He shuddered when it began but held still this time, his eyes closed in concentration.
“Ahh,” he sighed when his eyes reopened a few minutes later. “I see.”
Renesmee smiled at him. He hesitated, then smiled a slightly unwilling smile in response.
“Eleazar?” Tanya asked.
“It’s all true, Tanya. This is no immortal child. She’s half-human. Come. See for yourself.”
In silence, Tanya took her turn standing warily before me, and then Kate, both showing shock as that first image hit them with Renesmee’s touch. But then, just like Carmen and Eleazar, they seemed completely won over as soon as it was done.
I shot a glance at Edward’s smooth face, wondering if it could really be so easy. His golden eyes were clear, unshadowed. There was no deception in this, then.
“Thank you for listening,” he said quietly.
“But there is the
grave danger
you warned us of,” Tanya said. “Not directly from this child, I see, but surely from the Volturi, then. How did they find out about her? When are they coming?”
I was not surprised at her quick understanding. After all, what could possibly be a threat to a family as strong as mine? Only the Volturi.
“When Bella saw Irina that day in the mountains,” Edward explained, “she had Renesmee with her.”
Kate hissed, her eyes narrowing to slits. “
Irina
did this? To you? To Carlisle?
Irina?
”
“No,” Tanya whispered. “Someone else . . .”
“Alice saw her go to them,” Edward said. I wondered if the others noticed the way he winced just slightly when he spoke Alice’s name.
“How could she do this thing?” Eleazar asked of no one.
“Imagine if you had seen Renesmee only from a distance. If you had not waited for our explanation.”
Tanya’s eyes tightened. “No matter what she thought… You are our family.”
“There’s nothing we can do about Irina’s choice now. It’s too late. Alice gave us a month.”
Both Tanya’s and Eleazar’s heads cocked to one side. Kate’s brow furrowed.
“So long?” Eleazar asked.
“They are all coming. That must take some preparation.”
Eleazar gasped. “The entire guard?”
“Not just the guard,” Edward said, his jaw straining tight. “Aro, Caius, Marcus. Even the wives.”
Shock glazed over all their eyes.
“Impossible,” Eleazar said blankly.
“I would have said the same two days ago,” Edward said.
Eleazar scowled, and when he spoke it was nearly a growl. “But that doesn’t make any sense. Why would they put themselves and the wives in danger?”
“It doesn’t make sense from that angle. Alice said there was more to this than just punishment for what they think we’ve done. She thought you could help us.”
“More than punishment? But what else is there?” Eleazar started pacing, stalking toward the door and back again as if he were alone here, his eyebrows furrowed as he stared at the floor.
“Where are the others, Edward? Carlisle and Alice and the rest?” Tanya asked.
Edward’s hesitation was almost unnoticeable. He answered only part of her question. “Looking for friends who might help us.”
Tanya leaned toward him, holding her hands out in front of her. “Edward, no matter how many friends you gather, we can’t help you
win
. We can only die with you. You must know that. Of course, perhaps the four of us deserve that after what Irina has done now, after how we’ve failed you in the past—for her sake that time as well.”
Edward shook his head quickly. “We’re not asking you to fight and die with us, Tanya. You know Carlisle would never ask for that.”
“Then what, Edward?”
“We’re just looking for witnesses. If we can make them pause, just for a moment. If they would let us explain . . .” He touched Renesmee’s cheek; she grabbed his hand and held it pressed against her skin. “It’s difficult to doubt our story when you see it for yourself.”
Tanya nodded slowly. “Do you think her past will matter to them so much?”
“Only as it foreshadows her future. The point of the restriction was to protect us from exposure, from the excesses of children who could not be tamed.”
“I’m not dangerous at all,” Renesmee interjected. I listened to her high, clear voice with new ears, imagining how she sounded to the others. “I never hurt Grandpa or Sue or Billy. I love humans. And wolf-people like my Jacob.” She dropped Edward’s hand to reach back and pat Jacob’s arm.
Tanya and Kate exchanged a quick glance.
“If Irina had not come so soon,” Edward mused, “we could have avoided all of this. Renesmee grows at an unprecedented rate. By the time the month is past, she’ll have gained another half year of development.”
“Well, that is something we can certainly witness,” Carmen said in a decided tone. “We’ll be able to promise that we’ve seen her mature ourselves. How could the Volturi ignore such evidence?”
Eleazar mumbled, “How, indeed?” but he did not look up, and he continued pacing as if he were paying no attention at all.
“Yes, we can witness for you,” Tanya said. “Certainly that much. We will consider what more we might do.”
“Tanya,” Edward protested, hearing more in her thoughts than there was in her words, “we don’t expect you to fight with us.”
“If the Volturi won’t pause to listen to our witness, we cannot simply stand by,” Tanya insisted. “Of course, I should only speak for myself.”
Kate snorted. “Do you really doubt me so much, sister?”
Tanya smiled widely at her. “It
is
a suicide mission, after all.”
Kate flashed a grin back and then shrugged nonchalantly. “I’m in.”
“I, too, will do what I can to protect the child,” Carmen agreed. Then, as if she couldn’t resist, she held her arms out toward Renesmee. “May I hold you,
bebé linda
?”
Renesmee reached eagerly toward Carmen, delighted with her new friend. Carmen hugged her close, murmuring to her in Spanish.
It was like it had been with Charlie, and before that with all the Cullens. Renesmee was irresistible. What was it about her that drew everyone to her, that made them willing even to pledge their lives in her defense?
For a moment I thought that maybe what we were attempting might be possible. Maybe Renesmee could do the impossible and win over our enemies as she had our friends.
And then I remembered that Alice had left us, and my hope vanished as quickly as it had appeared.
31. TALENTED
“What is the werewolves’ part in this?” Tanya asked then, eyeing Jacob.
Jacob spoke before Edward could answer. “If the Volturi won’t stop to listen about Nessie, I mean Renesmee,” he corrected himself, remembering that Tanya would not understand his stupid nickname, “
we
will stop them.”
“Very brave, child, but that would be impossible for more experienced fighters than you are.”
“You don’t know what we can do.”
Tanya shrugged. “It is your own life, certainly, to spend as you choose.”
Jacob’s eyes flickered to Renesmee—still in Carmen’s arms with Kate hovering over them—and it was easy to read the longing in them.
“She is special, that little one,” Tanya mused. “Hard to resist.”
“A very talented family,” Eleazar murmured as he paced. His tempo was increasing; he flashed from the door to Carmen and back again every second. “A mind reader for a father, a shield for a mother, and then whatever magic this extraordinary child has bewitched us with. I wonder if there is a name for what she does, or if it is the norm for a vampire hybrid. As if such a thing could ever be considered normal! A vampire hybrid, indeed!”
“Excuse me,” Edward said in a stunned voice. He reached out and caught Eleazar’s shoulder as he was about to turn again for the door. “What did you just call my wife?”
Eleazar looked at Edward curiously, his manic pacing forgotten for the moment. “A shield, I
think
. She’s blocking me now, so I can’t be sure.”
I stared at Eleazar, my brows furrowing in confusion. Shield? What did he mean about my blocking him? I was standing right here beside him, not defensive in any way.
“A shield?” Edward repeated, bewildered.
“Come now, Edward! If I can’t get a read on her, I doubt you can, either. Can you hear her thoughts right now?” Eleazar asked.
“No,” Edward murmured. “But I’ve never been able to do that. Even when she was human.”
“Never?” Eleazar blinked. “Interesting. That would indicate a rather powerful latent talent, if it was manifesting so clearly even before the transformation. I can’t feel a way through her shield to get a sense of it at all. Yet she must be raw still—she’s only a few months old.” The look he gave Edward now was almost exasperated. “And apparently completely unaware of what she’s doing. Totally unconscious. Ironic. Aro sent me all over the world searching for such anomalies, and you simply stumble across it by accident and don’t even realize what you have.” Eleazar shook his head in disbelief.
I frowned. “What are you talking about? How can I be a
shield
? What does that even mean?” All I could picture in my head was a ridiculous medieval suit of armor.
Eleazar leaned his head to one side as he examined me. “I suppose we were overly formal about it in the guard. In truth, categorizing talents is a subjective, haphazard business; every talent is unique, never exactly the same thing twice. But you, Bella, are fairly easy to classify. Talents that are purely defensive, that protect some aspect of the bearer, are always called
shields
. Have you ever tested your abilities? Blocked anyone besides me and your mate?”
It took me few seconds, despite how quickly my new brain worked, to organize my answer.
“It only works with certain things,” I told him. “My head is sort of… private. But it doesn’t stop Jasper from being able to mess with my mood or Alice from seeing my future.”
“Purely a mental defense.” Eleazar nodded to himself. “Limited, but strong.”
“Aro couldn’t hear her,” Edward interjected. “Though she was human when they met.”
Eleazar’s eyes widened.
“Jane tried to hurt me, but she couldn’t,” I said. “Edward thinks Demetri can’t find me, and that Alec can’t bother me, either. Is that good?”
Eleazar, still gaping, nodded. “Quite.”
“A shield!” Edward said, deep satisfaction saturating his tone. “I never thought of it that way. The only one I’ve ever met before was Renata, and what she did was so different.”
Eleazar had recovered slightly. “Yes, no talent ever manifests in precisely the same way, because no one ever
thinks
in exactly the same way.”
“Who’s Renata? What does she do?” I asked. Renesmee was interested, too, leaning away from Carmen so that she could see around Kate.
“Renata is Aro’s personal bodyguard,” Eleazar told me. “A very practical kind of shield, and a very strong one.”
I vaguely remembered a small crowd of vampires hovering close to Aro in his macabre tower, some male, some female. I couldn’t remember the women’s faces in the uncomfortable, terrifying memory. One must have been Renata.
“I wonder…,” Eleazar mused. “You see, Renata is a powerful shield against a physical attack. If someone approaches her—or Aro, as she is always close beside him in a hostile situation—they find themselves… diverted. There’s a force around her that repels, though it’s almost unnoticeable. You simply find yourself going a different direction than you planned, with a confused memory as to why you wanted to go that other way in the first place. She can project her shield several meters out from herself. She also protects Caius and Marcus, too, when they have a need, but Aro is her priority.
“What she does isn’t actually physical, though. Like the vast majority of our gifts, it takes place inside the mind. If she tried to keep
you
back, I wonder who would win?” He shook his head. “I’ve never heard of Aro’s or Jane’s gifts being thwarted.”
“Momma, you’re special,” Renesmee told me without any surprise, like she was commenting on the color of my clothes.
I felt disoriented. Didn’t I already know my gift? I had my super-self-control that had allowed me to skip right over the horrifying newborn year. Vampires only had one extra ability at most, right?
Or had Edward been correct in the beginning? Before Carlisle had suggested that my self-control could be something beyond the natural, Edward had thought my restraint was just a product of good preparation—
focus and attitude
, he’d declared.
Which one had been right? Was there
more
I could do? A name and a category for what I was?
“Can you project?” Kate asked interestedly.
“Project?” I asked.
“Push it out from yourself,” Kate explained. “Shield someone besides yourself.”
“I don’t know. I’ve never tried. I didn’t know I should do that.”
“Oh, you might not be able to,” Kate said quickly. “Heavens knows I’ve been working on it for centuries and the best I can do is run a current over my skin.”
I stared at her, mystified.
“Kate’s got an offensive skill,” Edward said. “Sort of like Jane.”
I flinched away from Kate automatically, and she laughed. “I’m not sadistic about it,” she assured me. “It’s just something that comes in handy during a fight.”
Kate’s words were sinking in, beginning to make connections in my mind.
Shield someone besides yourself,
she’d said. As if there were some way for me to include another person in my strange, quirky silent head.
I remembered Edward cringing on the ancient stones of the Volturi castle turret. Though this was a human memory, it was sharper, more painful than most of the others—like it had been branded into the tissues of my brain.
What if I could stop that from happening ever again? What if I could protect him? Protect Renesmee? What if there was even the faintest glimmer of a possibility that I could shield them, too?
“You have to teach me what to do!” I insisted, unthinkingly grabbing Kate’s arm. “You have to show me how!”
Kate winced at my grip. “Maybe—if you stop trying to crush my radius.”
“Oops! Sorry!”
“You’re shielding, all right,” Kate said. “That move should have about shocked your arm off. You didn’t feel anything just now?”
“That wasn’t really necessary, Kate. She didn’t mean any harm,” Edward muttered under his breath. Neither of us paid attention to him.
“No, I didn’t feel anything. Were you doing your electric current thing?”
“I was. Hmm. I’ve never met anyone who couldn’t feel it, immortal or otherwise.”
“You said you project it? On your skin?”
Kate nodded. “It used to be just in my palms. Kind of like Aro.”
“Or Renesmee,” Edward interjected.