In the shadows (Caius Volturi)

Talks with Alec

***Shado's position***

I was lying in my bed. It was nice and the moon shone into my room. I knew that the Volturi were outside just watching. It was one of those sleepless nights, the nights where my thoughts wouldn't shut up so I could sleep. I don't need sleep anyway, not as much as others. I was afraid to sleep. I didn't want to see my nightmares because I knew they were not nightmares; they were the truth and that scared me. So many things scared me when I thought about it, but to make me feel better I didn't think about it.

So, it was on one of those nights where it was cold outside, very cold. You could hear the wind beat against the trees and you could almost feel the darkness. It was quiet in my room and I also couldn't hear the rest of the family downstairs. God knows what they were doing. Caius had gone out to hunt. He took Afton and Felix him with him as the two of them had been out for quite a while. They'd probably be in Seattle by now drinking some person's blood.

I didn't really care from whom they took blood maybe that made me a bad person, but they would die one day anyway. It didn't matter and to be honest. The Volturi we're not worse than the Cullen's. Humans deserve death, they had all sinned, but the poor animals didn't. Besides animals were dying out while the human population was getting bigger and bigger, and I have not once in my life met someone who has never done anything wrong.

I had been lying in my bed for hours now, it was way past midnight, and I was bored. Without a second thought I slipped out of my bed and opened the window. The cold air whipped against my face and through my short hair. I don't like long hair; it gets in your way when you try to shoot arrows.

I had been staring out of the window for not even 5 minutes when I decided I wanted to go out. I saw Alec on a tree opposite my window. He waved but I ignored him. I put my hands out and pulled myself up, so now I was hanging at the side of the house. Within a second Santiago jumped to me.

"My Queen may I ask what you are doing?" he said with a confused expression. I could barely see him properly it was so dark, but I liked the darkness his red eyes glowed and it made him look like a dangerous predator, which he was.

I just shrugged not giving him a real answer and started climbing up the side of the house. He tried to get me to stop, told me it was dangerous, and I should not do this, that Caius would not be happy. But I ignored him. So many people telling me what to do, who I should be, and how I should behave. They all had no idea, no idea about me, and they didn't want to learn. I was not the perfect person and that was a problem. I reached the roof and sat down.

I could see the Woods. Endless trees. I could hear a river close by, but that was all. I couldn't hear any animals I didn't have super hearing. A few seconds later someone sat down beside me, but I didn't look up to see it was.

"Your thoughts were too loud, weren't they?" Alec asks. I half expected to feel his body warmth due to how close he was sitting to me, but then I remembered he didn't have any. He was a vampire. He was dead. He had no body heat.

"Yes, they were too loud. They never shut up, ever".

"I had that very long time. Not the problem to sleep, I was a vampire by then. We don't sleep, I mean the thoughts that I wouldn't leave me alone. The 'what ifs' and the nightmares. You still get them when you don't sleep, just while you're awake, you get flashes of your past it's not pretty.

"What do you want then? What do you want to see? If you only saw the good things in life, you'd be naïve. It would be even more painful if anything were to happen ever."

You know, I've been alive for over 1000 years Shado, and I've never met anyone like you. I've met women that threw themselves at any man and I also knew women like you. Secluded ones. Ones that did not care about anything, but you still are different. How come? What happened?"

"Life" is all I said. Alec was a nice person to talk to. He had also survived things he should not have. Every vampire did. Barely any humans were changed just because they were in a relationship with a vampire or something. It was weird, that just did not happen. Normally humans were changed because they were dying or because a vampire was sloppy while drinking and then left them black thinking, they were dead.

"My sister and I were burnt at the stack. They thought we were witches. The witch Twins. They were afraid of us, so they burnt us. I remember Aro saved us. He changed us into vampires, gave us a family, made us his guards.

"People fear what they do not understand. That's just how it is. They say knowledge is power, but it's only the power against fear. We will never know everything, that's why we fear things."