Chapter Eighteen: The Nightmare - Alice
"Prophecies are tricky creatures. They don't tell you everything." - Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Prophecy Girl)
Thursday, September 15, 2005
"Angela?" I heard her screaming at me. Were we just…
Rosalie's Cadillac was fully restored and beautiful. We didn't take it out much, especially since it was best driven with the top down, but even as vampires we didn't enjoy that kind of drive in the pouring rain. Yet the day was perfect, with a high but thick ceiling of clouds and rain called for late evening. It had been a good morning, with Angela staying over. None of us were doing well since the boys left, but we all had our roles to fill.
We were twenty minutes into our trip and we were mostly engaged in small talk. Rose reached for the radio and we caught a song in the middle.
"Oh Monday mornin' you gave me no warnin' of what was to be. Oh Monday, Monday, how could you leave and not take me…"
"Sorry Angela." Rose said, turning off the radio.
"No, it's okay, music doesn't bother me." Angela gave a half-hearted smile and looked back out the car window.
"You can find me crying, all of the time." The song continued as Rose turned the radio back on.
"Yeah, never mind." Rose said with a small sad chuckle. "This is supposed to be a bright day."
"I'll try, I promise." Angela said with a nod, even though her body language told me she was only going on this trip for us.
"I really don't think I need all this." Bella said fidgeting with the hat and scarf I had painstakingly found to make her look stylish instead of stealthy.
"You do look a bit like Carmen Sandiego." Angela said with a shrug.
"A red trench, damn." I said pouting a bit, I hadn't thought of that ensemble for Bella, with her coloring and hair she would look amazing.
"Never." Bella said, crossing her arms.
"Ah… fine." I conceded. "Speaking of clothes, is that on our agenda?" I asked hopefully.
"Perhaps, but there is an actual reason we're going into the city." Rose answered as if she were in charge of the afternoon.
"I don't see why I need a new identity, it's not as if we're moving until next year anyway." Bella said, shaking her head.
"Practicality, plus the marriage license will look better if you aren't legally dead." Rose answered simply and gave her a playful smirk in the rear-view mirror.
"Ugh, I haven't even said yes." Bella frowned and tightened her arms around her chest.
"Yet." I added and everyone started to laugh playfully at Bella's frustration, and after a moment she began to laugh along with us. We continued to talk as we made it into the city, and stopped at a mall to do some light shopping. It wasn't until we heard Angela's stomach that we turned towards the food court. "I'm really not hungry guys." Angela said for the fourth time.
"We can leave you alone if you don't want to eat in front of us." Bella offered.
"Please, the humans will just think we're all on diets." Rose scoffed and led Angela towards the Chinese food which we all knew was her favorite. She dithered a bit before getting her usual plate of noodles, chicken and vegetables and we all sat down away from the rest of the mortals so that our presence wouldn't bother them while they ate.
Angela got two bites into her meal when her face twisted, and she clutched her stomach. "I'm so sorry." She stood and ran towards the bathroom. We all followed and found her in one of the stalls retching. She calmed after a moment, but as she sat down next to the toilet, we could see something was wrong with her. We made our way to the car and Rose drove home like a race car driver, amidst Angela's intermittent screams.
I was holding her hand, and could see the fear in her eyes when suddenly the world shifted around me.
I was standing in the lower living room, and the house was unusually empty. "Hello?" I called, hoping for an answer. I didn't want to be alone. I walked towards the library, hoping to find anyone. When I opened the door, I knew I was late, and everyone was already gathered. As I entered the room the arm of my lover pulled me close and wrapped me up in their embrace. I looked back to see their face, but it was obscured in shadow.
Then I scanned the room. Bella was standing with Edward, her right arm wrapped around his waist and her other hand was clasped tightly with someone I couldn't quite see. This stranger was shorter than her, and feminine with long blonde hair. Bella glanced at me with concern, and then Edward locked eyes with me briefly and he shook his head, confirming something that made my soul shake.
"So it's true, the Dragon was executed." Stefan said with a note of surprise in his thick Romanian accent.
"Mason, his name was Mason." Angela corrected, her face hard and her eyes full of a kind of pain I couldn't quite grasp.
"Right Mason. I never met the man but Rachel spoke of him." Stefan said with a nod, clearly respectful.
"I heard Aro loved her, the fool." Vladimir added, shaking his head.
"Rachel, the first?" Alistair said with reverence.
"I heard that she wasn't the first." Bella countered.
"Whatever newborn." Alistair threw back at her with flared nostrils. "Carlisle, I will not participate in a war against the Volturi."
"We may not have a choice." Carlisle countered. He paused and looked over at me, "Alice, any visions we should be aware of?"
"Nothing new." I said with obvious frustration, although I had no idea why I answered a question I didn't know the answer to.
"Alright, Alistair before you make your decision, let me explain. The way I see it there are immediate threats on two fronts. The wolves are gathering to the south-west. The newborn army was spotted east of Port Angeles by Garrett heading towards us, likely from Seattle." Carlisle sounded tired, and nearly everyone looked hungry. Their eyes nearly pitch black.
"I counted thirty, but there could be more holding back." Garrett said with a frown.
"Oh great, so you want me to risk my life fighting a hopeless cause?" Alistair shook his head with a deep scowl.
"You're not helping, friend." Eleazar tried, but Alistair just laughed at him.
"I haven't lived seven hundred years by being careless. Once you gain a few centuries you'll learn that." Alistair said with a dismissive wave. "I'm out of here."
"A carefully planned battle is not careless Alistair." Stefan tried, but Alistair just shrugged him off and left through the closest exit. "Good riddance then, we can take the Italian scum without him."
"Stefan, our goal is survival. Not war." Carlisle corrected.
"Whatever Carlisle, you'll see there is no other choice." Vladimir said with a small chuckle.
"Alright, Jasper what's our plan?" Carlisle said directing the attention
"Our best strategy is to encourage chaos, with both sides converging on us, we have an opportunity to pit them against each other." Jasper sounded confident, his red eyes scanning the room.
"It isn't without difficulty. War is never predictable." Garrett said, his usual sarcasm completely absent.
"This should be easy, it's just mongrels and mindless newborns." Kate suggested with enthusiasm, catching Garrett's attention.
"The Volturi will mop up what is left if we don't win outright." Tanya warned.
"What about Rose, wouldn't that work for the rest of us?" Esme suggested making the best out of a bad situation.
"I've tried to help Emmett the same way, and it doesn't work." Rosalie said, shaking her head.
"Mason should be here. I should have gone after him." Angela said through clenched teeth, flashing intense guilt. Then her face shifted and I could see anger, panic and fear. Why was Angela angry with me?
Why was Angela panicked and afraid?
"Alice? What the hell is this?" Edward's voice was unexpected, and came from behind me. It snapped me out from my role in the vision and I was me again.
"This is a vision, I think." I answered somewhat less than confidently
"Mason just brought you and Angela to the house. You're in a coma for lack of a better word. I was trying to get a read on you but couldn't get through, and was about to give up when I kissed you on the forehead and here I am." Edward shrugged, clearly unsure of anything.
"We need to somehow rewind this meeting, we could listen and get information." I wanted to know more about the whys and whats.
"How? Have your visions ever worked like this?" He said clearly just as desperate for answers as I was.
"This? No. It's never been like this." I waved my arm around at the menagerie. His eyes bugged out at the gathered vampires, the largest either of us had ever seen.
"How am I here?" Edward asked the better question, in the past he had always been a remote observer of my visions, he had never never been an active participant before.
"Great question, and I got a better one. How do we get out of this?" I looked around as the world shifted again. We were still in Carlisle's study, but there was a medical bed taking up a good portion of the room. Bella was laid out on the bed looking extremely drawn and thin but also very pregnant. Another version of me and Edward were standing next to Rosalie and a Quileute I didn't recognize. The events were horribly traumatic, as Bella tried to give birth, but things went sideways because the amniotic sack was as tough as our skin, leading to Edward literally ripping into her with his teeth.
"I don't understand." My Edward said, reaching out a hand towards Bella.
"She's human, and I'm sure that's your baby. I saw a glimpse of this before, this was your future if you had saved her that day." I looked over at him and realized I shouldn't have clarified. He looked broken and was visibly shaking with loss.
"I was always going to hurt her." Was all he could summon.
"No, you idiot, you had a baby with her. Here, let me show you." I pushed the vision forward effortlessly as he delivered the infant, and turned her into one of us. The vision stopped abruptly the instant her eyes opened again.
"That's as far as I've ever seen. This world vanished right here." I explained, he looked over at me. "It was all hypothetical then, one version of events. I had just seen up to this point when you chose not to save her." I looked away from him, his eyes were frantic and furious.
"I could show you more realities if you like, one where she married some wolf in La Push. Another where she never came to Forks. The worst one was when you fed on her, succumbing to your thirst. None of them, including this one, are real anymore. They're shadows. Memories of realities we changed." I pushed the vision away and tried to conjure what we were watching before.
Instead the room remained the same but the person on the bed was no longer Bella, it was Angela. A different group was surrounding her, Carlisle, Esme, Rose, Bella, another copy of me again and someone in the back of the room I couldn't quite make out. The same someone who had held me in the earlier vision. My future mate, whoever it was. Angela's face was puffy, and she had dark circles under her closed eyes. She was hooked up to a ventilator and she had large purple bruises on most of her exposed skin. Yet even in her slumber there was a sadness to her face that couldn't be missed.
"This is before the meeting." I explained. "I don't know how I know. This is like experiencing my visions in technicolor when before they were in black and white."
"Should we explore more or try to get out of here?" Edward had regained his sense of self again, but I could see the fear in his eyes.
"I want to see that meeting again." I said, focusing my mind on that point in time. The world shifted, and we were in the library again. With all those gathered vampires.
"This is remarkable." Edward said, looking around at everyone, frozen in time.
"Yeah, we must've called on friends. One of them said that Mason was executed, but I don't know why." I asked, and wanted to move over to see if I could push away the shadows hiding my future mate, but yet again we were pulled away from the meeting.
"Damn it." I exclaimed in frustration.
"You asked a question, I think the vision obeyed." Edward smirked. We found ourselves standing in front of the house, as Mason and Angela and another copy of me were standing together.
"Take care of her." Mason asked the other me who nodded easily, his face a storm of conflicting emotions.
"No, take me with you." Angela begged, and he immediately moved over and pulled her face into his hands, kissing her deeply. Tears were streaming down both of their faces, which felt very normal for some reason despite the fact that Mason was a vampire who shouldn't be able to cry.
"I have to go; I have no choice now. But know that you are more important to me than anything else. Taking you with me, and risking your life would be pure selfishness on my part. I want nothing more than for you to be at my side from now on. You are my partner, my love. I cannot believe I found you." His passion for her was easy to see, he was breathless and clearly didn't want to let go. She just pushed into him and they started to kiss passionately.
"Okay. I wasn't expecting that." Edward said with wide eyes. "Should we try and stop them from happening?"
"I think that might already be too late. They met when I crashed the Porsche. Wait, I crashed the Porsche?" I frowned, I liked that car.
"Yes, I believe you fell into this trance while behind the wheel picking up Angela." He looked sympathetic, but thoughts of the car vanished.
"Shit, is she okay?" I was suddenly worried I was the reason she was on a ventilator.
"She looked fine." He confirmed, and I felt instant relief but also some intense guilt. Flashes of memory of the crash came to me then. With Angela once again acting selfless and heroic, and watching as Mason jumped onto a car going ninety to save her.
"He saved her life, no wonder they grow close." I muttered, and Edward nodded.
"She deserves happiness." He sighed, but a warm smile turned up his face as he looked at their embrace.
"Then we don't interfere, but this moment in time, there is something about this event that's very important. I can see it's a catalyst, I just can't see why." I scrunched up my nose in frustration, trying to force my vision to give me an answer.
"What's the context, why is he leaving?" Edward asked, and as he did a snippet of information came to me.
"I'm not entirely sure, but it has to do with the Volturi, but I don't know what to alter here. It's hard to see beyond this. There is Angela on the ventilator and the meeting about some upcoming battle. Then…." I felt the world fall away again.
This time, purple smoke obscured my vision, thick and sweet it was a sight that sent waves of fear down my back. The smoke was something I had never seen, but heard about from Carlisle, a telltale sign when one of our kind was set on fire. The sound of crackling flames combined with desperate cries of pain surrounding me tore through my mind like I was walking through a field of glass trees slicing every part of me just by moving forward. Through the smoke I could just make out the ruins of a building, which I knew was once my house. As I began to walk through the wreckage, which was nothing more than a handful of walls still standing, I felt a hand grab at my leg. Startled, I looked down into Emmett's face, or at least half of it, the rest shattered and gone. I screamed as he collapsed.
Terrified, I began to trip and stumble my way across the battlefield, confronted with face after face; Tanya, Carmen, Irina, Eleazar, Charlotte, Peter, Garrett, Jasper, Edward, Emmett… Esme, the people lost were unfathomable. For every person I loved, there were a dozen faces I didn't recognize. Then the smoke cleared, and a line of black cloaks were revealed. Aro was standing in the center of them, smiling in smug satisfaction. Four figures were on their knees in front of him, the four that had survived this battle.
Kate looked angry but resigned to her fate, having lost her entire family. Angela's black eyes looked dead as if any life within her had been extinguished. Bella was staring at the ground, her expression fixed in a permanent scowl. She glanced at me and grimaced, anger burning behind her eyes. I tore my gaze away from hers and found the face of the last of those kneeling in supplication. It was Rosalie, and she didn't look angry or dead inside, she looked broken and utterly ambivalent to the world around her.
"Join us Alice." Aro offered, extending a hand. "Join your sisters, we would welcome you." Aro pleaded with me. I almost reached out to take his hand, it was a good offer. To live with my sisters, even in the guard. Perhaps one day we could find a way to be free again.
Then I realized it was a trap, and I couldn't agree to live that life. "Never." I said defiantly.
"We don't give second chances." Aro warned as I realized he was holding Carlisle's head in his other hand.
"No." I said again, holding back the scream of grief. Then I looked around at the Volturi guard, and then down at the four sitting in submission.
Kate stood then and leveled a glare at Aro. "I owe you pain!" She touched him, and Aro's body twisted and fell to the ground. Bella and Rosalie launched themselves forward and took Aro's head. It was a good opening volley, but very quickly the tables turned as one by one Rose, Bella and Kate fell. All that remained was Angela who hadn't moved, and myself. I had wanted to help but I was stuck in place, as if I could be nothing more than an observer.
Caius walked over the corpse of his brother, and stopped in front of Angela. "You were the Ancient's mate?" He asked, forcing her to look up.
"Mason." Her voice was hollow, pained. The grief in her eyes was deeper than losing a love, there was more I couldn't see.
"He didn't even put up a fight." Caius taunted. I could see a flash of anger cross her face, but it quickly died away and her eyes went blank again. "Are you sure she is worth the trouble or rehabilitation?" Caius looked back and Jane nodded.
"I don't fully grasp her power, but it is remarkable." Jane looked down at my sister with a strange joy on her face. Then she leaned down and slashed at Angela with her gift. Angela barely reacted but did look at the diminutive vampire with a look of curiosity for the first time.
"Do you join us?" Jane's question was simple, but Angela seemed confused. She tilted her head and started to laugh. It was a broken desperate laugh of someone who had nothing left in the world. She stood and raised a hand towards Jane who stumbled back holding onto her throat in confusion. Then her face cracked and her body crumbled to dust. Caius tried to react but Angela just waved at him and again his body crumbled to nothing in seconds. Then she rose up into the air raising her hands and cackling maniacally as every single remaining guard and witness the Volturi had gathered suffered the same fate.
Then she turned to me, her black eyes full of a rage I had never seen before. It was beyond murderous, it was almost devoid of anything remotely human. "You did this to me, you told him to go. I hate you!" She lifted her hand and I felt something twist inside, and then my life seemed to be draining from within. I clutched at my throat when suddenly Edward grabbed my shoulder, breaking the reality of the vision.
"You're right. Let's get out of this." I focused and tried to force it to end. That's when I felt Edward's intrusion on my mind. "Edward, you have to help."
"I don't even know what I'm doing." Edward shook his head, lost and frustrated and clearly terrified.
"Try to let go." I suggested, and he nodded once. In the next instant I felt his mind vanish and suddenly the vision surrounding me melted away. The world flooded back to me, and I found myself on a couch in my living room. The entire family surrounded me, and Edward was just starting to rouse from the floor by my side.
"What the fuck was that?" I said, my voice quivering from the emotional fallout of witnessing my entire family slaughtered. How could this be a better future? What had I forced us into?
"Tell me that wasn't real." Edward said as he came to, and quickly searched the room finding Bella. I followed his scan of the room and looked into each face and felt myself shudder in both relief and utter agony.
"What's going on?" Carlisle asked, his concern and worry twisting his features into a dark grimace.
"A nightmare, and I have no idea how to stop it." I felt hollow sobs racking my chest. I turned towards Angela in shock and sorrow. As I met her eyes I had to repress a shudder, because for an instant all I could see was her murderous gaze bearing down on me with the intent to kill.
"Oh god, what did I do?" I whispered, knowing all of this was my fault.
"I did this, not you Alice, not you..." Edward trailed off, his voice shaking with emotion, then he shut his eyes and lowered his head in shame, his body shivering with uncontrollable pain and grief.
Author's Notes:
I was both looking forward to working on this chapter and dreading it. While most of the beats are the same, there are a lot more details added and this matches my continuity a lot more. Alice has to change several things to fight this timeline, and each of the above scenes will fully play out later on, although they might just be a bit different.
I will explain things as they happen when we get to those points in the story. That way there are no future spoilers, but at least there will be context. Again, we are very early on in this story believe it or not. Not even a third of the way through the narrative. Things do start to pick up very soon.
I would also say if you are on the fence about Edward this is kind of the turning point for him. He finally sees what he did, he finally gets to witness first hand the consequences of his choice.
I will also promise this is not a doom and gloom story, despite how bleak things seem.
The song on the radio was; "Monday, Monday" - written by John Phillips and performed by The Mamas & the Papas.
Next Chapter: The Lonely God - Angela
As always, thank you for reading!