Chapter 16

Love Vilified

It seems almost effortless, the way she has slipped into my life. In many ways I am certain it is like a barbed dagger; the damage is minimal when it is plunged in, but it destroys you when it is removed. My captive has captured me. She has no idea the depths of my fears – not that I will kill her – but that I know something will go wrong. I have lived fifteen centuries and each time I allowed myself to hope, it has gone wrong. And still I am helpless to these feelings of wary optimism.

She wants to know what keeps me from being happy. I will tell her, but it hurts me to remember. Some memories are painful, but others are full of guilt and I have worked hard to bury them. So I take her down to the sitting room and she relaxes on the one sofa which was not destroyed when I fought Carlisle. She seems awed by the remains of the other, but she makes no comment. I pull her against me. Somehow speaking such things is easier when I can feel her and touch her.

"You're right, Tessa isn't the only sad story I have to tell." I know she is listening as she rests her head against my chest, with one arm around me and the other holding my hand. "It was not long before I met Vladmir...not long as in around a hundred years. There was a lot of change happening in this area. It was what you now call the middle ages. It was when I still felt I had the power to influence regimes and governments, and I would go to war with this faction or that leader. It has taken a long time for that passion to die.

"It was in the aftermath of one such battle that I found her. I have it written in my journals the exact conflict but it could have been the Cumans or Uzes, it has all run together in my mind. What I will never forget is the ghost.

"I saw her after the first battle as I went out among the gravely wounded. I dressed in black so as not to be seen but she was dressed in white. I observed her flitting among the dead and it looked as if she was doing exactly what I was – feeding on those left behind to die. I tried to catch her, but she fled faster than I could follow.

"The forces marched. I heard rumors through the ranks of the ghost which had been seen, and there was great fear that it's presence could turn the tide of the conflict. For days both armies marched, gathering strength for the next encounter. When it came it was fierce and bloody. By nightfall there was a field littered with corpses and the dying. In those times there was little that could be done for the injured. What can easily be mended today by surgeons was considered lethal then. Infection ran rampant among injured and they would slow armies down if they were taken along. Sometimes allies would go among the wounded and finish them before they left, to save them from the wild animals and collect up needed weapons and supplies.

"But after this battle both sides were still camped nearby so anyone attempting to loot the fallen could have faced attack. Still it was my habit in those days to go out and end their suffering. I saw her again, making no secret of her presence. When a small detail of soldiers came at her I heard her laugh as she easily evaded them. She was fast, even more so than I. I did not chase her this time, but instead I made my presence known and retreated into the forest. She followed me and easily caught me even as I was able to leap into the trees.

"When I first saw her she was stunning. Easily the most beautiful creature I'd ever seen, she had flawless white skin and ebony hair that flowed past her waist. Her eyes were red like mine, and she wore a white silk gown that had fallen to tatters at the hem. When I spoke, she didn't understand my language, but I understood hers. I found out that she was newly created, what we call newborn. For the first year they have greater strength, speed, and stamina, but also less reason and greater hunger. Her name was Cecilia. She had traveled a great distance and she was lost from the one who had created her. I pieced together her story and it seemed that one of our kind had created several newborns to help in a conflict, but she had escaped him.

"She was wary of me but I was able to teach her some things that were part of the law. The way she was openly allowing herself to be seen and her abilities to be witnessed would draw the wrong kind of attention. I found she'd also been stealing from the dead and she'd amassed a small fortune she'd hidden away. When I questioned her about why she needed money, she told me she had a child to take care of back in her home country. She'd been a widow when she was created and she remembered thinking that she would be able to take revenge upon her husband's killer. She had fled when it became apparent that she couldn't remain around her son. She hoped to carry the treasures back home to provide for him.

"In human years she was older than me but I was several hundred years beyond her after the change. We formed an uneasy friendship and I taught her the laws of the Volturi – not because I believed in them myself – but because I had run across a couple groups of hunters they had sent out to enforce their laws, especially those concerning secrecy.

She seemed to grow weary of the battles after our first few months together. The season had turned to winter and it was tedious following the armies. And so I suggested that she could come with me to a place I had away from much of civilization. I had been granted a small keep for helping in some conflict years prior. It was not much, but it was away from the constant misery of war. She came away with me and for six months she shared my home.

"I don't think she loved me. But that did not stop me from loving her. When she came to me as a woman I think it was more out of curiosity than any desire she had for me. But I was in awe of her. Her strength and passion were boundless and I made up my mind that I would do whatever it took to keep her, and to make her fall in love with me. As soon as the spring came she began making plans to leave. She was desperate to return to her son, since she was calmer and able to control her hunger. I was anxious to keep her with me. I invented one excuse after another for why she couldn't go; from flooding of the plains to political change in her homeland. One morning she packed up and kissed me goodbye.

"For a full day I agonized over her loss, then I locked up my home and set off after her. She wasn't hard to find since I knew her hunting habits, but she seemed to be almost upset that I'd followed her. After days of enduring her coldness and quiet, I fought with her. I demanded to know what was wrong and why she was angry with me. It was then that she admitted that she was not just going back home to check on her son, but to change him. She knew the law and she knew if I was involved I would be guilty along with her. I spent the weeks of our journey trying to talk her out of her decision. It was a futile effort.

"When she came to the village where she lived, she kept her presence secret, and instead spent days haunting the home of her sister who was taking care of the boy. When I saw him, he wasn't the young boy I'd expected, but a young man of thirteen. At the time thirteen was considered a man in many ways. He was old enough to become apprenticed in a trade, old enough to court, and old enough to be legally responsible for his actions.

"When Cecilia finally made her presence known, I went with her. Her sister was afraid of us, but her son Daniel was overjoyed to see his mother. She gave her sister the treasures she had collected, but her sister seemed to understand that they came from the dead and she wouldn't even touch them. Daniel didn't want to let his mother go.

"Against the protests of her sister we took him for a walk in the evening and Cecilia explained what had happened. I didn't want her to tell, but what I wanted was not her concern. For a week we took young Daniel on these nightly walks, and I think she was trying to decide if he had a good future with her sister, or if he would be better off with her. I really think she had decided to leave him behind, but on the last visit he protested.

"When he broke down and clung to her, it was more than she could handle. He begged to go with her and she had to explain that it would be too dangerous for a human to stay with us. Then he asked to be changed. She knew she couldn't do it. She knew she was still too controlled by her thirst. She also remembered the pain of the change and she didn't want to be the one to inflict that on her child. So she asked me to do it.

"Of course I made all the appropriate arguments, but I loved her, and I had this dream of keeping her with me. Perhaps with her son we could live as a family. We explained everything to him as best we could. I told him of the laws and about careful hunting and keeping our existence secret. I warned him about the pain, but nothing seemed to deter him from his desire to be with Cecilia. Even stranger was his acceptance of me. In all of our exchanges he had been respectful and treated me almost as he might a father. It must have been obvious that I loved his mother.

"The decision was made and we took Daniel off alone that night. In the quiet solitude of the woods I bit him. There was no temptation to finish him as I had felt before with Tessa, though I had to order Cecilia away when she showed signs of hunger toward him. I held him during the agony of the change. I listened as he begged to die, and I watched him writhe in torment as he felt his body being consumed by fire. And when he screamed, I clutched his face to me so his mother wouldn't have to hear; though I know she heard anyway.

"When the transformation was complete I knew I had made a mistake. Cecilia was no longer the most beautiful creature I'd ever seen, for now it was Daniel. He was an angel of incomparable beauty. His hair lay in dark curls just past his collar, his skin was perfection with still the rosy hint of life on his cheeks. His grace was unmatched by anything that ever walked the earth, and when he spoke it was music. I fell in love with him as if I had given birth to him myself. The joy he felt at his strength and newly awakened senses was magnified to his mother and me. We began to travel back to my home, while he leaped through the trees and ran like the wind. When he first hunted, I steered him to a party of hunters and advised him of which to choose, but he took all three!

"I had time to work with him on our journey and by the time we reached my home he had learned about being cautious and selective when hunting. I warned him to never hunt near our home, a lesson Cecilia and I already knew.

"For a time we were happy. We were a family in every way possible and it didn't take long before Daniel started to call me papa. It was maybe a year we had together – a year of living in bliss with the two people I loved. I thought of them as my angel and my goddess and in many ways I think I worshiped them.

"When Cecilia began taking Daniel out hunting without me I saw nothing wrong with a mother wanting to spend time with her son. She said he liked to paint and either before or after hunting he would spend time painting. She showed me his work and he was quite good, whether it was landscapes or the portraits of his mother. I still have some of them stored around here, since he was quite talented.

"It was while they were gone that I had a strange visit from a group of horsemen. It seemed they were on a hunt for the monsters that had been terrorizing the countryside. The stories they shared with me left me in shock. As soon as they were on their way I left on a hunt of my own.

"I could follow their scent but half a day away it became unnecessary because the smells of decay were everywhere! It was a small village – not exactly in our territory – but close. I was horrified at the magnitude of the carnage. In the fifty homes that were clustered along a dusty road, there wasn't a soul left alive. Men, women, children, infants, were all dead, all drained of their life's blood. Even the livestock had been taken. It reminded me so much of the Volturi, I was actually wary of finding them lurking about. It was a senseless slaughter and to me it looked like it had happened over only a few days.

"When I located Cecilia and Danial they were near another village about five miles away. Daniel was painting a portrait and as soon as he saw me he ran to hug me, calling "papa!' Cecilia was not as happy to see me, since she knew what I must have seen already. I immediately asked why they had done such a thing, and she had the decency to look guilty. But Daniel looked confused. 'They are only humans papa, why do you care about them? They are not in our territory and I wanted them so badly!'

"I tried not to let the horror show on my face. I tried to explain about secrecy and the law and then spun off into what was right and what was wrong. The casual taking of innocent life was the very reason I'd left the Volturi, and here was this boy explaining that the humans were nothing but food for him! To make matters worse, he walked to the nearby village to show me why he felt the way he did. It was there I discovered he had a power that was terrifying in its simplicity. As he walked down the road people came. They ran to him joyously, reaching to touch him and weeping at the sight of him! It seemed I was not the only one to see him as a beautiful angel.

"As I watched I saw a father hand him a child of about two encouraging him to take her as a gift! I saw my son Daniel hold the child and prepare to feed on her even while the crowd pressed in on him, and it was only my voice – my cry of command that saved her. Daniel was no longer a newborn so he should have had more restraint than he was showing. I took him away from the village and I had to use my command on them to keep the villagers from following their angel. I had to keep them from following him to their deaths. I took Daniel and Cecilia a day away from any place where there were people. I tried to convince them how wrong they were and how they couldn't ever do what they had done again. She agreed with me, but Daniel, my beautiful son refused to see reason. The people never fled from him. They never saw him as a monster and he saw no reason to refuse what they freely offered.

"I used my power on him. I pushed my strength, my will and my command onto him. He didn't realize, but she did. I would have done anything to save them. I don't think she realized how dire the situation was becoming. Whoever had changed her had already broken the law and would be attracting the attention of the Volturi. It was likely that they would hear about the monster destroying villages and come to find him – come to find us.

"We went home and I tried to teach Daniel about respecting human life. I tried to remind him that he himself was human once. And I kept a closer watch on the two of them. A month passed and it seemed to be working.

'But one night while I was caught up in my writing they disappeared. I chased them down and found them at the village where Daniel was considered an angel. I followed the sounds of the screams where the first bodies had already been discovered. I found them sitting by the fire in a small home as one by one it seemed the family came and offered themselves to him. I was heartbroken. Cecilia was with him but she was not feeding. She was the mother giving her son the sweet he wanted. I ordered her away. It took my whole will to force her to leave her son since she knew he was in danger from me.

"With her gone I took him outside and attacked him. He didn't fight back at first; I was papa and he was so saddened and confused at what I was doing. Without his newborn strength he didn't stand a chance against me. The brutality necessary to destroy one of our kind is horrifying even if you don't know the one you are attacking. But to know him and to love him the way I did was more than anyone should ever have to go through. He was my son and I killed him. I destroyed him utterly, and I burned the remains.

"Before the flames even died she came at me. Cecilia came back and she knew what I had done. She flung herself screaming at my back, biting and clawing like a lioness defending her cub. I tried to defend against her attack. I threw her off and tried to reason with her. I tried to command her even, but she was in a state of fury that had no reason. She attacked me again and again. I tried to tell her I loved her but she screamed how much she hated me. I could see she was perfectly willing to kill me, and I finally had no choice but to fight her. The whole time I begged her, pleaded with her to see reason and forgive me. It was no use; in the end her body was added to the flames along with our son. I actually threw myself onto the flames after her. But my body refused to stay there and I went off to heal from the burns.

"I have never returned to the keep. I wandered alone for another hundred years. Later I was able to recover the paintings Daniel had done, but it was quite some time before I could even look at them. I have seven in storage. Two paintings are of her, one is a self portrait, two are landscapes, one is of me, and the most horrifying is the one he did after they destroyed the village, with bodies rotting in the sun. I think a part of him understood the horror of what he'd become – of what I'd made him."

I can't believe she is still with me. She hasn't said a word nor asked a question the whole time I was speaking. When I finally pause and look at her I can see she is crying. Like before she is shedding her tears for my sorrow, only this time I almost wish she would not. This time I have to acknowledge my own complicity in what happened and it makes me feel even more guilty to see her tears. I pull her to me and try to sooth her. "Please do not cry Summer, it's been a very long time." I wipe her tears on my sleeve, and kiss her. She is so fragile as I hold her, and still she cries.

"Stefan, it's not your fault! You didn't make her and you didn't decide to make him either. You tried to teach them and you did everything you could do to make it right. Think about it, if she had tried to change him you would have kept her from killing him, and the results would have been the same. The only thing you did was love them – you can't feel guilty for that."

She touches my face and I want to believe her. I want to take the absolution she offers. But I know that I am the only one who can still remember them and their ghosts condemn me. I found out later that if we had only waited to turn Daniel until he was a little bit older, until his voice changed and there were other signs of maturity, he would have been past the point of his immature selfishness. Maybe six months would have been all he needed. Six months to preserve my family forever. Instead I lost them both.

Summer has pulled herself onto my lap and she is curled against me with her arms wrapped around my neck. I am not sure why this brings me such comfort There is a part of me that dreads this closeness. I have seen so much of my life laid to waste. She is innocence and purity such as I have never known, and it saddens me that my taint has already begun to stain her. She thinks it matters that she has such a limited time to live, and yet to me they all are but wisps. But I am weak. To hear her declarations of love reminds me of my own time with Cecilia. It reminds me how I fell so easily to her beauty and her wild aloof spirit. What is love but a snare that captures and binds the innocent and foolish.

In this calm I feel the desire to tell her more. "Summer, there is a part of my life that puts you at great risk. You know I've told you of the Volturi and how I feared they wanted me destroyed. I was wrong in this belief for so long. They feel I have been adequately 'punished' for my defiance. But it is now that they would like nothing better than to be given an excuse to destroy me. Vladmir and I are forever a thorn in their sides with our open dissension and criticism of their leadership.

"But we have not always been an idle threat. You see it was only a short time after I lost Cecilia and Danial, my second family, that I met Vladmir. I was wandering Europe at the time and I kept hearing talk of creatures that sounded like me. But they eluded me each time I tried to search for them. I knew that the one who created my Cecilia was still out there, unless the Volturi had found him, but I never got closer than the rumors and legends.

"I met Vladmir during some conflict or war. It was a time of great change and the borders changed almost as fast as the map makers could draw them. But I did not meet him on the field of battle, but at a large roadside inn on a night when the patrons were gathering for yet another skirmish. The drinks flowed freely for the men who would be facing their deaths not much further up the road. I used to frequent such establishments myself because that was where I could hear the most accurate news concerning upcoming battles.

"At first I did not notice him, but as the evening wore on I noticed a table at the far side of the common room seemed to be getting louder and more raucous. A small crowd had gathered around it. As I listened and watched, I saw that one man was the cause of the all the furor. A game of chance was in progress, and this one man was winning an inordinate number of games. Strangely though the mood was not hostile, but was one of camaraderie and excitement. The man was telling stories, cracking jokes, and treating his fellow gamers with good-natured teasing. He seemed to draw people to him like a magnet; like me.

"I moved closer to observe and that's when I noticed he wasn't a man at all. He was indeed like me! But he fit in so well among the men, it was not easy to notice his lack of heartbeat or his scent. If it took me so long to notice him, I realized immediately that he was already well aware of me. It was in his quick look and the way his lips quirked in a smile only I would notice. I was fascinated and I spent the hours of the evening just watching him. When the men drifted away to sleep or seek the comfort of a woman, I followed him out into the night.

"I expected an adversary but he introduced himself in a friendly manner, with a smile that I did not expect from one of our kind. He had adopted many human mannerisms, and I had to laugh as he explained how he'd taken his name from a former leader of his homeland in Wallachia. He had actually known the entire royal line, but it was Prince Vlad Draculea III who impressed him most.

"As he put it: 'He never gave up and he never gave in. He was a marvelous man in his treatment of his people. He took a lawless country overrun with thieves and uncaring aristocracy and brought law, and justice. But he wasn't one to hold himself above it all; he had higher standards for himself and those in power, and if the rest didn't live up to his example he had them removed and replaced. He was the kind of leader a man wanted to follow into battle; and I do mean follow, as he was out in front facing his enemies. He had a lot of enemies, especially among the Turks. His own brother converted to Islam and joined his enemies. He was a man of unwavering passion and I was happy to choose his name as my own. If I can add to his legend, I consider it an honor.'

"I asked him about his own origins and he simply told me he was too old to remember. I asked if he had known Cecilia and he indeed knew her. His story shocked me as he informed me that the Volturi had created her along with many others at the behest of Pope Pious II. It seems the crusades had only gained limited support against the advance of the Ottoman Empire and other Islamic groups. It was hoped that our kind would be able to support the Roman efforts to hold onto Christian countries and cities.

"Apparently the Volturi were good at creating newborns, but not so good at controlling them. Vladmir laughed when he told me how they'd started with a dozen and had to destroy two and were only able to take six back home with them and the other four disappeared.

"I told him about Cecilia and even Daniel, and he patted my shoulder in sympathy. 'I know all about them, I tracked her and discovered their remains. I have actually been looking for you. I appreciate you telling me her story.'

"I asked him why he was looking for me and he smiled. It seems he'd pieced together a story about one who could draw people to him with the sound of his voice. He could make armies fight for him and convince rulers to take up his cause. He seemed completely convinced that I was that person. He didn't even wait for me to confirm or deny his theory but went on to outline his own plans.

"He was building an empire for himself. He had taken over the abandoned Poenari Castle where Vlad the impaler had ruled, and he was having it rebuilt as his home and for those who would ally with him. There were already six of our kind plus him and he wanted me to join them. His wife was back at the castle overseeing the work, and he'd also found the other three who had escaped the Volturi, and they had joined as well. He was currently traveling and looking for humans with certain gifts or abilities that might come through if they were changed. He thought I would be very helpful in controlling his newborns until they were past their voracious hunger. He was of the mindset that the Volturi did not have our best interests at heart, and he wanted to be able to resist them if they came to enforce their laws on him.

"His plan was to to create a small army, but not to attack others of our kind, but to force political change and help stabilize his part of the country. He could foresee a place of peace and prosperity, where new ideas and philosophies could flourish. He wanted to see advances made in art and literature and science, which was slow in coming with all the efforts going into wars and crusades. I listened to him and it was as if he read what was in my heart. I had seen bits of what was then modern philosophy as I'd traveled and I could see changes occurring in places that were peaceful with stable governments in place. I was at first prepared to deny him and turn him down, but the dream he unfolded was my dream too! A hundred years had passed since I'd lost my goddess and my angel, and I was ready to help Vladmir embark on a dream. But it wasn't just his dream, it was our dream. In a very short time I discovered him to be not only an ally and a companion, but my friend."

a/n: Okay I realize I'm riding roughshod over a lot of history and geography in these chapters. I should have researched it and made it more accurate, but it's fan fiction and the specifics are not important to the story, and I'd rather write than research... and I'm lazy.