by Alicorn
"Oh, no, that isn't my plan at all!" I said. "I'll bring her home with me, of course."
"Are you hoping to turn her?" guessed Aro. "And add her to your coven?"
There was an edge to his voice, so slight that I might be imagining it. But I guessed that the correct answer was not anything he would interpret as: "yes, I seek to expand my coven's influence, when we are already the largest coven in the world apart from your own even notcounting our extended family in Denali, and have values antithetical to yours, by poaching your secretary and turning her where you were about to let her die". I would have to want Gianna for something specific, something that only she could do...
"I need her to bear my children," I told him.
* * *
"I beg your pardon?" asked Aro, after a silence of almost four seconds. I had managed to surprise him.
"Before I was turned, since I had plenty of warning, one of my sisters extracted some eggs," I explained. I didn't really want to discuss anything this personal in a roomful of Volturi - but Aro already knew it; he'd read Edward after my surgery. "I'll eventually want to use them - at least one. I could hire a stranger to carry the child, but then I couldn't keep a very good eye on her, because it would be very difficult to closely associate with a human without giving myself away. But Gianna's perfect. You've made an exception for her knowing all about us yourselves already, so of course it's okay for her to realize what's going on. I can keep her at home with me and make sure she's taken care of."
"I... see." My situation as regarded the possibility of children was probably unheard of among vampires. There was no precedent, no "legal" grounding, to forbid me this. It wouldmean more vampires eventually - I had no credibility whatsoever if I claimed I was planning to have children and then let them die. But it would be over a time frame that would look less alarming than just turning Gianna right away, if I played my cards right. And Aro had already, very clearly, offered me Gianna. I waited, unblinking, with the cutest, most innocent smile I could muster on my face.
Marcus slid across the floor towards Aro, and they touched hands for an instant. Aro glanced to Caius, who looked like he'd eaten something that disagreed with him. Deprived of Alec's ability to keep me out of their deliberations, Caius didn't speak either, just went to Aro and communicated by thought transfer as well. I waited while Aro thought. His eyes were closed, his face completely composed and neutral.
"My dear," said Aro after half a minute, assuming an almost avuncular smile, "I said you could have Gianna, and have her you may. If that is the use for her that suits you, far be it from me to deny you." Like I was a four-year-old who'd gotten a nice toy and only wanted to play with the box it came in. I hoped Gianna didn't hate my plan, was willing to go through with whatever needed to be done in order to placate the Volturi -
"Thank you," I said, bowing again.
"We shall have to send you visitors, in a year or two, to make sure that you are pleased with your gift, of course," Aro went on. "I would hate to discover that I'd offered you a present that you didn't like. The same goes for the objects I sent to you in the mail. I hope they will meet with your satisfaction." How... lovely. A deadline on my reproduction. I managed to avoid crossing my fingers, hoping for Gianna's - and Edward's - willingness to tolerate the situation. I put off thinking about how I liked it myself. There was no safe way to back out at this point.
"I haven't seen them yet, but I'm sure your taste is faultless," I said diplomatically, "and that I will treasure them always."
"I dearly hope so, although a treasure like yourself would outshine anything I could offer."
How long were we going to keep up this ridiculous exchange of pleasantries? Tell me to take Gianna and go, already... "You're too kind," I fluttered.
"Not at all, lovely child. As long as you are here, is there anything else you should like to have?"
"I should hate to impose. I'm only glad that I could reassure you as to my compliance with our law." That might count for something, identifying the law as my own. I was rapidly finding that one of the most convenient uses for perfect recall was the ability to keep my own subterfuge straight.
"Well, then, I shall delay you no longer in your return to your mate and your coven," said Aro genially. "The sun will be up in only a few hours. I shouldn't like to keep you for so long that you would need to tarry here for an additional day."
"My thanks," I said, with one more bow. "Until next time."
Aro nodded, agreeing, "Until next time."
* * *
I followed the route I'd taken up to the chamber, backwards, without help - although Santiago ghosted along behind me, presumably for some combination of purposes including supervising my behavior and taking up the underground guard post.
Gianna was still at her desk. She looked around when I approached; Santiago swept past me into the elevator without looking back.
"Hello again," I said, trying to sound nonthreatening.
"H-hello, Bella," said Gianna tremulously.
"It's okay," I promised. "I'm not going to hurt you. I'm going to take you home with me, okay? You're going to be fine."
She stared at me, at my red eyes.
"Would you feel better if I put contact lenses in?" I asked, raising an eyebrow. "I am not going to eat you."
"Where are we going?" she asked in a small voice.
"Norway. My family's there. We don't eat humans," I promised her. "Come on, I'm sure Alice booked us a flight, I don't want to miss it. What do you need to bring?"
"I - not much - passport, clothes," Gianna fretted. She didn't get up from her seat.
"Do you want me to help you pack?" I prodded.
"They're not going to kill me?" she asked in a small voice.
I winced. "Uh... Aro gave you to me, as a "present". I think he thought I'd kill you, before, but I didn't. And I'm not going to kill you. And my family is not going to kill you. We'll do our best to keep you safe. Please pack your things. Come on, I wouldn't need you to pack if you were going to be food, would I?"
Whether she accepted this logic or the sheer repetition just finally sank in, Gianna got to her feet and managed to walk out of the room on wobbly knees. I waited, seeing no reason to continue to frighten her.
Gianna took only eighteen minutes to pack. She came back with one, small suitcase - either she didn't have much or wanted to bolt and leave a lot of things behind. "Ready?" I asked her when she wheeled her bag into the entryway. Gianna nodded mutely.
"Is there a better way out than that?" I asked, pointing at the elevator door. She nodded, and showed me through locked doors (to which she had a key, and which she locked behind her) into a part of the compound I'd never been to before. It looked like some kind of art or history museum, complete with velvet ropes and an information desk, but Gianna seemed in a hurry, so I didn't linger over this oddity. We passed through the darkened, deserted museum in a couple of seconds and out into the streets of Volterra.
I was a little turned around, but after a moment recalling and adding up all my twisting travels, I figured out where we were in relation to my car. I put a new pair of contact lenses in and led Gianna along.
She followed me without speaking at all; I could hear her heart beating too quickly, and wondered if she was okay. But I didn't know how to ask after her condition without risking spooking her further, and she was at least capable of following me where I led. I got her into my rental car and drove us back to the airport.
Chapter 16: Ambition
As I'd expected, Alice had gotten us both booked and we were soon on our way to Norway. "Are you okay?" I finally asked Gianna, as the plane took off. I kept my voice low enough so that nearby travelers wouldn't hear.
"I'm fine," she squeaked, sounding less than fine.
"Gianna, you are not in danger," I reminded her. Then, "Flying is the safest form of travel."
That got a choked, sob-like giggle out of her. "Do you really think they'll let me live, after deciding to kill me?" she
asked in a breathy whisper.
"That depends on why they decided to kill you," I said. "It could have been that they have something against me, and thought it'd be useful if I ate you, since then they could be offended and have something concrete against me."
"Maybe," Gianna murmured.
"How did you know they wanted you dead?" I asked.
"I hear more than they think I do. Not everything, but... I heard Chelsea and Santiago talking..."
"Who's Chelsea? And remember to keep your voice down. I can hear you just fine."
"One of the guard. She - her power is a little like Marcus's. He sees relationships; she can weaken them or build them up. They use it to keep the guard unified, to divide covens they punish. I heard Santiago asking her to... break the one between Santiago and me. I didn't know there was anything to speak of. None of them were my friends. Santiago was more cordial than most of them, I suppose. But the only reason I could think of to break anything that might have been there was, would be if I was going to die, and Santiago didn't want to care."
"Did you hear what Chelsea said?" I asked.
Gianna shook her head. "She was too quiet. But I went out for lunch and called you. Your coven-mate, Alice, let me through. I don't think they know I did it, or that I heard Santiago."
"Probably not." I paused. "Uh, there's a complication with how I got you out, that you should know about."
Gianna went stiff in her seat. "What?" she asked in a small voice.
"I had to explain why I wanted to get you out, I needed to have some use for you. Aro said I couldn't just let you go off by yourself because you know too much. I wasn't going to eat you, and that didn't leave me a lot of options." I required another lungful of air, but the scents of humans had almost stopped bothering me. I sipped from my complimentary water anyway, just to be safe - it would be a long flight. "I, uh, told him that I need you to be the surrogate mother of my child or children."
She stared at me. This was an entirely reasonable reaction.
"My sister harvested some eggs before I turned," I explained. "I wasn't planning to use them soon. Actually, I didn't have any concrete plans to use them at all, I was just hanging onto them in case I wanted them later. But they exist, and it was something I could say, that would explain why I'd need a live human around who knows about us. But Aro said he was going to check on me in a year or two to make sure I'm "pleased with my gift". So that means that unless you really hate the idea, or my husband does, or we think of a great way around it..."
"No, that's fine," said Gianna. "I'll help you."
I hadn't expected such ready acquiescence.
"Can I ask you a favor?" she asked tentatively, after a pause.
Ah. "What is it?"
"...Do you know why I was with the Volturi to begin with?" she asked.
"You wouldn't tell me," I reminded her, and she flinched. I was starting to think that she'd been very thoroughly trained to obey vampires and the fact that I retained continuity with my human self, whom she'd given the runaround, was throwing her off. "If you're willing to share now, I'd like to hear it."
Gianna ducked her head. "What I did tell you was true. They tell a lot of vampire stories in Volterra." She paused. "I believed them... and so did my brother. Ilario. He believed more than I did. He wanted to be one himself. He looked for them, but never found them, and then he got sick. He's going to die. The doctors said there was nothing I could do, but he told me that there was - and I did it - and I found the Volturi, and I knew they'd never help my brother themselves once I realized how they are, but I thought perhaps they would -"
She'd started crying partway through this recitation. I could fill in the rest of it myself. If the Volturi had "kept" her, she could have turned her brother - or tried, anyway. Gianna probably didn't know that syringes worked, and I didn't think even I could manage to administer venom by mouth without flipping out and devouring the human I'd meant to save.
I wanted to offer Gianna a tissue, but I didn't have any; she sniffled for a minute, and then collected herself. "Gianna," I said, "do the Volturi know about Ilario?"
"Aro's read me," she said quietly.
Well, then -
Wait. Did that necessarily mean that he knew about her brother? He could absorb a lifetime of memories with one touch. But vampires hadperfect recall, nothing more or less than that. Could he process a lifetime of memories that quickly? I'd spent hours and hours just re-reading my own notes and integrating them with my memories. That sort of thing wasn't the work of an instant. Would he have bothered to spend a couple of days analyzing Gianna's? Even if things she'd forgotten with her imperfect recording weren't accessible to him either, it'd be a richer set of stuff to take in than my notes and hazy, blocked human memories. I was almost sure that he wouldn't bother with the far longer period of time it would take to deal with more complex, better-remembered, and longervampire histories.
This probably boiled down to a very significant limitation. I'd need to check with Carlisle and Edward, to confirm or disconfirm. Aro might just have an astronomical mental capacity incomprehensibly greater than that of every other vampire. He might be quite capable of assimilating hundreds of years of sleeplessness where every last sixteenth of a second was packed with sense data and thought, all in a mere moment. And capable of doing this without toppling over as though affected by Alec's power, cut off from the present and his own experiences by the foreign additions.
But probably, he could only find memories helooked for - memories he knew to look for. Either he had to plan to seek them before touching his target, so he could catch them as they flashed by; or he stored them all as they came in, and then could investigate them at his leisure. The first would be less dangerous, because it meant that only a fresh read could get him information he didn't yet possess. But even the latter was importantly different from his simply knowing everything his targets knew.
Edward might not know. He (and Alice and Jasper), despite their extra senses, didn't have any spare room in their heads relative to the baseline vampire. If Edward was listening to Aro's mind when Aro took in someone's thoughts, it probably sounded like a compressed blur - he'd get a couple of images, could probably swipe anything he was particularly trying to see, but wouldn't be able to distinguish between the possibilities unless Aro ruminated on his limitations in Edward's range.
This was unlikely to mean that Aro hadn't learned about Ilario. If he'd read Gianna, the most obvious motivation was to discover why she'd looked for the Volturi and whether she could be trusted. Her brother was clearly relevant, the sort of thing he'd have dug up.
But it could mean that my private moments with Edward were safe unless he was some kind of silly voyeur. It could mean that he didn't know about the Quileutes. It could mean that I could plan the Volturi's downfall with the help of others, given certain precautions. It could mean that he was less powerful than he thought we believed him to be.
"Then he probably knows," I told Gianna. My own head was still the safest place to hide information. Gianna didn't need to hear this, not yet. "But there may be a way for us to save your brother anyway. You say he wants to be a vampire?"
She nodded. "Very much. I don't think he knows all the details - but I'm sure he won't care."
"And he believes in vampires," I pressed. Oh, but Aro, of course we had to turn him - he knew too much - you know how much respect we have for the law -
Gianna nodded again.
"Okay. I think we can do this. But we've got to check in with my family first."
"Thank you," she said fervently.
"Do you want to be a vampire too?" I asked. "After Aro's been convinced that I wanted you for the reason I told him?"
Gianna thought. "If my brother were already safe, and didn't need me to be one..." Say yes, I thought at her uselessly, yes you do...
She seemed really stumped by the question. "I mean," I said, "not like one of the Volturi. I'm sure my family, or our friends in Alaska would take you in."
I still needed to meet the Denalis. Perhaps there would be time for that soon.
"What is it like?" she asked.
"Oh, I can't even - it's amazing," I said. "The transition is..." I mulled over the word choice, too quickly for her to catch it. "Not fun. But mine was better than most and we could do the same things for you. And being a vampire is the most marvelous thing. Did you know we can see ultraviolet? And everything feels and looks and sounds and smells so intensely." She flinched when I said smells. "And," I went on, "the evidence suggests that if you know about vampires beforehand, if you're expecting to become one before you start turning, then it's easier to control yourself, have the full use of your rational faculties to start with and not slaughter humans. I'm not magical like that - I have a power, but that isn't it. I just had warning."
"Oh," she said, a fascinated glint in her eye. "It's as wonderful as it looks? The way you move, and sound..."
"It's more so. A hundred times more so. My experience might be a little better than most," I allowed, "because I turned with my mate already waiting for me, and that isn't likely to happen for you. But even without Edward - yes, better than it looks." And turning is worse than it looks, my conscience hissed at me. Nothing can look that bad, there's only so much volume you can get out of one pair of lungs when you scream...
"I think I would want it even if Ilario didn't need me," said Gianna, speculative. "But I will help you first, with a child, if it seems like that makes the most sense. Will your sister be willing to take eggs from me as well?"
"I'm sure she will." I wasn't, but I was sure I could convince her or get Carlisle to do it. My conscience prickled. "Uh, Gianna... It's worth it. It really is. Eternal life alone is worth it, even without the added bonuses, which are themselves awesome. But while you're turning, it won't feel that way. No matter how much you believe it now. There's nothing you can imagine that's enough to prepare you. When I said "not fun", that was a flippant reference to how my sister Alice described it to me before I turned - she can't remember her own turning at all. She was going by secondhand information. I remember everything about mine except the beginning, because Carlisle put me in a coma first. And it's not going to feel like anything could be worth it, while you're in the middle of it."