SEIZING SOMETHING
"Begin by seizing something which your opponent holds dear; then he will be amenable to your will."
—Sun Tzu, The Art of War
—
DECEMBER 7TH 2039
7:52PM MST
INDIAN PEAKS WILDERNESS, COLORADO
The forest was quiet as they ran north into the mountains. Every now and then the silence was broken by a soft question or an equally muted comment, but for the most part the Cullens kept their mouths shut. Thankfully. It would really send the Major into fits if Esteban zeroed in on them because his coven couldn't resist the urge to blabber amongst themselves.
Carlisle Cullen was doing a poor job of pretending to be comfortable with Maria trailing behind the rest of the group; as he very well should, she thought. Every so often he'd risk another glance over his shoulder at her, trying to be subtle but failing every time. The fact that he couldn't figure out where she was by just the sound of her feet against the ground alone was as irritating as it was unbelievable.
Maria thought, since the Major had been with the Cullens for almost a century, that he would've trained them up into half-decent soldiers by now. Or that he would have at least ingrained within them some basic survival skills that would actually serve them well in an emergency like this.
Especially after her first visit to their funny little coven.
If anything, that event should have been a wakeup call to him: that he would never be rid of her or the south or the place he came from. He would never escape the man she had made him into, no matter how many cars or sweaters or computers he owned. You could put a coyote with the dogs but eventually it would bite.
While the Major's coven was, at best, ungrateful, and at the worst, absolutely useless, at least his mate appeared to have some sense. Maria hadn't had the chance to study Alice properly back during their first meeting beyond simply sizing her up. It had been easy to dismiss Alice back in the day, as feeble and soft as she was. Maria would always be pleased that she was taller than the woman who'd finally tamed the Major into some form of domestic submission.
She still wanted to know how they'd met, but she'd rather rip her own arm off than ask.
Maria watched as Alice trailed behind Emmett, who led the charge forward. It appeared that they were taking a well-worn path; they were likely regular inhabitants of this portion of the forest despite claiming that they preferred to hunt farther away.
Preferences be damned, they better find some vermin quick. The longer they stayed away from the Cullen domicile the more annoyed she found herself becoming. They'd only been gone for about fifteen minutes but each mile they traveled was another mile they could potentially be traveling into enemy territory. If they made the mistake of letting their guard down because of their familiarity with the area they would absolutely pay the price.
Emmett mumbled something to Alice, too low for Maria to hear, and Alice replied with "Let's try to keep away from the trails and see if we can't find something by Silver Lake." There was a moment of hesitation before she spoke again, "If we have to, Indian Peak, but not past that."
Emmett exchanged a nod with Carlisle, and shot Maria a curious look before turning northbound and continuing on.
How bizarre it must be to see the consequences of your own actions before they befell you. Maria wondered what kind of human Alice must've been to turn into an immortal so gifted. Maria had assumed herself lucky with her selection of the Major all those years ago, and found that his ability had been perfect for what she needed from him. But to have a psychic of Alice's caliber, or even the detestable Edward's…
Well, it was no wonder the Volturi apparently had their eyes on this foolish coven. There was treasure to be found amongst the trash. She could picture them picking the gold out of the ashes now. Ashes she had no intention of being a part of.
"Nearly there," Alice muttered softly toward them as they continued their run up through the slopes of the mountain. The snow was sparse in this area, as if the ground hadn't received enough of yesterday's warmth to melt it into nothing the same way the snow around their property had sunk into the earth.
Maria had never liked snow. It got in the way.
Alice quickly took the lead from Emmett, steering them across a specific path that only she seemed to know. Maria moved herself a bit closer to the group, nearly putting herself at Carlisle's side and enjoying the uneasy glance he shot her way.
Maybe if she said "boo" and lunged at him he'd get scared enough to stop fucking looking at her.
Thankfully, Carlisle Cullen wasn't her focus on this little excursion. This evening she only had eyes for Alice. The Major had been very clear with his instructions: bring his mate back promptly or he'd tear her newborns to pieces.
She had originally shrugged and remarked that it was only what they were made for, but when he'd snapped at her and started to work himself into an annoying tantrum, she'd rolled her eyes, told him he was being an impudent child, and then told him that she'd cash in all these favors eventually.
God, he would owe her so much after all was said and done. She soothed herself with this thought as she ran with the Cullens, following closely behind Alice.
Maria wondered if she would have figured out something was strange about Alice if she had thought to look for signs. Begrudgingly, she had to hand it to Edward. His possession of an ability had been the most surprising to her. Especially thinking back to all the judgments she had been casting back when she first met them, in their quaint Canadian homestead, and all the internal mocking she'd indulged in before she'd arranged her dramatic exit.
She was also a little amused that he hadn't seen that parting gift coming. Oh, well. There was no use thinking about it now. Maria was more than willing to let bygones be bygones; if they wanted to hold a grudge over a handful of humans then that was their own problem.
Alice eventually lifted a hand behind her, slowing her run and signaling them to follow her lead. "Hold on," she spoke quietly, jogging slightly ahead of them after they slowed to a stop.
Maria had to admit, she was a little curious to see what type of vermin these people gorged themselves on. She didn't want to watch them hunt exactly—ugh, it was bad enough it would be a few hours minimum before she could hunt with her men—but for the Cullens to hunt together so… so socially was another anomaly.
The actual hunting aspect was the most fascinating part. If humans could give them a decent chase like the mountain-dwelling animals they were currently trying to sniff out, perhaps feeding would be a more entertaining affair.
Maria inhaled deeply and tried to see if she could smell whatever had stopped Alice. They certainly hadn't come across any scent trails, human, animal, or vampire for that matter. It wasn't until Maria focused her hearing that something felt very, very wrong.
She stepped sideways, moved closer to one of the Cullens—Carlisle, still—and began to survey the area. There was no movement and there was no sound.
None at all.
It happened too quickly to understand what was going on, but when Alice took another step forward, her foot failed to support her weight. Instead, she toppled over so neatly she looked like a human fainting. By the time her head smacked against the ground, face-first, her body bouncing with the softest of thuds, Emmett was already within arms reach of her. He wasn't quick enough to catch her, but by the time he was reaching out to place a hand on her back, he too crumbled to the ground.
It took every ounce of strength in her body to wrench Carlisle Cullen backward, shocked at his strength as he desperately attempted to rush toward the two, somehow incapacitated, vampires.
"Alice!" Carlisle yelled, his voice echoing in a way that did not sound right to her ears. Maria growled as he yanked his arm out of her grasp and managed to take another step forward. They were barely a dozen yards away, and if he didn't stop fighting her then there was a chance he would be down next. "Emmett!"
Maria shushed him desperately, trying to trip him up with every trick in the book. In her head she was cycling through her options as fast as possible. The fact of the matter was that they needed to back as far enough away from here as they possibly could before whatever happened to Alice and Emmett happened to them, too.
Carlisle gained a few more feet—barely a second had passed since Alice had fallen—when Maria took a chance.
It was a tried and true method that Maria only used when she felt she had the advantage on the field, and since Carlisle was not attempting to kill her, she utilized it then. She reached out and gripped his elbow with her hand and for a moment she let him pull her forward quickly, one step, two—
Maria pulled back on his arm while he was mid-step, throwing him off balance slightly and launching herself forward using his momentum. With her feet in the air she twisted, using her leg to swing her around and place herself in between Carlisle and the others.
Still in midair, and still hurtling toward a certain death Carlisle seemed determined on inflicting upon them both, she planted her hand against his shoulder. It gave her enough purchase to release her grip on his elbow and hook her arm around the back of his neck. With her momentum still on her side, she swiftly hooked her opposite leg around the underside of his armpit and pulled him down on top of her.
They rolled ass over ankle twice before Maria managed to pin him, one arm wrapped around the front of his neck, the other desperately trying to place a hand over his mouth as she shushed him.
"Stop it!" She hissed as he tried to stand despite her grip on his throat and her weight on his back. This was why she preferred killing to subduing, ten out of ten times. These stupid men just loved to throw their weight around mindlessly. "Quiet!"
"What are y—"
"What are you doing?!" It was so hard not to raise her voice. It was so hard not to just fucking twist and be done with him and claim "whoops, sorry, it's just that he was trying to get me killed!"
Something was very, very wrong, and if Maria didn't get the two of them out of the line of fire, they were next.
No, he was next. She downright refused to be brought down alongside a vampire who owned a fucking lawnmower.
"Backup," she hissed as he tried to throw her off again, "We need backup! Without it, we're going down, too." She tightened her hold and tried jerking him back into the wet, snowy earth. "Look," she hated that he was forcing her to speak like this. There was a very real chance Esteban or one of his people could be watching them at this very moment.
That thought reinvigorated her unlike no other.
"Look!" And she jerked his head upward, she brought both of their gazes toward Alice and Emmett's crumpled forms. They saw Emmett's face where he lay, his head pillowed on the side of Alice's back and facing them.
His eyes were still open.
"Something is wrong with them, we need the others, now." There was something happening out here in these woods and Maria had a sinking feeling that whatever had removed Alice and Emmett's ability to speak and move could very well be slinking slowly toward them.
Carlisle breathed heavily as he looked toward his coven mates, and finally stopped fighting her. Despite this, Maria did not loosen her hold. "What—I—"
"You go back to your home, get the others, bring them back here but do not get this close." Maria's head shot back and forth, trying to take in as much of the surrounding area as she could, committing every branch, tree, and bush to memory with her quick survey. "I'll be in the treetops watching them."
"We can't leave them!"
"I am not! You are! If you cannot trust me to—" A quiet, whispering sound made the silence shimmer for a moment, and Maria and Carlisle watched as all the trees beyond them, starting at where Alice and Emmett lay and continuing farther back than they could see, shivered slightly, the leaves rippling in an unnatural, eerie way. "Get back, now."
Maria released Carlisle's neck and scrambled backward off of him as fast as possible. She could have actually sworn out of relief when, instead of marching forward idiotically, he also hurried backward alongside her. Not once did either of them take their eyes off the tree line.
The leaves all flickered once more in sync, and that's when Maria realized what was wrong.
"The entire forest," she whispered quickly, not daring to raise her voice any higher, "it's empty."
"Not empty." Carlisle had finally calmed enough to see sense. Maria finally turned her head, daring a glance at him. "Numb." There was a flicker of horror across his face as he looked back toward her. "Alec."
Maria didn't know who that was, but if Carlisle knew someone who was capable of rendering vampires fully immobile this way, she did not want to waste time interrogating him.
"Hurry," she turned back toward the quiet, shimmering forest and locked her gaze onto its victims. "If we're quick enough we can figure something out." He didn't immediately run off and for that Maria reeled on him. "You do not have to trust me but if you do not listen to me then their deaths will be on your head!" She moved in front of him and shoved him on the chest as hard as she could, immediately despising how he was far stronger than she would have guessed. "Get back to your house now. Get everyone moving," she commanded, her eyes lit with concentrated frustration as she planned out her next moves.
It did not matter to her that Carlisle Cullen did not trust her. Maria had given the Major her word when she said she'd bring Alice back, and she did not intend on setting foot back on their property without the seer. "I'll keep watch," she hissed, turning back toward the forest and moving sideways, already looking up into the trees for a good place to start. "Go."
Finally, after far too many words exchanged, Carlisle turned and ran away, his speed satisfying enough for her to turn her attention forward once more. At that pace he could be back at their home within ten minutes. Calculate in an additional minute to get everyone moving, and then hopefully another ten minutes, maximum, before they could be back and ready to fight.
What they would be fighting exactly, Maria had no damn clue. Her only hope lay in three things: one, that Carlisle had some sort of idea what was going on or how to combat whatever this was. Two, that hopefully the Cullens and her men could move quicker than their enemy could. And three, that the Major and his coven were ready now to put their lives on the line for the two of their own that were currently out of commission.
In a roundabout way, this strange happenstance was almost an encouraging ordeal for her. Only in attempting to fight for another one of their "family members" was she sure the Cullens would do exactly what they needed to do to prove effective against Esteban's potential army.
Only a coven as absurd and attached as this one would put their lives on the line for others. And anyone willing to die for another person was a body willing to fight to the death. Those were the bodies that were useful to Maria in a fight like this.
Of course, strategically speaking, she would rather that the gifted members of their coven survived. She didn't quite understand the breadth of Bella's shield, but the Major had deemed it vital enough to plant the girl at the back for everyone's protection. Edward's death would be quite a loss, and Maria didn't even want to think of the possibility of Alice getting whisked away. Not because of what the Major would do—and Maria was no idiot, she knew she would be in quite a bit of danger if they lost Alice—but because of what her gift represented.
No enemy of hers needed that kind of power. In the wrong hands it could mean Maria's demise once and for all. And despite the distance that had existed between herself and the Major over the past century, Maria would never fully give the Major up to something as novel as a battle between an opposing army. Numbers be damned, the Major wasn't allowed to die just yet.
Maria had brought him into this world and she was the one who decided when he could exit it.
It didn't take long for her to scale the nearest tree, and after jumping from treetop to treetop she felt as if she'd put a decent amount of distance between herself and Alice and Emmett.
She could still see their bodies between the leaves where she was perched, but unless someone knew precisely where to look, she would be hidden from view to anyone down below. With practiced ease, Maria stilled herself completely, not making a single noise or moving a muscle, and opened up the focus of her two prime senses.
After three minutes of complete silence, the shimmering began to slowly recede. Maria watched it and dared to move her head slightly, peering through a wider patch of leaves to see it moving back west in the very direction they'd been heading.
There was an urge to drop down and see whether or not their bodies were still as prone as they'd been before, but Maria quickly resettled herself and stared closely at them. Somehow they were still lying motionless on the ground. Perhaps the shimmer only caused the effect, but the absence of it wouldn't reverse it.
Maria wasn't given the opportunity to think about it much more before the sounds of feet, approaching from the northwest, reached her ears. It was so easy to hear in the eerie stillness of the forest. Even as the leaves began to return to their usual state, blowing in the breeze and resting idly in its absence, there was still that acute, awful silence.
If this condition was reversible, it was not something that Maria could sort out.
Slowly, but not silently, two vampires appeared in the distance.
Maria's attention locked onto the newborns immediately, and the sight of them made an old, resentful anger plant itself deep within her awareness. It had been a long time since she'd looked at a member of Father Esteban's cult, but the cross carved into their foreheads was as ugly as it was prominent.
The two vampires approached Emmett and Alice. One used his foot to flip them both onto their backs as he stared down at each of them. Alice's face was still hidden from sight, but Maria did not miss the way her arm fell lifelessly across her chest; the black shirt was now dirtied and wet from the mud and snow. Emmett's eyes stared upward now, still unseeing.
One of the men gave a quick signal, and then more people appeared. She watched two additional cult members emerge and felt something in her chest turn into lead. Maria wished she could will them dead.
If Maria hadn't been who she was, she would have missed it, but when a newborn turned his head slightly to look back the way they'd come, Maria followed his gaze…
Only to see a hooded figure hidden deep within the woods. The dark gray cloak was draped over the individual's shoulders with the hood pulled up to obscure their features. It was a stark difference from Esteban's cult members, who always—and even now—wore the ragged, unwashed clothes of their meals.
Carlisle's startled familiarity with this incapacitating ability—and the horrified utterance of a name attached to it—reminded Maria of something Alice had told her two days prior, about the Volturi's preference for extra-sensory abilities, and how, if it was them, they were in trouble.
Suspicion morphed into realization which quickly snapped into the painful sting of fear.
The sight of a member of the Volturi guard hidden deep within the woods made her veins turn to ice. She had never before seen a member of the guard with her own two eyes, but now it was impossible to misunderstand what she was seeing.
It was one thing to have to face down Esteban's cult. It was a separate, far worse thing to have to face down his cult and members of the Volturi, all at once.
The dark shape gave a quick nod toward the newborns and the prone bodies, and one after the other, Alice and Emmett were hauled up and thrown over a shoulder.
The cloaked body was her primary focus. Their silhouette was ever-so-faintly illuminated by the scant moonlight shining through the treetops and clouds above. In an instant, Maria memorized everything about the scene: where they were standing, their relative heights to the trees around them, the placement of their feet…
Suddenly, Maria did not mind the snow so much.
In an instant, the four vampires turned and ran back the way they came, the fifth (the goddamn member of the fucking Volturi guard) disappearing with them. Maria only waited eleven seconds—long enough to see a leaf in her peripheral vision shudder, fall away from its branch, and slowly sink down to land gently upon the cold ground—before she started moving.
It was a dangerous game she was playing, but Maria would be damned if they disappeared without a trace.
Maria moved onward in the trees at a pace that even an out-of-shape human, following on the ground, could keep up with. With every tree she traveled between, moving so carefully that not a branch creaked or groaned from the pressure, she eventually made it to the point where Emmett and Alice had fallen before she paused again.
She was not foolish enough to continue. Not yet. But as she looked at the ground beneath her, the forest ahead of her, and the trees around her, something changed.
Softly, the forest was brought back to life. First, with the chirping of bugs, next with the subtle movements that were usually easy for Maria to ignore. Every forest and desert and inch of earth crawled and teemed with life, noisy, writhing, alive. As the seconds progressed, the forest transformed from its haunting, unnatural silence back to its bustling, creaking symphony. She even heard, what were likely smaller mammals and birds nearby, resume their movements, their tiny heartbeats just barely discernible over the soothing noise of the forest coming alive.
Maria was not one to take stupid chances.
So she could not explain why she held her hand out, fingertips pushing past the invisible line she'd drawn in the air. When nothing happened—no strange sensation, no fits of limp unconsciousness, no shift in the air—she exhaled slowly.
Then, she moved onto the next tree.