Sanguine - Aro Volturi

Chapter fourteen

I was exhausted. I could practically feel my body starting to shut itself down. Every minute crawled by like another hour. The pain that encased my body had dulled to a numb feeling, with every inch of my skin and muscles aching it was difficult to locate an area that felt worse that the rest of me. I had stopped being able to feel my hands a while ago, my struggling had obviously caused the restraints to cut deep enough to damage some nerves.

I was dehydrated and hungry, I hadn't eaten in days and the only liquid I had been given was about half a pint of water and even that must have been at least two days ago now. I had tried with all my might not to piss myself, but I had to give in, my back was sticky with the fluid that had gathered beneath me, a mixture of blood and other icky bodily fluids.

Michael had obviously run out of inspiration because he hadn't visited me for ages, my latest tattoo, making the collection now a total of five. He'd taken more blood too, his care over inserting the needle had dramatically decreased and when I had had the energy to twist my neck enough I could see the developing purple bruise in the crease of my elbow and the torn entrance for the needle.

I feared that Michael was starting to get frustrated, something out of mine and his control was not going to plan which was making him very angry. I could hear screams from elsewhere in the building every now and again, and I prayed to whoever was listening that those screams wouldn't be mine.

It had been within the first few days he'd explained that vampires existed, that these immortal beasts roamed the earth just like himself, feeding off the life blood of innocent humans and secretly living in the shadows for years. They controlled the underworld - as I had nicknamed it – a whole other world of creatures that lived side-by-side humans without a trace, well, not enough traces for anyone to take them seriously. The stories of their kinds had been twisted through time, mostly by the creatures themselves as a ploy to keep humans far enough away from the truth.

He'd told me about Aro, about the Volturi, the leading coven within the vampire world. Aro was as close to royalty as you could get as a vampire. His coven lured in hundreds of tourists every year to feed off their blood, he killed people, he'd killed thousands of people across his lifetime, without regret, without remorse, he was a murderer.

Michael had told me I was Aro's mate, some magical bond connecting us together, it was fate, Aro had been waiting for me his entire life and he'd be alive...dead? For nearly three thousand years. There was nothing he didn't know after all his time experiencing different centuries and learning as much as he could, he was there when theories were developed, lived through the basic advances in medicine and the industrial revolutions. He'd seen all the wars, taken advantage of most of them probably, wars are perfect places to kill humans and drink their blood.

Aro was going to be part of my life whether I liked it or not, it had been written in the stars, fate had decided my path and they all led to him.

"There is a lack of urgency to find you," he snapped. The door had opened and closed without me registering his presence. "Your 'mate'," he spat the word with so much venom I was surprised the liquid wasn't oozing from him mouth. "He acts as if he doesn't care for you...and father..."

Michael was obviously very attached to the man he called his father, whether he was a real person or an illusion I was unsure. I also didn't know if he was a vampire, maybe he was his biological father, or perhaps just the monster that had taken Michael's once human life and turned him into a creature of the dead.

"Father wants you dead. He...he wants me to kill you and leave your body on the steps of their fucking castle. He wants you molested and mutilated and tortured, god, you better be grateful that I have you." He pushed a frustrated hand through his hair before composing himself. "I have to do better, so this won't be permanent, but it will help break you. I believe that if you ever get back to him, as long as you are mentally broken then I will have achieved my aim, who can love the shell of a person?"