until dawn (marcus and bella )

chapter 2

MPOV

Yet another day where I must sit here listening to the pathetic and insignificant woes of vampires visiting Volterra. The only thing of even passable interest is that Caius should be returning soon and so Athenodora is excitedly pacing in the conservatory just beside the throne room. It is nice to see someone have a completely pure source of joy.

Aro is humming and haaing to the worthless vampire in front of us as though he is actually contemplating helping him. I close my eyes and try and drown the entire thing out. I do not particularly care one way or another that my brother enjoys playing head games with the common vampires that come to us, but I dislike having to listen to it when he says such similar things over and over again.

Finally the scum is disposed of (it really was his own fault that caused that other coven to move into the territory he inhabited), and Aro calls asking Sulpicia and Athenodora to come join us. The majority of the guard relax minutely and I can hear Heidi sweeping up the ashes of the former annoyance followed by the footfalls of the approaching wives. Sulpicia goes to sit on Aro's lap, her footfalls slightly further apart than Athenodora's due to her longer legs and there is a similar rustle of fabric as Athenodora sits upon Caius' throne.

It is Athenodora who finally breaks the near silence of Aro and Sulpicia kissing (of which they are wont to do whenever they are together for any uninterrupted period of time) by asking the question I knew would come up sooner or later, and therefore did not actually need to voice myself.

"Aro, did you have something to inform us about? Why is it that Caius is returning so soon? The meetings in the Americas were supposed to continue into next week were they not?" she asks. I can almost hear the questioning stare and slight censure that is surely upon her face. Athenodora may word things pleasantly and appear flighty or uninformed but she knows Caius' schedule better than he himself. She is also one of the few to be able to speak to Aro thusly without consequences. Aro, in standard fashion ignores any hidden meanings to her tone and answers her brightly "Quite right, Athenodora, however, I received a call from Afton just this morning and was informed that something had come up and interfered with our plans and so they were returning to Volterra forthwith. Caius had Afton convey that my presence would be necessary and that the matter may be time sensitive so of course I agreed and asked Afton to send along my condolences to Caius about the ruination of his plans. You my dear, are all too familiar with how unsettled poor Caius gets when things do not go his way."

Though outwardly I made no sign of it, I mentally perked up at that statement. Aro had a way of layering information within information behind the guise of whimsy and a carefree cheerful tone that made people underestimate him. After centuries of practice the entire family, and a good portion of the guard, became adept at deciphering his words to get to the heart of the matter. The point of fact for this is that Caius does not change his plans for anything short of unmitigated disaster. That he himself was coming back with the guard and not merely moving them about like chess pieces to forcefully put things back in place for his plans to go through, was significant. In addition to this, that Caius was so vague in his message, or that of Aro in his retelling of it, meant that the matter could have great impact on us as a family and needed to have any information pertaining to it kept as low key as was possible in a castle full of super-hearing vampires. It also likely means that this was either large enough that Caius couldn't deal with the matter on his own, or is something he had not experienced before in his long life and therefore needed to regroup so to speak and confer with us.

One of the many things about the Volturi most do not know is that the reason we have succeeded in holding power for so long is that there are no secrets between the three of us. Where one is weak the other two are strong and vise versa. It often appears to bystanders or even those within the lower guard that both Aro and Caius have their own agendas and plots completely unknown to the other two thirds of our power base. It also often appears as though Aro is the one really running the show as it were. The fact of the matter is that that is simply not true.