Beyond the Dawn (Life and Death, Book II)

27. CONTRIVANCES

Rather than rejoin the waiting guard, Sulpicia waved all of them forward, and they immediately began closing the gap between our groups. Edythe started to back up, grabbing my arm and Eleanor's. We hurried back to the rest of our side. Julie stayed farther ahead than we did, never taking her eyes off the Volturi. Her fur was standing straight out as she kept her teeth bared at them. We rejoined our family around the same time Sulpicia disappeared into a shroud of dark cloaks.

In those few seconds, they had effectively halved the distance that separated us. There was only a single leap any of us could easily make between us and them now. Athenodora didn't waste any time. She and Sulpicia were face to face now, and she began to burst out a spew of discontent.

"You are a fool to abide this infamy, sister! I do not understand how you can stand by and allow such a cover-up to an egregious crime!" Her hands were balled tightly into fists. I wondered why she didn't just touch Sulpicia to share her thoughts. Were we seeing a divide in their opinions already? Surely, we couldn't be that lucky.

"There is no deception," Sulpicia insisted in a voice that reminded me of someone trying to appease a child. "Do you not see how many witnesses have gathered in agreement this is no immortal child? They've all seen the evidence for themselves." She gestured to our small gathering of nineteen people.

All this time, my fear really had been misplaced, or at least misdirected. I'd pinned the source of our conflict on Sulpicia's intentions. But now that just seemed silly because Sulpicia was relatively benign and reasonable compared to the one she and Marcus shared their power with. Athenodora was the most hate-filled being I'd ever had the misfortune of meeting. It made me wonder who or what had wronged her so severely to make her so despicable. I almost felt sympathy for Marcus having to live through the millennia with this pair—the perpetually angry on one side and a megalomaniac on the other.

Athenodora seemed to calculate something in her head for a moment, and then her hard expression faded. She turned and glanced at their own witnesses, and I couldn't quite describe the look on her face... Apprehensive? I looked at their congregation, too, and I saw how much the emotions had changed. They were no longer the angry mob that had traveled so far with them. They were confused and uncertain. Whispers broke out amongst the crowd as they tried to decide how they really felt about all of this.

As I waited for the ancients to deliberate, I tested my shield again just to be safe. I let it stretch out into a wide dome that covered our side. I could feel each and every life force within it. Edythe's was the most familiar and comforting to it.

And then I realized with disappointment that if any one of the talented Volturi got underneath it with my family, it would be useless. How would I be able to keep up with whom I should keep out while trying to maintain all the important people inside it?

"The werewolves," I heard Athenodora mutter, interrupting my sudden anxiety.

Of course. So here would come the contrived excuses... How many would they throw at us before one stuck? How many times would we have to argue our way out before we couldn't any longer?

When everyone diverted their attention to the wolves, I realized in a panic that I still only had Julie covered. Or at least I thought I was only covering Julie. But somehow I could still sense all of their sparks right alongside hers, despite the fact she was the only one of them I directed it towards. I let the shield slide away from Julie, just to experiment with it, and all ten of them vanished. When I edged it over her again, they all reappeared instantaneously.

I thought about the way their minds were so interconnected. If they could share each others thoughts, I reasoned the pack had a psyche that operated as one whole. So if I protected one member, the rest were included just as well. I wished it could be that easy to hold onto everyone else who mattered to me. That would have solved my biggest problem.