Chapter Twenty-Two: Together Alone
Bella's POV:
"Alice?" I said, suddenly at her side as was Jasper. "What do you see?"
Alice remained unmoving for the time, as her eyes saw the future before us. Instinctively, I knew exactly what was happening now. She was seeing Ben arriving in the States. This was IT. Her eyes occasionally flickered as she looked at invisible images to everyone but herself and Edward.
Edward.
My feet were carrying me to the house before Jasper could even notice my change in emotion. I was already flying back through the forest, just far enough in to get within Edward's range of telepathy, since I knew as soon as he could hear my thoughts…
A blur crashed through the forest at my side, as Edward scooped me up, his eyes roving the vicinity. My thoughts may have given him the wrong impression perhaps, giving him the indication that I was in danger. And by extension, I supposed that was true in a sense. Depending on how Alice saw the future as going, the objective future could very well decide our fates.
Seeing that nothing was immediately threatening me, he looked down at me, clearly wondering at my alarm.
"Alice is having a vision," I said, pointing the general direction of Alice.
Instantly his eyes hardened and his expression too changed suddenly. He set me back on my feet as we both ran back the way I had come, and Edward's eyes began to glaze over as well as he saw into Alice's mind. He talked as he ran.
"She's seeing Ben," Edward confirmed. "He and Tia are both coming. The Volturi as of yet don't know that they're in the air, but it won't be long before they find out. I'm sure Aro has a private jet at his disposal which may catch up to the plane Ben has taken."
A cold knot of dread settled in my stomach as I heard his words. Edward's mouth turned into a frown.
"Though… the future is surprisingly hazier than normal," Edward said. "Alice can't see who will come through first; Ben or the Volturi. The future is being clouded from her."
"Shapeshifters?" I ask, my eyebrows rising. There's no way that the Volturi, and Caius specifically, would allow themselves to recruit a shapeshifter to hide their purposes. They were too proud for that. Edward shrugs.
"Like I said, Alice can't see and so neither can I. But it sure seems like that's the reason," Edward said. He frowned, focusing again as new information filtered through to him. "Alice can't see the time they get in, but she can sense it. Roughly 4 P.M. -ish".
Roughly three hours from now. My heart leapt into my throat. Why hadn't she seen this coming earlier?
We arrived in the clearing, and Jasper looked about as troubled as I must have looked. He was holding Alice's hand as she continued to speak out the visions she was seeing.
"Getting murkier…" she mumbled. "Future clouding over… as Ben… steps out…"
She sighed, and her eyes cleared again.
"That's it. I can't see anything else. Ben makes it to the ground, but I can't see what happens afterwards. The future is far too objective right now."
I have to admit, I was certainly panicking at this point. If vampires could get mental breakdowns, this might've been one of the few in vampiric-history.
"What do you mean? How does that happen?!" I asked, probably shaking Alice a little by the shoulders as I panicked. The pixie calmly regarded me, a glazed look in her eyes as she continued to carefully watch the future. "Alice!"
"Bella," Jasper said, and I looked up at him. He looked concerned as well, but he also looked much, much calmer than I felt. He slowly reached over, removing my hands from Alice's shoulders firmly. "What's done is done, what will come will come, and what is happening is happening. There's nothing we can do to change it from here, except be where we can, when we can."
"What are you talking about? Alice said the future is too objective now, of course there's something we can do! There's just got to be something we can—"
"Bella," Alice said, and my rampage was immediately diverted as I hung on her words. "This really is the best path. I may not be able to see what happens, but I can sense that all the other ways that the future could go are even worse options. I may not be able to sense exactly what's going to happen; something's clouding my sight. But I know that whatever happens, has to happen. Jasper's right. What's going to happen is going to happen, and we will hold you back, if you try to change anything."
As though to back up her threat, I felt Edward's arms wrap around me in what could be either a hug or a restraint to make sure I didn't bolt off to figure out some way to change the future.
Her words are the more than welcome wake-up call to ground me to reality again, and halt my panicking. I take a deep breath, and though I'm still way past the level of worrying, I can find the strength in myself to pull it together.
I take a much-needed deep breath, and slowly exhale.
"Alright…" I say, slowly. Too fast, and I might lose my cool. "Alright. I'm sorry, Alice. I shouldn't have shaken you."
"You're still holding up admirably well, Bella," Jasper said reassuringly.
"Yeah, don't worry about it. I've shaken Jasper a few times when I was being really worried about something," Alice added.
There was a pause as I tried to control myself, but I felt my control start to slip from my grasp. I was truly beginning to freak out again.
"Alice…" I said, my voice shaking. "I am really, really worried about this whole situation. I… I don't know how we're going to make it, Alice."
I heard Edward's chuckle as his arms turned me to face him, wrapping me in a comforting hug.
"D-Don't laugh at me," I cried, as I made a fist and pound it into his shoulder a little to try and work out some of my anxiety. "I'm not k-kidding, this-s is really not f-funny—"
Edward pauses for a moment, before he begins to speak again. "I'm not laughing at you, Bella. It's just that… I think there are some people who would like to greet you, and their timing is impeccable."
He drew my line of sight up, and turned me around. My eyes began to widen as I took in the figures before me, who were advancing out of the treeline steadily towards us.
"Hello again, Bella," Kate said, smiling a little. "Miss us?"
Behind her and at attention stood Garreth, and due to the wedding bands around their fingers, I assumed that he had made good on his promise and settled down with the Denali clan since our last meeting. Renesmee would be excited to see Zafrina here, with her other Amazonian accomplices, as well as roughly twenty other faces.
The faces of the Irish coven were missing, and so was the Romanians and the Egyptian covens. There were a few scattered nomads that I couldn't find elsewhere either, but somehow, some way, they were all here.
"H-How—" I began to ask, turning to Edward.
"Bella," Edward laughed, chuckling as he watched my brain fail to make the obvious connection. "You don't think Alice and I were calling people like frantic madmen, when we first saw the news? They got in from the airports just today, and we're lucky that enough of us are here to withstand a fighting chance, alongside your newest little gift."
I timidly looked down as I heard the other vampires in the clearing immediately begin to start murmuring. Secondary gifts? Did they mean some item I possessed that could help us, or—?
Edward looked down at me. "Show them," he whispered to me, in a voice low enough that not even the vampires roughly fifty feet away could hear his words. "Show them. It will boost morale among the 'troops'."
"We're a rather rag-tag army, aren't we?" I asked, in the same quiet voice.
"Back when America was first starting out, it wasn't much more than anything else but a ragtag army. They overthrew the greatest country of their time. Now it's our time to do the same."
I looked up at him, kind of hoping he wouldn't ask me to show off in front of all these friends—but of course, I knew I had to. They would have to know at some point what I was bringing to the fight this time, and whether this new figure on the battlefield would be friend or foe.
So hesitantly, I stepped forward. I let all the vampires' voices die down, as their attention was diverted to me. And then, I felt the electricity inside myself begin stretching out, flowing over my vampiric skin as I glistened dimly in the moonlight.
I grew to gigantic dimensions, and fur sprouted all over my body. My tail materialized, and so too did my claws, canine paws, and wolf's head. I towered over the other vampires in the clearing as I stood up tall and straight, an autumn wind flowing through the forest at that moment. Perhaps that was a bit theatric, but it felt good on my fur.
All the vampires looked up at me with a much-cheered look in their eyes. They saw a fighting chance in this huge wolfish form of mine. Perhaps we weren't as weak as the Volturi thought us to be.
"Those Volturi have yee-d their last haw," Garreth commented, causing the rebellion of thirty vampires to laugh.
Leah's POV:
My dreams that night were hectic, and like only snippets of possible events.
Me, as a wolf, rushing through the forest as I listened to silence, but I knew there were soundless screams in the direction I was running.
Rye holding my hand, his eyes steeled and his face strong as he stared over the treetops with me next to him, watching the sun set on the eve of a battle.
Agony piercing my brain as I watched a red blur rise against a white blur, before some kind of purple lightning stretching from the white to the red, knocking it back down again.
Jane's laughing face, as she stood over a crumpled wolf-like shape I knew to be Bella.
La Push on fire, and bloodsuckers killing all of us as punishment for helping the leeches the last time. Humans would simply think it was some kind of terrorist attack or something.
Pain.
Worry.
Anger.
HEAT.
I woke up, gasping. The sound was accompanied by a yelp, and I realized that I had unconsciously phased into wolf form when I sat up so suddenly. The sudden transition set me off-balance, and I fell to the floor with a thud.
Though panic was racing through my heart, I was able to phase back before I got in trouble. Of course, accidental transformations would be dismissed, so I wouldn't get in too much trouble for it.
Internally, I was freaking out even still. I was pretty sure that I needed a comforting presence near to me, so I could calm down again. I wanted Rye to be here, to hold me while I slept, like Bella had once told me Edward did for her when she was a human.
Not having Rye here, though, and no reason that would be approved by my mother, I had to sit here and cry myself into being calmed again from the images I had seen.
Fate was not so cruel to me, however, and sent me the best comfort as I could think of for the time; the only person in this house who was as invested in the upcoming battle as I was.
I heard a knock on the door. Not waiting for an answer, the door creaked open, and I saw Seth's shadowy shape in the doorway, walking slowly in.
"Sorry if I kick you, I can't see a thing," he said, as he listened to my suppressed crying.
He came over to my side, and sat down, putting an arm around my shoulder. From him I heard no tears, but I could feel the worry in his chest all the same, as we each knew the other was thinking about the same thing; the Volturi and the battle they brought with them.
We sat there together, brother and sister, and comforted each other as we could about the fears we have concerning this fight.
Rye's POV:
I blinked, my head in my hands as I processed Rosalie's story. But she wasn't even finished yet. She paused, taking in my reaction.
"Y-You're telling me this why?!" I asked, looking up. A few stray tears were running down my face as anger began to fill my heart. "After all this time, it was just more vampires that took even you away from me—"
"There is more to this story, so before you accuse my husband or my brother, you need to hear this first—" Rosalie continued, deeming that I was obviously not ready to stop hearing her story at this time.
Only after they were all safely out of the entire area did Jasper begin to release his hold on her. But seeing that Rosalie immediately began to panic again, he quickly replaced his hold, breathing a bit heavier with the strain of using his ability for so long. At least he was growing stamina extremely quickly.
"Noooo—" Rosalie weakly muttered, as she beat a fist against Emmett. "Gotta—get something—"
Emmett just hugged Rosalie a bit tighter as they drove on, giving Jasper and Alice a confused glance. Jasper looked at Alice, also with confusion. Did she have any idea what Rose was going on about?
He was somewhat surprised, and Alice as well judging by the look on her face—when she could only shrug. She didn't see what Rose had been, or would be worrying about. It was blocked from her sight, whatever it was.
Probably, it just meant that it wasn't important enough for Alice's ability to worry about, like they had originally thought. But Rosalie had been away from the bear for roughly three hours by now, and she still seemed to be under the influence of a feeding frenzy, from their perspectives.
For now, Jasper would shrug off her strange behavior. She could eat when they got there; there should be plenty of food where they were going. Nice grizzly bears and wolves in Alaska, this time of year. And no Volturi either, who would come and blame them for the newborn overpopulation.
Oh well. Rose would be fine until they got there.
Ah, how true those words were.
The time finally came; they were in their new house by now. Jasper was finally ready to let down his ability, though by now it was like his brain had numbed to the fatigue of it. He'd wake up with a splitting headache tomorrow, but at least they had managed to get Rose to a place where she could get a better source of blood; one that was Volturi-free.
The moment he let his ability down, however, Rosalie jumped up, and dashed towards the door. He would've let her go about her way finding something to eat, if it hadn't been for Edward. Suddenly he was there, holding her back.
"No, Rose!" he shouted. "You cannot go back to Montana!"
Instantly, Jasper replaced the numbing power over her mind again, sighing at the strain. Rosalie was again confused as to what she had been thinking of, as Emmett once more lumbered over and picked his wife up, depositing her on the sofa. He sat next to her, keeping one arm around her to hold her down.
"Oh dear, she's quite insistent tonight, isn't she?" Esme said, having watched this episode.
"Was she like that the whole way down here?" Carlisle asked, leaning forward as he looked towards a very confused but stubborn Rosalie, who was even still trying to escape Jasper's influence, though she didn't exactly remember why.
"We've been waiting for her to come out of this feeding-frenzy for about five hours now," Emmett confirmed. "I can't understand it. There's gotta be a better source of blood way closer than that old grizzly, but she won't give up trying to get back to it."
Esme was watching Rose's insistence with careful examination, as she unpacked some of the china they kept to keep up the human charade. She watched as Rosalie strained futilely against Emmett's super-strength. This kind of dedication went even beyond a blood-frenzy. Either Rosalie was somehow stuck in some kind of frenzy, or it was really important to her to get back to whatever it was she had left behind.
"Carlisle," Esme said, still watching Rosalie, and unwrapping an antique china plate they got from Jamaica. "Maybe Jasper should let Rosalie go."
Of course, she did still know that it was too dangerous in Montana for vampires to be seen, but there was something in Rosalie's urgent demeanor, even while under Jasper's full power, that alarmed her, almost. It at least raised flags, that whatever this was, was in fact vitally important.
"I… gotta—" Rosalie said, curling and twisting as she tried to get out of Emmett's grasp.
"Jasper," Carlisle said, hearing the certain note in Esme's voice that told him she knew what she was doing. And to listen to her. "Let her go."
"—get back…" Rosalie continued, fighting with all her might.
Jasper looked at Edward, and at Alice, and they shrugged. They, at least, could not see anything inside her mind or through her decisions, since at the moment she had neither. They were just as clueless about what she wanted as the rest of them, because Jasper's gift blocked her from doing anything else.
"—to..." Rosalie grunted, writhing in Emmet's arms.
Might as well hear Rosalie out. Perhaps she had forgotten one of her favorite things back home? That dress that Alice had designed for her? He dropped his influence on her mind, and immediately, Rosalie's eyes were alight with a rekindled fury, as she barked out two words they had definitely not expected to come from her mouth.
"—MY SON!" she said, jumping up as she managed to wiggle out from Emmett's arms.
Esme dropped a plate.
