Disclaimer: I disclaim.


Marcus had a dark look on his face, and I was feeling a little regretful as the elevator doors closed. Not for my decision, not yet, but because now I was stuck in a tiny place, held captive in the arms of an angry... whatever he was. As soon as the elevator had started moving, Marcus rather gently set my feet down and reached a pale, cold arm to press the emergency stop button.

"Luce," he started, but said nothing else for a few moments. Then picked me up again, this time sliding down the wall to the floor and pulling me into the space between his legs. I sighed, because he was cold against my aching ribs, and because that pheromone he must have been producing that made him smell so sweet was on full blast. Seeing as I was stuck, why not enjoy, eh?

"Luce," he began again, "Can I not convince you to change your mind?" He touched his cold fingertips to my jawline and tilted my head up to his face, bringing his down closer, in what I believe to depths of my rotten soul an intentional effort to manipulate me with his beauty. Jerk.

"What can you offer that's better than what he did?" I asked petulantly when I could think again. He seemed to consider this for a while, and I took the opportunity to stretch my uninjured leg out to meet the casted one, conveniently underneath his uplifted knee. Then I marveled a bit, because his body was spread out in just the perfect way to accommodate my injuries, and I wonder how he knew, why he was so attuned to that.

Somehow in the span of minutes since we'd met, Marcus had become as acclimated to my signals as Rickie was after the many years he'd been with me. It was highly disturbing.

I pulled forward a bit in his arms, as if to sneak away, but he just tightened his grip a little and put one hand on the side of my face, pressing it to his collarbone. I didn't dare resist, what with the force I somehow knew him capable, and the fragility of my own body, all I could do was feel a little helpless and useless.

"You are so delicate Luce," Marcus said quietly, "And I have not held a woman in my arms in a very long time."

I don't know what else he could possibly have said to inspire my anger so quickly as he did in that moment. One, another woman. That made me jealous. Two, I was jealous. That made it worse. Three, I was frightened at the sudden severity of emotion that I couldn't explain. I pulled away again, and this time, he let me, looking at my face with an expression that seemed all at once embarrassed and frightened. He seemed so childlike and innocent in the one moment that I was taken aback.

"Well," I stuttered, "I haven't held a woman in a while either..." Oh, my God. If I could have died then... Usually when I say something sarcastic, I think first, but he was just so pretty...

Marcus's face became even more stony then.

"Uh... That was a joke...?" I said, my face must have been several shades darker than a pomegranate then, which, if anybody is wondering, is my favorite fruit. And so good for you, look it up folks.


"I fail to see any humor in this situation," Marcus said after a moment, trying to gauge the look on Luce's face. She was bright red, and it was a little dizzying to see the blood flush, and to hear her heart beat so loudly in her embarrassment.

He watched the colors swirl between them and focused on the scent of their bond. It was an amazing thing, bonds between people. They each had colors, and shapes, and scents. Some were thick, almost opaque, some translucent and wispy. And they flowed at different speeds, swirling and waving, or taut like cables strung between people.

The bond between Luce and himself was a marvel. It reminded him of the bonds between the members of the Cullen clans in consistency, and the way it grew was frightening. Just earlier in the same day since he had met her, it had been like a thread, was thicker, and brighter, smelling like her, and like him. It was a pleasing mixture that curbed his thirst for her. He watched it glow slightly and pressed his nose again behind her ear to breath in the scent cautiously. He found it didn't burn half as much as it had before, and pulled the tip of his nose through her hair.

"M-marcus," She squeaked, "Why do you keep sniffing me? Are you a dog?" Something about her tone made him pull back and look at her face to gauge her expression. She looked a little nervous, but more intent, as though she thought perhaps that was the kind of monster he was. He chuckled darkly, and the look on his face must have frightened her, because she clenched her fingers on her right hand and shifted away.

Again. He let her gain some distance, pulling his arms back and capturing her hand to gently uncurl the fist she'd made. He stretched her fingers out and inspected them silently. They weren't quite straight, any of them. He turned his eyes then to hers, questioning wordlessly.

"I broke my fingers a lot when I was younger," She answered, "The people who raised me didn't really take care that they healed straight, so I have crooked fingers. They still work fairly well," she added, and he sensed in that moment a great deal of pain and shame that she was trying to hide, "So it's not like I'm crippled."

Then she looked at him with a determined gaze, and the silvery irises demanded his attention.

"Your turn."

Marcus sighed and, wondering why he was so willing do as this child commanded him, began to speak.

"I am not a dog." And then he paused, looking for words that wouldn't overly frighten her, but she wasn't in the mood to wait.

"And?" She pressed him, not giving even a centimeter.

"I am immortal, and I consume human blood." Marcus finally relented, then felt like he'd used the wrong words. He waited for a reaction for two seconds, then three, then four...

Uh... Wha...? Hmm. Sooooo...

And then I exploded. "Vampire?!" I practically shouted, hurting my ribs with the force of the exhalation, "Like, Bram Stoker, Dracula, 'I vaaant to suuuuck your blood', vampire?!" I had to draw a deep breath then, right before I surrendered to the peals of giggles that overcame me. Ouch. Giggles hurt.

But I couldn't stop. It was just too funny. Or maybe it wasn't funny at all. I was just so tired, and wired, and shocked, and in so much unnecessary pain. Why the hell are vampires real? Couldn't he have been a fairy? Or a leprechaun? The thought of the tall, brooding man in a green suit and hat dancing a jig was funny though, and again began the giggling, just as I'd though it could stop.

"Oh! Oh! Ouch! Hahaha!" I looked up into the face of my vampire captor, and he looked so helpless with his eyebrows lifted so high and his jaw a little slack, and those filmy red eyes just so confused.

"Pffahaha!" I started up again, and then tears started rolling down my cheeks, and I couldn't breathe, and I started to hiccup a little. Then gasp, and suddenly, I was hyperventilating, and clawing at the chalky hand that held mine. I couldn't see his face then, because everything went dark.


When I woke up, it was to the pressure, dry air, and dull roar of a plane's engines. All I could think of at that point was; how fast. I suppose Marcus hadn't argued with the eviler vampire's decision. Then all of a sudden the pain swept over me like a wave. I really should have taken that medication. I opened my eyes blearily to my surroundings. The plane was small. The interior was rich, warm colors, with lots of wooden paneling and earth toned draperies. I felt leather beneath me, and a thick wool blanket over me.

My second though was, of course Rickie. I sat up slowly, and was relieved to find him in the seat facing me, and met his tired, worried eyes. I relaxed the tension I hadn't known I was carrying at the sight of my baby's exhausted face.

"You look awful," I said. He smiled sadly.

"You look worse."

"Drugs?"

"Mn. I'll get 'em"

"Thanks Cocoa-butter."

I looked to the side of me, without surprise to find Marcus the vampire watching me cautiously, like I was a madwoman, which, given the recent, episode... Was all his fault. Phooey. I knew I must have been pouting like a child, because all of a sudden he reached his long, tapered fingers out and squished my cheeks in. He raised an eyebrow at me, and I thought the corner of his mouth twitched.

"You frightened me," he said simply, and I could see that I had by the relief in his eyes, and a bit of something else that I looked away to avoid seeing. Then I watched his arms come into view before he took the liberty of picking me up, wool blanket and all, and fitting me into that same place as he had in the elevator, wrapped around me like an octopus. When Rickie turned from my luggage with the prescriptions and water bottle, he almost dropped them.

"Lu-what are you?" he pleaded, and his voice cracked with fear. He quickly closed the space between us and sat down on the floor of the private jet (which, privately, I'll admit to wanting one of my own) in front of us. He didn't say anything else, and I'm afraid that Marcus may have been discouraging it wordlessly from behind me. He just opened the bottles, shook out some drugs, and gently placed them in my waiting palm, then opened the water for me.

I threw back those pills in a heartbeat and grabbed the water to slough it all back with, feeling better immediately with just the knowledge that I would be beyond any worries soon in a less pained, drug induced high.

"Thank you so much Rickie," I said, my voice thick with gratitude. And then I reached out my good hand to grab his, and I felt the monst- ...vampire behind me tense and release in reaction. But this time Rick was looking at me, and didn't shy away from whatever face was being made. I kept his hand in mine and spoke again, this time to Marcus.

"Are we going to my home?" I asked, wanting to know more than just that.

"Your deal is being upheld."

"One year?" I asked.

"One year," he replied, and seemed so sad at the words that I looked back at him awkwardly, turning at an almost uncomfortable angle, until he shifted us so that I could see him more easily. I leaned now against his arm rather than flat against his chest, and then missed the cold for my swelling torso. Oh, whoops. I may have been approaching feverish. Shh. Don't tell anybody.

Yes. His face was sad. Devastated almost. The weight of all the sorrow I'd known in my whole life seemed as nothing in the face of what he felt in that single moment, and I don't want to seem like I'm out for pity (we've been over that), but I have reasons for my bitterness.

"What is it?" I asked him, getting a little frightened at his silence. Somehow I really didn't like how dark his eyes were.

For a few minutes, he said nothing at all, and I turned to Rickie when he squeezed my hand gently.

"Lu, you slept for a long time," he whispered, "We're in American air right now. An' we'll be landing at a private airstrip 'n Georgia in an hour or so."

"Oh," I replied, a little shocked, "I guess I needed the sleep. How far is the airport from home?"

"Two or three hours."

I smiled then, anxious to see my treasure again, and Rickie smiled back, picking up my hand in both of his larger, darker ones to place it on the top of his head. I rubbed with my fingertips, feeling out pressure points against the rough scratchiness of the shaved hair that was growing back. He hmned softly and leaned against the chair without touching my vampire. Almost immediately he was snoring in soft, grumbling snuffles that I loved so very dearly.

I don't know if I've been able to express this upon you, but that child's the joy of my life. He will always have a piece of my heart that nobody else will get. I didn't give birth to him, and never acted a mother to him, but the maternal instincts, what little I have, always acted up like a storm around that giant puppy child. I was definitely going to get him a dog.

I sighed with pleasure at the comforting bearish noises and pulled the blankets tighter around me. I was starting to get a bit chilly, and a bit sleepy, and a bit numb to the pain. That was why I was so stunned when Marcus finally started talking behind me.

"Didyme," he said so softly and carefully that I turned to look at his lips to see if they'd moved, "The woman I loved once was called Didyme."

He was silent again, and I looked from his lips to his eyes, but had to look away.

"She was happiness. It was her gift. And she chose me."

My throat felt a little clogged, and my heart a little achy, but I waited for him to work up the courage for more words. And I knew then that it was courage he was showing. I realized that he was speaking of things he hadn't spoken of in years... Decades? Centuries? I didn't know how long, just that it was an old pain, and deep. And the dirtier part of myself was glad that she was gone. I didn't delve too deeply into my reasoning.

"In all my existence, I had never known such happiness as when she smiled at me," he said again, and his voice was so heavy with emotion that I couldn't look up, "We were going to leave, and spend our days searching the world for all the joys it could offer." His breathing hitched and he had to stop again. He wrapped himself around me again, clutching me as if I could hold the pain at bay. He couldn't finish, and I knew that, somehow. So I didn't ask. The ending was obvious anyway.

Maybe it was the drugs, and maybe it was whatever supernatural thing was going on between us, but I felt my mouth opening too.

"I was fifteen," I said, and then winced, checking to make sure that Rickie was still asleep. He was, and I took a few deep breaths to calm myself, "I'd been adopted by a rich old woman who pitied me for my weakness, and wanted to show me that the world had kindness in it."

I scoffed bitterly at the memory of that old hags face in my brain, then remembered another face that made me full of hate and pain and old fear. Marcus didn't push me, and I was grateful, because I was repaying his story with one I'd never told a soul.

"She had a nephew a couple years older than me, and he wanted her inheritance so badly that he took to all sorts of awful pranks and insults when her back was turned... Almost pushed me down the stairs to my death, and certainly broke my wrist. Not that that was hard to do," and I stopped again, because I knew I was getting off-track to avoid saying the rest.

"One day, he... He was so angry that day... I think he'd just seen her arguing with his dad about her will." I squirmed a bit, listening to Rickie's snores to calm down. My heart was beating a mile a minute, and I was sweating, but I felt so cold, and it wasn't just Marcus.

"It's not like I could struggle with him, hell," and my voice cracked and felt brittle, "He broke so many bones anyway, I can't imagine, I mean... He would've snapped my spine."

That was all I could say, but I didn't have to say more. I heard him growl behind me, and turned to see fire in his eyes.

Marcus was the monster then, and I felt my fight-or-flight instincts kick in. Only he wasn't letting me get away.

"Marcus!" I whimpered, "Hey! Let go, your scaring me!" The blood red of his eyes was brighter than ever, and even his chalky skin seemed more like granite or marble, like it could snap me in half. "Marcus! Stop!"

And then he saw me again, and cried out softly, pressing his nose deeply into my hair again.

"I will kill him," he hissed into my ear venomously.

"N-no need," I stuttered back, trying to swallow my heart back down.

"I will."

"You can't," I said, and he must have heard what I wasn't saying, because he tilted my chin again with his fingertips so he could see my face, "He's dead."

I didn't say anymore than that, and I certainly never will. Not to him, or to anyone. That darkness I'll take with me to the grave.

Marcus became very quiet then, and all I could hear was the roar of the engine and Rickie sleeping.


Luce's steady heartbeat and slow, even breaths calmed Marcus only a little. Inside he was so hot with anger he couldn't think. His little Luce, with a fierce soul in such a fragile body, the thought of...

And all at once, he realized he was no better, and he was as cold as he had just been hot. Waves of guilt as he hadn't felt in centuries swept through him, even coloring the bond that had just been strengthened by opening himself to her. He felt sick.

Marcus looked around for anything he could think of to distract himself. This! This here was why he had shut out emotions before with that cloud of hazy, blessed indifference. He groaned softly at the brunt of it, and then, ever so gently set Luce down on the leather chair, stood, and walked to a cabinet to retrieve another blanket. He wrapped it snugly around her, under her feet, and tucked it beneath her chin tenderly. In a show of generosity, her pulled out another blanket for the boy, draping it over him with decidedly less affection.

Then he left for the cockpit, away from the sleeping children.

Inside the cockpit he found Demetri and a disposable human flying the plane in silence. The human looked terrified, and Marcus assumed he was not aware of who, or what, rather, he was transporting across the ocean alone. Demetri looked up at Marcus, and met his eyes. What he saw must have disturbed him, because he tensed up like a spring and glanced back at the passenger compartment suspiciously.

"How soon until we arrive, captain?" asked Marcus in a voice a bit stronger than he remembered it being before. Demetri seemed to notice the oddity as well, but the pilot was oblivious, and answered.

"It'll be half an hour yet, sir," then swallowed convulsively, his heart-rate soaring. Demetri glanced over in a greedy way, but Marcus had better control due to his age and former indifference to anything, and laid his palm on Demetri's shoulder as warning. The younger vampire settled down, but remained alert to the pilots every heartbeat. With that, Marcus returned to his human and her boy.


"Whoa, Alice! What could that mean?"

All heads present turned to look at Edward and Alice, who had suddenly stopped what they were doing at the piano. Bella was by their side in an instant Taking Edward's hand and looking at her sister nervously. Jasper, Esme and Carlisle were the only other people in the room. Jake and Nessie were running laps with Seth and Leah in La Push territory to blow off steam since the princess's favorite Auntie wasn't back.

"What did you see?" asked Carlisle, worried. It had been only hours since the disturbing vision of the Volturi lord in the dungeon, and now it seemed to have taken a more frightening turn yet.

"He's in the U.S." said Edward calmly, and the room got colder, "He has that woman with him, and Demetri, and they landed a plane in Georgia, it looks like.

"What?" cried Bella, "What do the Volturi want to do there, set up a base camp to launch an assault on us?" Everyone paused to consider that suggestion, and Alice focused as hard as she could on the image, to get as much out of it as possible.

"Why would they only send those two?" asked Esme, "That doesn't make much sense. They never separate themselves from the guard, and what's more, why would Marcus split up from Aro and Caius?" She pressed her back against her husband for comfort, and Carlisle put his arms around her, silently seeking the same. The room was quiet while all of its inhabitants tried to figure out some sort of explanation. Jasper was the first to speak.

"We should go check it out," he said, breaking the silence, "Or at least go meet up with Em and Rose to make sure they're alright." It was something no one else had considered, that some of their family was in the southeast at that very moment, hours perhaps from the reach of Demetri...

Esme whimpered. Bella hissed.

"I'll call Tanya down from Anchorage. Someone should stay with us here where Nessie and the wolves are," said Carlisle sensibly, "Jasper? Alice?"

"We'll be safe," said Alice brightly, "They won't be trying anything in the near future. We should be able to meet up with Rose and Emmett in Texas somewhere. Bella, will you call for us?"

Bella reached in her jacket pocket for her cell-phone and dialed, but got nothing.

"Alice," she started.

"Keep trying. You will get through." And then she and Jazz were out the door and gone.


Okay. Hey. I know I haven't updated this story in a long time, but I've found life to be a extra busy place in the past few years. I also had six or seven pages written that I lost when my operating system had to be wiped to cure an evil virus. So this chapter is a bit different than the original, but hopefully as good. It's not like anyone will ever know, eh?

But I make a promise here and now. I will finish this story, even if it takes forever, because I already know where it's going, and I've sped the time line up a little to help. I may never write anything else, but I will definitely see this through!

Now that that's over with, I also updated the earlier chapters with a couple of very minor changes. Feel free to let me know of any mistakes I've made, and cross your fingers for the next chapter. :]