CHAPTER 25 – LOSING HER
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I do not own Twilight, no copyright infringement intended.
In a move very reminiscent of a Tenacious D song, I wrote this chapter and edited it to perfection, only to lose it when I accidentally saved over it with an old version. That was not a good night!
THIS CHAPTER COINCIDES WITH CHAPTER 20-22 OF RED EYES AND THE SHE-WOLF
Thanks to WolvesCanEatMe, Sweetvenom69, Duskwatcher, Bforqueen, Nowforruin, and all of my readers and reviewers. Feel the love!
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Suddenly, there was light.
Even while I still felt the tingle of vampire saliva sealing my freshly attached head, I made my body sit up. In response, someone pushed down on my shoulders, and I struggled and fought against them.
"Shush, Demetri. It's okay." A familiar female voice spoke and I looked up. Heidi's red eyes smiled down at me. "Relax. You're safe."
"Leah—"
"They escaped. Leah's long gone, Demetri."
My eyes spun around the room—I was lying on the familiar bed in my quarters. The sudden return of the voices in my head made me feel dizzy and disorientated.
"What happened?"
Heidi beamed. "Leah killed Jane, and then we arrived and saved her from Alec. Felix and I took care of Aro and Caius while she escaped out of the window with her cub—I mean, the baby."
"But how? Before my head was removed, Alec had taken away her senses."
"Caius says that the baby changed into a wolf, and suddenly Leah could see—he doesn't know how."
"Harry phased?" I smiled as I pictured a tiny wolf. My son. It must have been the pack mind that helped Leah. Feeling relieved that they were both alive and well, I relaxed on my bed as I adjusted to my reverse decapitation.
"Yes, and then they escaped over the rooftops and through the town. There's quite the panic above ground."
"How long was I gone?" I asked Heidi.
"Almost a day. There was a standoff, and it took time to negotiate terms. I insisted that you were to be reanimated, but there were some finer points that Caius, the Romanians, and I needed to agree on first."
"The Romanians?" I asked, before I became concerned that I could not hear Leah or her little echo. "Where did Leah go?"
Heidi laughed, and I realized that it had been a long time since I had seen her this carefree. "Well, I thought you would be the person who would know that better than anyone."
I listened intently. Leah's voice, since she had become my mate, had been louder than any other I had ever known—yet I could hear nothing.
Could she be with the Cullens? They were still on my radar intermittently—all except the shield—and back in Washington State.
I checked in on Leah's mother and brother. They were motionless and I assumed they were sleeping. The pack mates that had accompanied the Cullens on the flight were also in La Push—one or two on patrol, the others also sleeping. I had no idea what time of day or night it was.
I became confused. "I can't hear her."
Heidi's eyes snapped to mine in surprise. "But she left here entirely unharmed. Where can she be?"
"If I knew, I'd be there now." I got to my feet and rushed to leave the room.
"Where are you going?" Heidi asked me pleadingly.
Pausing as I opened the door, I turned to give her my reply. "I'm going to retrace her steps and find her. I'm a tracker, and that's what I do."
When I discovered that it was light out, I halted, though the sentries—Corin, and a large Romanian who I was unfamiliar with—did not try to stop me.
It seemed that the rule of never revealing yourself was now obsolete, and that Volterra was no longer the safest town in the world from vampire attack—quite the opposite. Aro had been destroyed, along with most of the guard as I'd known it, and the Volturi headquarters was now overrun with unkempt and brutish Romanian sympathizers.
Finding it difficult to step into the light now that I wasn't rushing across Asia to come to Leah's rescue, I ventured outside only once the sun had set.
Leah's scent was still strong, and I followed it through Volterra's gates, and out into the dark countryside beyond. Her course was not straight, and I familiarized myself with the new smell that mingled with Leah's essence. I guessed that it must be the strangely sweet and warm aroma of a shape shifter/vampire baby.
My mate and my child—I gladly filled my lungs with them. There was no hint of blood—they must have been entirely unscathed.
I smiled to myself as I realized that the route Leah was taking was bringing me closer to Parma airport—she had listened to me. I found that encouraging that she might also have begun to trust me.
The imprints of large wolf paws were still visible in the earth, and there was the occasional stray silver hair. I wondered what had being going through Leah's mind as she ran. Was I forgiven? Would we have a passionate reunion? Had the effort I'd put into coming to her rescue gotten me off the hook for the murders in New York?
After the desperation of my rescue attempt, I wanted nothing more than to hold her in my arms and indulge my vital need to be in her presence. Only briefly meeting Harry, I wanted to be officially introduced to my second-born son, and truly see what Leah and I had created together.
I followed the trail to a tree-filled underpass, and stumbled across something that made my smile fall. The whole area had been doused in animal blood. I could smell Leah and my boy, but there was something else that the blood-scent polluted. Vampire?
The carnage was not made by humans. Something had made a mess of the carcasses, and more than one animal had been destroyed here. The trail led me to the side of a lake, and I struggled to find Leah's scent beyond that place. I circumvented the entire body of water and could find nothing.
This was an obvious cover up, that was certain, but by who, and why?
Leah would not have been able to do this on her own. Had the Cullens arrived in Parma and helped her escape? Certainly, they'd been on a flight heading east the last time I'd noted their position, and now they were back where they belonged. Could they have made it to Europe, rescued Leah and my child, and returned in that amount of time?
I could not imagine the vegetarians of the vampire world creating such a bloody mess. Animal blood definitely brought the Cullens to mind, but was that what I was supposed to assume? Had this scene been a set up to distract me from something much more sinister that had happened?
From that moment on, I kept close tabs on the movements of all the Cullens and the Quileutes that I could hear, but did not hear the slightest hint of Leah's voice.
Finally, I returned to Volterra, and immediately began searching the internet for anything related to the many sightings of a large wolf and her cub running across country. The last report had been from a health spa near the underpass and nothing since.
Heidi and Felix stopped by my room a number of times and attempted to talk to me, but I dismissed them as I became more and more obsessed with finding Leah.
Still listening in on the Cullens mental voices, I noticed one after the other heading north into Canada, where Eleazar and his coven had settled. The Cullens' wolf and his father soon followed behind them in a car; they were the only Quileute wolves that left La Push that day, that week, that month.
Single-mindedly, I threw myself into investigating Leah's disappearance twenty-four hours a day, pausing only to feed once in a while. Every possibility that came into my mind had to be examined until it was proven incorrect.
One day, when musing over the possibility that one of the Romanians might have had opportunity to wander away and encounter Leah, I sought out Heidi to ask her more questions. In the throne room, I found the new Guard repositioning chairs under Heidi's supervision. There were now four—one for Heidi, one for Caius, one for Stefan, and one for Vladimir. Heidi now also wore darkest black, as did her new peers.
On the wall, a new coat of arms was being hung on the wall. Our new motto was
Ex cineribus renatus ad caelum volo; risen again, out of the ashes and into the sky. We were no longer "the Volturi," we were "the Fenix"—our new emblem was the bird whose name we had taken.
Heidi halted her interior decorating to speak to me, and listened to my theories with interest, answering my questions as she simultaneously ordered bulky Romanians around the room. She still followed my initial instinct and suspected the Cullens, but with each day that passed, I dismissed the theory further. Surely there would be some sign that Leah was with them?
Cullens came in and out of the range of their shield on occasion, and Leah's mother never left La Push. Other than the Cullens relocation to Alaska, they seemed to carry out the motions of their lives as they always had.
Did they miss Leah as much as I did? Were they aware of where she was, or the possibility that she might be dead? Samantha the human secretary, before she had fallen prey to a large Romanian, had said that she'd been told to never connect Leah's calls back home. If I was mistaken about the Cullens movements on that day, then it was possible that they still thought that Leah was globetrotting with me. After all, the psychic had difficulty seeing shape shifters.
As I left the hall, I almost literally bumped into Caius as he sprinted into the room, saying that he wanted to ensure that his seat was not in an unfavourable spot. He glared in my direction.
"You would do well to realize that there have been a number of changes and show me a little more respect, tracker. Know that I am not as tolerant of your love for wolves as Aro was."
"Caius!" Heidi exclaimed, before they began to argue about who should occupy the centre-right and centre-left chairs. We now lived under an uneasy democracy which had filled the void left when Marcus, and predominantly Aro, had died.
The Romanians were cruel and vicious, and Caius seemed to waiver between the old ways, and support for the violent actions of our former enemy. Heidi was the only voice of reason, and it took almost all of her attention to focus on preventing them from committing terrible acts and keeping some semblance of order.
I left Caius and Heidi to their struggle for dominance over the new order and the best light, but as I went, it occurred to me that while Heidi had been busy reattaching my head to my body, Caius would have been free to go where he pleased, unattended.
It was obvious that Caius would like nothing more than to slaughter any creature remotely wolf related, including Leah and my son.
I opened up new lines of investigation. He had no alibi other than his wife, Athenodora, and of course, she would corroborate his tale. Caius was devious, and would not hesitate to use any method at his disposal to achieve what he wanted.
At first, I dismissed the idea as quickly as it came, but as time went by the argument became more convincing, and my heart sank as I considered what that meant—that Leah and Harry were dead.
Rage bubbled up inside of me, and it was only knowledge of the fact that Caius now had more power than he'd ever had under Aro that held me back.
Was Caius cruel enough to kill Leah and a newborn child? The answer was an immediate 'yes'.
He had the motive and the opportunity, and after exhausting all other possibilities, it remained the only explanation that had not had some element of it disproved.
I found it difficult to tolerate even the briefest moment in Caius' presence, and though Heidi denied his involvement, he continued to be my prime suspect. Finally believing that Leah was dead and losing the fire that pushed me to keep searching, I felt hollow. Everything that happened around me no longer had meaning, and I found myself falling further and further into despair.
After promising myself that legacy—my mate and my child—would endure this time, and I wouldn't be the only survivor, the failure to keep that promise often flung me into dark emotional holes that no one could coax me out of.
Love had found me, and now that it had gone, it left me with a rawness and pain that I didn't think possible. Felix and Heidi looked at me with pitying glances, which only hurt me further.
At a distance, I looked as if I was still part of the living world, but the truth was that I'd never felt more dead than I did at that time. Retreating within myself, I became devoid of any feeling or emotion beyond those related to that which I had lost. I cared for nothing, because there was nothing to care for.
Felix and I had both been asked to stay and become the heads of the new Guard, but we had both refused. In my current state, I was useless as a soldier, and Felix was struggling to cope with a rapidly growing and very bloodthirsty daughter. Being around the Romanians was a bad influence on her, as she saw their violence and attempted to mimic it; in the interests of good parenting, Felix had decided to leave Italy and live a nomadic life.
Times were dangerous, as humans were now well aware of our existence, and it had been discovered that modern weapons were effective against us. Flamethrowers, artillery, air strikes—they could all kill a vampire if caught unaware.
Humans had become very suspicious, and I had read of a number of instances where they'd tortured and killed their own kind in vampire witch hunts, before they had discovered the simplest test of whether someone was one of the undead was to put them under a UV lamp and watch them sparkle.
Our kind was now free to choose whether they killed openly or kept to the shadows. I opted for the latter. To me, walking around during the day in sunnier climes seemed to be the equivalent of holding a neon sign saying, "Nuke me."
I weighed up my options. I could stay and have the position I'd craved for, with one of my closest and most trusted friends as my master, but also, the vampire I strongly suspected had murdered my mate and child. Or I could leave with my other closest and most trusted friend, and become a nomad, answering to no one but myself and doing as I pleased.
Trying to keep order in a chaotic world where there was nothing worth fighting for seemed pointless, and so I decided on the latter.
The day that we left was strangely low key. I had decided to take very few personal effects with me, but had somehow been laden with a number of bright pink bags containing Felicia's belongings; Felix, too, had been emasculated with his daughter's luggage.
We stood there while Heidi gave us an emotional goodbye; my traveling companions echoed her sentiment, while I stood there cold and impassive. Without Leah in the world, I was empty and had no emotion left within me to give, other pain and guilt.
Heidi gave us all cell phones with which to keep in contact, and the promise of the use of the Fenix's jet any time we required it. She cupped my face as we made our farewells, and then moved onto Felicia and Felix. Before she could become too upset, she was called away as a skirmish had broken out between Vladimir and Caius in the Great Hall again, and I was glad that the event had not been too drawn out.
I was pleased that my female friend had finally found the position of power she had always deserved, but to see her delight in it was too much for me to bear. Where the world was now hers, I had lost everything.
As Felix, Felicia, and I left Volterra, I looked back only once, at the window and balcony on which I'd briefly seen my child in the arms of the woman I loved, and my empty tear ducts burned.
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Heidi POV
Demetri, Felix, and Felicia faded further and further into the distance. It pained me to realize that they truly were leaving me here, after all of our time together as inseparable friends. I cared for each of them dearly.
Demetri—I had loved him with every fibre of my being for endless centuries, always biding my time and never quite accepting that he was incapable of feeling the same way. I had been right to hope that he could care that deeply about someone, but it had almost destroyed me when his love had pulled him in another direction.
I despised the she-wolf, but knowing that she meant happiness for him had meant that, for his sake, I had to do everything in my power to keep them together—though I had failed miserably in that task. Demetri thought that she was dead, but I still suspected the Cullens' interference.
Her supposed death had hit him harder than I would have expected, and he became a shell of the man I had fallen in love with. The outside was as perfectly preserved as it had ever been, but he was rotting away on the inside. It was painful to see.
When I said my goodbye to Demetri, he stared back at me with eyes that barely seemed to focus. I might as well have been saying goodbye to a statue. His body was still here, but the life force that had once animated it had gone.
It worried both Felix and I, and my other closest friend had promised to keep a close eye on his condition, both of us hoping that a change of scenery might benefit his love-sickness.
I often wished that it had been Felix that I loved, rather than our promiscuous friend, but I cared for him as if he were a brother instead. Happiness would have been simple with Felix—he was loyal, caring, and much more sensitive to the feelings of others.
Felix's goodbye had been very different: a crushing hug which I had returned as firmly as i could, and promises to speak regularly and visit if possible.
There had been a number of occasions throughout the years, when Felix and I had found ourselves in a situation where it would have been easy to push our relationship onto another plane, but it was always the thought of our mutual friend that got in the way. Neither of us wanted to settle for second best, and as such, we never allowed our mutual affection to blossom into anything further.
Having never had children while human, I also mourned the loss of Felicia. After being so involved in her early upbringing, I felt as if I was relinquishing my honorary daughter. However, I understood Felix's reasons for wanting to go. This environment was not the right place to bring up a child, as the darker sides of vampires were on show at all times.
They had my promise of assistance whenever required, hoping that when Felicia had matured they would be able to return, and we could be together again. Nothing would make me happier, other than Demetri being able to move on from losing his wolf and realize that I had always been here for him.
The deep depression that had gripped him rivalled that of Marcus. He was hurting, and there was nothing short of presenting Leah before him that would mend his broken heart—and of course, I was in two minds whether I would be able to do that or not.
If I discovered that the she-wolf was still living with the Cullens, would I let him know? The nobler side of me said yes; another side of me, a darker, more selfish side, said that I would make sure that she became as dead as he thought she already was.
Felicia had promised to let me know if she heard anything on the matter, quietly, without her father or uncle's knowledge, and I felt touched at her loyalty to me. I had no doubt that she would grow into a wonderful young lady, and hoped she would one day choose to return to my side—I could be her mother and female role model, if she wished.
Witnessing Demetri's pain, I promised myself that if Leah had survived, she would not go unpunished. I had no time to look into the matter for myself, as Caius constantly needled me, trying to find weak spots that would allow him to be as dominant within the Fenix as Aro had been with the Volturi. The Romanians, too, constantly wanted more power.
As a human, I had been an adored princess amongst my people; now, after waiting patiently for millennia, I was Queen of all vampires. Revelling in my achievements, the ongoing struggle to keep my place did not make my victory any less complete.
I was not willing to give it up for anything, not even Demetri.