Luminosity (Book One)

Chapter 11: Volterra

I wondered, as I started to see signs for the airport out the window, how vampires got through airport security. It seemed unlikely that security scanning machines and the like would react normally to them.

By the time I was on the jet that James picked out, I still didn't know how the Cullens would manage, but James did it by sneaking us into the baggage compartment. He killed a man to do it. He didn't eat him. I wasn't sure if he was full, or thought it would be too obvious, or didn't want to drop into hunting mode and accidentally turn me into dessert; but he just clobbered the guy over the head with a suitcase and then arranged the scenario to make it look like the corpse had accidentally dropped the luggage onto his own head. No blood.

I spent the duration of the murder crouching inside the luggage cart that James's victim had been driving. I knew James would at least hurt me, and likely kill me, if I tried to escape - and besides, the only people who I'd find useful rescuers wouldn't be confused by my hiding place. They'd be able to smell or hear me anyway.

Traveling in the baggage compartment of an airplane was not fun. I complained softly of hunger and thirst, and James was able to find a packed lunch and water bottle with his superior sense of smell. From the look of the bag he retrieved it from, it had been intended as a carry-on and just barely exceeded the size limit. He didn't look thrilled about having to feed me, but didn't complain about it either.

I ate it, and it tided me over until the plane arrived in New York, where we had to change flights. James didn't kill anyone this time. He stole a long hooded coat from someone's garment bag to hide under (dawn was underway on the east coast) and loosened the latches on the door to the belly of the airplane; when we were a hundred feet off the ground, he kicked the door open casually, seized me, and fell gracefully to the ground in a hail of instrument cases and upholstered sacks and cardboard boxes.

James did not run with concern for my comfort. My ears were ringing with wind. I knew vampires could move outrageously fast, and supposed that the ground crew might be distracted by the luggage rain, but it still seemed an awful risk. Maybe he was betting on the fictional Volturi reward being retroactive. He leapt into the baggage hold of the next plane. I couldn't see anything - he moved too fast - but he didn't seem to have attracted the attention of anyone who wanted to investigate the rapid dark shape hurling itself into the airplane.

This airplane had a caged dog traveling in it. It hated James and yowled at him constantly. It seemed to irritate him, so he opened its cage, strangled it, and then stuffed a luggage strap down its throat in case anyone should happen to wonder at its death.

I wondered when I would start going into shock. Probably soon. I really ought to be in shock. Perhaps I was, and hadn't noticed. I didn't know what shock was like.

"Where are we going?" I dared ask, hours into the second leg of the trip, after he'd found me another snack and an entire case of fancy bottled water somebody was bothering to import.

"Italy," he said shortly.

The plane landed. Not one to repeat himself in making an exit, James hid the pair of us in a corner. When the baggage handlers noticed the dead dog, and started yelling at each other about it in rapid Italian, he walked right out behind them, me in tow.

He broke into and hotwired the first fast-looking car he found in the airport's parking lot.

And then we drove.

"How did you get through them to me?" I asked timidly, sitting next to the vampire in the driver's seat.

"Well, it helped that I know the little one's secret," he said, as though letting me in on a joke. The little one - Alice? I'd suspected...