Forget Me Not | ✓

16 | To Drown Her Sorrows

"Fuck!" Adele swore and to the glass.

"What is it?" Carlisle inquired.

"The bitch is going through with it." she growled. She and Jasper were on the same page.

"What is it?" Edward asked. Adele thought back on the night of the chase when Victoria estimated their numbers and realized their one weakness rested with the Quileute wolves. She planned to exploit them with an army of her own. "I didn't think of that...but yes....it makes sense."

Jasper rubbed his face and stared at the television, deep in thought, "It takes more than one of our kind to cause the damage they're reporting. Quite a few more. They're undisciplined, conspicuous..." Bella was more concerned with the fact that this was the most she'd ever heard Jasper say rather than with the vampire attacks.

Edward gaped, "Newborns."

Bella furrowed her eyebrows as the first image to pop into her head was a baby with crimson eyes. She shivered and thought better of it. "Like...new vampires?"

Edward nodded, "In their first three months after the change."

"That's when we're at our most vicious, uncontrollable, insane with thirst..." said Jasper as he gave her a piercing stare through his golden eyes. Adele was right when she said Bella still had much to learn about vampirism.

Emmett grinned at her, "Something to look forward to."

"No one has trained these newborns – and these attacks, they are not random." Adele added in, looking away from the glass long enough to avert her attention to the real problem at hand. She couldn't daydream about a silver wolf anymore – not with yet another life-or-death threat looming in the air.

Emmett stood enthusiastically, "Oh, now we definitely gotta go."

Adele and Jasper stared at each other. His lips formed a thin line as he asked Carlisle, "What do you think?"

"I think there haven't been any newborn armies in over a century – that I know of." he muttered and sped over to the bookshelf nearest the archway to check.

"There is now. And they've been created to fight someone." Jasper chimed in a history-doesn't-matter-now tone. He cracked his knuckles and brooded. This brought up memories of a past he had hoped to forget. If this army was indeed coming for them, he'd have to dig everything up – after all, he had the most expertise with newborns. He was turned by a woman, Maria, and she took advantage of his empathic abilities by using him to train an army of newborn vampires for her during the Civil War. She would never let her vampires live past a year after their transformation because they'd grow weaker, so he must've killed hundreds of them before taking his life over for himself. Not too long after, someone in the 1950s, he met Alice in a diner in Philidelphia and she saved him from wallowing in self-hatred. He never had to think about fighting and killing newborns again – not until now.

"We're the only clan even close to Seattle." said Edward.

"Exactly." Adele muttered.

Carlisle glanced at her, "Regardless, if we don't put a stop to it, the Volturi will. I'm surprised they let it go on this long."

"Maybe they're purposely ignoring it." Edward trended very carefully with his next words. Alice, Adele, and himself were the only ones who knew about his plot, "When we're were in Italy, I read Aro's mind. He didn't want me to see, but it was there." Adele came to a halt and tensed. "He wants Alice and me and Adele to join him. Our gifts would shore up his power." he kicked his lips, "But he knows we'd never choose him as along as our family is alive..."