was unseeing, I sensed it.
It restarted again, picking up from where it left off. As if nothing had happened. As if I wasn't being burned alive, and everything was fine.
Unfortunately, the fire did not decrease one tiny degree—but I discovered that I could think around each blistering tongue of flame that licked through my veins.
I remembered why I was suffering, and what was causing it.
My memories came back to me bit by bit, and they were almost as painful as the fire ripping its way through me.
I had been in the Meadow, crying my now-burning heart out. Visitors had then come, forcing me to surface in the flooding tears. They were vampires; the leader of the coven was Aro.
For some reason, he had bit me.
Maybe he thought I was special. I wasn't special—far from it. If I was so 'gifted', then why had he left me? This Aro was most definitely wasting his time.
I almost pitied him as much as I pitied myself. He was wasting his endless time.
Yet he had forced me into this life, one I didn't want to be a part of. I didn't want to be a monster anymore—the only reason I had wanted to in the first place was to be with him. But he wasn't here.
Along with the returning of my memories, my hearing got clearer, too, and I could count the frantic, pounding beats of my heart to mark the time.
I could count the shallow breaths that gasped through my teeth.
I continued to get stronger, my thoughts clearer. When new noises came, I could listen. I could listen and identify the sounds and voices that were made.
"Aro, when is it going to be done? We've been waiting." An impatient hiss came from beside me. One filled with contempt, and the person knew as much as I did that Aro was doing something reckless.
It was only then that I realized I was being held in the arms of someone, their grasp iron and unbreakable. Though I didn't try to break it; the strength was evident, anyway.
My scathed body—which I assumed had been reduced to a pile of ashes by now—shook with a low chuckle from the person holding me.
Aro.
"Patience, Caius, it's going to be soon now. Sometime today, I think. Not much longer."
Today? If my teeth weren't clenched so hard they should have broken by now, I would have laughed in weak relief. The fire would be put out soon.
A nearby clock ticked slowly. Unbearably slow. It was old, I could tell, and the ticking resonated in the belly of it.
More people walked in the room and asked questions. Some were displeased, some were curious. The tone of their voice was sharp but tinkling for most of them. Though one was soft and melodic. I wondered whose voice belonged to whom. If I opened my eyes which were squeezed tightly together, then maybe I could identify some of the vampires I had seen in the forest.
A light breeze was stirred up and brushed past my heated cheeks. It wasn't cold at all anymore—instead it was more of a neutral temperature.
On the good-news side of things, the flames started to fade from my fingertips and toes. Fading slowly, but at least it was something new. This had to be it. The pain was on its way out...it would be over soon....
And then bad news. The fire in my throat wasn't the same as before. I wasn't only on fire, but I was now parched, too. Dry as bone. So thirsty. Burning fire, and burning thirst....
A new scent, which I could define from others due to a sharper sense of smell, trickled into the thick air, making itself clear to me.
It was mouthwatering and positively delectable. Filling my nostrils with a lovely lure. My body tensed up slightly, as if to go after it. But I couldn't due to the immense pain in me. It was unbearable.
The fire in my throat flared up as the scent came closer until it was right in front of me.
"Heidi is almost here." A women's voice, young and sweet.
The owner of it stumbled back, emitting a gasp, when a shocking and unexpected growl escaped my teeth. I was momentarily frightened, but it wasn't enough to stop my muscles from bunching up again as my mouth pooled with liquid.
"Thank you, Gianna," Aro said courteously, but his tone was guarded and his grip on me tightened. "You may return to your duties," he hinted clearly, and the footsteps receded quickly.
Could things get any worse?
Also bad news: they fire inside my heart got hotter, overpowering the one in my throat, which was, in the previous scenario, in the forefront of my mind.
It kept growing, skyrocketing in heat.
How was that possible? Surely it couldn't get any worse?
It just went to show how wrong I was.
My heartbeat, already too fast, picked up—the fire drove its rhythm to a new frantic pace. Instead of tha-thump, tha-thump, tha-thump, it was changed to thumpthumpthumpthumpthump. Definitely quicker than the average human's.
The fire retreated from my palms, leaving them blissfully pain-free and cool. I luxuriated in the moment for as long as it would let me, before more pain came. The pain went from my palms to my heart, which blazed hot as the sun and beat at a furious new speed.
It raged over my entire being, my body writhing but being restrained. Choked sobs escaped through my teeth.
On the up-side, the flames that ravished in my wrists and ankles went away.
I begged for mercy, screaming it over and over. But then the fire ripped hotter still through my chest, draining it from my elbows and knees.
It, along with the rest, went into firing the bonfire that was one my heart. It felt like it was a pile of ashes now, and though it was already burned beyond recognition, the fire kept on reducing it into smaller and smaller particles.
And then—oh!
My heart took off, beating like helicopter blades, the sound almost a single sustained note; it felt like it would grind through my ribs. The fire flared up in the center of my chest, sucking the last remnants of the flames from the rest of my body to fuel the most scorching blaze yet. In Aro's restraining arms, my back arched, bowed as if the fire was dragging me upward by my heart.
It became a battle inside me—my sprinting heart racing against the attacking fire. Both were losing. The fire was doomed, having consumed everything that was combustible, though it still tried; my heart galloped toward its last beat.
The fire constricted, concentrating inside that one remaining human organ with a final, unbearable surge. The surge was answered by a deep, hollow-sounding thud. My heart stuttered twice, and then thudded quietly again just once more.
There was no sound. No breathing. Not even mine.
For a moment, the absence of pain was all I could comprehend. It was so awe-exuding—it had stopped and I was free from the wrath of the blaze.
The grasp on me loosened, and I opened one eye.
A quick intake of breath as I stared at my surroundings. I hastily opened the other and looked around at my surroundings with a new light.
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