Springing from tree to tree, Enzo finally plummeted toward the ground and tucked and rolled for a softer landing. He darted forward, sliding past the lead two shapeshifters. The third tackled him head on and he jerked back three steps. Jaws snapped at his face eager to rip him to shreds. It's a wonder all of Forks hadn't heard or witnessed the confrontation yet.
He held the jaws shut with his hands and instantly regret it as a large maul bore down on his head. The jaw never trapped his head, a horde of vampires appearing in the large clearing. The shifters scattered, outnumbered and out muscled. They retreated to a safe distance, waiting for the chance to strike away.
Enzo lay on the ground in temporary relief.
Aro tossed back his hood, alerting Enzo it was too late to run.
Alec stripped Enzo of sight first, allowing him to have a sense of touch and smell to feel what was about to happen. Four pairs of hands grabbed hold of him as his hearing slipped away to nothing. Jane amplified the pain, planting a mental image of him being torn limb from limb. His cries of pain reached Nikolai miles away on the hunt for a deer. Recognizing Enzo's voice and sensing the others presences, he fled to Allison's home.
4:03 am.
Nikolai shook his beloved awake. The darkness of the room obliterated any awareness the sleepy Allison Bishop relied on. " We need to move -"
Holding her close to his chest, he listened to her calm beating heart in relief. The house blurred around him as he zipped from it to halfway through the thick trees and ran into the same group of vampires that killed Enzo. Demitri grinned at them.
A small hand tapped Nikolai's chest light. " Hey, Niko - I need to breathe,"
He loosened his grip instantly and muttered an apology in russian.
" It's alright, big guy. Could you tell the audience they can go home?" She peered out from the blanket he wrapped her in.
Despite his arms holding her, she felt no more safe in his arms than she did in her bed. The cold seeped through the blanket and from Nikolai himself.
The many pairs of eyes that stared back at them further unnerved Nikolai.
" A witch," A lone voice whispered in awe.
Nikolai turned Allison away from the prying eyes.
The world turned off sense by sense for Allison. Alec never twitched.
" You will not have her," Nikolai insisted. " Witches are not to be killed, remember? It's written in your laws," Nikolai refused to let Aro touch her. For some reason Aro chose to let the evasion continue.
Allison regained sight first, bright light dimming to a normal dawning hours.
The greek gripped Nikolais muscled arm. " I will not be stopped. I will have a witch if I hunt a witch for my coven,"
Nikolai dropped Allison to the ground and clutched his head.
Allison recovered quickly and clutched the blanket tight around her to ward off the cold. Tucking herself close to her fiance, she glared up at Aro. She searched for a reason as to why they were after her and her fiance. Her arms enveloped the man she loved despite her head telling her to stop loving him a time ago.
" A witch who can sense us," Aro dropped to her level. " Think of your powers amplified. You would be one of the most powerful in the Volturi,"
Nikolai shuddered in her arms. " Stop whatever it is you're doing to him,"
" Or what?" Aro moved behind her breathing down his neck. " You'll use crystals and tarot cards?"
Her jaw clenched. Cold. Tired. Scared. Irritated. " Witchcraft isn't a videogame,"
Well, it isn't everyday someone is ignorant of what videogames are. Despite that Nikolai moaned in pain and clenched within my arms. " Stop! He is no threat to you,"
Aro's hand snaked into my hair and gripped my mane, ice cold marble like skin to living flesh. A pressured presence filtered through my mind like a person rifling through a book, reading what appeared to be random thoughts. " Foolish mortal," He yanked her head back.
Nikolai ceased to shake. He caught his breath and held onto Allison.
Aro ripped Allison out of Nikolai's arms and tossed her into Jane. Jane easily held her down, digging nails into flesh. Before Allison screamed, Aro held her against a tree and sunk his teeth into her neck. Blood flowed from the fatal wound. Nikolai launched off the ground, halted mid air by an unnamed member of the guard physically interfering. They traded blows yards from Allison and Aro.
Blood dripped down Allison's throat from Aro's wrist, his hand holding her chin up to prevent her from spitting it back out. He unceremoniously dropped her to the ground and ordered the guard to let Nikolai out of the head lock subduing him. He licked his lips in satisfaction and ordered them to move out.
Allison's throat burned as if a fire torched it, her tongue and throat scorching. Tears ran down her cheek, her throat wound throbbing and swelling shut once more. Nikolai scrambled to her side and cupped her head in his hands, resting it on his lap. He leaned in and shielded her from the elements. Clothed only in pajama shorts, a tank top, and with a bloodied shoulder, Allison's hair splayed out in Nikolai's soaked lap. The snow cooled her body's temperature. Soon the tears turned into whimpers of pain, and with each heartbeat, the venom pushed through her veins toward her heart, burning away veins and transforming her into an ungodly being.
" Stay with me," He whispered in her ear, clutching her to his chest. He prayed to every saint he could remember and then to every god and goddess that his mind recalled from movies and books. None of it eased her current suffering.
Kheti found the both of them in the growing rays of daylight. The cold cooled Allison's body temperature and the pain of the torturous transformation contorted her mentality into that of blacking out the rest of her memories. " You can not stay here, Niko-"
" I know that, but I can't take her back to her home,"
" You could take her to Alaska," Kheti whispered to Nikolai. " Take her to Alaska, and I will meet you there," She placed money into Nikolai's hand. " She'll need clothes. Don't worry about sanitary items. She won't need them. A blood supply will be at the safehouse. I'll see that it's restocked as often as necessary. The longer you linger, the more intense the transformation becomes,"
Except Kheti underestimated the directness of the route that blood traveled. Aro dripped it directly down her throat and blood circulation forced it closer to her heart faster. The venom directly implanted in her neck wound worked double duty. Although Nikolai traveled via normal mortal transportation with the 'sick' Allison and flew privately to the private Alaskan compound Enzo purchased years before Nikolai was made, By the time they arrived in the beautifully decorated and extremely secure and self sufficient compound, Allison made the final transformation.
She opened her eyes for the first time as a vampire, sensory overwhelmed and extremely confused as to who she was. Nikolai helped his beloved explore their new home, shortly joined by Sehkhet two months following. She discovered the compound littered with witchcraft necessities and spell books and a Book of Shadows in its infancy. The young vampire practiced the craft out in open, her magic literally coming to life the moment she uttered words. Kheti expected Aro to claim the young woman, and when Aro requested a report on Allison Bishop's well being and progress as a vampire, Kheti never replied.
Allison's vampiric amnesia and shifting sense of self-awareness prevented the past from refusing the rekindling of a love between herself and Nikolai. Years passed in relative peace for the trio, Kheti effectively resigning from her position with the Volturi and leading the newly founding coven. Nikolai fully embraced Allison's gifts and heritage, and so it happened fifty four years and six months later, the witch regained a fully self-aware mind without constantly struggling to remember who she was and why she struggled to maintain that sense of awareness. The magic that ruled her mind subsided enough for the soul within to dominate once more.
Two weeks later, Sehkhet Mariani introduced Allison and Nikolai to Amun, Kebi, Benjamin, and Tia. Allison instantly disliked Amun and pitied Kebi and followed Kheti's lead in being quiet about her discontent with the imbalanced relationship between the ancient egyptians. Nikolai boasted of his mate's abilities and surprised Amun and Kebi with the knowledge that it was Aro's venom that turned Allison. Kheti informed the coven the Volturi were not welcome in her home nor would she permit Allison near them.
" I assure you," Allison stated for everyone's benefit and understanding. " I will never join the Volturi. Enzo may have been an enemy, but the Volturi act in manners that are vile and greedy. I'd sooner trust a shapeshifter with my life than the Volturi,"
" That is because you do not understand," Kebi said carefully.
Allison looked the former and arguably current slave in the eye. " My magical core was disturbed by his presence - their presence. I know when corruption is presence. I am a corruption of nature. No one is meant to control nature as Benjamin. No one is meant to read minds or attract people to them, or deprive people of senses or cause pain or cast imagery on another. It is a corruption most foul." She dusted the crushed crystal powder into her drawn rune. " He took from me my mortality. And I will take from him something equally precious one day,"
And so it came to pass, that not Enzo, but Aro himself made an enemy not even Alec could stop. With an adoring lover who supported her up to the very end when she claimed the life of her maker, Allison avenged her own death and gave up immortality on the day she attacked Aro. Side by side Nikolai and Allison killed Aro, Alec, Jane, and Corin before being slaughtered mercilessly by the remaining guard capable of reaching them. Kheti joined forces with Amun, Kebi, Benjamin, and Tia to attack Caius, Chelsea, and the guard that remained loyal to Caius. In the end Kheti fell with Kebi, leaving Amun, Benjamin, and Tia the survivors of the assault on the Volturi.
Marcus spared the lives of Amun, Benjamin, and Tia on the grounds that Aro had acted in opposition to the laws laid forth long ago. The young witch and the fledgling coven no longer mattered as they were destroyed by their own need for vengeance. Marcus determined that Amun, the well known leader of his coven, acted on the enforcement of the laws and fought to prevent a disregard of the crucial laws that governed vampires and permitted them to live in peace. The wives of Caius and Aro resisted this decision and ordered the death of the survivors, only to be overruled by the now determined Marcus to reinstate peace. No longer prisoners in Volterra, the wives assumed a public positioning with Marcus. The Volturi held its control of the vampire world, its more vile members purged from the ranks of leadership and the guard.
Within the existence of Chelsea, Corin, Alec, and Jane, the Volturi sought out new talent. Without Chelsea forcing loyalty, Corin being an addictive drug like presence, and the feared twins, the balance of power shifted. Suddenly the Volturi were no longer as well protected as they boasted of. Suddenly the world, even if they considered the attack an abomination and total disrespect, believed the Volturi not above falling in on itself.
