The Girl Who Was Taken (Renesme Cullens Twin Sister)

Fifty-Five

Volterra, Italy. September 10th, 2018

A very old man stood in his very old throne room that did not belong to him anymore. This man named Marcus and he was sad, and it was obvious to anyone who looked upon his face, and noticed the deep lines carved into his skin where his smile used to be. He had not smiled in many, many years, except one time, three and a half months ago when his dynasty was usurped right from under him. He thought they would show him mercy and tear his body apart like they did for the other traitors. They did not. Instead, they looked him over and knew that he was no threat. His years of anger and violence were long past him. He had thought perhaps he would sit still and let time pass on without him, but as he sat and petrified, he saw that he would never feel better and he would never get his will to live back. It had been two thousand years since his beloved Didyme was still alive. Two thousand years of waiting for the pain to go away.

After watching the summit argue over the principles of what the new vampire government should look like, whether it should be split into multiple kingdoms across the continents, or distributed by the existing countries, to which some argued their origin countries have changed names too many times, or their peoples had been forced to relocate, and what about the trouble with Israel and Palestine?

And Vladimir and Stefan, the true culprits for this outrageous reallocation of power, yet weren't quite strong enough by themselves to keep the other vampires in check. They kept interjecting from the sidelines, "Let's reveal ourselves. We're done with this secret government business. Let's stop pretending that the humans control the world. It's time we walk into the light."

But no one else seemed to be on the same page as they were. The ones who remembered back to the time when humans were aware of vampires, and believed that they existed, remembered that it wasn't a very prosperous time. Not compared to now. Back then, one could walk into a village, and they would raise their crosses and torches and burn a vampire alive if they were not careful.

And now with the possibility of nuclear warfare, and Alice Cullen going on and on about her vision of the future that showed her the destruction of Italy, no one was eager to reveal vampire kind. "There's many ways it could happen," Alice kept saying. "All it takes is one of us stepping out of line and revealing the existence of vampires. The human governments are already suspicious. They've been gathering evidence of us for centuries, and with camera's and the same faces popping up over and over with new identities, and tax evasions and stock market ploys that we pull, well, it's a wonder that they don't already know about us."

Marcus agreed with her. It was too easy to reveal themselves to humans. The Volturi coven had been all too occupied with keeping everyone in line for two millennia. At times it felt like that was all that mattered, keeping the peace, the illusion of a safe world, hiding in the shadows.

But he was tired, and no one would show him mercy and behead him like they did with his brother-in-law Aro, and Chelsea, and Alec, and all the rest who refused to work with them. He thought for a brief moment that Caius was somewhere out there on the run. He thought about the members of the Volturi Coven who had fled with him. Less than ten, he knew, but as to their names or faces, he couldn't say. He had stopped paying attention to who joined their coven a long time ago, stopped looking at their faces.

It was only this morning when he made the decision. The Cullen's had left yesterday, asking for a brief recess to celebrate their daughter's birthdays. And the other covens, and individual vampires who denounced their Volturi alliance like Jane and Demetri took this time to rest and think about their priorities. Marcus was left alone in Italy. He had been quiet and obedient, not putting up a fuss to their new order of things. He was an outlier. He was basically a statue. No one had suspected him of turning on his own kind. Yet that morning, as he watched the sun rise over the ocean, he had decided that since the Romanian scum wanted this, and they were the ones who beat him out of the throne, then he would give it to them on a silver platter and let them deal with the aftermath. The only part of it he was interested in was how Alice insisted this would lead to Nuclear warfare, and he figured that being blown up by a nuclear bomb was quite an extravagant way to go.