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THREE WEEKS LATER

CALLIDORA'S POINT OF VIEW

My time planning the ins and out of my travel was perhaps the most fun time I had in my short existence. Hebe had made sure to equip me with what I needed when it came to travel in an unknown nation, but nothing could prepare me for what I knew was to come.

I would be spending the first week doing the actual work my father had set me to Italy for. Volterra had been littered with corrupt priests for some time now and it was time to put an end to that. This world of humanity seemed much scarier than that of Olympus. They had little to show for humanity besides war (which, to be fair, brother Ares and sister Enyo enjoyed with passion), something that I could not find within my heart to care for. I did not wish for violence and slaughter, preferring simple peace and tranquility.

For the second week, I had planned a few shopping trips of my own. Aphrodite had come around a few times to explain the ins and outs of human fashion (as she said she would not like a beautiful young goddess like myself looking out of place in one of her favorite cities) before leaving for the mortal lands once more. To me, she seemed to be quite full of herself in a funny way. She was still the most beautiful woman around, so confidence was practical for a woman like herself.

The third week would definitely be spent for simple explorations. I wanted to see the world that humans had created for themselves without thinking much of the immortals. According to Daddy, the vast majority of humans do not worship immortals like vampires do. Oh, yes, the vampires. Daddy explained yesterday how they work. Quite an odd system, having three kings together, but it sounded like it worked well for their species. Whatever could keep the peace would have to do.

Right now I look about sixteen years old. At least, that's what Mommy said last night. I had also finally gotten my own room to sleep in, much to Mommy's dismay. She was still very attached to me and wants to know everything that I do at all times. It wasn't too bad, having her be so overprotective. It meant that she loved me, and I most certainly wanted to be loved.

Still questioning what outfit to wear, I walked out of my closet only to fall down on my comfortable bed. Mommy insisted on giving me pure gold sheets with lines of baby pink running down the edges. Daddy said that I wasn't a baby anymore and needed something less childish. The whole thing had turned into quite a nasty argument, with me eventually just thanking Mommy for the sheets and telling them I wanted to go to sleep.

Those fights were starting to get to me. No matter what happened, no matter how hard I tried to help them work it out. It seemed that it always came down to me. They were fighting about things having to do with me. I hated that.

I hated a lot of things.

Things with Hebe and Selene are going well. Hebe often shows me things I had no clue existed and Selene taught me all about the Vampires of Volterra. For whatever reason, someone had made one of my uncles mad, meaning that he cursed someone to bloodlust for all eternity. Selene had told me some of the ins and outs of vampire society. She even included some of their lore in her lessons on the near-immortals.

To be fair, I found myself loving the stories of vampires more and more. I felt connected to them for some reason. Perhaps it was their society and their ability to gain gifts that amused me to no end. If I was noticed by them during this trip, I would be able to confirm or deny some of my theories on how they behaved around goddesses like myself.

Artemis had been teasing me for some time now. I knew it was all in good fun, but I hate when she brings her bow and points an arrow in my face. Everyone laughs at how scared I get, but how am I supposed to keep a straight face when my older sister has an actual wooden arrow near my eyeball?

Picking out a light yellow dress, I make my way down from my room into the dining area. My family was there to send me off on my journey and I knew Mommy would try and stop me from leaving her at least once, to which Daddy would remind her that I needed to figure out who I was and what my role would be and that this was a good idea he came up with. After that Mommy would yell and I would leave the room because I hate it when they argue.

Oh, the joys of being a young goddess. Who would have known that I signed up for watching family drama play out right in front of me. You would think that they would at least try to hide their Mommy and Daddy issues, but it seems like they would rather verbally duke it out in the middle of lunch.

"She shouldn't be leaving so young!" Mommy shouted.

"We've been over this a thousand times, Hera, she's almost full grown!" I managed to tune out their argument as I came closer, giving each of them a quick hug. "Hello, dear, how are you doing today? Ready for your little quest?"

"Very much, Daddy," he smiled and gave me a quick kiss on the cheek. "I'll make sure to stay safe, Mommy. I promise."

"Come here," she ordered, kissing me on the head. "Mommy loves you, I hope you know that."

"I do, Mommy, I do." Mommy smiled and waved me off.

"Don't you dare get yourself into trouble while in Italy. If I find out that anyone is messing with my baby girl I will come down there myself and make cows crap near them for the rest of their lives, do you hear me? Nobody is ever allowed to hurt my baby girl or even make her annoyed. Annoying people will be crushed." I smiled at Mommy's overprotective nature and gave her another warm hug. "Is all of your stuff packed? Enough warm clothes? It's the winter there and I don't want you being cold at all. My babies will always be warm in the coldest times of the year."

"I made sure, Mommy. I'll be very warm, I promise."

---

My plot had frankly been quite simple. The hotel I was staying at seemed like a good enough place. Mommy had made sure that I had luxury (as a goddess, she said, it was the least the people down in Volterra could do) and ambrosia to eat and drink. It seems that the diet of a goddess consists almost purely of ambrosia, especially for me. Since I was still young and not completely grown, having that sustenance would be important for helping me stay strong and healthy.

The hotel was much more modernized (I think that was the right term for it, I didn't know much about architecture and history yet) with new plumbing and high end people staying inside. Once I had given the man my I.D, he seemed to know exactly who I was and even managed to bow down for me. His expression when he noticed me, I would never forget that. Both intrigued and terrified, he was.

"You'll be staying in this room, Miss Olympus." Ah, the last name was one of my favorite parts of this exertion. "If you ever need anything, just call downstairs and we will be with you in no time."

"Thank you." The man seemed quite surprised that I had acknowledged his existence at all. "I'll make sure to not make too much noise."

No words were exchanged after that, with him leaving me to my room.

I had to make a plan. Of course, I had a plan, but I didn't have a plan. This sort of thing required precision. I was going to get away with murder. No human would get out alive. My initial idea was to just burn them alive, but I calculated that the priests could still have a chance at survival. To allow them to live would be a terrible misdoing on my part as well as make me fail my entire mission. The whole reason why I was in Volterra was to kill these terrible men and therefore stop their crimes against men, women, and children.

The thoughts of what they did to children. It was enough to make my stomach churn. They had to die. I couldn't allow people like this to live. I may hate needless violence, but this was very much needed. It did not go against my own moral code. Some men had to die.

Thankfully, I was not a man.

"Perhaps slaughtering them would be the best idea," I theorized, looking down at my feet. "How would I make that look like an accident. Daddy said that the humans could look into something that didn't seem like an accident."

I hummed, thinking about it for a second. "I was going to burn the place down. Combine the two ideas?"

"If I did combine those ideas, how would I execute them?" I needed more time to think about it, time that I did not have at the moment. "Fire. Burn the whole damn church down? Seems legit. Ok, I'll burn the church down with the dead priests inside. Seems alright to me. Any objections, Fates? I didn't think so. Can they even hear me right now? Ah, who cares, I need a lighter and a knife. Perhaps a gun if I want to stay with the times."

Mulling over ideas for some time, I decided that burning the bodies of the priests I kill would be the best option. Bringing myself down to the church, I noticed that nobody was inside. Why would they be, it was a Monday? Even in my three weeks of life I knew Mondays were the worst.

The entire place reeked of sin, something that was supposed to stay outside of its doors. It was disgusting. I hated this. I hated this place and I hated the people inside. I hated whoever these priests were and I wanted them dead.

Thankfully, it was my job to kill them.

On the inside a few priests stood at the front of the church.

"Child, what is it that you seek? We are not usually open during these hours," They spoke in English, not the native tongue of the land. "Come to confess your sins?"

"Here to bring justice to yours." They looked between each other.

"God is our judge, child, nobody else." Their hands were shaking with fear as I made the very Earth shake with my magic. "She's a demon! A witch of the worst kind! How have you gotten here, demon? We shall not fall foul to your mischief."

"I'm not a demon," I try to explain, "What I am about to do would not be classified as mischief either. I have to say, sister Artemis is more likely to come down for some mischief, as she often finds herself pointing her bow at my head. Although you should know that this God you are talking about does not exist, a mere plot set up between brother Ares and Daddy after a fight over staying in the house perhaps three thousand years ago."

"Heretic! You speak of false gods!" I rolled my eyes.

"Damn, I am a false god. Are you saying that I don't exist?" One of them grabbed a gun from inside of their robes. "Not very holy of you, carrying around that thing. You were wrong about the whole God is my witness thing. A goddess will be your witness, that goddess being me. Now, die."

Bringing my hand up in the air, I allowed the ceiling to crash down on two of the men. One of the ones left, the one who had brought out a gun, shot in my direction. The bullet went flying, moving too fast for me to dodge. A sharp pain went through my skin as the small bullet ricocheted off of my strong skin and flew into the eye of the priest who shot it, effectively ending his life.

Golden blood dripped from the wound on my leg, running down to my socks. I would have to get new socks and a new pair of shoes, goddess blood often ruined things, at least from my experience with the substance.

Pain still ran through the wound as I got annoyed with the men who were trying to kill me. All they had to do was die peacefully. Just let me kill you!

"You bitch!" One of them screamed as I put a pole through his skull, smiling away as I tried to stop my poor leg from bleeding. My poor leg... I have to stop these people! What has my leg ever done to them! This is assault!

By the time that I had managed to kill the rest of the priests in the church, my blood had stained my pants. My perfect white pants were now gold. Well, I guess the bottom half was, the top was still pristine and in near perfect condition.

Red blood stained the floor, forcing me to move to an area that didn't have as much terrible human blood in it. To me, it didn't matter that these men were dead. Uncle Hades would be dealing with them in the Underworld. They had done atrocious things, so their killing was justified, unlike the slaughter that Enyo and Ares often committed together as chaotic twin immortals.

A small shuffle could be heard inside of the building, causing my head to whip around. I could have sworn that Daddy said there would be twenty priests. I counted again, finding twenty dead priests on the floor of the church.

I found myself face to face with a boy and a girl who looked to be around my age. One had long, flowing blonde hair, and the other had much shorter brown hair. Their facial features suggested that they were in fact related, perhaps twins like Artemis and Apollo or Enyo and Ares.

Their eyes, blood red. Those eyes matched the color of the floor at the moment. Vampires, these people were vampires, the same sort of vampires that auntie Selene had been telling me about. By the look of their black cloaks, I suspected that they were local vampires and a part of the Volturi.

"Vampires," I said quickly. The two of them stared at me with wide eyes for a second before blinking a few times. "What are you doing here?"

"Blood," the girl said, looking down at my leg.

"Right, you smell blood," I said awkwardly, not really knowing what to say. "Sorry for the mess. I didn't- I have to burn this place down soon, or the thing called the police will try to- uhm, how do you say that- arrest me. We don't have that in Olympus I have no clue what it is but my Daddy made it sound bad."

The twin vampires looked at each other.

"Uhm," I said awkwardly, "I don't really know what we're supposed to talk about now. I'm like a month old so I don't have any stories."

"You want to talk to us?" the girl gasped as she spoke, almost in denial. What? Why would she- am I a big deal? I mean, I'm a big deal at home, but I'm also a big deal here?

"Of course I want to talk to you!" I exclaimed, excited to be meeting vampires for the first time. "I've been wanting to meet vampires since my auntie Selene told me about them! Your eyes look so cool, so much cooler than mine. Red has to be better than pink, honestly, more frightening. What is it like down here? This is my first time in any mortal land."

"Things are..." the boy struggled to find the words, "normal, I guess..."

"Come on, tell me more!"

With that, I had adopted my first vampires.

---

Within the span of the next two hours, a pair of Volturi guards named Santiago and Afton had shown up. According to them, they had been worried for the twins because going missing for more than two minutes was not in their nature. They were nice, but they weren't like the twins at all, who stuck to me like glue now.

I was still a child. I had no reason to want or need to adopt these vampires, but it had happened. Likely by the Fates, I'm assuming.

Jane and Alec were their names and had been a part of the Volturi since their turning. I didn't know what their reasons behind turning were, as when I asked Jane she had shaken her head and looked at the ground, but I knew that they had been turned by one of the three leaders of the Volturi. Both of them looked much younger than they actually were, both of them being seventeen when they turned.

According to the two of them, they had been seventeen for almost twelve hundred years, far longer than I would have expected from how they talked. It seemed to me that they had been turned quite recently, speaking the same way that many of the local teenagers did.

My new knowledge on Jane, Alec, and the Volturi would come to use soon, as Santiago and Afton had offered to take me back to the castle to stay for some time. Knowing what Selene and Daddy said about the way vampires thought of gods and goddesses, I agreed to come back as long as I could have my stuff delivered. I may be a goddess, but I can't magically create clothes out of thin air. I didn't need to pack all of my stuff up to take it over, that would be ridiculous.

I mean, I was only going to stay for a few days at most. It wasn't like I would stay there for the rest of my immortal life.

---

MARCUS' POINT OF VIEW

A wave of unrelenting boredom had been washing over me for the past two thousand years, although today I was both unamused and unimpressed with Aro's conduct during trial. The man had no filter when it came to expressing his desire to have people join our coven. I knew it was all a sham, the little power plays he would pull whenever his position was at stake. Aro and I had been brothers since the day we met, and to be fair, I would be an idiot if I could not recognize that tiny glimmer of mischief in his eye when he saw a gifted vampire.

Boring in every way possible, this trial. Simple case of feeding inside of Volterra's walls, we had seen this thousands of times before. Terrible crime, feeding on our locals, at least in Caius' eyes. I guess I didn't have the wherewithal to care for such laws, lord knows how many receptionists people have eaten. We had a law made just for that, considering Caius doesn't know how to keep his temper in check.

Yes, very dismal, life. Or was it death? I didn't have a clue anymore. I'd look out the window and wish for things to be over day in and day out, but Aro would never grant my requests. Don't think so rashly, he would say. Over and over again, the same phrase. It wasn't like I had a perfect memory and would be able to remember this words of advice from my last suicidal binge eating session.

It's a certain sort of feeling, depression. Too bad for me, I'm a vampire who can't move past his emotions. Puts me between a rock and a hard place. To move on or to have my brain remind me that nobody would ever love a man who let his wife be killed by the enemy? That really is the question.

Always leaning towards the latter, I suppose.

Many people had it worse than me. Gods, I had no use being so depressed. Look, even my depression has depression, not thinking it's good enough to be depression.

Either heavily depressed or bored, I didn't know what more to do with eternity. I've learned all the languages that are in the world (yes, even the native and the old ones almost nobody speaks. I have to spend my time doing something) and have learned how to do almost everything. I can paint, play every instrument, garden, use technology (okay, that one is most debatable, modern technology is quite hard for someone as old as me).

What more was there to do?

Aro must have cracked a joke, I wasn't listening. Caius shorted and looked at me, rolling his eyes.

"Can you not appreciate good humor, brother?" the blonde king questions judgmentally. I rolled my eyes and looked him dead in the eyes with a stone cold expression plastered on my face.

"No, you hyperactive albino bunny," I sighed and looked out the window.

"Well shut up if you have nothing nice to say, Marcus. Didn't mean to ruin your sorrows," Caius muttered under his breath. Right as he was about to speak, it hit me.

It hit me like a damn trainwreck.

Mate, my inner vampire screamed at me to go and find her. Perfection, she was perfection and-

I could smell her blood. She was hurt. Why had I allowed her to get hurt? How could I possibly have- There was no time to waste, I had to find her. This was the worst sort of pain, looming deep in my chest. My heart, no, it wasn't beating- that old thing has been dead for well over three thousand years. Could it be my soul?

Before my mind could race, my body left the room. In the middle of trial or not, I needed her. I had to help her. She was bleeding.

She had the ability to bleed.

"MARCUS!" Aro's rushed yell didn't matter. I couldn't stop running. I hadn't ran in years, spending most of my time moping at my desk. My legs would run, they would run for her. By the gods, I would run forever if it meant that she would be here.

I waited, I waited for so long. The bonds, I hadn't checked them for two months. Had she been born without my knowledge? My eyes didn't have time to glaze over, to check the soul bonds of everyone around me. They all thought I was crazy now, but I... I needed to get to her, no matter the cost. I could look stupid if it meant I would keep her safe, keep her warm and happy. Safe.

Lord, I must have searched for a while. Her blood, that sweet smelling blood that I would cherish with my undead life, had been spilled. Never had I felt so ashamed. Not even losing her (even after so many years it pained me to say her name) made me feel this way. She wasn't an object, but she's mine. Mine.

Still racing, I finally saw her. Snow blonde hair like pristine purity, with skin to match. Perfection, utter perfection. I wanted her, I longed for her. Nothing else mattered, just her. She has all of me, every little bit of me. Even the parts that I hated, I would give them to her.

Her name- What is her name? She's so beautiful. I need to know her name-! I mentally cursed myself for my quickened thoughts. I couldn't take my eyes off of my mate, not before I could see her face.

She couldn't see me yet. Gods, she was probably human, with a human sense of smell. She would have to understand. She was supposed to want me back.

"Marcus you fool-" I let out an unyielding hiss as my soul brother tried to hold me back. No, he couldn't hold me back. I would rather die-

My instincts took over. Aro pinned me to the wall at first, but I growled and threw him into one of the walls. Black cracks formed all over his face, likely forming under his black suit as well. Fuck, I had thrown my brother. I couldn't control myself with the bond making me feel like a hormonal teenager.

Mate. The word chanted through my mind as I made my way closer. She was with the guards, they had brought her in. How did they find my mate? Where had she been?

She was safer, Heidi was our fisher. She wasn't going to be hunted, she was mine. Nobody would lay a single hand on her or they would face my wrath. Death, they would die if they tried to harm her. My darling mate-

Mine. My guards had noticed me. Jane and Alec sent me a questioning glare, one that I couldn't take into consideration. Cold eyes, cold walls, warm blood.

Within a second I was behind her. I didn't mean to be so rough, I just wanted to see her. My vampire purred as she noticed my existence. That was all I wanted. Notice me. Notice me. Pay attention to me.

My soul worried that she had been hurt. I would never forgive myself if she got hurt, especially if I, her mate, hurt her. No, no, I wouldn't, I couldn't. The very thought made emotional fire dance across my skin.

This tiny little woman with snowy white hair and blood-

Gold.

Gold.

Her blood stained her white trousers. Golden blood stained her white- Goddess. I had-

Her pale skin matched my own, but her warmth, I could feel it all day. With no care, she glanced up at me. So much smaller, barely reaching the upper part of my chest. Her eyes were pale and milky, a diluted version of my own. A pure version of my own.

Snap.

---