Author's Note: This chapter contains some sexuality. There is nothing too explicit, but if you object or are under-age, please skip this portion of the story.
VIII.
Although the hour was indecorously early, a mismatched quartet of immortals gathered in a burgundy mausoleum of a study that could only have been polished and pieced together by Aro. Discomfort thrummed in the air between them, an unwelcome guest that lingered in the shadows' play of the torchlight and the silken sweep of medieval tapestries.
Aro shattered the calm, allowing his carmine gaze to fall upon a quaint, contrary child, dour in her gleaming shoes and sternly Edwardian dress. "Jane, sweetheart, are you certain that Bella agreed to become one of us?"
The witch-girl extended a shivering hand, offering her master all that she had seen, trapped between quartz skin and the seashells of nails.
"Oh, dear one, I am not questioning your recall or your honesty. I merely wish to know the circumstances that prompted this unlikely outburst of reason from our guest."
Adolescent uncertainty, stammering and slippery, stole Jane's words, her teeth leaving a pressed imprint upon bruised lips. "Mistress Sulpicia," she whispered finally. The ghostly fissures upon her heart tightened and shifted as she recalled the taste of envy upon her own tongue, before the tortured splendour of her gift had been uncovered.
Aro's laughter was deliciously, dexterously mad. "Of course. My lovely mate has ways of drawing jealousy to the surface." Ruffling Jane's hair with an incautious palm, he murmured a gentle dismissal and turned his eyes to the chamber's remaining occupants.
"It seems that we have nearly earned ourselves a gifted guard, my brothers. I believe that I am owed an apology. You both did, after all, question my methods."
There was no triumph to be seen, no gauzy, glorious joy.
For a wintry moment, Caius and Marcus wore twin expressions, disbelief coalescing with uncompromising condemnation upon severe, snow-stained features. Their minds had strayed, without a doubt, to thoughts of their mates, shimmering, sentimental fantasies that blurred and bloodied their intellect with crimson ardour. Briefly, Aro wondered how a woman, or the mere misted memory of a mate, held his brothers in absolute thrall, but that was contemplation best saved for a drowsy interlude.
"Do not trouble yourselves with Isabella's transformation. In a few days' time, there will be nothing to fear," he soothed, impatient hands fervently clasped at his chin.
The choking, chilly shroud of apathy had once more fallen over Marcus, while Caius appeared to be searching for a retort, barbed with disbelief.
"Come now, my brothers, do you not trust me? It will be such a simple thing to turn Isabella," Aro insisted, the leaping flames coaxing an edge of light upon a starving smile.
Questions glided in the stillness upon whispering wings, but he chose to pay them no heed. Instead, the meeting came unstitched when Marcus departed, swiftly and unceremoniously.
"If I were in your place, the girl would be dead by nightfall, and the Cullens would not know where to begin seeking her corpse," Caius said casually, before taking his leave in an irritated tangle of shadows and snow.
[-]
"Come inside, my dear," Aro sang as Bella tiptoed into his study, cautiously placing her feet upon the intricate weave of the carpet. Her heart was already pounding and she was certain that if she did not take care, she would be sprawled upon the floor, her shoes uncomfortably caught upon roughened silk.
When she drew close, he opened his arms, inviting her to curl upon his lap as a beloved cat would. Although she was unpleasantly reminded of childhood, the earth-haired girl complied, immediately noting how intimately comforting it was to be held and cherished.
"You have expressed a desire to become immortal." An ephemeral touch tousled her hair, perhaps in encouragement.
"Jane told you? I don't... I don't mind or anything, I just wanted to tell you myself."
"With time, you will find that little Jane is most fastidious in her duties. Nonetheless, my original question remains. Do you indeed wish to be turned now?"
The edges of her vision curled and blackened suddenly, as she gasped. "Now? This instant? I didn't think it would be so soon."
"Why such reluctance, my lovely Bella? Surely you know that you will be a breathtaking immortal." His speech was punctuated with kisses, which seeped like blood, lower and lower. These were not the miscellaneous caresses of a lover testing the waters with tentative toes; there was a purpose here, dark and decadent as ancient wine. All too soon, questing hands found their way beneath her collar, stroking the softness of colourless, human ribs. "Is it because you fear losing your precious mortality, with all its messy, sticky sentiment?"
"I'm...I'm not scared," she breathed, her fingerhold upon false courage as insistent as the pressure her slim palms applied to his shoulders, curiously seeking exposed flesh beneath the dull ebony of pressed robes. Her blood was thrumming in the chambers of her chest, cruelly apparent, and her sallow cheeks blossomed with colour, as she realized how utterly, terribly weak she appeared.
The vampire laughed, pressing small, sparking kisses upon her lips, her cheeks, her eyelids, while his hands drew shapes through the fabric of her garments. It was a dancing, dainty seduction, but it only took Bella a moment to realize that it was not requisite. She was already his, as though she wore his crest, a steel brand marking her allegiance.
"Your heart," Aro mused softly, whimsically lingering upon inconsequential words. "Your pulse is so quick, like wings." His laughter fluttered and flitted, elegant as the birds the simile evoked. "Perhaps it is I who frightens you?" He allowed his fingers to fall, resting upon the flower-spattered cotton that covered her knees.
Once more, she squared spindly shoulders in protest, willing to prove her worth to a being older than thought. Bella's fingers crept towards her own clothes, tentatively peeling fabric to reveal flimsy, flushed skin and permitting the soft scraps of her blouse to tumble away.
"You are not afraid? Well, well." Teeth, gently vicious, closed at the hollow of her throat, sending molten shivers through her. "Perhaps you should be."
The topography shifted.
The chilly expanse of a mahogany desk prickled her spine, raising tantalizing welts, but Bella no longer noticed; Aro commanded her absolute attention, with clawed hands and a snarled, iron grin. The gentility abandoned his motions entirely, leaving nothing but sinew and bone held together by reserved lust that darkened his eyes to onyx.
Somewhere, deep inside her pattering thoughts, Bella could hear screaming, but raw exhilaration looped shackles around the fear.
An appraising glance was cast over her body, still obscured by the insignificant blush of a bra and a ruffled skirt, before Aro's smirk coiled and melded into a hunter's lunge. Cloth was rent to ribbon, and a cool tongue traced designs upon her right breast as nails gouged and plucked at the left. Delight quickened her breathing, each small ember of pain slipping directly between her thighs and winding itself into aching knots.
Illogical, intoxicated syllables slipped from Bella's sweetly swollen mouth as pale teeth closed upon her nipple, sore and stubborn from previous attention. Soon, his fingertips dugs into the translucent skin of her belly as sharp-edged kisses savaged a path towards the steady slope of graceful hipbones. Everything—Aro, her pulse, time itself— was rushing far too rapidly, a giddy blur of colour and heat, and Bella wanted nothing more than to stop, to continue, to drown and resurface gasping once more.
Her lover, still perfectly clothed and supremely unruffled, raised his head and observed, his eyes gliding over the staccato rise and fall of her breasts, the petalled flush that glazed her skin, perhaps the way a handful of touches had reduced her to garbled want and slipping need.
Aro bowed his lips over her thighs then, and her world became flame. His tongue danced over tender flesh too quickly, clumsy teeth adding piercing, perilous friction that threatened to tear her apart, leaving only rags and pooling carmine. Each swipe of mouth and fingers moved her closer to the inescapable fall, but too steadily, too gently for her liking.
Finally, her shredded mind stitched itself together for an instant, long enough to whisper a handful of worn words.
"More, Aro, I—"
He halted, and she mewled, mourning the lost press of papery skin and slick warmth, but the ebony-haired immortal did nothing to relieve her.
"You would do well, cara mia, to remember that I will only give you what suits me."
The pronouncement was odd, too grave for a moment so intimate, but lust was a cruel master. Bella lay still, helplessly hoping that docility would earn her his touch once more.
"Much better."
His fingertips and tongue resumed their rhythm, drawing her closer to agonized rapture until—
"Aro, I...I—"
The garbled scream of soaring, tumbling joy turned hideous as bruising bites coaxed crimson from her hipbones, her wrists, her throat.
Bella was left alone then, abandoned to a different sort of death as lazy, coppery rivulets stained her skin in grotesque spirals.
[-]
In the palazzo's shaded rooms, a honey-haired woman clutched her companion's hand with vicious talons. Had Athenodora been human, her palm would have become nothing more than matted sinew, but immortality lent resilience to Sulpicia's fervent grasp.
When the mortal girl's shriek carved ugly, splintered shapes into the silence, Aro's mate smiled, lyrically lovely once more.
"Newborns are so very bewildered when they wake," she mused. "So many odd ideas fluttering in their strange little skulls."
Athenodora's laughter was sweetly silvery. "And disillusioning them is such fun."
Author's Note: This chapter was a difficult one for me to write, and I hope that it was slightly uncomfortable to read. The inherent power imbalance and insincerity between Bella and Aro, as well as the beginning of Bella's transformation are meant to be frightening, coldly manipulative events, and I hope my condemnation of these actions came through within the writing itself.
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