The witnesses met his gaze with careful faces. One, a small black-haired woman, looked briefly at the dark blond male at her side.
“Are those our only choices?” she asked suddenly, gaze flashing back to Aro. “Agree with you, or fight against you?”
“Of course not, most charming Makenna,” Aro said, appearing horrified that anyone could come to that conclusion. “You may go in peace, of course, as Amun did, even if you disagree with the council’s decision.”
Makenna looked at her mate’s face again, and he nodded minutely. “We did not come here for a fight.” She paused, exhaled, then said, “We came here to witness. And our witness is that this condemned family is innocent. Everything that Garrett claimed is the truth.”
“Ah,” Aro said sadly. “I’m sorry you see us in that way. But such is the nature of our work.”
“It is not what I see, but what I feel,” Makenna’s maize-haired mate spoke in a high, nervous voice. He glanced at Garrett. “Garrett said they have ways of knowing lies. I, too, know when I am hearing the truth, and when I am not.” With frightened eyes he moved closer to his mate, waiting for Aro’s reaction.
“Do not fear us, friend Charles. No doubt the patriot truly believes what he says,” Aro chuckled lightly, and Charles’s eyes narrowed.
“That is our witness,” Makenna said. “We’re leaving now.”
She and Charles backed away slowly, not turning before they were lost from view in the trees. One other stranger began to retreat the same way, then three more darted after him.
I evaluated the thirty-seven vampires that stayed. A few of them appeared just too confused to make the decision. But the majority of them seemed only too aware of the direction this confrontation had taken. I guessed that they were giving up a head start in favor of knowing exactly who would be chasing after them.
I was sure Aro saw the same thing I did. He turned away, walking back to his guard with a measured pace. He stopped in front of them and addressed them in a clear voice.
“We are outnumbered, dearest ones,” he said. “We can expect no outside help. Should we leave this question undecided to save ourselves?”
“No, master,” they whispered in unison.
“Is the protection of our world worth perhaps the loss of some of our number?”
“Yes,” they breathed. “We are not afraid.”
Aro smiled and turned to his black-clad companions.
“Brothers,” Aro said somberly, “there is much to consider here.”
“Let us counsel,” Caius said eagerly.
“Let us counsel,” Marcus repeated in an uninterested tone.
Aro turned his back to us again, facing the other ancients. They joined hands to form a black-shrouded triangle.
As soon as Aro’s attention was engaged in the silent counsel, two more of their witnesses disappeared silently into the forest. I hoped, for their sakes, that they were fast.
This was it. Carefully, I loosened Renesmee’s arms from my neck.
“You remember what I told you?”
Tears welled in her eyes, but she nodded. “I love you,” she whispered.
Edward was watching us now, his topaz eyes wide. Jacob stared at us from the corner of his big dark eye.
“I love you, too,” I said, and then I touched her locket. “More than my own life.” I kissed her forehead.
Jacob whined uneasily.
I stretched up on my toes and whispered into his ear. “Wait until they’re totally distracted, then run with her. Get as far from this place as you possibly can. When you’ve gone as far as you can on foot, she has what you need to get you in the air.”
Edward’s and Jacob’s faces were almost identical masks of horror, despite the fact that one of them was an animal.
Renesmee reached for Edward, and he took her in his arms. They hugged each other tightly.
“This is what you kept from me?” he whispered over her head.
“From Aro,” I breathed.
“Alice?”
I nodded.
His face twisted with understanding and pain. Had that been the expression on my face when I’d finally put together Alice’s clues?
Jacob was growling quietly, a low rasp that was as even and unbroken as a purr. His hackles were stiff and his teeth exposed.
Edward kissed Renesmee’s forehead and both her cheeks, then he lifted her to Jacob’s shoulder. She scrambled agilely onto his back, pulling herself into place with handfuls of his fur, and fit herself easily into the dip between his massive shoulder blades.
Jacob turned to me, his expressive eyes full of agony, the rumbling growl still grating through his chest.
“You’re the only one we could ever trust her with,” I murmured to him. “If you didn’t love her so much, I could never bear this. I know you can protect her, Jacob.”
He whined again, and dipped his head to butt it against my shoulder.
“I know,” I whispered. “I love you, too, Jake. You’ll always be my best man.”
A tear the size of a baseball rolled into the russet fur beneath his eye.
Edward leaned his head against the same shoulder where he’d placed Renesmee. “Goodbye, Jacob, my brother… my son.”
The others were not oblivious to the farewell scene. Their eyes were locked on the silent black triangle, but I could tell they were listening.
“Is there no hope, then?” Carlisle whispered. There was no fear in his voice. Just determination and acceptance.
“There is absolutely hope,” I murmured back.
It could be true,
I told myself. “I only know my own fate.”
Edward took my hand. He knew that he was included. When I said
my fate
, there was no question that I meant the two of us. We were just halves of the whole.
Esme’s breath was ragged behind me. She moved past us, touching our faces as she passed, to stand beside Carlisle and hold his hand.
Suddenly, we were surrounded by murmured goodbyes and I love you’s.
“If we live through this,” Garrett whispered to Kate, “I’ll follow you anywhere, woman.”
“Now he tells me,” she muttered.
Rosalie and Emmett kissed quickly but passionately.
Tia caressed Benjamin’s face. He smiled back cheerfully, catching her hand and holding it against his cheek.
I didn’t see all the expressions of love and pain. I was distracted by a sudden fluttering pressure against the outside of my shield. I couldn’t tell where it came from, but it felt like it was directed at the edges of our group, Siobhan and Liam particularly. The pressure did no damage, and then it was gone.
There was no change in the silent, still forms of the counseling ancients. But perhaps there was some signal I’d missed.
“Get ready,” I whispered to the others. “It’s starting.”
38. POWER
“Chelsea is trying to break our bindings,” Edward whispered. “But she can’t find them. She can’t feel us here. . . .” His eyes cut to me. “Are you doing that?”
I smiled grimly at him. “I am
all
over this.”
Edward lurched away from me suddenly, his hand reaching out toward Carlisle. At the same time, I felt a much sharper jab against the shield where it wrapped protectively around Carlisle’s light. It wasn’t painful, but it wasn’t pleasant, either.
“Carlisle? Are you all right?” Edward gasped frantically.
“Yes. Why?”
“Jane,” Edward answered.
The moment that he said her name, a dozen pointed attacks hit in a second, stabbing all over the elastic shield, aimed at twelve different bright spots. I flexed, making sure the shield was undamaged. It didn’t seem like Jane had been able to pierce it. I glanced around quickly; everyone was fine.
“Incredible,” Edward said.
“Why aren’t they waiting for the decision?” Tanya hissed.
“Normal procedure,” Edward answered brusquely. “They usually incapacitate those on trial so they can’t escape.”
I looked across at Jane, who was staring at our group with furious disbelief. I was pretty sure that, besides me, she’d never seen anyone remain standing through her fiery assault.
It probably wasn’t very mature. But I figured it would take Aro about half a second to guess—if he hadn’t already—that my shield was more powerful than Edward had known; I already had a big target on my forehead and there was really no point in trying to keep the extent of what I could do a secret. So I grinned a huge, smug smile right at Jane.
Her eyes narrowed, and I felt another stab of pressure, this time directed at me.
I pulled my lips wider, showing my teeth.
Jane let out a high-pitched scream of a snarl. Everyone jumped, even the disciplined guard. Everyone but the ancients, who didn’t so much as look up from their conference. Her twin caught her arm as she crouched to spring.
The Romanians started chuckling with dark anticipation.
“I told you this was our time,” Vladimir said to Stefan.
“Just look at the witch’s face,” Stefan chortled.
Alec patted his sister’s shoulder soothingly, then tucked her under his arm. He turned his face to us, perfectly smooth, completely angelic.
I waited for some pressure, some sign of his attack, but I felt nothing. He continued to stare in our direction, his pretty face composed. Was he attacking? Was he getting through my shield? Was I the only one who could still see him? I clutched at Edward’s hand.
“Are you okay?” I choked out.
“Yes,” he whispered.
“Is Alec trying?”
Edward nodded. “His gift is slower than Jane’s. It creeps. It will touch us in a few seconds.”
I saw it then, when I had a clue of what to look for.
A strange clear haze was oozing across the snow, nearly invisible against the white. It reminded me of a mirage—a slight warping of the view, a hint of a shimmer. I pushed my shield out from Carlisle and the rest of the front line, afraid to have the slinking mist too close when it hit. What if it stole right through my intangible protection? Should we run?
A low rumbling murmured through the ground under our feet, and a gust of wind blew the snow into sudden flurries between our position and the Volturi’s. Benjamin had seen the creeping threat, too, and now he tried to blow the mist away from us. The snow made it easy to see where he threw the wind, but the mist didn’t react in any way. It was like air blowing harmlessly through a shadow; the shadow was immune.
The triangular formation of the ancients finally broke apart when, with a racking groan, a deep, narrow fissure opened in a long zigzag across the middle of the clearing. The earth rocked under my feet for a moment. The drifts of snow plummeted into the hole, but the mist skipped right across it, as untouched by gravity as it had been by wind.
Aro and Caius watched the opening earth with wide eyes. Marcus looked in the same direction without emotion.
They didn’t speak; they waited, too, as the mist approached us. The wind shrieked louder but didn’t change the course of the mist. Jane was smiling now.
And then the mist hit a wall.
I could taste it as soon as it touched my shield—it had a dense, sweet, cloying flavor. It made me remember dimly the numbness of Novocain on my tongue.
The mist curled upward, seeking a breach, a weakness. It found none. The fingers of searching haze twisted upward and around, trying to find a way in, and in the process illustrating the astonishing size of the protective screen.
There were gasps on both sides of Benjamin’s gorge.
“Well done, Bella!” Benjamin cheered in a low voice.
My smile returned.
I could see Alec’s narrowed eyes, doubt on his face for the first time as his mist swirled harmlessly around the edges of my shield.
And then I knew that I could do this. Obviously, I would be the number-one priority, the first one to die, but as long as I held, we were on more than equal footing with the Volturi. We still had Benjamin and Zafrina; they had no supernatural help at all. As long as I held.
“I’m going to have to concentrate,” I whispered to Edward. “When it comes to hand to hand, it’s going to be harder to keep the shield around the right people.”
“I’ll keep them off you.”
“No. You
have
to get to Demetri. Zafrina will keep them away from me.”
Zafrina nodded solemnly. “No one will touch this young one,” she promised Edward.
“I’d go after Jane and Alec myself, but I can do more good here.”
“Jane’s mine,” Kate hissed. “She needs a taste of her own medicine.”
“And Alec owes me many lives, but I will settle for his,” Vladimir growled from the other side. “He’s mine.”
“I just want Caius,” Tanya said evenly.
The others started divvying up opponents, too, but they were quickly interrupted.
Aro, staring calmly at Alec’s ineffective mist, finally spoke.
“Before we vote,” he began.
I shook my head angrily. I was tired of this charade. The bloodlust was igniting in me again, and I was sorry that I would help the others more by standing still. I
wanted to fight.
“Let me remind you,” Aro continued, “whatever the council’s decision, there need be no violence here.”
Edward snarled out a dark laugh. Aro stared at him sadly. “It will be a regrettable waste to our kind to lose any of you. But you especially, young Edward, and your newborn mate. The Volturi would be glad to welcome many of you into our ranks. Bella, Benjamin, Zafrina, Kate. There are many choices before you. Consider them.”
Chelsea’s attempt to sway us fluttered impotently against my shield. Aro’s gaze swept across our hard eyes, looking for any indication of hesitation. From his expression, he found none.
I knew he was desperate to keep Edward and me, to imprison us the way he had hoped to enslave Alice. But this fight was too big. He would not win if I lived. I was fiercely glad to be so powerful that I left him no way
not
to kill me.
“Let us vote, then,” he said with apparent reluctance.
Caius spoke with eager haste. “The child is an unknown quantity. There is no reason to allow such a risk to exist. It must be destroyed, along with all who protect it.” He smiled in expectation.
I fought back a shriek of defiance to answer his cruel smirk.
Marcus lifted his uncaring eyes, seeming to look through us as he voted.
“I see no immediate danger. The child is safe enough for now. We can always reevaluate later. Let us leave in peace.” His voice was even fainter than his brothers’ feathery sighs.
None of the guard relaxed their ready positions at his disagreeing words. Caius’s anticipatory grin did not falter. It was as if Marcus hadn’t spoken at all.
“I must make the deciding vote, it seems,” Aro mused.
Suddenly, Edward stiffened at my side. “Yes!” he hissed.