Chapter Twenty-Six: Benjamin

I did as I said I would. Straight back to the motel, grabbed a hot chocolate from the machine down the hall, and collapsed onto my bed. The mattress was too thin to actually provide relief from the knot in my back, but the meagre comfort it offered was gratefully received.

I told myself I should sleep before taking a good look at the photos. This was my murderer I was going to identify, and that took some preparation.

I dozed for an unsettled hour, got up, took a shower, and was plugging my cell in to charge, when I saw the stack of pictures on the table beside the television. I wish I had bullish confidence or nerve. My grandmother Esther once told me I needed to get myself some chutzpah. I'd spent the whole afternoon wondering whether that was some exotic fruit before my father explained that I just wasn't a courageous person. 'It's okay to be a softie,' he'd said. That was before anyone had threatened my life.

It made me think of Jennifer Moroney. The girl who I had let down. If only I had trusted in my visions. I should have done something to help her when I had the chance. It was then that I decided I would not be that boy anymore. If I was to survive I had to be bold, and I had to face my enemies, even if they were just on paper.

I picked the photos up and laid them out across the bed. None of the photos were new, and from their outfits, I guessed that these people were either at a masquerade ball or they had the same gift as Alice and didn't age either.

One was turned over the wrong way, and beside the salad cream smudge I saw a name drawn in Alice's neat handwriting. 'Aro' the first one said. He was not the man from my visions.

I looked over another few. Marcus, Caius, and a boy who looked about twelve, who turned out to be called Alec. I shook my head and picked up the last piece of paper. This one wasn't a photograph but a drawing; quite clear to the extent that a hand drawing could be. I didn't know that Alice was an artist.

This one was enormous, with broad shoulders that ran right up to his severe jaw, almost eclipsing his squat neck. He had a flat nose, bright red eyes and short, cropped hair. On the back was scribbled the word Felix.

I closed my eyes and imagined the scene that I'd been trying to forget for the past two and a half weeks. I saw myself reaching for the door. When I pulled it back, it was him.

It was a little after 10am the next day when I pulled up to the gallery. Alice had not come out last night despite my revelations. In fact she'd not even let me discuss it over the phone. Instead she'd said she would love to see the new exhibition and arranged to meet me here in the morning. Some kind of coded message perhaps, but even so, here I was outside the gallery, my hands shaking and sweating with the drawing in my grasp.

I'd made it through the night without hyperventilating over the identify of my killer but that did not mean that I'd got any sleep. I'd tossed back and forth for hours, brewing with questions that I had for Alice. Why did she not call me back? She'd brushed me off over the phone with some garbage story about an art gallery, which I didn't fully understand, but then when it came to Alice there was more and more that didn't make sense. If these people were like her, then it was time to face the truth.

I re-checked my watch at 10.17am. She said she would be here around half past, but I couldn't spend any longer pacing around my motel room.

"Breakfast?" She said, tapping on my window waving a brown bag in her hands. For someone who never appeared to be hungry, she was certainly astute when it came to my appetite.

"I could hear your stomach rumbling from the road," she said, watching me tuck into the egg mac-sandwich thing. It didn't look altogether appealing, but it sure was tasty.

"Do you not want to know who it was I recognized?" I said, between bites.

"It doesn't matter."

"What? You were the one telling me it was so important and thrusting those photos in my face. You're kidding me right?"

"I didn't mean it's not important. I just meant it doesn't matter which one it is. If it's any of them, then it's as I feared. It's bad."

"Oh great, makes me feel so much better."

She looked at me devouring the last bit of the bun. "You wanna go inside. It's a Dale Chihuly exhibition. Quite extraordinary."

Why not? Given the choice between talking about my impending death, or taking a moment to appreciate a bit of art, the decision was easy.

I followed her out of the car, towards the main entrance. The museum was basically a barn, with the whole front ripped out and replaced by double height glazing. Inside there were islands of glass, from balls of swirling color, to intricate sea forms that seemed to be glowing. A special pond area had been created at the back with blue and green glass tendrils, which stretched out over the water. Alice watched me with a strange look across her face.

"It's nice to see your expression," she said. "I've forgotten what it's like to see something for the first time."

She smiled and walked alongside me until we reached a display with old boats overflowing with glass pieces.

"So, are you going to tell me the truth or what?" I said.

She bowed her head and leaned in closer.

"Are you ready to hear it?"

I nodded and sat on a bench that faced out onto a walled garden where the exhibition extended outside.

"You know when you're a kid and you like reading creepy books, and at the end of the night your mom says it's only a story," she said. I nodded.

"Well," she continued, "what if they were real, some of them."

"Not Frankenstein?" I said. I had hated Frankenstein, and that was the one character with jumped to mind when I thought of that drawing back in my hotel room.

She smiled but only a little. "Not Frankenstein."

"Who were those people on the photographs?" I said. "Why did you think it would be them?"

"They are members of a coven called the Volturi."

"A coven?"

"Yes, a group of... people, kind of like the mafia."

"Oh." Great. Not only was someone after me, but it all stemmed from some kind of weirdo mafia.

I look up at her, confused. I couldn't understand why a bunch of people like that would take any interest in me whatsoever. I was just some wimpy kid from a small town.

"And I don't think they intend to kill you," she said after a moment. "That's not their style."

"Well that is good news," I said. "Isn't it?" Her facial expression still looked sombre. "You mean they leave me for dead, but I don't actually die. Should I pretend to be dead, for effect? Will it hurt?"

"No, that's not what I mean. I think he's planning something worse, and yes, it will hurt."

Alice jumped up and led me out into the gardens. It was windy and I pulled my jacket in. So much for it being summer. I hadn't seen a day of sunshine since I'd arrived.

"I'm not quite sure how to tell you this, Ben," she continued. As if 'it will hurt' was not enough.

She stopped walking and turned to face me, her eyes luminous yellow and her expression austere.

"I think they might want you to join them. I think the whole reason they come after you is for your gift, and I think they have found a way to make you listen." She looked away. "The Volturi can be very... persuasive."

"So they threaten me? They pretend to kill me to scare me?"

"I think they turn you."

I walked on. "Turn me into what? An employee? Their little messenger boy? An exhibit in their travelling circus?"

"A vampire," she whispered.

Although soft, it rung loud like church bells, and brought me to an abrupt halt.

At that point two things crossed my mind. The first, that vampires actually existed. I couldn't fight against creatures like that. I'd seen Bram Stoker's Dracula; there was no way I could fight against him. And the second seemed to follow the first. How did she know?

She didn't age. She didn't eat. She didn't tell me anything about herself, or let me meet her family, and she'd practically gone nuts when I'd cut my finger in that restaurant in the food court at the mall.

Her eyebrows cast down at their outer edges, her lips were pursed, and she was watching me very closely.

I started shaking my head at her.

She bit her lip and looked away.

"No, no, no," I started saying. She moved towards me, and tried to put her hand on my shoulder. Her ice cold, demon hand.

I started edging away.

"Ben, it's alright to be weirded out. I would be too."

Shaking my head I looked towards the doors. There was one that led back into the museum and a smaller one, a gate, which wrapped round the side of the barn and I presumed led back to the parking lot. That was the one I ran for.

The gate was locked by a catch at the top. After rattling it a bit, I eased it free and didn't look back. I made it to the car and then to the freeway. Still no sign of her.

It was only when I reached the state lines that I truly believed she was not following me. I pulled over at a gas station, washed my face in the sink of the men's restroom, and studied the reflection hard.

Was Alice a vampire? And worse, did she think that this Volturi was going to turn me into one too?