Red Moon ~ Chapter 12 ~ Flight

Chapter 12: Flight

We followed Aro inside the plane and he showed us to two seats in the back. We sat as ordered as Aro went to the pilot cabin and a voice overhead told us to put our seatbelts on. The plane started moving and soon we were flying. We had lost our chance to escape. And now we were going away… Away from our families… Away from our friends… Away for our freedom…

The plane was silent, except the breaths of the vampire passengers, some of them probably the oldest vampires alive… I shivered at the thought of this and all the things they had done to survive over these hundreds… or even thousands of years…

“I think it’s time you show me what happened six years ago.” I whispered to Nessie, not sure if she heard me. She was looking at me, thinking and then reluctantly took my hand.

* * * * *

I was near a clearing, in a tent in Bella's arms. She was telling me I should go with Jacob when she told me to without hesitation. I touched the locket on my neck and I saw Nessie touching the same locket too. (The real Nessie, not in her memories.) Bella stepped out of the tent and looked out at the many vampires, including her family; Zafrina and Senna were outside as well. Jacob and the wolves I guessed were his and Sam’s pack were there too. Another man, with black hair was there too.

‘That’s Benjamin, from the Egyptian coven, Amun, his coven leader is Carlisle's friend,’ Nessie’s thoughts explained.

Near them were some other vampires with golden eyes like ours.

‘Those are from the Denali coven, Tanya, Kate, Eleazar and Carmen,’ she explained to me who everyone was and that they had come to witness that she was growing and was not an immortal child.

The Volturi reached us from the other side of the clearing in a perfect formation. Aro was there, in the center, dressed in black with two other men. Aro, as usual, smiling as if he was everybody’s friend and this was just a social gathering of vampires. Evil, evil man.

‘The one with the black hair is Marcus and the other is Caius. On their sides are the witch twins, or so the Romanians, Stefan and Vladimir, call them. The girl is Jane, she has the power to create the illusion of pain and the boy is Alec, he takes away all your senses, you can’t feel, hear, smell or see anything. That is what happened to us in the forest before we ended up in the car. The others are witnesses for the Volturi, Aro’s and Caius’ wives and their soldiers-bodyguards.’ Now I knew about that girl, Jane, and Alec and most of the guard.

Aro greeted Nessie’s family; Edward, Emmett and Bella with me in her arms, they approached him. I showed him my memories instead by giving him my hand and then we all backed away. Aro started questioning our witnesses and then said they would make a decision. Jane seemed to try to hit some of us and when she couldn’t she screamed like a spoiled little girl who didn’t get what she wanted. Alec took her hand and came forward. He stared at us like he did when we were in the forest and a clear haze started approaching us. I know that haze! So he did that? It couldn’t touch us though. I don’t know why but it didn’t reach us. They gave up. Caius tried to accuse the wolves but he failed and just before the big battle began, Alice and Jasper arrived from behind us, with a vampire and someone else; not human but definitely not vampire either.

‘That guy is Nahuel, one of the hybrids Zafrina told you about, remember? And the vampire is his aunt Huilen. He and his aunt explained that there are others and after more arguing and debating, the Volturi left after that,’ she said briefly not wanting to show me the whole memory.

* * * * *

She let my hand go as Aro silently and scarily (like a typical vampire from the human stories would have) approached us making the blood in my veins freeze ice cold.

“Do you need anything? A cup of blood maybe?” he asked in his sticky sweet voice. I felt my throat burning but I knew he would offer human blood so I shook my head no.

“Maybe you want company to talk? How about I sit with you for a while?” He smiled again as he took the seat in front of us. Nessie and I looked at each other knowing that wanting or not, I don’t think this was something we could actually refuse.

He spoke to me now. “We haven’t met before, have we? I know your name, dear, but I really have not a clue about anything from your life.” he asked curiously, showing pure interest about me, but this made me even more uneasy.

Renesmee had placed her hands on her seat and slid her right one ever so slightly and touched me with the tips of her fingers without Aro noticing. ‘Don’t give him your hand whatever you do. He will read every single thought you ever had.’ I wanted to thank her for the warning but this was not possible.

“Since you know my name there is no reason for introductions. What do you want to know about me?” I spat at him, the disgust evident in my voice but I did not care.

“How old are you? Do you have a family? Do you have a gift? Tell me whatever you want about yourself.” His burgundy, milky eyes sparkled and he waited for my hopefully ‘amazing’ answer.

“Okay. I am five years old; actually next February I will be six. I live with my mother and father,” I continued spewing out information with no emotion, just wanting to get it over with.

He interrupted me. “Your real parents? Or you are adopted?”

“My real ones,” I told him with a smile. A tear fought to fall at the thought of my parents and how scared they must be right now, not knowing where I was, but I would not give him the satisfaction.

“Hmmm… Interesting. And I suppose they are vampires, right?” he questioned.

“Yes,” I answered curtly.

“How about your diet? Human food? Or blood?” he asked as he cocked his head to the side as if he was trying to read my expression. He knew the answer by looking at my eyes, so it was obviously just a formality for me to answer the question.

“Both food and blood. Animal blood,” I said giving emphasis on the word animal.

“I see,” he said, seeming disappointed. “How about any special abilities? You were different in the forest, little one.” I was sure he would bring the conversation there. Nessie had explained to me that he was a collector of sorts. Of stories, of talents, of power. I tried to be careful with my answer.

“Yes. I am still working on that. That is probably my gift, but since it is new to me, we are not for sure yet.” This is not completely a lie.It was just Carlisle's theory, no matter if it was true or not.

“To be honest I wouldn’t have noticed you weren’t just an animal if you didn’t have a shirt on.” He chuckled at the memory.

 Jacob was right. My shirt really gave me away. I could have ran away and brought help if I had taken that stupid shirt off. I feel like such an idiot right now.

I nodded to him.

“Well, my dears, I hope you enjoy our flight. If you need anything, just ask.” And he finally left disappointed that he didn’t learn anything really interesting about me and my ‘mysterious life’.

“We must be careful with what we say around him,” Nessie told me.

“Yeah, I noticed. What is he up to?” I whispered to my dear friend.

“Sorry to say, but what I worry more about right now is Jake. What if he lied? What if he isn’t alright?” she started crying again.

“No, no… Don’t think like that… He didn’t look like he was lying… I guess he is somewhere in the plane. I think that Jake is Aro’s pawn to keep you under control, so it is unlikely that he will do anything to hurt Jacob for now.” I patted her hand in comfort believing every word I said to her.

Instantly, she raised her head and started looking around, trying to find the familiar face of his among the stone-cold faces of the vampires around us. Nothing. But there was someone covered, under a cloak, like he or she was sleeping. Could that person be him? The cloak was going up and down, like the person under it was breathing and I could hear a strong heartbeat besides mine and Nessie's.

We observed the unknown person (hopefully Jacob) for a long time, stress was building inside me, each minute passing I was feeling more scared and alone even with Nessie next to me and more than fifteen vampire passengers on the plane. The existence of these vampires wasn’t comforting, rather the opposite I could say, but Nessie being here wasn’t really important either. She was lost in her own drama and pain. I mean, you could smell her fear about whatever had happened to Jacob from miles away. And this wasn’t helping me much. I didn’t try to start a conversation with her, neither of us was in the mood of talking, let alone that a bunch of vampires would listen to our every word. I felt too anxious and scared to sleep at first, but after a few hours of the sounds of the droning airplane engines, I felt tiredness taking over me and I sunk in a deep sleep.

It was an uneasy sleep though and I saw what I definitely wouldn’t call peaceful dreams. Most of the time, I saw little Jane, looking at me, smiling cruelly and then I was falling on the floor, screaming from the pain that she was inducing.  

Someone lightly pressed his hand against my shoulder and I jumped up with my eyes wide opened and sweat running down my face. My heart was beating so fast, I thought it would jump out of my chest. I saw a cloaked vampire over me who told me to get out of the plane. Nessie was not here anymore, she must have been taken out already. I pulled my cloak hood up and with long strides I reached the door. I was right; Ness was already out, following the twins. I ran to catch up with them. No one spoke but I had the feeling that Jane was smiling the evil, cruel, definitely not angelic smile of hers again.

In the parking lot, two limos were waiting, black with dark windows so that you couldn’t see who was inside like the one that brought us to the airport. The huge vampire, who had grabbed Renesmee, whose name was Felix according to Renesmee, was next to the door, holding it open for us to get in.

Ness and I took two seats next to each other and the twins sat across from us. Felix took his seat right next to me and I slid over as far as I could from him, squeezing Nessie against the window.

The ride was silent as we were reaching Volterra. The whole city was on a hill and surrounded by huge stone walls and behind the walls you could see towers and some of the house roofs inside the town. We didn’t go inside the city, as I expected, but we went around it. The limo stopped near the wall but there were no signs of an entrance to the town near this part of the walls.

Felix stepped out in the cloudy afternoon and reached the wall. He kneeled and took some stones from the wall, near the ground and revealed a passage which led under the city. Then he came back and motioned us to go through the passage. We were first and Jane and Alec were right behind us, which caused me to slightly panic. They are dangerous but walking right behind us felt really awful. I didn’t know if they would try to do something or not.

We went down the stairs and I headed to a tunnel where a soft, yellowish-white light was coming from. The tunnel was round, like a really wide and long pipe, made of grey stone. Felix stepped in front of us to lead the way and we followed him through the tunnels which were lighted only by candles and torches. It was really creepy, cold and damp, especially with three powerful vampires from the Volturi guard in front and behind us. He stopped in front of a wooden door with a silver handle and intricate flowers were carved within the door itself.

“Here is your room. Someone will come and check on you in about an hour,” he said and left with the scary, brown-haired twins following behind him.

Nessie opened the door. The walls were made of white and grey stone and at a higher part of the walls, near the ceiling; I could see wide windows that had a view to a beautiful garden. The whole floor was covered with a light lilac carpet. The chamber reminded me much of my bedroom in grandma’s home in Texas, just much bigger and more princess-like.

 On the left side of the room were two huge, king sized beds with light purple bedding and lilac pillows. A canopy made of some white-silver metal covering each of the two beds, and a white, thick fabric with deep lilac swirling flowers adorning it. The right side of the room looked more like a small living room. There was a fireplace in the corner, the chimney was covered with the same light grey and white stones the room walls were and on the bottom was a carved piece of white marble.

There was a lilac sofa and two similar armchairs near the fireplace and in front of them a low wooden, white table with a glass vase (which looked really expensive) with fresh lavenders and white roses. On the fireplace mantle were little wooden, obviously handmade artifacts representing little animals.

On the right wall was a wooden door, with similar shapes and handle of the front room door but made from the same silver-white metal the canopies over the bed were made of. It led to a bathroom. There was a huge, crescent-moon-like bathtub made of white marble with a white curtain half hiding it. On the opposite side were two big sinks also made of marble. There were shelves and some space by the sinks and the bathtub overfilled with bottles containing shampoos, aromatic oils and other such stuff. I could spend weeks trying them all out.

I went back in the bedroom and headed to one of the beds where there was a long, lilac dress made of silk, exactly in my size. On the other bed was baby blue one obviously for Ness. We took off the cloaks and our old clothes and tried them on. They were both so beautiful. We were looking at ourselves in the mirror in the bathroom caught up in the girlie moment of pretty clothes and new surroundings that we almost had forgotten what had happened and that we may still be in great danger until we heard a knock on the door.  We were both pulled from our moment of silent fantasy and looked at each other in horror as we locked our arms together and with a united front, approached the door and the unknown visitor.

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