Twilight Fan Fiction / Twilight Fan Fiction ❯ I Know My Duty ❯ Wrong ( Chapter 25 )

Twilight and its three and two half sequels are the creation of Stephenie Meyer. This story is a fanfiction based on characters, settings and concepts from Twilight, its three sequels and the first half of Midnight Sun, all of which are the creation of Stephenie Meyer. No party other than the submitting author may alter this work in any way other than font size and other reasonable accommodations to formatting.

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"But you see how independent Benjamin is. He won't be used." -Edward, Breaking Dawn

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We'd started at the farmhouse.

This place had been a working farm once, long since converted to a city businessman's private retreat and the surrounding land repurposed or sold off. Like many other properties in this part of the peninsula, it was in the process of foreclosure. The owners had left, or simply remained in their primary residence. But in this housing market, there was little chance that it would be purchased by a new owner. The sign out front hadn't been touched in some time.

Places like this attracted squatters. Squatters tended to be the kinds of people who wouldn't be reported missing until after their killers were miles away.

Under other circumstances, the residents might have made acceptable prey, but the bank had sent someone to check on the property, and he had disappeared as well. The story had made the local paper and a few people had made a blog post or two.

One of the guardia had found the bodies in the basement, drained of blood and hardly concealed at all. He'd also found a bent fireplace poker compressed in the shape of a hand.

We'd arrived just after dusk. The vampires who'd done the deed were long gone, of course. This deep in the Volturi heartland, they would have known not to linger, but it was too early to tell if they knew they were marked.

Rolfe had picked the lock. Hadn't left so much as a scratch on the keyhole. Then we'd stepped inside. The blood had been removed, and the iron poker was locked in some inspector's closet sporting a plastic bag marked "evidence." Retrieving it would be Heidi's task. That was not why we were here.

I had to admit, it was amazing to watch Demetri in his element. As with Aro, I had a front-row seat to something ...rare.

I could see why I'd had no luck in my search for Victoria. Demetri's eyes didn't miss a thing. He saw through the scuff marks left behind by the investigators and the ordinary wear of fifty years of normal use, picking out the signs of vampire and prey with a practiced eye. He breathed in the air around us and identified two scents, distinguishing them from the room, the past and each other. He would have been a master tracker even without his gift.

They'd have placed that to block the light, he thought noting the bookcase pushed in front of a north-facing window. These vampires didn't like to keep every source of sunlight covered, so they'd dealt with the one opening that would cause the most trouble while they enjoyed the local amenities. Running water. Running blood.

It was like watching someone worry bits of glass out of a magpie's nest without tearing it. A set of impressions was forming in Demetri's mind, not images, not flavors. It was far closer to the soundless voices I detected whenever I focused on a given person's thoughts. With every decision Demetri pried from the house, they became clearer to him. Two minds...

Two minds headed north.

"What did they do?" she asked me.

"They left evidence behind, and humans found it," I told her.

"They're not still here are they?" she asked.

"No," I whispered. "They're trying to get to France."

Demetri looked up at me, eyes narrow and scrutinizing.

What could I do? I smiled.

I didn't know he was that fast. Demetri had thought my gift worked like his, that I had to get a sense of things before I knew anything. Rolfe was taking to me because he thought I was amusing. Demetri would take to me if he thought I was useful.

I wondered if that was why Aro had sent me on this mission. I'd assumed it was to keep me away from Marcell, but he'd gotten better and better at keeping things from me. The more I learned about Demetri, the more I knew that I would never be able to escape from Volterra.

Well, it was certainly tempting, I thought as we locked up the house and left. Bella stepped up beside me and let her fingers twist around mine. I didn't let go until Demetri cast me a commanding look. The Volturi did not break discipline in the open.

I could have told him that there was no one around for miles, no one to see, but that wasn't the point.

We were outside Volterra, the pair of us, and I so wanted to run. I had to actively remind myself that, as calm as she'd become, Bella would never make it all the way to New York on her own, not without exposing herself to the public, and if I went with her, Demetri would catch us both.

I was never far from her. Demetri thought I was being protective. Rolfe thought I was being possessive. Chelsea watched, just watched, her two eyes like the jaws of some insect parasite. The truth was I was sure this mission had been a mistake. She wasn't ready yet. Her control was a hundred times better than that of a normal newborn her age, but she still wasn't able to resist blood at a mature level. There was too much that could go wrong.

Bella had been outside before, for a ten-minute walk around the piazza at four in the morning, keeping a death grip on my arm the whole time. I'd begged Caius not to send her—or come as close to it as I could without disrespecting him in front of the guard.

Caius hadn't wanted to wait. Aro had been sure the risk of Bella exposing herself was minimal, so long as she was properly supervised. It galled me to hope that he was right.

On my trip to Budapest, we'd used cars and trains, but then we'd known our destination. To a vampire with a moving target, the fastest way to travel was on foot. Whenever we were far enough from the road, Demetri would set a punishing pace, but I was enough in tune with his thought processes to match him, and Rolfe had known him way to long to be troubled. Bella sometimes overshot when he changed direction, but her speed made up for that. When no one was looking, I'd allowed myself a smile. She looked like she might even be faster than I was in a flat-out race, at least until her human blood wore off.

She seemed to be enjoying herself, closing her eyes against the fresh night air or laughing quietly as she followed along. She couldn't tell, but even Rolfe was starting to get annoyed. I'd whisper to her whenever we stopped: "Don't smile." "Don't lower your hood." "Don't speak unless you have to." She'd shoot me a put-upon look or two. I wished she'd just do as I said, trust my judgment until there was time to explain.

The Volturi weren't a modern military. There weren't classes of newcomers coming in at once. Most recruits were brought into the fold one at a time and followed the actions of their new brethren willingly and eagerly, if not always without incident. If Caius really wanted his army of neophytes, then someone would have to work out how to teach people who weren't volunteers fully versed in the Volturi legend. But that would come. I'd seen bits of Rolfe's own arrival in his memory. For such a joke-loving man, he'd taken well to this life.

He thought he knew why. He had no idea.

Chelsea's thoughts were wordless with frustration. I managed to keep my gloating on the inside. She'd been angry when I'd caught her trying to affect my perceptions, but when she found a vampire upon whom her powers did not work at all... I pushed back my amusement. This wasn't funny. This was dangerous. Bella had made an enemy and did not know it. If Felix was Caius's lion and Demetri his bloodhound, then Chelsea was his worm. She could chew her way into an enemy and they wouldn't feel the pain of it until it was too late.

He keeps hovering around the dark-haired female. I wonder what his story is, came the quick-moving, inquisitive thoughts. I looked over my shoulder at the young, dark-skinned man with eyes like shining red onyx.

This was another advantage of traveling overland. We attracted the attention of other vampires. Witnesses were an asset to an operation like this one. Witnesses would spread the word, say that the Volturi had acted rightly ...and if it seemed for a moment as though spreading the word would do more harm than good, the fires were already built.

For the past twelve hours, Benjamin had been trying to figure us out. This was the first time he'd seen the Volturi for himself.

And the way he saw us. Benjamin's mind was conventional but strong. After months of bracing myself against the thoughts of vampires who saw me as a freakish criminal at worst and a curiosity at best, Benjamin's neutrality was unnerving. Through his half-experienced, confident eyes, I looked as though I'd always been here. I seemed as gray as the cloak around my shoulders, but he could tell there was power underneath. I was a knife with a soft cloth wrapped around it, hardly different from Demetri. Bella was the one who seemed innocent. More than once he contemplated asking her if I my attention was unwanted.

Benjamin was a nomad, but he'd had a coven not long ago. In his thoughts I could see flashes of other faces, the man who'd turned him and that man's mate, most likely. I could see him, bright-eyed and angry. He reminded me of someone whom Carlisle had described to me once, but I couldn't be certain it was the same man. Even now, with everything else going on before his eyes, Benjamin's thoughts weren't far from him. It made me want to smile. I wanted to walk up to this strange boy and tell him that I'd had a rebellious period of my own, long ago, and that right now there was nothing I'd like more than to go back to the man whose vision I'd once found so oppressive.

But I couldn't do that. Or I had to. I was a bit confused about which. The problem was that Benjamin was also extraordinarily talented. His memories were full of images of lifting boulders with his mind, setting things on fire, conjuring icy winds out of nothing. He was ...amazing.

Aro would be pleased, very pleased that I'd brought him this memory. But what would he do if I did not bring Benjamin himself?

Warning him wouldn't help. Even thinking about warning him might expose me to Aro's anger. Instead, I focused on my reflection in his thoughts. I found that Benjamin's lack of malice toward me made it easier to focus on him than on Demetri or Chelsea or even Rolfe.

Of course, not all of his thoughts were pleasant. Benjamin's departure from his coven had been mostly about defying his maker, finding his own place in the world and seeing the wonders of Europe, but he was also looking for something specific. He already knew that the solitary life wasn't for him. To his own mind, he was a young vampire in his prime and it was high time he had a female. He supposed that he would have better luck finding one as a nomad than tagging along behind another man.

I found that exposure to Felix's perverse tauntings had not made me any more tolerant of less malicious speculation as to Bella's charms. Benjamin had given Chelsea a cursory look or two, but her appearance didn't appeal to him, and he had mistaken her Volturi field discipline for coldness. Bella, however, had long, shining hair, even if she was taller than he liked, and she smiled.

He wasn't insensible to the glares I sent his way, but he noticed other things as well. Bella stayed near me, but we rarely touched. My protective hovering reminded him of the way his maker treated him, not the way that same man treated his mate of many years. He wondered if Bella was talented. He wondered if I was trying to force her into a role of my imagining rather than her own.

Benjamin's interest in Bella was only passing, to my relief, but his thoughts made a few things clear to me: I had succeeded in making myself seem like one of the Volturi to an outsider's eyes. Aro would be pleased and even Demetri would have nothing to complain about. I had not, however, succeeded in making it appear as though Bella was my own. I would have to watch Chelsea and Afton if they were ever sent out together. I would learn.

To Benjamin, Bella was one of many pretty faces he'd seen on his journey. A smile would be conquest enough for him, and then he would move on.

I toyed with the idea of sending him to Denali with a letter of introduction. My cousins there would be just the thing for a young vampire in search of romance and adventures. And any vampire who learned that the vegetarian life was at least possible was a victory.

They didn't make it out of Italy. There had been little chance that they would. We caught up with them not far from a half-dead trainyard, three hours before dawn. They hadn't known we were there. They hadn't even been sure we were coming.

The scent of metal, oil, wood and cargo drifted toward us on the light breeze, half a mile distant.

I saw Bella's eyes on me, too wide. I saw her fingers flex and relax, like a cat stretching its claws. What I could see in her face wasn't fear but rather a sort of nervous agitation. I wished I'd remembered to tell her that we weren't in much danger. It was four against two and we had more experienced fighters, at least on average. I would have been able to tell from the way Demetri and Rolfe were acting that they weren't afraid, but I remembered that Carlisle had always said I was better at that sort of thing than most people. Maybe Bella didn't know.

I wished I could give her instructions. I wished I could put my arms around her until she was still. But there were witnesses, of more than one kind.

An open field, Demetri noted. He'd gone through this hundreds of times in dozens of different situations. He thought out the rest without putting his thoughts into words: It was a good place for an ambush. The hills would hide the fires from human eyes until all the evidence had burned to ash. Our strategy formed in his mind almost on reflex.

He knew exactly where they were. He had a sense, whether from his gift or not, that they would break cover soon

I had more information for him, but I waited until he looked at me. "They don't know we're here but they're being careful just in case," I said in as neutral a tone as I could manage. "One of them wants to try to run across the field as soon as they hear the engine start, jump into a freight car while it's moving. The other one would rather walk in, pretend to be human, find out for sure which trains are going where."

It was an older vampire and his offspring. I'd been trying not to hear their names.

I spot-checked myself in Benjamin's thoughts. He wasn't wondering how I knew. Demetri had been acting on impossible knowledge all day. The fact that I could as well was no great surprise.

Demetri nodded to Benjamin and I watched a thrill go through his thoughts, words like honor and crime shining through his anxiety like gleaming wet rocks above churning water. "Go around to the other side," he said.

"To ...cut them off?" Benjamin asked.

"If it comes to that."

Benjamin paused, as if waiting for further explanation. Demetri was silent. Benjamin got the point and headed out.

Demetri looked at me, wondering if he needed to tell me what to do. I shook my head. I'd already seen it all.

"Just follow my lead, little sister," Rolfe whispered to Bella with half a smile. "Let the others go first. We're the grunts this time, you and me."

He was trying to help. Bella responded with a hollow, mechanical smile that sickened me.

I looked at Demetri and waited. He gave a nod to Chelsea and I heard her thoughts reach out like spidery fingers toward the two men hiding in the folds of land beneath us. This was the worst part.

It wasn't the delicate job I'd witnessed in the library back at the compound. It was like watching a piano tuner reverse her grip on her tools and drag them through the instrument. I saw her identify strings of affection, friendship and gratitude and pull them out like fistfuls of hair, never minding the chunks of scalp that came too.

They didn't feel a thing.

What's his problem? thought Rolfe, and I let my face go blank. I hadn't realized I'd let that much show. Perhaps Bella wasn't the only one who still needed to learn the Volturi discipline.

The two minds hiding among the rocks below us were focused on the trains. One of them made a decision.

I nodded to Demetri but made no other move. Demetri inclined his head, watching. Now that our witness was out of the way, he let a tight, confident smile give some life to his features. He'd always been a blade, but now he gleamed.

Two figures darted out of the shadow of the hill beneath us and made a break for the train station. Under ordinary circumstances, the distance would have been scarely a minute's work for vampires taking only moderate care not to be seen.

Demetri nodded to me and I set out, skirting the eastern side of the depression. He would take the west himself, and the risk of the remaining daylight.

When they were almost halfway across, one of them caught scent of Benjamin, who'd been sent to hide upwind of them. Startled, he skidded to a stop. The other overshot him by a few paces, then slowed down. I could only see his silhouette, head tilted to one side, mouth open, mind forming a question.

He never spoke it. He never spoke anything, actually.

Demetri had more experience with these matters, but when it came down to it, I was just faster. I ran at the younger of the two vampires and left him sprawling on the grass, half his throat hanging by a flap of pale skin.

The elder heard me attack his offspring, but he didn't stop to help. He didn't even look over his shoulder. He bolted, but in the wrong direction. Demetri had predicted that our quarry would either continue north to the trains, in which case I was to catch hold of him and slow him down enough for Rolfe to get a grip on him, or turn left and run straight toward him. He went to Demetri.

Demetri at work made my lessons with Bella look like two children with sticks playing swordfighters. I barely saw his hands move, but I heard the sounds, like a stone wrapped in wet cloth and dropped from a great height. The man actually staggered forward a few feet before his leg gave way. Demetri was on him by then, but this vampire was older and more experienced than the one I'd disabled. Behind me, I could hear a wicked metallic ripping, but I kept my eyes on the task at hand. As Demetri ducked a blow to his midsection, I rounded on them both, searching for an opening. It was two on one. These were the last blows of a man who knew he wouldn't live to midnight.

The man lunged at Demetri again and the hatchet-faced vampire got him in an armlock. Before he could twist free, I had both my hands around his other arm and dislocated his shoulder. He gave a cry of pain that ended in a twisting gurgle. I looked down to see Demetri's arm protruding from the man's chest. I swallowed the sickness in my throat and finished my work on his arm.

Chelsea was already preparing the pyre. We weren't finished here yet. By now, the other vampire was sectioned and ready. The blaze would be quick and hot. Everything had to be smoke by the time any humans took notice.

"Hold him," Demetri said. Rolfe materialized on the prisoner's other side and we pulled what was left of his arms behind his back. To the prisoner's perspective, we'd acted in perfect unison. Vampires obeying orders and working together in large groups unnerved him, and that suited Demetri's purpose.

"What is your name?" Demetri asked. Benjamin, picking his way toward us from the near side of the north ridge, heard everything.

The man was breathing hard. I fought the instinct to shift my grip. I heard footsteps behind us as Demetri made eye contact with someone behind me. I breathed in Bella. Demetri inclined his head at her, but she didn't move.

"He wants you to take this man's right leg off at the knee," I said, bracing as the prisoner tried to struggle free.

I knew it was a mistake the minute the words were out of my mouth. I ran through scenarios of Bella gasping and starting to panic, running away or jumping at Demetri. I had to find a way to dispel the situation...

Her shoulder brushed against my side as she braced her foot against our prisoner's hip and a hideous steel groan went through the ground, through my hands, shook in my throat. My head snapped over my shoulder. Bella's expression was intent and a little stern but not haunted, like she was working on a math problem. I noted sickly that she'd botched it. Instead of using a twisting motion, she'd pulled straight, disassociating the knee joint but not the surrounding flesh. She licked her lips and pulled again, trying to detach the rest. I looked away.

Behind me, Rolfe was shaking his head. She'll pick it up soon enough, he thought. We would be doing this a lot, after all.

"Your name," repeated Demetri.

"...Eric," he said. That hadn't always been his name, but it was what he'd gone by for the past sixty years at least. I nodded at Demetri. He was telling the truth.

"You broke our oldest law, Eric," said Demetri. "You left evidence behind."

"I... I didn't mean to. I didn't— Please! It was Thomas! He did it!"

Demetri made a show of looking across the field at Thomas. Chelsea was looming like a vulture over his unburned but helpless limbs and torso.

By now, Benjamin was close enough to see what we were doing. He stopped, hovering behind Demetri. A great part of him was disappointed that he hadn't had the chance to help bring Eric and Thomas down. He'd been in a few fights since leaving his coven, but they'd been scuffles compared to this.

"Thomas is your newborn, Eric," said Demetri.

"Nn-no! He's almost two years," Eric protested, with a half-panicked, ingratiating smile. Images flashed through his mind of the night he'd found Thomas. He'd only wanted to feed on him, but he'd been interrupted by humans approaching. He'd dragged the body off rather than leave it behind as evidence, and by the time he'd found a safe place to bury it, his venom had already started its work. After that, he'd thrown himself into teaching the new vampire to survive, everything he'd learned.

They were clear memories, but there was a blankness to them. Chelsea had pulled all their meaning away.

"Thomas did it on his own. I didn't even know until it was already done, I swear."

He was throwing his offspring under the bus. But would he have done so if not for Chelsea?

"But you did not hide the evidence."

It was enough of a confession for Demetri. His gift told him that this was the same vampire he'd been tracking since the farmhouse in Italy, and mine told me that the man's thoughts matched what he was saying. Aro would touch us both when we returned, and he would know that we had found the guilty party. This questions were for Benjamin's benefit, so that he would tell others that we had been sure not to kill the wrong men.

"Who sent you to Italy?" Demetri asked. I blinked. We hadn't been sent to interrogate anyone. The sentence had already been passed. We were just carrying it out.

"Who are you working for?" Demetri repeated cleanly.

"Working for?" Eric asked back. Rolfe crushed his shoulder joint. "I—I'm not working for anyone!"

"He's nothing to do with them," I murmured. "He's just a fool who thought he could get away with cutting corners."

Demetri eyed me almost lazily for a moment. "You're sure?"

There was no way that this man could hide anything from me in his condition. I nodded.

And then his head came off in my hands. Demetri had barely seemed to move.

Bella was breathing hard. I caught a small, hidden smile on Rolfe's lips. What I saw in his mind made my skin crawl.

I'd been worried that Bella would be frightened by the events she would witness tonight. I'd been worried that she would lose control and end up hurting someone—or worse, end up the target of one of these hunting trips. It turned out I'd been worried about the wrong things.

Rolfe and Bella had torn the helpless younger vampire apart. And in Rolfe's memory...

"Chelsea?" Demetri called out.

"Ready," she answered, tucking a half-empty flask into the pocket of her cloak. She'd already doused the pieces of poor Thomas in some kind of accelerant. I bent down to take care of Eric, but Benjamin appeared at my elbow, a fierce, eager grin on his handsome features. An image of what he wanted dawned in my mind. I released the prisoner's arm and stepped back. As he darted in to take my place, Rolfe gave a chuckle. "First time at one of these, friend?" I heard Rolfe ask.

I took Bella by the arm and gently pulled her away. "He wants to do it," I muttered. "Let him."

"'Why?'" I wanted her to say. "'He doesn't enjoy it, does he? That's sick.'" But she only nodded and stepped back with me, standing like a statue at my elbow, finally showing that perfect Volturi stillness.

Rolfe and his helper made short work of the body. The four of us took the pieces over to where Demetri was waiting with Thomas and Eric's head. Its jaw was still moving. He was trying to talk, but his larynx was dangling out of what remained of his neck. It wouldn't have done him any good. His thoughts were a jumble of terrified nonsense.

When she'd first been turned, I had been unable to read the expressions on her new face. Now I only wished I couldn't. She was trying to hide it underneath her other feelings, but there it was. I looked away. There was nothing I could do except look away.

Now was as good a time as any. I walked up beside Benjamin, his face wild as he tore the remaining pieces of Eric apart. "Our master," I said as smoothly as I could manage, "would be pleased if you came to speak with him in Volterra."

The boy stopped his work and looked at me for a moment. From the corner of my eye, I saw Demetri look up at us.

"Would he be displeased if I did not come?" Benjamin asked me.

I paused, considering my answer. "Not with you," I said at last.

Benjamin's gaze drifted to his left, and I could see the future in his imagination. His fingers tightened and he broke Eric's wrist bones. He saw himself in a gray cloak. He saw himself dispensing justice.

I opened my mouth. I wanted to warn him, but I knew I couldn't risk any more than I already had.

Benjamin smiled. "Thank you for the invitation. I will..." he nodded. "Thank you." He didn't want to say anything yet. He'd run away from one master already, and freedom was still very sweet to him. But, sooner or later, he would change his mind.

I managed not to speak. I managed a smile, a Volterra smile, and I turned away, starting back up the hill.

Demetri would expect me to take part in the burning, but the most difficult and risky parts of the job had been done. He could hardly complain if I wanted to skip the light work. From the corner of my eye, I saw Chelsea uncap her flask again, but Benjamin's voice, flushed and excited, said, "Please, madam. Allow me."

I closed my eyes. Don't flaunt yourself, you fool. Did he want to end up like me? He did. I already knew that he did.

Bella didn't seem to be paying attention. She was at my elbow, trotting to keep up on her shorter legs as the flames took flight behind us. She didn't open her lips or touch my arm, but I got the impression that she wanted to talk to me about something. I hoped it was what had happened here, with Eric and Thomas. I didn't want to hear what she had to say, but at the same time, I had all my own words inside my chest, and I had to get them out of me.

"Is it over?" she asked quietly, voice full of leashed tension.

"Mostly," I said.

"Edward..."

I rounded on her. "What?" I asked.

"Why are you angry?" she said.

I shook my head, suddenly sick of her. I'd tried to protect her. I'd tried to protect Benjamin, but he would come to Volterra and be proud as a peacock about it.

"Edward, I had to," she said, the words coming from far back in her throat. "You know I had to."

"You didn't have to like it!" I shot back. Rolfe's memories gnawed me, brighter and worse than anything Felix had ever thrown my way: running feet, snapping hands, a hiss. As far as he could tell, she'd gotten as much of a thrill out of killing another vampire as Benjamin had. She'd looked exhilarated. She'd looked like one of us.

Why should I have expected anything different? This Bella was a vampire. Vampires liked blood and they liked to kill their own kind; it was the only true challenge that most of us ever experienced. I should have expected nothing different. I should have expected nothing better.

The dim light was like a finger tracing the outline of her face, the reflections in her eyes, sinking into the folds of her gray hood. She didn't contradict me. She didn't hiss back at me that I was wrong, scold out some explanation that I'd overlooked.

"I don't want to like it," was all she said.

When you heard what happened in Budapest, you looked at me like I was a monster, I thought it but I couldn't say it. Please, by God, do it again.

"What happened?" I asked. "What's different now? You weren't like this when it was Oleg."

She actually looked surprised that I'd mentioned it. She was surprised about something, at least.

"That was different," she said.

"How?" I asked. Any answer would do, anything to prove to me that I had only misunderstood things, that Rolfe's memories were wrong or that I was wrong about them. "How was it different?"

"Back then I..." she said, too quickly. "It doesn't matter. I don't think I can help it, Edward."

Intellectually, I could process it. Intellectually, I could imagine how someone who didn't have a choice might as well enjoy what she did, how someone trapped in a frustrating situation could enjoy expressing those frustrations in destructive ways. I could remember what it felt like to get the better of another vampire or a wicked human and put an end to him. I'd felt that satisfaction myself once. Even my brother Emmett entertained similar thoughts from time to time.

But there was more to me than thoughts. I wasn't a disembodied brain in a jar. I was myself.

I hardly looked at her for the rest of the night. Demetri plotted us a more direct route home than the one we'd taken during our search. Benjamin proved not fool enough to come with us. I poured my concentration into the area around us, listening for human thoughts. Demetri seemed to understand the idea that we could move more quickly when no one was watching, but he did not fully trust me, and we interrupted our journey with stretches of human-paced movement more often than we truly needed to. In all honesty, I couldn't blame him. I wasn't sure I trusted myself either.

I could feel her near me. She was waiting for me to do something, but I couldn't. I just couldn't...

We stopped for the day in a small town just off the highway. Volterra wasn't far, but we were simply out of time, and Demetri had hidden here before, in the storm drains. At least they weren't sewers.

I must have spent hours just staring at the walls, trying to ignore Rolfe's latest fantasy about Adrienne. He had to know on some level that it was never going to happen.

I wasn't sure exactly when. It might have been hours later, when I saw my own face in an ice-clear thought, dark and preoccupied.

"No," I said, fixing Demetri with as hard a gaze as I dared.

He looked over at me. "You should stay quiet. We're well hidden, but we can be overheard."

"I can do this," I insisted.

"Don't make me tell you twice."

"Don't tell Caius not to send us out together any more," I told him. "I can handle it."

Demetri eyed me for a moment.

"You were thinking about me. It draws my attention," I explained. "I wasn't spying on you."

"You get distracted," Demetri said, nodding toward Bella, who was still watching.

"I am supposed to pay attention to what my newborn is doing," I defended myself. "That is partly why I was sent with her in the first place."

Demetri shook his head. Aro and his projects... he thought, bordering on disrespect. It got in the way of the mission, to his mind, and nothing that got in the way of the mission had any business coming along.

"Don't!" I hissed before I could look away from Demetri. He narrowed his eyes and I turned to the female on his left, "I mean you," I told Chelsea.

Fool, she thought bitterly. So she was charged with breaking up fights in the field as well. I would have to remember that. It seemed she didn't like being caught no matter where she was. But there was something in her thoughts, half-hidden and flickering like a dry leaf caught on a stone. It was—

There were footsteps on the street above us, and we all fell silent. I listened. The thoughts were unsuspecting, and the human soon passed by.

Demetri was looking from Bella to me and back. He didn't like the idea of my reading his thoughts, but he liked the idea of being caught even less. Why do you want to watch? he asked mentally.

I must have looked confused.

You've made it clear that you don't like what we do, and you never miss a chance to remind anyone within hearing that that cloak you wear was forced on you. He made no effort to hide his distaste. Seeing your mate perform her duty clearly upsets you. Why put yourself through it?

I looked at Bella. She'd been watching us. She hadn't stopped.

I would rather see it than not see it. I knew that. Knowing how bad it was also meant knowing that it wasn't any worse.

Demetri was serious. For all his dislike of me, he knew that I was useful when I put my mind to it. Having Bella around made me less so, and Demetri could not see any good side to that.

Afton didn't come along just because Chelsea is with us, Demetri pointed out.

"That's different."

Isn't that why you picked her in the first place? Demetri asked, imagining the blankness in his own mind whenever he tried to get a fix on Bella with his tracking abilities. So that you wouldn't have to know every last thing she does?

I blinked. I hadn't thought of it that way. Back in Forks, I'd liked that Bella could surprise me, delighted in every new thing I'd learned about her—and that I'd learned them in the ordiary way, by seeing and hearing things, putting a mental image together piece by piece rather than just seeing and hearing it on day one. But I'd wanted to know what she was, not imagine what she might be. Through all of our courtship, I'd known there were still mysteries, but I had never supposed that I might be wrong.

But I could have been. The human Bella might have harbored impulses every bit as vicious as the ones the new Bella had shown tonight. Most humans did.

In its way, it was almost as disturbing as the execution. I might have been wrong about her. What if I'd never really known who she was?

How would I find her again?

No... No, Carlisle couldn't read thoughts and Esme couldn't read thoughts, but they each knew who the other was. The same went for Alice and Jasper. I'd seen their mental images of each other, and they had never seemed off. I hadn't been looking, specifically, but I surely would have noticed. I wasn't wrong. Demetri was.

"It isn't like that," I said quietly. It was the only answer I had for Demetri's question.

You aren't really her mate, are you? Demetri asked, and it was more than a smug statement. It was the mildest kind of threat that passed for threat in Volterra. He was telling me that he knew my secret but not yet saying whom he planned to tell.

My mouth was half open to deny it, but something must have shown on my face. He can't be, Demetri thought to himself with a smirk. He's as indignant as any impotent man.

I found that I was breathing hard. I could think of no way to respond that would not be seen as utterly childish, and it was completely infuriating. Telling him he was wrong, knocking his jaw out of joint, sitting down next to Bella and sulking there all day—everything would make him, and anyone around us, think that he was completely right about me.

Bella was watching us. One glossy lock of dark hair had come loose from her hood to rest against the breast of the gray cloak she'd pulled around her to absorb the light. She'd been watching me since we'd left Volterra, I reminded myself, and I had a sinking suspicion that I'd been wrong about why.

"You are not in a position," was all I could say, "to know a thing about it."

It was what my human parents would have taught me to say. I knew it without having any specific memory to place. Their imprint on me was like the lines water leaves in a streambed long after had gone dry.

Demetri's eyebrows lifted and he looked away. If this could be called a battle, I'd found a way to win it. It was true: A man did not presume to know what went on between another mated pair. If there was a Volterra etiquette about these things, then Demetri had broken it—or he would have if he'd asked the question out loud. Someone like Felix or Adrienne might not have cared that he'd been caught in this way, but Demetri was not Felix.

And he wasn't right about us, not completely. Bella wasn't my mate, no, not the way these Volterra vampires thought of it. What she was, though...

I'd assumed that Bella had been looking for guidance and protection—and it was true that she needed both—but she had seen me show weakness. Perhaps she'd been worried that I'd be the one to break. Perhaps she'd been looking for the moment when she'd need to jump in and prevent me from ruining us both. That moment had not come.

Yes, I might have been wrong about my vampire Bella. I might have been wrong about the human Bella as well. But this girl with us, she was on my side. I was not wrong about that.

But I did not know what to make of it.

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