❝Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.❞
- Friedrich Nietzsche
Alissa Cameron was just an ordinary high scho...
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❝Home isn't where you're from, it's where you find light when all grows dark.❞ Pierce Brown, Golden Sons
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THE REST OF OUR TIME IN ITALY WAS A BLUR.
After arriving to the nondescript lobby and slumping down in its comfy, albeit mammoth chairs, Demetri appeared, warning Alice and Edward not to leave before dark. Then he left. Gianna was the only stranger in the room, her dark eyes staring at us with vulture precision. Curious what occurred between us and her masters, I would have wagered. But wagering was the least of my impulses. My mind was overtaken by images of me, a vampire. Me, immortal. Me, taken from my home, my broken family before any amends could be made, from my foreseeable redemption arc, stolen away by a megalomaniac bloodsucker that wanted to paint me irredeemable. We sat there in the chairs for hours. Well, it had to be hours because of the leisure change from daylight to dusk, but it felt like minutes.
I wanted to cry, but crying wouldn't magically erase the events of the past hour. I wanted to flee, but something told me Aro had the means to hunt me down and drag me, a mess of flailing limbs and broken hope, back to his throne. I wanted to vent, but nothing would heal the ache in my chest or the pounding in my head. Nothing would help this situation—not even dying. Peace was lost.
I could tell my silence worried Alice. She kept glancing at me, seeming not to know whether I or Bella was the most distraught and in need of her attention. Even on our way to the hotel we were staying the night at. Edward looked equally disturbed, his focus switching from the trembling human attached to his arm, to my disheveled Dad silently staring at Gianna's desk, to me. I was wordlessly picking hangnails from my cuticles. My entire body was trembling. Traumatized was an understatement to how I felt.
It took hours for Bella to calm down, and by then we were able to leave under the safe obscurity of the night sky. We stayed at some hotel I couldn't pronounce, and I sat there on the queen-sized bed without my bag, declining Bella's offered unused toothbrush and the bottle of water Alice bought from the shop downstairs. Dad and I were staying in a room all to ourselves, but Alice and Bella repeatedly came to the door into the early hours of morning, offering goods I had no appetite for and pestering me about whether I was alright. After a while I stopped cordially accepting their concern and outright told them to leave me alone.
Getting my wish, I went to the window and perched there, staring out at the beautiful, ancient city. Dad was asleep already. We had yet to speak a word to each other. Actually, Dad had yet to speak a word to anyone—but it was most worrying he hadn't spoken to me, his troubled daughter who came to his rescue.
I didn't get a wink of sleep, feeling unsafe around someone whose mind wasn't their own.
When we got up and departed the hotel to drive Alice's stolen Porsche to the airport, we still didn't speak. It felt like we were strangers—more than Alice and Bella were to him, and Edward was to me. It'd stay that way until I managed to find a way to extract Dakota's darkness without hurting my father in the process.
