Cerulean Star

Chapter 1: Anything For You

I wanted to hold onto my dream. Just wrap it up and let it linger on my brain. I turned over in my bed refusing to open my eyes, I just wanted to see the meadow again. But as it was slipping away from me, I came to a dreaded realization. It was today. I hated today, of all the days of the year. Today was my seventeenth birthday, and I knew for a fact, that the vampires I lived with were planning a surprise party for me. I could hear the clock that stood in the Palazzo dei Priori, ten o' clock. My vampires let me sleep in. Sometimes they could be thoughtful.

I got out of my bed begrudgingly, and headed towards the bathroom for what I called a human moment. I lived with fifteen vampires, not including the ones that stay periodically in the castle from time to time. The fifteen that I speak of, the Volturi, are not only the permanent fixtures in Volterra; but they are also the peace-keeping, rulers of all of the vampires.

And I loved them all dearly, but I was annoyed that they would not respect my wishes about a birthday party. Year after year, they insisted on throwing me a party every year. No one was ever sure of my exact date of birth, but they knew the date that I was first brought to the castle. September 17th.

I let the hot water from the shower spray against my body as I recounted the story that my family tell me every year.

Now seventeen years ago, Heidi, the gorgeous vampire with the ridiculously long legs and mahogany hair, went on a fishing expedition. At least that was the way I described her task of finding humans and bringing them back to the castle for my family to eat. Unfortunately, for one of the females that followed Heidi, she was carrying me, well more like concealing. Heidi promises me every time the story is told, that she usually skips over people who are caring for infants, but since there is nothing I could do about it now, I always forgive her.

Aro drained the poor girl that day and was about to have one of the guards clean up the mess when he noticed that his victim had a death grip on something under her shawl. When he peeled the fabric back, he saw me, a tiny baby of only a few weeks. He intended on throwing me to one of the guards as dessert, I always shuddered when he spoke of that, when he decided against it. He gave me to his human secretary, Gillina, to be cared for. It was only until I was ten that he told me the reason why he decided to keep me.

Gillina did her best at raising me on her own. She worked and lived in the castle separately from the vampires. While she was working, she had a crib placed beside her desk so that she could watch over me. As I began to grow out of the crib, Gillina asked Aro if schooling and education for me was in the cards, or was the only reason I was being left alive was because of some sinister plan.

By then, the majority of the vampires, including Aro, had taken a liking to me, if not love. Aro never let me in on whether it was because of this love, or because of a dark plan that I was allowed to live, but I always suspected the latter.

It was only a few weeks after my ninth birthday, and I had just finished my Spanish lesson with Santiago. I was in my room with Gianna, the one I had grown up believing was my mother, when I decided to voice my concerns about our extended family.

"Mommy? How come Uncle Aro and everyone else, don't get any older?" It was something that I had begun to notice on a regular basis. I first noticed it in Jane and Alec, my cousins as I was led to believe. They always stayed the same height, and their features never changed. Of course, I was accustomed to their red eyes, mommy just explained it was because of a hereditary disease that the majority of the people in her family had, that seemed to skip over the two of us. But when I noticed that the two youngest weren't getting older, I began to pay attention to the rest of my family. Everyone, except for mommy and me, were the same as they were as long as I could remember.