Chapter 8 – Death and Rebirth

The smoke was bad enough. The damp wood was slow to catch, but even as the flames sputtered and flickered and threaded along the branches as it gained strength, the smoke billowed upwards in great clouds. It stung my eyes until I was blinded by my own tears, and burned my lungs so that every coughing, choking breath was agony.

At my back Alec was silent, but even though there was almost no sound from my ravaged throat I screamed. I screamed at the villagers I could not see, only hear through the thick clouds of smoke, wishing that I had the powers of witchcraft and magic that they were burning me for.

If only I had, then I could make them all hurt, make them all suffer this torment, and then they'd be sorry…

The flames rose higher, the tallest of them beginning to lick at my toes, and then it felt as though I were engulfed in the heat and the flames and sheer, overwhelming pain and I could think no more. I could smell the scent of my burning flesh as the fire gained strength, and the intensity of the agony meant that the light touch of Alec's fingertips against mine seemed to disappear.

I wanted to die, then. I wanted it to be over.

I didn't know what happening outside my own personal hell. I couldn't see through my smoke-blind eyes and probably wouldn't have understood even if I had seen, but even as lost as I was I felt when things began to change.

The noise from the villagers changed from a victorious chorus of gleeful vengeance to screams of terror. But then even the screams were cut off, one by one, until there was nothing but an eerie silence outside the crackle of the flames. Someone threw something over the fire, smothering it briefly, and for a moment there was a cool breeze blowing the smoke away and giving me some sweet, fresh air. I felt strong, cold hands breaking my bonds. Once the ropes were gone I fell, only to be caught up in arms that felt like stone but were curiously gentle at the same time.

There was movement after that, although I couldn't have said where we were going or how long it took to get there. The pain of my charred and burnt flesh was excruciating, and I had little attention to spare for anything but trying to breathe through my ruined lungs.

I was laid down somewhere and, although I wanted to open my eyes and blink away the tears and find my brother, all I could do was lie helplessly where I had been put. I couldn't bring myself to move, and as the pain began to fade I thought that I was dying, and that rescue had come too late. I wished I could see Alec…we'd always done everything together. How could I die if he wasn't there with me?

"If they die Philippe, these children will not be the only ones to burn today! You can mark my words, that will become your funeral pyre if you've lost the most promising hopes that the Volturi has had for decades! The sheer incompetence of what you have done here!"

I didn't know who it was speaking over me, but they were angry, their voice practically spitting with rage. I thought about opening my eyes to see who they were, but my body was unresponsive.

"I know my Lord, I'm sorry. But I swear to you, they had no intention of burning the children yesterday! They would have hung them for the babe's death and I would have been able to fetch you in plenty of time if they'd kept to that plan. But the storm, and the destruction of so much of the village…they blamed the children for witchcraft and started the burning while I was still travelling here with you!"

"You're lucky I'm a patient and forgiving man, Philippe! Now…can they be moved to Volterra as they are? Judging by the smell they've been roasted like pigs on a spit, but surely they'll live?"

"I'm not…I don't know my Lord." The deep voice was hesitant. "The burns are very bad, well up to the hips on the girl, and the smoke damage…the boy can hardly breathe and his heart…"

Alec. Oh Mother Goddess, please take care of him!

I forced my smoke blind eyes open to look for my brother, and through the streaming tears and cloudiness I managed to focus on the face peering down at me. It wasn't Alec though. Little more than a blurred white oval topped with dark hair, the red eyes shone like beacons…and I remembered.

A long ago Eostre day, flowers in my hair and offerings on the altar, and two men of such strangeness, with their red eyes that seemed to see too much and make me so frightened…Lord Aro.

"Then it must be done here," Lord Aro said flatly. "Now. I will not lose them."

"But…my Lord!" Philippe again, sounding horrified. "We can't possibly do that! They're…look at them! They're….children…"

"Don't you ever say that again!" Aro hissed, and even as my body burned my heart felt the ice of his tone. "They are what I say they are, and I say that they are mine. Mine!"

His face seemed to swim closer to mine, his red eyes drawing me in with their hypnotic power as he flashed his white teeth in a terrifying grin. "A little more fire for you, sweetling…but it shall make you mine…"

Closer, closer…teeth so white and terrible, ruby eyes so compelling…oh, Mother Goddess what he is doing to me?

I hadn't dreamed that the pain could get worse, but it did. I thought I had been thrown back on the pyre and I screamed and kicked and tried to claw my way free, but there was no escape. Not from the flames that consumed my skin and the liquid fire that flowed in my veins until I felt turned inside out with the sheer, raw agony of it.

There was no sense of time or place. I merely existed, in a place of such blazing heat and pain that there was little room for anything but the never-ending thoughts of the agony I was suffering. But I heard my brother scream once, and the thought of him anchored me a little in that place, and I began to listen for him.

Are you here too Alec? Can you find me? I want you.

Sometimes I heard him. Sometimes he screamed with a throat so hoarse it seemed to make barely any sound at all. Sometimes he cried. Once I heard him say my name.

Sometimes I heard them. Philippe and Aro. I hated them for this, for rescuing me from the fire only to throw me back into one a thousand times worse. I hated them for simply sitting there, watching me burn, instead of doing something to save me.

"There's a reason I rarely do this myself." Aro sounded peevish. "Can't you do something about that girl's dreadful caterwauling, Philippe? Tie her mouth or something?"

I felt hands on me, wrapping something around my face. Before they could tighten it I turned my head and bit down savagely. Fingers were pulled out of my mouth and I heard Philippe curse, even as Lord Aro laughed in delight.

"Little wildcat," he said, almost fondly. "I really cannot wait to see what they will become! If only it didn't require three days spent in this disgusting hovel of a village manor house listening to the two of them howl!"

"You can return to Volterra my Lord," Philippe said wearily. "I can see them through the transformation and bring them to you afterwards. You needn't stay."

"Leave them to you? After you nearly had them burned at the stake? I hardly think so!" Aro sniffed. "I shall see this through myself."

I drifted away again, lost in darkness that was full of pain and where nightmare dreams of demons and deities haunted me relentlessly. I screamed and fought and howled with my desperation for release, but for a long time it seemed as though relief would never come.

It was an infinitesimal change at first, just the tiniest cooling of the heat on my toes and fingertips. The flames began to fade – so slowly!- and then the burning lessened to only heat and the coolness invaded my body and the relief was so sweet I could have wept.

For whatever that torture had been, I had survived.

I opened my eyes, springing to my feet and instinctively crouching defensively, a stone wall at my back. My eyes swept the room, searching for anything that I recognised.

Alec. My brother lay several feet away, his eyes closed and his face cold and unmoving. He's dead.

I sprang across to him, dropping immediately to my knees with a grace that I didn't think to question despite the strangeness of it. "Alec…Alec…"

The sounds were all wrong. My own voice sounded nothing like it should, and kneeling by my brother I realised that the thudding beat I had taken for my own heart was that of my brother. I could hear it so clearly, and yet my own heartbeat…

"He's not dead. He'll wake up in a moment."

I whipped my head around. Seated at the far end of the grand table were the two men I remembered from my childhood. Philippe…and Lord Aro. But like the sounds everything was different, and I blinked as I gazed at them as if for the first time. I was stunned by the clarity of what I could see. The perfectly smooth skin and each of Aro's silky strands of hair as they lay in impeccable order. Philippe's fair hair, braided back from his face and tangled down his neck, made up of a thousand different shades of gold and white and platinum and yellow. The fabric of their tunics and hose, so fine I had never seen their like, but still I could somehow count the weft and warp threads of the cloth. The grain of the ancient, heavy oak table they sat at, the tiny faults and cracks in the earthenware mugs and plates scattered across the table…I seemed able to take all of it in in an instant.

And the smells! The smell of smoke still hung heavy over everything, but below that was the odour of animals and rot and death. Hay and earth and growing green things and the sun scorching the dirt outside. The smell of water, of honey and wool and timber. All of it assaulting my suddenly sharpened senses to an extent that was both bewildering and exhilarating.

But I couldn't take the time to think about it, not when I thought my brother might be dying. Backing away so that I could tend to Alec and still watch the men, I touched my brother's chest gently.

"He's not dying," Philippe said to me, his smile surprisingly gentle in his fearsome warrior's face. "Not so you'll notice…he's changing."

"What do you mean?" I demanded. I could feel his heart pounding fast, too fast.

Lord Aro stood up and smiled at me. "Why, he's being reborn. He's becoming what you already are."

Becoming what I already am? For the first time since opening my eyes I looked down at myself, and for a moment I froze.

I knew I had been burned. I had seen the flames of the pyre licking at my legs, I had felt the agony as skin blistered and charred, and I had smelled the gruesome scent of my own flesh as it cooked. There had been the endless pain as Aro and Philippe watched me suffer. What was left of my tunic and shift were black and scorched as I looked down, and yet after all that…my skin bore not a mark. Not a mark of fire, not a mark of anything, I realised with a lurch of unease as I pushed back the ragged sleeves of my shift.

It was the end of summer. My arms and legs should have been brown with dirt and sun. They should have borne a thousand different scars and marks and scratches, evidence of a life spent in forest and river, but instead there was nothing. Only smooth, hard white skin, with no marks or imperfections, and a body that felt suddenly alive with strength and energy and power.

"What?" I whispered. "What is it that you've made of me?"

Lord Aro's smile glittered in the half-light of the Lord's hall. "A vampire sweetling…I've made you a vampire."