Chapter song- Prelude 12/21 by AFI
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Mary managed to look apologetic in the doctor's arms, as if it were her fault that his former coven leader was a total psycho.
"Good going, Carlisle." Edward was extremely proud of himself and was having a grand time crushing Jasper onto the ground with his elbow.
"Carlisle," he pleaded from his completely uncomfortable position, "please don't hurt her... she's innocent."
The older vampire looked practically unrecognizable with his blonde hair and pale skin riddled with human blood. An unstable smile stained his handsome face. "Oh I know she is, son. So innocent that this whole family had to go down for her so that you, you ungrateful bastard, could keep your conscience clean. After all that we've done for you!" Mary whimpered as he applied more pressure to her neck and it began to crack.
Jasper's struggle became more feral as those sounds reached him.
And then the weight off his back lifted at the same time that a growl ripped through the tunnel. As he watched, large canine teeth closed around Carlisle's throat and his 'father''s head once again fell to the ground. Threat vanquished on that side, Jasper twisted around to see a short dark shadow had Edward on his knees, his eyes wide with shock.
"What-" Edward whispered as a white hand gripped his shoulder with frightening intensity.
"Good thing you can't read my mind." Bella's smile was grim as he collapsed to the ground and began to writhe at her feet. "Now she has a place to stay until I can put her to rest."
Jasper got to his feet slowly, his eyes on his brother. Then he looked at the girl he considered his sister. "Real lucky you got here in time."
Bella's eyes wandered to her actual sibling. "Yeah, real lucky." She sounded half-sarcastic and half-enraged.
He looked at his girl and she waggled her eyebrows at him playfully. So it had all been planned to a perfect T.
She ran into his arms and grinned up at him. "We've got two minutes to vacate this area. Might not be able to fight yet, but I sure as hell can help out with the small things."
"Well darlin', let's get the others and hightail it out." He swung her once in a tiny celebration before shoving open the door of the detainment cell. His family, all varying degrees of rugged, looked up at him. Rosalie was flatout mean-mugging it. "Your bail's been sprung." He tipped an imaginary hat their way, still so happy not to be in chains under Felix's tender mercies with no hope for the future.
"Bout fucking time." Rose snarked, sashaying out of the cell as though she hadn't been detained in a cell for days. A grinning Emmett strode out behind her.
That left Esme. Dark shadows crept under her eyes and made the lovely features stretch into a sadder rendition of the woman that he'd grown to love and respect as much as he had his own mother. She got stiffly up before running into his arms, startling him.
"Thank God you're safe." Low sobs ran from her body into his much larger one. She clutched at the back of his shirt in an unusually desperate grip. "When they took you... I thought another one of my family members was gone."
He rubbed her back soothingly. "I'm here." He reassured, not doing the best of jobs to hide his surprise. "We need to get out of here now if we want to keep it that way though."
Edward still sat on the stone floor outside of the cell, flexing his hands. "I think I've got the hang of this body now." He told a hovering Bella. A familiar Southern accent hung on to his normally stiff cadence.
"Luca?" Jasper asked incredulously, even as he simultaneously arranged his family members in a suitable formation to escape the Volturi's territory.
Red eyes gazed at him with an inscrutable expression while Bella promised to explain at a later time.
They set off into the dark tunnels, Emmett and Jasper instantly taking the front and rear positions of the line. Leah prowled in a protective circle around them. He knew that at the slightest threat, the she-wolf would be able to at least growl out a warning.
Mary ran at his elbow. She occasionally whispered directions to him. If she showed any discomfort in being a newborn with the scent of death and blood surrounding them, she never showed it.
She was already better than him.
As they moved through the tunnels, they passed the decapitated Carlisle and Luca, who Carlisle had apparently attacked in order to take Mary hostage.
Once they broke out of the back tunnel that pulsed into a seedy nightclub after taking out a few guards, Jasper let out a sigh of relief.
Now they just needed to get out of Italy and never stop running.
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It turns out that escaping Italy is pretty simple since everything is, geographically speaking, attached.
A two day's trek brought us to the Switzerland border, and it turned out that Esme was a walking encyclopedia about all of the strange sights we ran into as we transversed the strange continent.
"And right here, girls, is why keeping Switzerland bank accounts just makes sense." Esme lectured as she gave us an overly detailed account of how she was swindling the US government.
"But if we don't eat, why do we need so much money?" Bella asked, her hand on Leah's fur as they strolled behind.
Jazz had asked that we slow down as he thought over our next move. Losing the world's best vampire trackers was a tricky puzzle, but I had been able to pinpoint the best paths so far.
Esme groaned in exasperation as Emmett and Rose expertly hid their grins over Bella's natural aversion to everything that their mother took meticulous care to master. "Have you even been listening, dear? I think I need to start over..."
It was now Bella's turn to look properly put out, while I couldn't help but smile. With Esme's strong desire to stay financially comfortable, I would always be able to go shopping as much as my heart desired.
"Mary."
I snapped out of my fantasy of egregious purchases and craned my neck up to look at my ridiculously handsome boyfriend. "Yes?"
"Is it safe to stop for a bit? I need to stop in the next town and get a burner phone to make a few discrete calls." He absently cradled my face and ran his thumb over my lip.
My brain nearly exploded at the contact and I struggled to concentrate. "Uh... yeah you should be good. Maybe I could go with you?" I can totally ambush him and kiss the smithereens out of him.
His eyes twinkled at me as if he could read my thoughts. "Yeah sure."
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Leah melted into Bella's side as they watched Mary and Jasper walk down the hill that they were hiding out on. Rose, Emmett, and Esme were all hunting for whatever they could find and had promised to bring back blood for Mary and Bella since they were worried about their proximity to a small town. Apparently newborns were notoriously uncontrollable while hunting, and any incidents would ensure that the Volturi dogs would be hot on their trail.
Not that Bella was complaining, since she at last understood that the woman at her side was the reason why she had felt so unbalanced lately.
"You're really okay with being on the run for all of eternity with me?" She asked while absentmindedly fiddling with Leah's silky hair, fascinated with the way it reflected the moonlight back at her.
Her mate snorted at her and crossed her gorgeously long legs in such a way that it nearly distracted Bella from the conversation. "Yeah, it'd be great if that wasn't the case, but I'll take what I can get."
Bella's undead heart soared. It was great to finally be alone with her.
Someone cleared their throat. Well, it was great to be almost alone with Leah. Peggy stood over them, cocking Edward's nonexistent hip in a decisively sassy manner. "Not that it isn't great that y'all are huddling up on each other, but can someone help me crossover already?"
If Bella was still human, she would've been blushing out of embarrassment. She scrambled to her feet, a gesture that was really uncoordinated for a vampire. "I'm so sorry, Peggy. Of course I'll help you out! But..." she hesitated as she reached out to her, "didn't you want to kick Jasper in the balls before you left for killing you?"
Leah gasped beside her. "What a dick thing to do."
Peggy tossed her head back and laughed, twisting Edward's normally stuffy facial expressions into a lighter, more joyous version of the normally pouty vampire. "The Major actually made it out of that hellhole, Bella. Yeah, I've been pissed at him for a long time, but seeing him so happy makes it seem... wrong to ruin it. I shouldn't take my revenge out on him. Oppression controlled us like puppets and made us fodder for someone else's bigger picture. His life was stolen by that bitch too, and if I can help him get it back, then I will." A determined, serious expression crossed her face suddenly. "Please don't tell him about my involvement. Just tell him that I was some random ghost that you had made a deal with. He doesn't need to feel any guiltier than he already does."
Bella nodded slowly. "I promise to make it so. It's been a real pleasure getting to know you, Peggy. I hope whatever waits for you on the other side is full of as much life and happiness as you are."
Peggy held her hand out to the Shadow. "I'm ready, miss. Help as many people like me as you can, it's a real gift to give life back to the dead."
Isabella Swan brought the offered hand to her forehead and closed her red eyes in concentration. And thought of all of the sensations that had accompanied her when her heart had stopped and that pull had called her. Bella then pushed that blissful urge onto Peggy and watched as a beautiful wisp of a girl exited Edward's body and went upwards in a dramatic expulsion. She broke apart into a million pieces of light.
"Wow." Leah sighed in an unusually soft voice. "I think I saw a lot of light for a second."
Her mate smiled. "Yeah?" She twined her fingers with the she-wolf and waved goodbye.
The moment was broken as Leah jerked as a sudden thought occurred. "Bella?"
"Yes?" She asked in innocent confusion.
"What should we do about the ginger?"
The she-wolf and her imprint stared at Edward Cullen's unconscious body with neutral expressions stamped on their faces.
"Uh... " Bella hesitated and tapped her chin in distracted consideration for a few seconds, "let's get a fire going real quick. I'm like really sure that hosting a ghost for that long makes you pretty crazy anyway."
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A hundred years later...
"The Volturi are what?!" I dropped my sample fabrics in shock on the stylish oak floors.
My handsome mate gave me a slow smile. "You didn't know this would happen, my lovely seer?" He teased me while tipping my body back to sear my lips in a burning kiss.
I eventually came back up for unnecessary air, my face feeling hot from embarrassment despite my inability to blush. "I'm not clairvoyant, Jazz. How in the world did the Volturi disband? Aren't they like a gajillion years old and all-powerful? Isn't that why we have been moving like every six fucking months?"
He laughed at me outright, his honey eyes flashing in amusement. Honey eyes that hadn't held a twinge of amber in all of the time I'd known him; he hadn't broken his diet in so long that the others teasingly called me his Lucky Charm. "Apparently, a blast from our past was a helluva lot more ambitious than I ever thought was possible. She was the one who orchestrated every major player's demise, and stole the very valuable Chelsea's loyalty. Which was essentially a check-mate in every way that counted."
My mouth popped open as I mulled over his words. "Who is she?" My mind cranked to produce a million possibilities, all of which seemed highly improbable.
He ruffled my hair. "Her name is Gabi. Another seer that I saved from Maria, although from this news I wonder just how much I really saved her?" He shrugged carelessly even as he swept me off my feet and strode across our beautiful little house off of a private island I'd managed to swindle for us.
Another seer? A distant memory pinged and suddenly a human memory, a very fuzzy one, entered my head. "I think..." I said rather slowly as Jasper kicked open the double doors to our bedroom, "that this Gabi person is the reason why I'm a vampire."
"Oh really," he growled against my mouth after he threw me onto the bed, "then maybe we should send her a thank-you card."
As he pressed his lips against mine, I couldn't help but laugh in agreement. After all, we were finally free and we had our happily forever after.
THE END
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