Disclaimer: All things Twilight belong to Stephenie Meyer, I just borrow her characters to play in my plot. No copyright infringement is intended.
I like to thank Lorraine for always keeping me on track when I need it. JenRar once again very fast service with your awesome betaing skills.
The ancients are still occupying everyone's attention, is that their intention? Why are they there now? Let's just go and see.
Chapter 14 How to Catch an Heir.
BPOV
After the ancients said "Masters," I froze. What in the blazes was this? After my little power demonstration earlier, both ancients had locked up their minds. Neither Edward nor I could penetrate the block they threw up, or should I say the shield Alistair cloaked their minds in. I checked—while I could still wrap them up in one of my tendrils and access their powers, he'd closed off our mind reading very effectively. I had to give them credit. Edward, however, had been in the castle with every part of his attention. If projecting had one drawback, it would be the fact that sharing everything mentally was impaired quite a lot. Maybe that was because it all was so new. I hoped so.
Edward was more on the ball this time around and nudged me to show he was with me, in mind. On the outside, he demonstrated a completely different persona; he had changed from curious follower to coven leader in charge.
"What do you two want to show us here besides riddles? Those three mountains are your masters? I'd like to get some explanation about everything you try to get past us here! Now!"
"Edward, we're so sorry. We shouldn't have said that out loud. It's information you all need to earn by solving mysteries that have arisen during history. After we explained what we do here, you'll have to finish your quest and reunite Marcus with his mate. We will give you a small locked box that will be special to her. The right heir will trigger the box to open. You are on the right way to find who you're looking for." Alistair said, holding his hands up in a peaceful gesture.
"Now, we gave some of it away. This room represents the start of our race. How or why that is has to be left for the future. This is the seventh sanctuary we've built over an enormous length of time. When the heirs in your line decided to build a house in the new world, we started the first sanctuary on this side of the world. The house of your ancestors was protected by a clause in the will of each heir. It could only be inherited by the oldest child, male or female. Furthermore, the will dictated that the heir had to live in the house his or her entire life. Female heirs were protected further. The spouse they were marrying would forfeit their dowry if they refused to comply. It drove your father almost mad with rage that he had to live in your family's house.
"I'm sad to say that arranged marriages were commonplace when you were young. Your father accepted living in the family home because your mother's father was his boss, which meant he had to follow through with the deal to keep his job, as well as to be able to rise on the social ladder. The fact that your mother would have liked more children didn't sway him at all when his firstborn was a son. He'd done his duty, and after that he sought his comfort outside of the home. The fact that it wasn't his house did play into that as well. We watched him from afar and are sad to say he was a callous man, with sky-high expectations for you."
Edward interrupted them, exasperated. "I know my past, and I'm here for possible insight into our quest to find Didyme's reincarnation, something that's still a hunch we're working on. My human memories are all unlocked now, and that also brought back my father's cruel nature. Now please explain to us what this place is."
Amethyst looked contrite. "I need to stop my mate from antagonizing you any further. After watching history for millennia, we have forgotten that going forward toward a goal is how most creatures live. We are watchers, and we aren't used to showing others their way; it is not our task to do so. I can reveal that the incarnation theory is true, though. Souls separated from their eternal mate will always search until they're together again. Even if one of them is lost for a long time.
"Marcus has been lost in trivialities due to his manipulating brother-in-law. It is sad that not all souls are directed in the way of peace or are selfless from their inception. Follow Didyme's line to find her incarnation. She's always been in that line, if only in side branches, until now. Somehow the stars have converged to have her as the heir when her mate's line started the search.
"I made your search easier. Now please, follow me to the lines over the ages. Down here is the only complete rendering from the Stone Age to a century ago. When you all can find the time, we'd like to collaborate to once again make them complete. Until we find and inform the heir of your line, Edward, there is no official guardian of the lines in the human world. We track down the new heirs of every line when it stops in one branch, and we inform them of their task to keep their inheritance documented and how to do that. Before your mother died and stopped our information flow, we could simply follow the trees and pick up all information from the files. Sometimes the search took us beyond the information provided because the heirs only report on direct family, their brothers and sisters, not on cousins, etcetera. If the new heir isn't a direct set over to a sibling, we need to do our own tracking.
"Keeping the lines alive and aware is our main task. The second one is to keep true royalty in rule. That's why Alistair changed Marcus. It's unfortunate that because he's technically still in the council, we can't do anything to depose Aro, who came from a royal family line, but his elder sisters set him outside the royalty scope. Three weeks after Didyme's change, her sister gave birth to her first child. Aro was grief-stricken by the disappearance of his eldest sister. She had been his mother figure for ten years. He resented his second sister for not showing any grief; after all, being introduced to the secret had made her privy to the fact that Didyme had been changed. He had eavesdropped enough to have basic knowledge of vampire royalty. He just never connected the dots until Didyme came back to have him changed out of pity and because she missed him. His resentment transferred to her after that. He thought himself omnipotent because of his gift and hated his ceremonial post as captain of the guard. I'm convinced Marcus informed you of the rest. Maybe the indomitable Bella even lifted it from his own mind?"
Now that gave us some information on things in the past, but it wasn't anything new. I began to lose my patience with those ancients living in their own reality. They had set themselves apart from the flow of time, just watching over it. I began to see we could probably learn a lot from them, but it wouldn't set us on the path to find Didyme. They made it more than clear that they would provide us with a simple way to prove we found the heir but not how to find her. They'd told us the line to use to find the heir. That information, however, was antiquated, as we had found that for ourselves already too.
Edward plopped next to me on our couch. Bella, honey, I'm completely on the same track you are. I'm getting really tired of their side roads into history. They analyzed Aro's motivations accurately, and if you hadn't raided his mind, it would have been a real eye opener. Now, however, it's a load of rehashing crap. Let's stop it and get moving again, until the next history lesson. You never know… We might get lucky and learn something new and useful.
I nodded and brought my attention back to the still-talking Amethyst. Mentally, both Edward and I sat slouched on the couch, feet on the coffee table, munching blood balls.
"Follow us," Amethyst said while walking out of the chamber. Thank fuck... "This sanctuary holds the complete genealogical trees of each of the twenty royal lines. There are about thirty chambers, each holding twenty panels with the trees over a certain timeframe. Then there is a chest with a more comprehensive history of the happenings in the period, limited to big historical events and the family history of the heirs."
She led us back to the first chamber. To our surprise, this one had empty panels and the trunk stood open without any content.
Do we really have to emphasize that the last hundred years, no one went and sorted the mail? Goddamn, they're very up to speed, but they can't go into an empty house and take the mail? I'm getting mighty irritated by their higher-than-thou attitude. Their "we're more than just vampires" vibe they like to exude. Do I need to elaborate any more?
Edward sat next to me, drumming on his legs. He was right in my view. I believed that for ignorant humans having to do the work so they could transcribe it onto fancy panels, their ways would do it. They'd be just vampire scary enough to have the human faithfully do their bidding. To be knowledgeable vampires, it becomes an exercise in cryptic clues to things that are unimportant to the matter at hand. We had to get out of there. We had to finish those trees, give them facts to paint their fancy panels, but most of all to give us usable facts to go on. This guided tour was just depleting the projecting juice Edward had taken in on nonsense. That was it.
"Alistair, Amethyst, I'm sorry, but once again this history lesson in your tasks isn't conducive to the completion of our search. I'm sure we're all glad you told us our shot in the dark is right, and we appreciate the box you'll give us to make sure we got the right heir. The bottom line here is that we need Edward here on his A-game, and this standing around listening to history isn't the most productive way to use his limited blood supply. So I'd like to thank you for your time, but we need to take our leave now. Good night."
I took Edward's hand and started to bring the gloating bastard back to the parlor. Behind us, both ancients sputtered an apology and pushed a box into Emmett's hands. Kate took it upon herself to apologize for our blunt departure before all of our group followed us up to the parlor. Edward set himself next to the trapdoor, and as soon as everybody exited the sanctuary, he dropped the door closed with a bang. He then stood as still as a statue and threw his power out as wide as it would go. I ran into the control room and gave it a whirl to its maximum setting. As expected, the ancients had misjudged his range by several miles.
'Well, that took them long enough. They must have hoped we could give them more actual information. Their diet must give them more civilized manners. They were all politely listening to my endless ramblings about our history, although it seemed that their leaders are more knowledgeable on most of it. If I ever have to endure them that bored again, I'll have to set aside my rules and inform them of certain things. Ah well. It all proves our masters' belief in the humanitarian diet.'
Amethyst's thoughts rang out loud and clear. Edward snorted inside my head until I leveled him with a death stare. He went over and sat on one of the sofas, motioning to us all to join him. When we were all seated, he took the lead.
"All right. Interesting as all that was, Bella was right. We need a game plan to go forward. So let's break it up into tasks each couple here can tackle. Kate, Jasper, it would be of great help if you two could finish going through the mountain of mail. You're now getting familiar with each tree. Please search out especially Didyme's tree or, at least, sort everything but work out only that tree. We need to know where it ends. Rose, please start trying to work out where to go for Didyme's heir. If you get a feeling, you and Emmett should follow up."
His decisive speech stopped, and he got a very sad look on his face. He sighed and went on. "I think I'll need to go back to hanging around the castle to further our efforts there to bring Aro down as soon as we have located the reincarnation. Bella, do you think it's necessary to stay here, or could your efforts be done from Marcus's cave?"
Emmett sat forward and interrupted Edward's direction of his troops. "If I may… The ancients dropped this on me, and I think you two should keep it safe until we have a prospect for the reincarnation. We know now who it is, the current heir of Didyme's line. I mean damn, guys, you're the up-and-coming royal couple…"
The moment that sentence left his mouth, Edward shot from his seat, glaring at Emmett. "Stop that reverent nonsense right this minute. Yes, I'm from a royal line. I'll probably end up being part of the royal council. Next thing to be proven is impossible because skank-ho Renee doesn't know who Bella's father is. Yes, she's my mate, but first and foremost she's my equal and the co-leader of this coven. She doesn't tell you what to do because I told her to. She does it because she decided it on her own. It's logical that we discuss and form our opinions together, even more because of our connection, but know this. If Aro flips and destroys me, she'll do it alone until she can find me again."
Emmett raised his hands in a placating manner. "All right, all right. Slow down. Jeez, man, could you be a little more uptight about that?" he said while sarcasm dripped from his words. "I just want to know what to do with that box."
That stupid box should be where the heir was. I didn't want to traipse around behind the front troops with the box just to confirm if our guess was right. "You know, Emmett," I said, "keep the box with you. I'm going back to Italy. Even though Edward can project now, this whole situation isn't sitting well with me. When he's here, he can't monitor the castle the way we'd like. You and Rose will be on the frontline in this search. You'll need the proof when you find someone who matches the criteria. Take it with you. Plus, they entrusted it to you. It's your task."
He put the box in the middle of the coffee table. It was a metal box with a handprint on the top. Each fingertip had a contact point—at least, that was what I thought they were. In the middle of the palm was another one just the size of half a golf ball. The scent wasn't familiar to any of us. The metal was not from Earth!
"Well, it smells like our true ancestors were space travelers. Please, Rose, start trying to find your way. We need the reincarnation of Didyme as well as the heir of her line. Find one, you'll find both, as is often the case," I told them.
Edward didn't show any outward sign of agreeing with me. Mentally he said he was testing their level of loyalty to me as his equal in the coven. They didn't disappoint him. Rose, of course, stood up and started mumbling about what she was looking for, setting the stage to make her power—as the ancients had confirmed, it was more than an ability—do its job. After about five minutes, she closed her eyes and started to slowly turn on the spot. After another few minutes, she came to a stop with a jerk, facing the mountain of mail in the foyer. We all followed, fascinated by her demonstration. Her eyes still closed, she began to go through all the letters, holding each one for a fraction of a second and then putting them down in several piles.
Jasper stepped up to the piles and went through them while a big grin grew on his face. From his mind, it was clear that Rose was sorting them into their trees. Soon it became apparent that some heirs hadn't taken keeping the secret to just the heirs. Maybe that bit had been lost during the ages. There were three trees, recognizable by their mark on the envelopes, where numerous heirs were sending in information at the same time; the stamps on the letters clued us in to that. After about half an hour, Rose had done the job, sifting through the complete mountain. What we hadn't noticed was that she'd held back a stack of letters.
Rose opened her eyes and presented the stack to me. "These should all go to Didyme's line. The final one will show us our starting point. But the feeling won't become solid yet. I'm afraid that this line of heirs has somehow stopped sending in their information. Don't ask me how I know. It just popped into my brain. But let's sort this tree to its end and then go where it leads us.
"Oh, Kate, could you please go out and get Emmett and me some stage make-up and elbow gloves? We will need to go to sunny places and will need the cover. A good pancake should keep our faces from sending the humans into a panic. The gloves will aid too. Make-up on hands is just not a good idea. It'll come off whenever you touch something."
Kate was out of the door like a flash, but not before she planted a good one on Jasper, taking him by surprise. He sat back on his heels for three minutes straight, staring at the point she'd left his view. After that, he took the pile of letters Rosalie held and asked her to help him put them in order. Why bother opening them all when you could start at the very end of the tree without opening the rest? Rose brought out a beautiful crystal pendulum while Jasper spread out the letters.
Rose once again closed her eyes and hung the crystal over the spread of letters. I had seen that more than I cared to remember. The ladies on the reservation dowsed every major decision of the tribe. They were first spoken about, then dowsed, and finally they made the decision on the outcome, however harebrained that decision was. To say I was a skeptic was a gross understatement. I saw, however, that the crystal in Rose's hands acted completely different from those ladies at the Rez. From them, I could see them steering the pendulum their way, with human eyes. Rose, however, didn't move an eyelash. Her pendulum moved on its own in an erratic way. It took Jasper and me a minute until we deciphered what the thing showed us. The intricate movement with sharp corners gave us the order in which to pick up the letters. Every time it started its movement anew, it held still over one singular letter for a second.
Jasper grabbed that letter. To our astonishment, the pendulum reacted immediately by holding its position over the next one just long enough for Jazz to grab it. Ten seconds later, he held the stack again but now in the right order. He gave me the top letter, opening the bottom one himself. My letter came out dated in the nineteen twenties. His letter would give us the starting point for our hunt.
Edward and I sat, stunned, on our couch. It was crystal clear that Rose's ability was far more than that. Amethyst's assessment was spot on. We had to agree to that, even if we didn't like it… How it had escaped everybody's attention that Rose could accurately steer decisions was very clear; until Alice and Jasper joined the coven, it hadn't been necessary to have a guide. They had moved from small town to small town, following Carlisle's wishes to be more human than the humans themselves. After they joined, Alice had taken control of the decisions by pushing her ideas onto everyone. Her manipulating ability must have kept Rose's power vague and inactive. However else could she now have so much control?
Jasper had read the letter for himself and started laughing really hard. I snatched it from his hands and read:
To whomever it may concern,
My mother told me a fantastic story. I was very tempted to scoff and dismiss all of it. Then I found the trunk with family diaries, going back without end. he earliest were even written on scrolls and even one on a stone tablet in cuneiform script. Thank heavens some ancestors close to that time included a translation matrix for it. Well, that was cuneiform into Ancient Greek. Not much help for my barely there high school diploma. Helpful ancestors again included a translation of the translation. The absolute meticulous nature of every diary made me start writing too.
My mother's story was a big surprise. Apparently I'm the crown prince to one of twenty lines of vampire royals. Well, damn. I'm mostly flabbergasted, but stunned could be more accurate. Some things fell into place, though. I'm sure I've met vampires before. I put one and one together, and those too beautiful people with too graceful movements that crossed my path, sending me away almost angrily before talking to some other people, were vampires. My mind is reeling with the thought of what possibly happened to that other group of people and why they sent me off.
Now for the official bit. I'm Garrett O'Dalley. My mother was the heir before me in the dragon line. To the best of her knowledge, one of our line currently is a vampire and part of the royal council. If that makes me closer to the throne, I don't know, but it sure makes me proud.
As of this writing, I'm 18 years old and, according to my mother, now responsible to keep you updated on my whereabouts and happenings in my family. I'm still living in my parents' house in New York City. If I make any serious address changes, I'll update like I was told. I should mention, however, that I'm intending to travel the country to visit relatives in both my Irish as well as my native background. No fixed address or intention to stay somewhere, other than my ancestral home here in New York.
Until later times,
Garrett
"Well, that'll have you start in the Big Apple. He definitively was a teenager when he wrote this. He never even dated the letter, and he mentioned living with his parents, but not the address of his ancestral home. At least he gave us his name, but we don't know his middle name. Let's go through the other letters in the pile to see what his mom reported."
I ended up snickering over the juvenile way this, I would say, nineteen sixties teenager wrote. Jasper was staring at the envelope the letter he'd opened came in.
"Guys, I think I solved the date conundrum. Because this was sent via snail mail, the stamp on the envelope to devalue the postage stamp has a date. This stamp gives us the approximate date the letter was written. That should also give us a narrow window on his birthday, because his mom would have told him sometime around his birthday. Give or take a few weeks for him to go through the trunk with journals; let's say a month. This stamp says June twenty-first, 1985."
I went through the rest of the letters with Rose until I sensed something strange. It was half a lonely feeling. Jasper gasped and snapped his head my way. I looked around, and Edward was missing. Going internal, I found my man smirking on the couch. His eyes were apologetic, though.
Sorry, love. Marcus got me back to my body. something's up with Aro, and he wants me there actively scouring minds. His jolt to my body snapped me back before I could say something. Please tell the others my good-byes for now. This projecting is tiring like you wouldn't believe, and even though I have room enough in my mind, most of it is used up by the projection. I just know you're able and determined enough to lead that bunch of ragtag vampires to success. Go on, do your thing, and then come back to Italy. You can guide them more when you use the future box to predict the weather and keep all gathered information in the cave. One safe, central place.
I gave him a nice head rub and went back to sorting through the information Garret's mother had provided. We found his New York address; a quick Internet search told us that the house was still owned by the O'Dalley family, but a request for a change of planning permission had been filed to change it into apartments for rental purposes. We also found a letter from January of 1967. a very happy young mother informed us of the birth of her first child, a boy named Garrett William Maria O'Dalley, born on the eleventh of January.
As soon as all that information was gathered, the front door burst open, and Kate ran in with several big bags from a theatre shop. She ran into the kitchen and spread her haul out on the counter. She had a big jar of plain stage pancake in pure white, about ten little jars of pure pigments in fair skin tones. She went through the kitchen cabinets, grabbed a big bowl, and emptied the big jar into that bowl.
"Don't just stand there gaping. The damn shop didn't have readymade skin tones that would suit a vampire. So I took the pure white clowns use and some pigments that we can mix together into a sufficiently fair color so that you two won't look like total idiots with far too brown skin. So get over here and help me blend it."
Kate was on a roll. It took the three of them half an hour to mix two jars of slightly different colors. One was marked Rose and the other, of course, Emmett. I used the time to my advantage and tried my power on the one Rose had demonstrated to us earlier. Hijacking it was easy, but that was the end of my ability to use it. This was a different kind of power. I couldn't just use it. To get it to work, I needed more; not even wishing it to work helped. It was strange, but I felt my whole body flooding with relief to have found a boundary to my power. Edward's mental pat on the back and arm rub soothed me even more. The weight of the world was lifted off my shoulders. The fact that I was omnipotent as long as I had the right powers nearby had slowly settled in my mind. The weight of the responsibility to use it for the good of the vampire world had become near crushing, without me being aware of it.
Oooxxxooo
The hustle and bustle went on for another hour. Cars were rented and suitcases put inside those cars. Routes were planned and a plane ticket bought; I would return to Italy to man, as Emmett dubbed it, Operation Central. Finally, everything was ready. Jasper and Kate would remain in Chicago, and Rose and Emmett, armed with every bit of information available, would drive to New York to start the search for the elusive Garrett. The search of Edward's mom's quarters would have to wait. Her input had been invaluable, but it was apparent that most of her efforts had to do with the ancients and wouldn't be helpful to our search. Edward also wanted to be there as a whole, not just a specter, when we went through all his mother's things.
A few hours later, I pretended to sleep in my first-class seat while going over everything in my head. The most snowed under thing of this trip would have to be Jasper mating with Kate. Just before I left, he had taken me in a hug and confided through his mind that they were taking it as slow as possible. He was thrown for a loop that manipulation could trump instincts. He didn't trust himself to really feel what he felt. After all, he only discovered he could separate his power's emotional upheaval from his own feelings a short few months ago. That too made him hesitant to act right away. I was glad he was cautious, as long as he didn't give it up. He wouldn't. He was happy for the first time in eighty years.
I was shaken from my musings by Edward bounding into our living room as a puppy, and I mean literally as a doggy puppy. An adorable little puppy with unruly bronze hair. He jumped on the couch and snuggled onto my lap, showing his belly. He would always be a cuddler. He became his own sexy self again, his head still in my lap, and told me that he'd witnessed the first big crack in Aro's unflappable exterior.
Do you also love that almost everything is possible in Bella and Edward's mental home? I'll tell you now, the ancients will come back in part three of this story, their role here was limited because they had little influence on the inner workings of the royal court, that is the problem of the royal council or their subjects.
My recommendations for this week are:
Failure to Thrive by Julesnerd. Bella is sexually unfulfilled after four horrible encounters. She meets Edward Masen, and Bella has been told she's frigid. ffn 1904085
No Ordinary Proposal by twilover76. Bella wants to escape her small-town life and live her dreams in New York. What happens when a man almost twice her age makes her an offer she can't refuse? ffn 8092082
Please, everyone, reviews make my day.
Enjoy Reading.
Pien