CHAPTER ELEVEN

"How? How can you know?" But the answer to my question was obvious.

"Alice. Alice has seen it, no matter what we come up with, no matter what I decide. Every single course of action ends with my death. Aro's death, too, and the continuation of both the vampire and human races, so in the end, it's worth it."

"No, it isn't." My voice started low and forceful but grew in pitch. "No, Edward. No."

"I'm sorry, Bella. There's a lot I'm not sorry for, but to leave you behind, without your mate, your sire, alone… Even with the support of my family, it's a horrible existence, and I wouldn't wish that on anyone. I didn't want any of this, but I have no choice."

"There has to be something." I rose up on my knees and grabbed the shirt he threw at me. "Something you can do, some sort of plan, that doesn't end with you…not coming home."

"There isn't. We've spent years trying to come up with an alternative, but Alice's visions always end the same."

"But they're not always right. You said so yourself."

"The future isn't set, true, but none of the alternatives we've come up with have made any difference."

"But you're strong. Stronger than anything—than anyone. And you can read minds. How can they get anywhere near you? Near enough to…kill you. Oh." I clapped a hand over my mouth at the phantom nausea that gurgled at the thought.

"I can take anyone physically, but Jane is part of Aro's guard. Her skills are more mental, and those I don't have much defense against. Some, more than most, but not enough."

"Who the hell is Jane, and what can she do?"

He started toward me as I swayed on my knees, clutching my shirt to my chest, but stopped a few feet away.

"Jane can make you wish you were dead with just a look. She makes the fire of changing feel like mild sunburn. She can—and will—incapacitate me completely, and the other Volturi guards will do the rest. I'm quick enough to take advantage of the element of surprise and get to Aro and Cauis—probably not Marcus, but he isn't a threat to anyone—but not enough to get away before she realizes what's happening and takes me down."

"Can't you take her out first?"

"Alice has seen a couple of scenarios where I manage it, but Jane has a twin brother. They're never apart. I can't take both of them before one or the other gets to me mentally."

"He can do what she does?"

"Yes, but not exactly. He incapacitates with nothingness. Takes away all your senses, every one, like flipping a power switch. I could only stand there, limp and unaware, as the Guard tore me apart. Either way, I'm a goner. But I'll take Aro to hell with me first, you can count on that."

"You're not a goner. No. No way. No one can help? Not your giant of a brother? Or Jasper. Can't his ability to control emotion help?"

"No." He shook his head, auburn hair falling in dark flames over his forehead. "If they go with me, they all end up dying, too."

Dying. Torn to pieces. I couldn't bear the thought. Wouldn't allow it.

"I'll go. I'm a shield or blocker or something, right? Can't I block her? Keep her from zapping you or whatever?"

"You're not going."

"But I could help." I grew excited at the thought. "I could shield you so you could go in, take care of Aro, and get out."

"You can do that?" he asked with a cynical, raised brow. "Cast your shield? Protect others? You know that for sure? Sure enough to bet your life on it? No. I didn't think so."

"I could distract her." I threw out ideas, desperate for something, anything that might work. That might save him, save me. I'd just found him, my mate, and I wouldn't lose him. Not now, not ever. "I can shield me. Maybe I could get her to focus on me, not you. Distract her. By the time she figured out I'm not affected, you'd be done with your little task, and out we go."

"You're sure you can block her? Enough to risk your life?'

"I'm sure," I insisted bravely.

"Enough to risk my life?" he asked softly.

My mouth opened and closed.

"That's what I thought."

"But—"

"Yes!" The delighted yell came from the house, growing in volume with each repeat. "Yes, yes, yes, yes!"

Alice came barreling into view a few seconds later and launched, bowling me over so I lay half-naked in the grass.

"You're a genius! It's going to work. It is. I've seen it." She hugged me hard and then turned her smiling, shining face to Edward. "It's going to work, Edward. Just like she said. She'll distract Jane—her evil little power won't work on our Bella—and you'll have time to get to her and anyone else who's a threat. You'll have to work fast and sure, but you can and you are. After all these years, after all this time… It's going to work. You don't die. Neither one of you die."

Edward peeled her off and handed me articles of discarded clothing so I could dress. We returned to the house much more slowly than we'd left, with Alice smiling happily and Edward hovering behind me. Jasper waited at the front door, eyes on Alice's happy face, but his smile faltered when he spotted Edward and me. His chest expanded with a deep breath, and his gaze fixed determinedly back on Alice as his mouth and nose twitched.

"I take it things went well?" he asked politely, but his gaze flickered to Edward again briefly. "All sorts of things?"

Edward took my arm and steered me inside with a dark look for his brother. We walked into the great room, and he dragged me to a halt when he saw Emmett and Rosalie sitting on the sofa in front of the giant television. Emmett grinned and waved, but then jerked back, his eyes going wide and nostrils flaring.

"Holy shit, you guys smell." He barely flinched when Rosalie smacked him, but his eyes narrowed and gleamed. "I take back everything I ever said about your problems getting laid. Well, most of them. She's a vampire right and proper now, isn't she? You didn't waste any time. So, Bella, come sit down next to your new favorite brother Emmett and tell me all about it."

"Twelve year old," Edward muttered as we swept past.

Emmett stared to laugh, but sucked in a sharp breath, closing his eyes and filling his lungs. "Rose."

"Upstairs. Now," she demanded, and they disappeared.

I glanced at Edward's stoic face and took a sniff at my shoulder as he hustled me toward the kitchen. His hand lingered in the small of my back, but drifted down the caress the curve of my ass, and Jasper peeled off for the stairs.

"I'm out," he called. "Alice, come upstairs as soon as you're done."

Everyone acted like we stunk or something. I inhaled again, but didn't smell anything but Edward all over me, and he smelled pretty damn good. Amazing, in fact. My gaze fastened on his neck as venom pooled in my mouth, wanting his, to give him mine, and Jasper's muttered oath drifted through the house. The sound was followed by the bang of a window opening, a body landing on the ground, and Jasper's running footsteps disappeared into the forest surrounding the house.

"You sure know how to clear a room," Alice teased, but she threw her arms around Edward and then me. "I can't tell you how excited I am this is going to work. Thank you, Bella. Thank you for saving my brother."

"She hasn't saved me yet," Edward muttered, but he smiled at me over Alice's dark head.

Carlisle and Esme entered the kitchen, and Alice swept them up in an embrace. "It's going to work. I've seen it. After all these years, Bella was the key in more way than we realized."

Relief shone bright on both their faces, and Esme reached out for Edward's hand before pulling him into a hug.

"I knew it," she breathed, rocking him. "I knew something would come up. We couldn't lose you. We just couldn't."

"What have you seen, Alice?" Carlisle asked.

"I see the two of them walking into the Volturi's chambers in Volterra, Bella heading straight for Jane and Alec, Edward for Aro, Caius, and Marcus. Five headless bodies, and then…" Her gaze shot to Edward's filled with surprise and frustration, but he just returned the look with a slightly arched brow. "And then I see Edward still has some decisions to make."

"But they're both okay." Esme moved back to Carlisle and clasped his hand, sighing with relief when Alice nodded.

"We just walk in there?" I asked, scrutinizing Edward's expression, and he smiled at me with an innocent blandness I didn't buy for a second. "No one thinks that's weird that we show up in Volterra?"

"They're expecting you." Alice delivered that alarming news with a smug grin. "Aro will actually invite you there. Welcome you. He's fairly bursting at the seams with curiosity."

"Curiosity? Why?"

"He's pleased Edward changed you, such a high ranking human within the Institute."

"Not much goes on at the Institute without Aro's knowledge," Carlisle told me. "But to get first hand information, a personal account, will have him eager to meet you, Bella."

"I don't remember much." I rubbed my forehead, struggling to focus on my fading human memories. "I made notes, though, right? My computer. I imagine that was lost in the accident."

I didn't quite recall being in an accident, but I remembered Alice telling me I'd trashed my car while trying to get somewhere safe to change.

"I brought it," Edward murmured. "It survived the wreck."

He disappeared but returned seconds later, holding my laptop. I opened it on the counter and skimmed through the files.

"There is quite a bit of information. I'm sure we can find something to entice Aro."

I read quickly through my months of interviews and study of Edward. Admiration swelled my head and heart at his clever game and the brilliance of his manipulations. I'd been furious with him, but that seemed more clinical knowledge rather than actual emotion. He still annoyed me, no doubt often would with his attitude and obnoxiousness, but the strong and undeniable connection between us had been forged in fire and would never be broken. According to my notes, I had sensed it even as a weak human and been drawn to him despite my professional ethics, experience, and knowledge. I couldn't reconcile the human he'd toyed with over those weeks with the being I had become. Contempt and superiority washed away any pity that lingered for the naïve woman I'd been.

Vampires ate people, after all. The natural order of things—survival of the fittest. Which brought to mind a question.

"If the Volturi know about the Institute, why do they allow it to continue? Capturing vampires and studying them?"

"Well, first of all, it amuses them. You haven't been a vampire long enough to understand how awful the boredom can get. Any distraction or challenge is usually welcome." Carlisle cast a sidelong, reproving glance at Edward, who just smirked. "Second, the Volturi use it to neutralize or eliminate troublesome vampires. Faulty ones."

"Vampires can be faulty?" I examined each perfect specimen before me and then worried about myself.

Carlisle exchanged another glance with Edward. "Yes. Edward started to explain the process and the difference between changing and becoming a vampire?"

"Um. Kind of." I recalled what had distracted me from that conversation—uncontrollable lust—and how he had deliberately fanned that flame. Edward received another critical look.

"Venom transforms a human into a vampire, but it doesn't complete the process, not totally, until more is consumed after the initial change. That's what sets and solidifies the alterations. Until then, the being is a vampire, but a weak one. Too many human traits cling to it. A vampire in that incomplete state is a liability to others and itself, being both mentally and physically unstable. Those are the vampires the Institute captured, with very few exceptions."

"So, one bite injects venom for the change to start, but more is needed to complete the process. Fascinating."

"Or more than one bite, depending on how much venom got injected the first time. Like with you and Edward."

"Me and Edward? What do you mean?" I glanced back and forth between Carlisle's chagrined face and Edward's forbidding one.

"The first bite—when I bit you there at the Institute, in the cell—I had no intention of changing you. Your body didn't get enough venom, and the drug you drank to knock me out counteracted some of what you did get. You would have lingered in the between, burning, suffering, agonizing, if I didn't give you more. So I did." He shrugged, his thumb rubbing back and forth over the faint scar on my wrist. "You'd spilled so much blood, on you, all over the car after you drove off the road. I didn't have much time. So, I bit you, injected you, at every major vein I could access and then brought you here."

"You didn't want me to suffer," I murmured.

"I didn't want you to be a liability." But he smiled and squeezed my hand, which for Edward was as good as standing on the rooftop and shouting his love.

"Does it have to be the original biter—the sire—to be the source of the secondary venom intake?" I asked Carlisle.

Edward smacked his forehead with his free hand and rubbed his face in exasperation of my continued questions. I just sank my nails into the base of his thumb hard enough to get a wince.

"No. That happens quite rarely, as a matter of fact. Perhaps to get a wider exposure to different venoms, maybe that makes the vampire stronger, I'm not sure. Interesting, now that I think about it." He and I shared a meaningful moment of kindred scientific spirits. "But when it does, it creates a strong bond between the two vampires. Like us, for instance. I changed everyone except Alice and Jasper—but they're kind of their own interesting little subject—and I'm the source of the additional venom. That bond is what keeps us together as a coven. A family."

"That's not all," Esme interjected. "It's you, Carlisle. You keep us together. Your own unique talent."

"Maybe so," he allowed with a smile. "But it also has to do with the fact I was one of those flawed vampires."

"What?" I started with wide-eyed surprise.

Carlisle shrugged. "My sire didn't stick around, and after my change, I didn't either. I hid, horrified at what I'd become, neither fully human nor completely vampire, for years."

"Hundreds of them," Edward supplied. "Until he changed me. I fought him a lot those first few years. We both had plenty of opportunity to ingest venom from bite wounds. The damage had already been done, on his part, at least. He's still disgustingly compassionate when it comes to humans. Eating them, especially."

"I just like to explore other alternatives, especially if the two species have to learn to live together."

"Vampires survived in the Institute on animal blood." I recalled what I read in my notes more than I actually remembered from experience.

"Not well, and not for long," Edward told me with a life of one brow. "Carlisle was very intrigued by that possibility, but his studies found it was similar to crossing human and animal blood. Humans can't survive with a transfusion of animal blood, and neither can vampires. Maybe for a little while, but then the body rejects it."

"Vampires seemed to survive at the Institute, didn't they?"

"Seemed," he emphasized. "When you disposed of them, what was the most common reason?"

I struggled to remember, but again, the reasons in my research notes, my studies, were what I recalled instead of the actual human events. "Because they'd shut down. Mentally and physically. They thought it was because of captivity, that vampires don't adjust well."

"They don't," Edward said curtly. "But it's the blood source, as well. We can survive longer than humans on animal blood, but eventually our body starts breaking down. Trying to eat itself."

He shivered. "That was horrible. The absolute worst part about being there. Vampires need human blood to survive, but it's more than that. We need to hunt."

Carlisle tipped his head back and forth. "We'll see. I imagine your thoughts on hunting humans hasn't changed now that we know you're not going to die?"

My eyes narrowed on Edward's carefully blank face as his words back in the forest suddenly made sense. "You didn't think your opinion mattered because you didn't expect to be around to care."

"I wouldn't have, now would I? If I'd been gone."

I shook my head in exasperation with him, not for the first time, and definitely not for the last. "And now? Now that you're going to be around?"

"I still don't agree, but I'll still play along. For now."

"What do you mean, for now? What's going through that clever little brain of yours?"

He shrugged, and I wanted to kiss that damned smirk right off his gorgeous face. The little monster had something brewing, if his too casual smile and Alice's warning glares were any indication.

"How do you see both species surviving if we don't come up with some sort of solution?" Carlisle asked. "Even when Aro is gone, we'll always be at war. Once humans figure out there are more of us than they suspect, that we aren't almost extinct, they'll have an Uprising of their own."

Edward shrugged again. "For all the good it will do them. They can't fight us. That's why I have to stop the vampire Uprising and make sure it never happens again. What do you think humans would choose when faced with extinction? To be wiped off the face of the earth or submit to a far superior species for a chance at continuing survival?"

"Blood slaves? Is that what you're talking about?"

"If that's what it takes for us to survive. All of us—humans and vampires."

"If we can feed on their blood without killing them—bagged, stored blood—both races might have a future. We could continue on as we have."

Edward shook his head doubtfully. "It's a delicate balance and not in vampire or human natures to maintain it. We're both too selfish, each considering our race to be the rightful, dominant one. With two opposing forces programmed like that at such a basic level… No. I don't think we can continue on like that for long. But, as I said. I was outvoted, so I guess we'll see. I'm willing to wait and see which species breaks first. Should make for good entertainment after the little problem with the Volturi eradicating both humans and vampires no longer takes up all my time."

"Didn't Edward say you stayed with the Volturi for a while?" I asked Carlisle. "Didn't they know you weren't all the way changed?"

"Yes. Hiding in plain sight. Oh, Aro knew, of course. He knows everything. He can read every thought, every memory you've ever had with a touch of his finger. But I was amusing and intriguing, so they allowed my existence and even my presence in their court. They won't be able to resist having you come visit, Bella."

"Curiosity killed the cat, or so the saying goes." Edward said. "And we'll be one great big curiosity. Not that Bella isn't full of it all the time, but you know what I mean."

"Full of what, exactly, Edward? What am I full of?" I turned in him with a mock scowl, and his red eyes gleamed with playful intent.

"Me," he said succinctly. "Later, Carlisle."

I pouted as he backed me through the great room and toward the stairs. "Not enough, Edward. Not anywhere near full enough."

He picked me up and kissed me, flying up the stairs as I wrapped my legs around his waist. I bounced on the bed I'd destroyed after I woke from the change as he stood at the foot, grinning fiendishly with his hands on his hips, more handsome and compelling than any being had a right to be. I sat and scooted to the edge of the mattress.

"I want more," I purred. "More venom. More sex. More you. Why don't we kill three birds with one stone?"

I grabbed him through his jeans, caressing roughly and eliciting a groan before I pulled the buttons on his fly open and sank to the floor on my knees.

"Stone is just about right," I said with great satisfaction, stroking his hard, marble length.

I loved having power and control over this strongest of beings, him helpless and begging and incoherent as I covered him in wet, sucking heat. I gulped greedily as he burst in copious, sustaining surges down my throat, and then I was on my back and he returned the favor. We rolled and thrust, wriggled and rocked, lay in each other's arms soothing and then enticing all night long.

He covered me, filled me with venom. Again. Still. Always.

Forever.

The next morning, vampires wandered down the stairs with clothing in various states of disarray and hair completely wrecked.

"Yeehaw," Emmett mumbled faintly, while Alice walked straight up to Edward and started smacking his shoulders.

She and Jasper appeared particularly tousled.

"Next time you make a decision like that about the sofa in your room—and the balcony railing, what the hell were you thinking?—give me some warning first, okay? Those are mental images no sister wants to see. Ever."

"Or feelings any brother wants to experience." Jasper squeezed his eyes shut. "Holy shit, you two."

"Maybe we need a honeymoon," Edward swaggered over and kissed my forehead amid protests and groans from the others. "Away from all the prying eyes, ears, and minds. Maybe Esme's island near Rio."

"Italy sounds like a perfect place for a romantic getaway," I suggested. "Seeing as how we'll be there anyway."

"Smart, sexy, and practical. I see the beginning of a beautiful relationship." His kissed me again, biting my lip before soothing away the stinging wound and venom with his tongue and a moan that was echoed around the room.

"Just got the e-mail from Aro," Carlisle informed us, walking into the great room with his blond hair sticking straight up in the back and Esme's shirt tangled around his ankle. "He says he's delighted that you'd ask for an audience and can't wait to meet Bella."

"I can't wait for Bella to meet him. He won't have any idea what hit him. And baby's all mine."

"Jackass," I laughed, the sound muffled against his mouth as he wrapped his arms around my waist and kissed me.

"Ew, no," Alice cried. "Edward! Not the hood of my car!"