Demetri watched as his little mate crouched down into what she had been taught was a battle stance, brow furrowed in adorable concentration, and he waited for her to move to attack him. The courtyard was mostly empty, only himself and Felix joining Bella as she tried, unsuccessfully, to learn the most basic self-defense.
Bella charged, and while she was quick, Demetri was struck again by how much she resembled a puppy, though this time it was less to do with her anger and more to do with her bumbling movements. Biting back a chuckle, he sidestepped her fervent assault.
With a squeak, Bella attempted to slow herself from continuing on after he stepped away from her only to have her shield stall her momentum completely. Unlike when her shield had captured Felix, however, the watery shackles released her before she truly had her feet under her and as they retracted, she ungracefully whirled and landed hard on her bottom.
Felix moved to stand beside Demetri and shook his head. "I have literally never seen a clumsy vampire before," he said, voice filled with awe. "Seriously D, it's not even supposed to be possible. Have you honestly ever seen a vampire fall on their ass?"
Demetri turned and regarded his friend with a cool sort of dismissal before he moved forward and helped his Belloula to her feet. After taking his hand and allowing the gesture, she looked at him sheepishly through a curtain of her hair. He sighed, pushing the raven-colored locks back from her face and smoothing her silk dress back down along her hips.
"Ignore him, kouklista," Demetri told her with a slight quirk of his lips. "You are learning and Felix is still sore about your first sparring session."
She brushed his fingers away and pushed her hands to her hips with a huff. "How am I uncoordinated?" She demanded. "Everyone else walks around here like they're floating and I'm still occasionally tripping over nothing whatsoever."
Demetri pressed his lips together to stifle his smirk, unsure what to say. It was true that his mate was quite possibly the single most graceless vampire he had ever had the pleasure of meeting. But where he found her occasional stumbling and inability to master combat begrudgingly endearing, Bella seemed to take it as a personal affront that her most basic ability was far below the norm. He decided honesty, if gentle honesty, was almost always best, and even more so when addressing one's partner.
"I am unsure why, precisely, you continue to find yourself troubled by the very air on the occasion that you try to move with purpose, Psychi Mou," he answered dryly, wrapping an arm around her waist so she couldn't storm off in irritation before he finished. "But I imagine most of these graceful creatures you seem to think walk as if floating would happily embrace a bit of clumsiness if they could have only a taste of what you can accomplish tactically with your translucent bodyguard."
Bella's body untensed slightly, and with a sigh she allowed herself to lean into Demetri's side. He took a deep breath of the tantalizing scent of his mate before he pressed a kiss to her temple and released her. "In fact, perhaps we should focus our work for today on the control of your shield and leave the combat to next time for the moment."
Now it was Felix's turn to sigh. After Bella's shield had first appeared, it had been fascinating to watch how it manifested itself during training exercises. For one, no matter how Demetri approached her, it never moved to protect her against him. Even when he had moved with as much aggression as he could muster in an attempt to force her shield to come out and play with him, it remained stubbornly away.
Anyone else, however, need only flinch in her direction under a circumstance where combat was being practiced and they found themselves restrained in increasingly creative and bizarre ways. Afton, after he had volunteered to help one day, found himself lifted upside down and hanging from something that resembled a tentacle. The tentacle had been attached to nothing but air and he had fervently declared he meant Bella no harm directly before he was released unceremoniously to crumble head first to the floor.
Afton did not volunteer again.
No one was keen to go up against a shied that seemed to have a mind completely of it's own and the mentality of a small child when it came to how it restrained others. It was even capable of restraining whole groups of people if the instance where Marcus, Felix, Aro, and Santiago had moved forward as one as a test and found themselves frozen all together as if in a giant block of jello was any indication. That one had been particularly tricky because the shield had thickened such that it was impossible for the captives to speak, and it seemed reluctant to release enough of their heads to allow even one to affirm that he meant no harm. It had taken Bella nearly an hour of coaxing the wayward defense mechanism into some sort of compromise where it would allow for the heads of the men only to become unencased. Aro had crowed delightedly at the display while Marcus smiled one of his small enigmatic smiles and Felix and Santiago escaped to drink bourbon and complain about the bambina whilst they licked the scratches to their wounded pride.
Bella's shield, Marcus and Demetri had posited, was based somewhere in her subconscious and seemed to sense danger on an instinctual level that her conscious brain could not reason with. Furthermore, it almost seemed to resent training and the implication that it needed to practice, and therefore it insisted on taunting anyone who dared to attack Bella even under auspicious of helping her to improve her skills. Demetri, whose walls were lined with knowledge and books, was fascinated by this new and entirely unpredictable gift. If he was being honest with himself, he was even a little charmed by this wild, cocky, and completely unruly little piece of his kouklitsa.
Which is why now, with Felix grumbling as he moved into a crouch across from Bella, it was understood between the two friends that Felix would take the hits that her shield would undoubtedly deal to him in the name of loyalty to his best friend, because no one else in Volterra was going to. Despite how part of Demetri was loathe to tame this piece of his Belloula, he was also aware that her lack of control bothered her. She needed to learn to work with her shield, rather than allowing it to operate as an autonomous piece of herself with its own rules, specifically if all other forms of combat were likely to remain beyond her grasp. Demetri doubted her coordination was going to improve with time.
"Calm your mind, Belloula," Demetri coaxed her as she stood stock-still across from Felix, a grim expression on her face. "Felix is going to attack, but only by moving forward. Instead of using your shield, I want you to step slightly to the side and allow him to move past you. Concentrate on speaking within yourself, telling your shield that it is not needed for this battle and that all you need do to defend yourself is step to the side."
She closed her eyes and Demetri could see she was speaking in her mind, although as far as he knew, her shield had yet to answer her. He wasn't even sure it was sentient enough to verbalize, but he knew it was sentient enough to understand her, as the only way it released its captives was after they confirmed verbally they were not a threat to Bella. Part of him wondered in a real combat situation if the shield could be tricked by an enemy, or if it would be intelligent enough on its own to realize any enemy was lying regarding their intentions. He made a note to test that possibility out later that week.
Bella's eyes fluttered open and she nodded to Felix, who grumbled but shook his shoulders out and began moving towards her. He charged, and just as he was close enough that Bella had begun to slide to the left, a lasso of greenish-blue liquid extended from somewhere near where he started and wrapped around his ankle, bringing him crashing to the ground.
In an exaggerated slow motion that mimicked the act of someone pulling, pausing, and pulling again, the lasso wrenched Felix backward. Felix was heaved across the courtyard by his ankle until he lay fuming on the ground exactly where he started. Demetri struggled not to grin at the display while Bella appeared to not even try to fight her amusement as she collapsed to her knees in a fit of delicious sounding giggles.
Demetri strolled casually towards the lumbering vampire sprawled on the courtyard stone as Felix flipped onto his back and waited with murderous fury in his eyes for Bella to finish laughing and coax her shield to release him.
"You have to admit, the thing has a sense of humor," Demetri told him seriously.
"Shut the fuck up, D."
Bella had retreated to their rooms soon after that, begging Demetri not to make her do anymore after her shield had managed to ignore her and ensnare Felix for the 6th time. Felix hadn't even bothered to excuse himself, just glared at Demetri before storming off to presumably find someone to complain to. Left to his own devices, Demetri had taken the offered solitude to meditate, a technique he that had found along with many other warriors allowed him to hone and refine his already impressive skills.
His quiet was interrupted by the arrival of a copper-haired, annoyed-looking vampire. Demetri had cracked an eye at the intruder, then assumed the child intended to learn some sort of combat skill in the courtyard and so ignored him in favor of returning to his meditation. It wasn't until Edward Cullen's footfalls had brought the vampire to stand directly in front of Demetri and the boy had cleared his throat that Demetri bothered to look up at him.
He quirked an unimpressed eyebrow at the Cullen and waited.
Edward pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed before he looked back down at the vampire before him. "We need to talk," he grit out, the words appearing the physically pain him.
Demetri's other eyebrow rose as he moved to stand, brushing off his trousers. "I cannot imagine what you and I possibly have to speak about, Cullen," he responded smoothly. "But please, do enlighten me."
Edward eyed the man in front of him, took a deep breath and opened his mouth. Nothing seemed to come out and he tried again before he finally gave up and started pacing.
Demetri watched the other vampire, nonplussed by the whole event. This conversation, or current lack of one, was a bit like a fly buzzing about but staying determinedly across the room. Annoying, but not quite obnoxious enough for one to bother with actually killing the insect.
"I love her," Edward blurted out, stopping to stare at Demetri with a mix of resentment and despair.
"Yes," Demetri affirmed. "I am aware."
"You don't- You don't even know her!" Edward spat, anger obviously catching up to him as he threw his hands in the air. "I had her, and she was beautiful and fragile and innocent and I left it all so that she could live a good, pure life, one she was worthy of, and you- You ruined her!"
Demetri tilted his head to the side as his lips thinned slightly. "Explain to me, Cullen, what exactly you mean by 'ruined.'"
Edward stepped forward, pressing his face near Demetri's, seemingly oblivious to the way the other man's eyes had steadily darkened. "You made her into a soulless monster! You think you have some sort of disgusting, vampiric claim on her and now you've told her the same and in her naivete, you've forced her to believe it. You've trapped her, enslaved her, stolen her very innocence and filled her head with lies and deceit about who she is and who those who love her are and you've turned her against us!"
Edward grabbed the front of Demetri's shirt, shaking the other man slightly as Demetri continued to watch him rage impassively. "She belongs to the human world, you bastard!" He snarled. "I made a mistake, but I would have gone back; she called to me, screamed to me, even across oceans. I would have gone back and watched her grow and age and we'd have passed a beautiful, fragile life together until she left this earth and I would follow her to the afterlife! I'd have crawled my way out of hell just to find her in heaven, I swear it. She was made to be a Cullen, Bella Cullen, the one human member of a vampiric coven and my wife and I would have had her, would have gotten her back if it wasn't for you and your moronic mati-"
Demetri silently dislodged Edward's hands and twisted the man around, pulling Edward's wrists to his back as he turned the other vampire to face away from him. With Edward's back to his chest, he brought his free hand up to grip Edward's neck and tightened his grip, slowly squeezing the younger vampire's windpipe as he forced him to his knees. Edward kneeled at his feet facing the courtyard, his wrists wrenched up between his shoulder blades and his neck gripped precariously in Demetri's palm. One movement is all it would take to cleanly separate Edward's head from his shoulders, and knowing this, the man began to shake slightly in fear.
"You know, Cullen," Demetri told him conversationally, "it was my intention to simply allow you to remain in Volterra and sulk about your misfortunes. See, you aren't important, Edward. Not at all. Not to me, and not to my mate. You are simply a very small and very insignificant footnote in a past that frankly, Belloula doesn't remember nor after learning about, seem all that proud of."
Demetri paused and pulled ever so slightly on Edward's neck, causing the skin to crack and a slight whining sound to emerge from the boy's throat. "It seems, however, that you do not understand much of anything about vampires and that's unfortunate really, because if you did, I suspect you would not find yourself in the precarious and potentially fatal situation you are currently ensnared in. Your coven leader has failed you. Allow me to enlighten you."
"Mates are sacred," Demetri continued as if he were discussing a painting or commenting on the architecture. "Especially true mates; really, those are unbreakable. You don't fuck with mates, Cullen. More importantly and relevant for you, you don't fuck with my mate. I cannot say what Belloula was like as a human, and frankly, I have very little interest in that. Personally, I think your plan to condemn a human woman to a life with a predator (who she, as a result of her species, could never match in strength, speed, or intelligence) is at best cruel, but how you choose to run your love life is really none of my concern. That's because your love life does not in any way, shape, or form have anything to do with my mate."
Demetri twisted Edward's neck a bit more, allowing the skin to crack further and the boy below him to struggle slightly as panic set in. "Shhhh," Demetri shushed him. "We're almost done here."
"All these things you've said, Cullen," Demetri shook his head and tsked. "They are very upsetting. That my perfect mate is 'ruined?' That she is anything less than everything good and right in this world? These are the sorts of things that she will never hear. She will never know that someone would suggest that the state of her soul is anything less than pristine nor that you have insulted her intelligence by suggesting I could somehow deceive her into believing we are something other than what we are. She will have no opportunity to hear these things, in fact, because you will stay so far away from her that your presence will not even be registered in her beautiful brain. You will not speak to her, you will not look at her, I would highly suggest you not think of her either, just to be safe."
Edward screamed as Demetri used the forgotten grip he had on Edward's wrists to wrench his hands from his body. Pushing Edward forward onto the stumps that were left, Demetri rolled the man over with his foot and tossed him the left one.
"Remember, Cullen, just how easy this was for me."
Demetri stared down at him as Edward writhed and scooted away from him, his face emotionless. "I'm not a particularly good man. There are very few things that a person can do to upset me, but insulting my mate appears to be one of them. I'd tell you what would happen next time we have a conversation like this, but there won't be the next time, will there?"
Demetri eyed the hand he was holding delicately with a slightly wrinkled nose. "You'll have to see Carlisle to get this back, I think. I want to make sure the man understands just how desperately your education is lacking."
With a slight incline of his head, Demetri turned his back on the vampire still rolling in agony at his feet and went to seek out the head of the Cullen Coven.
