"You're going to get through this," Bella said.
She straddled Edward's ribs, her knees tucked tight against his shoulders, and behind her was Ginnie, butt planted sideways across his shins as she tried to crush him into the bottom of the ship's cramped hold. Their weight felt almost ghostly. He knew he could throw them off, and if he caught the scent of sailors' blood again, he might. He could climb aboard the closest ship and rip out the first throat he found.
Only twice had he been successfully subdued: in the pit, and when Bella used her talent to bring him to the ground back home. There was nothing like the pit here – he could punch his way through the hull – and he wasn't sure Bella could terrify him to the point of immobility anymore.
"You're doing fine," she said. "We won't be this close to other ships once we've left the canal."
That didn't help him now.
Only a day and a half since I last drank blood, he reminded himself. Bella and Ginnie had hunted the moment they spotted land – the eastern tip of Somalia according to Mary. They'd been a sight, returning with hefty, horned antelope slung across their shoulders. Ginnie had looked ridiculous, but seeing Bella like that had thrown him. For a moment he could imagine her growing up in a world of hunters, Stonehenge, dirt floors and little farms. What struck him was not how long she'd lived – he'd heard more about that than he ever wanted to – but how similar her life was in her cabin with no electricity and her small garden out back. At some point she'd let the world pass her by, and yet she'd set out into the unfamiliar to fetch him back from fear and guilt and human blood.
There it was, that red smell again, like a fresh cut, like salvation, and he was back in the ship's hold struggling to be still.
"Tell me something about your life," he said.
"My life?"
"If you don't do something, I'm about six seconds from causing a scene the Volturi won't be able to ignore."
Bella's mind shuffled through images until it stopped on a cracked stone covered in snow.
"I'll tell you about my time with the Romanian coven."
"Ugh, a bunch of men," Ginnie said. "And that's only two centuries before me. Tell us about the Daughters of Set."
"This is the story I want to tell him, and we're concentrating on Edward."
Ginnie threw her head back, weight shifting onto her palms, and rolled her eyes. "Aren't we always?"
"Tell me something," Edward said, "or I'm going to rip through the hull." To show them how easy it would be, he popped his knees up and sent Ginnie tumbling onto a nearby crate.
Bella jammed her thighs so tight to his sides that he could've sworn he heard a rib start to splinter. "Listen, then, be still. This was a long time ago; I was less than three thousand years old, and it used to be that when you travelled through Thrace or Pannonia –"
"Pannonia?" Edward asked.
"Just listen."
He nodded. So far he still wanted to shred something.
"When we travelled the lands surrounding the Romanians, we were supposed to pay a visit to the far side of the woods." She must have seen his next question on his face, because she said, "Transylvania. The name is Latin for the far side of the woods."
"Okay." It was going to take more than a list of place names to get him through this.
"I think their rulers were bored, confined in one castle so long. Their custom was to change their entire families, so there was no shortage of them, but they got tired of one another. Everyone in that city knew what we were. The coven brought in humans caught further afield in raids on the Goths and the Huns, because otherwise the city's population would have fled or attacked. The Romanians were ruled by three, just like the Volturi. Ivan, Stefan and Vladimir. Ivan and Vlad were extremely close, and Stefan was Ivan's brother. Ivan could move objects without touching them."
"It's called telekinesis," Ginnie said.
Bella shrugged. "Whatever the word, Stefan and Vlad had no special talents, and when Ivan found out that the Volturi were sending the witch twins, he decided to keep the two men safe."
This wasn't working – a history lesson when he was going to turn inside out. Edward's feet pounded on the hull floor. There was blood out there, so close and far richer than animal blood. He realized he'd been shaking, and Ginnie was now holding him more firmly, her hands tight around his ankles.
"What does any of this have to do with you?" he asked. If he sounded restless and irritable, she'd have to let him off the hook, given the situation.
She laid a hand across his chest and leaned down. "I'm coming to that part." Her mouth was so near to his that he kept expecting a touch. "I'd been close enough that I decided to pay my respects. I liked the Romanians. A few of them enjoyed music and dancing and big, raucous fights… Don't give me that look, Edward. I didn't always stick close to home. Besides, the Romanians used to pretend I didn't bother them; the first one to leave the hall would be ridiculed for their fear."
"Too much testosterone," Ginnie said.
"Maybe so, but unlike some, they never complained about the way I made them feel."
That barb might've hit home, because Ginnie looked away.
"I knew something had happened when the castle was empty. Ivan, Stefan and Vlad – they were never far from their thrones. I found Ivan's body hanging by the ankle from a Laurel tree. His head was gone. There was a scorch mark where a bonfire had been. I didn't know at the time that Caius had sent Alec and Jane to dispatch them all. I wandered the castle looking for survivors, and it wasn't until I was leaving that I heard a series of taps, like sleet but uneven.
"It came from below a slab of granite, flat beneath the snow. Something had cracked it, but it still held. It took me a while to shift it on my own. Vlad and Stefan were there where Ivan had trapped them. They forced their way up and out the moment I freed them, and it was Vlad who found Ivan first and pulled his body down. I offered to help them search for others, but they asked me to leave. I don't think they wanted to show grief any more than fear."
"What happened to them?" Edward asked.
"They were still alive the last I heard. I suppose they weren't much of a threat to the Volturi without Ivan and the rest of their coven."
Ginnie looked skeptical. "They haven't sought revenge?"
"They're as pragmatic as you Vikings. I imagine they're waiting for a sign that the Volturi are growing weak." She sat up, taking that full mouth away from his, and Edward lifted his head as though to follow. She thought he was struggling to get free, and she said, "Just a little longer. You've done so well. I think we're nearing the end."
As the ships were released into the Mediterranean, they drifted further from each other, until he only caught the scent of blood, layered beneath fishing nets and oil drums, when the wind brought it closer.
"Let me up."
Ginnie was quick to scramble off of him and away, but Bella stayed where she was.
"You need to stay here where the scent won't affect you until we're into the Atlantic, but you did well," she said.
"I did. I deserve a reward."
"When we get across to Portugal, we'll go for a swim."
"That's the sort of reward you think I have in mind?"
"Trust me. It'll be a good swim. You and me."
It sounded damned near perfect actually, and when did his life ever go that well, so he should have known she was hiding something. In his defense, he was distracted. Her offer held the promise of touch, and on top of that, he could still sometimes catch blood in the air. So he lay there, oblivious to any changes afoot, and after a day of being buried beneath wooden crates while the boat heaved up and down in a storm, he was hungry (nothing new), brooding (what a surprise), and ready to be in the open sea.
It was night when Bella returned to lift the trap door to the hull where he lay beneath Mary's cargo.
"We're out far enough. Come up. Come swimming," she said.
"What if we lose sight of the boat?" he asked, but he let her take his hand and bring him to the deck where the moonlight made the low whitecaps glow.
"Mary dropped anchor. But even if she hadn't, the ship's putting along at less than half our speed."
"Why didn't we just swim home?"
She smiled as she hopped up on the railing, and with a firm tug she sent them both splashing into the water in all their clothes. Not that "all their clothes" was much for Edward; having refused something from Mary that looked like a muumuu, he still only had the jeans he'd been wearing when the Volturi nabbed him.
"Because it's easy to get lost in the open sea and waste time heading off course. Anyway, did you want to spend over a week under water?"
I just want to go home, he thought, but he shook his head.
Bella was thinking of home too, of that stripped-clean scent near the river where the new growth competed for the little bit of sun that spotted the forest floor.
"We'll be there soon," he said.
She gave him a sorry little smile, then slapped the water so it splashed him. Before he could sputter, she'd dropped under the waves. She was wearing shorts and a too-large white shirt that Mary had loaned her, and he could see her slipping like a stream of light beneath the surface. It set off his instinct to chase, as if she were some gorgeous, woman-shaped ball of string he needed to catch.
He was fast. Even in the water, he was faster than anyone else. It took a matter of seconds before he reached out and caught her around the middle, the white blouse billowing, and her hair snapping back behind her as he tugged her close.
They started to sink. Neither of them was swimming now, and they left the light above them and drifted down together past silver schools of fish and down, even darker, colder, to the coral beneath. Something scuttled out of the way as they touched sand.
She put her hands on the back of his neck and pulled him closer so she could move her mouth against his with no finesse whatsoever. It made him smile. Everything felt better when Bella wasn't cool and perfect. He couldn't tell her, so he just hummed the last of his breath into the water in bubbles that probably made him look ridiculous. He pushed her cloudy hair aside, and she kissed his throat, ran her hands up and down his tender ribs, wrapped her legs around his waist to cling, weightless, as she grazed his collar bone with teeth. One hand shifted lower to rub on his jeans, and for a moment he was tempted to let her have whatever she wanted.
Not this time.
He wanted to make her moan too, or at least gurgle out the last of her breath, wanted to give her so many sensations that she wouldn't be able to focus on just one. He put his hands up under her arms and lifted her so her chin rested atop his head, and he could lean in to suckle her breast, though the material got in his way, and he had to flick it up and around her neck so he could put his mouth directly on her skin. He touched his teeth to her, tasting salt water, and pulled on her nipple as his hands rubbed circles along her spine.
She threw her head back, and perhaps he'd found a way to make her desperate, though her thoughts were still centered on him, the feel of his shoulders beneath her hands. He wanted her mind on herself. Without moving his mouth, he shifted his hand lower to the inside of her thigh and pushed two fingers beneath the hem of her shorts. She shuddered and pulled back enough to grab his hand and move it over the fabric, but also to the center. Was that a step forward or back? Did she not want him under her clothes or did she just want pressure where she needed it more? He used the palm of his hand to rub up and down and she bit him, actually bit him hard enough to hurt, on the side of his neck.
"Solluu." The sound that bubbled out was incomprehensible. He didn't know why she tried to speak when he could hear the clear Sorry in her mind.
It was fine. For a moment she'd felt nothing but the thrum of her own arousal, and apparently that made her want to bite. There were worse things.
She shook her head and pushed off from his shoulders, rising up and up until her head disappeared above the water.
"What?" he asked the moment he surfaced. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing." She swam close and put her hands on either side of his face so that she could hold him still for a closed mouth kiss, their foreheads touching for a long moment, like she was trying to read his mind or letting him read hers. "I have to go."
He could have called her a coward, but the thirst was getting hard to ignore, and it was a long way across the Atlantic. He wasn't sure how she and Ginnie were going to hunt enough to keep him from being strung out. "Be quick then."
"As quick as I can be." She was looking over his shoulder to the west where there was nothing but water, and if he'd been paying more attention, he would have remembered that she always looked directly at him when they talked to one another. It was just for a moment, and maybe he couldn't be expected to catch every nuance and read a deeper meaning when he was anxious for a meal. He watched her swim the backstroke before she turned and dove northeast towards the shore of Portugal. She was thinking about the cabin as she swam away – the piano in the corner, Bat's weathervane on the roof. Not once did she let her mind slip. He watched until he couldn't tell her apart from the waves.
When he climbed over the side of the boat, he found it deserted. Mary had to hunt too – not that he wanted to think about her stalking some tourist on the beach – and Ginnie must have left to meet up with Bella.
Everything was rhythmic: the waves lapping the hull, metal clicking as the anchor's chain was pushed back and forth. He sat on the deck and almost managed to keep his mind still like Bella's for a moment.
Mary returned first, but after a waved hello, she disappeared below deck with a serious looking wrench in hand. Ginnie came next, but not with a fresh kill. She'd gotten a battered old motorboat from somewhere, and came putting up to the yacht with three coolers in front of her.
"Take them as I pass them up," she said, and he opened the last one to find it spilling over with bags of blood.
"Human?" he asked. It didn't smell human.
"Don't be daft. Horses and sheep, mostly. We need to get them into the refrigerator. And don't ask me how I got it. I'm not even going there."
She was wearing a white lab coat with a nametag that said 'Alberto Rios'.
"Isn't Alberto a man's name?"
She grabbed the tag and flipped it up so she could read it. "Huh. Fuck." Need to get the blood in him before I tell him, and Isabella should have just told him herself, because this is not the sort of thing I promised Morfar anyway.
"Tell me what?"
"Double fuck."
"That an Old Norse saying?" he asked, and she shot him a dirty look. "What should Bella have told me?"
Ginnie looked past him to the steps that led below. She had an image of a castle in her head, and he moved from curiosity to the first sharp sting of panic. He'd seen that place in a painting Carlisle kept in his study.
"What the hell do the Volturi have to do with it?"
"Mary, get up here! I need you," Ginnie called. The last time he'd seen her look this nervous was back in India.
"Tell me."
"When Mary's here. I'll tell you, I swear." She tried to slip past him, but he yanked her back by the arm. "Mary, goddammit, come on!" she said.
"What's going on with you two?" Mary took one look at the grip Edward had on Ginnie and lay her hand over his.
"That's what I want to know," Edward said.
"Let go of my arm first."
"Not a chance."
"Both of you settle." Mary started to pry his fingers loose. "Think, Edward. If you want her to talk to you, you need to give her some space."
He let go, but stood between Ginnie and the railing. Her thoughts went back to Demetri and a little yellow car on a cobblestone street.
"She's gone to Volterra, Edward."
He plunked like a sack on the deck.
"I'm sorry, but she said she had to do this, that they needed to know they couldn't hurt you again to get to her, so when Isabella told me to come back on my own, I damn well did it, because the woman scares the hell out of me when it comes down to it. You know even Aro won't take her on, so it'll be okay, and I called grandfather while I had reception; he's going to meet us off the coast of Virginia, and you'll see, it'll be fine."
He wanted to stuff every word back in her mouth. More than that, he wanted to fling himself overboard and swim for the nearest coastline. There was a time when he would have done it, and to hell with anyone who got killed on the way. He cursed Bella for knowing him well enough to realize that he wouldn't do that now. There'd be no way to reach her without moving through the human world. Even if he knew the way and could stick to the countryside, he'd still have to get at the heart of Volterra city to find her.
Ginnie's mind was still running as fast as her mouth had been.
"When did you know?" he asked.
"Not until we were in Portugal, I swear. I guess she didn't trust me to keep it a secret. I'm terrible with secrets." She put the lid back on the closest cooler and sat down. "I think she was trying to hint though, when we had you down in the hold."
He must have looked as lost as he felt.
"With her story about the Romanians," Ginnie said. "Ivan keeping his lover and brother safe."
"What lover? What are you talking about?"
"Vladimir. Isn't that what Isabella meant when she said 'extremely close'?" She shook her head. "It doesn't matter. I was talking about the thing with Ivan keeping them hidden from Alec and Jane."
"That was supposed to make me, what? Feel okay about this?"
"Well, they're still alive, aren't they?"
"Maybe the other guy would be too, if he hadn't locked everyone away and fought by himself."
"Oh please. He had all those other relatives with him and…" She stopped. "You mean Isabella's on her own." She slid off the cooler and moved forward so she could put a hand on his shoulder. He shrugged it off. "She'll be fine. She's used to being on her own. You watch, she'll be back at the cabin in no time, and grandfather said he'll get you there and wait with you until she comes."
He shook his head. "I'm not going to the cabin."
"What do you mean?"
"I'm not."
"We can't stay here. It's not easy to find a lab with animal blood."
"Not here. I'm not waiting for her to decide to come back. I'm going to Forks."
"What the hell is Forks?"
"I remember the way Carlisle brought me. We kept to the forests. I can do it again."
"Isabella will kill me if you go off on your own."
"Then she'll kill you," he said. "She thinks she can make every decision, but I'm not going to let her. I'm going to Carlisle's." He didn't care how he sounded. He was sick to death of trying to prove he was a man. He didn't even think about what would happen if Carlisle turned him away. He jumped over the coolers and pelted down the stairs and shut himself up in the hold with every intention of staying there until the need for blood brought him back out.
Thanks for reading.
All the usual characters, settings, etc. are the property of S. Meyer. Original characters and plot are mine. No copyright infringement is intended. May not be reprinted without express written permission.