Part Two

Can't Catch Me Now

There's blood on the side of the mountain

There's writing all over the wall

Shadows of us are still dancin'

In every room and every hall

~ Olivia Rodrigo, Can't Catch Me Now

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Bella

Aro, it seemed, had learned his lesson.

Reinforced iron was used to wall in my cell. I didn't see anybody for weeks on end. There were no windows, the small space drowning in a darkness so impenetrable sometimes I wondered if I was accidentally using Alec's gift on myself. The darkness brought with it a kind of numbness I wasn't sure existed as a vampire, so maybe it was his gift that brought me that one little slice of peace.

Because everything else was unbearable.

The first few days were much like my first few months as a vampire. I stayed inside of my own mind, enjoying the heartbreakingly short amount of time I'd been by Edward Cullen's side.

It was easy, sometimes. Pretending I was there. Deluding myself into thinking my memories were a reality I could hide away in. Sometimes it wasn't even my own memory that brought me peace. Any glimpse I got of Edward's life was so thoroughly engrained in my mind that it was like a living movie. Chicago in the 1900s was like nothing I'd ever known, and I spent most of my time going day to day with him in his human life.

He had dinner with his parents once a week.

His father was harsh, but loved his son. And his mother doted on him like no other.

I was in the middle of one of their family dinners when the first vision hit. He wasn't the relaxed, kind hearted man I had been spending the last however many days, weeks, months? with.

He was a vampire on the verge of breaking. Maybe already over the edge.

Alice was with him. He was in the cottage - the one we spent our first week together as husband and wife - sitting on the floor in front of what had once been our bedroom.

His hands were buried in his hair, his eyes squeezed shut as if he were in agony.

"Again," he snapped.

Alice winced.

And I knew. We were mirror images of each other, even oceans apart.

He didn't move. Didn't breathe. Just… sat there. Having Alice replay what I had to assume was that first and only vision she'd ever had of me, over and over. My new reality.

I curled myself further into the cold, stone wall.

He is alive, I reminded myself. Over and over again. Replaying the words until I convinced myself that was all that mattered.

I could have fought harder, not so willingly gone with Aro when he showed up.

But the carnage he was going to leave behind would have broken me in every conceivable way.

They would all die. Every single one of them, each in a way more horrific than the last as they tried to protect me.

It didn't matter what I did; which power I grasped at to hurl toward the guard, a few always slipped through. A few lethal soldiers that managed to kill my family one by one before forcing me to watch Edward…

My fists clenched.

I could have fought. But this way, at least he was alive.

He would feel better.

Eventually, one day, he would feel better.

Edward

I had every inch of the vision memorized. From ninety years ago, there wasn't a particle of dust I didn't know. But now… now I knew her. Now I saw the way her fists clenched and eyes darted back and forth as she worked her way through a vision and recognized the darkening purple circles under her eyes.

Why Alice could only ever have this one vision of Bella, none of us knew. There were more questions surrounding her entire existence than answers, but I clung to the only concrete piece of knowledge I had, and that was her location.

Ninety years with the Volturi and I hadn't figured out how to best their cells. I had done my research, thrown a few unruly vampires in them myself over the decades, and no one had ever escaped. I had never escaped, after a planned bet with Demetri gone wrong where I boasted I could get out easily enough.

The steel was reinforced, ancient, and impenetrable by even a fully fed vampire on their best day. The chains were ancient, I wasn't even sure if Aro knew where they were from, but breaking them was impossible. I wasn't even sure if they could be opened once they were fastened around a wrist. I had never seen anyone make it out of the dungeon in one piece.

I flinched.

I should have tried harder. Ninety fucking years there and I couldn't figure out a single way for her to escape.

Aro had millennia on me. He was no fool, and his empire was well earned. Well protected.

"You ready?" Emmett's voice floated through the house. He forced me to hunt once a week. Goading me until my anger took over and I took out the first animal with a heartbeat near me before returning back to the solitude of our bedroom.

Carlisle visited once a day, sometimes sending Esme in his place when he was out of town. They told me tales of all they had been doing, the friends Carlisle had reached out to, ones who had recently moved to the area to try and help. All so laughably talented compared to Bella.

Carlisle was a practical man - vampire. He saw the changes in Aro from the last time he had seen him to four months ago.

Maybe vampires weren't meant to live forever. Maybe, after too much time, even a once strong creature with the mental clarity a human could only dream of started to deteriorate. It was millenia in the making, and maybe it would take a few more centuries before he truly lost it, but Aro was no longer the level headed keeper of justice he once proclaimed to be.

Or maybe he was just bored.

The Volturi, in practice, were beneficial to our society. Somebody had to be in charge, somebody had to make sure a few rogues didn't go slaughtering the planet. It was a brutal practice at times, but it was necessary.

The ideas Aro now had of his guard were far from the original purpose. They focused on power and destruction instead of control and peace.

He could do it, too. Now that he had her.

She wouldn't comply, not willingly. That much was obvious, given the piles of ashes we found after she was hauled away.

Their scents lingered by the ashes when we had found them. I knew it was no coincidence those three were at the top of my list to kill if Bella and I were to ever live undetected by the Volturi.

We weren't sure what exactly she did, how she destroyed them.

But I knew she did it for me.

Because I would have done it for her.

—Miss Americana—

It was just as boring and mundane of a day as the last one hundred twelve had been. Alice was only ever seeing that same vision, the one of Bella locked up in a dark and desolate cell day in and day out.

Carlisle liked to tell me he was gaining footing on his research, that he was learning more about Bella and her powers. Whenever I asked a follow up question he was, inevitably, out of answers.

I followed Emmett, not caring enough to even put up a fight today as we went for our hunt. The house was crawling with vampires, the land surrounding it infested with them now.

Most were no friends of mine, considering my work with the Volturi over the years. They were easy to ignore. And quick to keep to themselves when they realized I was a freshly unmated vampire.

It was uncommon, but happened. Losing a mate, no matter the circumstances, was the single thing our kind could all sympathize. Newborns were dangerous because they were strong and untrained and bloodthirsty. A vampire that had just lost their mate was a lethally trained monster with nothing else to lose.

Most of the guests kept their distance, whether they were new or had been here for weeks. So when two vampires smoothly took a spot blocking Emmett and I's path to the forest, I raised a brow at the pair.

Unfortunately, I recognized them.

Vladimir and Stefan, sole remaining members of the Romanian coven.

They were older than Aro, their coven having ruled for thousands of years before the Volturi took over. The pair were bitter, exiled, and had been itching for a fight for millenia. According to Aro, at least.

"I would have thought he'd be taller," Vladimir purred.

Stefan nodded. "Older, too."

I snarled.

They laughed.

"Wiser, perhaps," Vladimir went on, circling Emmett and I.

The pair of them were quite the vampiric cliche. Each could have been Dracula himself given their unwillingness to dress in anything from the current century and the thick Romanian tongue they had never let slip away over the years.

"You two said you wouldn't cause any problems," Emmett warned as a crowd formed around us.

I felt Carlisle's hand fall to my shoulder, watched as Jasper took his spot beside Emmett, and felt the eyes and rushing thoughts of at least three dozen vampires within hearing distance of the confrontation. I didn't bother to zero in on anyone in particular. They were all irrelevant.

"We're not causing a problem," Stefan said, leaning casually against a thick trunk of a tree. "We're just surprised, is all. That after all this time a Vampire Queen would end up with… this."

Every vampire in a ten mile radius froze. Breathing ceased and any one of us could have heard a pebble drop in the lake fifteen miles out in the silence.

Vampire Queen.

"You volunteered to help our cause, Vladimir, Stefan. Sharing what you know would be–"

"We will share," Stefan sighed dramatically. "As long as we have dibs on the witch twins when the fight comes."

"Alec is already dead," I snapped, surprising everyone. I didn't bother to talk much these days. "Bella–"

"The Queen," Vladimir corrected.

My mind spun. "My mate killed him. Along with Demetri and Chelsea."

"Interesting…" Stefan mused. "Aro must be keeping that information well guarded. No one else knows. How long ago?"

"One hundred twelve days," I answered automatically.

They both smiled, my pathetic, heartbroken, puppy-dog response amusing them.

"What do you know about a Vampire Queen, Vladimir?" Carlisle asked intently, passages of research and long lost myths flashing through his mind. He didn't seem the least bit surprised about a Vampire Queen.

A working theory, he told me mentally. One I assumed was as far fetched as they come.

Stefan grinned, a teeth-baring sneer in my direction. "How do you think we stayed in power for so long?"

The Romanian's story was not a pleasant one. They were some of the most ancient vampires amongst us, older than Aro and Marcus and Caius nearly combined. Perhaps my theory of vampires going insane was wrong then, considering neither Stefan or Vladimir seemed hell bent on world domination.

Either way, they ruled the supernatural world before the Volturi took over. For generations they were setting the rules, and unlike the Volturi they were honest about their hunger for power. They liked being in charge, enjoyed being at the top of the food chain, and didn't mind taunting a human or two for fun.

The Volturi prided themselves on control with the underscore of also serving justice. The Romanians were honest about their disinterest of justice.

But it worked. For the time period, they were a successful dynasty of talent that kept our existence - mostly - a secret.

Until Aro decided he should be in charge.

"Adria was… everything. Everything to me. Us. The heart of our entire coven," Vladimir told us, his voice uncharacteristically soft and almost vulnerable. "She was my mate. Our Queen."

I saw it. Her. His memories of his mate were not foggy in the slightest, even given the centuries since he had last seen her.

"How was she created?" Carlisle asked quickly.

Stefan shook his head. "She wasn't. She was born."

"How?" Carlisle stressed.

Both Romanians shrugged. Vladimir crossed his arms behind his back, not feeling any of the urgency everyone else in the clearing felt. "If you're looking for a concrete explanation for our existence, you will not find it with us, Carlisle. But we can tell you, every thousand years or so after the last is destroyed, a new queen is born. She starts her change on her eighteenth birthday. Only a handful have ever survived their change, from our knowledge. Even fewer have made it past their first year of existence."

"Why?" I gasped.

Numb. I had been numb since the moment she walked away. Resigned that my ninety years with the Volturi were utterly useless if I hadn't been able to either figure out a way for her to escape or keep her from them for more than a handful of weeks.

But his words… even fewer have made it past their first year of existence… were a shot of venom to my veins.

Vladimir squared his shoulder and came to stand directly in front of me. His words from earlier made more sense. Their digs about assuming I would be taller, wiser… while superficial and meaningless to me, I understood their origin now.

"A Vampire Queen with a mate will thrive for millennia. Keep the peace amongst our kind in a way only she can. It is not only her power that brings the peace… it is her. But she needs her mate, needs that tether holding her together. Without it… I've only met one other. She was young, spent nearly a year suffering through her change, and within six months she had lost her mind. Aro killing her was a mercy."

Carlisle cleared his throat. I was reminded of the quiet, lost woman I stumbled upon in the flowers when I first found Bella. The way her eyes seemed to see a million things I couldn't. How Carlisle said her mind got crowded and she preferred verbal communication…

"I have many more questions," Carlisle started. "But how is this not more common knowledge? How do you–"

Stefan gave Carlisle a patient smile. "Bloodlines, Carlisle. It's always the blood."

A/N: I have no plan for this. I just sit and write and see what happens. Hope at least someone out there is enjoying the ride.