Chapter 19 – Beyond Volterra

I fastened the clasp of the midnight blue cloak I was wearing, admiring the way it was fashioned so cleverly to look like two birds. The cloak too was new. Athenodora had lent it to me, since I had none of my own. It hung to my ankles rather than my knees, as it would on Athenodora, but it was luxuriously thick and soft, and the cost of the dye alone would have been astronomical.

For a brief moment I had a flash of memory, of icy cold and biting hunger and a bed of straw and animal skins that was never warm enough. This cloak would have been so welcome back then. But I shook my head. It was me, the pathetic little human girl in those memories, but each day they were fuzzier and faded and gladly I let them go. So much better to be what I was now. I didn't want to remember the hunger and the cold and the powerlessness.

But there had been a dog…and the day that I realised I didn't remember his name I had felt a grief so strong it had shocked me.

I strode from my room and into the main hall, finding the other members of the party already waiting. Caius, Matilda and Willamar were chatting casually with Aro and Marcus, and Felix and Appius were busily pounding each other in the head and laughing. They all wore grey cloaks, fastened with a clasp stamped with the Volturi crest. I felt conspicuous in my blue – just another thing that separated me from the others and made me wonder if I really belonged and was part of things here.

Alec appeared silently from the shadows. "I just wanted to say good luck," he murmured to me.

"I wish you were coming with us."

Alec looked wistful. "I also. Not just because I don't like it when we're apart, but because you're going to see so many new things. Lord Aro told me that you're going all the way to the Iberian Peninsula in the west."

I nodded. "He say that the humans who have conquered it call it Al-Andalus, and they worship neither the Christian god or the old gods of ours. And some of them have skin in all shades of brown."

Alec sighed. "I'd love to see it all! We're learning so much here, but…"

"One day," I said, cutting in before he could continue his complaints and maybe lapse into criticism. "We'll see it all one day, Lord Aro promises. I'll tell you about it this time. And we won't be gone too long- Willamar will find the vampire causing trouble and he will be eliminated. They're going to purchase more slaves on the way home, but that will be as close by as possible – no one wants to have to wait for a slow bunch of humans."

Alec wrinkled his nose. "Shepherding human slaves doesn't sound fun."

"No." I wasn't excited about that part of the trip. The idea of using my gift for a purpose was intriguing, but the rest of it made me resentful. I didn't want to shuffle a herd of terrified humans along, and I didn't want the inevitable scorn from Caius when I drank from them regularly.

"Come along!" Caius called imperiously. "Jane, we're waiting."

Alec and I briefly clasped hands in farewell, and then I joined the group gathered around Caius. Aro made an extravagant farewell, and then we moved across the hall and made our way down the familiar tunnel to the exit in the church.

The little building was complete, the stones standing straight and firm in the early evening light. I took a deep breath, the warm air rich with enticing and fascinating smells. I remembered coming this way as a brand new vampire and how overwhelming and chaotic everything had felt, so different to the way I felt now.

I sighed, and realised that the others were already some distance away. Pushing aside the memories I raced lightly after them.

We never got tired, but I slowed our run often as something caught my eye. There was just so much that I had never seen! Rivers that made my river of home look like nothing more than a tiny stream; hills so high I couldn't see the top of them for the clouds. The plants and grasses and trees were all different. There were villages and even towns that we passed around or sped through, the air smelling tantalisingly of all the humans that lived there.

Caius was curt in his impatience with me, but none of the others backed him. Felix and Appius were too scared of me and what I might do to them, and Matilda and Willamar were merely amused by my inexperience. Out here, away from the hierarchy and intrigues of Volterra, they were more relaxed and it seemed even as though they might like me as they made sure to point out oddities and marvels to me.

I wasn't sure what I thought about Matilda and Willamar. They were kind to me, but it wasn't really anything to do with me that made me so uneasy around them. It was the way they were with each other, the gentle touches, the way their eyes met and the way they seemed to move instinctively in time with each other. The way each of them seemed to be the centre of the other's world and the way that, as an outsider, this made me feel.

In some ways it was like Alec and I, but in a different dimension. I had learned about vampire mate bonds and had thought I understood, but what I saw between Matilda and Willamar was nothing like the extravagantly formal relationship between Lord Aro and his lady Sulpicia. This was…this was intimacy. This was love.

I didn't want it for myself, not really. And yet, as we fed on the outskirts of the city we had been heading towards, I couldn't stop myself from covertly watching them. They had a human between them and they took their time draining it, kissing away the odd splatters and murmuring to each other in voices too low for anyone else to hear.

I didn't want it for myself…but something about this fact disturbed me. Everyone else in Volterra seemed to want that. Even those who didn't have a permanent mate were always playing at it, flirting and laughing and kissing and other things that I didn't even want to think about, let alone do.

I sucked at the hole I had torn in my human's throat, savouring the last drops. He was an old man, and I had done nothing more than hasten his looming death.

Perhaps that was why I didn't care for having a mate, I mused. Maybe it was my age. Maybe it was something that only happened when you were older, and I was too young. Too young. My thoughts soured as the words echoed in my mind.

Too young. That's what everyone had said, when Lord Aro had brought us to Volterra. Too young to be vampires, too young to be Volturi… I had ignored them and scorned the idea that I was too young for anything, but now I was sitting here watching Willamar laying delicate kisses along Matilda's cheeks until he found her mouth and wondering if maybe they were not entirely wrong.

It is something I'll never have, I realised numbly. I'm always going to be thirteen, and always on the border of something more, but never moving forward. It will always just be Alec and I, and we'll never quite belong…

"Enough," Caius snarled, and it took me a second to realise he wasn't talking to me, but scowling at Willamar and Matilda. "We must find this vampire we've come in search of. You say you're a tracker Willamar, well here's another chance to prove yourself."

Felix and Appius stiffened a little at Caius' obviously disagreeable mood, and began digging a little faster at the hole they were working on for the bodies. I grabbed the old man by the ankle and tossed him at the hole, making a face as I heard his bones crack. Soft hands, I reminded myself. Lord Aro always says it, soft hands.

"Keep your hood low over you face and don't speak," Caius warned me as the five of us entered the city. "The vampire we seek has been committing outrageous acts of slaughter, and we would rather not provoke him or the populace into anything impetuous. Discretion is necessary at this time, Jane."

I was irritated that I'd been singled out, but the feeling didn't last. Once again I began lagging behind, fascinated by the exotic people still moving through the streets and some of the magnificent buildings that I began to glimpse.

"Jane, come on." Matilda took my hand and smiled at me mischievously. "We mustn't vex Caius!" She pulled me along, and I sped up until I was keeping pace.

"There are two vampires in this city," Willamar said at last, drawing to a stop in the shadows. "There's one in the dwelling on the corner. Her tracks are everywhere, and I think she has been here for some time and is not the one we're seeking. But she may know something of the other."

"I'm sure Jane can persuade her to share what she knows," Caius said with a glacial smile.

The vampire woman was waiting for us when we entered the tiny dwelling, having heard and scented our approach. It was a dim, filthy hovel and the vampire I faced was nothing like the Volturi vampires I had become used to. She was dressed in filthy clothes, and her hair was in the same tangled, matted locks that mine had been as a human.

"What do you want?" she demanded suspiciously, glaring at each of us in turn.

"We're from the Volturi…" Caius began.

"I know where you're from. I know what you are." The vampire bared her teeth. "What is it you want with me? I've done nothing."

"Really?" Caius inquired. "You've done nothing?"

"I told you I hadn't!"

"I'm not sure I believe you…Jane?"

Caius gave me a sweet smile, and I unhesitatingly sent a bolt of agony towards the vampire. She fell to the ground, writhing in excruciating pain, her mouth open in a silent scream. I held it for a moment, and then just as abruptly as she'd first felt it, it was gone.

"You really have done nothing?" Caius pressed. "There is someone in this area breaking the rules…if not you then who?"

"It's not me! I swear it!"

"Then who?" Caius appeared to be enjoying himself.

"I don't know!" The vampire was still crouched on the floor, all hostility towards us gone in the face of her fear.

At a nod from Caius, I did it again. I made her hurt until she screamed, until she didn't know anything but pain, and then I held it for an extra second before I let it go.

"Please, please, stop! I don't know what you're doing…but please, don't! I don't know anything! I've smelled the other, they came to the city only recently, but I never met them. I don't know anything else I can tell you!"

"Should we believe you? We have ways of making you tell the truth, as you have clearly felt tonight," Caius said in his poisonous voice.

"No! I swear to you that I'm telling you all that I know! The other, I've smelled him on the other side of the river, and up near the palace, but I avoid those places! Please, however you're doing that, you don't need to…I'm not hiding anything!" She was practically sobbing.

"She's telling the truth," Caius said briefly, sounding almost put out that he couldn't order the torment to continue. "It's not her- we must find the other." He turned his eyes back to the vampire woman. "The Volturi thanks you for your assistance. You need have no fear of us as long as you maintain secrecy and follow the rules. We ask only for loyalty to our cause."

"Of course my lord, thank you," the vampire babbled. All her previous belligerence and hostility had vanished.

"Very well," Caius said. "Willamar, we'll be following you."

Willamar led us almost unhesitatingly through the city, tracing the scent of the unknown vampire. I was impressed, having not seen a tracker in action before. Willamar's ability to follow the faintest, most compromised scent was amazing.

"He's in there," he said at last, pausing outside a large, elaborate building of pale stone. "That's a palace they use for prayer, and I think he's…"

"Brought down his vampire wrath on them," Caius said grimly.

The wind picked up then, and I smelled the delicious scent of the blood, so much of it from so many people, mingling together as it spilled… I couldn't stop my snarl as I darted towards the front doors.

"Oh, newborns," Felix snorted in disgust, but I didn't stop to argue.

I flew up the steps and into the hall, but then I could have screamed in rage because they were all already dead. Human bodies tossed carelessly across the floor or piled haphazardly, arms and legs and heads bent at grotesque angles. And the blood…I was dazzled by the sight of so much of it, dripping from the bodies and sliding across the floor, pooling in the dips and trickling away beneath the stones. This vampire hadn't even drained them, he'd just bitten them and taken a swallow and moved on to the next one. And now all that blood was wasted, contaminated on the floor and beginning to cool and congeal.

"He wasted it all!" I said furiously to Caius as the others joined me in the hall. "Look at that! All that blood, and I don't get any of it!"

"You'll have your reward for you work once it is done," Caius told me briskly. "Now, where is the vampire responsible for this?"