Prologue – Decisions, Decisions

"If it be right, do it boldly; if it be wrong, leave it undone."

Bernard Gilpin

Tuesday 9th January, 2007 – 22.35

"Demetri, you said? A fitting name for the thuggish henchman of an effete Italian dandy," I murmured as I turned his head from side to side in a slow roll. His glassy, lifeless eyes were already losing their crimson hue to become closer to what they had once been in his long-forgotten human life. This was an unmistakeable sign of death in one of our kind, although such were the lengths that were ordinarily necessary to kill us – dismemberment followed by immediate immolation – that few of us ever witnessed the phenomenon.

The only thing keeping his enormous body upright was my right arm with its hand wrapped tightly around his throat and in the vampire scheme of things, I wasn't considered to be particularly strong. As I pondered this unexpected turn of events, I stood stock still as only a vampire is capable of doing. Had any humans happened across us in that damp back alley they might well have blinked in puzzlement, taking us for posed mannequins – an outlandish advert for some boringly predictable 'avante-garde' designer.

No matter. There were no witnesses as the one who just scant moments ago had confronted me had obviously planned it that way. It had been the perfectly executed ambush and I had walked obliviously into it. Had the lumbering idiot not been possessed of the need to inform me of who he was and why he was about to kill me, he very probably would have taken my head off without me being aware of his presence.

"Follis!" I swore, not really knowing if I was addressing the corpse or myself.

As my senses strained for any sign of an accomplice, I quickly took in the more obvious details of my would-be assassin. He had been, I grudgingly admitted, a good choice for the role of executioner. His now proven cunning aside, he looked little more than a hulking great bruiser who might bring nothing more to bear on a problem than muscle. Nothing could be further from the truth, of course, but if one underestimated one's opponent as he had done me then the results were invariably fatal. Vampires seldom took prisoners.

Further yet I reached out to the limit of my acute hearing as my nostrils flared, straining to catch the merest whiff of incongruity on the damp breeze. There was as yet no sign that the one who had claimed to be called Demetri was not operating alone, but to run would be rash. Let them come to me now that I knew I was in danger; let them find themselves faced with my talent. Besides, I would have to dispose of the body lest I further arouse the interest of the Volturi. Resolving to use this stillness productively, I cast my mind back barely two weeks in order to review the names and faces of those previously mysterious Italian ghouls.

*

I had been just one of the unwilling witnesses-cum-hostages whom the Volturi lackeys had efficiently swept up on their journey from Italy the very north of the New World. Ordinarily, I would not have been able to allow myself to be brought under the noses of that knot of power-hungry, suspicious parasites. Unfortunately for me, therefore, there had been far too many of our kind around for me to absolutely guarantee my anonymity had I employed my own power to cheerfully commit wholesale murder. Consequently, I had found myself an increasingly incredulous and slack-jawed witness to the staggering idiocy of our kind.

Werewolves! Who on earth cared which 'flavour' of shape-shifters they were? That spectacularly dim-witted Egyptian pretty boy who could create wind and split the ground? Who amongst us were incapable of resisting the fiercest of typhoons or leaping across the widest of canyons? At the end of the day, each side was every bit as bad as the other: strutting peacocks who sought to cow the other with useless displays of garish plumage. The only ones with any brains seemed to be the Volturi henchmen who simply wanted to rip their masters' enemies limb from limb. Their attitude might have lacked subtlety, but it would have worked.

However, the whole sorry affair had played out without a satisfactory resolution for vampirekind. At some point in the future, the Volturi would attack again. Indeed, they would have to if they were to deter emerging power bases who, unlike the golden-eyed Cullens, actually coveted the reins of our world. Quite why anyone would bother was beyond me as herding cats would be simplicity incarnate in comparison to controlling an unknown number of peripatetic super-predators who mostly couldn't tolerate one another's company. Still, some moron would want the job and that fact alone ensured future strife.

First Aro would need to pick off the emotional new-born woman, her mind reading mate and, if rumours were to be believed, the tiny seer. Birds of a feather might very well flock together, but such a collection of talents under one roof? Surely nothing similar had ever happened before in the history of our kind outside of Volterra? Everyone could see that particular collision coming, but perhaps that wasn't the case for what had happened here tonight.

Before anything could be achieved, the Italians would first need to discredit or eliminate as many of their witnesses as they could. Were they not to do so, word of their frustration at the hand of a mere handful of vampires would undoubtedly spread far and fast. That would in turn lead to humiliation and a further vulnerability in the mystique which surrounded them and those who wished to keep both their power and their heads simply could not allow that to happen.

Hence the presence of this Demetri.

I had taken my usual precautions after fleeing the scene of the confrontation, so it must have been bad luck on my part that I was near the top of the hit list. Perhaps that or it was merely a case of apparent good luck for him. Whatever had happened, as he had quite skilfully cornered me in my temporary abode – an abandoned industrial warehouse – he had seen no need not to enjoy himself by giving me a chance to amuse him by fighting him 'mano e mano'. Idiot – he must have been quite young as only his casual cruelty and cocksure arrogance had saved me and likewise doomed him.

These thoughts had flitted through my head in just a few brief seconds, of course, and as they faded I found myself still to be needlessly pinning the motionless corpse to the wall. It was odd to say the least when I released him only to see his body fall to the ground in an almost human manner, so ungainly was it.

"Run and hide, or speak to the Cullens?" I mused as I dragged the limp form towards the soon-to-be broken gas pipe.

*