Shahrazád's Ghosts
Epilogue: Part II
Alice Cullen
2434 A.D.
"The Italian city of Volterra suffered from a suspected terrorist attack at 7pm, local time, last night. A series of explosions racked through the ancient Tuscan city, destroying the tenth century Volterra Cathedral and most of La Piazza dei Priori. Officials said other landmarks have been damaged, but they are still assessing the extent. At least a hundred and thirteen people have been confirmed dead. Another two hundred and thirty are injured. Law enforcement is working around the clock to find the culprits of this heinous act of violence. Now in other news, the stock market is down…"
"Holy shit, she did it! I'd have never believed it to be possible," Emmett exclaimed. His eyes were glued to the news report, the same as everyone else but his response drowned out all the others because of his volume. Carlisle was frozen in place. Rosalie and Esme whispered quietly to each other from the back corner of the room. Everyone could feel Jasper's mix of awe, fear, and respect. However, it was Emmett who leapt from his chair and nearly broke the wooden slats for how fast he moved.
"Is it true?" Esme asked. "Was this an attack against the Volturi?"
Alice nodded. To her, at least, it wasn't a surprise. "The covens of North Africa, India, Romania, Central Asia, Indonesia, and China all came together against Volterra. Aro attacked one too many of their allies for them to stay quiet and they decided they needed to attack before Aro came after them next. Aro's stolen army turned on him when he brought them too close to Volterra."
"I still can't believe that an army of Edwards has been wreaking havoc around the world," Emmett said. "It's kinda creepy."
"It'd be creepier if we had seen it," Rosalie agreed. "An identical army would be bad enough, but Edward? One Edward was enough to make me crazy. How many Edwards does the world really need before all hell breaks loose? That's a whole lotta angst to wield as a weapon of mass destruction."
Alice didn't need to imagine it. She had seen it. She had to admit that the visons she received of a hundred and fifteen carbon copies of her brother - each trained to military precision, and acting as a uniform whole against their targets - had been disconcerting, to say the least. Terrifying, if she was honest with herself. Edward had always been scarily determined and gifted and she much preferred seeing him use his unique skillsets for the good of the world instead of as a weapon. She was glad to have been spared meeting the army in person, but that didn't mean she enjoyed her visions of their deaths.
They had been careful. True to their word to Darling, the Cullens had disappeared from public sight for the last eighteen years. They had not tried to overtly blend in with humans. Instead, they lived more like their cousins in Alaska and stayed in one place. They settled in an isolated region of Yukon, Canada, not far from Mount Logan. They bought a vast piece of property - large enough to ensure they had no neighbors. Then they built their own home, specifically to meet their unique needs. There were more than enough wings for each family unit to have their own privacy, but the large common area allowed them all to congregate together, when they wished for company, which was often.
With little Mikie's rapid growth rate, it would have made it even more difficult to feign humanity, if they had tried. Locked away on their own property, no one noticed them or paid attention to who came and went and they could keep their inhumanness to themselves.
It was easier, in many ways, to live separate from the human world for a time. Bell and Michael had so little experience interacting with a human community that they struggled to blend in, whenever they ventured into Whitehorse. Rosalie refused to even bring them along anymore when she did her monthly shopping trips. The day Michael had uprooted a full-grown white spruce in the full view of ten humans had sealed it.
"If they want to practice playing human, then they need to wait till we are in a bigger city. Whitehorse is too damn small for them to get by without being remembered. They can stay at home like good little vampires and stay out of trouble," Rosalie said. "When they are house trained, then they can come out to play."
Bell was careful to keep their family shielded at all times, just in case Demetri ever sought out Michael again. They also avoided interactions with passing nomads, just in case news of their location would travel back to Aro. They were close enough to the Denalis to allow regular visits between families and this provided a greater sense of community and companionship. The Denalis were delighted.
Interactions with old friends necessitated figuring out how to answer the inevitable questions that arose from Edward's resurrection from the dead. They had debated the best course of action. There options were not ideal to start with:
"Edward knew he was dying so decided to clone himself so we could keep him with us."
"This is Edward's long-lost twin brother who also happened to be made into a vampire."
"This is Edward, but he had a psychotic episode, has amnesia, thinks he is now called 'Michael'… oh, and managed to grow a beard."
"This is Michael… what's that? He looks like Edward? You don't say? We hadn't noticed."
In the end, Alice saw the best explanation was to blame it all on the Volturi.
"The Volturi have been playing with genetic experimentation and obtained replicas of Edward. One escaped."
Technically it was even (mostly) true. Darling had been part of the Volturi at one point… and Aro desperately wanted to create his own clones. If it just so happened those clones were all still humans or that Michael was formed in Neverland and not Volterra, the Denalis did not need to know that. Michael's own ignorance of the situation of his creation provided a great enough cover to ensure limited details were shared and that was that.
Kate said she liked Michael better, anyway.
Tanya said she would have, too, if it hadn't been for Bell.
Irina didn't care about Michael or Bell. She only had eyes for Mikie.
The little family settled in happily with the Cullens and never once talked of leaving. They had no desire to see the world or explore.
"Why would we leave when we have all we could ever want here?" Bell explained and that was that.
Esme never kept a guest room for Edward again. She put his photographs in the attic and filled the walls with photographs of Bell, Michael, and Mikie instead. The family never talked about the shift but in whispered moments alone with their mates they agreed in its rightness.
Even Carlisle.
Michael never "became" Edward, no matter how many years passed but fully inhabited his role as "Michael." While his innocent naiveté gradually molted off with the passing of years and experience, he never quite lost his optimism or contagious enthusiasm. Even during his "golden" years, Edward had still worn darkness like a second skin and had never quite found peace with himself (or within himself). Michael had never known he should be at war and he walked with an ease that marked him as a distinct individual, separate from his genetic prototype. Even in their memories and minds, none of the vampires who had known Edward could mistake him for Michael, once they got to know him.
While Esme ensured she had enough guest rooms for all of Edward's children, the twins were not frequent visitors.
"Don't take it personally," Izzy told Esme. "They are homebodies at heart and always have been. I could barely talk them into meeting me in Marrakesh and that's only around 2,000 miles away from their home. Canada might as well be the moon. If ever they do come, take it as a sign of how much they care."
When the Cullens left Scotland, all the children went their separate ways, much to everyone's disappointment. The twins were more than homesick and ready to go home. Isabella, too, was ready.
"Do we need to hide, too?" Izzy had asked, before the inhabitants of the Scottish castle disbanded.
"The Volturi don't know you exist. As long as you avoid nomads and keep playing at being human, you should be fine," Jasper had assured the trio.
"We would do well to avoid nomads, even without this possible danger," Khalid answered, with a pointed look at his sister. She ignored him.
They had all done just that. They had submerged themselves into their pseudo-human lives and only reintegrated into the world of the supernatural when the visited their vampiric family again.
Izzy came nearly every month or two, but she did not stay longer than a weekend or so when she came. The twins did come, but only once and for Mikie's wedding.
Like his fellow hybrids, the grown Mikie could settle into a human community much easier than his vampire relatives. When he grew to adulthood, he decided to go to college in Anchorage, and liked it so much, he stayed on indefinitely.
"It's not fair," Bell complained. "Our lifespans are longer…shouldn't that mean our children should be young longer? He grew up too fast!"
Everyone else agreed with her but there wasn't much they could do about it.
The Cullens had secretly hoped Mikie would find a nice little hybrid girl to settle down with so they could know his wife for their entire lives, rather than a brief interlude before they had to hide their lack of aging away. It was not to be. He settled down with a human woman, just as Izzy had done in her first marriage, and was perfectly content to maintain his life as it was.
They all knew someday he would have to leave his human life. Someday, he would have to face the fact that he wasn't aging. He wasn't ready yet. He was happy, as he was (despite how his parents moped around and missed him after he left them and constantly pleaded for him to come back and visit).
Aunty Izzy understood and was a key intermediary between disappointed family members, the day Mikie said he was marrying a human. "Give him time. He needs to be fully human now. In the future, maybe he'll come around. He has time."
"And that is why Aunty Izzy is my favorite," Mikie said, leaning over to pick up his diminutive "aunt" and swing her in a wide circle. He was as tall as Jasper by then and his fiery red hair was brighter than his father's had ever been. He was covered in freckles and his green eyes were every bit as bright as Khalid and Kassim's had ever been.
They never did figure out how to explain the relationship between the children - not even to themselves.
"I mean, technically they are siblings," Jasper said.
"No, they aren't!" Rose argued back. "They had different mothers and different fathers. Technically, they are cousins. Their fathers and mothers were related to each other, but they were not the same individuals."
"But, genetically speaking, they are exactly the same! If an archaeologist dug them up and ran tests, they'd find they are exactly the same!" Jasper argued back.
"Maybe their DNA is exactly the same, but the bodies they inhabit aren't," Rose said. "You can't say identical twins are the same people. It's like they are the kids of two sets of identical twins, which would make them cousins."
On and on it went. To simplify matters, they simply said they were an "aunt" and "uncles" to Mikie, and that was that.
"I don't want Mikie to have to know everything, not unless he asks someday, when he's older," Michael told the family, when the subject first came up. "Bell and I didn't need to know. We are alive and that's all that matters to us and unless something changes, that's enough for Mikie, too. Edward is your long lost relative, but nothing more."
Other members of the family didn't agree, but they respected Bell and Michael's opinions in the matter and didn't press.
In order to grant peace to the rest of the Cullen family, Alice and Jasper spent most of their time on their own. It wasn't because of a lack of desire to stay with the family or out of any underlying conflict, but Alice didn't want to have to explain her sudden shifts in mood or the turbulence her visions gave her. She also didn't want Michael to have to see her visions. She didn't even want to have to see her visions and rather wished Bell's gift could have been used to occlude her sight.
Back when her visions were used primarily to predict the weather, stock market, and high school pop quizzes, they were easy enough to deal with. Ever since Edward had left, her visions had become worse than nightmares. For a time after his death, she thought the worst was over. In a way, maybe it was. However, her confidence in her visions had been shaken by Izzy's existence and she knew better than to trust any of what she could see (or not see) entirely. There were holes. There were mistakes. There were omissions. There were sudden changes.
It was around a hundred years after Edward's death when Alice's faith in her visions was called into question again. She was suddenly assaulted with visions of individuals she knew to be dead. It didn't help matters that the visions were nearly identical to ones she had experienced in the past. Her pivotal vision of Edward's two fated paths resurrected from beyond his grave and lay bare before Alice's sight all over again.
She could see it. Two visions of two possible futures for Edward. In the first, the Swan girl gazed at Edward with red eyes and a smiling face, her arm enfolded over a golden-eyed Edward's shoulders. In the second, Edward's arm enfolded her corpse, his red eyes and blood-stained smile, gazing at her lifeless body.
Alice began to notice subtle differences in these recent visions from those of her past. For one, the Swan girl's hair was shorter and her clothes were not those of a twenty-first century American high school student. Edward, also, was not dressed as he had been. In the vision, his hair kept changing. Sometimes it was short, sometimes long. Sometimes he had facial hair, sometimes he did not. These inconsistencies and the obvious fact that both were supposed to be dead, made Alice think either they were memories masquerading as visions or that something was wrong with her gift. She didn't look into it further and she dismissed the vision whenever it came.
She regretted this a hundred and forty years later. Discovering that a shade of Edward's mate had not only survived his end, but managed to resurrect Edward over a hundred times in an effort to overthrow the lords of the vampire world had shaken Alice to her core. She realized what her vision had actually been, now. She hadn't seen it, hadn't recognized it…because she hadn't looked. The guilt of that, the weight of that, plagued her.
She vowed not to let such an oversight happen again and so she fixed herself in place and stared her visions full in the face, no matter how terrible or uncomfortable they became. With all that occurred in Neverland and then Volterra, her visions were seldom anything but nightmares.
Alice hadn't known, beforehand, whether the antipathy surrounding her visions of Neverland's queen was due to her own past experiences and unresolved feelings for her brother's end, or if it was a premonition of what was to come and what her relationship with Neverland's founder would entail. She had hoped to somehow make up for her past failures, to somehow make it better, but Darling was harder to crack than a coconut. In the end, it was Darling who gave the proverbial balm for her soul and not Alice… and this left Alice feeling all the rawer and more exposed. Darling's olive branch hurt more than her anger ever would have, as much as Alice desperately appreciated it and needed her forgiveness.
It became all the worse because of her knowledge of what Darling and Peter were heading straight into. Alice could see it all and no option could be described as "pleasant."
Alice had visions before Darling ever came to Scotland.
In one, Darling never came and the Volturi's scouting party arrived first. In this scenario, Aro would have discovered, and recognized, Bell. Bell and Michael would have been pressed into Volturi service, neutralizing Darling's advantage, and the successive battle in the empty grounds around Tinkerbell's House would have come down to the two women: Darling against Bell.
Peter, still ignorant of his requited mating bond with Darling, would have been torn between which woman to protect. This would have led to his downfall. His death made Darling wrath unstoppable and she became the avenging angel she always intended to be. She would have easily been proved the victor over the Volturi with the advantage her army gave her in numbers, but Michael and Bell would join Peter in death. Her victory would not heal the grief Peter's loss caused and she would not have outlived him by long.
Darling did not stay in Neverland, but she chose to leave her fortress undefended so she could protect Bell. This changed the outcome on all sides, save for that of Darling's eventual victory over the Volturi.
There was another vision where Darling was never betrayed. Her army was strong and prepared to fight when Aro arrived. In this, the forces of Volterra were overthrown within a matter of hours, but Peter insisted on standing guard over Darling himself. Felix took his head.
A Darling bereft of her mate and reeling in fury directed her anger at the vampire world in general. With her army behind her, she fulfilled her original purpose of seeking to destroy as many of the vampire world as she could, with all judged guilty solely on their existence as vampires. It was against Darling that Augustine's alliance of covens came together to fight against and it was Neverland that went up in flames in the aftermath.
There was another course of action and one in which both Darling and Peter lived. Alice's one remaining means of making up for her past mistakes, her one gift of atonement to make to the woman she had left behind in Barzakh, was to give her back her mate.
So, when Alice shared her vision of the future with Peter upon his departure, in a word, she lied… by omission or editing.
"You have a choice, Peter. If you choose to go with Darling now, and you stay by Darling's side, she will live. If you leave her, if you stay back, she will die."
Alice knew that Peter would never agree to a course of action which would force Darling to suffer. He would gladly give his life to keep her from harm, even if that action in itself would cause her to suffer. For Darling to live, so must Peter. For Peter to live, it meant he had to think the actions he took were for the good of Darling rather than his own self-preservation.
Alice saw what would happen if she told Peter the truth of what was coming. He would have killed all the clones in Neverland before Aro even arrived. He would have fought against the Volturi single-handed. He would have sabotaged all of Darling's plans himself, if only to keep her from the fate that was going to befall her.
Alice told Peter just enough truth and enough glimpses of visions to propel him in the proper direction. Darling would take care of the rest. Alice might have neglected to tell Peter the message she gave Darling, right before they departed Scotland.
"You have a choice, Darling. If you let Peter remain free, he will die. If you let him stay by your side, like he will beg you to do, he will not survive. If you lock him up, he will live."
This was the extent of Alice's meddling. Still, it had the desired effect. Peter was locked away where no one, not even himself, could lead him into harm's way and he would keep all his limbs and teeth intact. Yet, the years between would be long and difficult.
Jasper had to nearly drown Alice in waves of peace and calm every time she saw just what Darling was facing in the hands of the Volturi. Still, she lived and would someday be freed. Peter, well, her vision of him remained unchanged. He was, for all intents and purposes, hibernating deep underground and waiting the return of his beloved whose kiss would wake him from his sleep.
All Alice could do now was wait.
As soon as she knew it was time for Volterra to fall, she returned Alaska to be there with the Cullens when it happened. The news report showed images of the visions she had been waiting to see and there was a certain level of vindictive satisfaction knowing she would never have to see the handiwork of Caius and Aro again.
"You doubted she could do it?" Rosalie asked, one eyebrow raised in Emmett's direction. Jasper began searching the internet for more information on the "terrorist attack" in Volterra and began to play whatever he could find on the T.V.
"I mean, she's pretty bad ass, but didn't Alice say her little magic kingdom was ransacked?" Emmett responded. "I expected to hear some big epic battle when the Volturi showed up at her house with her army. Instead, we heard the Volturi won."
"If you will remember, I said, 'won for now.' Not simply, 'won'," Alice chimed in, speaking for the first time since the news came on.
"Same difference," Emmett said.
"Hardly," Jasper wryly answered. "I believe the appropriate phrasing is that they 'won the battle but lost the war.'"
"What happens next?" Rose asked. "Is that it?"
"It's only the beginning. The invading covens were content enough to fight alongside each other to overthrow Volterra. Once the dust settles, they will turn on each other over who will take leadership next. Half of them want to become the Volturi and take their place as tyrant rulers. The other half want this to be a revolution - but the nature of that revolution is still contested. Some want to entirely conquer the human world. The others want to institute a kind of symbiotic, open, coexistence with humans," Alice explained. "There will be vampire wars springing up around the world over what our next era of vampire-human relations will be."
"Which side will win?"
"Which side will win for now or win overall?"
"Overall."
"The pacifists, but only because they will be the only ones left standing at the end," Alice said. "The only thing they need to do to defeat the others is to wait quietly while the others fight it out and destroy each other. I wouldn't recommend going anywhere near Volterra for at least a hundred years. Maybe two hundred."
Emmett whistled. "What about the humans there?"
"It's going to be real hard to keep vampire existence a secret like that," Jasper observed.
"I don't think our existence would have remained secret much longer anyways," Alice said. "With changes in human technology, it was only a matter of time… and the Volturi have been so consumed with their internal affairs lately that they have not been monitoring the human world like they used to.
"Actually, the leader of the covens of North Africa has been secretly making alliances and treaties with human governing bodies across Africa and Asia for nearly two hundred years. He's made sure that when our cover is blown and Volterra falls apart, his covens will not be disturbed or even be a surprise, at least on their side of the globe. He's planning to offer refuge to any vampires who are disrupted by human antagonism in future, in case their geographic regions are less hospitable."
"And the humans will accept that?" Carlisle asked, suddenly very interested in the direction of the conversation.
"Well, in the regions the treaties have been established, they already have. There's still debates about just what rules, regulations, and protections should be enacted between parts, but the acknowledgement of shared territories and mutual existences is not a question."
"North Africa – that's Augustine, correct?" Carlisle said.
"Yes."
"I think it's time I pay Augustine a visit," Carlisle said.
"It's a good idea…," Alice began, but then her mind filled with a series of visions of what this visit would entail. She grinned. "But Carlisle…"
"Yes?"
"Take Bell and Michael with you."
"Do you think it will be that dangerous?" Carlisle asked.
Alice laughed. "Oh no. Not dangerous at all. Augustine will see you faster if you bring them… and the look on his face will make it all worth it."
ooooo
Augustine
2435 A.D.
When Augustine was informed he had visitors from a North American coven, he had been surprised. The covens separated by oceans rarely interacted with each other. There were, of course, curious nomads and stragglers who travelled between continents, but entire covens rarely left their own geographic territories and rarely translocated for more than a decade or two at a time before returning "home." He could not fathom why any of the North American covens would bother to travel all the way to Tunisia to seek him out, unless it had to do with the international trade in bottled blood. However, he had given that all over to Slightly and Marcus and it should not concern him at all.
"What do they want? Slightly is here. Send him."
"Their leader is someone who calls himself Carlisle Cullen and a mated pair who say they are Michael and Bell Peterson. Carlisle says he wishes to speak with you specifically."
"About what?"
"I don't know… but you should know, Michael resembles Slightly so exactly I would have thought they were born twins."
"Oh… Oh…"
"And the woman, Bell, it if weren't for her hair, I would have mistaken her for Darling."
Augustine froze in place. For the first time in nearly a hundred years, he broke with etiquette and sought his visitors out rather then having them sent in to him.
The fair-haired, European vampire who called himself Carlisle came forward and greeted Augustine in the manner of his people, but Augustine did not pay any attention to him. He could not look away from the pair alongside him.
Augustine couldn't say he was surprised… he had always known Darling created clones of herself and Slightly … but seeing the reality of it was another matter entirely. He immediately cleared his schedule of all other visitors and screamed out through his home.
"Slightly… you two-faced son of a jackal, what else have you neglected to tell me?"
Oooooo
Augustine stared back and forth between Michael and Slightly. They were identical, save for a small scar under Slightly's left eye. Then there was the woman. He was nearly overcome with warring waves of joy and grief at the sight of her. It was Darling, and yet not Darling at all. No, if he had seen her from a distance, he would hardly have recognized her as the same woman. It was more than her short hair and informal trousers and blouse. It was the way she carried herself without concern and the brevity of words spoken by her unharried eyes. This Bell might have been a replica of Darling but she was no imitation.
Their coven was an unambitious and terribly boring one – full of vampires more content to live as humans than as vampires. They were useful allies and he would willingly accept any of them under his coven, if they so wished, but he would not have traversed continents and oceans to seek them out himself.
Though, to know that such a shield still remained was a useful piece of information, and so he would play the host for as long as necessary to foster the relationship between covens.
"It's true. When our alliance of covens broke into Volterra, they found half the guard unconscious on the ground of the blood reproduction plant," Augustine explained. "It only took a single match to fell their greatest of assets. The ones who remained and stood to fought were few and did not possess the skills required to provide much of a challenge. The overall battle took little more than a day.
"When the fighting was over, Darling's stolen army broke into the blood reproduction plant and did not leave any bottle or barrel dry. The coven from the Indus valley found them first. Their sister coven in the Deccan plateau was wiped out by an attack by the Volturi and that army. They had no wish to see which side the army would fight for when they woke and so they ended them all where they lay.
"Our alliance of covens expected to give their lives to the cause. None of us expected to find Volterra so easily captured. No one could figure out why Darling's army turned on the Volturi like they did. One moment, they were following Caius' orders, and the next, they turned on every guard around.
"When the fortress, the symbolic heart, of the vampire world was ours, our alliance quickly fractured. When the covens of the Maghreb returned home, those of Romania and Indonesia were still warring with those of China and Russia. It is anybody's guess who will overcome, in the end."
"Do you know Darling's fate?" Carlisle asked.
"No, and that is for the better. Any of those covens that remain would burn half their own members at the stake if it meant they could claim Darling for themselves. As long as fighting continues in Volterra, it is better we do not know her fate."
"How did you come to acquire these two?" Slightly asked, motioning to Michael and Bell. "I did not think I would ever see either of you again."
"You knew us?" Bell asked, confused.
He gave them a cocky smirk and nodded. "I knew you both… quite well. Especially you, Michael. Are you still studying trees these days?"
Michael gave a wary, hesitant nod and the pair locked eyes. What appeared to be a silent conversation flittered between them, culminating in Michael's groan and his eyes closed. Slightly's grin only grew wider.
"Out loud, boys," Bell chastised. "Or I will shield you both to force you to speak out loud."
It was then that Augustine felt as foolish as a foiled thief. Of course, Slightly had to have a gift. He made a mental note to confront Slightly later, once their guests were not around to witness it.
"Oh, it's nothing important. I might have been a regular visitor of Michael's when he stayed in Volterra. He thought about you a lot, back then. It almost made me nauseous with how sickeningly sweet it was," Slightly said. "I am glad to see you both survived and have stayed out of trouble. Peter never did tell me where he sent you."
"Peter sent them to our family through some, uh, shared acquaintances," Carlisle said.
"How could Peter possibly have any acquaintances? The man hardly ever left Neverland, unless he was with me or in Barzakh."
Carlisle was about to speak when he was cut off by Michael's sudden interjection.
"Darling's sire was originally part of Carlisle 's coven."
It was enough to leave Augustine and Slightly speechless. Augustine would have exploded in curses if Slightly had not placed a steadying hand on his arm.
"It is true," Carlisle said. "Edward, my son, was both Darling's creator and sire. He was no longer staying with us, by that time. When he found his singer, he chose to go another direction and left us. When it became clear what that direction entailed, my daughter sought him out and ended him. By then, we knew nothing of Darling."
"He should face the wrath of the gods for a thousand lifetimes for the harm he caused to his own mate," Augustine said in his lingering sense of anger.
"Well, he is beyond reach of our justice now and must face the consequences in the next life," Carlisle said.
"To meddle with playing at the divine while only a mortal being will always reap divine retribution. We are not meant to experience our singer more than once. We are not meant to form a mating bond more than once. These are our gifts, our moments of tasting the divine, but we are not meant to dwell on Mount Olympus. This recreating of people, it is playing at being god and must lead to destruction. At first, I, too, was entranced by its power, but no more."
"But you replicate blood." Carlisle pointed out.
"It is magnificent! The divine granted humanity the ability to sow crops and rear cattle over gathering wild foods. This is our domestication! This is our preservation of food, our maintenance of harvests, our irrigation and our plow. It is the very spark of divine imagination and creativity!"
"How is that different than playing god?"
"Ah, but here we are replicating only the blood, not the entire individual. We do not create new people. There is no spark of life, no creation of soul, but only the flow of inanimate fluids, no longer connected to their host body."
"Do you still replicate singers' blood?" Carlisle asked.
"No longer," Augustine said. "My enemies have either been defeated or are in the process of defeating each other. I believe the effects of unlimited duplication of singers' blood is quite clear."
"Why do you think we experience such a strong reaction to particular individuals?" Carlisle asked.
"I have dwelt on this for years, wondering that myself. Perhaps it is to test us, to reveal what is in our hearts. For a vampire to face their singer and overcome - what greater test, what greater proof, of strength exists? To falter and consume - well, that is to partner with eternal torment. To have tasted such beauty and then dwell in the confines of the mundane is as near to hell as can be experienced in our lives.
"Yet if we know such beauty exists and allow it to live, allow it to breathe, allow it to flourish, only then it becomes ours because it is not owned, it is not conquered. It is free and that gives us freedom. To kill it is to destroy part of ourselves. We exchange our soul, the part of us that is made for beauty, in exchange for owning what was never meant to be owned."
"Some would argue that no soul is created in a clone," Slightly pointed out with a wry grin.
"And some would argue there is no soul at all. What of it? What people have ever lived who do not know we are more than our bodies? What people have ever not known about the immortal spark, the thirst for life, the flimsy piece of consciousness that dwells in our bodies? Fools and blind men who wish to become fools. Tell me, does death begin with the body or the mind or the soul? Does life? The presence of our kind alone should be ample evidence of the existence of souls. I am as I was human, only in a form that has already passed through the fires of first death. I will remain, even after I pass through the fires of my second death."
"What of the Volturi belief that vampiricim is humanity perfected?"
"Typical Volterra arrogance. It is far easier to remain convinced of one's own superiority when you lock yourself away in a fortress and never allow it to be questioned or tested. Have you ever read the works of the fifth century scholar from Egypt..."
oooo
When their guests returned to their home, Augustine could finally address one of the many unexpected revelations their arrival had prompted. Augustine turned on Slightly with a glowering expression.
"Not only is there a duplicate of the most powerful shield known to exist in the history of the vampire world… but her mate is a telepath? Darling's entire army was made up of mind-readers?" Augustine said, hoping he was wrong, but knowing he wasn't.
"That about sums it up," Slightly said with a shrug. Then he gave an irritatingly mick bow and clapped in applause.
Augustine swore loudly. "It does not conclude anything! You didn't tell me! I sent our covens into battle unprepared for such a fight!"
"Darling told me not to tell, no matter what."
"Darling is gone. The Volturi have fallen. You ingrate. How dare you keep such secrets from me!"
The reminder of just where Slightly's loyalty still lay was not exactly a surprise but a reminder. Darling, afterall, was more than his sire. She created him, raised him, and was a manifestation of his mate and so Augustine should have expected Slightly's gut instinct remain loyal to his mistress. It was still irritating.
"It never seemed like quite the right time to make you as mad as a starved crocodile."
"As mad as… you are correct. I should have your head for this, you filthy dog! You treacherous piece of vermin! You have been gleaning every thought from my head for decades years without warning me!"
"If I told you, then you'd filter your thoughts."
Augustine groused and grumbled and continued swearing at him, though he knew Slightly himself could tell when his anger had given way to shrewd calculation.
"And you can easily read the thoughts of each and every one of our enemies and allies."
Slightly shrugged. "You want to know what Nadya was thinking when she came from Morocco?"
"If you wish to distract me from my anger, it will not work."
"But I made you curious."
"Tell me… but do not believe for a minute I am not still angry with you."
"Oh, I can still hear your anger... and all your scheming as you decide just how to best utilize my gift."
"Can you gift be turned off?"
" Not without Darling."
"What a pair! What possibilities! And she was assembling them like mass produced shoes! It is nothing short of a miracle that Volterra fell."
Augustine shook his head. "Playing god... playing with fire... taking a serpent by the tail..." he mumbled to himself.
"Augustine... there will be no more Darlings. We made sure of it. Bell is the only one that remained."
"I am not sure if that news should grant me more relief or despair. Well, distract me, Slightly. Tell me about Nadya."
Slightly grinned.
oooo
Author's note: one more real epilogue. Then I will have a section of reader AUs for this story. PM me all your brilliant ideas on how this story could have gone and I will include them.
Also, I had a sudden burst of a short story in this world. It has absolutely nothing to do with any of the rest of this story. I may tag that on at the end, just for fun. Stay tuned.
