Chapter VI

In which Alec returns home

"Jane, wait! Don't go!" shouted Felix from behind the first floor banister as the little vampire was marching down the stairs. They had just finished dressing themselves in the new clothes delivered to them by a shop in town when Jane pocketed her new cellphone and went down.

"I need to get a headstart!" she shouted back and slowed her rhythm, waiting for the telltale sound of her companions' footsteps. It was not fair, she knew, but it couldn't be helped. They were in no position to leave her wandering alone and unprotected, so they would need to follow her.

They caught up with her before she was even out the door, the discomfort caused by being trapped between orders obvious on their faces. It was hard to go against centuries of following Aro's orders, and Jane too was no exception - she had the distinct feeling that she shouldn't be doing it, but the urgency of her situation gnawed at her. She had to find her brother.

As they left the building, Felix and Corin flanking Jane anxiously, Jane was struck by the odd realization that with Alec gone, she had become twice as important to the Volturi, as if her brother's worth had transfered onto her. The thought made her nauseous, and she spat some venom flecked with dirt onto the pavement and watched it simmer as it melted a small hole in the ground.

"I've looked at the map and done the math," she spoke as they headed to the car. The sun had set, leaving a chip of bone-pale moon shining over the clear sky. "I don't think they took him somewhere on the mountain. They can't be that stupid, they would know we would comb every nook and cranny. And wherever they took him, they probably took him by car, as I can't imagine he would have followed them freely. I say we check the main roads for clues."

"You know what's been bothering me all this time?" asked Corin as she climbed into the car. "How could they get Alec at all? He should have cut off their senses within minutes. How could they kindnap someone with that kind of power?"

"They either have someone talented who can negate or overcome his powers, or they came up with something else," stated Felix, the unsaid implications of this words cutting into Jane like a knife.

They drove up to the place where they had last parked their car and got out. With their dark-colored sports clothes, they looked as if they had come off the cover of a sports magazine, with Jane the only odd one out, her brother's travel jacket hanging a bit awkwardly from her body. They decided to check the road nearest to the landslide area, as it made sense that time would have been of the essence for the kidnappers.

"They wanted to get out of there with Alec as soon as possible. I'd say it's a good place to start," Felix spoke as he peered into the dark depths of the forest. If he hadn't been worried about Alec, the prospect of pulling out all the stops and running as fast as his muscles would allow would have gotten him grinning with excitement. He would have even challenged Corin to a race, overtaken her easily and then dived at her unsuspecting head from atop a tree when she least expected. But the spectre of Alec's absence hung over them like an old cobweb, and there was room for nothing else in him but concentration.

They began their ascent. The encroaching darkness made the forest feel primaeval. Shafts of moonlight speared through the lattice of pine tree branches, briefly touching the three vampires as they ran up the side of the road with exhilarating speed, accompanied by the flutter of frightened owls and the dry crunch of green needles. Sometimes, they slowed down to feel the air and catch the scents of the night, or when one of them thought they saw a skid mark on the asphalt or a deep footprint in the mud by the side of the road. Although their eyes were as good as any nightcrawler's, Felix would have rather used flashlights, but they couldn't risk being spotted by anyone, human or vampire.

The moon was high above the stony peaks when Felix's cellphone started to vibrate. He hissed at his companions so sharply that Jane nearly slipped off the branch she was on. She balanced precariously for a few seconds, leaning back and forth like an acrobat in a silent film, before grabbing a branch to steady herself. Below, Corin was already next to Felix, the light of the phone screen casting a cold light over their fine features.

"What is it?" called Jane from above.

"I caught Alec's transmitter on the map!" announced Felix as both he and Corin darted forward and began searching through a patch of shrubs.

Jane's first instinct was to fly off her branch and join the search, but a thought held her in place. His ashes could be in there. And then she was paralyzed with terror ar what she might discover in the next few seconds. So horrified she was that she wanted to tell the others to stop searching, but her voice seemed to have left her. It dawned upon her that she was not ready for anything except finding her brother alive.

There was a rustling in the grass below and she looked down to see a small hedgehog making his way across the mossy ground with pitter-pattering paws. She stared at it, unable to move, unable to speak.

Felix had turned on the pocket flashlight he had brought along and was knee-deep in the shrubbery together with Corin, combing through the stems and leaves. Corin made a noise and extended her closed palm towards him, which he promptly shone his light on.

"Cell phone pieces. Our model," Corin concluded. "They destroyed his cell phone for good measure."

"They probably took him here, got him in a car and destroyed his cell to avoid any tracking chances. Well I got news for these fuckers, Demetri is coming tomorrow and he will track their piss traces right up to their door," growled Felix, continuing his search.

"I don't see ashes anywhere," murmured Corin carefully, as if afraid to tempt fate. She heard Jane jump down from the tree and walk towards them.

"Found the transmitter!" cheered Felix, holding the vital little piece between his thumb and index fingers. He showed it to both ladies and then gave it to Jane to put in her pocket. She complied mechanically.

"They either took him here and got him into a car, or... they planted this here to lead us down the wrong path," mused Corin, twisting one shiny ringlet between her fingers.

"We just have to show this to Demetri and he will feel whether it's the right path or not. If yes, then we save considerable time." Felix focused his flashlight on the sign next to him, noting the distance to the city. "They probably took him to the city. It's too close not to take advantage of it." He moved his thumb to turn off the flashlight when Corin put a hand on his arm and stopped him.

"Felix, light that sign again please."

Felix did what was asked of him, and Corin went closer and examined a small hole at the bottom. "How odd," she muttered.

Felix came over and gave it a look as well. "What is it?"

"The sign here is new. It couldn't be more than six months old. The quality is also high enough to avoid rust. So what is this hole doing here?" Her fingers traced the edge of the hole carefully and peeled away at its yellowish margins. She rubbed the little bits between her fingers and sniffed at them. The light coming from the lantern made her eyes look like red enamel. "I've seen this before. It's venom. This is how our venom looks like after burning through metal."

Felix made a sound of recognition and promptly spat on the right side of the sign. It was not a mouthful, but his venom sizzled briefly before burning a few layers through the sheet of metal. It looked very much alike to the original work of art. One of the less-known proclivities of vampires, especially during their first century, was the habitual spitting on things to see the ensuing chemical reaction. The sizzling, melting and occasional sparks were a new way in which the neonate vampire could interact with the world. Spitting contests were frequent.

Jane surprised her companions by suddenly walking to the sign and using her finger to scrounge up the edges of the hole and collect the rusty remains in her palm, which she proceeded to smell, then lick. She held the contents in her mouth for a few seconds, and when her eyes widened, both Felix and Corin knew she had identified the trace as Alec's.

She spat a gob of rust-colored venom onto the ground and gasped: "It's Alec! He was here! He left this trace for us!"

"Excellent! That means they didn't kill him. I knew it, he's more worth to them living than dead." Corin exchanged a look of relief with Felix.

The little hedgehog reached Jane's leg, sniffed at it uncertainly and then continued on its way, followed by her red eyes. A soft mist was beginning to crawl down from the mountain, eating away at the edges of the world. The critter went on undeterred and vanished.

"Hedgehog in the fog," Jane said.

Corin gave her an inquiring look.

"It's a Soviet animated short film from the seventies... Hedgehog in the Fog. Alec loved it," explained Jane almost bashfully.

"Why don't we head back and you tell us what happens in it?"

Jane's story began together with their descent. "A little hedgehog lives in an old forest. Occasionally, he visits his friend the bear cub in the evenings. They drink tea, eat jam brought by the hedgehog and they admire the stars. One evening, the hedgehog travels through the forest to make his usual visit to his friend when he notices a meadow whose grass is covered by a blanket of fog. And in that meadow is a beautiful white horse, grazing what appears to be the fog itself. It looks like something out of a dream, of the kind that people don't have anymore.

Entranced by this ethereal apparition, the hedgehog enters the mist and gets lost in it. He wanders around the eerie and beautiful forest as shapes and animals drift in and out of sight. An owl stalks him, a fish saves him from drowning in a river. A rusty leaf startles him. In the end, he hears the voice of his worried friend calling out to him, and they are reunited. And then... "

The bear cub talked and talked, and the hedgehog thought: "Isn't it wonderful that we are together again?"

There was a little bit more to the story, but Jane, who had stopped, felt the air get caught in her throat and flailed her arms helplessly. Vampires could not cry, and so the pain had no way to go but down inside. Corin placed an arm around her and drew her close. "We'll get him back, you'll see. And then you'll watch the stars together again, half a sky for each of you."

It did not seem real, but there she was, right before him. She rummaged through the plump purse she was carrying and produced a blood bag. "Drink," she said, placing the tube of the bag close to his mouth. Alec leaned his head forward and caught the tip of the tube between his lips. His eyes never left the girl's face, even when the urgency of his thirst made him suck a little too fast for his dignity. He had been so scared for his life that his growing thirst had gone almost unnoticed. The blood was clean and young, and if Alec would have had arms he would have grabbed the soon empty bag out of the girl's hands, torn it open and licked it clean. The state of his body being less than satisfactory, he had to control himself when the girl slowly took the bag away from him and tucked it back in her purse. She had raindrops scattered on her thick black hair, which Alec had admired so many times before in the past.

"It's all I could get on such short notice," she said after he finished drinking. She had a hint of amusement on her face. "We weren't expecting you yet."

Alec did not know what to say. The situation was almost unreal. Silently, he stared at the wealth of red flowers embroidered on her black dress and at her necklace of delicate peridot drops. Even in a modern dress, it was still her. It was really her. The girl whose grave he had visited so often in the Volterra cemetery. The face he had come to know only in black and white was before him, in the most unexpected of ways, sweetened by the vampire transformation.

She moved forward, the gems on her neck glinting in the semidarkness of the van, and before Alec knew, she took him in her arms like an overgrown child. She carried him out of the van, and he could see that they were somewhere outside the city, a place judged by Alec to be a neighboring village. The colorful roofs of several houses were poking out of the sea of trees in the distance. They had stopped next to a faded wooden fence that surrounded an overgrown garden. Alec could hear bees buzzing around the greenery. A flock of sparrows was chirping loudly in the oak tree next to the rusty gate. A rotten swing was swaying lazily in the cool after-rain breeze. The girl pushed the gate open with her foot and began walking on a winding path lined with weeds and garden flowers. An occasional drop fell from the rustling canopy of branches above and curved down her round cheek. Alec looked at her until he felt her gaze about to shift to him, at which he looked down at her necklace.

"Do you like it? I made it myself."

"I used to have eyes that color once," said Alec, watching his disheveled reflection in the facets of the gems. "Listen, Oriana..."

The only reaction the girl had to hearing her name was a pair of slightly elevated eyebrows.

"And how might you know my name?" she asked while they were passing under a grapevine arch.

"You have a gravestone in Volterra cemetery. A picture, too. Your parents and younger brother express their love and regret."

"My, my, will the wonders never cease?" she asked no one in particular.

"I used to visit it quite often."

"How so?" She stopped to blow a ladybug away from Alec's forehead.

"It was a very nice picture."

The girl smiled, looking pleased.

"Where are you taking me, Oriana?"

"Surprise."

A small wooden house emerged at the end of the stone path, lined by two overgrown rose bushes. Its tiled roof was sinking slightly in the middle, and its windows had beautifully carved trims. Somebody had painted a red fox surrounded by bluebells on one of the outer walls. A clematis plant was spread out on the other wall and part of the roof, its deep purple flowers darkened by the recent rain. The front door was painted blue, with the house number scrawled on it in chalk. The house looked like it belonged in someone's happy childhood memories. If he wasn't being carried off to an unknown fate, Alec would have half expected a kind-faced grandmother to come out and greet him with a plate of freshly sliced apricots.

As soon as they got close to the house, the door did open. The middle aged man in running clothes gave them a steely look and stepped aside to let Oriana enter with her maimed hostage. They exchanged a look as she passed him, but Alec hardly noticed. He was suddenly consumed by an overwhelming feeling that something was wrong with the man. There was something deeply unsettling coming from him, but Alec did not know what, and the uncertainty made him more afraid. It was almost unheard of for a vampire not to know at all times what was happening to him and why. As Oriana walked on, Alec heard the man go outside and close the door behind him.

He was brought into a room filled with handmade rugs strewn across the floor. A faint musty smell hung in the air, the kind one often finds in old uninhabited houses. There were two vampires waiting around a table filled with maps. The first one to turn was the blond man who made half of the duo which attacked him and his companions. He seemed to be in a bad mood, and was standing with his arms firmly crossed against his chest. The other vampire was the lanky teenage boy with a head full of curls and a papery white skin. "We caught a big one," he said in a rather pleased tone of voice.

"Aren't you proud."

"Oh, I am. And why shouldn't I be? It's not every day that we have one of the most important vampires in the world at our mercy. Or at least part of him," the boy teased, eyeing Alec's torn sleeves.

"You know this will mean your death. Even if I die, the Volturi will hunt every last one of you down and drag you out from whatever crevice or hole you took shelter in and-"

"Feed us to the fire?" interrupted the boy.

"We are more imaginative than that," replied Alec, looking mildly offended.

The boy seemed markedly unimpressed by the threat looming over his coven. He ran a slender hand through his mass of black curls and studied Alec with a knowing smile on his face. "Tell me something, old boy. If you were in my position, what would you do with your captive?"

"Tell him why he was taken in the first place."

"Why, there's every reason to! You know a lot. Mercury was in retrograde. The Volturi will never recover from the loss of your powers. You are very pretty."

He picked a stray hair off his striped t-shirt and put it on his tongue. Turning to the blond man, he said: "Call everyone, we need to make a decision. Remember to check if Asena's phone can still be used. And as for you," he approached Alec and placed a hand on his wet forehead. "You need to go away for a while."

Alec was quite sure he was dead. Or at least dreaming, because he was back home in his sister's room. His bare feet sank deliciously into the burgundy carpet. The room looked the same as usual, with Jane's desk in charming disarray and their self-made colorful stained glass lamp placed atop a pile of books, spreading a warm light on the paintings adorning the walls. Most of them were vampire work. Jane had painted their mother, a vivacious-looking woman gazing adoringly at him from her gilded frame. The only other painting in their collection which was a portrait belonged to a handsome young Frenchman known to history as Saint-Just. Alec had had the past two hundred and fifty years to get used to the painting, but he still had to suppress a scowl every time he saw it. They had been in France at the time of the French Revolution, enjoying the murderous chaos that made feeding such an easy task, and Jane, sensible Jane, reasonable Jane, had developed a most infuriating crush on this rather, in Alec's opinion, shady character. He never understood what was it that fueled this most improbable attraction, and Alec had suffered terribly during that time as he watched his sister essentially stalk the young man whenever the weather and time of day allowed it. It was humiliating beyond measure, and Alec privately lamented that no other Volturi member was willing to discreetly break the young revolutionary's neck for fear of Jane's wrath.

He remembered they somehow managed to sneak in the assembly when he was speaking once. Death cannot be that busy, had thought Alec at the time, although quite unfairly, he later admitted to himself. Jane had been entranced by the speech and spent a lot of time making faces that made Alec wonder if vampires could still vomit involuntarily after all. She had even asked Aro to turn him, nodding her head during her speech almost as vigorously as Alec was shaking his at Aro behind her back. The man was too radical and too idealistic to be of use, and Aro elegantly slithered out of making any promises.

He was only twenty-seven when the guillotine finally cut his head off on a July day in 1794. The twins were outside Paris negotiating a trade with one of Aro's contacts and found out too late to do anything. Jane was devastated and sent Felix to buy his things when they were sold at a public auction the very next day. Felix came back with his sword and his ivory razor, which Jane kept in her room underneath her portrait of him. Alec had to bribe Felix not to buy Saint-Just's ivory flute as well, and he regarded the plate of Roman armor he traded as worth being spared an eternity of Jane playing that thing and sighing bitterly over it.

If Saint-Just had lived, he would have come to resemble his father more and more, with his large nose and stern countenance, and would have lost the pleasing softness bestowed by youth. Instead, he died a beautiful young man, and his portrait, painted with agonizing care by his smitten sister, was staring at him from across the room, all blue eyes and curls.

God, how I hate you for dying young.

There was a small clanking sound as the paintings began to move as if something alive was wriggling underneath them. Suddenly, he took a step back as thick white worms started to pour out from beneath every painting on the wall, screeching at him in high little voices, and he saw the young man in the painting look straight at him and open an injured mouth. The world has been empty since the Romans, he said as blood ran down his chin and into his immaculate cravat.

Alec opened his mouth to call for Jane, but his voice came out garbled and animal-like. There were no doors in the room, and he considered trying to break the walls, only to discourage himself with the strange omniscience of someone who is dreaming. As the room began to spin around him, the only clear thing he saw was Oriana, who was walking towards him carrying her self-made necklace in her lifeless hands. When she was only one step away, she began to grow and grow as if distorted by a sickening mirror... and then she took her tear-shaped gems and jammed them into Alec's eyes.

Now you have your old eye color again.

Alec screamed.

The morning was sweet and warm, filled with the trills of sparrows and starlings. Demetri adjusted his cap and got out of the car, the little strips of skin he was showing glittering in the sun. His coven members piled out after him: Santiago, Meishan, Raj, Sofia, Abel and Yunan, all dressed in sports gear. They left the car on the side of the road and made their way through the forest until they reached a great fallen pine tree upon which their companions were waiting for them. Demetri grinned when he saw Felix's hulking form, and the two men were exchanging a powerful handshake within seconds. Watching them, Corin mused how complete Felix looked with Demetri by his side. After greeting his friend, Demetri turned to Jane. Silently, she placed the small transmitter in his outstretched palm, and watched Demetri's fist slowly close around it. Nobody dared make a sound. Jane held the tension of a crossbow between her childish shoulders. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, Demetri opened his eyes.

"I already know where to go," he said. "He's still alive."

The rest of the coven exploded in cheers around them, with Corin jumping onto Felix' back and Meishan and Sofia each hugging one of Santiago's arms. Only Jane remained still, looking into Demetri's eyes.

"He is alive," she repeated. "And those who took him won't be for much longer."

Everybody around her smiled a sharp, hungry smile.