Disclaimer: I do not own most of these characters. They are the wondrous creation of Steph Meyer!

A/N: Goodness, I'm so sorry about the delay. I had a huge research paper and presentation that was due on Thursday. I have a debilitating fear of public speaking and I was so stressed about it that I couldn't bring myself to write anything. It's over and done with so to celebrate I wrote you lovely peeps a post. Hope you like it.

Chapter Ten And the Truth Shall Set You Free

Justin was coming. I just had to fight Ben off a few more minutes. Everything was a blur now. All I was aware of was his teeth tearing at me, his hands clawing at me, and the floor beneath me shuddering as his power over earth cut great chasms through the floor. "Ben, dammit, get a hold of yourself," I rasped, my throat so raw from the struggle with him.

For a half of breath, he faltered. "Bella?" he asked, dazed, before he renewed his attack against me.

I'd shared enough information with Justin before I lost my powers that he knew to kill the soldier, the problem was locating said soldier as he was somehow hiding himself from us.

Time shimmered. I knew that feeling. It was one of the few powers that I'd come into contact with that for whatever reason, I'd been unable to collect. Justin was here and our time nearly stilled as his time continued naturally.

I felt him race past me, his scent putting me at ease immediately, but I never caught sight of his form as he searched for the illusive soldier.

Ben's attacks stopped so abruptly that my fist collided with his surprised face, his body sailing across the room only to crash into Jasper and Alice, who were no longer locked in battle with Felix.

I cringed when I heard the thunderous sound of their collision. "I'm so sorry, guys," I muttered as I got tenderly to my feet. I healed myself quickly and ran to Alice, tripping over what felt like a rock. I gasped when I looked back and realized it was Felix's head. "No!" I whispered, kneeling down to scoop it up.

Yasmin moved forward in slow, small steps. "You can heal him?" she asked, her voice barely audible even to my sensitive ears.

"Yeah," I sighed and pulled his body towards me. While I worked on him, I shot an angry glance at Alice and Jasper. "What the fuck? This was not necessary."

Jasper clutched Alice closer to him and let a rumbling growl trickle from his barred lips. "He was trying to kill us."

"He was under a spell," I bit back.

"I didn't know that," he replied in a gravelly voice, still guarding Alice as though someone here would attack her at any moment. I guess, considering what had just happened, it wasn't too far fetched.

I jabbed my finger in Alice's direction. "She knew. All you had to do was keep him from killing you without doing too much damage to him. Look at Ben. He's certainly no worse for the wear."

"He's going to live, what are you bitching about? And look at you. Look what Ben did to you." He released Alice and glided smoothly across the floor, his fingers tracing Ben's bite marks on my throat and shoulder. Ben looked down at the floor, embarrassed at what he'd been forced to do to me.

Jasper's light touch made me shudder and I moved away from him. "You will bear these marks for all eternity, Bella. If you would've been a little more practical and a little less cautious, you-"

"God! You are unbelievable. I swear I can't win with you Cullens. Either I'm too ruthless or I'm too compassionate. You're never fucking happy."

"Bella, please. Be angry at us later," Alice interjected, trying to diffuse the tension boiling in the room. It was just what I needed and I stopped my tirade, my eyes roaming over our ever growing group. The humans and shape shifters had joined us again and I was suddenly angry all over again.

I didn't even remember moving, but I found myself in the frightened psychic woman's face. "Some goddamn psychic you are," I sneered while she took trembling steps away from me. "Did you know that soldier was in here waiting to attack us? Did you?" I roared. The blood drained from her leaving her a sick pasty color as her back hit the dull cinder block wall.

"Bella, stop," Alice said. "Look at her. She's been abused enough." Her dainty hand rested on my shoulder restoring some calm to my crazed mind and turned me away from the terrified woman. "You didn't have a vision. I didn't have a vision. How can you blame her for not foreseeing this? She's been abused enough for one lifetime. Please don't add to it." I nodded, unshed tears burning within me as I fell against her and soaked up all the comfort she was offering me, and when Jasper added his feel-good powers to the mix, I didn't object. I was burned out. One more catastrophe was going to be the drop of blood that broke the vampire's back. I was muttering incessantly while Alice stroked my hair and found myself enveloped in Justin's familiar arms.

"We'll get him, hun," he spoke gently.

"Get who?" I asked, perplexed.

Alice gave a small laugh. "Edward. You were just asking for him a few seconds ago."

I closed my eyes and tried to pull myself together. "Where's Melody?"

Two of the shape shifters came forward. "We've got her." He motioned back to the cells in the other room. "We locked her in one of the cells." I must have given him a stern look, because he was suddenly fumbling over his words as he tried to explain why Melody was a prisoner again. "She's starving, Bella. It took all of us to wrangle her into that cell. She would've killed all of the humans."

I nodded. "Jasper, why don't you, Ben, and the shape shifters start hunting down the personnel. I don't care what their role was. If they're alive, kill them. We need to sweep this mess under the rug and fast. Oh," I added. "Bring a couple down here for Melody." I half expected a big argument about my orders. About how wrong it would be to kill all those people, but Jasper's nothing if not practical. Carlisle, I'm sure, would have had a fit. Thank goodness he wasn't here.

Where to begin? The task was huge. "Kayden? Any suggestions?"

He looked startled at my question and stammered, "Uh, well…the…we need to…" his voice trailed off as his eyes searched the room frantically. "I guess we should find out if anyone has made it out of here."

"And we do that how?"

"The video surveillance," he replied in a droll tone.

"Great get started." I was still in Justin's arms, and couldn't bring myself to break the contact. "Hey, you got a cell phone; Ben seems to have crushed mine." Kayden unhooked his from his belt and tossed it to me and exited the room. "Go with him, Alice," I breathed through her mind.

I'd been debating the best way to get Melody back to Christian without having to actually run into Christian. I punched in Demetri's number. I'd send Jasper and Alice with him. Three should be more than enough to restrain Melody. And Jasper's powers would be more beneficial there. David had some control, I didn't have to worry too much about him, but I still had to worry about Rachael. "Shit!" I swore at the same time Demetri answered the phone.

"What's wrong? Justin asked.

"Bella?" Demetri questioned through the phone.

"Uh, hold on a sec, Demetri." I shook my head in embarrassment. "Rachael. She's still out in the woods…I just left her out there like that…her life's essence stolen from her." I pressed the phone against my forehead.

Lines formed on Justin's face as he frowned in confusion. "Rachael? Dave's girl?"

"Yep. I…uh…used Seline's power on her and then we were attacked, so she's still stuck like that. Hopefully some animal hasn't nibbled on her bones."

"Bella?" Demetri's voice reminded me that I was in the middle of something.

"Yeah, I'm here. Sorry about that. It's been a long day. I need a favor."

We were back in our hotel room. It had been spacious enough when it had just been the seven of us, but we now had nine others, not including the pile that was Rachael. She was now packed away in my luggage. I so did not explain that to David. Something told me he would be a bit peeved at my treatment of the love of his life.

Kayden had discovered that the doctor and three others had gotten away. Which created a huge problem all on its own, except it was so much worse than the fact that that there were humans alive that knew about us. They had Mia's head. If we could get to them soon enough, we might be able to put her back together again. I was guessing he was planning on resuming his Frankenstein efforts and would be using Mia's head for DNA samples. It wasn't like they had another facility lying around equipped to do such procedures; at least I was hoping they didn't. Kayden had assured me that there'd only been one. It would take them a while to create another lab and begin harvesting samples, so her head should remain intact for a while. For Santiago's sake I hoped so.

The compound was no more. We demolished it. Well, more accurately, Ben and I had. We created a huge earthquake, which left the facility little more than rubble. There was no evidence left of what had taken place in that house of horrors. It had taken hours to destroy everything, to hack into all the files and see how much information had been passed along, and how high up the military chain it went.

I definitely wasn't looking forward to explaining to Aro that this went as high as the Pentagon, which also meant that the President, or someone very close to him, was involved. I doubted that the President was actually aware, because if it ever became public it would ruin him. This way he'd have plausible deniability, but I'd bet my last pint of blood that his Chief of Staff or Vice President was somehow involved.

"Where's Ben? We need to get these humans into another room before Melody goes insane," I muttered. And as if my words were magic, he appeared with a key card in hand and ushered the humans out of our room. Felix went with him. He was doing his damnedest to ignore Yasmin, who seemed greatly hurt by his cold treatment. But I wasn't fooled. He left with Ben under the pretense of helping guard the humans, but I knew that he couldn't help but be near Yasmin. At least he wasn't trying to gobble her up, though he did look like he was in a great amount of pain.

I think the only reason he could bear to be near her was the amount of human blood coursing through his veins. I know, we weren't supposed to be drinking human blood under Aro's new edict, but we had to kill all of those humans…a few of us - I'm not naming names - got a little out of hand. I was beginning to doubt that I'd ever be able to get back on the vegetarian diet.

"You better call Edward," Alice reminded me as she filled another suitcase with her unnecessary garments. Why on earth had she felt the need to bring so many impractical outfits on this assignment was beyond me.

"Why?" I asked. Not that I didn't want to talk to him, God knew I did, but she had an odd look on her face that worried me.

"So we can arrange for you two to return Anna to Alyria," she said in an 'are you dense' tone. Alice and Jasper were going to help Demetri with Melody. He was on his way right now, much to Leah's chagrin. We'd decided she shouldn't come because, Melody, as a newborn, would not be able to keep from attacking a wolf. It was just a natural vampire reaction.

Fear thrilled through me. "I can't," I breathed.

"Can't what? Talk to Edward?"

"Can't take her to Christian."

Alice studied my face for a long moment before ordering everyone out of the room. When the last person filed by me, she closed the pale peach door and leaned against it. "I think it's time you told me what's going on. Why you and Edward have been separated. Why you are going out of your way to avoid Christian."

I turned my back to her trying to buy myself some time to gather my thoughts. I was afraid I'd lose her if I admitted the truth, but she wasn't stupid, she knew something was up. I let out a calming breath and turned back to my tiny, yet intimidating, sister.

"I slept with Christian my last night in Volterra," I admitted softly, looking at her from under my eyelashes to gauge her reaction.

Her lips pressed together in a firm line and she nodded her spiky head curtly, but remained quiet.

I swallowed past the lump in my throat and went on. "Edward knows. We're working it out. I don't think it would be a good idea for Edward to go anywhere near Christian right now and I know I can't be around him," I supplied.

"Why, because you're in love with him?"

"No…I don't know."

"I think that's answer enough," she replied stiffly. "How could you do that to Edward, Bella? What's wrong with you? Do you not want to be happy? Edward would move the heavens for you. You're everything to him and this is how you repay his adoration and love?"

"I don't know…what you want me to say, Alice. I made a mistake and I regret it more than you'll ever know."

"If that were the case then you wouldn't be worried about seeing Christian."

"I don't understand…"

"The only reason you're afraid to see Christian is because you don't believe you can control yourself around him. Even now, you're still drawn to him. You still want him and you know that if you two are together again you'll fuck him," she snapped moving slowly across the room to stand in front of me, her eyes dark and full of anger.

I wasn't used to hearing such things come out of her mouth. I could tell she was livid with me. But her little theory was wrong. "No," I whispered. "No, I said more forcefully. "I will not make that mistake again."

"Why, Bella? Why would you risk your whole relationship with Edward? Why, when everything was over and we were about to get on with our lives, did you go to Christian?"

"We'd grown very close," I confessed. "I don't expect you to understand, Alice. There's no excuse good enough, but he was there for me when all of you abandoned me in that godforsaken place." Not that I thought of Volterra in a negative light now. I'd grown to think of it as my home and certainly felt more comfortable with Aro than the Cullens.

I realized that I'd quit explaining myself and glanced at Alice only to find her still glowering at me. "Edward and I were having problems before I'd even left for Volterra and…Christian…" I shrugged. "…was there for me. Respected me. Treated me like a woman instead of a fragile piece of glass that needed to be handled with kid-gloves. He never acted superior to me, the way Edward does. He's over seven hundred years old and I felt like his equal. I've never felt that way with Edward."

She sighed. "I told him that he was too domineering," Alice murmured. "He just wants to keep you safe, Bella. I know he's not always the easiest person to live with, but you bring out both the best in him and the worse. I've never seen him happier. You gave him that - a reason to live again. But at the same time, you stir that protective streak of his. I know he can be paranoid and intense. Maybe you should've tried talking to him about it instead of turning to Christian."

I tucked a strand of hair behind my ears and pondered her words. "You make it sound so simple. Do you think that he'll be able to just turn off that protective streak, because I don't."

"No, but he'll be able to restrain himself better once he realizes how much it bothers you. Call him. Even if you two can't deliver Anna to Alyria, you two still have a lot to talk about."

"There's no time for marital problems, Alice. In case you forgot, we still have a huge problem."

"There's always going to be some other distraction. Weren't you saying that you needed a vacation? I think you should take it. Aro has other people to rely on. It doesn't always have to be you."

I let that stew for a moment. She was right. I didn't have to continue searching for those people. I was tired in my soul and needed to get away from everything for a while. I chanced a look at Alice, who still looked pissed. "Do you hate me?"

A smiled tugged at her lips and she pulled me into a tight hug. "Silly, Bella. I could never hate you. I think you're an idiot, but that's beside the point," she chuckled and poked my nose with her index finger. She moved to the dresser and retrieved one of our newly acquired cell phones and held it out towards me. "Call him."

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Sabrina