Chapter 11 – Now or Never
Bella Cullen
"If I knew you could joke like that Carlisle, I might have followed you to America," Amelia said, after the ringing laughter stopped. I couldn't help but feel on a high after realising that the Volturi could be easily beaten as long as Amelia wasn't distracted enough to use her power. From what I heard, it seemed that she really needed to think when she used her ability to manipulate and control the minds of other people.
"This might seem rude but what is Aria's ability?" I asked. I was very interested in finding this out, as Renesmee had 'flipped' my ability to block any vampire from my mind. I wondered what ability Aria had inherited from her parents.
"Not rude at all! Aria can instantly tell who is around the area but just feeling the minds around her, an ability I bet she got from Demetri who tracks people through their minds, as I can only tell who a person is if I listen to their thoughts then add my own in. Aria can also enter a person's mind and take away their thoughts. It might not sound bad, but I asked her to try it on me once – it was horrible." Amelia couldn't help shivering. "Aria just makes you not think – can you imagine a scene where you are simply incapable of thinking – you are blank, empty, devoid of everything. It is a very effective torture technique that I have seen her use, because it just drives people insane."
"Torture?" I asked in a voice that was slightly higher than I expected.
"You are just so innocent Bella!" Amelia laughed, her burgundy eyes gleaming maliciously. I saw Edward giving Amelia a meaningful look that I noticed she ignored.
"As a vampire – and even as a human – I was always quite the blood thirsty character. Aria has inherited that from me too. You should hear what I did to my human mother – ooh, that was nasty and I enjoyed it. Worthless wretch deserved it. She only cared about improving her station in life, and utterly ruined mine the moment she could. It was my revenge – but that wasn't the only time that Aria has done that for me."
I felt several chills up my back. Amelia reminded me of the Romanians, Vladimir and Stefan that were also eager to defeat the Volturi. They seemed to both enjoy violence, seeing as they had once made a flippant comment about ripping the eyes out of the Volturi that had made me stay away from them afterwards. Amelia and Aria had seemed nice enough but now…
"Don't be prejudiced Bella!" Amelia cried out, amused. "I mean you no harm. Maybe I'll tell you the story of my human life – you might understand why I am who I am."
Carlisle was standing next to Amelia with no sign of fear. If Carlisle had no issues with Amelia, then I figured I would do my best to be friendly, violence driven character or not.
"The Volturi have certainly met their match this time," a soft silky voice that I instantly recognised said. Speak of the devil and the devil shall appear, I couldn't help thinking as the Romanians entered.
"Stefan, Vladimir," Carlisle said, the image of the welcoming host. "You got our call?"
"Certainly," Vladimir chuckled. "We had to come along to watch the show. You may not have gotten into a battle with the Volturi a century ago, but I am certain this time there will be a fight. I could almost guess the Volturi will fall."
During the arrival of the Romanians, I noticed that Amelia had ignored them completely. Instead, her focus was on the small audience that was sitting on the couch ready to listen to her story.
"Are you going to start or not?" Emmett demanded. Amelia grinned.
"Careful with what you say. I might get offended," Amelia replied, causing Emmett to sink slightly into the couch as Rosalie smirked at him.
"I was born as Mary March, Amelia being a name I gave myself, in London during the early years of the rule of King Edward, son of Henry VIII. My father was a member of a rich family, the Marches, however, when I was about one, he was disowned. My mother, on the other hand, came from a typical English family and married my father for his money. Him being disowned really hurt her quest for riches.
"However, soon that didn't matter as my mother, who was well liked by the Marches, managed to get a role as one of the senior maids for Queen Mary when she took over. She was so well liked by the Marches that they adopted her and she got the inheritance lost by my father.
"For several months she tried to turn me into the perfect daughter. But due to her absence in the first few years of my life, I was my father's child. And so my mother gave up on me and my father, barely giving us any money to survive on as she gained riches befitting a royal. Soon, we didn't even live in the same house.
"I spent my years in a street gang in order to gain enough money to survive. One day, when I was fifteen, we robbed the home of a rich duke, but the robbery went wrong, and the duke was killed. My mother, of which I did not realise until was too late, had watched every move I made and knew it was my gang who killed the man. Days later, me, a fifteen year old girl, was been accused for murder and destined to be beheaded, an order encouraged by my mother.
"Using the stolen money, I fled to France. In France, I encountered a manipulative man who had tried earlier to get his niece on the throne of France by getting the French king to fall in love with her, but she rather didn't like her uncle and left him. He offered to adopt me as his niece as long as I would help him, and I accepted. Within a few years I was a respectable Frenchwoman, who had made the King of France himself fall in love with me. I was happy. I was then Mary Bodicoeur, and happy to renounce my English roots and my name.
"I was twenty-three, pregnant with the King's child, and nearly Queen of France. Queen Mary and her servants came to court, and everything went wrong that night."
Amelia closed her eyes in anguish. Alice, who was on the couch wasn't playing any attention to Amelia. Instead, her eyes were staring vacantly into the future. Out of the corner of my eye, I noted that one of the Romanians, Stefan, was playing rapt attention to Amelia's story.
"My mother recognised me and denounced me as a criminal of England. When Queen Mary had backed her up, it was all over for me. I fled that night, fled to the first place I thought of –Italy. I had learnt Italian in France and put that to good use.
"It was the night that I gave birth to Giselle several months after fleeing that Demetri had come for me. I was scared, so scared of him, but when he left, I fled all over Italy, eager to invade him.
"In time, I gave birth to Aria, who bit me and turned me into a vampire. I spent a few years in Italy before I returned to England, turned my father, and a year later, we took our revenge on the woman who never cared about us. I won't go into detail only that her killing became the most gruesome murder case in London.
"I used my power to manipulate the King of France to accept Giselle as his only heir, and spent the rest of my time in France as Giselle grew up and became Queen. When she got fatally ill after giving birth, I turned her, and later her husband Roger, and returned to England.
"It was about a century after my birth when Demetri found me. My father was killed in the struggle, but I managed to tamper Demetri's thoughts before he could take me to the Volturi. I'll just say that I spent the rest of my vampire years either in France with Giselle and Roger, or in Australia with Aria."
"Wow!" Emmett said, grinning like a child at the conclusion of the story. I couldn't help sighing at his reaction. "You were quite cool as a human."
"You call that only cool, Emmett? I hope you use your torture techniques on the Volturi when we fight them Amelia," Stefan said heartily, looking directly at Amelia who raised her eyebrow. Vladimir laughed chillingly.
"Carlisle," Alice said urgently, cutting off Vladimir's demented laughter. All the heads in the room, earlier focused on Amelia, turned to Alice as her eyes snapped back to the present.
Within seconds, the guests that had been upstairs had suddenly appeared in the now-too-crowded living room. I saw the Denalis on the extreme left-hand corner of the room, with Eleazar looking especially uneasy. I knew it was because of Amelia, because even I could feel the vibes of hatred from her. Who knew what Jasper was feeling, sitting only a metre away from her. The Amazons and the Irish coven were standing together, waiting silently for Alice to speak. Benjamin and Tia were standing solemnly in front of them, but Renesmee and Aria remained outside, unconcerned about Alice's vision.
"What did you see?" Carlisle implored urgently.
"We really have to choose now. If we do not leave within two days, the Volturi will block us completely and we will have no choice but to fight, because there will be no way that we could flee. For the best case scenario, if we wanted to go to Novosibirsk, we should leave tomorrow," Alice said, annoyance on her face. It was clear from her expression that the constrained time frame was really annoying her.
"Only two days?" I asked, shocked. We had earlier decided to flee, but now that the option was available, I wasn't sure if I wanted to. I really wanted to see the end of the Volturi.
Emmett tapped his foot impatiently on the foot of the couch.
"So now what?" he muttered, impatience on his face.
Jacob Black
The meeting with the Elders certainly hadn't helped my bad mood. I still didn't know if the Cullens were going to leave Forks or not, and it was something that I felt that I deserved to know. After all, I was imprinted to Renesmee, and if Bella still had an issue with that it wasn't my problem. I would go to the corners of the world for my Renesmee.
I shifted instantly into my wolf form, the bad mood evaporating the moment I let myself loose and ran. The feeling of the wind on my fur… it was bliss. But certainly not with the thoughts that were running through my mind.
Jake, Quil thought as he turned tail and ran for my direction instead. There's some kinda problem down in the forest. There is something that feels weird in there, and Sam is going to check it out. It feels bad though.
I agree with that one Quil, Embry said, joining in the conversation. I paid no attention the moment I saw the forms of Embry and Quil beside me. All I did was keep running, feeling the slight strain in Quil as he tried to keep up.
Jake! Embry! Quil!, an urgent voice cried out. I stopped running the moment I recognised Seth's thoughts.
What?
Don't go any deeper into the forest! I've just contacted Sam, and he needs us all in the other side of the forest near the beach. The Volturi aren't attacking the Cullens. They've coming to La Push to destroy us! The fight has just started in the forest! I've never heard the panic in Seth's voice before. Even when we confronted the Volturi a century ago with the Cullens and their bloodsucker friends , Seth hadn't reacted this way before. I felt the fear coming in on the thought that those disgusting bloodsuckers were attacking on our territory. The Volturi had never attacked us openly on our land before.
Seth, where is Leah? I can't feel her here, I asked. I gave a silent order to Quil and Embry to run to the location that Seth had told us to go to.
She hasn't phased yet. I'm running back to fetch her them I'll join you. The battle seems bad. I can hear the screaming from here, Seth said, before I felt him phase back to human.
C'mon, I muttered to Quil and Embry. We ran as quickly as we could to the beach, concentrating on the sound of our paws hitting the ground, rather than the howls and screams that we could hear from the forest. We also focused our sense of smell on the forest around us. With our sensitive noses, the smells of blood and smoke were hard to bear. I knew we had reached the battle the moment that I saw sunlight break through the canopy of the forest, only to be met with the scene of fighting werewolves and sparkling vampires.
Quil and Embry disappeared with a flash, jumping into the middle of the battle. I, however, waited. I wanted to find that Volturi bloodsucker warrior that had made Bella's face twist into such a broken expression that I had even felt like shattering myself. I might be imprinted to Renesmee, but I still loved Bella, even after she chose Edward over me. And I had felt uncomfortable when I had seen that warrior's fangs in Edward's neck. He didn't deserve to die that way, bloodsucker or not.
The moment I saw him, I leapt into the battle. My thoughts were filled with nothing more than an animal hatred, and a need to destroy this filthy monster. To protect the ones I loved. Bella. Renesmee. And my home. I would not let these pathetic bloodsuckers stop me from doing my duty. I felt it the moment that Leah and Seth entered the battle. All I was concerned about was destroying the grinning creature before me. I really wanted to make him squirm without the use of his power. So long bloodsucker, I thought, the moment that I crashed into the vampire.
Note: For Amelia's story, I know that the timeline of the ruling of Queen Mary is off by a quite a few years. From what I recall, she only ruled for five or so years, so don't complain about the history being wrong! I know it, but it was the only way that the story would work out properly. If you really want to find the exact facts, you can just google it.