Jacob was gonna murder her dumb ass, but only if Charlie didn't get to her first. Here she was, running through the streets of Volterra to save her ex-boyfriend from suicide by fire and dismemberment, and if asked why the only reason she could come up with was 'it seemed like the right thing to do.'
As Bella caught sight of the previous light of her life (and current bane of her existence,) cold water from the fountain she was running full tilt through spilled over into her sneakers and she was struck by how sickly Edward looked. It appeared that after he was denied his death at the hands of the Volturi, he really let himself go. For someone who had left her, he was doing a remarkable impression of a man who had been rejected and abandoned.
Just as he took a step fully into the light, Bella slammed into the stone of his chest, wrapping her arms around his steel neck and trying futilely to push him backwards.
"You have to move!" She pleaded with him as he sighed heavily and embraced her. She could have smacked him for choosing now for a cuddle, this was so not the place for hugs. "Open your eyes, look at me! I'm alive! You have to move!"
Finally, as if coming out of a trance, he pulled her backwards into the corridor he had just exited with a gasp, never once releasing her body.
Bella released a sigh of relief as she brought her arms down in front of her and attempted to take a step back and get some distance. Edward seemed reluctant to release his hold, but he loosened it, allowing her to put a few precious inches between them. She took deep gulping breaths as she tried to calm her heart rate from the sprint she just engaged in.
"Bella," he whispered reverently, "it's you."
"Yes," she said, rubbing her temples to attempt to stave off the headache threatening to split her head apart. With more force, she pointedly took another step backwards. This time, he did release her, though it looked as if it physically pained him.
Bracing herself, she looked up into his perfect features and felt... very little. It wasn't love anymore, just a little echo of the loss of her innocence. He was still and would always be painfully beautiful, he would always be her first love. But he would also always be the boy who used her biggest insecurities to try to break her and leave her desolate in the forest.
"I just needed you to understand I'm alive," she told his chest forcefully, refusing to meet his eye. "You don't have to feel guilty or hurt yourself, or whatever this is. I'm alive, and you see that, okay?"
He looked down at her with that familiar mix of unconditional love and condescending superiority. "Bella, I lied," he breathed as if it explained everything. "I love you. You just believed it so easily."
She blinked up at him, completely incredulous at such a statement. What, she was supposed to assume he was a dirty liar who enjoyed cruelly demeaning girls with the secret weaknesses he knew about them? Well, while NOW after months of self-esteem building and distance from the situation, it seemed a fair assessment, THEN she never would have thought even for a moment that he would tell her anything but the truth.
Shaking her head with a chuckle at the sheer nerve of her ex-boyfriend, she met his eyes, crossing her arms across her chest and lifting her chin. "Yes, Edward, I believed you," she told him calmly. "You were my boyfriend, I trusted you implicitly, and I was not aware you would ever lie to me. I took you at your word, and it decimated me. For a little while. But that does not mean that I want you to die. That seems like a bit of an over-"
She was interrupted by the arrival of two vampires she had never seen as Edward shushed her and forced her unceremoniously behind his back. She fought the urge to smack him upside the head for his rude dismissal. It would, after all, only serve to make her hand sore.
"Gentleman, I won't be needing your services after all," Edward told them coldly.
The MASSIVE mother fucker in front paid him no mind. "Aro wants to speak with you."
"No rules were broken," Edward responded in a voice bordering on desperation.
"Never-the-less, we should take this conversation somewhere more private." The other vampire eyed Edward with a look that said in no uncertain terms that they expected his compliance. Red eyes flashed to hers, eying her intensely as a small smirk graced the man's face, before moving back to stare at Edward when he began to growl quietly.
Bella had the overwhelming urge to kick the yellow eyed vampire in front on her. Why was he GROWLING at men who clearly worked for the god damn king of the Vampire race? For god's sake, Edward was the one who came here, demanded they kill him, and then threatened to expose the biggest secret their species had simply because he didn't get what he asked for. She grit her teeth in exasperation. Sometimes, it was like he was 2.
"Of course," Edward replied softly, with a push to her behind him. "Bella, why don't you-"
"Edward, enough," she scolded him quietly. "Aro, the king, wants to see us. We're gonna need to go."
He shot her a warning look. "Love-"
A sliver of fury raced down her spine as she pressed her lips together in a hard line. She stepped sideways to move around him before his hands clasped onto her waist, restraining her.
When she spoke, her voice was colder than his skin. "Remove your hands from my person and do not call me that." Edward's eyes widened but his arms dropped to his side, the expression on his face warring between shock and hurt. "I am confident the ruler of your entire race has better things to do than wait for the guy who almost exposed the existence of vampires to hundreds of random people. Personally, as a human who he could crush with a whim and a flick of his pinkie, I'd rather not keep the man waiting any longer."
Alice fluttered in behind her, but Bella was really not in the mood for a lecture from the pixie at the moment, so she ignored the woman who used to be her best friend in the world. Instead, she stepped towards the red eyed vampires who could easily make her lunch.
"I'm ready when you are," she told them with a small smile, glancing between the two.
The big one snorted and eyed his companion. "She's got much bigger balls than the fur muncher, D."
'D' had her fixed in his unwavering gaze, his smirk still playing across his face. "She most certainly does." He extended his hand to her with a raised eyebrow, daring her to take it. Never one to make good life choices (and really why start now?), Bella placed her warm hand in his gloved one and his smirk turned to a grin.
Edward hissed something behind her but before she could turn to glare at him, a small teenage angel faced girl walked into the corridor, her face set in a mask of irritation.
"Enough! Demetri, Felix, the Masters are waiting!" She hissed.
Bella was drug along behind who she now knew was Demetri, and had she not been equal parts angry and petrified, she would have had more to say about the stunning architecture. Felix was eyeing her speculatively as Bella attempted to keep from stumbling. After tripping a fourth time, the vampire snorted and took a deep breath, scenting the air as if sniffing a delicious pie. Of course, to him, she reasoned, that's probably exactly what she was.
"Oh, dibs," Felix said with a sinister smile that showed all his teeth. Demetri paused and turned slightly to face the bigger vampire, one eyebrow raised with his eyes pitch black and hard. Felix blanched and seemed to take an involuntary step back.
"Or not," he mumbled quietly, raising his hands in a surrendering motion. Demetri kept his eyes trained on the other vampire before he turned without a word and beginning to move again.
Jane, as she learned the girl was called, pushed open two heavy wooden doors to reveal three men seated upon a dais in what could only be described as thrones. Demetri released her hand with a wink and moved to stand beside Felix at the back of the room, leaving her beside Edward and feeling oddly exposed without the red eyed vampire. The room was empty aside from the Kings, who she recognized from Carlisle's painting, and one additional vampire who motioned for Jane to join him, calling her sister.
"Ahhhh," exclaimed the man she recognized as Aro as he rose and strode towards them. "What happy news! Bella yet lives. This is a surprise."
Without asking, he took Edward's hand and his eyes unfocused slightly before he released it and fixed Bella in his penetrating gaze. Alice had lectured her in the car on the Volturi, telling her among other things that Aro's gift was soul reading, which he could accomplish with a single touch. Bella immediately averted her eyes from the King in front of her, keeping her posture as submissive as possible. She was not an idiot and these were not the Cullens. These were real vampires, 'Cold Ones,' and not only capable of serious damage to her person, but, she imagined, much more willing to inflict it than the golden eyed figures she had once called family.
Before she could blink, Aro stood in front of her and extended his hand. "May I?" He asked in a tone that sounded very little like a question.
Edward growled and Alice hissed at him. Bella, for her part, looked at Edward wide eyed and incredulous, trying to tell him with her eyes to shut the fuck up. Was he trying to get her murdered?!
"Of course," she murmured, turning her attention back to Aro. She couldn't help watching his face as he bent over her hand. She noted with fascination as his eyes widened and his eyebrows shot up to his forehead.
He released her hand with a soft sound, somewhere between elation and discomfort. "I see nothing." He turned back to the thrones. He seemed to be thinking before he turned back towards her, fixing her with a curious sort of expression. "I wonder if she is immune to all our gifts..."
He was turning towards Jane when Demetri spoke unexpectedly from the back of the room, "Master, that won't be necessary," he said firmly, in a tone that bordered on menace. "She is untrackable. I can attest to it."
Aro studied him with a look of surprise and slight anger. "Demetri-"
"Brother." Marcus' gravelly voice rang through the room and Bella fought not to snicker as every vampire in the room started. She didn't even know vampires could startle. Marcus extended his hand for Aro to touch and as he did, several things happened simultaneously.
Demetri took a step forward to stand at Bella's side. Aro turned back to look at Demetri with excitement in his eyes. And Edward snarled and shook his head, attempting to reach around the larger vampire and pull Bella behind him.
Demetri was faster, however, and quickly enough that it made her a little dizzy she was across the room, looking into the wide expanse of the Demetri's back as Edward lunged and was quickly restrained by Felix.
"No, you are monsters!" Edward was snarling. "You cannot do this!"
Aro fixed him with a glare that had a shiver running down Bella's spine, even across the room. "You will find, young man, that I can do a great many things. Especially when one such as you has violated so very many laws, that it is impossible to pick just one to punish."
Aro glanced towards her before turning his stare back towards Edward. "As it is, you must know you have damned her, as you see it, or condemned her to certain death."
Bella closed her eyes and fought down the whimper at the realization that she had been aware, deep down, was coming. She had known, of course she had known, that she was never going to leave Volterra with a heartbeat. It was guaranteed from the start. So why had she come here? Oh yes, because 'it seemed like the right thing to do.' For god's sake, why did her sense of right and wrong always have to get her into such unbelievably deep shit?
Demetri's back was rumbling with a growl as he pulled her closer to him by her hip.
"I left so she could have a normal life! I left to keep her safe!" He was shaking with righteous indignation. "I'll not let you do this to her!"
Bella sucked in a ragged breath and tried to contain that temper that had been steadily growing since she arrived in Volterra. She tried so hard, fought so valiantly. But no counting to five was going to do it this time as she leaned slightly out from behind Demetri and stared hard at her ex-boyfriend.
"How dare you," she said furiously, voice deathly steady as she shook her head. "None of the vampires in this room brought a vulnerable human into this world of supernatural predators, you did. You told me the secret, you revealed the vampire race, you left me with knowledge that is illegal for me to have! Furthermore, you abandoned me to the pissed off mate of a vampire you and your family killed who now is obsessed with the idea of 'a mate for a mate,' blissfully unaware that you fucking left me in the woods and vanished from my life. You were going to condemn every single human being in Volterra today who saw you sparkle in the sun to certain death! Do you ever, for even a moment, consider the consequences of your actions?! THEY are going to kill a human to protect the entirety of their species. They kill humans to eat. YOU were going to kill humans for a very public temper tantrum, and you condemned me to death for a love that wasn't even important enough for you to stick around for. I didn't pick this, I am fucking innocent, but if you want to blame someone for the fact that I am going to die here in Italy, you need only look in the mirror."
Aro startled her from her self-righteous monologue by clapping his hands together and squealing as if she had simply done the most delightful trick. Demetri's growl rose in volume until she could feel her whole body vibrating right along with his.
Aro looked to the guard and smiled indulgently. "Demetri, now, there is no need. The sentence is death, my friend. However, whether her heart ceases to beat today, or in three days, I leave entirely up to you."