Revelations

"You're taking me with you tonight," Bella insisted as I drove her home.

"Bella, you're worn out," I protested. The party had gone on forever. Esme had cooked enough food to feed an army, and the mass of high school students had devoured nearly every bite. After the wolves left, my siblings had joined the party in earnest, the hard knot of worry in all of our minds was replaced by a profound relief.

Even one of the wolves was a terror that would have thrown the odds in our favor. Six of the massive beasts, and there was no way we would lose. I did wish that Alice could see the wolves, though. I knew that the vision Alice had seen earlier no longer applied, but it would be nice to be able to see our victory the way I had seen our defeat!

"You think I could sleep?" Bella's voice was disbelieving.

While I was glad for their offer to help us kill the newborns, I knew how volatile the pack was and would rather not expose Bella to the danger that they represented. There was no way of knowing if everyone would be able to keep their tempers – Emmett and the big grey one already had a grudge. Things could get out of control.

"This is an experiment. I'm not sure if it will be possible for us all to…" avoid killing each other, "… cooperate. I don't want you in the middle of that."

"If you won't take me, then I'll call Jacob."

I scowled, knowing she meant it. Charlie's house was still lit, but I could hear his sleepy thoughts when I parked my car.

"See you upstairs," she said sourly. I watched until she was inside before driving my car around the block to the place I'd left it before – an unused driveway where Charlie would not see it. My car taken care of, I sprinted back to Bella's house and sprang up to her room. While she prodded Charlie into his bed and then performed her usual nightly bathroom ritual, I waited in the rocking chair in her room. I could feel the unhappy scowl still on my face, but was unable to get rid of it.

Bella carefully hung her new outfit from Alice in her closet. I didn't take my eyes off of her while she crossed the room to take my hand. "Come here," she said softly and pulled me with her to her bed. My scowl was replaced by a happy smirk when she pressed herself against me, practically laying on top of me. I held back my chuckle at her obvious attempts at preventing me from leaving without her. I tucked her quilt around her body, not wanting her to be chilled by my cold skin and considered what I knew of the wolves.

The first time I had seen Jacob in his wolf form, I had been forced to acknowledge that he was made to kill vampires just as surely as vampires were made to kill humans. I had met the wolves seventy years earlier, but somehow it was different when confronted by one who hated me personally. With Jacob it was less a matter of species difference and more a matter of love - or hate. Although I was worried about their tempers and what might happen when my family and the pack got together that night, I was no longer worried about the coming battle with the army. At least, so long as this evening went well.

I could clearly remember Jacob showing me Laurent's death. I remembered the pack from before, how it was only Carlisle's calm manner and my ability to read their minds that had prevented us from killing each other then. We'd outnumbered them, but their confidence in themselves never wavered, nor did their belief in their duty to protect. It was a part of them, just as much as their hair color was.

Whatever newborns got in their way were not likely to survive. Seven of us, plus the six wolves against twenty untrained newborns… I grinned, eagerly looking forward to the fight.

Bella lay tense against me and I heard her heart stumbling, followed by the scent of a fresh flow of adrenaline.

"Please relax," I said in a gentle voice.

"Sure," she grumbled.

"This is going to work, Bella. I can feel it."

I felt her hold on me tighten, she stopped breathing and her body started to tremble. The flow of adrenaline increased. She was terrified, I could tell, and knew that it was for the mutts and for my family that she was afraid.

Using my calmest voice, doing my best to dazzle her, though I wasn't looking into her eyes, I said, "Listen to me, Bella. This is going to be easy. The newborns will be completely taken by surprise. They'll have no more idea that werewolves even exist than you did. I've seen how they act in a group, the way Jasper remembers. I truly believe that the wolves' hunting techniques will work flawlessly against them. And with them divided and confused, there won't be enough for the rest of us to do. Someone may have to sit out," I laughed softly.

"Piece of cake," she muttered, unconvinced.

"Shhh. You'll see. Don't worry, now." I brushed my fingers against her soft cheek and softly began to hum her lullaby. Her body never relaxed against me, her muscles remained locked and tense. I kept waiting for her to waver, for her body's demands to make themselves known, but she was still rigid when the time came for us to head over to the clearing.

"Are you sure you don't want to stay and sleep?" I tried once more to reason with her, but she just gave me a look of disgust, so I sighed in defeat. Glad for the excuse to hold her in my arms, I scooped her up and leapt from her window into the dark night.

She locked her arms around my neck and her legs around my waist and I could feel her warm breath on my neck. I didn't bother to hold back my grin as I took off into the forest, running at top speed toward where my family waited. It was all I could do not to start laughing. I loved the feel of her soft body pressed against my back, of being surrounded by her warmth. I didn't have long to enjoy her embrace, though, reaching the clearing faster and smoother by running than the first time when we'd taken the Jeep.

I heard their thoughts long before we reached the clearing. My family was excited by the wolves' offer, and relieved that we would not have to fight the army alone. Well, except for Emmett, who believed we could have handled things on our own. He still held a grudge against the big grey wolf and would rather have had a rematch with him tonight than a demonstration of our fighting skills. What if we gave something away that he could have used to defeat the wolf?

Not that he really wanted to kill him, but my brother was always up for a good tussle.

"Emmett," I could hear Alice telling him sternly, "if you'd seen the how the fight would have gone without the wolves, you wouldn't be so quick to dismiss their help!"

"I'm not dismissing them," he evaded. "I just wish it wasn't necessary to show them our practice sessions." ...love to take on that big grey one someday…

"Well, maybe they'll do more than watch. Think they'd be up for demonstrating some of their moves for us?" Jasper wondered.

I saw the image of Emmett and the big grey wolf circling each other and heard Emmett laugh in delight at the thought.

"You know what I think?" Bella asked me.

How often had I wondered what she was thinking? Giving in to my desire to laugh, I said, "No." She didn't appreciate my amusement, so I tried to be serious and pressed her. "What do you think?"

"I think it's all connected. Not just the two, but the three."

I eyed her for a moment, trying to see where her convoluted brain had taken her, but then shook my head in defeat. "You've lost me," I admitted.

"Three bad things have happened since you came back." She held up a finger as she made each point. "The newborns in Seattle. The stranger in my room. And – first of all – Victoria came to look for me."

The reminder of Victoria ended my amusement instantly. "Why do you think so?" I asked her.

"Because I agree with Jasper – the Volturi love their rules. They would probably do a better job anyway. Remember when you were tracking Victoria last year?"

"Yes," I scowled. "I wasn't very good at it." She would not - should not! - have still been a threat if I had been better at tracking her. Instead of focusing on the vampire I was chasing, I'd been distracted by Bella's past and had lost my chance to catch her. But even though she had tricked me and come here to seek Bella's death, what did that have to do with the stranger? Victoria wanted Bella dead. She'd have had no reason to leave Bella's father alive, nor to leave before the deed was done. The intruder could easily have murdered Charlie and then Bella, rather than leave their scent behind to warn us. And it felt like a warning. Like the kind of warning Caius had given to me in Volterra. Change her or else.

"Alice said you were in Texas. Did you follow her there?" she pressed me.

"Yes. Hmm…" I remembered my trip to Houston all too clearly. I'd met Maria's coven there. They were an army much like the one that threatened us now, only unlike the one coming for us, her coven had been well trained. Discreet. A true army, where the one coming for us was more like an unruly mob. And, although she had known of Alice's talent, Maria hadn't really known how it worked. How would Victoria be able to get around her visions so easily? Whoever it was had intimate knowledge of Alice's talent.

"See – she could have gotten the idea there," Bella explained. "But she doesn't know what she's doing, so the newborns are all out of control."

"Only Aro knows exactly how Alice's visions work," I disagreed.

"Aro would know best," she argued back, "but wouldn't Tanya and Irina and the rest of your friends in Denali know enough? Laurent lived with them for so long. And if he was still friendly enough with Victoria to be doing favors for her, why wouldn't he also tell her everything he knew?"

I didn't like the points she was making. I'd known Laurent had been in Seattle… and at about the same time that Victoria had been there, apparently. And Irina had been there, too… but that didn't necessarily mean he hadn't met up with Victoria. I didn't want to think that Irina could be directly involved. Tanya had insisted that they hadn't told Laurent of us, and I truly believed that she hadn't. But maybe Irina had. It had been Irina he'd been involved with, after all, not Tanya.

That didn't change the fact that the intruder was a strange vampire who had left Charlie and Bella alive. I still didn't see why anyone other than the Volturi would do that.

"It wasn't Victoria in your room," I insisted. I was familiar with her scent, and if I was certain of anything about the intruder, it was that it hadn't been her.

"She can't make new friends? Think about it, Edward. If it is Victoria doing this in Seattle, she's made a lot of new friends. She's created them."

I could see what she described all too well. When tracking Victoria through Phoenix, I'd found evidence that she'd created at least one vampire, perhaps two or even three others. The predator in Seattle had said she was looking for others to help her fight. Whatever else she'd been up to, she had certainly been looking for help to kill my family and my Bella.

What kept throwing me was the intruder. Why wouldn't he have killed Charlie and stayed to kill Bella if the intruder and Victoria were linked? Then again, just because I knew she wanted Bella dead, that did not mean she didn't want the same thing for the rest of my family, too. We had all been involved in James's death. It could have been that she wasn't quite ready to take us on at the point when she sent the intruder, still needing to build her army. And then too, his visit had surely told her much about the way Alice's visions worked - or failed to work. If she had only been given some basic information about Alice, she might have needed to test her theories before committing herself to the larger plan. And she could have gotten that information from either Laurent or Maria.

With a sinking feeling, I thought Bella could be right. I could picture her ferocious feral face easily, staying out of the fight, letting the newborns kill us for her. She'd have her revenge and at no risk to herself. But if it was Victoria and not the Volturi, why had they not interceded by now? Her army – if indeed they were hers – was blatantly breaking all of the laws regarding our secrecy. Surely the Volturi were not blind to what was going on here. Alice had said Caius had been dwelling on Seattle. They had to be involved or else they would have stopped her by now.

"Hmm. It's possible," I eventually admitted. "I still think the Volturi are most likely… But your theory – there's something there. Victoria's personality. Your theory suits her personality perfectly. She's shown a remarkable gift for self-preservation from the start – maybe it's a talent of hers. In any case, this plot would put her in no danger at all from us, if she sits safely behind and lets the newborns wreak their havoc here. And maybe little danger from the Volturi, either…" I trailed off, thinking, listening to my family.

They could hear our conversation, of course, and were reacting to Bella's revelation. I saw Carlisle picturing the various members of the Volturi that he had known in his time in Italy. I watched him flash through countless hours of arguing the minute details of the laws with Caius.

… don't want to believe it's them… or is my perception of them skewed? The laws keep them in control… those who create the laws could re-create them as well… Caius is unscrupulous in using anyone to achieve what he believes will serve the greater good… Aro wants Edward and Alice… might even turn a blind eye…

Jasper was remembering his years as part of Maria's coven, of endlessly training newborns, all of the things he had learned about them, the way they fought, their weaknesses. Though he had wrestled with me and Emmett, it had been decades since he'd fought for his life, and this time, he had a mate to protect.

Rosalie's thoughts were screaming at me, but her glare was fixed on Bella. I growled at her, but she ignored me, too busy concentrating on being nasty to even hear me.

…always that human girl who threatens my family! …bad enough she nearly gets my brother killed, now there's an army after her, so of course he has to get the whole family involved in protecting her. Emmett is such a child sometimes! …thinks this is all a joke, some big game! …get himself killed… I will never forgive you, Edward, if anything happens to Emmett!

I could have laughed at my big bear of a brother if I wasn't so annoyed at his mate. He'd loved competing as a human, but wresting with us wasn't quite the same. He felt protective toward his family and stopped short of using the force necessary to beat Jasper. Those newborns would never know what hit them when Emmett finally let loose.

…finally see some action! …tired of wrestling. I want to really rip into something for a change. Can't use all of my strength on Jazz in order to defeat him… bears are no match for me… finally a real opponent!

The Volturi were on all of their minds, too. After I had brought Alice to Aro's attention, we had all been waiting for them to make a move against us. This army was a perfect way for them to disrupt our family unit. They could let them tear us apart, then step in at the last moment, saving me, or perhaps just Alice, and the vampire community at large would never know the difference.

Or, if I was wrong and they truly had the best interests of the vampire community in their minds, it could be that they had not acted yet for another reason. Just because they knew of the army, didn't mean they'd know for certain who had created them. If they came to destroy the army, they wouldn't necessarily catch the one behind it. Even moreso if that one was Victoria, catching her would be tricky with her gift for avoiding danger. Maybe they were waiting until the creator exposed themselves. However, she could set them loose on us without ever doing so, and if we killed them all, there would be no one left to connect her with them.

"Perhaps she's counting on us to win, in the end, though certainly not without heavy casualties of our own. But no survivors from her little army to bear witness against her. In fact, if there were survivors, I'd bet she'd be planning to destroy them herself…" She could have learned that trick from Maria, too. Jasper himself had helped Maria thin the ranks when her soldiers got too old and were no longer of any use to her.

"Hmm. Still, she'd have to have at least one friend who was a bit more mature. No fresh-made newborn left your father alive…" It had been over a year since we'd killed James, though. Plenty of time for her to make a friend and have that friend overcome his newborn ferocity. If it was her, and the intruder was someone she'd created, she probably had him feed just before his visit. She might even have been waiting in the car.

I felt a chill. If Bella had been at home, not just Charlie, I had little doubt that Victoria would have killed her. If the newborn had reported back to her that Bella was there and unprotected, she could have gotten to Bella and killed her before we could have done anything about it!

Feeling extremely grateful for my obsessive inability to leave her unsupervised, I looked back at her and smiled. "Definitely possible. Regardless, we've got to be prepared for anything until we know for sure. You're very perceptive today. It's impressive," I complimented her.

She sighed and shivered. "Maybe I'm just reacting to this place. It makes me feel like she's close by… like she sees me now."

I hated seeing her scared! She was safe and protected and would stay that way for the rest of eternity. "She'll never touch you, Bella," I vowed to her.

Unable to stop the sense of foreboding that the thought of Victoria here brought on, I probed the shadows with my eyes and my mind. There was no one other than my family for miles around, yet I could see her face so clearly. Feral, feline, cunning, her eyes watching everything, her mind calculating the best way for her to survive, she was - without a doubt - dangerous. My muscles ached to rip her to pieces! For a moment, I pictured myself sprinting to Seattle that very moment and tracking her down. I felt myself snarling in anticipation. Killing was wrong. I knew this. If Carlisle was right, killing a vampire was no different than killing a human, but those moral rules no longer applied when my Bella's life was threatened.

"Yet, what I wouldn't give to have her that close. Victoria and anyone else who's ever thought of hurting you. To have the chance to end this myself. To finish it with my own hands this time." The hand not clasped in hers clenched into a tight fist. The last time, I had allowed Jasper and Emmett to tear James apart. Not this time. No, this time, I'd have the pleasure of ripping her to shreds. Bella was mine! How dare anyone threaten her!

"Is something wrong with Alice?" Bella whispered to me.

I laughed, partly at the fact that she bothered to whisper, partly at Alice, because I knew what was bothering her. "The werewolves are on their way, so she can't see anything that will happen now. It makes her uncomfortable to be blind."

Alice had been watching Jasper warming up – though our muscles didn't need it, he had found long ago that it helped keep him centered and focused before a battle – but at my teasing tone, she looked at me and stuck her tongue out.

And how would you feel if you were suddenly deaf? If all minds around you were like Bella's?

I couldn't help but laugh at her. There had been many times when I used to wish for exactly that. However, now that I'd experienced what it was like to not be able to hear – how frustrating it was to have to guess at everything Bella was thinking! How did normal people manage? – I knew that I'd miss my gift if it were suddenly taken from me.

"Hey, Edward," Emmett called to me as he sauntered up to us. "Hey, Bella," he grinned at her and pictured her punching the vampire army the way she'd punched Jacob. "Is he going to let you practice, too?" I bet she's feisty enough to take them all on single-handed!

I groaned at him. That was the last thing I needed Bella to be thinking about! "Please, Emmett, don't give her any ideas."

"When will our guests arrive?" Carlisle asked me.

I cast my mind out once more and caught the thoughts of several wolves. They were a jumble of senses; I could see through multiple eyes, hear with their ears, smell the scents of the forest… It was very interesting, smelling through their filter. My nose burned as they followed a strong icy-sweet trail toward my family and I realized I was smelling us the way they perceived us. Huh. I recognized the area and could tell how fast they were moving. And I saw, not just the forest, but them, as they saw each other.

"A minute and a half," I said with a sigh. "But I'm going to have to translate. They don't trust us enough to use their human forms."

"This is hard for them," Carlisle said, thinking of the last time our family and a pack had come together in such a way. "I'm grateful they're coming at all."

Bella turned her wide eyes on me, "They're coming as wolves?" I smelled a new flood of adrenaline in her system again and heard her heart speed up. I nodded, watching the fear on her face. From the beginning, she had never been afraid of me. Even when I had been so close to killing her that day in our meadow, she had trusted me. Jacob may be her friend, and she may have insisted to me many times that they were not dangerous, but I thought that was probably because she had spent her time with them in their human forms. I was always a vampire. I knew she'd seen Jacob in his huge wolf form at least once, but I doubted it was much more than that. I wondered how she would react to seeing the entire pack of enormous monsters.

Or, perhaps her fear was because the wolves and the vampires would be so close to each other. I knew that is was always the safety of others whom she was concerned about.

I wondered, too, how the newborns would react when confronted with the wolves. Even one could have turned the odds in our favor. The entire pack on our side, and we were sure to win. I touched each of their minds, learning who they were. Sam, the Alpha, the biggest and jet black. Jacob, the next largest, a rusty brown. Paul, the big grey one Emmett had come up against. Quil, not as tall, but long and lanky, and a light brown. Embry, shorter than Quil, but broader, and grey with dark spots along his back. Jared, a mix of brown and grey that made him blend into the trees and rocks. Seth, small, and dusty brown… Seth? And… Collin… Brady… and Leah. Leah?! Not six, but ten wolves, though several of them seemed so young. And Leah? A female?

"Prepare yourselves," I warned my family, not quite succeeding in hiding my delight. "They've been holding out on us." I realized what Jacob had been hiding from me that day in Bella's kitchen. Sam had given him orders not to let us know the extent of their pack.

"What do you mean?" Alice demanded. I hate not being able to see!

"Shh," I cautioned her. It was never good to show fear to a wolf. As they crept up to us, I could see Sam at the front, Jacob and Paul at his shoulders with the others spread out on either side of them. My family moved to mimic their lines. Naturally assuming the position of protectors, Jasper and Emmett placed themselves opposite the three lead wolves.

"Damn," Emmett muttered, impressed. "Did you ever see anything like it?" I saw that big grey and a couple of the others when chasing Victoria, but that black one is huge!

…ten! …so many lives affected by our family's presence here…

…ten! This is exactly what we need! Tanya's refusal won't matter now. That army doesn't stand a chance…

…ten! …can they have kept this a secret? …Bella didn't know?

…ten! …save our lives… my children safe

…ten! There were three last time! We could have taken them down then, but now… Edward better be right about this… trust his human to get us all killed by her pet dogs before the army even gets the chance…

My family's thoughts were a jumble of shock, fear, anger, and elation. Jasper, especially, was elated. I could see him envision the coming army being confronted with our army, the seven of us, plus ten enormous werewolves – werewolves whose sole purpose seemed to be ending the lives of vampires. The scent of death rolled off of them and I saw Esme shudder delicately, while she eyed Rosalie. Even from here, I could hear Rose's low growl. If we weren't being watched by the pack, I would have started screaming at her. How dare she blame Bella for this? The army wasn't her fault! But her friendship with Jacob and the pack may have just saved all of our lives, Rose and Emmett's included.

Of course, that was assuming we could get through this meeting without attacking each other.