Chapter 14

BPOV

With no definitive way to hold Alice while we interrogated her the only option we decided was to continue having Hulk hold onto her. They both hated it immensely, and Alice kept complaining that he smelled and that just made him more agitated. She refused to talk until she was fed, but since we had no human blood in the fridge, I went out to hunt for her.

No one could stand to watch her feed aside from Steve, so he stayed with me while she went at it. As she was finishing up and everyone else came back, I crouched down in front of her.

"Now, you're going to give us some answers, Alice." When she looked up at me with her light blush-colored eyes, I knew there was much more to the story.

Edward

I thought the day I left Bella alone in the woods in Forks was the hardest day of my life.

I was so wrong.

Standing in front of the Volturi and pledging my service and allegiance to them was the hardest thing I've ever done.

"So, young Edward"—Aro's high voice rang like a bell in my ears as it echoed around the chamber where he and his two brothers were holding audiences—"you finally want to come and be a part of the guard? Is that correct?"

I nodded, suddenly unable to form words.

"And what of your family? So many gifted and wonderful creatures in your small coven." Aro glances over both shoulders to Caius and Marcus. "Why, we'd love to have terrific, tiny Alice and the spry Jasper in our accord as well."

"If I can convince them to come, will you take me?"

Aro laughs his maniacal laugh, and I try not to cringe.

"I suppose we could offer the three of you a special place in the guard. I do adore Jane, but having different … gifts could make for interesting audiences."

I nod and promise to bring the two of them back with me. As I'm turning to leave, Caius calls out to me. "What about that pretty little human you had? Yes, Edward, we know about her."

"We're nothing. She's nothing." The words sound weak to my own ears, but I force them out anyway.

Caius sits forward on his throne. "But did you tell her?" He's all but hissing and spitting venom at me.

"Yes, but she won't tell. She's too afraid, too heartbroken. And who would believe her?" I ask with a casual shrug of my shoulders.

"Surely, you've listened to her mind and heard whether she has told anyone?" Marcus asks me lazily from his chair.

"I … I can't hear her. She's silent to me," I admit with defeat.

Aro turns and walks to his brothers, and they whisper among themselves. When Aro turns around, his eyes are even wilder than before.

"We'll give you what you seek, my dear boy. But bring the human girl to us. We believe she also has a gift—one we haven't seen in millennia. We want her as well." Aro nods and continues to do so until I finally agree and turn to leave.

I have to go back to Forks and bring Bella to Italy.

To say the family was angry that I went off to meet with the Volturi would be a massive understatement. Carlisle was furious, and Esme felt betrayed that I would go to the rulers and enforcers of our laws without speaking to them first. Rosalie and Emmett were mad too, but mostly, they were hurt because they could guess what my plans were.

Then there was Alice and Jasper. He felt how wound up I was when I entered the house in Ithaca, and Alice had been confused for two days as I kept my mind as blank as possible to throw her off my trail.

Rosalie and Emmet left for Europe while Carlisle and Esme berated me for three full days. It would be so easy to just … end them.

"Edward! No!" Alice screams at me just as I lunge for Carlisle—the man who loved me like a son, cared for me as a father would and guided me.

The man who made me a monster.

All the rage that had been pent up inside me for over one hundred years came flowing out as I ripped him limb from limb. When I felt Esme attack me from behind, I gave her the choice to come with me or join her beloved.

She gnashed her teeth at me and I ripped her head off.

Alice and Jasper stared at me, stunned and scared.

"Jasper, go make a fire in the backyard," I order him with a snarl.

He backs out of the room and tries to pull Alice with him, but she shrugs him off.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" Alice is screaming, and I can hear dogs from miles away begin to bark. "We can put them back together. Help me! We can fix this."

"I'm done, Alice. You know what gift Aro gave me before I left Italy with my assignment?"

"Your assignment? Edward, what are you talking about?" Alice has only looked scared once in the time I've known her. The moment Jasper tried to attack Bella on her birthday.

I walk toward Alice and grin. "He gave me the gift of human blood, Alice. Do you even remember what it tasted like? Of course, you do. We can have as much as we want, whenever we want.

"We just have to get Bella and change her, and then the four of us can join the guard. Think about it, Alice. Jasper won't suffer anymore. You and he can truly be united in every way. Don't you want that, Alice?"

I was so sure how everything would end up that when her eyes glossed over and she was searching for her future—when her eyebrows rose to her hairline—I knew she saw what I was seeing.

That's all I needed.

Added to the fact that Alice was still weak when it came to human blood, I walked past her into the kitchen where I had deposited a cooler in the unused fridge and pulled it out to rip open a bag of Type B blood. When they both ran into the kitchen and took over, I dragged Carlisle and Esme's bodies outside and let them burn.

Once Alice and Jasper were on the sauce and under my control, taking out Emmett and Rosalie was almost easier than our "parents". We just separated them while they were hunting in a Romanian forest.

The look of horror and disbelief on both of their faces made it so worth it. Rosalie never liked Bella anyway, so she never would have been much help to me and my cause. And Emmett? Well, he was an idiot; I'd always thought so. Aside from his brawn, he wasn't good for much in my opinion, so both of them had to go.

Unfortunately for us, news spread of what we were doing, and we were confronted by the coven from Denali when we returned to the States. Carmen and Eleazar tried to calm us down and convince us to stop our rampage, as they called it.

That blonde bitch, Kate, tried using her power on us, but Jasper blocked her with her own fear and we broke them down too.

A few days later while we hunt through New Orleans on our way back to Forks, Alice approaches me cautiously.

"Edward, can I have a word with you, please?" She looks even smaller than usual, and her red eyes are wide.

"What is it, Alice? You seem upset."

"I'm upset about a lot of things, Edward." She lets out a sigh and sits down on a bench next to me in Jackson Square Park. "Mostly, the fact that it's been over two years since we left Forks. What if Bella isn't there anymore? Or, worse, what if she's not interested in seeing you again?"

"Can you see her?" I ask, suddenly nervous that my plan is going to hell.

"I get glimpses but not a clear enough picture. Her future is uncertain right now," Alice wails quietly, and for the first time in years, I feel a wave of affection for her.

"Alice, we know what her fate is … she's destined to be my mate. You saw it years ago, and now we're going to fulfill that vision. Aro says she has a gift. Think about it. We'll be the four most powerful vampires the Volturi has because we'll be part of the same coven. We'll be together."

Alice smiles weakly. "Like a family?"

"Yes, just like a family."

Getting into Forks was easy enough. We'd put some cars into storage in Seattle and drove the silver Volvo into town. It was like the three youngest Cullen kids had come back to visit.

We'd even sacrificed our taste buds by eating animals for several days so we could return to the golden eye color we'd once had while living there. No one paid us much mind until I was pulled over for a speeding ticket on Front Street by none other than one Chief Charlie Swan.

"You know why I pulled you over, don't you?" He finally takes a good look at me and his calm cop demeanor fades away. "Edward Cullen, what the hell do you think you're doing here?"

"Hi, Chief. My brother, sister, and I are just back home to see some friends and visit our old house. We're all at school at UDub." I tell him this as softly and calmly as I can. I can't smell Bella on him and that concerns me.

Charlie Swan doesn't buy my bull for one second. "You blew it, kid. She doesn't want to see you."

"Hi, Charlie!" Alice sings out from the passenger seat with a great big smile. "Maybe she doesn't want to see Edward, but I'm sure I can come by and say hi, right?"

The chief sighs and scratches at this mustache. "Even if she wanted to see you, Alice, she isn't here. She moved about three months ago."

I asked him where, and as he lectured me and wrote me a ticket, I listened to his mind. It was almost as silent as Bella's to me. All he seemed to be thinking was that he should kick my ass and send me packing. Nothing about where his daughter was.

"I get it, Chief. We'll leave." I take the ticket from him and deliberately speed off and out of town.

That night, Jasper comes to me with a plan, and while it's messy, it does have a certain panache.

"We'll get into trouble with the Volturi. Aro will see this as too public," I state as Jasper sits across from me at the diner we've stopped in to hunt.

"Maybe … but maybe we don't need the Volturi," Jasper says as he pushes the full cup of coffee out of his way so he can lean on the table between us. "Maybe once we get Bella, the four of us can take out the Volturi ourselves, and we can rule and govern the vampire world."

"Jasper," I see the look in his eyes—the blind devotion. He truly believes we can do this. "Are you using your powers on me?"

"I promise I'm not."

"I like it. When do we start?" I ask with a smirk.

When we start leaving our trail for Bella to pick up on, it starts out as fun for us. Once we get to Chicago though, we realize we need a more stable plan because we have no idea where Bella is.

Alice finally has an idea to hack all the college and university websites in the country to see if she's a student. While normally, I would agree to this, Alice hasn't been using her gift, and that's really how we're going to find her.

Finally, not with her gift of seeing the future but her powers of observation, Alice figures out where Bella is.

People Magazine is running a feature on the billionaire, Tony Stark. Something about some charity work he was doing to contribute to the relief work in New York after that alien invasion.

And wouldn't you know who was standing next to him in a few of the pictures in the spread?

Stark's goddaughter, Bella Swan, a student at Columbia University.

"She's in New York. We need to head there," Alice tells me as she closes the magazine and tries to throw it away, but something catches my eye, and I rip it from her hands.

I flip back to the pages of the Stark story and see in glossy color Bella talking and laughing with some clown in red, white, and blue.

"That's Captain America," Jasper says over my shoulder. "Don't you remember him from back in the day?"

"He's not the same guy though, right?" I ask incredulously. "He'd be over 100 years old."

Jasper shakes his head. "He put a plane down during the war and was frozen in the ice. It's a whole thing. I'll pull the info for you."

I nod absently as I look at the photos—his hand on the small of her back, her leaning into him to listen to him speak, and their shared smiles.

How dare she? She's my mate!

Our plan was simple enough: we'd leave a trail of clues that Bella could pick up on. She's smart and she'd know it was a vampire immediately.

With the trail of victims growing and my bloodlust churning, we had to get to New York and Bella sooner rather than later.

I sent Alice and Jasper to Staten Island, knowing full well that Bella would find her way there to either look for me or some other vampire. She was reckless. I never anticipated that Alice would change Bella and not bring her back to me. I raged for days until I finally calmed down enough to rework our plan.

We left the note at the Avengers tower to let her know we were coming. I wanted her ready to leave with me.

Then we tracked her down to the woods in upstate New York. That's where I watched from up high as she trained with those humans. For what? Who was she trying to defend herself against?

Certainly not me; not the love of her life.

I walk back to where Alice and Jasper are waiting. "Go down there. Bring her to me. Don't fuck it up this time."

"What about what I saw, Edward?" Alice asks me as she and Jasper stand.

"If it comes to that, then let it happen."

I send the two of them off, hoping for my reward and redemption and ignoring the feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach.

BPOV

"I stopped feeding on humans after I bit you." Alice's voice was full of regret even if she was trying to regain a vegetarian lifestyle.

"But you did feed on humans. And you killed Emmett and Rosalie. Your brother and sister! You stood by while Edward murdered the people you've called your parents for decades. They were good people, living good lives." I can't look at her as she sits limply in Hulk's hand.

"I didn't have a choice."

"There's always a choice. You just didn't make the right one," I say in a low tone so only she can hear me.

I look at my friends and family and shake my head. They might never understand or forgive me for this.

I leap at Hulk and grab Alice's head, twisting at the neck and ripping it off.

As everyone stares at me in shock, I look to Thor. "I need a fire and I need one now."

In the distance, deep in the forest, a gut wrenching howl rings out.