Jane
Jane's denial crumbled as she circled a third time about the crater that had been her home. What besides an earthquake could possibly have caused such a catastrophe? Yet it was plain that this was no natural disaster. Only the Volturi fortress had been affected. The soldiers poking through the rubble spoke American English, not Italian. A noxious fuel residue, mixed with bitter dust, choked her nostrils. Would Alec's ashes smell different than everybody else's? Could her twin brother really be dead?
Jane ducked into an alley, tortured a random resident of Volterra, and shredded him into paste. She spent several minutes licking blood from the concrete, waiting for Volturi enforcers to approach. No enforcers came. The vampire reckoned she could glut herself on the entire town; no one would stop her. This, more than anything else, convinced her that the Volturi really were gone. Aro, Marcus, and Caius were gone. And most incomprehensibly, Alec was gone.
At one level, of course, there was no mystery to it. Jane and Alec had inflicted so much death for so long. Was it really strange that it had caught up with them at last? She recalled burning at the stake 1200 years ago. The flames had consumed more of her than Alec by the time Aro had rescued them. Perhaps that was why Alec had always been the gentle one, content to kill and feed. Jane, however, had been reborn from pain and through pain and to pain. She had made the world bear her suffering ever since.
It was Bella's fault. Jane did not understand how or why, but she knew it had to be Bella's fault. Surely it was no coincidence that three days after their failed attack on the Cullens, the Volturi had been consumed by unnatural fire. She could not imagine how the Cullens had done it, how Edward had hidden the plan from Aro. But those were just details - secondary, unimportant. The key fact was that before Bella had come along, the Cullens had not been a threat. That meant it was Bella who had killed Alec. Jane would now kill Bella. It was as simple as that.
A hidden dungeon waited in Vienna, a place where the Volturi survivors could gather and regroup. Jane decided to head there. Then a fresh swirl of confusion rooted her in place. Had serving the Volturi been the right choice? Although now that she considered it, she couldn't recall ever having actually decided to follow Aro. Why had she stuck with the Volturi for so many centuries? What did she want to do with her life?
These questions upset Jane deeply, not because they were bizarre in themselves, but because she didn't understand why she had never asked them before. What was happening to her? What had happened? She had not slept since the Dark Ages. Why, then, did she suddenly feel like she was waking up? Who was she? What world was she living in, and why? And why had she waited until now to wonder?
Perhaps she should just slaughter the impudent human soldiers desecrating her brother's remains, create an army of newborns, and declare herself queen of Italy. That would certainly suppress all these miserable queries.
But Jane's training asserted itself: avoid detection. Above all else, avoid detection. She gave deeper consideration to the American soldiers, so out of place in Tuscany. She pondered the lingering airborne miasma. Eventually the terrible question formed itself: what if the Cullens had received outside help? What if humans had been involved in the destruction of the Volturi?
The idea that the world could have changed that much pushed Jane to her breaking point. She gave the crater a parting grimace, turned her cape on Voltera, and fled toward Austria.