“Mine is bigger,” I heard Renesmee insist as I burst through the thick thornbushes to the small open space where they stood.
Jacob’s ears flattened as he took in my expression; he crouched forward, baring his teeth —his muzzle was streaked with blood from his kill. His eyes raked the forest. I could hear the growl building in his throat.
Renesmee was every bit as alert as Jacob. Abandoning the dead stag at her feet, she leaped into my waiting arms, pressing her curious hands against my cheeks.
“I’m overreacting,” I assured them quickly. “It’s okay, I think. Hold on.”
I pulled out my cell phone and hit the speed dial. Edward answered on the first ring. Jacob and Renesmee listened intently to my side as I filled Edward in.
“Come, bring Carlisle,” I trilled so fast I wondered if Jacob could keep up. “I saw Irina, and she saw me, but then she saw Jacob and she got mad and ran away, I
think
. She hasn’t shown up here—yet, anyway—but she looked pretty upset so maybe she will. If she doesn’t, you and Carlisle have to go after her and talk to her. I feel so bad.”
Jacob rumbled.
“We’ll be there in half a minute,” Edward assured me, and I could hear the whoosh of the wind his running made.
We darted back to the long meadow and then waited silently as Jacob and I listened carefully for the sound of an approach we did not recognize.
When the sound came, though, it was very familiar. And then Edward was at my side, Carlisle a few seconds behind. I was surprised to hear the heavy pad of big paws following behind Carlisle. I supposed I shouldn’t have been shocked. With Renesmee in even a hint of danger, of course Jacob would call in reinforcements.
“She was up on that ridge,” I told them at once, pointing out the spot. If Irina was fleeing, she already had quite a head start. Would she stop and listen to Carlisle? Her expression before made me think not. “Maybe you should call Emmett and Jasper and have them come with you. She looked… really upset. She growled at me.”
“What?” Edward said angrily.
Carlisle put a hand on his arm. “She’s grieving. I’ll go after her.”
“I’m coming with you,” Edward insisted.
They exchanged a long glance—perhaps Carlisle was measuring Edward’s irritation with Irina against his helpfulness as a mind reader. Finally, Carlisle nodded, and they took off to find the trail without calling for Jasper or Emmett.
Jacob huffed impatiently and poked my back with his nose. He must want Renesmee back at the safety of the house, just in case. I agreed with him on that, and we hurried home with Seth and Leah running at our flanks.
Renesmee was complacent in my arms, one hand still resting on my face. Since the hunting trip had been aborted, she would just have to make do with donated blood. Her thoughts were a little smug.
28. THE FUTURE
Carlisle and Edward had not been able to catch up with Irina before her trail disappeared into the sound. They’d swum to the other bank to see if her trail had picked up in a straight line, but there was no trace of her for miles in either direction on the eastern shore.
It was all my fault. She had come, as Alice had seen, to make peace with the Cullens, only to be angered by my camaraderie with Jacob. I wished I’d noticed her earlier, before Jacob had phased. I wished we’d gone hunting somewhere else.
There wasn’t much to be done. Carlisle had called Tanya with the disappointing news. Tanya and Kate hadn’t seen Irina since they’d decided to come to my wedding, and they were distraught that Irina had come so close and yet not returned home; it wasn’t easy for them to lose their sister, however temporary the separation might be. I wondered if this brought back hard memories of losing their mother so many centuries ago.
Alice was able to catch a few glimpses of Irina’s immediate future, nothing too concrete. She wasn’t going back to Denali, as far as Alice could tell. The picture was hazy. All Alice could see was that Irina was visibly upset; she wandered in the snowswathed wilderness—to the north? To the east?—with a devastated expression. She made no decisions for a new course beyond her directionless grieving.
Days passed and, though of course I forgot nothing, Irina and her pain moved to the back of my mind. There were more important things to think of now. I would leave for Italy in just a few days. When I got back, we’d all be off to South America.
Every detail had been gone over a hundred times already. We would start with the Ticunas, tracing their legends as well as we could at the source. Now that it was accepted that Jacob would come with us, he figured prominently in the plans—it was unlikely that the people who believed in vampires would speak to any of
us
about their stories. If we dead-ended with the Ticunas, there were many closely related tribes in the area to research. Carlisle had some old friends in the Amazon; if we could find them, they might have information for us, too. Or at least a suggestion as to where else we might go for answers. It was unlikely that the three Amazon vampires had anything to do with the legends of vampire hybrids themselves, as they were all female. There was no way to know how long our search would take.
I hadn’t told Charlie about the longer trip yet, and I stewed about what to say to him while Edward and Carlisle’s discussion went on. How to break the news to him just right?
I stared at Renesmee while I debated internally. She was curled up on the sofa now, her breathing slow with heavy sleep, her tangled curls splayed wildly around her face. Usually, Edward and I took her back to our cottage to put her to bed, but tonight we lingered with the family, he and Carlisle deep in their planning session. Meanwhile, Emmett and Jasper were more excited about planning the hunting possibilities. The Amazon offered a change from our normal quarry. Jaguars and panthers, for example. Emmett had a whim to wrestle with an anaconda. Esme and Rosalie were planning what they would pack. Jacob was off with Sam’s pack, setting things up for his own absence.
Alice moved slowly—for her—around the big room, unnecessarily tidying the already immaculate space, straightening Esme’s perfectly hung garlands. She was re-centering Esme’s vases on the console at the moment. I could see from the way her face fluctuated —aware, then blank, then aware again—that she was searching the future. I assumed she was trying to see through the blind spots that Jacob and Renesmee made in her visions as to what was waiting for us in South America until Jasper said, “Let it go, Alice; she’s not our concern,” and a cloud of serenity stole silently and invisibly through the room. Alice must have been worrying about Irina again.
She stuck her tongue out at Jasper and then lifted one crystal vase that was filled with white and red roses and turned toward the kitchen. There was just the barest hint of wilt to one of the white flowers, but Alice seemed intent on utter perfection as a distraction to her lack of vision tonight.
Staring at Renesmee again, I didn’t see it when the vase slipped from Alice’s fingers. I only heard the whoosh of the air whistling past the crystal, and my eyes flickered up in time to see the vase shatter into ten thousand diamond shards against the edge of the kitchen’s marble floor.
We were perfectly still as the fragmented crystal bounced and skittered in every direction with an unmusical tinkling, all eyes on Alice’s back.
My first illogical thought was that Alice was playing some joke on us. Because there was no way that Alice could have dropped the vase
by accident
. I could have darted across the room to catch the vase in plenty of time myself, if I hadn’t assumed she would get it. And how would it fall through her fingers in the first place? Her perfectly sure fingers…
I had never seen a vampire drop anything by accident. Ever.
And then Alice was facing us, twisting in a move so fast it didn’t exist.
Her eyes were halfway here and halfway locked on the future, wide, staring, filling her thin face till they seemed to overflow it. Looking into her eyes was like looking out of a grave from the inside; I was buried in the terror and despair and agony of her gaze.
I heard Edward gasp; it was a broken, half-choked sound.
“
What?
” Jasper growled, leaping to her side in a blurred rush of movement, crushing the broken crystal under his feet. He grabbed her shoulders and shook her sharply. She seemed to rattle silently in his hands.
“What, Alice?”
Emmett moved into my peripheral vision, his teeth bared while his eyes darted toward the window, anticipating an attack.
There was only silence from Esme, Carlisle, and Rose, who were frozen just as I was.
Jasper shook Alice again. “What
is
it?”
“They’re coming for us,” Alice and Edward whispered together, perfectly synchronized. “All of them.”
Silence.
For once, I was the quickest to understand—because something in their words triggered my own vision. It was only the distant memory of a dream—faint, transparent, indistinct as if I were peering through thick gauze.… In my head, I saw a line of black advancing on me, the ghost of my half-forgotten human nightmare. I could not see the glint of their ruby eyes in the shrouded image, or the shine of their sharp wet teeth, but I knew where the gleam should be. . . .
Stronger than the memory of the sight came the memory of the
feel
—the wrenching need to protect the precious thing behind me.
I wanted to snatch Renesmee up into my arms, to hide her behind my skin and hair, to make her invisible. But I couldn’t even turn to look at her. I felt not like stone but ice. For the first time since I’d been reborn a vampire, I felt cold.
I barely heard the confirmation of my fears. I didn’t need it. I already knew.
“The Volturi,” Alice moaned.
“All of them,” Edward groaned at the same time.
“Why?” Alice whispered to herself. “How?”
“When?” Edward whispered.
“Why?” Esme echoed.
“
When
?” Jasper repeated in a voice like splintering ice.
Alice’s eyes didn’t blink, but it was as if a veil covered them; they became perfectly blank. Only her mouth held on to her expression of horror.
“Not long,” she and Edward said together. Then she spoke alone. “There’s snow on the forest, snow on the town. Little more than a month.”
“Why?” Carlisle was the one to ask this time.
Esme answered. “They must have a reason. Maybe to see . . .”
“This isn’t about Bella,” Alice said hollowly. “They’re all coming—Aro, Caius, Marcus, every member of the guard, even the wives.”
“The wives never leave the tower,” Jasper contradicted her in a flat voice. “Never. Not during the southern rebellion. Not when the Romanians tried to overthrow them. Not even when they were hunting the immortal children. Never.”
“They’re coming now,” Edward whispered.
“But
why
?” Carlisle said again. “We’ve done nothing! And if we had, what could we possibly do that would bring
this
down on us?”
“There are so many of us,” Edward answered dully. “They must want to make sure that . . .” He didn’t finish.
“That doesn’t answer the crucial question! Why?”
I felt I knew the answer to Carlisle’s question, and yet at the same time I didn’t. Renesmee was the reason why, I was sure. Somehow I’d known from the very beginning that they would come for her. My subconscious had warned me before I’d known I was carrying her. It felt oddly expected now. As if I’d somehow always known that the Volturi would come to take my happiness from me.
But that still didn’t answer the question.
“Go back, Alice,” Jasper pleaded. “Look for the trigger. Search.”
Alice shook her head slowly, her shoulders sagging. “It came out of nowhere, Jazz. I wasn’t looking for them, or even for us. I was just looking for Irina. She wasn’t where I expected her to be. . . .” Alice trailed off, her eyes drifting again. She stared at nothing for a long second.
And then her head jerked up, her eyes hard as flint. I heard Edward catch his breath.
“She decided to go to them,” Alice said. “Irina decided to go to the Volturi. And then they will decide.… It’s as if they’re waiting for her. Like their decision was already made, and just waiting on her. . . .”
It was silent again as we digested this. What would Irina tell the Volturi that would result in Alice’s appalling vision?
“Can we stop her?” Jasper asked.
“There’s no way. She’s almost there.”
“What is she doing?” Carlisle was asking, but I wasn’t paying attention to the discussion now. All my focus was on the picture that was painstakingly coming together in my head.
I pictured Irina poised on the cliff, watching. What had she seen? A vampire and a werewolf who were best friends. I’d been focused on that image, one that would obviously explain her reaction. But that was not all that she’d seen. She’d also seen a child. An exquisitely beautiful child, showing off in the falling snow, clearly more than human…
Irina… the orphaned sisters… Carlisle had said that losing their mother to the Volturi’s justice had made Tanya, Kate, and Irina purists when it came to the law.
Just half a minute ago, Jasper had said the words himself:
Not even when they were hunting the immortal children
.… The immortal children—the unmentionable bane, the appalling taboo…
With Irina’s past, how could she apply any other reading to what she’d seen that day in the narrow field? She had not been close enough to hear Renesmee’s heart, to feel the heat radiating from her body. Renesmee’s rosy cheeks could have been a trick on our part for all she knew.
After all, the Cullens were in league with werewolves. From Irina’s point of view, maybe this meant nothing was beyond us.…
Irina, wringing her hands in the snowy wilderness—not mourning Laurent, after all, but knowing it was her duty to turn the Cullens in, knowing what would happen to them if she did. Apparently her conscience had won out over the centuries of friendship.
And the Volturi’s response to this kind of infraction was so automatic, it was already decided.
I turned and draped myself over Renesmee’s sleeping body, covering her with my hair, burying my face in her curls.
“Think of what she saw that afternoon,” I said in a low voice, interrupting whatever Emmett was beginning to say. “To someone who’d lost a mother because of the immortal children, what would Renesmee look like?”