race

We made our flight with barely seconds to spare. Then the torture began.

I watched the flight attendants stroll casually up and down the aisle, patting bags to make sure they fit in the overhead compartments, and pilots lean out of the cockpit to chat leisurely with them as they passed, and I wondered they couldn't feel the accusation boring holes in their backs.

"It's faster than running," Archie reminded me in a low mutter. I nodded once, though my hands remained clenched around the knees of my jeans.

Even when the plane finally taxied from the gate onto the runway, and we lifted off into the sky, my anxious impatience didn't abate.

Archie was on the phone before we'd even stopped climbing, and the steward eyed us with disapproval, but I glared at him, daring him to say something, and he passed on without comment. I knew Archie was talking to Jessamine—giving her an update on the situation.

"Yeah," he said, his voice so low I barely heard. "I don't know...the thing is, she just keeps changing her mind. A killing spree through the city, lifting a car over her head in the main square...anything that would violate the laws. She knows Sulpicia would have to respond."

There was a pause, then Archie said in a lower voice still, urgent, "No, love, you can't do that...What? No, you've got to bring them back. You have to know what'll happen if she sees a single one of us. Our only shot is if she sees Beau first. I'm going to do what I can, but our chances aren't too good, so make sure Carine's prepared for the worst."

Another pause, and Archie smiled grimly. "Yeah, I know that...Don't worry, I promise. I'll find a way out, no matter what. Love you."

Archie closed the phone and leaned back in his seat, looking suddenly tired. "Really sucks having to lie to her."

"What's going on?" I said in a low whisper.

Archie sighed. "Royal and Eleanor—and Jess, too—were all set to go after her, see if they could convince her the truth. But that won't work. The moment she sees them coming, which she will, she'll just act that much faster."

"But she can read minds," I objected in a low voice. "She should know the moment she sees them what the truth is."

Archie shook his head. "You can lie with your thoughts. Edythe knows the moment we see her we'd be chanting 'He's alive! He's alive!' whether you were or not."

Archie hesitated, and he looked at me from the corner of his eye. I thought I saw a touch of guilt there.

"What?" I said.

He looked away, staring at the seat in front of us. "I gotta be honest with you," he said in a low voice. "I also just didn't want them—especially not Jess—in the city. If they get there too late, and Edy's already broken the laws—and the Volturi try to take her—they'll fight them. That will make them traitors, and they'll all be executed. I couldn't...I just can't see Jess die that way. You know?"

I stared straight ahead, too. I nodded slowly. I understood. Archie couldn't put Jessamine in that kind of danger, not even to save Edythe. I couldn't blame him for that. Edythe was putting herself in harm's way, and Archie could risk his own life, maybe even mine, but he couldn't risk the most important person to him. I didn't know whether that was right or wrong, but I understood, and I didn't think badly of him for it.

But how could Edythe do this? Why was she running off to kill herself in the first place? It was completely stupid. Maybe she had said something along those lines back what felt like a lifetime ago, when we'd been watching Romeo and Juliet. But later, she'd said it herself—it had just been a silly, overly romantic notion. Her feelings for me had never been actual love, she'd just been doting on a favored pet. Without realizing it, she had been rolling a ball of string in front of me, enjoying watching me play, but it wasn't real. None of it had been.

Carine's words from what seemed like an age ago drifted back to me.

"I think you know the kind of person my daughter is better than that, Beau. Any action she takes, she takes on the full weight of its responsibility, without excuse..."

I nodded slowly. That was it. When she thought the mistake she had made had led to my death—I could only imagine the crippling guilt that must have overtaken her. She'd always had a tendency to take too much blame for things on herself.

My eyes stung, and I blinked rapidly. All this time, I'd never once blamed Edythe for what had happened. Jeremy had said that she had been toying with me, but I didn't believe that. I believed that she had believed that she really could love an ordinary human, that she loved me—it had been kind of her to think so. And I was glad that she had thought so, for a while at least, because I wouldn't miss what I had had the privilege to experience in that brief time for anything, not even to save myself the torture of the last few months. She had made an honest mistake and I didn't blame her for it. But I had never imagined that the good I'd seen in her ran this deep—that she was capable of such deep remorse.

I shook my head. "You said the others would fight if the Volturi tried to do anything to Edythe, and would all be executed," I said. "What about you though? Are you in danger?" I couldn't help but remember his earnest promise to get out, and his comment about lying.

Archie smiled grimly. "We're heading into dangerous territory here. Sulpicia makes an effort to be fair and just where she can. But if we're trying to protect Edy and help her even if she's willing to break the laws—well, from all Carine has told us, Sulpicia believes in loyalty to the law and justice over coven bonds. So if we help Edy, that makes us her accomplices, and just as much of a threat."

Again, I nodded slowly. "Who are these Volturi exactly?" I asked. "I mean, I know they're like royalty, and they rule over you and make sure you're following the rules—but where did they come from? What makes them more dangerous than you or Royal and the others?"

Archie sighed and shook his head. "It's a long story. See, first you have to understand, our coven's pretty unusual. You don't see too many big covens like ours, or like Tanvir's in the north. That's because most of our kind aren't exactly civilized. They just sort of drift from one place to the next—I guess you could call them vagabonds—and they go it alone, or at most, in pairs. Joss's coven was unusually large, and Lauren ditched them without a second thought. But there's an exception—and that's the Volturi.

"The core three members are ancient, all over three thousand years old. There were originally six—three pairs of bonded mates, Sulpicia and Aro, Athenodora and her mate Caius, and Marcus and his mate. Here's the history as we've all been told—Thousands of years ago, in the Mycenaean age, everything was being torn apart by turf wars and widespread slaughter of human prey. Vampires didn't bother to hide their existence, and they fed wherever, whenever. The Romanians were the ones on top—they kept all the others from cutting in on their territory through brute force, and they got all the best feeding grounds. Aro was the original founder of the Volturi—he convinced Marcus and Caius to join forces with him, in the hopes they might create a world more peaceful, stable, and they would rule over it. They each took mates for themselves, as they planned how best to overthrow the Romanians, and establish a new rule.

"No one knows all the details, but Aro—maybe getting too ambitious, trying to cut down the number of those he'd like to share power with—murdered Marcus's mate, Aro's own sister. Only Sulpicia saw what he did. He never believed for a moment she would betray him—but Sulpicia turned him over to Marcus, and Caius, too, who turned out to be in on it. Now there are three members of the core family—Sulpicia, Marcus, and Athenodora."

"Only three?" I said in a low voice.

"Only three part of the main family," Archie corrected. "That doesn't include their guard. The guard is huge. Last we heard, always a core of at least eight or nine, almost all with seriously powerful gifts, then more members of a transitory secondary guard, many of who have gifts of their own. And the Volturi are always looking for more potential recruits. They're impossible to fight."

"And they live in Volterra," I said.

Archie nodded. "No hunting in Volterra, obviously. They bring their food in from outside, far away. Mostly they scrape up the dregs of society, people who won't be missed—druggies, pimps, people who don't follow human laws. Sometimes they play vigilantes and catch criminals still at large, too. That's what Sulpicia wants—to clean up anything that threatens world order."

"They don't sound all bad," I said slowly.

Archie smiled grimly. "Maybe they aren't bad—for vampires. But human and vampire standards are two different things. They may say they live by a code, but they all drink human blood, and not just criminals. Their prey could be the homeless guy off the street, or a teenage runaway—like I said, people who won't be noticed. And that's not even considering that sometimes they make mistakes—lose control, like most of our kind."

Archie continued, "And when it comes to humans, innocent or not, keeping the secret comes before all else. I hate to say it, but your dog friend could be right—there's a huge chance you'll end up dead, either by the hand of a guard who loses control, or Sulpicia may order your execution right along with Edy's and mine, just for being a human in the know."

I didn't know how to answer, so I simply stared at the back of the seat in front of me. I kept the window shade down, in case any sunlight outside might inadvertently touch Archie's inhuman skin. I still didn't say anything as Archie settled back into his seat, closing his eyes, and I knew he was concentrating on his visions, waiting to find out what would happen, if Sulpicia would grant Edythe what she asked.

I knew I shouldn't interrupt him, but I suddenly blurted before I could help myself, "Hey. What about the girl?"

Archie's eyes opened, and he looked back at me.

"The girl," I muttered, staring at the folded up food tray on the back of the seat in front of me. "In Carine's painting, there were the three Volturi, and there was a girl there, too. Mele the thief, or something."

"Oh, her," Archie said, leaning his head back against the seat. "She's dead."

I gazed back at him for a moment. I opened my mouth to ask a question, but Archie had already closed his eyes again, back to watching the future. I decided it was better not to bother him, and I settled back into my seat.

It felt like an eternity before our plane finally began to descend to New York City. I had to shake Archie to let him know we were landing, and we had to run flat out across the airport to make our next flight. But I was relieved we wouldn't have to wait around, stuck at an airport, and once the plane was in the air, Archie settled back into his trance.

There were hours to kill before we would get there, so I spent the time thinking. I needed a plan for what to tell Charlie in case we actually made it back. I dwelt on that for quite a while, but before I could come up with anything, my thoughts wandered back to Jules.

The expressions I'd seen pass across her face in those last tense few minutes kept playing through my mind—supreme loathing for Archie and any other vampire, anger, and at the very last, terror and despair as she pleaded for me not to go.

Say we did somehow manage to pull off the impossible, save Edythe and make it back alive. Would Jules feel that I had at last gone a step too far? That I'd chosen my vampire family over her, and it was the last betrayal she could take? I might return to Forks successful, but completely and utterly alone. I wondered just how long I would last without Jules there to keep my head above water.

At some point, I finally drifted off to sleep, and the next thing I knew, Archie was shaking my arm. I startled awake in my seat, spinning to face him, but I saw to my relief in the dim light of a reading lamp a row behind us that he was smiling.

"What?" I whispered. "What happened?"

He kept his voice barely audible as he answered, "Edythe just spoke to the Volturi. Sulpicia has decided to deny her request. She's going to try to reason with her. She hates to see life wasted—especially for someone like Edythe, who has such a powerful gift, and even more, a strong sense of justice. She's going to offer her a place among the guard, as an alternative to dying."

"And Edythe?" I replied in a quiet whisper. "How will she respond?"

Archie shook his head. "I can't see that just yet, but she won't be swayed by anything that Sulpicia says, that's pretty certain. But this at least will give us more time. Sulpicia is reluctant to do anything, and that might force Edythe to get a little more creative."

I didn't answer. I still wasn't ready to start getting my hopes up. Instead I said quietly, "Just how are you seeing all this so clearly? Then other times you see more than one possibility, and you can't tell which one is the one that will actually happen yet—and some things don't happen."

Archie sighed a little. "It's complicated." His voice was so low I could barely hear it. "It's very close to actually happening. Sulpicia and Edy have already made their decisions, so things are pretty much set, up until the point Edy's plans get more defined. It also helps I'm really concentrating—when things just come to me from faraway, when I'm not expecting it, usually those are just glimpses, possible maybes. Not to mention visions of our kind come more easily than visions of yours, and since Edythe is my sister and I'm used to seeing her future, hers is almost always more clear."

I picked at the armrest of my seat as something I had been thinking about for a while came back to me. "You see me sometimes," I said slowly. "My future. Certain possibilities."

My voice was weighted with meaning, and Archie, perhaps already seeing what I was about to ask, seemed to know what I was getting at.

"Yeah," he said in a low voice. "Like I told you before, I did see that—you, becoming one of us. At the time."

"At the time," I repeated slowly, with a tinge of resigned defeat.

Archie stared back at me for a long moment, expression wary. He seemed to consider something. Then at last he sighed deeply and ran a hand over the stubble of his hair.

"You know, Beau-man—considering the completely stupid situation we're in right now, I've just about made up my mind that if we actually survive this, I'll just do it. I'll change you."

I stared at him, not sure if I'd heard that right.

"What's with the look?" Archie said, frowning. "Because I sort of got the impression all this time that's what you were aiming for."

"Yeah," I managed to choke out in a hoarse voice. "Yeah—let's do it. Do it now. I'd be so much faster, and maybe we'd make it in time."

Archie rolled his eyes. "Idiot. We're getting into Volterra tomorrow, and in case you've forgotten, you'd be screaming in pain for days."

"Oh...right." I had forgotten. For a moment, my thoughts flashed back to my hazy memories when we were on the run from Joss, when Archie had told me about the transformation. Vampire venom incapacitated prey with indescribable agony, but if left to spread, over the course of a few days it would go through the entire body, until the heart finally stopped, and the conversion was complete.

I felt my shoulders sink, and couldn't help but add in a mutter, "If you don't do it now, you'll change your mind."

Archie eyed me again, frowning slightly. "I wouldn't have even said it if I wasn't pretty well decided. Edythe will probably want to kill me, but considering if we save her life I'll probably want to kill her, I figure we're even. Let her try to stop us."

I didn't want to get my hopes up, but I felt my spirits lift at the thought. Maybe Edythe wouldn't find me at all interesting as a vampire, but at least we would be equals at last, a part of the same world. Even if she wasn't interested, I would be able to follow her, have the power to at least try to win her over. Maybe I could even be a part of the Cullen family.

Archie was eying my contented smile, still frowning. "You know I'm not totally sure that I could, right? There's a pretty fair chance I'll end up killing you instead. Like I said before, we're like sharks, and the taste of blood sends us into a frenzy."

I shrugged. "I figure it's worth the risk."

Archie's eyes narrowed. He tapped his fingers on the armrest with mingled irritation and impatience. "You know, sometimes you're way too laid back about your life. If you weren't so quick to go around jumping off cliffs, we might not be in this mess."

It was a fair point, and I decided not to argue.

Archie sighed. "You should try to get some sleep. I'll wake you up when something else happens."

"I'll try," I said doubtfully.

The corner of Archie's mouth flickered in a smile, then he closed his eyes and let himself fall back into his trance.

I leaned my head back against my seat, and closed my eyes.

The next thing I knew, Archie was reaching over to snap the window shade closed against the brightening in the eastern sky. I sat up straight, blinking the sleep from my eyes.

"What?" I mumbled. "What's going on?"

"They did it," Archie said quietly. "Sulpicia told her no."

I was completely awake now, and I felt a flood of relief, followed by a new surge of panic as I looked at Archie's bleak expression.

"What has she decided to do?" I asked, as evenly as I could.

Archie shook his head. "It was pretty chaotic for a while. I was only getting flickers, she was switching plans so fast." He hesitated. "This last hour was really bad...she'd almost settled on going hunting."

My brow furrowed. "Hunting?"

He looked at me, his face grim. "She was going to hunt, right in the middle of the city. Tourists—at least until the Volturi got her."

"Oh," I said. I felt sweat break out on my palms, and I had to work to shut out the images that suddenly flooded my mind. "But she changed her mind?"

Archie nodded. "At the last minute."

I felt myself relax slightly. It made sense. Edythe wouldn't want to disappoint Carine—not at the end.

I said, "What's her plan now? Will we make it?" I felt a shift in the cabin pressure, as the plane angled downward.

Archie was staring straight ahead, his face solemn. "We might. If she sticks to her last plan—she's going to keep it simple. Just walk out into the sunlight."

I nodded slowly. Sunlight. I closed my eyes, recalling the way the light broke out in prisms across her skin, shimmering like diamonds. That would definitely be enough to incite the Volturi to act.

I opened my eyes, seeing the pale gray light beginning to show through the open windows along the cabin. "So we'll be too late," I whispered. My voice was calm, but I could feel myself shaking.

Archie shook his head. "Right now, she's leaning toward the melodramatic. She's going to go to the main plaza, and wait until it's filled with tourists and the sun is exactly overhead. She'll come out right under the clock tower."

"So, until noon," I said. "If she doesn't change her mind."

"If she doesn't change her mind," Archie agreed quietly.

We were quiet then as it came over the intercom that we would be landing soon, and the seat belt lights flashed.

I stared straight ahead, my hands clenched around the material of the of my jeans. Make it, or not. One or the other. It came down to this—Edythe had to be saved. I couldn't contemplate the alternative and stay sane.

"How far is it from Florence to Volterra?" I muttered.

Archie glanced at me, and though his features were still drawn, the corner of his mouth twitched in an almost-smile. "That depends on how fast you drive."

We roared like a couple of maniacs down the road, first weaving in and out of Florence city traffic, then screaming through the broad Tuscan landscape. If this had been the Indy 500, I was sure the other cars would have been out of sight by now.

"Nice ride," Archie exulted. "Fast."

We were in a yellow Porsche, the windows tinted and an interior of black leather. Needless to say, Archie had not picked the car up from among the airport rentals, and I kept expecting to see a roadblock and a mess of police cars with flashing lights up ahead.

"Relax," said Archie, apparently already seeing the comment I was about to make. "If the police set up a roadblock, it'll be behind us. Far behind us."

We drove a while in silence before I said, "Have you seen anything else?"

Archie frowned, staring straight out the window. "There's some kind of festival going on. It's not a normal day. The street's full of people and red flags. What's today?"

I paused, and I had to think about it. "I think the nineteenth. Maybe."

Archie chuckled, though there was no humor in it. "Well, that's ironic. It's Saint Marcus Day."

I looked back at him. "What's that?"

Archie shook his head. "The city holds a celebration every year. As the legend goes a Christian missionary, Father Marcus, drove all the vampires from Volterra fifteen hundred years ago, but was martyred in Romania, still fighting the vampire scourge. Course, that Marcus wasn't actually a saint, but one of the Volturi. He's the one who started a lot of those old superstitions about crosses and garlic—just to give the people some peace of mind, make them feel like they had a way to defend themselves. People didn't have any reason not to believe they worked, as of course vampires don't trouble Volterra. These days Saint Marcus Day is more a celebration of the city's police force, since Volterra is such an amazingly safe city."

I stared out the window. It was beginning to sink in—of all the days Edythe could have picked, this had to be the worst. The Volturi would not be happy to have a vampire flouting what she was in the middle of such a celebration. They would act immediately—maybe even before then.

My hands were clenched into fists, and I could feel myself shaking.

I lifted my eyes to the sky. The sun was higher now—too high. I felt sweat on my hands again, even in the air-conditioned car.

"Is she still planning to wait for noon?" I said quietly, desperately.

"Yeah, she's going to wait it out. And the Volturi are waiting to see what she'll decide."

I stared straight out the window, watching as the road flew at us with unbelievable speed, trying not to think about how fast we were going. "So what's our plan?" I asked. "What do I need to do?"

Archie shook his head. "Nothing. She just has to see you before she steps into the light. And she has to see you before she sees me. I'm going to drop you off as close as we can get, then you go where I point you."

I nodded, not speaking.

He paused. "One thing, man," he added. "Promise me."

I saw something appear in our line of sight—a castle city right on top of the closest hill. Protected by ancient sienna walls and tall towers, it was a beautiful city, and it was easy to see why tourists would flock to it. However, my throat had gone dry, and I couldn't seem to swallow. Volterra—the city of vampires.

"Yeah?" I said, distracted.

Archie looked at me. "Whatever you do, try not to trip."