Luminosity

by Alicorn

  Edward's face was frozen into a mask of dread. But slowly, he managed to nod.

  "Fine," said Rosalie tightly. "We go to Denali, you go to your deaths, but Elsie's safe with me. With all of us," she added.

  "There has to be another way," said Carlisle, and Esme nodded fervently.

  "There doesn't have to be another way," I said. "If there is one, if you think of one, please,please tell me - but there doesn't have to be. The Volturi can be too strong to fight, too evil to dispense mercy."

  There was a heavy pause, and then -

  "I... I guess we need plane tickets," said Esme. "I'll... go buy them." She handed Elspeth to me.

  I turned to face Edward, standing close, so we could both hold her at the same time. Elspeth held up both little hands, touched our faces, showed us ourselves and how miserable and afraid we looked, and wanted to know why.

  I had no idea what to tell her.

  * * *

  Esme bought tickets. We collected our documentation. I raided a petty cash location - there was money stored all over the house, in various denominations; I helped myself to a wad of American dollars in case I did manage to get out of La Push alive. Edward pocketed half.

  There weren't flights from Norway to the States so often that it would have been worthwhile to simply leave immediately. There was a little time before we needed to go to the airport. I fed Elspeth, as much as she would swallow - I didn't want her hungry around humans and tempted to try to bite them, and even though we could all give her our airplane food, it might not be as much as she'd want. I put on my Valentine's bracelet.

  Edward pulled a little paper packet out of a hiding place in our cottage. "I was going to give you this tonight, after Elspeth was asleep," he said. "But..."

  I unwrapped the packet. It contained a locket. I flicked it open; it already held pictures - one from our wedding, one of Elspeth. I closed it, put it on, and tucked it into my shirt, and kissed him.

  Time was up. We went to the garage and piled into a car; the other four were in another. We were on the same flight over the Atlantic and would split up when we had to change planes.

  Elspeth definitely picked up on our collective mood and kept sending us pictures of ourselves during the first leg of the journey, wanting to know what was wrong.

  "We're going to let Grandma Esme and Grandpa Carlisle and Aunt Rosalie and Uncle Emmett take you to see some friends in Alaska," I whispered to her, "but me and Daddy can't go, and we'll miss you."

  That explanation seemed to suffice for her. She slept through most of the flight.

  * * *

  At the airport where we had to change planes, I almost backed out. Almost clung to Elspeth when Rosalie reached out for her, almost said we should run, should hope to keep away from Demetri forever, should abandon the wolves and take Elspeth and not endure this loss now when it could certainly be put off until later. I re-checked all my logic in a flurry of desperation. But I still couldn't think of a way to hide her, couldn't think of a way to thwart the Volturi tracker indefinitely, and was still sure that I'd been sentenced to death and Edward with me for the crime of being my husband. Elspeth had as much of a chance as she could get, in Denali. If something came up that really changed that situation, well, I knew where she was.

  I took a deep breath, and, forcing myself not to tremble, let Rosalie take her. "I love you," I whispered to Elspeth, and Edward echoed my words. Edward and I handed our phones to Carlisle, to make us impossible to contact in that direction. Impossible to threaten.

  Edward hugged his adoptive parents, each in turn. I didn't try. It was my fault there needed to be a goodbye. My fault the family was splintering.

  Their connecting flight was earlier than ours. They walked away, with Elspeth peeping over Rosalie's shoulder and waving forlornly, and Esme looking back every few moments, despairing. They disappeared around a corner.

  We had time to buy new phones - we left the airport and did that, then went back in. I texted Jacob, giving him my new number and telling him our expected arrival time in case he wanted to be part of the cavalry. There was no answer before we boarded our second plane.

  Elspeth's absence felt cold. I didn't needwarmth. I could live in the vacuum of space, if it came to that. But I missed it, I missed her, her heartbeat and her quick little breaths and the heat when I held her. The play of color in her dreams. I sat as close to Edward as the airplane seats allowed, wrapped myself up in his presence and tried to offer back what I could to him.

  My baby was five days old, and in five days she'd become so important. Could we stay away from Denali? What mattered was really if everyone else thought we could, I supposed, and no one else could look into my mind and feel the cold.

  We talked, a little: quiet discussions of tactics. If the Volturi had backup there before we arrived instead of just the twins and the two others Jacob had seen, we would do thus and such; if Jacob's pack didn't show, that would have this other implication. I paid just enough attention to memorize the new information and dredge up relevant tidbits about the wolves. Most of my mind was on our daughter and how cold it was without her.

  I said that to Edward, when there was no other contingency plan to invent - "It's cold."

  He nodded. He knew what I meant.

  I pulled my locket out of my shirt and touched the side of it that held Elspeth's picture. She's safe, safe as I can make her, I told myself.That's what's important. I've always known that it's more important that my loved ones be alive, that they be happy, than that they be near. That's why I don't live in Jacksonville with Renée and Phil right now, attending twelfth grade and keeping notebooks and being human and being single and childless.

  Single and childless. No state had ever seemed so distant. Edward was part of me, attached, inseparable, essential; Elspeth was part of me, carved out of my heart and secreted away for safekeeping, leaving an unhealing wound in her wake. The Florida-dwelling high-schooler I could have turned into, with one different choice, was not me. She just would have gone by the same name. Or maybe she'd have people calling her "Izzy" by this point. Who knew.

  "I had such delusions of grandeur," I murmured. "I was going to build up the population of wolves over years and years, collect allies, work on my shield, take over the world. Convert everybody to vegetarianism, turn humans as fast as we could handle them, cure death."

  "I love you," said Edward. I put my locket back in my shirt.

  "I love you," I replied.

  There was nothing left to say.

  * * *

  When we got off the plane, I checked my new phone. There was a message from Jacob - or from his phone, anyway. Someone else had probably typed it. Jake fazed n says Rchl n Beky have smthg rong w/ thm, it said, unanmus not 2 go bak n risk it b/c nowere safe 4 imprins 2 hide. I dialed the number, hoping to get more detail; there was no answer. I tried four times and gave up.

  "That's six wolves out of the picture, whether they got run down or something else happened that no one's picking up," I said. "And depending on what the "something wrong" is, maybe the other twenty-five as well. Those girls they took have families, too - if they make a fuss about their daughters being kidnapped that means a bigger coverup job for the Volturi... just how many people did I get killed?"

  "If the Volturi kill people, they kill people, not you," Edward said, and I knew he was copying what I'd said to Gianna about Maggie earlier. It was unhelpful. So many people, dead or about to be -

  "They've probably wiped out everyone on the Quileute reservation," I said. "But there's only one Quileute imprint; that won't keep it contained even if they explain everyone on the reservation going missing. Three Makahs - including a toddler! - and a girl from Forks are the others; they can get that information easily from any wolf. What are the Volturi going to do, wipe out the entire population of the Olympic Peninsula to keep people from investigating those disappearances in a way that implicates the supernatural?"

  "There are more immediate concerns," Edward said. />
  I pushed my hair out of my face, staring at the phone, willing it to ring; it didn't, so I put it in my pocket. "Right. Anything could be going on with Rachel and Becky - Jane could be hurting them, it could just be that extended sensory deprivation via Alec is interacting strangely with their telepathy - either case, I might be able to get them up and in the fight if I can take out or at least distract the illusionists."

  "If we get close enough for me to hear their thoughts, I can probably figure it out without us getting near enough that they'll notice us," Edward said.

  "Right," I said again. "If the wolves are out of commission... if I can't get them up even if I get the witch twins out of the picture... then we have no chance in a stand-up fight, then we run and hope they take a long time to catch us."

  Edward nodded once.

  We headed west.

  "Do you want to check on your father?" Edward asked, as we passed close to Forks.

  "Yes," I admitted, "but... we shouldn't."

  "We don't have to do anything that will leave a trace," Edward said. "His thoughts aren't quiet, only indistinct - we just need to go through town and I'll be able to hear him."

  "Even if he's okay, you still might not find him. Jacob's pack could have warned him and he could be running away, or he could be out of town for some unrelated reason. We don't have time to check really thoroughly. I'd be more worried if we went through town and you didn't hear him than I am now."

  Edward nodded. "After, then."

  "Right. If there's an after."

  "We can run if the wolves aren't able to help," he reminded me. "There will be an after. I won't letyou die."

  We went past Forks, and I was glad I couldn't cry.

  * * *

  We slowed down when we were within a few miles of the field where we expected to find the center of the action. Edward crept forward several paces ahead of me, listening. When he stopped, I stopped. We were only a mile and a half from the edge of the field - barely out of earshot for noises the volume of ordinary voices.

  "I hear Aro," Edward said.

  "He's the most familiar voice there?" I asked, feeling compelled to whisper even though I heard nothing besides ordinary forest noises.

  "Or close enough. Some of his familiarity is borrowed from people he's read, including me."

  "What are you getting from him?"

  Edward closed his eyes and focused. "He's reading someone. It's very fast, I can't quite... I think it's one of the wolves, maybe Rachel." A minute of silence passed as he waited for Aro to finish reading his target. "Yes, that was Rachel. The wolves are all alive, but Chelsea's there - and someone I haven't heard of, a new witch. I don't hear all the details but the new witch is doing the same thing Chelsea does. The wolves are... with the two of them working in concert..."

  "We're dead," I said. Chelsea alone was enough to hold the Volturi together against fractious vampire instinct; she and another vampire with a comparable power could probably turn the wolves' loyalties. The imprinted wolves would have had stronger outside claims on their devotion than witchcraft could fabricate and would have been able to pull away given the freedom of Jacob's third pack. Not so for the others. Jacob had mentioned Jane, Alec, and two "big skeeters". For the timing to work, Chelsea, and possibly also the new witch, had probably been hiding until after he left. They were resources too important to risk until the illusionists had done their damage.

  "They don't know we're here. I can listen a little longer, maybe find something that will help us hide," Edward said. "The group that was here to start was Jane, Alec, Afton, Demetri, Chelsea, and the new witch - oh, her name is Addy. Aro, with Renata, arrived fairly recently and he's checking Chelsea and Addy's work before the wolves are allowed to wake. Now he's reading Becky." Demetri and Afton would be the "big skeeters", then, most likely.

  "If Demetri is there and the wolves are the Volturi's new best friends, shouldn't we be running as fast as we can so we have more of a head start when they start looking for us?"

  "Bella, they might not want to kill us," said Edward, full of hope. "They think the wolves areuseful, they're going to make them a sort of outer guard - they might not blame you for activating them."

  "Do you really think so?" I breathed. I didn't want two large packs of wolves added to the Volturi's arsenal, but if it meant that the arsenal wouldn't be turned on me and Edward -

  We could have our lives back, we could have our daughter back -

  "It's not a sure thing," he admitted. "But it's possible."

  "Keep listening," I said.

  After a moment, Edward said, "Harry and Sue are dead." Of course they were. They wouldn't have liked what was happening to their children, they'd have tried to intervene, but they had no fighting experience whatever. They could have been brought down at range with next to no effort, dismantled and incinerated at leisure. "So is everyone else who lived on the reservation - except a number of children who carry the gene and are too young to activate," he went on after a pause. "They're going to bring them to Volterra and torch the village."

  Of course they were.

  "Can you hear anything about us?" I asked. "Do they want us dead, do they want to give me a medal, do they think we're beneath notice, what?"

  "I can still hear only Aro," Edward said. "He's... giving Alec the go-ahead to release one pack. Rachel's. They're going to make sure that they're sufficiently under control, that they don't need a little more tweaking from Chelsea and Addy."

  "Check how, exactly?" I said, leery of the possibility that this could involve sending wolves running in formations all over the area that might intersect with where we were standing.

  "They're calling it good if the wolves will sit and stay when told," said Edward, disgustedly. "And phase on command. That's all they need to get them to Italy safely; Chelsea and Addy can go on working with them indefinitely."

  "And... the wolves are taking this how?"

  "I can't hear their thoughts - they're following the orders, but I don't know how they feel about it. We could go closer..."

  "Not until we have some idea of whether we're on death row or not," I said.

  "Aro's reading Rachel again," Edward reported. "Now he's giving the go-ahead to wake Becky's pack. They're behaving similarly."

  "Did you get anything from his read on Rachel?" In the midst of so many things to be concerned about, I didn't have much to spare for her, but I was somewhat upset about her approximate enslavement by the Volturi.

  "Not much... but... it sounded like Chelsea managed to twist their loyalties in large part by directing their native dislike of vampires at you," he said regretfully. "She doesn't spin affection out of thin air, she needs some resources to work with; I surmise Addy works similarly. It sounded like - mind, it went by very fast, I've certainly missed bits - like the Volturi have set themselves up in the wolves' minds as a necessary check on the general vampire population, to prevent rogue vampires like you from causing damage."

  "Splendid. Just splendid. So the wolves all hate me and they're working for the Volturi to help them necessarily check the vampire population - are they thrilled at the honor, do they wish the last few months were all a dream so they could live normal human lives, or what?"

  "The impression I have is one of the entire mess being a dirty job that someone has to do. But it went by extremely quickly, it was harder to follow than a normal read - a dozen minds all going by at once through hers - I can't be very precise."

  "Did Aro tell Chelsea and Addy to use that angle where I'm a dangerous rogue, or did they pick it on their own, or was it the only one available? That could be a clue about how dead we are," I suggested.

  "I haven't heard about that. Aro, at least, isn't thinking of us at all right now. He's considering how best to deploy the wolves."

  "How long are they going to be standing around in that field?" I asked.

  "I don't know. They aren't aware that we're here, or Aro would be thinking about it," Edward said. "We can move in a
little and I should be able to read the guard members, if not the wolves."

  Part of me wanted to say no and demand that we turn tail and run. There were only two of us, versus eight vampires (mostly witches) and twenty-five wolves. If they did want us dead, we needed as much distance as we could possibly get between us and Demetri, who was right there and could be ordered to hunt us down at any moment. And then he could point and say "thataway" and we would be toast.

  On the other hand, if they didn't want to kill us, if Demetri wasn't particularly interested in finding us, then we could go to Denali and get Elspeth. And that was possible. They were using the wolves, after all.

  I was so cold.

  "Okay," I murmured. "But quietly. And sign language."

  He signed back, "All right."

  We crept forward, one step at a time, waiting for someone else to cross the border of Edward's hearing.

  * * *

  Chapter 28: Ashes

  "I hear the guard now except for Addy," Edward signed to me. We were just barely more than one mile from the field. Only the fact that nobody was raising their voice kept us from being able to listen directly to their conversation. Only thick tree cover kept us from being able to see them, up to and including the whites of their eyes. And vice versa. I held very still, moving only my hands to reply.

  "And?" I asked.

  "They don't want to kill me..." he signed. "Aro's still hoping to recruit me. They haven't gotten to the subject of you yet."

  "Well, if they're hoping to recruit you, then that does limit what they can do to me," I answered. A hot flare of hope lit somewhere in my chest.