THE DESTINED
I left once the sun was up to check the woods around her house; there were no unanticipated scent trails this time. When I returned she was already slamming the hatch on her car and slumping into the driver's seat.
The day was warm. Warmer than it had been since fall, though, there would certainly be a big drop in temperature once the sun went down. La wore a thin black v-neck blouse over a faded pair of jeans with heeled boots. Her peacoat was already folded haphazardly in the passenger seat.
The unseasonable warmth should have made her happy, but she looked even more despondent than she did on the previous day. I frowned as she pulled out of the driveway and took off down the road. Her tires peeled out on the pavement with an uncharacteristic aggression.
I ran to campus and watched as she grumped around, speaking only when it couldn't be avoided. Even Fungus left her alone. I stayed only long enough to hear her agree to the rescheduled trip to Port Angeles. Angela would be joining them this time, which was good news as with La's mood, there would need to be a buffer between La and Jessica or none of them would survive the trip.
On my return to the Cullen household, the entire family was outside in the surrounding meadow. It wasn't very often we allowed ourselves the luxury of sunshine, but with Peter and Charlotte in town, Esme likely couldn't resist.
Alice was weaving flowers into Charlotte's hair while the two of them watched Jasper and Peter spar. Carlisle was reading a book while his partner worked in a flower bed nearby.
"What's up, Pops?" I flopped onto the blanket beside Carlisle. He shut his book immediately and turned to me with a ready smile.
"You look better and better every day, son."
"People keep saying that, but I'm way too handsome to have ever looked poorly." I picked his book up to read the cover. The Odyssey. He must be feeling nostalgic about something. Carlisle only ever pulled out the classic fiction when his mind was wandering.
He chuckled. "Well, it's nice all the same."
"Where's Edward?" He wasn't enjoying the sun with the rest of the family.
"In his room, I expect." Carlisle retrieved his book and continued from the page he'd left as if he hadn't been interrupted.
Instead of going back around to the front of the house, climbing the stairs, and knocking on Edward's door like a normal, I turned to the wide bank of windows at the back of the house. The last window at the second floor level, all the way to the right was open. The tinkling melodies of Debussey could be heard streaming out over the trees.
There was no point in disguising my footsteps, Edward would be expecting me. I leaped up into the branches of a tree beside the house and dove toward the open gap in the windows. I landed lightly on a plush golden rug.
Edward was seated on his reading couch with a notebook propped on his knee and a quill in his hand.
Where on earth did you find a quill?!
"What can I do for you, Emmett?" He didn't look up.
"Are you practicing calligraphy?" I asked in exaggerated interest and tried to peer at his notebook. He snatched it away before I could get a glimpse.
"I'm writing a letter if you must know."
"Super sorry to interrupt," I said, with very real sincerity. His vinyl collection was in a bank of shelves opposite the window. I went to it and quickly sorted through until I found the album I wanted and held it up. "Can I borrow this?"
"Yes," he set his calligraphy aside and reached into a drawer beneath the record player. He quickly flipped to a record with practiced movements and pulled it out. "But this is the one you want - the late 50's collection. It has 'Love is Here to Stay' on it, which is the song stuck in your head."
"Thanks!" I added it to the stack I was collecting. "Can I borrow your car tonight, too?"
"Not the Porsche?"
"Too loud," I chuckled. Only Alice would buy a car in such a vulgar shade of yellow.
Edward smiled. "It's quite something, certainly. Is your Jeep also too loud?"
"Definitely." My Jeep had been purchased with a singular goal; destruction of everything in its path. It was a great car, but hard to miss, which made it less ideal for the execution of stealth missions. Even the humans I meant to follow would catch sight of the behemoth eventually.
"Alright then, sure."
"Thanks twice, brother!" I clapped him on the shoulder, then went up to my room where I dropped off the Billie Holiday records I'd just borrowed. From my room I could see that Jasper and Peter were still sparring in the yard. I had several hours to kill before La would be going to Port Angeles, I may as well enjoy my time.
Again, instead of taking the slow route through the house, I popped my window open and jumped straight toward the fighting figures. They each spun away just before I landed, Peter roosting in a nearby tree, while Jasper sprang forward to sweep my legs out from under me.
I managed to jump away from the effort, only to have Peter at my back, executing a solid hook to the kidneys. I hit the ground and rolled away laughing.
He came over to help me up, grinning widely.
"Well aimed, my friend. Want a round?"
"Hell yes!" Without a moment's hesitation, we swung at each other, in a flurry of punches and roundhouse kicks. Jasper took a break to sit with Alice and Charlotte.
Peter was an extraordinary fighter. He had an inherent quickness, that almost seemed like he knew where I would strike before I did. It reminded me of what Jasper said about some people having a positive aptitude for vampirism. Hadn't he said the southern tribes looked for humans like that? Was it possible Peter was himself one of those?
"Do you know anything about humans that tend to…" I wasn't sure how to phrase it and fumbled the wording. "Take to vampirism easily?"
My attempt at nonchalance was made more difficult by desperate motions to block multiple jabs aimed at my face. Peter didn't miss the gravity of my question, busy though he was. He pulled out of a swing immediately and gave me a sharp look.
"Why do you ask?" Charlotte flitted over to stand next to her partner with the same penetrating stare.
"I just wondered what some of the implications might be." The two of them were standing shoulder to shoulder, tense and aggressive. "I've never heard of anything like it before Jasper mentioned it."
"Why do you want to know?" Charlotte narrowed her eyes.
"He's not building an army, if that's what you're thinking." Jasper had risen to join us. His posture was one of relaxed contentment that went directly at odds with his friends. Alice was only a few steps behind him.
"Then what is your interest?" Peter glared at me.
"Why are you so protective over it?" I mirrored their stance. Two could play the intimidation game, and if they had information that might be helpful to La's situation, I needed to hear it.
"They are hunted," Charlotte said flatly in her quiet, serene voice.
"You may as well tell him, Peter. He's not going to give it up," Jasper added. A wave of calm swept me. He was using his peculiar talent to help ease the sudden hostility in our dispositions.
"Why didn't you tell him yourself?"
"I thought it would be better from the three of us together," Jasper admitted. "I was planning on calling you when Alice saw your visit."
"Why wait until now?" Peter persisted.
Jasper tilted his head in Alice's direction.
"It wasn't time," she supplied. Everyone seemed to accept that without further explanation.
"We'd better start at the beginning, then." Peter motioned for Jasper to take the lead.
"When Maria started the southern wars, everything changed," Jasper began with a sigh. "You've never been down there, so you have no reason to understand the state our kind were in - especially back then. Forced to live in shadow in an area that is known for big open skies. Living away from the metropolitan areas is impossible for the lack of hunting, so we were forced to live exclusively by night.
"It was Maria who declared she would no longer hide. She began to claim territories as her own and held them with brutal force. At first, it was to keep her coven fed, but she got greedy. Her territories expanded, her coven grew. Things became unruly when the other covens fought back. It became a violent race to claim the largest piece of the hunting territory."
I knew this part of the tale. Jasper's origins story was not a pleasant one. He would tell me about the newborn armies next, how Maria was able to gain a foothold in Mexico, and even into New Mexico. He would tell me how she was only able to hold it through blatant slaughter. It got so bad, the Volturi stepped in and rained hell on El Paso. Every vampire within 200 miles had been eradicated. Jasper and Maria barely snuck out with their lives. They hid north, regrouped, and finally reclaimed their territory. This time they did it quickly and quietly.
"The most effective way to claim and hold land was with an army built from newborns," he went on as I expected. "Their strength is at its peak during the first year. So we trained them extensively for six months, then sent them to their deaths."
"As I told you, during this time Maria and I discovered there were some few that absorbed the training with ease, that could control their thirst a little bit better, and seemed to absorb vampiric existence with glee. We call them the Divenire."
A thrill traveled down my spine.
"The Divenire?" I puzzled over the word. It sounded Italian, but languages were never a strength of mine. "To divine?"
"To become," Alice corrected.
The three vampires before me nodded meaningfully.
"You don't mean to imply that these people are meant to be turned into vampires?" I asked in stupefaction. We discussed this with Alice only the previous month and decided it was a ridiculous idea!
Didn't we?
I thought back to the whispered conversation between myself, Jasper, and Alice on my first day back in class after my trip to Canada.
Now that I thought about it, I didn't remember Jasper saying a word. He'd let me and Alice bicker over his head.
"Yes," Charlotte murmured. "The Divenire are thought to be humans that are destined to become vampires."
"No one is meant to become a vampire," I disagreed immediately, unwilling to believe it. That would mean La never had a choice to begin with, that all of this was preordained somehow.
"Many would disagree with you," Charlotte demurred. "We exist, therefore we exist to procreate, and some humans take to this existence better than others."
"How can you tell which humans are Divenire?"
Peter and Charlotte looked at each other wordlessly for a moment, before either of them spoke. There was a gravity in their gaze that didn't seem to sync with the question I had posed.
Peter answered. "You will find the Divenire among the restless wanderers. They tend to notice our differences immediately, but will not be bothered by them.
"During the height of the Southern Wars the Divenire were a rumor," he continued. "A fairy tale at best. What did it matter if there might be some few humans that could be destined to join our ranks? What is destiny to the immortal? Those who have all the time in the world?
"That is until Maria got involved," I surmised.
"As you know, during that period, time was of the essence," Jasper said. "We had to be quietly lethal, and exactingly effective. When Maria heard rumors of humans that might be vampire-ready, it was a matter of course that she found them and turned them.
"She set out to find one immediately. It was a slow process because she didn't know what exactly to look for."
Oh my god, "And then she found you."
Jasper nodded. "And then she found me. A young military hopeful with a talent for persuasion.
"Upon transition, we shine," Jasper added. "We are less confused, less chaotic, and quicker on the uptake. We absorb everything about vampirism rapidly, and wear the mantle of immortality more comfortably than any other newborn I've ever seen."
Another chill crept down my spine. This sounded very, very familiar.
"She wasn't sure what she found with me until I had transitioned. Even then, it could have been a coincidence, until we found Peter."
"The southern wars changed, then. She sent us looking for Divenire, sometimes tearing people from their families, even decimating entire villages to build her army," Peter continued the tale.
"That's when you left?" I asked.
"Sadly no," Peter shook his head and glanced at Charlotte. "It wasn't until she threatened the life of someone precious to me that I left." She took his hand with both of hers and held it firmly.
"So what does being Divenire mean for the human? What did it mean for you?" I brought the conversation back around to what I really wanted to know; how this would affect La.
"For me, it meant only that my life was cut short," Peter said.
"Are you happier, or more comfortable?" I was grasping at straws.
"Yes and no," Peter allowed. "It's hard to say. I was not given a choice. Perhaps if I hadn't been born in blood, it is possible things may have been different, but we'll never know."
My mind was still reeling from the implications, trying to fit pieces of a puzzle together. "If someone was meant to be something, shouldn't there be a reason?"
"Some say, the Divenire have a different purpose to those of us that simply exist. A drive, if you will." Charlotte spoke up with a shrug. "Again, if that is true, Maria made sure anyone in her ranks was unable to know any purpose but her own. We were beaten into submission."
"Now, we only want peace," Peter agreed. "But I have wondered about those of us like Carlisle, who has dedicated his existence to a higher purpose. If there were more of us dedicated to the good, we would be unstoppable."
I blinked at him. "If we did too much of that, the Volturi would slaughter us."
"Yes," he murmured thoughtfully. "It's amazing, isn't it? All of that power, yet they've stayed hidden, secluded, in a remote tower for centuries."
There was nothing I could say to that. He was right, but it didn't seem fair that any small group of people should have the weight of changing the world on their shoulders. Predestined or not.
"How about your transition? Was it shorter, easier?"
"Not particularly, I don't think," Peter said. "I found it easier to control the thirst drive within the first year, as Jasper said. To Maria, this meant we could train earlier, which meant joining her ranks more quickly. It only enabled her to use our newborn strength for a longer period of time."
"Jasper also mentioned the possibility of stronger powers, is that true?"
"Those of us that are powered are even rarer than you would find in a general population of vampires," Peter admitted. "When one is found their power is fearsome to behold."
"That's why they are hunted?"
"Yes," Charlotte narrowed her eyes. "Why are you asking? Do you think you've found one?"
I glanced at Jasper, surprised he hadn't mentioned anything to his friends. His face remained impassive at my inquiring look.
"It's possible," I said. "She shows no fear in my presence at all."
"Keep her safe," Charlotte's features pinched. "There are those that would take her from you."
"What do you mean?" I asked warily.
"We've heard whispers of a hunter in the night." Peter put his arm around his mate and pulled her close. "Whispers of one lacking morals, that flies with all haste through various cities wreaking havoc."
"Where did you hear this?" Jasper's curiosity refocused everyone's attention away from me.
"Outside of St. Louis nearly two months ago," Peter offered. I immediately relaxed. St. Louis was more than two thousand miles away. There was no feasible reason for that troublemaker to come this far west.
"What else can you tell me?" Jasper asked, but he was only doing his due diligence.
"Only rumors. It is said that he killed an old one, and is merciless," Peter spread his hands in apology. "We didn't want to be involved, so we're heading to Vancouver to stay well away."
"You know what can happen when rumors like that start," Charlotte shook her head.
"Indeed," Jasper agreed.
I left them to their discussions of rumors and passed the time in my room, listening to my borrowed records and reading some old comics. When it neared the time La and her friends would be arriving in Port Angeles, I put the comic back in its case and joined the family downstairs, who had moved inside as the afternoon progressed.
Jasper and Peter were rounding their conversation into the looping structures of circular goodbyes.
"Do you ever run into Maria?" Jasper asked. They were standing by the door, light packs on the backs of both Charlotte and Peter.
"Thankfully not," Peter chuckled. "It's probably for the best we don't."
Maria had turned the three of them, at different points, over the last two centuries. Jasper was the oldest, having been turned during the Civil War, and Charlotte, the youngest, in the late thirties. Maria had once looked Jasper up while we were living in Calgary. Edward and I had recently returned from our journey away from the family and were experiencing dubious success in reestablishing our commitment to the humane diet.
Maria, noticing this, took full advantage and showed us an incredibly good time. We nearly burned the whole city down on one particularly questionable night. It had been an eventful visit and one that I remembered fondly, if a bit chaotic. The family had to move immediately, and Jasper had asked her, as politely as possible, to refrain from visiting again.
Peter had been instrumental in Jasper's eventual defection from the Southern wars. Since Jasper had been Maria's favorite, she'd never quite forgiven Peter for the loss. This had always been a bewildering detail in their relationship to me. As far as I knew, Maria had planned to kill Jasper and was only thwarted by his defection. In that case, I always thought Maria should have been thankful Peter was able to lure him away with talks of peaceful lifestyles.
They shook hands with broad smiles and made promises for another visit, not so long in between this time. I offered my farewells as they exited and waited only long enough to see them running off into the woods before I sprinted for the garage.
"They're going to go straight to Seattle, Emmett," Alice called. "You don't have to worry!"
I pretended I didn't hear her, and slammed the door closed behind me. My excuses were already so thin I was starting to wonder why I continued to pretend. Of course I was worried about La, but not really because of Charlotte and Peter. I trusted them well enough to stay away from our territory.
No, it was simply an uneasiness in my gut when I couldn't be sure of La's well-being with my own eyes. I was happy to let the women get a head start toward Port Angeles - tailing them at the crawling pace of the speed limit would do my head in. This way, I could catch up with them at a reasonable speed.
As I got into the Volkswagen, Alice's little face appeared at the door I had just slammed shut.
"Say hi to La for me!" She waved happily from the doorframe as I flipped her off and squealed out of the garage.