Luminosity

by Alicorn

  James gave a slight nod, more invested in the conversation now. "Aro and Marcus," I continued. "They were out of their city dealing with somebody who broke some rule. The Volturi must be really powerful, huh?" I marveled. "I mean, those people who had me trapped, I would have tried to run away but there would've been no way I could do it. And there were seven of them. I don't know how you got me out, I mean wow. I can't imagine what would scare them, but they sure wanted the Volturi's permission before they did anything." I paused, for effect. "Wow. I bet the Volturi will be pissedif they can't have the witch they wanted after all. Maybe they'll kill all of them. Serves them right," I spat. The unspoken implication was that James, too, would be at the risk of Volturi wrath if he were responsible for the loss of the desired witch.

  It was a bluff. An outrageous bluff concocted in too little time and too much adrenaline. But heknew I had every motivation to lie like a rug, andalready planned to kill me and already had the means to do it. Anything I could tell him that didn't make him kill me sooner or slower was a potential improvement.

  I would have backed off in a heartbeat if he'd shown any inclination to be annoyed with the fact that I was talking, or with the likelihood that I was telling tales. I wanted to set myself up as the useful object that could be destroyed orredeemed for valuable cash prizes, and I wanted him not to accumulate enough hate to pick the first option out of spite. It would be worse than useless for me to annoy him, or at least to appear to be the source of his annoyance or emotionally precious to that source.

  But James wasn't annoyed. He'd gotten his target. He could have gagged me and hadn't. He could have told me to shut up when I started talking, and didn't.

  The Volturi were the only group I could think of that could definitely kill James and might not kill me besides the Cullen and Denali covens. And James knew about them. I had not memorized any meeting places or things of that nature into which I could hope to lure him to good effect. And so I was hoping that the Volturi really didlike witches. And that my witchy power was extensive enough that I could prove my claim to their mindreader.

  "The Volturi have never done anything like that before," James remarked.

  "It seems weird," I said. "I gather they've been running the vampires for, like, thousands of years." I was trying to sound a little stupid, too stupid to be deliberately tricking James. I wished I hadn't used the word "gather". I went on, more carefully, "Maybe they think the secret's all gonna go to hell anyway, since technology's getting so, you know, high-tech, and it's harder to hide. And they want to get more witches first so when it goes to hell they get to stay in charge."

  James was smart enough to put this poorly worded supposition together. "Then it's not much of a reward, is it?"

  "I guess. Those people who had me before really wanted it. But I mean, if you're immortal, I guess a hundred years or whatever isn't that long? I dunno. It could take that long for the immunity to be useless. It sounds like a long time to me."

  "Was that the only reward the Volturi had on offer," he asked, "or did those people ask for it specifically?"

  "I'm not sure. I know they were talking about how they already had plenty of money, and didn't need more," I said. "I don't know what all else the Volturi were offering... I don't know what they have."

  "Mm."

  "Hey," I said, "are you a witch too?"

  He smirked. "Just a bit."

  "Have you ever met the Volturi? What are they like?"

  "They don't normally like to be disturbed," he muttered. "More trouble than it's worth to just go visit them..."

  "Oh," I said, and fell silent. Needed to give his mind time to work.

  There were a few things he could be thinking, and many of them worked in my favor. He could fear the Volturi, and want leeway within their rules as a valuable prize. He might admire them, and want to curry favor for its own sake. I could imagine that it would make hunting more interesting if victims knew he was coming and could try to resist him, although non-vampire resistance was unlikely to be particularly entertaining.

  I decided - for the time being - not to mention Victoria. That would make him angry. I needed him curious, ambitious, risk-loving, not angry. And I didn't know how narrowly his taste for drama was beating his taste for blood, that he could calmly drive me around. Anger could not tip that balance in a good direction.

  "Where are you taking me?" I asked after a few minutes.

  "The airport," he said.

  "Seattle?" I asked. "Or one of the little ones?"

  "Seattle." The short answers didn't seem to be good green lights for continuing to chat, so I dropped my head onto the car seat and tried to fall asleep. I didn't quite manage it, but I did sort of half-doze until we got to the airport.

  I was just able, in spite of being tied up, to cross my fingers.

  * * *

  Chapter 11: Volterra

  I wondered, as I started to see signs for the airport out the window, how vampires got through airport security. It seemed unlikely that security scanning machines and the like would react normally to them.

  By the time I was on the jet that James picked out, I still didn't know how the Cullens would manage, but James did it by sneaking us into the baggage compartment. He killed a man to do it. He didn't eat him. I wasn't sure if he was full, or thought it would be too obvious, or didn't want to drop into hunting mode and accidentally turn me into dessert; but he just clobbered the guy over the head with a suitcase and then arranged the scenario to make it look like the corpse had accidentally dropped the luggage onto his own head. No blood.

  I spent the duration of the murder crouching inside the luggage cart that James's victim had been driving. I knew James would at least hurt me, and likely kill me, if I tried to escape - and besides, the only people who I'd find useful rescuers wouldn't be confused by my hiding place. They'd be able to smell or hear me anyway.

  Traveling in the baggage compartment of an airplane was not fun. I complained softly of hunger and thirst, and James was able to find a packed lunch and water bottle with his superior sense of smell. From the look of the bag he retrieved it from, it had been intended as a carry-on and just barely exceeded the size limit. He didn't look thrilled about having to feed me, but didn't complain about it either.

  I ate it, and it tided me over until the plane arrived in New York, where we had to change flights. James didn't kill anyone this time. He stole a long hooded coat from someone's garment bag to hide under (dawn was underway on the east coast) and loosened the latches on the door to the belly of the airplane; when we were a hundred feet off the ground, he kicked the door open casually, seized me, and fell gracefully to the ground in a hail of instrument cases and upholstered sacks and cardboard boxes.

  James did not run with concern for my comfort. My ears were ringing with wind. I knew vampires could move outrageously fast, and supposed that the ground crew might be distracted by the luggage rain, but it still seemed an awful risk. Maybe he was betting on the fictional Volturi reward being retroactive. He leapt into the baggage hold of the next plane. I couldn't see anything - he moved too fast - but he didn't seem to have attracted the attention of anyone who wanted to investigate the rapid dark shape hurling itself into the airplane.

  This airplane had a caged dog traveling in it. It hated James and yowled at him constantly. It seemed to irritate him, so he opened its cage, strangled it, and then stuffed a luggage strap down its throat in case anyone should happen to wonder at its death.

  I wondered when I would start going into shock. Probably soon. I really ought to be in shock. Perhaps I was, and hadn't noticed. I didn't know what shock was like.

  "Where are we going?" I dared ask, hours into the second leg of the trip, after he'd found me another snack and an entire case of fancy bottled water somebody was bothering to import.

  "Italy," he said shortly.

  The plane landed. Not one to repeat himself in making an exit, James hid the pair of us in a corner. When the baggage handlers notice
d the dead dog, and started yelling at each other about it in rapid Italian, he walked right out behind them, me in tow.

  He broke into and hotwired the first fast-looking car he found in the airport's parking lot.

  And then we drove.

  * * *

  "How did you get through them to me?" I asked timidly, sitting next to the vampire in the driver's seat.

  "Well, it helped that I know the little one's secret," he said, as though letting me in on a joke. The little one - Alice? I'd suspected...

  "Her... secret?" Still playing dumb. Until he got me to the Volturi he could decide to kill me at any time.

  "Yes. She has visions, you see, of the future. A long time ago this would have gotten her burnt at the stake... in the nineteen-twenties it was an asylum, shock treatments, that sort of thing. She was the only one who ever got away from me. She had a protector, just one, but he made her safe, not like yours. I was surprised to see her with that lot, though. Anyway, she can be fooled. They're only visions, not knowledge. Did you know there are a lot of interesting sets to visit in Hollywood?" He grinned to himself. "Indecision throws her off. I told my Vicky all about it, that I'd tell her when to jump in, that she should just wait. I only made up my mind to do things I wanted her to see - everything else I dithered about even while I was doing it."

  I nodded slowly. If I lived through this, I wanted to be able to tell Alice where she'd come from.

  But he was done talking about Alice. "That, and Sunday night, I nibbled on some of your neighbors a bit. Hope you weren't attached to them. I tied them up and gagged them so they wouldn't attract any attention with their screaming, but I don't imagine that held them for long once they woke up and noticed how very, very thirsty they were..."

  He looked so smug. So that was how he'd distracted my three watchers. He'd turned a confused bunch of newborns loose in the neighborhood, a time-release threat, and theywould have made themselves an obvious, immediate danger to me and Charlie and everyone else in Forks. He would have known when to expect them to finish turning.

  It might have been sheer luck that Edward had needed to hunt on the same night. James hadn't given any indication that he also knew Edward's power - but he was clearly an old, experienced vampire, and might have bet on being able to take on one or two defenders in a fair fight, with a flailing newborn coven and a false lead to Florida distracting the rest. Sheer luck, that he'd found me entirely alone - but skill, that it had even been possible.

  Did he actually believe my nonsense about the Volturi, or was he pretending in order to lull me into a false sense of security?

  I didn't poke at it. If I acted like he might not believe me, it would only bring to mind the possibility that I was not to be believed.

  "Wow," I said instead. "You're really good at this. If they'd made me like them, you wouldn't have wanted me anymore? Like that little one?"

  Idiot! I screamed at myself, silently in my head.Idiot! Idiot! You did not really prioritize! You would not have been significantly less useful at self-defense if you were in the middle of turningand then James wouldn't have wanted you and it would be over already. You'd be a vampire by now, you'd be the other one that got away, you knew that every other detail but your own survival was of secondary importance. But you didn't get them to inject you with immortality juice because it wasn't a guarantee and you thought you had your bases covered even though you knew you were dealing with something deadly and powerful that wanted you ended about which you had limited information...

  "Right," he said, unaware of my internal self-castigation. "Well, the Volturi will still want you that way, but originally I only thought you'd be an interesting meal. I'd have been very irritated with them for taking away my fun, of course." But then all his targets would have been fighters in their own right, with a chance, not dividing their attention and flying all over creation trying to protect three separate squishy humans... "I killed the one who changed your little friend." But the Cullens mostly come in pairs, and if I were a vampire by now then all of them would...

  It would not make sense for someone as uninformed as I pretended not to ask... "You said my neighbors were screaming?"

  "Oh," James chuckled. "Yes. It's an intriguing process. You're sure the one with the reddish hair's not a bit too fond of you? I could send him a tape of that after the Volturi get it started."

  I shivered. "I don't think he likes me at all. None of them do. They were going to sell me to the Volturi, just like you. They'll be mad at you about stealing their reward, I guess, if that's what you want?"

  "Makes things interesting that way," he said, still smirking.

  Idiot! I wailed in the unbroken privacy of my own mind.

  * * *

  Volterra was beautiful, in the way that any city occupied by vampire royalty that might be either death or salvation would be beautiful.

  James started muttering to himself about how, exactly, to track down the Volturi, once we were in the city. He abandoned the car and followed the heavily shadowed alleys between the tallest buildings, sniffing the air. Eventually he caught some promising odor and led me - assuming that I'd follow, desparing of escape - down a sloped tunnel-like alley which ended in a brick wall. There was an open grate in the pavement - it looked like a sewer drain.

  "Down there," said James. "Jump."

  "I'll break a leg and then you'll have to carry me. I might actually die from a fall," I said, "if it's deep enough and I land wrong - and I'll probably land wrong."

  James groaned, picked me up, and hopped down into the hole without arguing further. "I hope you're worth all of this," he mumbled to me, setting me on my feet. He inhaled deeply. "You've got quite a flavor, you know. Better be worth not getting a taste..." He stalked off into the darkness. I followed him by sound, tripping frequently; he eventually got annoyed and lifted me again. I didn't protest. I didn't want to crack my head open under a city in Italy, not when I was this close to heroically bluffing my way out of certain death.

  We came to a large grate with thick, rusting bars of iron. Part of it had been cut away and replaced with a thinner grille, which hung on hinges and looked like a door of sorts.

  James pushed this little door open with his foot. It opened into a large, stone room, the far side of which was dominated by a heavy wooden door. James had to put me down to pull it open; it was immensely thick.

  Past this door was a fluorescently lit, unremarkable hallway. Pale walls and gray carpet. Since I'd be able to navigate that, James put me down, and I stepped forward out of sheer curiosity without even looking to see if he wanted to go with more caution.

  It really was just a hallway. But there were vampires in it.

  * * *

  There were two of them, tall but otherwise indistinct under black shrouds, at the far end of the hall in front of what appeared to be an elevator. I wasn't actually sure that they were vampires until one of them spoke. The words were, naturally enough, in Italian. But his musical, perfectly precise voice definitely belonged to a vampire.

  James replied in the same language, gesturing at me with one thumb. I caught his own name, but no other words stood out to me. The conversation continued, becoming faster and more heated, until finally the shrouded vampire who hadn't spoken cut in with an English sentence, directed at me: "Are you a witch?"

  I shook off the sensation that I was Dorothy Gale of Kansas, and gulped, and said, "Yes."

  "And your power?" inquired the vampire, from beneath her hood.

  "I don't have a n-name for it," I said, stuttering slightly. I could not blow this or I was certain I'd be killed. "Um... m-mental privacy, I guess. It's sort of a... meta-power."

  "That is testable," she announced. "You will come with me. Both of you." She moved her head slightly, making it clear despite the hood that she was talking to James as well. "Stay here," she told her counterpart. He nodded.

  I followed the female vampire into the elevator, as did James. She touched one of the buttons, and it began to conve
y us upward. I felt the urge to ask her name, but this was not quite the social situation that it would have been with only humans involved. She shrugged the hood of her shroud off; she was as ice-skinned as any vampire, with the same burgundy eyes James had, and long black hair.

  The elevator opened into a cozy, sophisticated, windowless reception area. The walls were decorated with bright landscapes, and deep green carpet covered the floor. Behind the mahogany counter in the room's center sat a woman - a human woman, with green eyes and too much vibrance to her tea-colored complexion to be a vampire. She was in her early twenties and pretty, but not eternally so. That was not in line with what I'd been told of the Volturi's approach to secrecy. At all.

  "Buon giorno, Santiago!" the receptionist said brightly to the vampire woman. That was a phrase I could at least guess at. Just a greeting. If it specified time of day, I didn't know - I had no sense of time left after the trip, not having had a chance to look at a clock. It was probably Thursday, or early Friday, I thought. At least in Pacific time. I didn't know Italy's time zone.

  "Buon giorno, Gianna," replied the vampire - Santiago. Her tone was neutral. James seemed as confused as I was by the presence of a human, but didn't comment. I followed Santiago and James as they went around Gianna's desk and through a pair of wooden doors.

  We went through a perfectly ridiculous maze of halls upon doors upon antechambers upon stairs, and finally, what I thought was two floors above ground level, we reached what appeared to be our final destination. It was an immense, round room. There were no artificial lights, just slits of windows letting sunshine in, and the only articles of furniture were a number of massive wooden chairs, placed at irregular intervals near the walls. There was a drain in the middle of the room. This did not make a lot of sense on a second story as an entrance or exit, like the one in the alley apparently was, but I didn't get the opportunity to speculate.