A/N Everything Twilight belongs to Stephanie Meyer, the plot of this story is mine. No copyright infringement is intended.
I'd like to thank all the readers here and on every other medium I use to put my story out there for their unwavering support for this story. Right now I'm working hard on the sequel, but that isn't going as fast as I would like. So prepare yourselves for a waiting period between the end of Twilesque and the start of Parallax. I simply refuse to post a story which isn't finished before I start posting.
A very big thank you once again for my team for even correcting my mistakes while not feeling well. Thanks Chandra! Lorraine my co-conspirator and story bouncer, and LunaDiSangue85 who gives an objective view, because she isn't in the planning sessions. Ladies you're golden in my opinion!
Now let's see what Marcus has to say.
TWILESQUE
Chapter 24 In Conclusion, C + S = 12
EPOV
Finally some rest; I had been at it for weeks, assessing my family's minds over and over. They were all ready and had well organized minds with a suitable decoy in place. Everybody had rearranged everything, even Alice, even though she did so very reluctantly. She fought to keep her power visible, until Rosalie pointed out she could be enslaved by Aro if she showed such a strong power. If Alice was anything, she was very attached to her freedom.
Carlisle and I split the travel arrangements. He ran the decoy, I ran the true ones. His plans consisted of us arriving in our personal jet in two weeks' time. Normally, Rosalie, and either Jasper or I, would fly that jet. This time, we hired a vampire pilot and co-pilot to fly the jet to Pisa. They would also guard the jet until we would eventually fly it back to the U.S. For Aro's sake, Rosalie and I made a flight to Italy, carefully staging our intended date and time of the actual flight. We went back as soon as the jet was refueled.
Emmett and Bella had a whale of a time, playing cards as if they were six different people. It was rowdy, it was hard ball, and it was for high stakes. Our stakes were chores around the house: dusting, building works, laundry. Yes, we actually had laundry now; our times of wasting money on throw away clothes was over. Or it was for three couples in our coven. Alice still held out that she wouldn't wear 'old' clothes. Jasper liked well worn jeans, and snuck his jeans into our laundry. He threw brand new ones into the hamper/waste basket in his own room, otherwise they would pile up and Alice would notice. Alice didn't recycle her clothes; they were not donated, oh no, they were burned.
My travel plans were far more mundane, even though we would travel under four of my aliases. Every couple was booked on separate occasions; I started with Bella and I. We flew under the name Thompson-Clark, yuppie silver-spooners, with big trust funds. Carlisle and Esme became the Grants, young retired, self made millionaires who sold their Internet business for a small fortune. Next in our line-up were the Huffmans, ex-football player with his cheerleader high school sweetheart who happened to hit it lucky on the stock market. The last couple had become affluent through striking oil; they were the Lisenbys. They were all booked into the first class of the same flight. I'd made a very detailed biography of every couple; we were flying intercontinental and would be questioned in length, we had to be completely believable. When we could pull that off, the Volturi would never know we were already in Italy.
Bella was struggling to shut her power down; Marcus advised her to try to dial it down as much as she could. But the only thing I heard from her mind was coming through the link. Her personal shield, which could encompass me at will, was, even on the lowest setting, incredibly strong. She now sat in a quandary; to make Aro believe everything in our false memories, she had to at least be able to show glimpses of her mind. But the control of her power, even though it was incredible after only a few months, was still limited. We just prayed hard for a breakthrough before our audience in the Volterra castle.
The day we had to fly dawned completely overcast. We all were scattered over four different cars. Alice insisted on the limousine, Bella and I took a chauffeured town car. Bella never had any troubles with her bloodlust. She still had to consciously decide to hunt; never once had her instincts overwhelmed her rational mind. Her control was probably linked to her shield, too. Nobody was troubled that she would drain a human; their blood was actually abhorrent to her. Bella was a miracle, a new breed of vampire.
We decided not to hang out in the first class lounge too long; I took her around the tax free shops. We avoided the perfume alley; the artificial scents burned our noses from afar. My girl attacked the bookshop, buying every book she took a fancy to. She also dragged me to the electronics outlet; she wanted me to choose a camera for her. She wanted to try to document the Italy trip without portraits, just impressions of the surroundings. I found a nice Canon SLR camera with one objective, a compact 18-135mm lens. We took a few extra memory cards for it, and an extra battery.
Bella, in the meantime, was lured to the other electronics in the store. Video cameras as small as the palm of your hand, sound recorders the size of buttons; they could take two hours of audio, you just needed a device as big as a book to play it back. It looked like a book, too.
'Edward, I'm going to get some of this stuff. We know we have a mole in the family, someone working under the radar. These things actually look the part to my vampire vision. They can fool the rest; we only need two bugs. Car and Essie are linked at the hip when he's not at the hospital. And Jasper doesn't need a bug; his fight against his bloodlust is proof of that. So, are you okay if I do this?'
'Of course, darling, get whatever you want. Do you know you're rattling Lion's cave when you get all strategic?'
She really did; my vampire was pacing within his cage. We were in a crowded airport. I needed to have him cool down fast, before my instincts took over. Right at the moment my vampire was about to crush his cage, a cool hand wrapped around my left bicep. Immense amounts of love flooded the link, along with soothing contentment. Bella had so much more control over her vampire that she could calm mine. I just fell in love all over again.
We left the electronics store with four big bags, apart from the modest camera bag. I bought another suitcase and loaded it with everything; I would check it in at the first class lounge. I put most of Bella's books into the suitcase as well; additionally, she kept an advanced Italian speech course on CD, and three books all in Italian. I hadn't noticed with all the noises flooding my brain, but Bella wore a sound bud in one of her ears. I tapped it and she smiled, showing me a box she had loaded into her Discman. My girl still used antiquated personal stereo systems sometimes. But she used it well; she showed me a box of CDs of beginner and intermediate Italian. She was apparently determined to learn Italian before we were there.
'Don't tell me you never used Jasper's way of learning a language, this is his Discman, enhanced and now working at vampire speed. Since I bought it at the bookshop, I have already completed the beginner course and started the intermediate. I just want to understand the people around me.'
'I'm not stopping you, I just didn't know about vampire Discmans.'
We went to the first class lounge and boarded the flight, ignoring the rest of the family, even if they checked in with me/us mentally. Unbeknownst to everyone, Bella and I did everything together now, assessing family included; our link was never closed. We could each choose to shut parts of our minds off from the link, to give us a place to keep surprises from each other. A large part of the thirteen hour flight, we feigned to be asleep, something that was altogether impossible for, and infuriating Alice. She sat huffing and puffing, reading her fashion magazines. Carlisle was engrossed in a medical text, Esme found a book about interior decorating; from her mind, it was about Feng Shui and Minimalism. Rose and Emmett also 'slept' after a heated game of Travel Battleship. Bella and I, as I said, feigned sleeping, but went over her training through the link. She even tried to lower her shield again and again, closing the link for a moment and telling me something in her mind. Sadly, nothing came through.
After our flight landed, we all separated again. I had arranged separate accommodations for each of the couples. The only five star hotel went to Alice and Jasper, just because she was the only one in our family who actually thought the number of stars important. Once Bella and I were settled in our comfortable room, I shot Marcus a short text telling him we had arrived. Only ten minutes later, I got an answer: a set of GPS coordinates, a time, and a date. The day after tomorrow, at one in the morning, we would meet Marcus there. Shortly thereafter, another text came; this one was for Bella and me alone.
*Same place, tomorrow, at three in the afternoon, just you and your mate!*
'Bella, honey, Marcus wants to meet us alone before he meets everyone. You game?'
'Of course, why wouldn't I be? He's your mentor, after all. I respect him for that alone.'
We decided not to tell the others about the group meeting yet, our rendezvous was a given that it was secret. Bella had me in her shield permanently now. We absolutely needed to keep Alice out; after antagonizing her as much as we had lately, she was sure to want to block us. After a good look on a map, we determined that the coordinates lay in the middle of good hunting grounds. Using that as our excuse, Bella and I made our escape from the family.
We drove a rental with heavily tinted windows to a deserted road, far from human habitation, leaving it there to run the rest of the way. Bella had opened her navigational app, putting in the coordinates. When we came close to the spot, we entered a densely wooded area; we kept a line as straight as possible to the coordinates. Suddenly, we stepped into a large clearing with an ancient olive tree in the middle. At the foot of the tree stood a shrine, a shrine dedicated to St. Marcus. Before a miniature Volterra stood a statue of him, brandishing a cross and a string of garlic. Cliché vampires, half his size, were cowering away from him. Next to the shrine stood the real article. He greeted us warmly and invited us to join him in his sanctuary. He pulled the arm with the cross down, and the whole contraption slid to the side, clearing a hole in the ground with a thirty foot drop to the bottom. Marcus indicated that we should go first; to keep my mate safe, I immediately jumped into the hole. I trusted Marcus, the hole not so much. My landing echoed through the cave; I stepped aside and Bella landed next to me, almost immediately followed by Marcus. He touched a tree root and the shrine slid back in place.
The three of us stood in a small antechamber; at least I hoped that was what it was. Marcus flitted through the only opening in the walls, we followed, Bella first, big mistake. I was still assessing my new environment, so I didn't notice the link stopped broadcasting. Looking behind me, I followed Bella blindly, until I ran into her. She had stopped dead two steps into the next room. Bringing my attention around to what was before me, I felt my jaw drop. We stood in an enormous artificial cavern, dug out of sandstone and granite by hand.
The enormous space was divided into several functional rooms; to the left was a wall with floor to ceiling—20 feet high—bookcases. They were filled with all kind of ancient texts: large leather-bound tomes and parchment scrolls. By the smell coming off them, some of those scrolls were made with human hides. In front of the bookcases stood a large cloister table, also filled with books. Some of the books on the table looked modern, and distinctly new age. To the right was a large fireplace surrounded by comfortable looking sofas and chairs. Straight ahead was a wall adorned with curtains; they were bound back from a large landscape in minute detail. It was obvious that a vampire painted this; one person wandered toward the onlooker: a beautiful female, radiating power, looked at you with love. When I picked up Marcus' thoughts, it became clear to me. He was greeting her reverently, and introducing us to his mate, Didyme. Bella's eyes widened as she, too, picked up his thoughts.
"Bella, più belle ragaza, did you find the key to shutting down your power?"
Marcus didn't want to waste time. We were here solely for business related to things we didn't tell the family about.
"No, Marcus. I can dial it down, but Edward can't break through, even on the lowest setting. It doesn't help that I need to keep the shield partly around Edward as much as possible around the family; we don't want our decisions twisted around by Alice. Sadly, her motivations aren't in the family's best interest. She has a tendency to twist everything around to suit her wishes. With the deep readings Edward was able to do, we found her completely narcissistic with a very superficial view on the world."
"With what Edward explained to me, I understand that you have hidden your power behind a wall of pain, yes?"
"Correct; my power control room is situated behind my wall of pain."
"And in that room, the knobs, do you place them? Or do they appear out of nothing?"
"It's a fairly dynamic process; at first they just appeared, but I deduced that that was not entirely the case. I think my subconscious mind placed the knobs, slides, and lights."
"Ah, and there it is, the wit of a genius mind. You, my girl, have stumbled upon something not many vampires know: the fact that we have two layers to our minds. A conscious layer, with about eight tracks, and a subconscious layer with another four."
Marcus turned to me and continued.
"Edward, with the help of Bella's boost in power, you should eventually be able to breach into the subconscious layers of the mind. There you can find all sorts of things, and with some vampires, those hidden layers are a truly terrifying place. Because I worked with my power for millennia, I found those sub levels. That's where the true loyalties of a vampire are settled. Faked loyalty will reside in the conscious mind, but the true feelings will always be there, just hidden from view.
"Aro has never worked with his power; he uses it but never thought of expanding his possibilities. Thank the powers that be, nowadays he riffles through a mind as if it were a glossy magazine, never reading or absorbing everything. His sub layers show me that his loyalty is only to himself. He tolerates Caius and me only because it gives a semblance of fairness, but he actually demands opposing council from us; that way he has the final, and essentially only, say in the matter. But I digress, what I wanted to say is never stop developing your power. Edward, you recently found a way to cope with thoughts that abused you. If you hadn't stopped working on your power, you would have found that earlier. I'm convinced that you can also reach the sub layers of the mind, albeit with Bella's help."
His warm gaze was once again turned to my mate.
"And you, Bella, your power is yours to wield, not the other way around. If you want to shut it off, if you want to make it stutter, just do it. Why not put an off switch on your control panel? A stutter knob for my part. Determination is the key; don't be afraid to show yourself for who you really are. I can see that that fear is what's holding you back. You are magnificent, show it to the world."
While Marcus was talking to her, Bella's mind was racing into her control room. She grabbed a mental piece of paper and wrote, in big capitals: OFF. On the left control panel there had always been a bigger dial, slap bang on top and in the middle. She plastered the note above the dial, and it miraculously lit up immediately. She apologized to me and threw me out of her mind completely, closing the link. Only seconds later her voice rang in my head.
'Edward? Can you hear me?'
Her mental voice was devoid of emotion, and I suddenly understood. I was hearing her mind through my power, not through the link.
"Yes I do, angel. I hear you! You, my brilliant girl, are truly a wonder. But I must say that I'd rather hear you through the link. Your thoughts lack emotion now."
Marcus' face lit up; he was almost bouncing in place.
"Wonderful, you already fixed it. Oh, what wouldn't I give to train you personally, but I think your continued stay in Italy would make Aro suspicious. We'll have to do it long distance. Now some practicalities… tomorrow your coven will meet us up top. I have absolutely no intention to show them this cave. This is my personal sanctuary. The books I didn't want brought to Aro's attention are here for my research. You both now know how to get in, and when we leave here you'll know the way out. Please keep it a secret you already spoke to me. Edward, I'll be addressing you as the coven leader. I'll do it for two purposes; firstly, because acting as a family will be ridiculed in the vampire community at large; it's only a valid notion as a cover in the human world. Secondly, because I want to have a good look at the coven as a whole. I want to see how the loyalties lie. And overall, it's clear that if we think about a Cullen Coven, and not a family, that you are the leader. You'll have to truly step up."
"I already did, Marcus," I told him. "I pulled rank over Carlisle when it became clear he dismissed my assessment of a situation and simply did what he'd always done, with devastating effects on Bella." I winked at her. "I also pulled rank on Alice, who dared to tell me my choices were not good enough. I must say that she has become somewhat hostile toward Bella and me. Until Bella joined us, we gave her free rein in her exploits. We each existed in our own little bubble, and let her dictate a lot. Bella believes vehemently in free will, and thus was able to dissect her motivations and essentially stopped her from running the family."
"Okay, that's clear; for now we'll keep calling it the Cullen Coven. But you'll be spoken to as the leader by everyone. Tomorrow we will solely discuss your audience before Aro, and Bella's reincarnation theory. Please share my thoughts, and perhaps Bella can use her power to show you mine with the emotions attached through your link. Don't try to understand, just record everything. Later this week I'll teach you to look at it. That's it for today, follow me."
He strode toward the fireplace and turned a brass embellishment on the surround. Next to the fireplace, a craftily hidden door slid open. He gestured us through the door and we climbed the stairs behind it. We surfaced inside one of the ancient oak trees on the outer edge of the copse of trees around the clearing.
"I'll see you two tomorrow; I need to get back to the castle. Aro expects me to discuss possibilities. Possibilities when he finds strong powers in your coven. He covets powers, he enslaves them. I'll explain tomorrow. Until then."
Bella hugged and thanked him for his guidance. I shook his hand and he pulled me in a man hug. Then he was gone. We went back to the car and made our way back to an overcast Pisa, strolling around, taking in the sights. This week would be as much a holiday as waiting around for Aro to find out we were in the country.
Bella wandered over to the leaning tower, until I showed her the big weights they needed to place inside to keep it upright but leaning. Because who would come to the formerly leaning tower? The biggest problem they had was the fact it was still subsiding. We got a book on the extensive operation which had taken place and had reduced the lean of the tower by a total of forty eight centimeters.
At the end of the afternoon, we barely escaped the sun by ducking into a bookstore with mostly old books. Bella immediately started to peruse the shelves. What I hadn't expected was her absolutely flawless Italian when she asked the shop owner to show her the supernatural books. My baffled expression made gales of giggles come over the link; that made me smile. When the sun set, Bella joined me again with a bag containing three very old looking books.
'Honey, these are gifts for Marcus. There is one on vampire royalty, one on reincarnation, and one on vampires in general. They are all from the thirteenth century and the shop owner told me they wouldn't sell due to the disinterest in supernatural phenomena nowadays. He let them go for a steal; I paid only five hundred euros for the three.'
Right then, I got another text from Marcus, immediately followed by one from Carlisle. Marcus' text simply told me he called Carlisle and set up the meeting. Carlisle's was short, too: the coordinates and time, followed by get there on your own. I almost bristled at his clipped tone when I saw that it was a group text. He suddenly tried to act the coven leader.
After a pleasantly spent night in our hotel, acting the humans we needed to portray, we hung out in the bar, acting like newlyweds staring in each other's eyes. Meanwhile, we discussed Bella's newfound on/off switch. She experimented a bit with a slight stutter setting, making her thoughts come through, but about one third of it was shielded. Bella went over her early memories of me, and I had to ask her three times to run over my story again, just to confirm the changes she put in to hide my power.
When the bar closed, we went to our room, laying down and going over everything we would share with the family and Marcus at the meeting. Eventually it was time to go; I wanted to be early, and maybe establish a link up with Marcus before the family arrived. We entered the clearing and we were the first to arrive. Looking around, I listened hard for the thoughts of my family, but they weren't in range yet. I pulled the cross arm of the statue and Bella and I quickly jumped into the anti-chamber. Marcus came our way and Bella gave him the books. He looked so pleased.
"Bella, my dear, these are awesome. I must congratulate you on finding three texts I never saw before. I'm especially pleased with the one on vampire royalty. It's a rare find; did you notice it was written on human skin? I think this book was written by a vampire. Sadly, this'll have to wait; we need to go to our meeting. Please, you two, keep tabs on my thoughts; I will show you all the bonds in the coven, conscious and subconscious."
He sent us out first, telling us to take charge if needed. But it wasn't needed. We arrived last and were greeted by a nervous group of vampires. Why they were all nervous was a riddle to us, and it didn't show in their thoughts either. They all jumped when Marcus strode into the clearing wearing an intimidating looking suit, which Bella called his mafia suit through the link, and she was right, too. She wrapped him up in one of her tendrils and started looking around while using his power, not interrupting his own usage of said power. She was also fully open to his thoughts, boosting my power to its limit.
Marcus walked straight to me and greeted me, businesslike but friendly.
"Edward, so good to see you again, please introduce me to your coven."
Esme immediately jumped in. "His coven? This is Carlisle's family. We are not a coven!"
"Really, miss?" Marcus whipped around to her. "Do you know how utterly unbelievable you are, uttering your human front as a fact in the vampire world? It's quite all right to establish a front to make it possible to live in the human world, but don't insult me with it when you enter vampire only territory. Edward here has been your coven leader from before you were turned. He is the one making it possible for you all to act out your strange family longings. Carlisle might have turned him, but Edward kept you together."
While he talked, he made his eyes sweep our entire group. Looking with him, he pointed out that the blue cables were ties of loyalty. Bella and I watched with him. Rosalie, Esme, Emmett, and Jasper showed inch-thick blue cables connecting them to me or Bella. Carlisle's cable was inexplicably purple; Marcus named it human loyalty. Esme also had a green inch-thick cable tying her to Carlisle, as had Rose to Emmett. Accenting those cables, Marcus simply said mates. Looking at Bella and me, he said, special mates. Both Bella and I bit back our gasps; we were connected to each of the members of our coven with blue cables, but between us a luminescent rainbow cable, at least two inches thick, pulsed away.
Then he zeroed in on Alice; she had no blue cables at all, and a red cable tying her to Jasper. Marcus told us that this was her subconscious tracks showing, her true colors, as it were. Bella reached out mentally and touched the red cable, clearly asking what that was. Deception, was the answer ringing in our heads. Marcus told us he would switch tracks to her conscious levels and for us to notice the difference. That was an understatement, Alice's conscious tracks showed blue ropes to all of us, even if it was only string thick toward Bella, and a green rope tying her to Jasper. If Marcus hadn't learned to see the true colors of a person in the sub-conscious tracks, we would have never known her to be a faker.
"Bella was with us the first day to tell her story and to learn about vampires." Carlisle had taken up the story we were here to relay. "She listened very carefully to everything we told her about us, and then declared that if a vampire's mate was destroyed, he or she should simply go and search for the next incarnation of said mate."
"Yes," Bella declared, "I'm completely convinced that souls are bound together, and they will meet time and again. I truly believe, for instance, that I retained some of my memories from former lives. That made it possible for me to write about Edward before I met him this time. He became ill and would have died a century ago, before we met. Because he was changed, he had to wait until my next incarnation to meet me again. In 1918 or thereabouts, he was still too volatile to have a human found mate. His power had to mature, as did he himself."
"Do you say, Bella, that my mate has had multiple incarnations over the almost millennium and a half since she was killed?" Marcus asked her in awe. "Are you truly saying that I might be able to find her again?"
"Yes, Marcus, that is what I believe. If it's true, I don't know. But I'm truly convinced about it for myself. Soul mates will always find each other again. Finding her and turning her is one option. The other one is to reunite as humans; that means walking into a volcano and releasing your soul. You all say killing yourself is almost impossible for a vampire. I say, excuse me, but bullshit. Vampires are flammable, use that. To kill yourself, build your own pyre or, as I said, walk into a volcano."
Marcus drew my attention to purple threads swirling around us all. Most were coming from Alice, but everyone had some, except for Bella and I. He told me it was curiosity, adding that those threads could weave into the loyalty cables. He mentally smiled at me, once again making Bella and I almost gasp out loud, by telling us that we would never have any outward thread toward each other because it all went through our mating cable, that's why it was rainbow colored. No outside power would ever be able to turn us against each other, because the mating bond was unbreakable.
'Edward, please read Jasper's sub-conscious tracks now that you have a feel for it. I picked something up from Alice. Even though she almost bursts with curiosity, she still doesn't believe a word I say. But using Jasper's power, I also felt fear from her when I picked it up. I quote, 'need to reinforce, he must not find out, can't believe that cunt ruining almost everything'. I think that was about me; oh well, I already knew she didn't like me.'
'All right, I'll read him now. Turbo boost me, baby.'
Jasper's mind flew by, the now familiar pace of his conscious thoughts. I touched one of the walls and sank through into another chamber with muted light. Three big signs, flashing red, drew my immediate attention. The first read: I am mated to Alice. The second was more into my face, almost as if it was fresh; it was handwritten in a hurry: I won't go against Alice. The last was very old and pushed forgotten into a corner. I don't feel bloodlust toward patient fourteen eleven. Those signs were significant, but pulsing in the corner bathed in blue light stood a picture of Bella and me. I slipped back into his conscious mind, completely rattled by the metaphoric way the sub-conscious worked.
"...that's why we all redesigned our minds. We won't show Aro any power at all, except for Bella because she still hasn't been able to shut down her shield," Carlisle told Marcus.
I had apparently zoned out of the conversation, but it wasn't important, this had all been discussed to death already.
"That's not true anymore, Carlisle, I was overthinking everything and searching for intricate solutions. It just suddenly came to me and I installed an off button. It's a dial so I can now shut my power off completely, or partially, making it stutter."
"Finally, you damn well took your time, and did you shut off your access to my power as well? I told you I don't want you hijacking it again," Alice fumed; she had to go shopping according to her thoughts. Marcus told everyone to dress to impress when we visited Aro.
"Of course I did, did it happen again? No, the only time it happened was because I didn't have control yet. Please don't be afraid to lose control of your precious, useless power. The only things you predict are your own delusions."
Wow, Bella was vicious all at once. Alice looked as if she wanted to rip her apart. I stepped in front of Bella.
"No you won't, Alice; it's true. You haven't really given us a lot to go on since Bella joined us. The one important vision was that hijacked one," I told her in a clipped tone, telling her not to start with me. Of course she had given us a lot more, but she didn't know that. As long as Bella and I kept that a secret, we had to act our parts.
I had recorded everything that went down, all thoughts from every family member, neatly stacked into labeled boxes. Marcus was making the rounds, saying goodbye to my coven, warning them he would be absent and aloof when we saw him again in the throne room. In the meantime, he thought to me that Bella and I could come to train some more in the sanctuary below; he would be there as much as he could. He bid us all a final farewell and disappeared from the clearing. He might actually be as fast as Bella and I.
I told everyone to play tourist for the rest of the week and meet us at the airport an hour before our plane would arrive. They were all advised to please keep their distance from each other, and us. We had to keep our cover undetected. They all promised, and with that we went to the four directions of the wind to our respective cars.
The week following, Bella and I visited as many cities and sights in and around Pisa. If anyone from the family was trying to keep an eye on us, the many cliché souvenirs would convince them what we were doing. They would never suspect that most souvenirs were hastily bought in a whirlwind visit, from which we would then go back to Marcus' sanctuary. He taught both of us a lot, and made sure we both were ready to act as the most important couple in our coven. He taught us to finally be true vampires, to hide our humanitarian facade. We became vampires with an alternative diet, not animal blood drinking pseudo humans. It felt freeing, as if we were coming into our potential. He merged our animal with our human. No longer was a cage needed; they worked side by side to ensure our well being on both sides of our existence.
Finally, the day dawned that our jet would arrive; the subterfuge had worked like a charm. Aro had told Marcus of the flight plan that was filed for the Cullen jet, listing two pilots and six passengers, all with the Cullen name somewhere in their listing. Marcus told us to expect Volturi guards to be present, with cars to bring us to Volterra. It was all as he told us.
Two SUV's with tinted windows pulled up in the hanger where we had just then boarded the plane. Alice had spent her week shopping to dress us all to impress. I had blatantly disregarded her choice for me; instead I dressed myself in a newly acquired suit. Yes, I bought myself an original mafia suit. Bella was equally stunning in a female version of that suit. We were both wearing matching his and hers aviators with mirror glasses. I held a briefcase with the mating documentation necessary to register us in the mating registry, and Bella had a purse in the same style. Together we radiated power couple, in human as well as vampire eyes.
We exited the plane in view of the Volturi guardsmen, fairly insignificant members with inconsequential powers. They directed us all to the two vehicles and had us board them. Emmett and Rose shared our SUV, together with a guard/driver named Julio. According to Bella, he could make flowers bloom, even in the middle of winter. As I said, inconsequential powers. After a two hour drive, we arrived in the underground parking garage. We were led through a maze of corridors and steps to the enormous double doors of the throne room. Just as those doors started to open, I heard Bella say through the link.
'Well, here goes nothing!'
A/N what did you think of this Marcus, I love him to bits.
As recommendation I am going to indulge in shameless self plugging. On FictionPad was an anonymous contest: the Olderward/Olderella Contest I entered and last Saturday the winners were announced.
To my utter astonishment I won all six categories. So please everybody go over to my profile and read Daddy's Precious. It AH/AU. But this big of a success I couldn't let pass uncelebrated.
Please review,
Pien