THE CHARIOT
"The conqueror may not yet have conquered himself. Here we find both will and knowledge, but there is more desire to attain than proven power for real attainment."
—Eden Gray, The Complete Guide to the Tarot
"Divinatory Meaning: Triumph, success, control over the forces of nature—thus triumph over ill health as well as money difficulties or enemies of any sort, including one's own lower animal passions. This is a card of those who achieve greatness. It may also indicate travel in comfort. Mental and physical powers should lead to fulfillment.
Reversed: Decadent desires, possibility of ill health, restlessness and desire for change, an unethical victory."
—Joan Bunning, Learning the Tarot
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DECEMBER 7TH 2039
7:02PM MST
NEDERLAND, COLORADO
It was two hours past sundown when the house first shook.
Alice and Edward turned their heads toward the garage and Alice heard Rosalie mutter something under her breath quietly. The only words Alice picked up were '—rebuild it from the ground up or I'm—' before Rosalie quieted her soft frustrations and turned her attention back to the maps she was going over with Esme.
Rosalie and Esme were in the loft now. Bella had drifted from the top of the house to the bottom over and over again during the course of the day. They could all hear everything that happened across the house (for the most part) but Bella had been serving as a partial messenger ever since Edward and Carlisle, with help from Jasper, had soothed Esme out of her panic attack.
Soft music played from the upper level, and although it did not prevent Esme from hearing the things Maria had to say to the rest of them, and it definitely didn't prevent her from hearing the current newborn training, it was something to focus on. Something to ground her while her brain recalibrated.
Neither Alice nor Jasper had ever seen Esme react like that before. Afterward, Edward muttered something that suggested it had been a while since Esme had broken down in that way, and Emmett's solemn nod had confirmed it.
The house shook again. This time, yelling and growling accompanied the noise. Esme started to, not very discreetly, hum along to the music after that.
It had been a long, long time since Alice had heard Jasper speak in the tones he was using. It was also the first time she was hearing him talk like this in person.
'Talk,' being a simple, understated word for what he was doing.
Emmett and Peter were both in the garage, too. Alice knew that Emmett was the only one helping Jasper. Peter was keeping watch, ensuring that the newborns wouldn't try to pull a fast one on either of the other men.
Edward, Carlisle, and Rosalie had also—independently from one another—wandered into the garage at different points in the day to offer assistance. Jasper had turned each of them away more curtly than the last.
Rosalie had been the most frustrated at that but Alice watched in a vision as Emmett quietly thanked Jasper for denying her. The emotional explosion in the kitchen earlier, paired with the information they were steadily learning about their enemy, had shifted the entire atmosphere of the household.
Alice pressed the towel to her nose again and let herself take a break for a moment. A moment was only a handful of seconds, but it was all the time she could spare. In that time she forced herself to focus more on the concrete present. Maria sat across the room, her brain forming plans Alice couldn't clearly see yet. Bella was in the kitchen with Carlisle now—barely an hour ago Rosalie's phone had received an alarming voicemail message from Tanya's phone—and they were discussing how, when they'd tried to locate the phone via GPS tracking and some helpful hacking, they'd turned up unsuccessful. There had been no discernible voices in the messages. It had been mainly muffled static.
Rosalie had quietly advised them not to stay on the phone with any strange callers after that. Even Edward held in the words he almost said in response ("They already know where we live") which had saved them all from having to experience another argument.
It was all any of them had done today, it seemed. Argue and disagree.
Alice could not clearly see the futures of their dear friends from Denali. Despite her untrustworthy sight, she knew that at least three of them were alive. Garrett, Kate, and Carmen came to her in flickers. Unfortunately, Alice hadn't seen Tanya or Eleazar's future's in her visions since they were attacked. The vision of Eleazar's supposed death sat heavy on her mind.
Typically, that would outright confirm their deaths.
The last time Alice assumed such a thing, Charlotte had really, truly ended up dead and it had been entirely Alice's fault. Edward shot her a sympathetic look then, and Alice turned away from him. She didn't want to hear another one of his placating speeches right now. Edward didn't need her anxiety added on top of his.
They still hadn't heard from Renesmee.
As they neared the forty-eight hour mark, they'd charged every device they owned and arranged them neatly on all of the tables and surfaces between the kitchen and the den. After Alice plugged in the eleventh phone Maria had remarked on the ridiculousness of the number of phones, tablets, and computers they possessed. When they ran out of outlets for chargers, Alice couldn't help but silently agree.
The minutes ticked down as forty-eight hours approached, and Alice saw no vision of them receiving a call. She couldn't trust this lack of visions, of course. There had been a lot she hadn't seen as her visions started failing her. Even despite that, Edward worried.
Edward hadn't spoken a word to Bella since.
Alice understood his pain even as she understood why Bella had done what she'd done. Alice felt responsibility for her best friends' quarreling now; if it could even be called something as simple as that. As if Renesmeé were off on a little trip for leisure and not running for her life into the unknown.
Alice had not seen Bella's plan at any point. Alice was the reason Bella had this idea in the first place. It was eerily similar to the advice Alice had left Bella with before she and Jasper had run toward the equator, leaving Bella with only a note to burn and an address to their old forger.
Back then, Alice had known that there was a chance that if their encounter with the Volturi went poorly, they would all die. All of them, except for Ness. It was odd, the way that history repeated itself. She felt a little sick as that old, buried hope rekindled in her chest.
Alice prayed that Bella was right: Jacob would take care of and protect Ness. He'd done a damn good job of it so far.
Edward's worry manifested in overt frustration (his ignoring of Bella) and the need to keep busy (his hard focus on hers and Maria's thoughts).
Sorry, Alice found herself apologizing. She really was trying not to think about the Ness situation, but it was hard not to let her mind wander there. They were all worried. Even if that worry was being pushed to the side in order to face the very real threat that was looming overhead. Anything that Maria of Monterrey feared, they had to take seriously.
It was as much as Jasper had said before he'd left for the garage again after Esme's breakdown, ready to teach the nine men that still remained inside all that he could as quickly as possible.
Maria still hadn't brought them into town to hunt yet. She and Jasper had come to some unspoken agreement (though her visions may have overlooked a conversation) that they would wait another day to feed the newborns. It felt odd after the explosive argument that had happened the day before.
Edward had told Alice what their reasoning was for that decision: training thirsty, irritable newborns provided better results. "If they want to feed, they'll meet expectations." Edward had spoken the quiet words, uttered to her in private, with a grimace.
Maria looked calmly pleased at the sound of Jasper's loud instruction from where she sat across the living room, curiously thumbing through a textbook that Alice knew she was not really focusing on. This was the way she planned. Alice knew it because she'd watched Maria do it thousands of times over the years.
It was the only thing that Maria ever did that humanized her to Alice. Her feet—still booted, still dirty—were tucked beneath her on the small, navy loveseat. The book in her lap was some dense medical text that had been sitting on the side table beside her. Alice wanted to go back to the library and add to her lists, but she also knew she had to keep an eye on Maria.
Not because she was afraid of her doing or saying something—Maria would do and say whatever she pleased now; Alice was not about to let Maria know that she could get away with murder at this point (quite literally). It would only make her more difficult to cooperate with.
Maria was getting her way now, but Alice knew she would take a mile the moment she realized she'd been gifted that first inch. They needed Maria, it was true. But they couldn't give her full control or let her take charge. The visions Alice received then were fuzzy, glassy around the edges like a worn, blurred photograph, but they confirmed her anxiety: Maria would help them, but they could not place all of their trust in her.
Or, at least, they might have confirmed that anxiety. Alice wasn't so sure now. She shook the uncertain thought from her head and winced in pain.
She needed to hunt. They all did, really. But none of them as badly as she and Carlisle. Esme and Rosalie had fed earlier in the week. Emmett and Jasper had hunted most recently, feeding on the way back from their trip escorting Peter into town for a meal of his own. Bella and Edward had hunted recently, too, the morning of Charlotte's death. Before the entire world had tilted off of its axis and her visions had begun to fail her.
A sharp sting of pain stabbed her between the eyes and Alice pushed through it, ignoring the pungent smell of venom that threatened to drip down her front. She sniffled idly, knowing that no matter how quiet she tried to perform the action, trying to hide this was a worthless endeavor. The entire household could hear her do it. They could smell the fresh venom leaking from her skull.
She lifted a cream-colored hand towel, freshly bleached with her venom, and dabbed at the bottom of her nose.
This had only happened once before: on a plane ride to Italy. Bella, sitting at her side, had not commented on Alice's sniffling; she'd probably thought that it was part of the playing-human charade. Or maybe she hadn't noticed it at all. It was still more difficult for her than it was for the rest of her family to really decode how much humans could see, hear, smell or use any of their meager senses.
On that plane ride Alice had pocketed the spare shirt she'd used to mop up the venom that had leaked. The strange, new symptom hadn't worried her one lick. She'd been so damn focused on saving Edward—her visions morphing and rolling and careening through her mind as fast as she could force them—that she hadn't thought twice about it. She'd mentioned it to Jasper, a few months later. Meaning that Edward eventually asked her about it.
Alice was surprised then, when Carlisle walked into the room as Alice absently wiped at her nose, and frowned at her.
"This doesn't look good," he commented, his fingers gently pressing beneath her chin as he tilted her head upward, this way and that. Alice was almost stunned that Edward and Jasper hadn't mentioned this to him back in the day. Sure, they'd been so wrapped up with Victoria and Bella's change and then the Volturi that it hadn't been thought much about afterward, but still.
"It's okay." And then she told him about how it had happened the time before.
"Nothing was blocking your visions back then?" Carlisle released his hold on her chin and Alice turned her head back down, meeting his sad, tired expression. Alice felt even more guilty then, for giving Carlisle another thing to worry about. It was bad enough her visions couldn't be trusted. On top of that, she was hurting herself to even see anything. It felt stupid, and utterly useless.
Alice shook her head at his inquiry. "Not outside of learning that I couldn't see the wolves that morning, but," she shrugged. "I think it's just overuse. It hasn't happened since. Even with Jake and Ness around."
"Does it hurt?"
"It's okay," she repeated. She didn't want to answer that question in case Jasper was listening in.
The house shook again and his voice rang out.
"Do not let your feet get out from under you," they all heard him snap, "Get up. Go again." His words weren't what worried Alice. Just the way he spoke them.
Short, direct commands. Not loud enough to be considered a shout but mean enough to make her flinch every so often. Bella had warned them, barely an hour ago, to avoid the south end of the house closest to the garage. The emotions lingering in the air were caustic.
Alice sniffed again but didn't reach for her towel yet. Carlisle had taken it from her hands and was studying it closely. "It's normal venom," she confirmed. "I'm alright, really, Carlisle." She was able to pull on a small, assuring smile. "Don't worry about me."
Carlisle sighed and folded the towel before handing it back to her. "We both know I can't control that." The smile he offered her in reply was sad.
Maria snorted across the room and Carlisle winced. Alice would've turned a glare on Maria if she had thought it would be seen by its target but…
Alice did it anyway, just to see if her visions were wrong again. But, no. Maria didn't turn her head. She only turned the page of the book still in her lap.
"You need to hunt," Edward spoke finally, his hand lifting to rest against Alice's back. Alice didn't know what he'd read in Maria's mind but he turned himself, moving his attention away from Maria abruptly. "Both of you do."
Carlisle, whose eyes had started to darken to a color that was more black than gold, didn't deny it. Alice, whose eyes were two days away from being pure coal black, was frustratingly the worst off of her family.
Another thing she felt guilty about. Hunting close to home might not be so easy as long as they didn't know where Esteban and his army were.
Half an hour later she stood on the edge of the property, bouncing uneasily from foot to foot while she waited. Edward stood beside her, keeping her company even though he would not be with them on their trip.
It was decided that they all needed to hunt and that it was better to do it sooner rather than later. They were to go in groups. In the first one, Alice, Carlisle, Emmett, and shockingly, Maria.
Carlisle had bristled when she'd announced that she was going, but Alice could tell that his relief over getting Maria out of the house and away from Esme was the feeling that won out. Edward didn't confirm this thought, but he did half-nod, meaning she wasn't far off.
Even more shocking was the vision Alice had received before Maria had announced she'd be accompanying them.
When the hunting groups had been split, Jasper had momentarily left the garage to corner Maria. He'd demanded, not asked, that she accompany Alice on the short trip. They'd bickered quietly in Spanish for a small while, Jasper's voice getting quieter and angrier as Maria's grew sharper and louder. But in the end, Jasper won out.
"I am only going so you don't have a fucking tantrum you rotten bastard."
Maria still had not spoken to her men once since Carlisle had asked that they remain in the garage. Alice knew that a couple of them were already doubting Maria's original intentions. Only five were still unflinchingly loyal. Or at least, they'd remain that way for the foreseeable future.
She hoped.
"If anything happens to her I'll hand you over to Esteban personally," Jasper had threatened quietly.
Maria hadn't flinched. She'd only sneered as she backed away. "Watch your tone or I'll throw her to him myself."
They'd argued for a few more seconds after that; just mindless insults and threats that, only Alice knew, were empty.
Alice knew she couldn't trust Maria fully, but if Jasper trusted her to keep Alice safe…
The idea left a queasy feeling in her stomach. She continued shuffling from foot to foot. The worst part was not knowing how much of that vision to trust.
Alice shook her head. No. Her visions hadn't been wrong, they'd just been off. She wasn't seeing nonsense, she just wasn't seeing everything. Lack of visions was what was screwing with her now. Alice had to start assuming that she was seeing far less than she should. It was maddening.
Edward reached out as if to steady her but then thought better of it. To his credit he didn't sigh, he didn't tell her to calm down, and he didn't frown at her, a silent commentary of her thoughts.
Emmett and Carlisle finally filed out of the house with Maria close behind, and Edward placed a hand on Alice's shoulder. "I'll see you soon."
Alice didn't trust her voice; the taste of venom had trailed its way down the back of her throat before her damned head had stopped leaking. It left her voice strangely scratchy and the burn in her throat was a bit more pronounced now. Besides, Alice didn't know what to say.
All she knew was that perhaps after this quick hunt she'd be able to think straight. If lack of a meal was affecting her ability to see the future so severely, perhaps she should remedy that. Even if it didn't fix the problem, she at least had a good place to start.
In the meantime, Jasper would train the newborns, Peter would watch in Emmett's absence, and Edward would keep an ear out for anything strange. Rosalie would keep Esme company and Bella would focus on every screen they had.
Not for the first time, Alice acknowledged—with a keen sense of fear—that they could keep everyone alive, or they could keep everyone sane. She could not imagine a scenario in which they could achieve both.
Alice didn't even look ahead to try to find one, not trusting herself to see. (Or, to not see.)
One more fuck up from her, and her entire family could end up dead.