Thirteen
Alice watched as Alec strode toward the line of Cullen's holding their protective stances in front of Bella and Edward's cottage.
Her mind flickered with unexpected changes—Alec pulling back the hood of his jacket, his hair much longer than she remembered it being during the confrontation in the mountain so many years ago. It fell down to his shoulders now, and it curled thickly at the ends. His face was so effeminate, whereas Jane, his twin, seemed more masculine in her appearance and tendencies.
Alice watched as Alec extended his hand to Carlisle. In the blink of an eye she was seeing Carlisle's hesitation, his unease at the situation was palpable, but when she blinked again his distrust was mastered and he was embracing Alec. The gesture was tenuous, lacking in the real friendliness that he later greeted Garrett or Tanya with.
She followed Alec with her eyes, continuing to jump a few seconds ahead looking for any moment of tension or disease. All the while, she kept her mind open to Edward, who she knew was reading both her thoughts, as well as Alec, and somehow, she knew, the rest of theirs as well.
Jasper and the rest followed behind the newcomer, with Jasper coming to her side for the briefest of pauses to brush his fingers against hers before she took up his position as guard, following closely behind Alec as he entered the cottage.
Somewhere behind them, there was a raucous with Jacob and Emmett. They could hear Jacob arguing for Emmett to stand aside, and Emmett's tart rebuke that he needed to put some clothes on before he went into his niece's bedroom.
Bella was ushering Alec into the cottage, her nerves taught with apprehension. The dwelling seemed all the smaller when half a dozen vampires tried to squeeze in.
"She's been like this for more than twenty-four hours," Carlisle was explaining.
Alec was focused on the little girl—teenager, he thought, getting his first glimpse of her. Even flushed with fever and clearly exhausted, with perspiration dampening the sides of her face and hair, she clearly held the beauty of an immortal child. Her hair was a fiery chestnut, a twin to her mother's silken locks, and her eyes were wide, and haunted with a wisdom that was startling from the face of one who presented so young. There were other clear signs that she was aging as well. The first thing he noticed were the twin buds of breasts that were poking up from underneath the thin cotton of her tank top.
"Hey!" Alice yelped from the other room.
Edward likewise, straightened his posture in a defensive motion.
"My apologies," Alec countered quickly. "It is easy to forget her actual age. Her beauty is startling to one who is not accustomed to it. She is," he tilted his head toward Bella, "so much like her mother, in that respect."
Bella folded her arms across her chest. "I can guess what that was about." She put her hand on Edward's chest, stopping him from taking another step toward Alec, menacingly. "You said you could help our daughter?"
Alec moved his hand out, stroking the soft underbelly of Renesmee's arm, stirring her from her sleep.
She murmured, "Who are you?"
"I'm here to help you," Alec reassured her. He continued to stroke her arm and eventually moved down to her palm. "Let me show you."
Although Renesmee's ability was hardly legendary, he did find it peculiarly and strange. She tightened her grip on him, though it was incredibly weak. He opened his mind to her, and through this connection, he allowed her to view the memories that he had held back from Edward earlier.
Firstly, there was the unsettling rumors of a vampire far to the east named Aleksandru who had fallen in love with a human girl. Although the knowledge of the Volturi was vast and expansive, it still took many months for stories from far afield to reach them. It must have been two or three years later that they heard of the human girl's death—he recalled Aro's mystified exclamation at the news that Aleksandru had married the girl, given her a human burial, and was now raising a strange child with abnormal abilities. Human-vampire children were the stuff of fairytales and legends to their kind, a strange bedtime story for the rebellious or lyrical at heart.
Still, Aro wanted to understand. So much of his immortal life was spent in the pursuit of understanding everything that was different or strange or unusual. Everything that was different from him.
This time Aro did not go himself to discover what had happened, instead, he sent Alec.
Traveling at that time was easier than it was now. He kept up a running pace through the foothills and mountains of Italy, cross the Adriatic Sea, and emerging into what is now called Croatia. He ran through Serbia and Bulgaria, stopping to taste the foreign delicacies of the virginal maidens in Romania and Hungary before finally making it to his final destination.
The palace that was spoken of as being Aleksandru's residence was in fact a wooden fort, protected by paid mercenaries, and spoken of as a ghoulish macabre dwelling by the gap-toothed locals in the village below.
Aleksandru greeted Alec with the honor he was accustomed to receive as a member of Aro's inner circle.
"I've come on Aro's orderes," he explained. "There is talk of the girl, a child, from the loins of yourself and your human bride."
Aleksandru spoke her name, but it was lost to Alec's memories.
Then he spoke of his daughter. Desislava was less than a year old, but physically she already appeared to be a child twice that age, able to walk and talk, with the elegance of any grown woman.
Alec examined her, as was Aro's request. But other than her accelerated aging, he found nothing usual about the girl.
Alec stayed in Aleksandru's fort over the winter, ever watchful of the strange girl and the stranger vampire who continued to weep at his human brides' gravesite. When spring came, Desislava appeared to be nearly ten, although in reality, like Renesmee herself, she had only been on this earth for a handful of years. She was a charming child. She enjoyed dancing, and her father took great pleasure in watching her charm the paid mercenaries of the castle fawn over her and dance the humble peasant dances that they taught her.
One evening, when the moon was high and the summer heat lingered long in the halls of the fort, Desislava fainted while performing a dance in the great hall. Aleksandru, with his vampiric senses, caught the girl before her head could fall hard against the stone floor. For many days, the girl languished, feverish and weak. Aleksandru raged against the heavens that he still believed to be coercing his fate. His child, the beloved daughter conceived from the coupling of his true love was clearly dying.
Literature of their kind was nonexistent in those days. There were the old scrolls from Egypt and Palestine, many of the originals lost in the great fire of Alexandria, and there were a few codex's hidden in various safehouses across Europe, but most of what anyone knew about the vampire curse came from the legends and gossip of local tribes and villages. Many of them contradicting each other from region to region, in accordance with the vampires who were, or had once been living there.
As Edward had done, with his daughter, Aleksandru tried to feed his daughter his own blood, hoping to heal her, or if nothing else, change her to be an immortal as he was.
It was one of the mercenaries, a young man named Radomir, who had so often danced the silly dances with Desislava, who mentioned that his grandmother was a wise woman in the mountains and might have an answer to this plight. Alec and Aleksandru fled into the mountains, using their vampiric speed to make short work of the journey. Aleksandru holding Desislava in his arms, while Alec ran with Radomir on his back to guide their way.
The old woman took one look at Desislava and cut her palm open, letting the child suck the lifeblood from her veins, greedily. Radomir looked on, aghast, and shocked at what he was witnessing, while Aleksandru, comforted by his daughter's sudden change in health offered to give the woman anything she wished.
The grandmother, aware of what she had done for the pair of vampires now crowding her hearth, had but one wish. "Make my grandson immortal, as you are."
Radomir objected.
"My son," the grandmother went on, holding a hand up to Radomir's objections. "Radomir's father, is an ill man. Not ill on the outside, but inside, he has poison. All of the children his wife has born him, including Radomir, will die young. Their bodies will weaken and die from tumors that I have been unable to find a cure for. Turn my Radomir until an immortal like you, and he will, in turn change his brothers and sisters so the line of my family will never die."
Alec spoke up, eyebrows raised in surprise by this woman's strange tale. "And what about you, old woman? Do you too, not want to be immortal?"
The grandmother laughed. "I am for the grave, young killer. My body will be dead by the next full moon."
Again, Radomir objected, but the old woman was resolute.
"I look forward to death," she told them plainly. "It is something that you," and here she looked directly at Alec, "Can never comprehend."
That night, when they had fled back to the safety of Aleksandru's fort, Desislava was given an evening meal of human blood mixed with the porridge that she often liked to take with honey or berries, now she would only desire it with blood, and Alec sired Radomir. The young man objecting, until the very end, that he did not want to be made into a vampire.
Alec stayed with Aleksandru for another summer. A year could pass in what felt like a month's time for the vampires. Radomir was resolved to his fate, and from what Alec heard later on, he did in fact change most of his siblings into vampires. Where they were now, he could not say, although he believed Radomir was still alive.
It was many years later, when Alec, back at Aro's court heard a rumor that Radomir and Desislava had fallen in love. He remembered the young human boy dancing with the strange beautiful girl in the cedar-smelling halls of her father's forts, and for their sake, Alec hoped that they were happy.
"But where are they now?" Renesmee asked.
Edward, had read the thoughts of Alec while he silently spun the tale to Renesmee from his mind and had dictated it back to the other vampires in the cottage.
Carlisle had already fled to the Fork's community hospital to get human blood
Alec confessed, out loud this time, "I have not heard from Radomir since the Eighteen-Hundreds, I do not know if he is still alive or not. It has been even longer than that since I heard any word of Desislava, though I do recall," Alec turned to Edward and Bella, "That she lived a long life, her time on this earth spanning several hundred years."
Bella spoke, "And it was human blood that helped cure Desislava?"
"Yes," Alec replied. "I believe this condition—I don't believe it has a name, though I'm sure Carlisle will remedy that, come on at the onset of puberty."
"Puberty?" Edward asked, skeptically.
Alec smiled shyly. "Renesmee will always be your little girl, Edward, but you cannot deny that she is becoming a woman. Every day more so." The memory of seeing Renesmee for the first time and noticing the faint hint of breasts crossed Alec's mind.
Edward hissed and Bella had to hold her husband back.
Carlisle's returned defused the tension. "It's fresh," he said, holding up the blood bag. "Donated this morning from the school's blood drive. Hasn't even been crossed and typed yet. Please, clear the room."
"I'll take my leave of you," Alec said, standing up from the bedside where he had sat. "Until tomorrow, m'lady." He gave Renesmee a charming bow and she smiled.
The remaining Cullen's, Jasper, Alice, and Rosalie, as well as the Denali vampires stepped outside, knowing that the scent of human blood was soon to be dispersed into the air. Alice kept a tight hold on Jasper's hand.
"Bella, you should go," Edward warned her.
"Edward, no," she objected. "I'm not leaving our daughter."
"It's the blood."
Bella was insistent. "I can handle it."
Edward remembered Alice's vision from earlier. Edward had to hold Bella back from the strong aroma of the fresh blood. He grabbed both of Bella's shoulders, turning her back toward the door. "I mean it. Alice saw it. You can't be in here."
Carlisle kept the blood bag closed, trying to avoid witnessing the confrontation between Edward and Bella.
"I can't just leave her."
Edward brought her in close, kissed her tenderly on the forehead, breathing in the scent of her which was so comforting to him. "Please, for her sake. For my sake. Please go wait outside. I'll call you as soon as she's finished."
Bella turned to Renesmee, a fierce look of longing and protection sweeping from her glance to her child's.
"It's okay, mommy," Ness said. "Will you go wait outside with Jacob? He's going to be really upset."
Bella sighed in resignation after that. How had her child grown up so quickly? How could she know so easily what others around her were feeling? Bella crossed the room quickly and kissed her daughter on the cheek. She gave Renesmee a silent promise with her touch and left the room quickly.
Edward, feeling the heartsickness of her absence, gestured for Carlisle to open the bag.
The room immediately filled with the strong tang of blood, even Edward had trouble holding himself back from it.