Chapter 13

One Last Request

Elizabeth left to meet Aro and Demetri; she was expected to return soon, along with the others, so we did not have much time to discuss everything that we had just learned.

Everyone seemed appalled by the Volturi's most recent actions. Charlie seemed eager to take on the job. Truth is, he missed working, and that seemed to be similar enough to his job.

That new "job" seemed to bring a new concern to Charlie's mind.

"You know, my leave of absence was supposed to be over next week, I might need to come up with another excuse to be away from work for longer."

"We will come up with something, dad".

Truth is; we had much more to deal with than just the Volturi. It had come the time to leave Forks. Everyone was aging, but us. It was inevitable that we would need to relocate for a couple of decades, and then we would be able to return when Fork's population had completely changed. Now that Charlie was one of us, the only person holding us back now was Jacob.

My mind wondered off around those concerns, when the door bell rang. I focused on the Volturi, we needed to deal with this first before all of the other issues that we had coming our way.

Aro, Elizabeth and Demetri came in. Charlie seemed to be a lot better in acting than I ever was… pretending not to know Elizabeth, in front of Demetri. Although, he kept staring down at Demetri, like he just wanted to reach across the room and grab him by the neck. Demetri seemed irritated; we knew that Charlie had disabled his ability a few days ago, and he had not been able to track anyone or anything for a few days now. It was quite entertaining to see Demetri like that.

Everything went as planned. Aro presented Charlie with the opportunity of join the Volturi, he hesitated at first, saying that he planned on going back to his job; the, finally, he agreed to his offer.

Aro said he and Demetri would be going back to Volterra today, and that Elizabeth would wait and go back in a three days along with Charlie; giving him time to put things into order around here. We all pretended to be upset with the planned events and Demetri seemed to believe all that was agreed to.

Aro and Demetri left. Jacob now felt that Renesmee was safe, so he went to see his dad.

Elizabeth now stood by Charlie. He looked at her in the same exact way that I remember him looking at Renee when I was a child.

"So… What now?" Charlie asked Elizabeth.

"Now, I will fill you in on the Volturi coven and each of its members' abilities. We do not want to create chaos right away, so we will start off by disabling Scarlett's ability. My visions should be able to tell if doing that from such distance will actually work. Then we move on to the next move from there."

Carlisle seemed concerned, as if something about this plan was not right.

"What about Aro? If this plan does not work, won't he be at risk once his brothers realize his betrayal?"

"Yes." Elizabeth said in a low voice. "Aro is willing to take that risk. He actually had a letter that he wanted me to give to you, Carlisle; but we shall first test the extent of Charlie's ability."

Alice and Elizabeth both started working together, focusing on Scarlett. Alice had a vision that Scarlett would soon be searching for humans with potential for useful abilities; Elizabeth gave Charlie the signal to disable Scarlett's ability, and so he did. Now we just had to wait to see if it worked.

We all waited anxiously.

Alice suddenly screamed in a way that I had never heard her scream before. Fear was clearly present in her voice. "STOP! Charlie, give Scarlett's ability back!"

Charlie was confused, but he followed Alice's request, immediately requesting an explanation.

"We cannot take this chance Charlie. I could not see in my vision if this will work, but I did see the Volturi coming to us before we could get to them, which leads me to believe that it did not work. Aro was not with them. We need to be closer, to be certain that it will work, so none of us will be at risk."

My first thought was Renesmee, I did not want to take her near that place, but at the same time, I could not leave her here. I also could not allow Charlie to go without me.

"How close to them do we have to be?"

Carlisle interrupted me with a back-up plan already in place. "We should all go. I believe that we should be in Volterra when action is taken, so we can monitor and control things more effectively. Once that is done, Aro should be able to take over and we will return… and Bella, I don't think Jacob should know. We will be back in a matter of days. I hate doing this to him, but maybe we should involve Billy and ask that he keeps Jacob in the reservation for a few days, for his own protection."

Elizabeth agreed that Carlisle's plan was well thought out, so did the rest of us; although, we did not look forward to leave the comfort of our home. Still, something seemed to bother Elizabeth. She was hesitating, but finally she took a white envelope out of her pocket and handed it to Carlisle.

"I think you should read this, even if Aro is safe; for now."

Carlisle opened the letter right away, and read it out loud, so that we could all hear it.

Dear Friend,

The situation that we encounter is much more complex that any of you imagine. There is a risk that I may not be around much longer, but if I am, have no doubt that I will be on your side. I understand that dealing with my brothers is too much to ask, especially considering the circumstances, but your coven is the only one strong enough, with the right abilities to not only defeat them, but to take on the job that we, the Volturi are known for. Your family is the only one able to enforce our rules, protecting our secrets, protecting our kind, as well as protecting humans from our own kind.

Aro

We were all speechless. I was still trying to process what the letter asked of us. Seeing Jasper and Emmett's excitement over it was a sign that my assumptions were correct. Aro wanted us all to not only defeat the Volturi, but to take over their role in our world.