CHAPTER 23

Everybody's Changing - Keane

Felix is over 2,500 years old. After the three Masters, he is the oldest Volturi, with Chelsea following closely behind him by a few hundred years.

He was one of the first recruits, back when brute strength and size were what mattered and vampire wars were straightforward. The Volturi has had three waves of recruitment since. But he is the last remaining member of that original group of recruits.

In his human life, he was a slave, a farmer, a gladiator and a soldier. The order that these occupations came in, he could no longer remember. But he had a wife and at least one child. He can't recall their names or their faces, but he remembers the nervousness and joy he felt when he held his tiny infant son, and the smell of fresh bread in the hearth.

They lived in what was then a small settlement, that an immortal Felix will watch grow into an immense and important city that its people will call Firenze. Or Florence, if you're one of the millions of tourists that visit it every year.

Now, there were three types of Volturi Guards. The first were those who wanted power. Power comes with authority and control, but also safety and protection. It comes with the knowledge of one's place in the world. There was no end to the number of beings who want power.

There were those who had to be 'persuaded' to join, bound to the coven by Chelsea.

Lastly, there are 'the true believers'. The ones who stay and serve because they believe in the cause. They believe in the Volturi mission that the world must be protected from their own kind. That their kind must be protected from themselves and their worst impulses.

Felix was changed by none other than Caius. The former Roman general who took him for his size as did no doubt those who recruited him to be a soldier and a gladiator when he was human.

What happened to his wife and son, he never knew. Too afraid to find out. What if he found out that the Masters killed them to get him? What would he do? What would he not do? The latter terrified him even more. The complacency which he had learned to live with.

But whatever the circumstances of his changing, he was assuredly a true believer. It didn't take much to convince him. The world three millenia ago was vastly different than it is now. Their kind ran rampant, enslaving swaths of territories and slaughter was wholesale. It took a very long time to make humans forget. To make them believe that these monsters are myths, folktales to make children afraid, legends and superstitions believed by the ignorant people of the past.

The arrogance of humans is their own kind's undoing. But also perhaps their saving grace.

He had become a sort of mentor or trainer for the multitude of Volturi Guards that had come and gone. Every Guard killed was a thorn in his soul he can't pull out. He holds a requiem, his own ritual of remembrance, every year where he recites their names, even the ones that have been dead for centuries. Because they and their lives should be remembered.

He may be mistakenly thought to be the giant with no thoughts but smashing things to oblivion. But he was far from that. He was illiterate as a human. Lady Didyme had taught him patience and control as a newborn. She had taught him to read and to appreciate humanity, and to live in the present regardless that they are immortal. That Felix continues an interest in all things human, the latest literature, movies, music, technology, is his way of commemorating her.

He doesn't mind the way people thought of him. It made him intimidating. But also, he had long ago stopped caring for what other people taught. A few centuries in age tend to do that to a person.

Or at least, for some.

He thinks to Demetri, whom Felix had come to care for genuinely and deeply. They couldn't be more brothers to one another if they had been born from the same human woman.

Which is why he knows Demetri quite well.

He remembers Dem's face quite clearly when they first took him from Amun after killing multiple members of his coven sparing only the leader, his mate, and Demetri himself. That enraged expression giving way to sullen resignation.

Demetri attempted many times to leave, which spoke to his fortitude considering Chelsea's hold is not easy to break off. To this day, Demetri still did not trust Chelsea. He maintained a façade of apathy that most have come to believe. Felix does not need a special ability to read minds or emotions to know otherwise.

Demetri had come to learn that emotions and affections were costly. A means to harm him, to toy with him. From that time when Caius forced him to duel against Palladius, a fellow Greek and the original Volturi tracker. Palladius had been Demetri's mentor into the Volturi. He had been fond of him. Caius' unnecessary decree that there can only be one tracker in the Guard was born of nothing more than sadism triggered by the friendship that he observed. A duel to the death. Palladius was weary of living. Really, he told Demetri, it would be a favor to him. Demetri never saw it that way.

So Demetri displays comradeship and fondness almost never. He alternates between apathetic, self-righteous, trite, and arrogant. All while caring far too much. It was Demetri's way of protecting himself. Of surviving being part of the Guard.

In this way, he was very much like Leah Clearwater. The she-wolf came to know pain and rejection by wearing her heart on her sleeve, her deepest hurts were weapons to be used against her. The attitude and the sharp words were part of a predictable and not at all unusual defense mechanism. There was something about this that made Felix very sad. Leah was, in many ways, an original. Her way of thinking and reasoning was clear. She was doing her utmost best to live authentically. The price for her attempts was solitude. Exile. Her unwillingness to compromise what she believes to be right has severed her from her home. And her secret self is isolating, making her unable to form sincere connections amongst humans. And yet she continues on this path.

It's why she disturbs them so much.

Him. Demetri. Chelsea. Carlisle. All of them. On some level, they have given up an authentic part of themselves to avoid loneliness. To rationalize parts of their existence that would otherwise be unacceptable.

It is easy to dismiss her rigidity, blame it on her youth.

Or maybe it was envy on their part.

Or admiration.

Felix would like to think that he misses that part of himself. Integrity. But he's unsure if he's ever had it.

Demetri no doubt did. Before he's rationalized to himself that he is a believer in the Volturi cause. Felix had to convince him. He was afraid the younger tracker would be destroyed by the Masters if he kept running away. Somehow, Demetri has convinced himself of his own façade of half apathy, half duty.

The tracker is fascinated by Leah. He has been for years now. He will never admit to it being anything past a professional interest.

And Felix is concerned how far his friend will take this fascination.

It was dangerous.

Leah Clearwater was dangerous.

A powerful, mysterious force. She herself likely does not fully understand what she's capable of, just blindly wending her way forward.

A walking emotional disaster.