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Every minute since she woke up at home with her family dead, Neave had wondered why Mother Nature had punished her like this. She had always been a good girl, even when she was not so well behaved –she always helped her mum and dad with the house chores and played with her little sister when her mother had to attend to her duties, and when her mum returned early to Mother Nature, Neave was strong. She was strong for her father, who needed someone to take care of the house, and she pulled through. She made sure to secure a marriage when she was fifteen to the village’s farmer.
The man she married was a gentleman, caring for her and her family. Her husband was not a young man – he was at least double her years; they shared the master room but slept in different beds. It was rare for them to be involved in sexual intercourse –they only slept occasionally, since he wasn’t as vigorous as a younger lover might have been. The first time they laid together was on their wedding night just to discover two weeks later that Neave was with child, which made her husband reticent to touch her intimately in case she ended up losing the baby. But, well, she didn’t mind it, really. He was held dearest in her heart for giving her the most precious gift ever given to a woman: a child.
The moment she saw him, she loved her baby dearly. More so than her own life. He was named Cynan, ‘chief’ for he commanded his parents’ hearts and pride, and he was a cute baby boy. Neave was so grateful to Mother Nature for gifting her with such joy she couldn’t help to smile every time, even at night when her baby wouldn’t let her sleep.
“Neave, I don’t think I say it to you enough times, but I love you, wife of mine.” Her husband usually said these words to Neave whenever she managed to do something that pleased him, which would occur quite a lot. There was this one time, after a particularly strenuous day where Neave had succeeded in cooking a delicious pot of boar meat, when little Cynan was being put to sleep, that the young mother was startled by the arms of her husband around her waist –she felt his dry, cold lips on the skin of her neck, lightly tanned by the sunlight, and shuddered.
“Neave, darling, tonight you are shinning. It would be my pleasure if you came with be to bed.” His voice was rough, raspy like his beard, and it never failed to command her total and undivided attention.
And so, it was no wonder she responded, “Wait me there, I’ll be ready in ten minutes.”
“That’s my darling.”
Neave then smiled shyly, finishing tucking Cynan in and closing his bedroom door before walking to her own to her awaiting husband. She found him completely naked, laid out on the bed and looking at her with hungry eyes. She took out her own clothes and folded them neatly on the wicker chair before joining him on the bed.
One day, while she was in the kitchen preparing her and her husband’s meal, he arrived home, which was earlier than usual. His semblance was ashen, his brow shiny with sweat, and his hands kept opening and closing into fists. Out of his mouth, the only comprehensible word Neave was able to grasp was ‘wolf’. A wolf had attacked the herd of sheep he was pastoring, and he almost didn’t make it. That day she discovered that he was terrified of death.
He couldn’t stand it. He told her one cold, winter night, after they had yet again consummated their love, that he would find a way to spare their family the tragedy of decease. She was still unsure about it, but she would indulge her husband’s daydreaming because of love.
Maybe what transpired that day was the start of the end.
Neave’s husband came home a few nights after the summer’s solstice proclaiming to have found the way of immortality; he said they would have to do a ritual at night to achieve the power to defeat death. With no possibility of opposing her husband, the naïve Neave smiled and nodded, happy for him, if not all that interested in his delusions.
That night, she brought her son to his bed earlier, shushing him and cooing until he fell deep into slumber. Once her baby was calm and safe in the Land of Sleep, she came back to the main room of their simple, pre-roman house. There was a strange circle in the middle of it, with multiple sacrifices, such as dead animals of different size –a boar, a rabbit and even one of their sheep, and blood. Lots and lots of blood that made her dizzy with nausea, but she stood and lied on the bed –that had been taken from their room for this purpose –without any clothes on, completely bare to her already painted husband, who gently marked her body with the same symbols.
The ritual was extremely painful. Her whole body felt as if it was on fire. No, it felt as if she had sunk inside a frozen lake in the cruellest of winters. Her blood coiled horribly, like serpents had entered her vessels and started playing tag inside of them, and her own brain could have exploded for all she cared. Her body remained still; in spite of the Hell she was being put through. How long would this last? What about her baby? Was she dying? She couldn’t scream for him, for even her throat was burning. She was sure this was punishment from the gods for betraying the natural order, for daring to trespass the rules they had imposed on the people and blatantly disobeying their teachings.
After three agonic days, Neave stopped feeling her beating heart. When she regained consciousness, she wasn’t sure who she even was, nor how she had gotten there –trapped inside a wooden cage below the grounds of a forest. The only clear thought that came to be was how thirsty she was.
She screamed with rage once she realized her husband had turned them into demons, monsters that had killed their son in a furious attack of thirst. Her eyes were blood red; her skin as pale as snow, and she was inhumanly thirsty. She, together with her husband, ended the lives of their own village, draining every man, woman, and child of their sacred blood, and once they were done with every single soul, they ran away. She couldn’t abandon her husband because of the sacred, binding nature of their marriage, but her heart felt cold and dead –not only in the literal sense.
Decade after decade, time ran and with it, so did they.
Neave felt horrible each time she killed someone to drink their blood, and she couldn’t for the life of her not see her husband as evil, revolting and despising. The love and devotion she once had professed to him had soured and decayed, leaving only ashes and sickening blood as a trail.
Years and years passed by without so much as a blink of an eye, until they decided to abandon their country to set for Great Britain. The year was around 1652, give or take one or two years; Neave and her husband had recruited a coven of creatures like themselves, who the had taken to call their children. Her husband turned them all except one girl named Rose. She was a French ‘witch’ that had been almost drowned in the river when Neave had been hunting. She had seen the desperation and felt the pain of the little girl and decided to spare her of her timely death. She turned Rose and cared for her the hole three days, waiting for the blonde child to completely turn. Once the turning time had ended and Rose accepted her new life, the two women had reunited with the rest of the coven. Neave’s husband had not been content with the fact that Rose was Neave’s child, but he accepted her addition, nonetheless. It didn’t take long before the five of them were crossing the sea to arrive at Great Britain.
It was not strange to see a married couple of an old man and a young woman, even with the centuries that they carried upon their shoulders. Thus, Neave and her husband told everyone they encountered the truth of their marital status. Likewise, their children pretended to be her husband’s brothers, and Rose posed as one of Neave’s husband’s children’s wife.
Life, or rather unlife, was not easy during those years –not too long after settling in they were easily discovered by the son of pastor Cullen, a twenty-three-year-old blond boy with blue eyes that went by the name of Carlisle. Neave thought he was smart and compassionate. She knew about the young lad of the pastor, the kind-hearted boy who would always help those who needed it regardless of their position in society – it did not matter to him whether they were peasants or lords: he was always the good Samaritan, like Christians said.
She had the pleasure of meeting him once when he was almost fifteen years old. Her coven had just arrived a few weeks and she thought it might be prudent to get to know their new ‘home’.
As she was walking down the streets of the rainy London, she walked in front of a little, modest church. It was painted in white with blue shades and gave a warm feeling whenever you looked at it. Many cultures depicted her kind as children of the Devil himself, so it was impossible for them to enter a sacred place. Oh, how right they were, and how wrong. While it could be agreeable that they were cursed and could pass for demons, they could touch and enter the sacred things and places just fine. Neave often questioned why she had been punished. Because there was no way eternal youth and life by the price of human torture could be seen as a blessing. Her husband was completely mad.
“Excuse me, my lady?”
The voice of a youngling took her by surprise, taking her away from her internal musings. She blinked three times to pretend she did not see the child the first time and to accommodate her actions to pretend to be human. He was a cute little thing, just as her little Cynan had been so many centuries ago. Her chest ached the moment her mind was plagued with distant memories of her dead baby boy. He had been the first one to pay the price of her immortality.
“May I help you with something?”
Neave smiled. The young boy was incredibly polite, with his wide-open eyes that screamed purity and his angel-like appearance.
“Sorry, dear, I was just passing by when I saw this beautiful place and I had to stop to be able to stare at such beauty. I’m Neave Camshron. My family and I have recently arrived from the West.” She lied smoothly about her last name. She had never had one, and she had been inventing new ones wherever they went. In this town, she and her family had opted for the Celtic one, in honour to her and her husband’s origins.
“I see. I’m the pastor’s son, Carlisle Cullen. If you need anything, please feel free to come to the House of God to seek help. We will be always there to help in everything we can. Have a good day, my lady.”
“Thank you for your generous words. I’ll make sure to remember them by heart. Have a nice day you too, young Cullen.”
“Oh, please my lady, call me Carlisle. I’m too young to be called like my father just yet.” His smile, cordial and ever polite and warm, made her return it with fondness and happiness. This child had managed to gift her with optimism in a way no one had ever achieved in her immortal life. Not even her lovely Rose, with her mannerisms and her docile and shy conduct.
The concerns of their imminent discovery did not bode well with her husband and Neave was completely unprepared for what the man did to the young Cullen. When they were caught, the humans had been ready to hunt them. With only their clothes on, they run away as fast as they could, but her husband remained, just to wait for Carlisle.
He tortured him, made him suffer in so many terrific ways and made him cry and scream even after his voice could no longer be heard to even the vampire hearing. She felt nauseated by her husband’s actions once she arrived to the scene, having returned when she realised he wasn’t coming with the rest of the family, and the worst part was that he knew! He was a manipulative immortal that had let power consume his soul. He was no longer her husband –he ceased to possess that power over her the moment he made her this monster. She could not condone those actions, and, in a rush of bravado, she stepped between them and stopped a punch that was going directly to the human’s chest.
“Stop! For Mother Nature’s sake, please, stop this madness!”
“Silence!”
The almost lifeless body of the young man known as Carlisle Cullen fell to the ground in a silent groan. Neave’s tearless eyes were fixed on her husband’s malevolent ones. It ignited something within her cold body. Her jaw pressed strongly, marking her facial bones; her lips retreated, showing her teeth and fangs with threatening intent. Her whole body was tense, and the air was charged with palpable tension.
“I have loved you since the first day we were reunited. I have devoted my heart and my honour and my whole body and soul to you. I have given you a son and I have let you kill him. I have let you kill me and turn me into this creature, into this blood sucker, and I have followed you in your desire to know the world that this immortality have let you know. I have killed to survive and stayed by your side like the gentle, lovely wife I was always supposed to be. I have let you bed me repeatedly with these cold and strong bodies. I have let you run free, with no restrictions, to enjoy the unlife you have brought upon us. I have permitted you a lot of things, but this I cannot! You are a sadist, a cruel monster with no capability of love. You are not my husband. You are not worthy of this eternity.”
While saying this, Neave had approached the man she once married, and found a place between his arms. She hugged him fiercely, not letting his strength defeat her resolution. He was speechless, that she could see, and suddenly her insides felt warm. Her fury and her rage manifested in pure seconds of fire. It burned her husb- ex-husband’s body and reduced him to a pile of ashes. It was not a very long moment but, for her, it felt like every second of their immortality together had been buried with his ashes. He was no longer in this world. He probably was in Hell, burning forever for his sins.
“Mother?”
Rose’s voice sounded worried, and that was the anchor Neave needed to come back from her thoughts. She could see the shocked and unsure expressions of her ex-husband’s children along with Rose’s worrying over the body of the blond human.
Neave acted on pure instinct. Her movements were as gracious as an angel’s and her speed was even faster than they had ever watched. In a matter of milli-seconds Neave’s fangs had found a place between Carlisle’s neck and left shoulder, and the venom poured into his veins with ferocity and pain. Neave cradled his body into her cold arms and looked down at him with pain and fond hope in her red eyes. The words that followed were directed to the younglings that stared at her, but not once did she tear her gaze from the trembling, agonising child she held in her arms.
“Whatever you want to do from now on is no longer my business. You can go wherever you want to, with whoever you want to. You may be responsible for your actions from this moment.”
The silence between them was deafening. After a moment, all but one of them had remained with Neave. She smiled, caressing Carlisle’s sweaty face delicatedly. She hid him within the darkness of the sewers, and with a voiceless farewell, her coven was gone from Great Britain. She hoped Carlisle could forgive her in the future. She would not affect his decisions once he woke up.
After the incident in London, Neave had wandered around the world hidden in the shadows. Her coven had decided, after long years held together by the madness of a bygone monster, to disintegrate itself. She did nothing to stop them.
She was happy to find some centuries later that Rose had found her mate –a white-haired, green-eyed human that had been saved from death by Rose. His name, Neave learned, was Pierre. Neave’s intention was to spy without being discovered, for she didn’t want to intrude on someone else’s happiness when she had none. She had been alone since her turning, and more so after she killed her husband.
That incident led her to learn she had a gift: she could set herself on fire whenever her rage overwhelmed her. It was a dangerous ability, and it had been because of it and what she had done with it following that fatidic night, on the hunt for cold-hearted, cruel creatures of the night, that she had been given the title as The Vampire Reaper. Everyone feared her, even if she was just a legend between her peers. But she knew people, human or vampire, were quite cruel when they wished and could harm anyone who was remotely related to her. Thus, without so much as a backward glance, Neave parted farther and farther away from her child and her mate, once again.
She continued to travel to different places, to know new landscapes and to run away from every creature that existed. She had given up human blood fifty years after she turned the Cullen child and, since then, she had found a ravenous appetite for bear’s blood. It was surprisingly tasty for her. Because of this newfound discovery, Neave decided to stay some time in America.
Her life the last thirty or so years had been more or less calm. No one knew she was there, for even the Volturi thought she was hiding somewhere deep inside the Siberian lands. Ha, what a triad of fools. If she so wished, they would be ashes before they could feel her approach – but she had neglected her sadistic nature so many centuries already that she could subdue it effortlessly. Violence only led to violence, and she was not interested in shedding more blood than the absolute necessary to maintain the equilibrium. She may be a demon, but Neave would strive to preserve the old gods’ teachings and rules.
She had been hearing rumours about a coven called Olympic Coven, composed by their sire, one Carlisle Cullen, his mate Esme, and his children Edward, Rosalie and Emmett, and Alice and Jasper Whitlock. The first time Neave had heard about her child and his family… To say she had been tremendously happy had been an understatement.
Because of her happiness and her enthusiasm, she found herself one cold February morning in the modest Forks. It was a very beautiful place if one knew where to look for. She directed her steps to the hospital right away. She wanted to be able to get a glimpse to her child. The moment she stepped inside the reception, though, a hard body collided with hers.
“Oh, I’m terribly sorry. I wasn’t looking where I was putting my feet.”
“…”
The silence with which she was received made her uneasy. With horror and shame, she noticed the person in question wouldn’t had been able to collide with her and maintain themselves standing if they weren’t a vampire. Neave cleared her throat and looked up with uncertainty. What she encountered before her was the compassionate and surprised gaze of her child: Carlisle Cullen.
Every minute since she woke up at home with her family dead, Neave had wondered why Mother Nature punished her like she did. She didn’t understand at the time, but she did now. It hadn’t been a punishment; it had been a gift all this time.
“Hello, young Cullen. It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?”