The Girl Who Was Taken (Renesme Cullens Twin Sister)

Seventy-Eight

Eventually we did straighten everything out in China. I memorized the right words, we hypnotized the right people, and Jane had some good discussions with the major Coven's over there. Then we moved on to France and then England, and finally infiltrated North Korea. And we did most of the travelling with a low profile, avoiding airports and any major hub where we'd be scanned or tracked. To say the least, it was slow going, and months passed by faster than I realized. Paul's phone calls grew sparser, until one day he left me a voice message.

"Hey... I called my Dad today." And he sighed. "I don't know why you haven't told me where you are. I can only assume..." he didn't finish that thought though. The line dragged on, and then he started over. "I knew you weren't there a while ago, found out from Emily actually. I don't know if you've heard about Sam... um... He was in a car accident..." And he was quiet again for a while longer. "My year's almost up," he said. "So I'm going to be home soon, and... I don't even know if you'll be there..." he gulped. "I think I still want you to be there."

I listened to the message over and over once I got it. I was horrified when I found it on my phone as a missed call, that I hadn't had my phone on me. But I suppose I had started to leave it behind in hotel rooms when we went out, trying not to think of him everyday all the time.

It ended with an, "Okay then. Well. I'll try calling you again soon."

That was a month ago and he still hadn't called. Now we were in Egypt, driving up to Amun's headquarters to witness the signing of some grand declaration, something the Volturi would never do since they forbid writing any of their vampire rules down. But Amun was trying a different form of governing. More democracy and representation among vampires, less Monarchy and dictatorships. And people did seem keener on it. There were bumps here and there, but then they were addressed, reexamined, and fixed.

Being here in person, in my real body, made the land look different. There was a lot of yellows and beige, most of the buildings were the same color. But it wasn't too different from other cities. There were swaths of grass here and there, with trees and green space. It sprawled far and wide, and the traffic was terrible. But Fernando pulled up to a building and let us get out and went to park somewhere else. We stood on the sidewalk, cars honked around us, people walked past. It seemed more than normal. Oddly unaware of the vampire wars that had been going on all around the world. Not that other people hadn't been going about their daily lives around the rest of the world, but there was something off here... No one looked twice at us. No one really even looked weirdly at the other people around them either. That was the most common thing that had happened since the war began, was how people would look at each other without trust.

"Amber," Jane called back to me. She hadn't stood there looking around like I had, instead she went straight for the entrance of the building, and now she was holding the giant door open for me. "Come on, the wind has a pressure lock on this, and I can't keep it open forever."

I nodded and jogged up to her, then kept step as she walked through the building like she owned the place. We went down a long hall with elevators, then farther down to a pair of doors that were held open, and through it we found a large conference room. There were already a hundred vampires in it. And upon entering, I had vague flash backs to the ball. Many of the faces that had made appearances and left hastily were here. Anyone who was anyone was in here, mingling with each other, chatting. A good number of them were vampires that Jane and I had recently visited to torture and brainwash. And I knew this might get a little awkward if we didn't watch our backs.

But everyone seemed relaxed. The dress wasn't fancy, just professional. There weren't any champaign fountains or blood bodies for people to feast on. It looked like any other conference might look.

I followed Jane, and she stayed to the side, toward the back. "I hate these things," she said. "I always feel as if they're going to end in a mass murder, and I was correct last time."

We stood shoulder to shoulder looking around. I didn't blame her for feeling odd and out of it. No one here particularly liked her, she was one of the witch twins. She probably inflicted her pain powers on at least half of these people at one point, which meant most of these people wouldn't be upset if she were executed. "Is that why you volunteered to do so much work for the cause?" I asked out of the blue, "to prove to people that you deserve to live?"

Her lips were pressed tight before she answered, still not taking her eyes off the vampires around us. "That's not the only reason. I also volunteered because I like your company." And she left the part about enjoying torturing people unsaid, despite having told me at least five hundred times in the last three months. That part didn't belong here.

We stood there quietly for a while, but my awkwardness melted away when I saw my sister enter the room from a door on the other side. She was shortly followed by Amun and others like Alice, and they filed onto the stage at the edge of the room so everyone could see them. "Good afternoon," Amun said, then repeated it in several other languages. "For the brevity of this conference it will be conducted in standard English, as that has become the business language of the world. But it will be translated and broadcast to all your home countries and coven's in every language we are aware of—" He went on, but by this time Renesme had scanned over the crowd and spotted me in the back. She smiled her classic smile, just a bright beam of happiness, looking like she used to before she lost herself to her obsession with blood. She backed up on the stage and made her way to walk behind everyone else, until she got off and zigzagged through the crowd all the way over to me.

Her eyes were bright red, her cheeks looked plump again, and her skin glowed. I wondered if that's what I might have looked like, with green eyes, except now I knew she seemed just a little stronger and surer of herself than I was. At some point we had switched, and I had taken on the burden of morals, the knowledge that people are friends, not food. I opened my arms and hugged her for a very long time. "I missed you," she said.

"It's been too long," I said. But I pulled away, letting the excitement of seeing her for the first time wear off. I had stopped calling her over a year ago after I found out what she was helping them with. Killing unborn babies. And I knew it wasn't just her, that it was everyone working in this new government, that everyone in this conference room supported it to some extent. But I still had yet to forgive her about it because I felt like she had more reason to dispute that kind of wrongdoing.

"What is it?" she asked.

"I just... How could you kill Dhampir? They're us..."

"Oh..." she said, her eyes went wide, big and round. "There were some that I couldn't do anything for, but... Oh Stormy. You haven't heard. No one's told you yet." She grabbed my hand, "I have to show you then. That's the only way. Come on, you don't have to listen to this speech. It's a whole lot of nothing. Alice wrote it, trying to find that median ground for everyone's happiness. But come on." She pulled me out of the conference room. Jane was quick to grab my other hand, so she didn't get left behind. I didn't blame her.

Renesme led us out of the building and down the street to another building. But before I could see anything that showed me what it was, she put her hands over my eyes, "No peeking yet. Just wait. Come on," and she held a door open for me, while keeping one hand over my face.

"What is it?" I asked.

Once we entered the building, I could hear chattering around us, coming from different rooms, and soft fluttering heartbeats. Not quite human heartbeats. I hadn't realized I could tell the difference so easily. "Okay," Renesme said, and lifted her hand from my eyes. I was standing in front of a large poster on a wall that read "Cullen Academy. A heaven here on earth."

Note--

Dedicated to @Blackwingnedvalkyie