-2- (Time of Dying - Three Days Grace)
When I wake up the pain is just in my throat. It feels like someone shoved a white-hot iron down my throat. I look around to see that I am in an old bedroom. Dust covers mostly everything. I remember my name is Sophia and I am with someone named James. “James?” I call out hoping someone will come.
“Love,” He says coming in and kissing my on the cheek. Am I with him? I suppose I should act as I know.
“Why does my throat burn?” I ask.
“You are thirsty for blood,” He says.
“Blood.”
“Love, you are a vampire, I’ll explain everything after we hunt,” He promises. We go out to a quaint little village where he allows me to hunt. After four humans he stops me and on the way home he explains the laws vampires must follow.
He tells me about our supernatural abilities and that some of us have gifts. He tells me to look at him and looking him in the eyes is when I experience a flashback of some sort; he experiences it with me.
James looks human. His skin is tan and his eyes are bright blue. He is taking out a trash bag in an alley way - between city apartments. He hears a noise that causes him to drop that bags. “Hello? Is anyone there?”
Something flashes in front of him that he can’t exactly comprehend exactly what it is. It comes by again and he tries to back out of the alley way before he is flung into the brick wall. He groans and places and hand behind his head to see his fingers covered in sticky, crimson blood. He grimaces as he weakly tries to get up and tries to defend himself.
“A fighter?” A bell voice asks.
“Who’s there?” He coughs out.
A lovely figure stands in front of him. Her golden hair, flawless fair skin, but her eyes are a shocking crimson. She inclines her head as if she were going to kiss him, but he screams as her razor sharp teeth pierce his flesh.
“This is my past,” He announces after the flashback is over. “This is your gift.”
“My g-gift?” I wrinkle my nose at the word. It seems like it doesn’t fit, but I accept it since he is the only person I have in the world now.
“You can see people’s pasts or have a ‘flashback’ this is wonderful,” He tells me.
“It is?”
“Not all vampires have powers,” James explains. “Traits brought in from their human life come into their vampire life.”
“You knew me as a human, didn’t you?” I ask.
He shrugs, “Only for a short time. I found you locked up and I saved you.”
“Locked up, where?”
“By these horrible people, they wanted you for your power, but I was passing by and I caught your scent. I saw you being tortured and I saved you.”
“Oh,” I almost regret asking.
“You are safe now,” He assures me. There is a knock on the door and I feel James tense up, “Stay here.”
My super hearing allows me to hear the conversation, but I do as James asked and do not move.
“We want the girl,” An unfamiliar voice demands.
“Girl?”
“The one you kidnapped from the asylum.”
“Asylum? I believe you are mistaken, my friends.”
“You know exactly what we are talking about,” Another voice hisses. “We sent our best girl in to find her and we intend to get her back. She is rightfully ours.”
“If she was your ‘best girl’ then surely I would have never gotten a hold of my girl.” I debate going in and helping James. He sounds angry, but he told me to stay. What could they be talking about?
“Chelsea never fails,” The first voice says. I have a flash of a face. A stunning pale woman with light brown hair and crimson eyes. Chelsea. “We want Sophia.”
I gasp. What is going on?
“You can’t claim her after I already have,” James defends.
“She is the lost princess that Chelsea claimed for us at the asylum, not your-” I drown out the voices. Lost princess, Chelsea, asylum... Memories flooded back in my head with a lot of pain. The lightning. My family dying in a train accident. The invaders.
James scoffs, “If I would have never set up the invasion you wouldn’t be interested in her!”
I gasp. It was him! He betrayed me. He was the reason my family was dead and I ended up in an insane asylum. If there wasn’t an invasion my family and I would be living our normal happy lives ruling France.
I had to escape, but where would I go? All I knew was that it had to be out of here. I remembered Chelsea and how she seemed so easy to trust. Could I go with the people who said they were with her. I get off the bed and enter the room James is standing with the strangers.
“I thought I said-”
I cut James off, “You lied to me! How dare you! You caused my family to die and me to end up in an asylum!”
“Sweetie you did that to yourself, all I did was start an invasion. You guys chose to go on a train and you chose to be stubborn.”
I slap him, “You b**tard! I don’t want anything to do with you ever again!” I look up to the strangers, “Whoever you are just get me away from this man!”
“Alec, Jane,” A man with long dark hair calls. Everyone has the chalky skin and red eyes so I can really only tell the people apart by their height and hair. Two young people, maybe twins - who are probably sixteen - come up and James begins to scream. “Don’t dispose of him,” He tells them. “We just need him to suffer for now.”
“Yes, master,” They reply in unison.
“I am Aro,” The man tells me. “This is Marcus,” - he gestures to a man who is slightly shorter than him with dark hair - “and Caius.” The other man he gestures to has snow white hair.
“The twins, Jane and Alec, are a part of our guard. We are the Volturi.”
“The law enforcers?” I ask.
“That we are, you would be a fine addition to our guard,” Aro notes.
“Anything to get me as far away from him,” I say glaring at James.
_________________________________________________________________________
The Volturi welcomed me warmly. Chelsea was one of the first people to greet me and she apologized for leaving me.
“I don’t blame you for James. You couldn’t have known he would be your replacement,” I sigh.
I am given a high ranking on the guard just under the dangerous twins, Alec and Jane. I don’t really talk to them, but we seem to have a mutual level of respect. Aro decided to make me the ‘assassin’ of the guard because I could see if the vampire really committed the crime they were charged with. I didn’t have a problem with killing, it helped me relieve the anger I kept inside.
One thing that didn’t change with me becoming a vampire was that I was still an introvert. Sure, I would talk to Chelsea, Felix, and Demetri, but I didn’t trust them with everything.
Tonight marked a new year, although we didn’t pay attention to time as some nomads did. The Romanian coven... or the few that were left had been celebrating the year 1600 - their 500th year of surviving their battle with the Volturi. Aro had told me that they were carelessly killing humans and coming close to exposing vampires, that was where I came in. The coven comprised of ten vampires and my job was to kill most of them, leaving only one or two to pass on word that the Volturi meant business.
My job was fairly simple. I managed to isolate each vampire when killing so the others wouldn’t be alarmed and alert the others. I left two vampires remaining, Stefan and Vladimir. This evening they looked terrified, their celebration was long over. The fear in their eyes had told me that they had heard of me and my work. “I want you to go now. If I hear word of you stepping out of line again I will not hesitate to decapitate and burn each of you very slowly,” I warn.
“Understand?
They nod before fleeing. I almost want to laugh, but I have to dispose of the vampires’ limbs before humans start to investigate. I collect all the limbs and bring them to a clearing nearby to burn them. The purple pillar of smokes arises with a sickly sweet smell that I’ve become familiar with before returning home to prepare for my next mission.