A/N: This was oringinally a one-shot but if i get enough reviews I will make this a multiple chapter story.
Summary: What if Alice didn't come with Nahuel and Huilen in time? What if Aro chose to persucute the Cullens and their witnesses then and there? But what if there was another type of shifter that had heard of the Cullens cause? And what if they had come to fight the Volturi because they almost decimated their kind centuries before? (This takes place chapter 38 book 3)
Bella's POV:
"Chelsea is tryin to break our bindings," Edward whispered. "But she can't find them. She can't feel us here..." His eyes cut to me. "Are you doing that?"
I smiled grimly at him. "I am all over this."
Edward lurched away from me suddenly, his hand reaching toward Carlisle. At the same time, I felt a much sharper jab against the shield where it wrapped protectively around Carlisle's light. It wasn't painful, but it wasn't pleasant, either.
"Carlisle? Are you all right?" Edward gasped frantically.
"Yes. Why?
"Jane," Edward answered.
The moment he said her name, a dozen pointed attacks hit in a second, stabbing all over the elastic shield, aimed at twelve different bright spots. I flexed, making sure the shield was undamaged. It didn't seem like Jane had been able to pierce it. I glance around quickly; everyone was fine.
"Incredible," Edward said.
"Why aren't they waiting for the decision?" Tanya hissed.
"Normal procedure," Edward answered brusquely. "They usually incapacitate those on trial so they can't escape."
I looked across at Jane, who was staring at our group with furious disbelief. I was pretty sure that, besides me, she'd never seen anyone remain standing through her fiery assault.
It probably wasn't very mature. But I figured it would take Aro anout half a second to guess-if he hadn't already- that my shield was more powerful than Edward had known;I already had a big target on my forehead and there was really no point in trying to keep the extent of what i could do a secret. So I grinned a huge, smug smile right at Jane.
Her yes narrowed, and I felt another stab of pressure, this time directed at me.
I pulled my lips wider, showing my teeth.
Jane let out a high-pitched scream of a snarl. Everyone jumped, even the disciplined guard. Everyone but the ancients, who didn't so much as look up from their conference. Her twin caught her arm as she crouched to spring.
The Romanians started chuckling with dark anticipation.
"I told you this was out time," Vladimir said to Stefan.
"Just look at the witch's face," Stefan chortled.
Alec patted his sister's arm. He turned his face to us, perfectly smooth, completely angelic.
I waited for some pressure, some sign of his attack, but I felt nothing. He continued to stare in our direction, his pretty face composed. Was he attacking? Was he getting through my shield? Was I the only one who could still see him? I clutched Edward's hand.
"Are you okay?" I choked out.
"Yes," he whispered.
"Is Alec trying?"
Edward nodded. His gift is lower than Jane's. It creeps. It will touch us in a few seconds."
I saw it then, when I had a clue what to look for.
A strange clear haze was oozing across the snow, nearly invisible against the white. It reminded me of a mirage-a slight warping of the view, a hint of a shimmer. I pushed my shield out from Carlisle and the rest of the front line, afraid to have the slinking mist too close when it hit. What if it stole right through my inatangible protection? Should we run?
A low rumbling murmured through the ground under our feet, and a gust of wind blew the snow into sudden flurries between our position and the Volturi's. Benjamin had seen the creeping threat, too, and now he tried to blow the mist away from us. The snow made it easy to see where he threw the wind, but the mist didn't react in any way. It was like air blowing harmlessly through a shadow;the shadow was immune.
The triangular formation of the ancients finally broke apart when, with a racking groan, a deep, narrow fissure opened in a long zigzag across the middle of the clearing. The earth rocked under my feet for a moment. The drifts of snow plummeted into the hole, but the mist skipped right across it, as untouched by gravity as it had been my wind.
Aro and Caius watched the opening earth with wide eys. Marcus looked in the same direction without emotion.
They didn't speak; they waited too, as the mist approached us. The wind shrieked louder but didn't change the course of the mist. Jane was smiling now.
And then the mist hit a wall.
I could taste it as soon as it touched my shield- it had a dense, sweet, cloying flavor. It made me remember dimly the numbness of Novocain on my tongue.
The mist curled upward, seeking a breach, a weakness. It found none. The fingers of searching haze twisted upward and aroud, trying to find a way in, and in the process illustrating the astonishing size of the protective screen.
There were gasps on both sides of Benjamin's gorge.
"Well done Bella!" Benjamin cheered in a low voice.
My smile returned.
I could see Alec's narrowed eyes, doubt on his face for the first time as his mist swirled harmlessly around the edges of my shield.
And then I knew that I could do this. Obviously, I would be the number-one priority, the first one to die, but as long as I held, we were on more than equal footing with the Volturi. We still had Benjamin and Zafrina; they had no supernatural help at all. As long as I held.
"I'm going to have to concentrate," I whispered to Edward. "When it comes to hand to hand, it's going to be harder to keep the shield around the right people."
"I'll keep themm off you."
"No. You have to get Demetri. Zafrina will keep them away from me."
Zafrina nodded solemnly. "No one will touch this young one." she promised Edward.
"I'd go after Jane and Alec myself , but I can do more good here."
"Jane's mine," Kate hissed. "She needs a taste of her own medicine."
"And Alec owes me many lives, but I will settle for his," Vladimir growled from the other side. "He's mine."
"I just want Caius," Tanya said evenly.
The others started divvying up opponents, too, but they were quickly interuppted.
Aro, staring calmly at Alec's ineffective mist, finally spoke.
"Before we vote," he began.
I shook my head angrily. I was tired of this charade. The bloodlust was igniting in me again, and I was sorry that I would help the others more by standing still. I wanted to fight.
"Let me remind you," Aro continued, "whatever the council's decision, there need be no violence here."
Edward snarled out a dark laugh.
Aro stared at him sadly. "It will be regrettable waste to our kind to lose any of you. But you especially, young Edward, and your newborn mate. The Volturi would be glad to welcome many of you in our ranks. Bella, Benjamin, Zafrina, Kate. There are many choices before you. Consider them."
Chelsea's attempt to sway us fluttered impotently against my shield. Aro's gaze swept across our hard eyes, looking for any indication of hesitation. From his expression, he found none.
I knew he was desperate to keep Edward and me, to imprison us the way he had hoped to save Alice. But this fight was too big. He would not win if I lived. I was fiercly glad to be so powerful that I left him no way not to kill me.
"Let us vote then," he said with apparent reluctance.
Caius spoke with eager haste. "The child is an unknown quantity. There is no reason to allow such a risk to exist. It must be destroyed,along with all who protect it." He smiled with expectation.
I fought back a shriek of defiance to answer his cruel smirk.
Marcus lifted his uncaring eyes, seeming to look through us as he voted.
"I see no immediate danger. The child is safe enough for now. We can always reevaluate later. Let us leave in peace." His voice was even fainter than his brothers' feathery sighs.
None of the guard relaxed their ready positions at his disaggreeing words. Caius's anitcipatory grin did not falter. It was as if Marcus hadn't spoken at all.
"I must make the deciding vote, it seems," Aro mused.
Suddenly, I heard a thunder of paws hitting the ground.
All of the ancients as one stiffened as they seemed to know what it was.
Edward also stiffened in shock as he I am assumming read their minds.
Then the body to the paws her visible.
There were about 30 lions and lionesses. As they came to a halt in front of my shield I saw Jane and Alec look thouroughly confused. The Romanians hissed with pleasure.
What happened next surprised me most. A male lion stepped forward and spoke.
"Aro, Aro," the lion mused, "it has been too long my friend."
"T'Challa, yes it has." Aro replied with a worried look in his face.
"Now what are you here for trying to pick a fight with these innocent vampires hmm?"
"This coven is not innocent of the crimes they have been accused of!" Caius said angrily.
"Quiet! I was not speaking to you now was I?"
Caius looked like he was about to pounce on the lion but second guessed it as the majestic being also took into a crouch.
"Peace T'Challa." Aro pleaded. "Caius was just trying to convince you to join us."
The lion scoffed. "You would dare think I would join you in destoying an innocent coven of vampires when you have decimated approximately over 200 of my people?"
"But that was millenium ago." Aro desperately tried to sway this T'Challa character.
T"Challa paced, eyeing Aro and Caius. "You still think I would join you? You wish of me to destoy you right now with all of these witnesses? With me showing them how weak you really are? You will leave this coven and never come back. Because if you do so i will put you in all of the pain you have put me in. Oh and control your children they are annoying my people."
Aro held up his hand to signal to Jane and Alec to stop. "My vote has been condoned. There appears to be no danger. I see no threat to our secret. It seems these half-vampire children are much like us."
"Good choice Aro." T'Challa said smugly.
"Dear ones," Aro called. "We do not fight today."
The guard nodded in unsion and Aro turned around and left his guard trailing behind him.
Jacob's POV:
As the royal leeches left I stared at one of the lionesses. She had a sleek tan color coat.
She looked at me, I think she felt my stare. When she looked me in the eyes everything inside me came undone as I stared at the face of a lion. All the lines that held me to my life were sliced apart in swift cuts, like clipping the strings to a bunch of balloons. Everything that made me who I was-my love for the vampire in front of me,my love for my father, my loyakty to my new pack, the love for my other brothers, my hatred for my enemies, my home, my name, my self-disconnected from me in that second-and floated up into space.
I was not left grifting. A new string held me where I was.
Not one string, but a million. Not strings, but steel cables. A million steel cables all tying me to one thing- to the very center of the universe.
I could see that now- how the universe swirled around this one point. I'd never seen the symmetry of the universe before, but now it was plain.
The gravity of the earth no longer tied me to the place where I stood.
It was the beautiful lioness not 10 feet away from me.