The next day, Cecilia was outside with Emmett, hunting bears. Demetri was away as well, hunting a couple of cities away and would probably return later than necessary, to offer her some private time with her family.
"Remember when you let me sleigh down a slope which resulted in a broken arm?" Cecilia asked Emmett, looking at him with a smirk.
He looked back at her with obvious surprise. "You remember that?" he asked and she nodded in confirmation. "Damn, I had hoped you'd forgotten that. You know, since all mortal memories are so vague."
It was true. Whenever Cecilia tried to bring to her mind one of her mortal memories it was always as though she was looking at the outside world with the wrong glasses, making everything twisted and distorted. Most of the times it caused a headache, but Cecilia found the memories too precious to have them just be forgotten.
"I think it's about time we get even, don't you?" Cecilia asked, raising a single daring eyebrow.
Emmett had the decency to actually look slightly frigthened. "Living with the Volturi has made you spiteful."
"Only yesterday you called me emotionless zombie."
"Potato, potato."
"Friends as well as Shakespeare?"
"A man of all times."
"Right."
Turning away from Emmett, Cecilia focused her attention on their surroundings. They'd been walking in the forest for at least half an hour now, neither of them catching anything except for painful burns from the other person. She was determined to have the first animal.
Just as she heard the snapping of a twig followed by the fast heartbeat and the smell of deer, Emmett darted past her. Not allowing him such an easy win, she started her pursuit. Faster than the human eye could catch and more graceful than any being could manage, she ran from one place to another. Still, she was nowhere near as fast as Emmett, who had longer legs and more muscles and with a pout on her face she watched as he snapped the deer's neck.
Not giving him the satisfaction of lingering to watch, Cecilia used her senses to find another animal. Opting for a calmer approach, she observed a mountain lion near a cave from behind a tree. Right as she took a step forward, two young cubs strode out of the cave, their eyes still a milky white colour and their mewling soft and needy. She held her breath, knowing she didn't need the oxygen anyway, and watched the scene in front of her unfold.
Once the mother had herded the cubs back in the cub, grabbing both of them by their scruff and carrying them off with the tiredness only a mother could posses, Cecilia ran away in search of another meal. It didn't take her long to find a deer, completely unaware of the danger following it. She snapped the animal's neck quickly and drained it of blood, before dumping the left-over body in a nearby ravine.
"Have you ever killed a human?"
Cecilia jolted from shock, turning around to look at Emmett accusingly. She'd been so absorbed with the sight of the deer in the depth of the greenery, that she hadn't even heard him near her.
"I haven't," she replied, crossing her arms in front of her chest. "Have you?"
"Yeah, many years ago," Emmett said, shrugging. "Just after I turned. But good for you that you were never tempted in Volterra."
After more than ten years, Cecilia was able to withhold herself whenever the Volturi organised one of their sightseeing tours around the castle, but in the beginning she would leave the castle for a couple of hours, only returning once the mess was cleaned by the lower guards. Looking up at Emmett, she squinted at the sun. "It wasn't always easy."
"I suppose it never is," he replied.
Chuckling softly, Cecilia started to walk back to her family's house, Emmett next to her. For someone his size, he made surprisingly little sound as he walked, though she knew he'd had many more decades to master it. Besides, if you're favourite meal was bear, you didn't want it to hear you before you wanted it to.
Looking at the house, open and inviting, as though her family's skin didn't bling like a diamond as soon as a ray of sunlight hit it, Cecilia felt an overwhelming sense of home-sickness. It was easy to forget about her family when she was thousands of miles away from them, busy with her own work, but now that she was finally able to visit she was reminded of all the thing she missed. A smile from her mother, a pat on her shoulder from her father, a ridiculous joke from Emmett and a compliment from Alice.
Emmett cleared his throat, earning Cecilia's attention. He looked conflicted, but she waited patiently for whatever he was about to say. "You could leave the Volturi, you know, come back to us. I'm sure we can tolerate Demetri in some way. I can build a doghouse outside for him."
Snorting, she gave Emmett a hard shove. "You should be grateful to him," Cecilia said. "In the last ten years he saved my life more times than I can count."
Emmett seemed to consider those words for a quiet moment, before smirking again. "I suppose that would make sense," he said smugly. "I never thought you would make it on your own."
Rolling her eyes, Cecilia entered the house and walked straight into the living room. Secretely, she had hoped that Demetri had returned already, but whenever he made a promise, even if she thought it was a stupid and unnecessary one, he would keep it. She loved him for it.
"Still, you two can stay."
"I can't leave the Volturi," Cecilia said, shrugging. "Not unless my head is severed from my body and one of them is burnt."
"Now that's something truly macabre," Alice said, joining in on their conversation. She was seated on the sofa next to Jasper, a tablet showing a website with clothes in her lap.
"It has become somewhat of my new talent," Cecilia explained, taking a seat on the other sofa.
"Speaking about talents," Jasper said, closing the book he'd been reading with a loud thud. "You've never really shown your gift to us."
Cecilia frowned, curling her legs on the sofa. "For obvious reasons."
"Why?" Rosalie asked, appearing seemingly out of nowhere. She took her place next to Emmett on the loveseat, the latter instantly wrapping his arm around her shoulders.
"Generally speaking it's never a good idea to mess with someone's mind," she said, shrugging. She pushed away all the memories she'd stolen trying to reach the surface, as well as her thoughts about the people she'd managed to turn so crazy even the loony bin wouldn't take them in.
"Surely a small thing can't matter," Emmett said. "Since Demetri isn't here, which is sad, because now he could have really proved his value to this family, I'll volunteer."
Cecilia stared at the vampire sitting in front of her, but seeing that he wasn't going to change his mind and Rosalie wasn't really protesting out loud, she gave in. Quickly, she decided on something that wouldn't have too big of an impact, before she entered her state of concentration and tried to get a feeling for Emmett's mind. It was surprisingly easy, which could mean either of two things. One, she knew Emmett just too wel, or two, he just didn't have that many deep thoughts.
After a moment, she smiled. "Alright, ask him what colour the sky is."
"Colour of the sky?" Emmett said, sounding as if it was as clear as two plus two equaling four. "Obviously green."
Her family members stared at her in amazement and Cecilia was very glad that there was no blood flowing through her veins anymore, or else she would have turned a bright shade of red.
"That's not just taking a memory," her father said, quietly joining them in the living room. "That's taking a fact that somebody has known for their entire life and giving something back that's false."
"Two sides of the same coin, dad," Cecilia said, repeating the same words Aro had said to her many years ago. Shifting her glance back at Emmett, she gave him back the knowledge about the true colour of the sky. For a moment he seemed a little dazed, but he cleared quickly. Cecilia looked back at her father, not being able to deny the deep, tugging sadness in the pit of her stomach. "And also the reason the Volturi won't allow me to leave. Besides, I know you guys see the Volturi as the bad guys, but believe me when I say there's a lot worse out there."
"That can't be true," Rosalie said, shaking her head resolutely.
"Only a couple of days ago I was standing in a Michael pentagram made by a crazy Russian bitch who thought she had earned the right to rule simply because of the name given to her at her birth," Cecilia said. "There is worse."
"Hold up, you didn't mention a Michael pentagram when you got here," her father said. He was frowning, a serious expression of worry crossing over his face. "How even did you get out of there?"
"I'm still not sure," Cecilia said, her voice hesitant. She had played the scene over and over in her mind, but at the very moment the pentagram shattered and released her, her mind seemed to black out. "But I think it was because I was trying to manipulate the said woman from inside the pentagram. As soon as I reached her mind, it shattered."
"A better question yet," Alice said. "What is a Michael pentagram?"
Her father hesitated a moment, before started to explain. "A Michael pentagram is like a trap for any supernatural being. It takes hours alone to draw, but only true faith in heaven can make it functional. I've heard of them before, but I thought it was only a myth."
Once again all eyes turned to Cecilia, matching expressions of disbelief on all the faces of her family. She chuckled awkwardly. "Told you there was worse."