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Prologue
'T w a s A M i d n i g h t D r e a r y
IT WAS A dark and gloomy night in late November of the year 1663. Every resident in a small London village hid within the impenetrable walls of their homes, praying to their god that they would not be victims of the pale ones that night. The pale ones were terrifying, heartless beings with pale porcelain flesh. The village was plagued by these pale ones since the first residents settled and their numbers always remained limited, as the vampires stalked their prey by day and hunted them by night to sustain their everlasting thirst for human blood.
Only one man in the village stood up to the vampires: Carlisle Cullen. He reluctantly took on the profession of hunting the vampires after the untimely death of his father. Hunting the ruthless creatures was a risky task, proven so when his father was killed by one himself. But unlike his careless father, Carlisle had something to lose: he had a beautiful wife and young daughter to take care of.
His young daughter, Adelina Carlisle Cullen, awaited his return home from a hard day's work when midnight crept upon them. And so on that very night, just like any other, six-year-old Adelina set herself down on her wooden toy chest and waited for him to come home. She inherited her father's light blonde hair, her mother's curly ringlets, and big blue eyes accompanied by long eyelashes. Their neighbors thought of the Cullen family as the standards to meet when it came to perfection and beauty; as if they were enchanting China dolls to be marveled and adored.
When raindrops slowly began to beat against the paned glass windows of the small cottage, Adelina hugged her dolly closer to her and watched the droplets race down to pass the time. Her mother, Rosaline, was fast asleep down the narrow hallway – she was used to her husband returning home late at night. Even at her ripe age, Adelina found time to worry about her father and a dozen questions plagued her mind when he was just a minute later than usual.
Just as she thought she saw his skinny figure emerge from the treeline across the path, she heard a loud crash downstairs. She froze and stayed completely silent as she heard footsteps follow the crash. The bedroom door creaked open and her mother – dressed in a silky nightgown with blonde ringlets spilling over her shoulders – slipped through and shut the door again. Her young face was vexed with fear as she listened for any indication of activity downstairs and suddenly, it dawned on her daughter – someone bad was in the house.
"Mama, what is hap–"
"Shh!" Rosaline hushed her and wedged a chair beneath the doorknob. She had no means to protect herself and her daughter and it would be useless to hide – she could only buy them another minute. No one in their right mind was out at this hour and she acted before coming to the conclusion.
The vampires were in the house.
"Darling, you must hide!" she whispered frantically as she removed the cushions from atop the toy chest at the window and opened it. She picked her daughter up and placed her inside the spacious box. "No matter what may happen or what you may hear, do not make a sound, Adelina. Promise me!"
"I promise."
Just as she was about to close the chest, the young girl cried out in a whisper, "No, Mama! Don't go!"
"I love you, my dear Adelina." tears welled up in her blue eyes, "Do not ever forget that I love you, baby girl."
"I love you, too, Mama."
As Rosaline closed the chest, her heart sunk as she realized that would be that last time she ever saw her daughter. Adelina's frightened eyes were that last thing she saw of her beautiful child before she closed the lid, listening carefully for the footsteps of multiple intruders raising the kitchen downstairs. Her heart shattered to pieces as she set each cushion perfectly atop, making it look as thought it was untouched. When the footsteps of multiple intruders bounded up the stairs, Rosaline backed away from the chest so as not to bring attention to it and climbed into her daughter's unmade bed. She shook from head to toe with nerves, her eyes glued to the chest where inside, her little girl refrained from wiping her teary eyes. The door creaked open again.
Adelina could only remember hearing murmurs as a short, inaudible conversation took place. Then, a loud, blood-curdling scream emitted from her mother's lips as she was dragged from the bed and onto the floor with a crash. The screams grew louder as the horrible soulless creatures tortured her. Adeline shivered with fear and just as she thought to cry out for her mother, her screams were cut off....everything return to an eerie silence.
Many moments passed.
Where was her father? Why hadn't not come home? They needed him! She needed him. She kept her promise to her mother and didn't dare move a muscle or draw in a single breath, but waited many long moments more before she decided was safe to emerge from her hiding space. Once she opened the lid, throwing off the cushions in the process, she wished she would have stayed in that chest and died –but Death would not allow her that kindness, for in front of her laid her mother's limp figure. Her nightgown was splotched with crimson until there was no white patch left to it any longer. Her neck was twisted in a sickening way and raw, red bite marks littered her arms and neck.
"Mama?!" she cried and shook her in attempts to awaken her from her irreversible slumber, "Mama, please! Wake up! Daddy's going to be home soon. He'll know what to do."
Her attempts to awaken her mother worked to no avail; she was already dead and not even the venomous bite of a vampire could save her. It took many more moments of her shaking her mother, covering her own small hands in crimson blood in the process, until the little girl finally comprehended her mother would not open her eyes ever again. She would not see her warm smile in the morning at breakfast as she laid freshly baked bread from the brick oven on the table or her kind eyes when she told her a story to put her to sleep.
Adelina unwittingly ran down the staircase and through the house to the front door. She threw it open and ran out onto the desolate streets of the village, oblivious to the fact that the vampire were still at large. Oil lamps dimly illuminated the dirt paths which she raced down towards the path her father followed home.
"SOMEONE, HELP! HELP ME!" she screamed as loudly as her small voice would allow her, "PLEASE! PLEASE HELP!"
But no one came. "PLEASE, IM
FRIGHTENED! PLEASE HELP ME! SOMEO–" Adelina shrieked as a pair of arms grabbed her and a hand clamped down over her mouth. She thrashed around and kicked out at anything she could until she smelled it – saw dust and freshly mown grass. Carlisle.
"Daddy!" cried out the girl.
He arrived her to a cluster of bushes and set her down. As he frantically checked her over for wounds, his heart dropped into his stomach as he took notice to her bloodstained hands. "Adelina! Why are you out here all alone?!You know it is not safe!"
"Father!" she heaved, "Father, it's mother! She won't wake up!"
A dreadful expression formed on his young face as he realized his worst nightmare came true, at last. His dangerous line of work caught up to him and his beloved family at last. He gathered her into his arms, ran as quickly as he could to their cottage and once they reached it, he barged in and set her down before running up the stairs. Carlisle raced into his bedroom and found the blankets on the bed in disarray. When he raced down the hall and stopped in his daughter's doorway, he found his wife's body as the cursed vampires left it – mangled and bloodied. He let out a loud cry, a cry of misery and fear and despair and lost love. The love of his life was dead.
He gathered her into his arms and kissed her warm skin, whispering a few incoherent, loving words to his wife's corpse before he rushed back down the stairs. He dressed Adelina into her thickest, warmest dressings, gathered her up again and bolted out of the house. They couldn't stay there, not when the vampire could come back to finish them off. Carlisle knew how their minds worked and they never left any witnesses of their attacks alive. They only left people to pick up the corpses the next day.
In the darkness of the woods surrounding the village, dozen of pairs of beady crimson eyes followed them, yearning for more human blood. They leapt out of the brush and charged at the defenseless pair mid-run. Without warning or even the slightest sound, one of the vampires knocked Carlisle off of his feet, sending both of them tumbling to the ground.
"My, my, my – look what we have here, boys!" one cackled as a sadistic grin formed on his devilish face. The other vampires held them down effortlessly as the man, their leader, hovered over them. Adelina screamed fearfully and reached out for her father.
"Please! Take me! Take me, not my daughter! Please!" begged the father, but they did not care for his cries and pleas for mercy. All they wanted was blood.
They silenced him by snapping his leg – just as easily as one could snap a twig – to ensure that he could not run away. Another sunk their razor sharp teeth into the wrist of the young girl and she let out agonizing cries. At the sound of her unruly suffering, Carlisle shouted and thrashed against the iron grips of his captors. Two of them bit into each of his wrists in turn and he shouted out in agony as sensations akin to fire coursed through his veins.
Their clan leader watched on with a satisfied grin. This was the man whose father had killed dozens of his members, this was the man who was following in his footsteps. He needed to know what it felt like to lose something important. And it was then that he thought of it: what pain was worse than watching your own child, your own flesh and blood, die? And live forever with that pain?
"Leave them." his voice was shrill and cold like ice.
The father and daughter were abandoned by the vampires, left in the street to await their deaths, and every neighbor lay awake in their homes, listening to their helpless screams. Carlisle felt the scorching venom run through his veins as he began to transition into the very monsters he hunted. His eyelids weighed down with exhaustion but he knew he had to stay conscious to save his daughter, who writhed in silent pain beside him.
Her screams had long stopped as her voice grew hoarse and she could do nothing else but weep. Carlisle struggled to prop himself up onto his elbows, pushing against the pain as he crawled to where she lay a few feet away. He lifted her bitten arm from the ground and pressed his mouth against the venomous bite, treating it like that of a snake's; sucking and spitting, sucking and spitting.
The entire time, Adelina continued to weep and when spots began to creep into Carlisle's darkening vision, all he could think of was his dead wife and dying child. This was the first of many tragedies to follow Adelina Cullen – and a change in her name and era would not change any of it.
This is the tale of the first Cullen.