Chapter 20

Death Warrant

(Jacob)

I still couldn't believe that the damn leech could have the gall to call Billy after all we'd given them in the the last few weeks. Apparently Alice lost sight of the Cullens and asked us to come help out. Naturally Ness would do anything for her family and I could understand that, but still I didn't know why they wanted Sam to come. But then something else crossed my mind; my dad walked. He hadn't walked for almost six years now, but yet as casually as ever he got out of his chair and answered the phone. What the hell was going on?

The smell was unbearable at the big house; way too sweet and too many bloodsuckers to be comfortable. Even human I had to hold my breath as much as possible but there were too many of them there so that almost every five seconds someone would move and stir the air up so their scent would hit me again. It made me wanna puke.

"What was it?" Ness asked Bella when we came into the living room. There were eight of them there; every one of the Cullens except Emmet and Jasper who were out sweeping the woods around the house. I brought Sam and Seth with me. That'd be enough backup if we needed it and between Sam and I we could alert everyone in La Push if we needed them. But then I smelled it.

Three vampires were coming back towards the house. By the scent, they were still more than a mile out, but it wouldn't take long for them to reach the house. Jasper and Emmet definitely in front, but then I smelled something else. Two that smelled bearable; not quite as good as Nessie, but tolerable. And then I heard their hearts beating rapidly, almost twice as fast as a normal human. I went to the windows of the third floor and caught sight of the five of them approaching from the south at a vampiric sprint. Emmet, Jasper, and I remembered the third after a minute, Huilen. Her nephew Nahuel was right behind her followed by another girl he clutched hands with.

She looked to be 17 or 18 in human years and was very pretty. She had vibrant red hair, not quite as bright as Victoria's had been but still a very deep auburn done up in a messy bun that didn't hide the natural curliness of it. She stood about five and a half feet tall and her eyes were a bright blue, reminding me of the sky on a clear day; something that was really rare on the Olympic Peninsula.

Then something else caught my attention; Huilen's eyes were no longer red, but now held a hint of gold in them. Apparently in the aftermath of seeing Carlisle, learning that another course was possible she must of adopted the same diet as the Cullens. I couldn't tell about the other two, because with half vamps the eyes stay the same color no matter what they ate.

"Carlisle, Eleazar?" Jasper called when he entered from the anteroom. "It appears we have some guests."

I had never used that word in my life, anteroom, but it was what Esme liked the entryway called and I liked to please her. She just had this motherly way about her, even to me and Seth.

"Welcome," Carlisle said diplomatically with a welcoming smile to the two South Americans who I already knew somewhat, "we are very pleased to see you two again Nahuel and Huilen, and who is this gorgeous young lady?"
No sooner did she step forward than something changed in Seth. The way he looked at her, it reminded me of when I saw… then it hit me. Seth imprinted on a bloodsucker, I thought. It was impossible, but then I noticed something else about her again. Her eyes had a human color and she had a heart beat. She smelled a little like Nahuel and Ness. Clearly she was one of the other half vampires that that other bastard had bred.

"This is Jennifer," Edward said obviously hearing through Seth's mind his thoughts about her. "Apparently there's been… a development with the Volturi."

I felt Seth's anger start to trigger a phase, but quickly stopped him. His imprintee was in pain and I knew all too well that he'd do anything to lessen her pain.

Jennifer started to snarl at the sound of the word Volturi; hell, I didn't like it either, but with the skills they had, it wasn't a fight I was particularly eager to engage in, even with Bella being able to block some of their attacks.

"That's a bit of an understatement," Jennifer snapped towards him. She was pissed, more than that. "Those bastards killed my family. I won't rest until they've paid for that."

Nahuel tried to calm his half-sister, but it wouldn't do any good. She knew that he was loyal to Huilen and not their father like the rest of his sisters had been. But then her eyes caught Bella and she must have believe the story that Nahuel had told her. Their father really didn't care about their mothers; humans were simply pawns for him to experiment with or feed on. He could have chosen to save them if he wanted to, but he so obviously didn't.

"Start at the beginning please," Carlisle said. "Why do you think the Volturi are to blame for killing your family?"

Jennifer snarled again. This wasn't something that someone would make up. "I saw them. Besides, who else would have, and father said that if anyone ever was able to make one writhe in pain without touching them it was one of those damned witch twins, and whoever could should run as far and fast as possible."

"They must have had their reasons," Eleazar said. He had to have been trying to find any justification for it, but as we knew from the standoff in the meadow last time, they rarely did.

"They didn't," Jennifer snapped back. "They killed them for the hell of it."

"Please tell us how and anything you heard them say," Carlisle asked. I assumed he was trying to gather proof that the Italian leeches were what we all knew they were; power-hungry murderers.

"I was out hunting in the village around where we had set up camp for the time. I hated living as a nomad, but father said there was no other way for us. To be inconspicuous, we had to move around often, but he always attempted to mate with a human woman before he left. He even asked us to try and mate with a male in the hopes of finding out if we could bear children. I never tried, but my sisters did but they never conceived and they always killed their mate before they left.

"We were staying in, I think it was Croatia when they caught us. I hadn't fed in a while, and with the help of Nahuel I tried the non traditional diet. It wasn't easy, but I could stick to it if there were carnivores around. The rest of my family wouldn't even try it; they viewed it as a waste of effort. Humans were there for our needs, while we were their gods; their betters. While part of that might be true, it wasn't right to indiscriminately kill humans for nothing more than sustenance when another option was out there."

Carlisle smiled at the impact of meeting Huilen and Nahuel. He had turned many into vegetarians, as they put it, simply by talking to them; showing them that with a small sacrifice having a permanent residence was possible.

Jennifer continued, "I came back from my hunt. My father and sisters had no interest in changing their diet. That's when I saw them on the ground not moving at all as this haze engulfed them. Then slowly a large one started ripping them to shreds and burned them." She started to cry at the memory, "I can still hear their shrieks and screams." Nahuel embraced his sister as Seth slowly approached them and offered his hand in sympathy. To my surprise, when his hand touched this girl, she calmed down. Then Seth instinctively wrapped her in his arms and she started sobbing more.

"Let it out, Jenny," Seth said with tears in his eyes from seeing the girl he'd imprinted on so upset. I understood what was happening; once a wolf imprinted they would do anything to stop the suffering of their imprintee. "Shh," he said rubbing her back as he held her. Nahuel looked almost jealous of how easily Jennifer started to calm down from Seth's touch.

"Easy Seth," I cautioned looking at the scowl on Nahuel's face, but he just looked up for a second before putting his focus back on Jennifer.

All of the rest of us, besides those two went into Carlisle's office to discuss what we thought this all meant.

"Obviously the Volturi finally felt it appropriate to act against Joham for exposing the vampire world to too much possible exposure with humans," Eleazar said trying to justify the actions of his former friends. "Intentionally impregnating human females for the sole purpose of seeing the results was a foolish experiment."

Edward growled at Eleazar, and I couldn't really blame him. "Are you forgetting about me?"

"You never intended to see if you could have a child with Bella, and even after Bella conceived, you wanted to terminate the fetus to ensure Bella's health. This Joham only sought to create half-vampire children regardless of the consequences. If he had created only the first child, to see if it was even a possibility and then never again tried, the Volturi probably would have had no reason to act. Think of the risk, Edward. The female's family would have observed her becoming weaker and weaker by the day, the pregnancy lasting weeks not months, and then the child literally ripping itself from its mother's womb."

Apparently this was too much for Nahuel as he left the room in tears from remembering all of the horrible things he did to his own mother. Huilen and Jasper followed him outside to, I assumed help him feel better.

Eleazar didn't let his reasoning stop because of their absence. "And let us not forget about what the child would be capable of after the birth. Renesmee was able to walk in weeks, and speak fluently shortly after that. Humans would rightly be suspicious."

"But the children were innocent," Bella pled with Eleazar.

"More than likely, the normal contingent of the guard was sent; Jane, Alec, Felix, and Dimitri. They don't ask questions; they simply destroy, especially Felix. I would assume that Chelsea wasn't with them since if she was, Aro would have welcomed the opportunity to add the three half vampires to his collection. It's fortunate that the youngest was able to escape, but the guard had no choice in this matter. Joham needed to be eliminated to keep him from ever again trying to procreate. The children were simply unfortunate casualties."

"Mighty cold of you bloodsucker," Sam countered, his tone completely devoid of any bitterness but cutting nonetheless. Apparently the elder of the Alaskans didn't find it offensive. He simply nodded at him. "I mean to execute children for no crime, that's not right."

"Many times there simply isn't a choice," Eleazar's voice soft but firm said. "It would be more dangerous to simply execute the condemned and then have the others fight to save him. In the end, sometimes proactively striking the entire coven is the only option. Wouldn't you agree, shape-shifter?"

Sam nodded. I knew that Eleazar was right, no matter how cold it was, we proactively tried to kill leeches before they could hurt anyone under our protection.

"Why would this Chelsea have mattered?" I asked trying to shift the conversation back on target, and that was the fight that was sure to come with the Italians.

"Chelsea's talent is to alter the ties to each other that people feel," Eleazar explained. "If Chelsea could have altered the desire for the other children to defend their father, then it might have been possible that they could have been spared. Alas, since they tried to defend him, the Guard had no other option but to destroy them."

His logic, cold as it was, made sense. I still wondered though why they wanted to destroy us all in the clearing a few years ago. And were we hopelessly sentenced to a fight with them when they returned in a few days, or could they be swayed again? I knew my brothers; I knew the Cullens. We would defend our families to the very last one of us standing.

There was something else I needed to check on while I was here. Two days ago, I called Carlisle and asked him to come to the hospital on the Rez to check out Emily. She was having a hard time with her first pregnancy, and I begged him to try and help them. He agreed; not really a surprise in the aftermath of the last few years.

"Doc, can I have a few minutes?" I asked hoping to get some time with him and Sam. He nodded and the three of us stepped outside the house. On the way through the living room, I was glad to see Seth and Jennifer still talking as the two of them sat on the couch. I was happy that he and Leah had both found their imprints. It made life easier, since now in my pack that only left Embry to find his mate. "So, doc, how's Emily and the baby?"

He looked at Sam, I assumed wondering if he should share this with me but Sam nodded and Carlisle said, "Emily is doing fine, all things considered. She just had a bad case of gestational hypoglycemia, but she's doing fine now. Her blood sugar was as low as 50 when she arrived at the hospital and they were afraid they'd lose both of them, but they were able to quickly get sugar in her and she stabilized. With the advanced stage of her pregnancy it was a concern, so I decided the best option was to deliver the baby now by caesarean section. She was only four weeks premature, but there still were complications from Emily's extremely low blood sugar.

"I saw Emily this morning before sunrise on my way back from the Forks hospital. She's fine, and the baby is fighting, but doing okay. We had to transfer her to the county hospital in Port Angeles, but last I heard a few hours ago, she's largely out of the woods. We don't have a very good NICU in Forks or on the reservation, so air lifting her to Port Angeles was the best option short of taking her to Seattle of Tacoma."

"A girl?" I asked Sam who had a proud smile on his face.

"Little Sarah," Sam answered giving him the baby's name. "Sarah Allison Uley."

I gasped; he named his first born after my mom, something I in no way deserved after all I did to betray his trust.

"It was the least I could do, Jake," Sam said sounding more sullen than I ever heard him before. "You showed me the truth about our new allies here," he said as he graciously smiled at Carlisle. "I never thought that the hatred between us, the Cullens and the tribe was unjustified, but now I know. That doesn't matter any more because now we have a bigger problem."

"What is that?" Carlisle asked.

"The Italian leeches," he answered, the rage still apparent in his voice. "For what they did to those innocent girls, there is only one fitting punishment for it. As far as I'm concerned, they've signed their own death warrants."

"Sam," I cautioned but he wouldn't let me continue.

"No. The Volturi must die. They've crossed the line for the last time. Eleazar was right; there might have been a reasonable justification for the father's execution, but not the children. I swear on my daughter's life, that the Italians will pay for their crimes this time."

"Let us hope it doesn't come to that," Carlisle said hopefully, but I had a feeling that Sam was right. They wouldn't listen to an airing of grievances and would probably just attack. "And apparently they have been busy the last few years, adding new talented ones to the guard. Edward fears that they might have one who can even neutralize Bella's ability."

"Well that's just great," I whispered sarcastically. That was all we needed; someone who could get through that thing that Bella could do would be really bad news for us.

"Yes it is," Carlisle answered apparently not picking up the sarcasm in my voice. "I doubt this time they will be rationed with. Alice only sees the guard coming, not any of the ancients. They don't listen to pleas."

This just kept getting better. We'd have a fight on our hands this time; something that some of the newer ones might welcome, but we'd still all need a little refresher on them. "Carlisle?" I asked at which he looked back at me. "I think it might be helpful if you reminded us of what they could do. It's been a while, and we do have some newer members of the packs who might not know all about killing vampires, since the only ones many of them know are you guys."

He nodded in gratitude. "Agreed. Can you send the ones who feel the need tonight, say about 3:00?"

Both of us nodded. In truth, all of us probably would come. Sam was the only was I really wasn't sure about. "Should I bring Austin?"

"Of course," Carlisle said again with a smile. "He may be new to this life, but he might be an asset, depending on how he takes to his training. Any way, this is information he probably should have anyway."

We would all come that night. While it wasn't necessary for all of us to come, I still assumed that strong majority would want to come. All would have their choice, and since we would be coming back later, I encouraged Seth to stay behind with his new found imprintee, and I couldn't be happier for him.

AN: Okay everyone. I want to thank everyone for almost 10K views, but I'd love reviews even more. Please let me know what you think. Now the bad news, well maybe not bad but I'm going to take a break until the new year with any updates to this story so I can focus on another project that I started, and that's a sequel to L&D, where Beau ends up with things he didn't even know he could have asked for, and he really gets his happily ever after, even if takes having to deal with Victor and his army. I hope everyone has a blessed Holiday season, regardless of which holidays you choose to celebrate.