THERE'S A DISGUSTING FEELING THAT WASHES OVER WHEN YOU DON'T HAVE AN EXIT STRATEGY.
I was feeling it deep in my chest, knowing that I couldn't go outside this room and that so many people were frantically calling and texting one another from all over the Clocktower.
Alec promised Renata and I that he didn't remember what happened before he was given the idea that he had to search for his Gameboy. It took some convincing, but I knew even before Renata began to believe him that Alec was indeed telling the whole truth. So much of what he described the feelings as, the confusion and dizziness reminded me of what I was used to when I was captive.
Memories were erased from one of the top Guards, who knew who else was feeling this way.
The boy didn't remember the face of the man, I couldn't either, and that frustrated Renata to no end. The young woman had shut down, refusing to talk about it further, rather, she was now furiously mashing the buttons on her phone to send out text after text.
We'd been like that for over three hours, nobody giving any news other than everyone was alive in the chat and nobody but Chrissy had been taken. That was good news, I supposed. I myself hadn't been nabbed and had my memory wiped of whatever good things had happened in the time I'd been here. I couldn't handle forgetting all of this, too many good things filled my life now.
Yet, I mourned for the idea that Chrissy's mind could have been wiped already, sending her back to square one.
Her head could be filled with delusions from him that I had left her in some way, which I hadn't. Despite us clearly not being on speaking terms, losing what she had gained, autonomy, was a terrifying thought that I couldn't bare thinking over as I was trapped within Alec's room.
Alec seemed to be deep in thought as well. Every time I looked over, he was staring either at his phone or at the ground. He barely reached for the phone, though, and did not seem to answer anything that came up in the chat from anyone.
The poor boy did not deserve to have his memories taken from him either, and I decided then and there that if anyone questioned his story that I'd defend him.
His strength and now his vampire power was not something anyone could overcome.
"Do you have any idea when the alarm will shut off?" Renata asked Alec, who had been in the Volturi for a lot longer than the younger vampire. "It's getting annoying."
"One of the Kings has to manually shut it off," Alec responded, his voice dead and lifeless. I really hoped that this situation wouldn't crush the poor boy's spirit, which was usually shy but lively in other ways. "Caius and Marcus are the only ones home."
"Aro said that he's coming back." My ears perked up at the mention of the final King who hadn't been home in over a week.
"When did he say that?" Alec questioned. "He's supposed to be dealing with that Newborn Army in Forks, the one lead by Victoria. I doubt the Cullens will be able to handle that on their own."
Renata sighed and shrugged. "Sent it to the chat twenty minutes ago. Shouldn't take him more than a few hours to run if he puts some effort into getting here before sundown."
"He's not that fast."
"Yeah, but the alarm's off and we're trapped in here until we figure out what's happening from here." Renata scrolled through what I assumed were messages to this chat. She sighed again and nodded. "Nobody's heard anything from Caius and Marcus in the chat for nearly an hour. I swore I heard them fight before going silent."
"Out near the entrance, yeah, I heard that too," Alec said as he grabbed a book from his bookshelf. "We're going to be in here for a while."
Already three hours into the alarm and I hated everything about a complete lockdown. This reminded me of the times in High School where we had to run under our desks and hide. Even the practices for those situations made chills run down my spine. Something about being in tangible danger or preparing for such just didn't sit right for me.
I'd been an anxious child and unfortunately I'd grown into an anxious adult. I knew what went wrong, I knew the sheer threat that it made to my and other vampire's livelihoods. This man would kill anyone if it meant that he could get to me.
If he found me, even if I was taken back, I would probably have to start all over again.
I was so sick of starting over.
My home was now here in Volterra, it would be for the rest of my existence as a vampire. I'd accepted that before the party and I was just beginning to become a real person, a true vampire. In the Newborn state, sure, but I felt real. The people around me felt real. I wasn't just holding onto the idea that I'd once been a person and needed to become that again.
"What are the chances that the vampire that took Chrissy will be able to take you as well, if given the chance?" Renata asked the grim question, not looking up from her phone.
"I am not leaving the room," was my response as I felt my body beginning to tense up again with anxiety about the situation. I did not want to be left alone outside these walls, or be out alone at all given that he had come back and literally snatched Chrissy from her cell and warped Alec in such a manipulative and disturbing way.
Renata nodded, understanding what I was getting at but also not pressing me further for more information. Alec sighed as he flipped open his book, reading slower than he needed to. He had too much time on his hands to read at the full speed a vampire could go at.
There was nothing more to do, we had to just hurry up and wait.
---
THE PACK OF SHIFTERS HAD DECIDED THAT THEY WOULD DO SOME TRACKING ON THE DIFFICULT VAMPIRES THAT WERE IN THEIR TERRITORY FAR TOO OFTEN.
Jacob had been given, albeit hesitantly, a list of laws that vampires had to abide by. Some of these laws included the new precedent that any vampire that was told to go away once and did not follow this could be taken down by the markers of the territory.
Technically, the Shifters owned all of Washington and some of the northern regions of Oregon. The forests were theirs and plenty of times they'd found themselves in Canada, but despite Leah's desires to claim parts of Canada as their tribe's right, Jacob told her that if they wanted to play this right, taking too much would make them seem greedy.
Leah hated that he was probably right.
Jacob realized early on that taking down the Cullens would be meaningless, they had a hearing set up and he didn't want to upset Bella by murdering her boyfriend. He was actually trying to move on, believe it or not, and dealing with her wasn't in his plans for the month, or even year.
No, Jacob and Leah would be tracking Victoria and these Newborn Vampires from the shadows, perhaps taking some of them out one by one when a few inevitably wandered too far from their little set up in Seattle to hunt.
It had been a great plan, actually, and they'd taken out one or two while they hunted as a group. They even managed to save a few tourists, who were asleep in their tents when the vampires were killed.
Jacob decided that night that he hated the smell of burnt vampire.
It was during the dead of night that he heard the scream. They'd run all the way up to Canada, knowing that Victoria had been known to hide up there (Alice had shared that bit, Jacob still wasn't fond of her).
At first Leah had assumed that it was a mountain lion in heat, then once they got closer they knew it was human, the scent not that of a feline but very terrified and sapien. Her head had turned, eyes widening in her wolf form. Not the first time they'd heard a woman being murdered in the woods (unfortunately) but it was the first time that they'd smelled a vampire along with it.
Jacob rushed through the woods, feeling the wind against his fur as he pounced onto a group of rocks that laid next to a cold lake.
He couldn't smell venom. It wasn't too late.
They both acted on instinct, seeing the vampire in the shadows of the night. With a glance at each other they knew, the bond between them as pack members working as nature intended. Jacob was filled with a need to protect his territory as he flew down, landing right in front of the vampire that had taken hold of this human.
Vampires, he'd come to realize, mistook shifters for creatures much more terrifying than he could truly understand. Wolves hunted to extinction for a reason, by the Volturi, that killed both vampires and humans alike.
This one, this cold, dark creature, thought Jacob was one of those, terror filling his eyes as he dropped the human to save himself.
Jacob's bite wouldn't kill.
The vampire didn't fucking know that, though, and was so cowardly that he'd leave this human to potentially be devoured by a creature. His meal, he supposed, did not matter when in saving her, he'd become a meal himself.
Jacob Black's eyes were focused on the vampire rather than the human woman, who Leah was fixated on.
"Go after him, Leah!" Jacob tried to command but was met with deep resistance within the bond. He growled and looked down at the human woman in his shifter form.
He knew right away why that vampire didn't matter.
Every thought, feeling, and desire made sense. Things fell into place, he felt mended in ways he didn't realize he was broken. Jacob stared into the deep brown eyes of this human woman and wanted nothing more than to destroy anything that kept them apart. The Cullens didn't matter, the vampires did not matter.
Things around him were so centered on her, he growled and tried to back up, but ended up backing into Leah, who snapped and bore her teeth at him.
He didn't realize that she was feeling it too, the desire to protect this woman. They'd both gone out tonight and saved her, saved her from a stupid fucking vampire who could have made her into a snack. Jacob praised whatever spirits had allowed the two of them to make it into the woods.
They'd found an imprint in an almost victim of a vampire attack.
Or so they thought.
She was shivering beneath them. Leah was the first one to shift back, the only thing that had been able to stay clothed from her human form being her baggy pants and sports bra. That would have been an issue if she were human, but thankfully her body temperature supported cold environments like the Canadian forest.
"Are you okay?" Leah asked, gentler with their imprint than she'd been towards anyone in her life, ever. "Everything is going to be alright?"
"Who the fuck are you people?" The woman exclaimed. "Fucking werewolf things the size of trees! What the fuck- what the fuck-"
Jacob worried for her as she began to panic, realizing that just because he imprinted on her doesn't mean that she knew that, or had any idea what that meant. The bond was one-sided for now, he and Leah had to build that up over time.
At least he'd bonded to an adult.
You can make conversation and calm down an adult.
"We aren't going to hurt you!" Leah tried to press, "Jacob and I are shifters, not werewolves. We will not hurt you."
"Children of the Moon-" the woman started as she tried to run away from the two of them. "The book-"
"We aren't Children of the Moon," Leah desperately tried to explain as she speed-walked towards their hyperventilating imprint. "How do you even know about those? They've been dead for like a thousand years and- wait. Fuck. You already know about them, don't you?"
"I'm attacked by him and now there's werewolves."
She just wasn't getting it at all, which didn't surprise Jacob. He was in denial too when he heard that all of the nightmares he heard about as a kid were real and scarier than he remembered.
"We aren't- please stop running. we didn't kill that vampire and he could come back-"
That stopped her in her tracks. Then she began to rush back to them, tears streaming down her face. "Please don't let him take me again."
Leah put her hand on her shoulder before she wrapped her arms around her imprint, realizing that this was just her response to such a shock. Jacob wasn't used to Leah being this loving, this physical and affectionate towards anyone but Seth or her parents.
"You're going to be okay, alright? Nobody is going to come and take you again," Leah soothed, letting their imprint cry on their shoulder. "We're really far from home."
"He took me from Italy," their imprint explained through rough sobs, "The Volturi kept me because I- I said- I was going to expose them."
God, Jacob knew that wouldn't end well. The Volturi had made such a fuss about Bella not being made into a vampire, if this human woman was not being turned and had threatened them- he could only imagine that she'd been imprisoned there or even told she would die if she didn't do as they asked.
"What is your name?"
"Chrissy"