2
JASPER stood silently watching her. His face was so sullen, even more so than usual, that it sent a chill down Alice's spine. Behind him, what remained of their home in Forks lay in a smoldering ruin, someone having set their house on fire. His deep, golden eyes pierced her soul if she even had one left.
She swore he mouthed her name, but she could not hear her mate's voice. Alice itched to reach out so badly to touch him, to caress his face, that it was almost an aching whelm. Alice outstretched a trembling hand to touch Jasper's cheekbone.
She tried with all of her might, but the distance between them only grew with each of her attempts, leaving her more panicked and frustrated. She screamed his name. Alice wasn't sure she'd ever felt more powerless in her entire existence—both of them.
In a stunned shock, Alice bolted upright from her vision. Her lungs, starved for breath, gasped in oxygen but it burned them with the unfamiliar purity. Her chest heaved and her shoulders shook, and if she could have, she surely would have shed tears.
Alice blinked owlishly with disbelief at the clarity that filled her mind.
She didn't know who was responsible for setting her and Jasper's home on fire, but she knew that if she had any hope of supplicating her captor some into letting her go, she now understood what it was that she needed to do.
To sympathize. To listen to her creator. To learn.
Alice was still gobsmacked as to how Urien could have managed to have found a way to keep his existence after all these years a secret from her. Much less if he had been a prisoner of the Volturi, why she couldn't sense him. She slowly opened her eyes, though she had spent the last several hours in Urien's car as he drove them to an out of the way airport to avoid detection in a daze, trying frantically to block out the numerous possible visions of her creator's future, all of which were not exactly pleasant mental images for her to bear witness to.
There were at least three possible outcomes for this to end for them both, and none of them ended in a win-win scenario. Her only hope was to attempt to reason with Urien, to find out his sole purpose for doing this and how, and why, after all this time, he had managed to avoid detection, and why she'd not been able to sense his presence all this time.
Self-loathing and regret surged within her bones. For a moment, she paused, keeping eyes closed, feeling every bone in her body ache. She ought to have seen the little incident in the alleyway coming, so why hadn't she? Was there something wrong with her abilities?
Or did Urien develop an ability of his own, a way of creating a mental block that kept her out? She paused, wondering his powers, should he possess them, were anything at all like Bella's newfound abilities as a vampire to put up a shield of sorts around her and those she cared about. There were too many answers swirling around in her exhausted brain and not nearly enough answers.
Not even one. Well. She aimed to change that. But…she knew she had to find a way to try to get a hold of Jasper. Edward.
Someone, anyone, send a text, as she was quickly becoming out of range of the scope of her abilities to initiate the mental bond between her family members, and once the two of them boarded a plane that would eventually take them across the continent to Italy, well…she could pretty much kiss that ability temporarily goodbye. Nope. She bit down against the wall of her cheek.
Trying to fumble through her purse inconspicuously in the hopes of groping her way through a message, even if it were gibberish, would hopefully send an alert to someone—preferably Jasper or even Carlisle or Edward—that she was in a spot of very deep trouble.
Of their entire family, those three were the three that Alice trusted the very most to react in a calm and level-headed manner to the fact that she had been kidnapped. This time, it would seem, for now at least, Alice was well and truly on her own.
This situation she found herself in, was admittedly, very, very new.
One that she wasn't entirely sure she was going to be able to talk, much less predict her way out of. No sooner had she barely managed to reach for the strap of her purse than did an audible grunt reach her eardrums. "I wouldn't do that if I were you, Alice."
Urien's voice escaped his lips as a harsh grunt, causing Alice's eyes to fling wide open as she turned her head sharply to the left to the driver's side to look at her unwilling captor in her precarious position. He noticed her looking out of the corner of his peripherals, never once removing his attention from the road in front of him and scoffed.
"Put down your bag, sweetheart. You won't find what you're looking for in your purse. No one's coming for you, Alice. It's just you and me," he grunted, his gaze briefly darting towards his own front shirt pocket as he looked down at himself before returning his attention to the road.
Alice supposed it ought to have been funny, her creator and sort-of-a-first-father figure to her telling to put down her bag that held a cell phone, an item that neither one of them had known would have been in existence at the time the two of them had spoken last.
Instead of smiling or laughing, however, Alice's gaze saw where he had looked to his shirt pocket a moment ago. Her heart sank to the pit of her stomach. Nestled comfortably in his pocket was her cell phone.
As long as he had it, there was no hope of her sending a message to anyone, ever.
"Why?" she demanded as she looked out at the road, finding it difficult and too nerve-wracking to eye him for long.
It was all she could ask. Why was he doing this. "What happened to you, Urien?" Alice pleaded softly, looking out at the road ahead of her while she spoke, not sure she wanted to look at her creator while she attempted to get to the bottom of this.
He made a scoffing noise at the back of his throat that suggested to Alice he were disappointed in her line of questioning, as though he'd expected better.
"Why don't you take a guess, Mrs. Cullen, you're a smart woman, after all this time, dear, surely you can piece two and two together and figure it out. Aro is what happened. The Volturi is what happened, the lot of them eventually found me, or should I say, Jane did."
The hatred in the vampire's tone was evident.
Alice stiffened involuntarily at the mention of Jane's name and let out a hiss. If she would have had fangs like the media portrayed their kind to have, they would have been borne at the mention of her name.
"Jane brought me to their…their headquarters or wherever they hole up in Tuscany like rats," he sighed, spitting his words as though they were poison in his mouth. "This was, I can't recall now, it's been so long. A few years after I Turned you." He paused, drawing in a sharp breath that sounded as though it hurt him. "I wish that…things could have been different, dear. I really do," he sighed remorsefully. He looked it, too. Urien glanced sideways at Alice before spotting a shoulder just off the highway exit and thinking that more sufficient.
She flinched as he expertly navigated his rental car and pulled the vehicle over and parked it. He drew in a shuddering breath and continued.
"They ordered me to tell them everything about myself. Who I was, who Turned me, if I could remember. If I had bitten anyone since my own Turning," he added. "The Volturi and I spoke rather heatedly about it when I refused to divulge any information, though they weren't willing to entertain the idea of a friendly chat," he snapped, his golden eyes flashing indignantly for a moment, and a low, almost wolfish growl erupted from the confines of his broad chest. "Aro almost killed me that day if it weren't for Marcus taking pity on me and sparing my life. That was the day that my life, what was left of it, became theirs to torment," he growled, gnashing his teeth together.
It made the fine hairs on the back of Alice's neck stand upright and she shivered, shrinking into her cardigan as much as she possibly could for warmth. She took a moment to think over her creator's words.
"Aro…" Alice whisper-echoed the Volturi member's name, wondering how in the gods' names she couldn't have seen this coming. Why on earth hadn't she?! A wave of fear wracked over her body at the thought that something might be wrong with her abilities, though almost immediately as the thought flitted into her already frazzled mind, Alice dismissed it, chiding herself for being so stupid and allowing her emotions to get the better of her.
Though thinking along these lines only caused the aching hole in her heart for her mate's presence to grow even more massive. If Jasper were here in the car with them, he would only need hold her hand, and instantly, her mood would be calmed. She would feel better.
But he wasn't, which meant that for now, at least, she was going to have to figure out a way to calm herself down. Alice shook her head to clear her mind. She exhaled a long, slow breath, willing her racing blood in her veins to try to slow down just a little bit.
Her mind felt like it was utterly reeling in shock.
Perhaps assessing what she knew of her current predicament, precarious though it was, might help her come up with a possible solution that would sway from either outcome of the visions she had seen.
Aro had always been the more ambitious and power hungry of the coven, to put it politely, looking for food, more ways to influence the behavior of the vampires around them, and the group had been especially relentless in their efforts throughout the years to attempt to entice Alice to join them.
But especially Aro. Carlisle was perhaps the only vampire of their entire Coven that Aro even harbored a twinge of unease towards. Perhaps even…even fear, maybe.
It was partially in part because of Alice's attachment to Carlisle Cullen as a father figure that Aro had not been more 'forceful' in his attempted methods of persuasion to get Alice to join them.
Which made her question why send Urien. Why now? Aro knew that Alice would never come to them willingly. A cold fear wafted down her spine and made her shiver at the thought that flitted across her mind.
"Are they…did they…?" she breathed, hardly daring to give the thought a voice.
She wasn't sure she wanted an answer to his question but needed one.
Urien, though he kept his attention fixated on the road, though they were no longer driving to head towards the airport, watched out of the corner of his eyes as Alice's golden irises widened.
Those almond-shaped, huge, doe-like eyes he'd come to know and love over these last several weeks of silently stalking her in Forks, learning Alice Cullen's routines, everything about her that was new of her to learn.
"I don't want to talk about it," he snapped, his tone suddenly turning clipped and hard. "Whatever the Volturi have or haven't done with me is immaterial to our discussion." His tone was bordering on a note of finality that suggested to Jasper's mate that the topic of what he might have endured was not up for discussion, either verbally or initiated telepathically.
She slowly pursed her lips and turned her head as Alice took her creator in sight. His bone-white face was apathetic and gaunt, cheekbones sunken in, just as she had remembered him looking at the asylum.
Alice furrowed her brows, thinking Urien needed a haircut with a real comb would lessen the ragged look.
She was honestly surprised if the Volturi had held him a captive for this long, they'd let him get away with such a shoddy appearance, though perhaps in Aro's twisted mind, it was a sick form of torture.
Urien wanted to say something nice at least, but suddenly, his jaw had locked itself tight, and his tongue felt thick in his mouth.
He searched his brain for the right words and tried hard to open his mouth to say something—anything—that might ease her fears, but instead clicked his tongue in a growing sense of frustrated disappointment.
Urien chewed on the wall of his mouth before turning his gaze finally away from the shoulder of the road to look at Alice.
Before he could stop himself, he felt his hand moving of his own accord, his fingers pressing against the back of her hair. His other hand moved up to stride his palm slowly, tenderly, across her right cheek.
Alice drew in a shuddering breath and lowered her thick eyelashes as her golden irises followed the trail his ice-cold hand had made. She imitated him.
She looked at her creator in amazement, and even before she could utter the first syllable of the first word, Urien immediately stopped Alice's lips from parting, putting a finger to her lips to silence her.
"Please don't, little dove," he crooned, whispering his words in a somber tone, though the edges of his lips turned upward in a faint ghost of a smile that did not reach his eyes, and caused the skin underneath his eyelids to crinkle in stress and hot, marring shame. "I don't need to hear it. I already can," he sighed, tapping to his head as if she had forgotten.
"But at least you should know," Alice pleaded in protest, biting down on her bottom lip as she stuck it out in a slight pout, hoping to supplicate Urien into letting her go. He could even drop her off right here, she'd run home.
She was fast enough. She could make it back through the front door of her and Jasper's home in the woods before her husband even knew she was gone and not back by the promised time she'd said. She hoped. She swallowed a lump in her throat.
Alice nervously tucked her hands across her chest and pointedly looked away, finally pulling her eyes away from Urien's.
She did not need her creator's words in that same husky voice that had chilled her thoughts and secured her at the same time. She did not need his words to know how he thought of her.
Urien was everything Alice didn't want to end up with, but right then and there, here in his rental car, his words were more than enough to cancel her ideals and rob everything from her. She felt a spiraling heat well its way into her chest from the pit of her belly.
Alice looked away, finding nothing more to say to her creator in this moment except, "I already do."
Urien's eyes flashed as he was silent for a moment, merely studying Alice's expression before he put the vehicle in drive again and pulled off the shoulder, resuming their long drive on the highway towards the airport.
He shifted somewhat uncomfortably in the driver seat, staring out at the road as though he could not see his former patient currently seated beside him.
Though he was not looking directly at Alice, she could see there was a regret in his golden irises that Alice already could tell right off that she didn't like.
"You know…you know that night was my fault."
Alice hesitated. While she knew which night her creator was referencing, she had never exactly blamed Urien for Turning her, for biting her and making her like him.
It had, they both knew at the time, been the only way to throw James off her trail and disinterest him once her blood no longer 'sang' to him back then.
Nevertheless, that didn't mean that Alice didn't harbor any anger towards Urien, however—anger, and a little bit of resentment.
They were complicated feelings, and she'd been burdened with them since the day after he had Turned her into one of the undead.
"I know why you bit me," she said instead. "You were doing the only thing you could to save my life."
Urien nodded. He looked so exhausted, so tired, and not for the first time, Alice, since knowing him in the institution, regretted making the man's life that much more difficult. Urien's lips pressed together tightly, then he parted them to address her directly.
"You've always defied my expectations, Alice. You coped with your… curse, with remarkable shows of strength and intelligence," he growled through gritted teeth, tugging on a lock of his hair, and gesturing to his eyes as if to emphasize his point. "You coped with what I did to you. You didn't let yourself become weak, you didn't try to kill yourself once you found out what I had done to you, what I'd made you into. Once you Turned, you adapted quicker than I thought, and thrived. And just now look at you, Alice. You're flourishing. I respect you for that, my dear. I wish there were another way, but there isn't. This is the world we live in, and our lives are no longer ours, dear, they aren't," he growled, sounding like he was talking more to himself than to her in this moment.
A shiver traveled up and down her spine as his words lingered in her mind.
This is the world we live in.
"I'm touched. Really," Alice snapped in a curt tone automatically as her creator spoke. She just wanted him to see sense, turn this car around, and take her back.
And then she blinked. Wait, what did he say?
He chuckled darkly.
You heard me, sweetheart. I admire it, even, he initiated in their mental telepathic link, though his tone sounded almost grudging. Maybe even a bit envious. You fight for what is yours, Cullen. You may need to do it again. Aro wasn't happy about sending me. He's quite angry with us.
Alice stared at Urien as though the older vampire had grown two heads as she shook her head in an incredulous disbelief. She swallowed a lump in her throat.
"Is there really no other way?" she begged, biting down on her bottom lip. "You—you know this is wrong, Urien, to take me like this, I know you know that. I can see it," she whispered quietly, her voice barely above a faint whisper. "I—I have a life here in Forks, I have a mate, a husband who's waiting for me back at our house, a family who's going to be crushed when they learn what's happened," Alice beseeched.
"You have had a decent life," Urien noted, almost coldly from the driver's seat.
Frowning, Alice furrowed her thin eyebrows as she glanced over at him, remembering that her creator, as good as terms as she had used to be with the man, had still forcefully kidnapped her from Forks.
Maybe she'd never see Jasper or the rest of her family again. She would never get to take Renesmee shopping for clothes. She'd never feel the taste of Jasper's kiss on her lips again. She would never play chess with Edward or listen to her brother compose another song on the piano.
The Volturi might very well finally kill her.
They would surely kill her, or they would hold her captive under threat of death to her and her loved ones and never allow her to return home to Forks. Alice didn't know how this nightmare would end.
If it ever would, and that thought terrified her more than any vision she could have ever had. God…
"An easy life," Urien went on. "Perhaps easier than you could possibly deserve, given the circumstances." He paused and glanced at Alice who was actively reverting her gaze and instead looking out the window. "I notice that you've enjoyed the scenery on this little car trip of ours," he commented breezily. "I don't often have a passenger in my car, Alice. Particularly not a pretty little slip of a thing like you. It's kind of nice to have company for once," he spoke. "It would be nicer if my…guest would speak to me."
Here, he glanced over at Alice with a slight frown and a raised eyebrow while he waited for his captive to try to collect her thoughts. She swallowed again as she hated hearing the faltering cracking and dip of her voice.
If she would have had the capability to shed tears, this would have been it as terror and a sickening, debilitating cold fear tugged at her heartstrings, that damned corded muscle within her chest that ceased its beating years ago.
Anything to try to supplicate Urien some.
"Please," she begged. "Please let me go. We can—I can help you, Urien, you—you don't have to do this. I—I don't know what Aro and the others have done to you, b—but…my father and I, Carlisle, we can help."
She stiffened as his hand touched at her hair and she could feel the older vampire's body stiffen and tense.
"What…what does Aro want with you?" she asked.
Alice tried her best to keep herself under control, but she was beginning to feel nervous.
When he did not grace her query with a response of his own, Alice began to feel a little irked by his lack of response. She swallowed hard and tried to reach him again.
"If I…if I go with you, I—if I promise not to try to escape from them, are they…will my family be safe? Please, Urien, don't let them hurt them…"
Alice was practically begging the older vampire now, and even among Aro and the others, she did not particularly consider herself a woman used to asking others for something else.
But, as they said, desperate times called for desperate measures, so Alice forced herself to swallow her pride and try to beg him to let her go.
Urien merely grunted wordlessly in response, shifting his position in the driver's seat.
Alice stared, feeling her throat constrict. She could sense that pleading with the older vampire was not going to work.
"Was there…" She paused, searching for the right words. "Was there ever a time," she asked, hardly daring to hope for an answer to this question, "when I made you proud? Or am I just another disappointment to you in a long line of failures?"
She spat the word 'disappointment' as though it were a bitter poison that had settled upon her tongue.
Here, at least, his words had inspired some form of response in her creator. Alice was momentarily relieved to see that, years of torment under Aro's hand hadn't turned the older vampire daft and dumb. Urien tilted his head to the side as he looked at her.
"Your Turning," he said almost instantly. "You never made a noise, despite the immense pain you must have been in at the time, little dove. The sheer amount of strength and willpower that must have taken you was…is…" he corrected himself, "immeasurable."
Alice blinked owlishly at him, not having anticipated that would have been his answer. Her mind raced as she tried to find the best way possible to breach this subject with her creator. She breathed heavily as she stared out at the highway.
Her heart sank to the pit of her churning stomach as the familiar sight of the airport came into view, the very same airport that she had taken Bella to when they believed Edward had intended to kill himself.
She did not want to see Urien's face when she spoke. If what she said to him next happened to anger the older vampire to the point of him wanting to end her life, she knew it would be better not to know if death was coming for her.
She felt the chances of Urien killing her were high when she next spoke.
But Alice could also recognize that she had to try.
She had thought she'd had a fairly good idea of what the older vampire had wanted with her back in that alleyway behind the café and bookshop she frequented every Friday and Saturday like clockwork, being it was one of maybe three places in all of Forks that were open 24-7 all days a week, which, to a vampire like her who had no need for sleep, was practically her own little slice of a quiet haven.
One of three places where she could close her mind during the witching hours and not suffer from splitting migraines from her visions and being forced to read peoples' minds.
Alice could only pray that Jasper thought to look there for her first, as she was on friendly terms with the staff there, and maybe their cameras had caught something around the property that would give Jasper a clue on who had taken her, though she hoped it wouldn't be that hard to figure out she had been kidnapped.
Once she didn't call or text to let him or anyone else in their family know, Jasper would start to get worried.
Alice glanced at her kidnapper nervously out of the corner of her peripherals, trying not to seem so conspicuous as she studied the vampire's physical features.
Urien was taller than Alice remembered seeing him last. Large, tall, and broad shoulders, and cold, dead golden eyes that were slowly flickering, their hue changing from a faint amber gold to a burgundy color.
Oh, god.
Her eyes widened as the realization hit her, as though she had been doused in ice water. He'd not fed in some time. Weeks, maybe, by the looks of him, and how his behavior was growing increasingly more volatile the closer the two of them got to the airport.
Have they…have the Volturi been starving him? And we're about to board a plane to head for Italy in a secluded place sequestered with humans? Oh, god…
Alice knew if she could keep Urien from killing anyone else, she would. There was no telling what monstrous tasks the Volturi made him carry out on their behalf.
She knew that once she was taken to Aro, and Urien was more or less recaptured and imprisoned, she would never be given access to him again, she would never look upon the man's face.
And she felt that this time was coming soon and as much as she could do for Urien until then, she would.
Alice could tell by the way that his fingers tapped on the steering wheel as he expertly maneuvered the car into the airport terminal's parking lot, that he was clearly insane.
God, Urien, what did he do to you? She prodded, trying to reach him, to which she was met with a withering look and silence on his part.
His behavior was skittish, his eyes darting nervously to the left and right, as though he were searching for something.
His tongue had this truly disgusting habit of flicking out every so often, like he was tasting the air for the scent of humans' blood.
Alice shuddered, scrunching her nose up in disgust. She knew she had to choose her words carefully. Alice stiffened as he pulled into a parking spot and put the car in park and turned off the ignition and pocketed his car keys into his jacket pocket.
"You know you don't need to hurt anyone, Urien," she whispered, her voice harboring a faint, pleading tone to it. "No one else needs to die, right?" she asked and paused. She heard nothing beside her. No reaction.
There was no amusement in his eyes. No evilness, no disgusted reaction. Nothing. His eyes were void.
Which wasn't necessarily a good sign, but at least the fact remained that he'd not erupted into a violent outburst so far was a good thing. It meant that he was at least listening to her words, if not considering them.
She slowly turned her head to face him, swallowing hard. His posture had stiffened, almost going rigid, in the driver's seat.
He was staring at her, his face devoid of emotion. His eyes were on her as they normally were, thoughtful yes, but hard to read.
She watched him look towards the front entrance of the airport for a moment, seemingly lost in thought, before rummaging in the pocket of his black leather coat and pulling out a worn, tattered photograph.
An old Polaroid. He tossed it almost violently onto Alice's lap, eliciting a squeak of surprise from the younger vampire as he merely grunted at her. With slightly trembling fingers, she held it up.
Alice heard herself let out a pained little gasp, an odd, strangled noise at the back of her throat as the pads of her fingers ghosted along the picture's surface. Tattered and torn at the edges, and covered in what looked suspiciously like browned, dried blood, Alice's heart sank as she realized the woman in the Polaroid picture must have been his mate, his wife, at some point.
The woman in the photograph was pretty, with long dark hair pulled up in a loose messy bun. A kind but tired face. Pale, if not a bit peaky looking, but such was the complexion of 'Cold Ones' like them. The woman had twinkling blue eyes.
"She's beautiful, Urien. Who is she to you? Your lover? Your wife? Did they…did they do something to her, Urien? Is that why you're doing this? Why you've kidnapped me, huh?" Alice questioned softly, as she silently handed the photograph back with shaking fingers.
He merely looked at it for a moment before plucking it from her fingers without looking at it, shoving it back into his coat pocket.
She swallowed down hard and attempted to diffuse the sense of defeat that she sensed within the man.
"You—you know, you should really look into getting a wallet, Urien, you could put that in there and it won't get ripped like—"
But she cut herself off when she heard him let out a low rumbling noise that could only be described as a growl of anger and impatience at her effort to make light of what he deemed to be a very serious situation.
She shivered and waited for her creator to speak. She watched as Urien kept his gaze fixated on the airport as his eyes narrowed, not answering her for a good long moment. Maybe this was a sore subject.
Had the Volturi done something to her in order to get the older vampire to fall in line and comply with their demands without resisting? She flinched, biting down on the wall of her cheek as Urien spoke up.
"Bad men can do fair things, little dove. "I'm by no means a good man. Or a moral man. I won't ever pretend to be, sweetheart, just look at me. I've done cruel and terrible things. So many of them… the worst possible things that you could ever even imagine."
His eyes narrowed until they reminded Alice of a pit-viper's slit like pupils, narrowed, cold, and beady.
Her lips parted, but no sound left, and Alice closed her mouth. She thought about her next words carefully, but instead, ended up speaking openly and honestly with her creator, her heart speaking for her.
"Why, Urien?" she begged. "Why do you do what the Volturi tells you? I—if that woman in the photograph is your mate, the two of you could flee. Leave Italy and go somewhere else, live your lives. You—you had a good life, Urien," she stammered, remembering what little snippets her then-doctor at the time had told her of his life back at the asylum. "A loving family. Successful parents. You were a doctor. Why?" she beseeched, biting down on her bottom lip.
Urien only stared at her, but his eyes began to blink rapidly.
Is he prone to some kind of thought disorder? Alice mulled over this sudden shift in his countenance.
She turned her head more to look at him and he only froze when she reached up a hand and rested it gently on his shoulder, trying to showcase to her creator responsible for her Turning that she was not afraid, though in actuality, she was.
"That's alright, Urien," she told him, shooting him what she hoped was a reassuring smile, though she could already feel her cheeks' reluctance to be molded falsely. "You—you don't have to answer that now."
He went on. "I had no choice. I know what I am, dear, don't think me unsympathetic to your plight. I'm not a good man or a moral man. But I'm a man capable of kindness, of being patient, gentle, even lenient on someone, dear. Again. I won't hurt you unless you make me. I'd really rather not," he growled, shooting Alice a pained look. "I've no interest in needlessly abusing a weaker vampire. I'll be decent as long as you do what I say," he hissed.
Urien turned his gaze towards the airport before looking down to check his watch and as a consequence, missed Alice's look of shock and abject horror plastered across her face.
"Our flight leaves in about forty-five minutes. That should be just enough time for us to get through TSA, maybe even browse one of those little gift shops you love so much, dear."
Alice swore she felt her heart flutter nervously in her chest, though of course, such a phenomenon was impossible, as her heart had ceased its rhythmic beating in her chest the very night she had Turned.
Would this possibly be a chance to escape? She could run, she had speed and agility on her side.
If she ventured into a shop, however, she ran the risk of having other people nearby, despite it being…she glanced at Urien's wristwatch while trying to be subtle about it. Going on almost twelve-thirty in the morning.
Their flight from Washington to Tuscany, Italy was roughly an eleven hour and forty-five minute flight.
All she would have to do is linger in one of the airport's shops long enough to approach someone—anyone—and beg them to send a message to someone in her family as she was long since out of their range to initiate the telepathic link between them, and Urien had possession of her cell phone.
Urien couldn't very well drag her towards their gate kicking and screaming if there were humans nearby. Doing so would only cause a scene to them.
Urien must have sensed exactly what she was thinking, though, and was quick to offer a rather terrifying thought in attempt to dissuade his captive.
"If you make a scene in that airport, little dove, I will hurt you. And I'll execute any witnesses. We're getting on that flight, and you're coming with me. Do you understand?" he growled through gritted teeth.
Alice numbly nodded. What other choice did she have in his moment to agree? She didn't even need to suffer a precognitive vision to know that if she did, all of the potential outcomes would be bad, and would surely result in someone getting hurt.
She could not—would not—allow innocent blood to be spilled on her conscience and disappoint her family.
She'd have to wait and see what the inside of the airport looked like at this hour. Probably dead, but if there were other humans out and about, she'd be stupid not to at least try to get a message sent back to Carlisle and Jasper.
Somehow, someway, she had to try to find a way.
Alice let out a breathy squeak and almost jumped as her creator's gruff voice, the true embodiment of the grave, spoke up in his typical rough voice that had always reminded Alice of sandpaper grinding against something.
"I know this doesn't seem fair to you, Mrs. Hale." He paused. "Or is it Cullen?" He furrowed his brows as if deep in quandary, and shook his head to himself, dismissing the question as purely irrelevant. "Whatever. It doesn't matter what I call you. But I can't have you trying anything stupid around me in public with all of these truly delectable-smelling humans. If you call attention to us, anyone who sees will have to die. You don't want that, sweetheart, do you?" Urien crooned.
"No," Alice breathed immediately, her blood cold in her veins. She really didn't want that. She didn't want to risk a human's life, simply to save her own…
"And in that event, after you've forced me to dispose of any witnesses, then I'll have to hurt you," Urien spoke in a causal voice that sent a chill down her spine. "I'm a vampire of my word, darling. I told you before. If you try to escape, you don't cooperate, and you're going to be hurt, but how badly it hurts you is going to be up to you. We'll see." He shrugged.
Alice felt her bottom lip trembling. She looked away, not wanting her creator to see how upset she was. She had no clue what to do in this instance now.
How could she not try to escape once they set foot inside the airport?
But then, if Urien managed to catch her, and he would, as the older vampire, despite his age, was much faster than she was, and they both knew it, if he really did kill anyone else who was around to see it, then it would be her fault, really.
And that, she knew, she couldn't let it happen.
After a few moments of a heavy, awkward silence, Urien's chilling laughter snapped Alice back to attention, causing the fine hairs on her neck to stand upright.
"I'm not a bad man, Alice. Well…I am, but I'm not in this moment. I want to help you. You can help us both by coming along with me. Quietly now…I am what I am, and I can either be a friend to you in this scenario and help make both of our lives that much easier, or I can be a terrible enemy," Urien advised her, shooting her an almost interested look out of the corner of his eyes as he studied her in silence.
Sulking, Alice stared over at her creator. The older vampire was every definition of a bad man.
The Volturi had turned him into a savage brute, a violent, cruel, terrifying monster. An accursed wretch and every bit a vicious bastard.
This was not the same vampire she'd met and befriended back at the asylum.
Whoever he had been back that, that man was gone. And in its place, was an empty shell of a man. Little more than a monster.
He was now sitting in the driver seat of his car, threatening to hurt her, to kill other people, innocent human beings who'd done nothing to him. These were not exactly things that a good man would do. People, Alice decided, were the very worst monsters of all.
Urien sensed her disapproval of his methods and sneered, the edges of his thin lips curling upward into a twisted sneer that made the petite little brunette vampire shirk away.
"I won't hurt anyone inside as long as you behave appropriately, little dove," Urien reminded her, a note of impatience seeping into his voice. "It's all up to you, dear. You do what I tell you, and no one will be hurt at all. We'll just get through security, you can visit one of the airport gifts shops, pick out a book or two, it's going to be a long flight, and then we'll be in Italy before you know it. Easy."
Alice stiffened and glanced down at the floorboard of his immaculate car, staring at her black ballet flats.
She almost felt betrayed, in a sense, by how quickly the tone of their conversation had shifted.
One minute, she had thought she'd been about to reach him, and then the next, he was threatening to hurt her, threatening to kill other airport employees or passersby if Alice so much as made one wrong move…
He nodded, seemingly satisfied by the fact that he had more or less shocked his captive into a stunned stupor of anger.
"Grab your purse. Get your things, whatever you need, and let's go. We've got a plane to catch." Alice's creator flashed her a disarmingly white grin meant to charm, but it only made Alice's insides revolt, as if spurned on by a poison that churned her stomach.
The threats certainly did a phenomenal job of pulling Alice back down to the precarious reality of her new situation she now found herself in without any help.
Urien may have showed no signs of wanting to hurt her, not really, talked to her about this and that, but the older vampire was still very much a kidnapper, had dragged her along on this venture against her will, had made idle threats along the way.
Urien was no longer her friend. Even if her creator was willing to be decent for a moment in time, he was not a decent man overall.
What she knew of him back then was now little more than a distant, fond memory.
That version of the vampire was dead, and he wasn't coming back.
Alice knew she had to wax and seal that off in her mind right now, or else…
This wasn't simple a 'fun little vacation' the older vampire was taking her on as a chance to get away, to catch up after all these long lost years of her attempting to locate him and getting nowhere.
It was still a kidnapping. This thought plastered itself in her mind, seeping through like a poison as she grabbed her bag off the floor of the car by her feet and hoisted her purse onto her shoulder, opening the car door and getting out, slamming it with as much force as she could possibly muster to showcase her displeasure to Urien.
Not that he needed a reminder.
As Alice walked towards the airport's front entrance in a huff, she didn't bother to wait for Urien.
A light sprinkling drizzle, little more than a mist had begun to fall. It cooled her cheeks, which, despite her natural coldness and inability for blood to flow through her veins as a vampire, surprisingly felt hot.
She could feel Urien's leering stare piercing a hole through the back of her skull, but Alice continued walking without sparing the man responsible for turning her into one of the un-dead a second glance.
Alice was smart enough not to look back.