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Ad Vitam Aeternum

Chapter 8

Marcus POV

I was seated on my throne observing the interesting patterns that the dust in the air made when the soft tendrils of wind blew across our audience chambers. It was the early hours of the morning and I could hear the small town awake to life. On the eastern part of the castle the sounds of the training of our guard were muffled by the thick walls of this millenary fortress. Emotions were running high within the Volturi coven. Soon it would be time for another feeding and I, as well as the rest of the coven was already a bit hungry.

Heidi was already hunting and tomorrow she would be here. Two human bodies would relinquish their life force for me to live for a month. I was old and I didn't need as much human blood as younger vampires did but I still needed it. I had come to make my peace with it long ago. That was the nature of life. One lives for the other to die. It didn't trouble me to take a life. I had done it all of my life, first as a warrior and afterwards as a vampire. I most certainly would never live the mockery of a vampire life as Carlisle and his bunch of vegetarians did.

I could hear my brothers and their wives talking softly beside me, discussing the strange call we had received a few hours ago from one Edward Cullen, one of Carlisle's supposed sons, asking for a meeting. I did not join them and they did not expect it. They all knew I cherished my space and privacy until I was needed for the affairs of state. I could see that their love, respect and affection for me were as strong as ever, as their bonds shone with the familial love. I knew very well what my race thought of me. They thought me to be weak, barely hanging to existence. To be a lost soul that survived the death of his mate only because Aro had made Chelsea bind me to the Volturi, so that he would not lose my gift.

It was ruse that we indulged in, as no one, except the three of us knew the truth about her death. And so the legend about me began, me being the quiet, depressed, and more humane of the leaders. Because of my rational and less cruel view on life I had the double of requests and petitions made to me. People asked my views and always, always hoped for me to put a word in their favor, as if by having survived a dead mate it made me more accessible to their plights.

Fools.

All of them.

How could they not see that if I was one of three rulers, I was not on their side, but on ours? I always gave my opinion on all matters but I would never, ever turn on my brothers. Because that was what they really were to me. My brothers! Our bonds had been forged by venom, by blood, by war and battle. And they were unbreakable.

Our merciless reputation in the vampire world was built on our belief that absolute, undisputed power is only achieved through fear of the law. Fear brings respect and respect brings obedience to our laws. It could not be any other way with a race as powerful, trouble making, and gifted as ours. But to be worthy of leading such a race we needed to be stronger and capable of enduring everything that they threw our way.

But we also protected the humans in our area of influence, and we soon had understood that the future of our race had to be to hide in the shadows of the human world, only then could we thrive. That was what made our coven worthy of leading the vampire race ever since the Romanian coven, the oldest living coven of our race, stepped down, tired of ruling and of being constantly challenged.

I loved my position as a ruler, as did my brothers. I liked having the power and to use it. I had fought for this for hundreds of years, with blood and venom alongside my brothers. My body held the scars of hundreds of fights for supremacy and honor. I endured a life without my mate for this! For power and for the unity of my coven, for my family! And only death by an enemy's hand would make me abandon my throne and my family.

Our triumvirate was the most powerful that had ever existed on this planet, and we, the three of us, were determined to keep it that way. Three rulers, three voices, three minds, one for strategy, one for war and one for reason, but only one goal; rule vampire race. Only we knew how much we relied on each other, how deep our bond for each others went, and how one's weaknesses were another one's strengths. We only shed our masks in the comfort of our families nest, away from everyone outside. Not even our most trusted guards knew our real faces nor they ever would.

I sighed deeply, thinking of the chores that I had set for today. First we had to deal with the Cullen boy. See what had his pants in a twist and deal with it. Once the audience was over I would go to my lab, situated deep in the dungeons. There I would continue the work that has occupied my mind for the last decades: finding a way to fight the thinning of the ozone layer. Somehow the impossible was happening, and we couldn't believe our eyes when we saw the two vampires that had been in Antarctica in a vacation. They were heavily burnt, having been brought to us by their distraught coven members. After reading their minds Aro discovered that there had been no fire in sight, and no humans around. They had been burnt by something in the sky, invisible even to our kind. We had to put them out of their misery as the damage made to their bodies was irreparable.

It didn't take long to know what happened, as human science had already discovered the problem – the humans and their science were far advanced in that area than we had ever thought- they had been burnt by a huge concentration of UV rays that a temporary hole in the ozone layer had let in. What gave the humans sun burns and skin cancer also burnt our kind in terrible ways if we were directly below one of the holes, our venom acting as an accelerant burning us from the inside when exposed directly to those rays. We had found an enemy and a purpose, and unknowing to humans we started our own fight to prevent pollution and global warming, linked factors in this disaster.

I smiled inwardly as I thought of my other task. My life had some small spots of pleasure besides ruling and science.

By the end of the day I had a pretty little thing waiting for me in my chambers. The image of that naked beauty almost was enough to shake my bad mood. For someone so little the young unmated vampire was a fire ball of sexual energy, willing to endure all that I threw at her. Pity that she only wanted the power and prestige that came with bedding a Volturi master and that she was getting too demanding. Silly creature, who didn't knew her place in our society. We, the Volturi masters, don't share our power, not even with our mates. She was only one of many women that warmed my bed since my mate died and my mourning ended. It was time to get rid of her, and find another to satisfy my needs. Tomorrow morning she would be out of Volterra with the bag that she had arrived with and no memory of the last month. Thank the Gods for Antonin's gift, the most recent acquisition of our guard.

So, here I was, bored. Living a life that presented me only occasionally with something interesting. Little excitement; almost no joy or happiness!

Thousands of beautiful, intelligent, women and men had shared my bed over the millennia after my mate's death, but none interested me longer than the actual sexual act. They passed through my life like flicking flames and left with no trace or second thought. No one had managed to break the shell over my dead heart. I had long conformed myself to live a life without the glory of having a mate. The perfect complement of my soul, the one person made for me and my only.

The one person in the universe that would give my life perfect happiness and love.

These words were linked with my late wife and mate, Dydime. Her gift made everyone happy to be around her. Everyone but her, who viscerally hated what she had become.

How much I missed her still, in spite of her betrayal and insanity, and how much I loathed that I was one of the only vampires in the world that remembered all of his human memories as clear as if it had been yesterday.

I had married her when she was fifteen and I was twenty eight as it was usual at the time between the roman families that were part of the nobility. She was the daughter of an immensely wealthy Etrurian family that had helped the patricians of Rome to remove from the throne of Rome the last Etruscan king Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, and helped my father and some other patricians to create the Roman Republic. An achievement that coasted her father's his life. Her older brother and head of the family, Aro, saw her as a tool to have powerful ties to Rome and the new regime. I had a high rank in the army as a commander of my own legion and I was finally prepared to take my father's place in politics when he was sought out by her brother Aro and it was decided that our marriage would be a good thing.

She was a young and innocent little thing that enchanted everyone with her happiness and joy. I loved her as she did me since the first day we met. She was a black raven haired beauty with eyes as blue as the sea and untouched by any man. I could not believe my luck in finding such a treasure and the day of our wedding was a happy one. In our wedding night she gave herself to me totally without the usual tears and screaming of fear of most brides, surprising me. I had been a highly sexual creature and my bed has had some of the most beautiful women and men as it was usual in those times.

There was nothing that I hadn't tried and I liked my lovers to accept all that I gave them. Having a bride capable of enduring all that I was capable of doing in bed was exhilarating and I felt blessed by the God's with my good fortune. But our happiness was short lived. I was there for her when her last close living relative, her brother Aro, disappeared mysteriously one night, a few months after our wedding. Leaving her without any other blood relatives and deeply hurt.

With the pressure from my own father to take the reins of the family and to follow his footsteps into politics soon I left the army to take care of our immense wealth and interests. Our combined fortunes made the Voltur family one of the richest in the Republic and when my own father passed away two years later I was already an influential member of the Senate. Our marriage was fulfilling and happy until she discovered her inability to bear me a child. Children were the biggest gift of a family at that time. Heirs to the family's power, money and prestige they were the ultimate goal of every marriage.

The fact that she was unable to have them made her change slowly. Her perceived failure ate away her heart and she started to lose her reason. Her longing for children became so strong that she brought servants to my bed hoping and begging for me to impregnate them. Two times it worked but once those children were born she couldn't stand to look at them because they were not hers and they reminded her of her failure. I was forced to send those children away, with faithful servants and their mothers to be raised and educated far away from our family's home. Afterwards I forbade her to continue with that folly and that only served to further her obsession.

I took care of my children though. It didn't matter to me that my wife didn't want them around. They had my blood and I would never abandon my own. I tried to be involved in their life as much as I could even though that hurt my wife deeply; I adopted them formally and gave them my family's name – Vultur - insuring that they were known and accepted into society.

Even if I never had any child with my wife my name would go on. They would serve Rome as I did, and be good, strong, useful men and citizens. My oldest – Marco, would go into politics and run the families business and my younger one – Lucian, would have a career in the army. Together they would continue my family's name and ensure that my line would stay strong and live on.

I did not repudiate my wife though. I loved her and stood by her side even when she was scorned by society for being barren. When ten years since our marriage had passed I had already given up on having a child with her, and as it was costume, I had started preparing my sons for their future. I was talking to my wife about my decisions concerning them, when our life changed.

My long lost brother in law came out from the dead on that stormy night. Changed and yet the same as he was when he vanished. Only one change though. Instead of his bright blue eyes so similar to my wife's, he had two, evil, malevolent red ones. He brought with him another demon, one that I had seen many times when I was a young child. I remembered him well; he was a friend of my father's. A young patrician man, known for his military achievements and that had disappeared mysteriously, Caius.

His wife and her family had been executed because foul play had been suspected in his disappearance, since it was well known that they had a very unhappy union. His children with whom I had played had been sent to live with their father's relatives far away from Rome and were never seen again. He hadn't changed a bit since the last time I had seen him, almost forty years ago. He was still young and unearthly beautiful even with the evil red eyes. I hardly remember what happened; I remember the snarls, the huge force that grabbed me from behind and broke my arm and some ribs. I remember fighting weakly against a stone pair of arms and my wife's screams. I remember a sharp pain of teeth biting into my neck, and then I felt like if I was being burned alive in Hades for all the sins against the God's that I had committed in my life. And then I woke up and I had my Didyme with me and we had become something more than humans.

Something powerful and evil.

Aro and Caius showed us a new life, the life of the powerful undead. Aro was lonely and wanted his family with him and decided to seek us out, hoping to convince us to join him. He didn't expect me to be his singer, and only Caius strength and control saved me from dying. But for the sake of my children we decided to move away from Rome until I was in control of my lust for blood.

But my mate was a different matter. She was a wild blood thirsty little thing that only curbed her thirst and learned control five years after our change. So we roamed the known world, learning, fighting, and in my case waiting to be able to go back and to see what had became of my sons. Unlike Didyme, my memories weren't hazy. They were clear as day, and I worried about them.

I never saw them again. When I finally went to look for them, they both had died in a fire a few months after our change. My grief and guilt over their deaths was great. My boys had been my hope for the future. I loved them greatly and I had not been there to help them. My name had died with them. Afterwards it was too painful to live where I had so many memories. We left Rome, never to return.

Our sires showed us how we were now the superior life form and how we were God's in our own right, immortal and all powerful. Aro, Caius and I created the Volturi, based on my old family's name, when I was attacked by a rogue coven of vampires that was terrorizing the tiny town of Volterra.

I destroyed the three monsters that demanded human sacrifices and took over the town. The grateful, simple minds of the town's people saw in me a savior and were grateful when we occupied their ruined castle offering them our protection. That provided us with a base of operations that was situated in the middle of the empire and for almost a thousand years the villagers worshiped us as God's. When Christianity appeared and finally conquered the noble Roman Empire burying the old beliefs, my feat went on into legend and I became a saint. Saint Marcus, the man who drove the vampires out of Volterra. The irony of that still makes us laugh today.

I loved my new life, the power, the respect and the immortality that I had. I had been made for this and for this new world. But she, my wife of my human years and my mate in my vampire life didn't. And while I built a future for our kind, and she distributed happiness all around her, her heart was turning to stone and hatred and loathing feasted on her soul.

She hated being a vampire and all that it represented. For centuries she tried to make me leave, to go and live like a nomad. Even after Aro and Caius found their mates and vampires asked to join us she could not find it in her the will to move on from her human life. I indulged in all of her escapes and extravagances. But it was never enough. She was always unsatisfied, always unhappy even though she distributed happiness.

No amount of love and attention given to her would make her want to stay. She hated the vampire court and her brother Aro. She blamed him for her supposed soulless existence and for the children that she could never have.

It was not his fault. But her troubled mind didn't acknowledge it and she never gave up blaming him becoming bitter that the chance of bearing a child had been forever taken from her.

I had to see my mate become increasingly unhappy, and slowly descend into an abysm of grief and hatred. We firmly believed that it was what made her go insane at the end and decide to betray us, and go on her own to seek a pack of werewolves to attack and destroy the Volturi. I sighed deeply as the memory played in my mind, clear as if it had been today and not more than a thousand years ago.

'We had left Volterra with our tracker and my mate's trail was not difficult to find. Her bodyguard had returned to us when she managed to escape him in the woods surrounding the town. She had been increasingly difficult to deal with and talked often of ending it all. We could not believe that her despair would reach such eighths.

We found her trail mingled with the trails of three werewolves, the same ones that had been creating havoc in the neighboring human populations and that we were actively hunting. But we were too late. The full moon was high in the sky and the brutish men were already changing. We had no choice but to engage in battle.

"Aro, seek Didyme, and make her safe!" I yelled to my brother as a werewolf clawed at my leg. Caius, me and the tracker we had just acquired were enough to fight these young ones.

Aro took off and it didn't took us long to finish the inexperienced werewolves. I wanted to hurry so while Demetri and I dismembered the infected carcasses I told Caius to go and fetch some dry wood. I wanted this over with soon. I craved to go to my mate and take her to security.

I could no longer trust her to be alone and unaccompanied. She was near, her presence calling to my very soul, making me feel whole and complete. I looked around and saw Caius walking slowly towards us, and the look on his face chocked any words that I may have wanted to say. He dropped the dry wood onto the pile of limbs, cut into his palm to drop some venom on the wood and started the fire with the torch that Demetri had lit.

"Demetri, you may go. Go to the castle and speak nothing of this."His voice held all the authority of the commander of the guard and Demetri didn't question the order. He just nodded and took off.

"Where is my mate? Where is Aro?" I had no patience for games right now. I was feeling something unidentified deep in my gut, a terrible feeling of dread. Before he could stop me I took off, picking up Aro's trail easily.

Nothing could have prepared me for what I saw. My mate lay on the ground completely naked, Aro by her side, his cape trying to cover a little of her modesty. Her body was a broken mangled mess of werewolf scratches and bites. Venom was leaking from every bite mark and thorn limb.

My roar of outrage shook the forest for miles until I sunk to the floor by her side.

"Didyme…"I cried, spent. Aro looked at me pityingly and stood, walking over to Caius. I frantically tended to her wounds, licking them, taking away the foul scent of those beasts' teeth and claws. I held her arms into place and watched as they unite with her body. She was going to be heavily scarred as their claws and teeth were the only ones that could mark our skin. I didn't care, she was my mate, my wife, and to me she would always be the most beautiful woman in the world. Every cry and sob that left her throat was knives that carved into my soul. But if I thought that I knew pain, I was wrong. What she said once she regained the ability to speak shattered my world.

"Marcus..kill me, plea…please…if…you lov..me…kill me…"She sobbed weakly.

I just shook my head in denial. How could she ask me that? I wanted to yell at her and beg and cry and die myself, everything but to lose her. She was badly wounded but she was already healing, her breathing steadying. How could she want to leave me? She saw my denial and she became more agitated.

"If …you d…n't I will do it again...I will seek them again…"What was she saying? I heard my brother's gasps and looked at the incredulity that washed away the pity they felt for me and for her.

"Did you look for these beasts?" I had to ask. I had to know if her despair was so great. They were our natural enemies and to seek them out was suicide. My world was spinning.

My whole world caved around me as she looked into my eyes and nodded weakly.

"Why? Why my love, why did you do this?"

"I…hate…We…are monsters, all…us! I will again….they attacked….the moon came, before I could...convince to attack Volterra…the Christians are right…we are demons…"I could not believe my ears. I looked in despair to my brothers, and saw that they harbored the same incredulous, pained look. She had betrayed us! I stood there with her in my arms, my brothers near me, lending me their strength by their presence, for an unknown amount of time. I just looked down at my broken, insane mate. Her babblings were irrational. She talked about death, about cleaning Volterra from evil by calling the wrath of God.

Unconsciously I loosed my arms from around her, trying to digest enormity of her confession. I didn't even understood what she was doing until I felt like I had achieved complete bliss and happiness. My brothers were too under the influence of her power that had become quite strong. It was all it took. She got up and despite her wounds and the fact that she was not completely healed she managed to escape us. She avoided Caius who was trying to shake his stupor and bolted like an arrow straight to where the burning pile of werewolf limbs was slowly turning the foul beasts to ash. Their bodies burned slower than ours.

We pursued her but to no avail. Right before my eyes she jumped into the pile, laughing hysterically and immediately her venom filled body ignited. My brothers restrained me from going after her, my roars of pain echoing in the quiet, frozen forest. In seconds she was nothing but ashes. And I was left to wander this Earth alone.

I don't know how many days I stood by her ashes, not willing to let go of my last link to her. The guard and my brother's mates came and sat down with me in silent vigil for many days. I could feel their presence but I did not acknowledge them. No one tried to engage me in conversation.

What can be said to a vampire that loses his mate?

Not a single word was ever uttered about her death by our family. The real facts were never known. My brother Aro took the blame for it without flinching as it served our purposes. And so the legend began.

And that is how my eternity continued.

Eventually I got up from the ground and headed back to the palace. My focus became the Volturi and my family. And it gave me a sense of accomplishment the work that we, the Volturi were called upon to do, to organize and civilize our world and race. Over the centuries I learned to have some measure of happiness and to accept that this had been the better outcome. She had never been happy since she became a vampire and not even my love for her could save her. I loved her enough to understand her need to die and to make my peace with it.

But I loved my life too and I was not tired of my eternity yet, even if it was to be lived without the true love of a mate.

When I finally gave notice to my family that I would begun to live in the sensual world again, centuries had passed, and my brother Aro made sure that my bed was warmed by some of the most beautiful women and men in both worlds, human and vampire. I accepted it; eternity was a long time to be without sex. I was a man in the end, and sex is something that I had always enjoyed. I knew that our kind only mated once, or so it was said, but I found out that I could live like this. So, I locked my love for my dead mate in a box inside my heart, promised myself that I would never love again, closed her chambers and tried to make the best of the gift of eternal life that had been given to me.

Aro's soft voice woke me out of my walk down memory lane.

"Marcus, the Cullen boy is here." I merely cleaned up my mind, and straightened a little in my throne. I noticed that my brother's mates were already out of sight. They did not get involved in our politics or ruling unless their advice was asked. They too knew their place. We do not share our power with anyone else.

I could not believe my ears. The stupid boy! How could this be? He claimed to be mated to a human girl for a few months, and he had left her alone to live a happy, human life without him? How come a vampire mates and doesn't claim his mate, human or not? The need for intimacy and for claiming completely is almost overwhelming in our race and little have the strength to fight it. This boy exuded an aura of martyrdom, and of drama that was quite ridiculous. But he was a Cullen. They were not strangers to drama.

All of this because she had died and he wanted to die too, hopping that he could join her in heaven. Stupid child! I had lost a wife and mate of centuries and I still lived. Weak creature. The boy didn't like my thoughts and growled lowly at me, earning him a burst of pain from my dear Jane that immediately silenced him.

Immediately I remembered how to block his talent. It seems that Carlisle doesn't instill respect for the eldest in his rag tag brood. That will earn him some problems in the future of that I am sure and it is not well seen by the other covens. Maybe that is why they don't get along with anyone else.

Having to hide my thoughts from a snooping child in my own house was infuriating, and what I really wanted to rip his head off for making me go through the effort. That would settle this problem once and for all and free us to pursue more pleasant matters. I was about to suggest that to Aro and saw that Caius opinion was much the same, when I felt my brother's whole posture tense. Something was very wrong. My brother Aro turned to us, after letting go of the boy's hand and his blank and void from emotions face made me look closely at the boys bonds, all the while keeping my thoughts well hidden.

His bonds to the supposed dead girl where indeed ones of mating. But they were the wrong color. They were a sickly black and purple color that made me want to puke my inwards out, when a true mating bond is silvery and bright like a mid day's sun. I knew that for sure. I had seen mating bonds all of my life and it never varies. And the matting bond was not broken as it gets when a mate dies. The girl was alive yet!

Something was incredibly wrong. His bonds with his family were the normal color, except for two. Two of his bonds were weaker, showing almost as if it was forced. He didn't like these persons in his family and he tried to force some feelings towards them, but they were false. Only when they were all in front of me I could know for sure who it was. It could provide us with some leverage.

I kept my thoughts well hidden while thinking only with the primary layers of my mind about the naked beauty in my chambers, knowing that it would sway the boy's attention from me. From Aro's face I could see that he too was hiding his thoughts. I watched them carefully as the boy squirmed and refused to join us, arguing with Aro that his family was innocent and that it had been him that had broken the law and that now it was over because the girl was dead and he wanted to join her.

I needed to talk to Aro about this immediately but I didn't want to alert the boy.

"I am sorry, dear boy but I cannot hurt my dear friend Carlisle that way. I will give you sometime though. I will give you until tomorrow to give you a final answer. You must understand that I must make some inquiries. I ask of you to return to us tomorrow morning. Remember the rules about our race, young Cullen. Two of the guards will keep an eye on you to see that you follow them." He dismissed the boy with a wave of his hand and we watched when he slowly walked out, the perfect image of misery and stupidity and, if I was right, of a huge error that would fall not only on him but on his whole family. Demetri and Felix followed him like a silent shadow at a nod from Caius.

As soon as he walked out and was out of our senses we turned to each others. Caius already sensed that something was wrong and was waiting. I knew what the foolish boy had done and so did Aro. Silently we followed Aro to the secret office, situated deep under the castle. No one dared to follow us once we reached the black door. Only we had the keys to this part of the castle.

Now we had to take measures to sort out the mess and to punish the culprits.

And I knew that we had big trouble coming our way. Carlisle was well known and loved by the vampire world. He had gained the respect of our race by his compassion and moral strength. He was considered one of the best of us and it surprised me that he would permit the horror that I was beginning to suspect his son had had committed.

My senses, sharpened by millennia of experience and knowledge were telling me that our world was going to be put on trial. I could sense the trouble coming our way and unconsciously my body tensed, waiting for the blow.

Little did I know that the storm that was coming would shake all of my beliefs and change my life when my brother uttered the fatal words:

"The Cullen boy has performed "reclusione di un'anima" on the human girl."

*A/N - I placed Marcus, Didyme, Caius and Aro's human life around the Patrician Era (509–367 BC) of Rome. Aro and Didyme are Etrurian (a region in the middle of Italy, and a precursor of the Roman civilization) and Marcus is a Roman nobleman from an ancient and powerful family that can be traced as being involved in the origins of Rome. My Marcus was changed when he was 38 years old.

So…what do you think? The chapter will be divided into two parts because telling things from his point of view is almost a whole story on his own. He has so much to tell and he feels so much and so deeply. Tell me what you think of his story so far…quite a tragic life no?