Midnight Solstice

Chapter 26

Picture: Marcus Volturi
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   "Did you sleep well?" I asked Katerina as she sat up. She gave me a sleepy smile and nodded.
  "I don't think I've slept that good in a while."
   "Hopefully you'll sleep that well while we are on our little vacation."
   "When do we have to leave?" I glanced down at my watch.
  "Our flight leaves in three hours, so we should be out of here in about two hours. It will take about fifteen minutes to get to the airport from here, but you never know how long it will take to actually get through security."
   "Oh! I almost forgot! Pauley is sending a car for us so you don't have to pay for parking at the airport." I raised an eyebrow at her.
  "Really?" She nodded. "That was awfully nice of him. I think he's taken a liking to you." She laughed.
  "He likes you too, you know. Pauley told me that when you went with Jane to interrogate him the first time, he wished that it was only you there since you were the easiest to talk to. The way he saw it, you actually wanted to do something about my father's experimentation and you weren't just doing it because Aro told you to. That really spoke to him." I was at a loss for words.
  "Hey, is everything okay up there?" She asked tapping the middle of my forehead. I nodded as I stood up of the bed.
  "Yes, I just don't see how my attitude towards the Morgynstein case has anything to do with his liking to me."
  "You can be so oblivious sometimes."
   "Excuse me?" She rolled her eyes and crawled off the bed. She walked over to my side.
  "You do so many admirable things that you don't even see as a big deal, even though they are." I chuckled.
  "Name one."
  "When I first came here; I mean my first time after my mother erased my memories from before; you were one of the only people who was actually decent to me. Everyone disliked me, or even despised me because I am a Morgynstein. I was definitely a big factor when it came to bringing the Morgynstein case back. People didn't want to deal with that again."
  "This whole time I've been here, you've bent yourself over backwards to make sure that my family and I are safe as well as dealt with my grandfather and the flash drive. And having to deal with those things on top of the responsibly of training the other newborns is a lot. You handle it so well Alec...you really do a lot of things that are nearly impossible for some people and you handle than with such grace. If it were me, I would have already been dead by now."
  "I said one pet, not...however many that was." A smile formed on my face. "But thank you for that insight." She scoffed. "What?"
  "See there you go again. You just brush it off like it isn't a big deal."
  "But it isn't a big deal."
   "It is to me. You should give lessons on handling stress. I could use some."
  "Love, stress is the whole reason why we are leaving for a week. And as for my stress, I just haven't reached my tipping point yet."
  "Well when you do, I'll be right behind you. At least we can go relax for a while. Maybe that will help. Or maybe shit will blow up while we are gone. At least we won't have to deal with it." I chucked.
  "You're right. I think we both have our share of stress now, but once everything ends, we can live peacefully for a while and never deal with a man like Michael ever again." I pulled Katerina to my chest in a hug. She wrapped her arms around my shoulders.
   "Please don't let this end too badly though. I don't think we have to kill my father. If I could just talk to him..."
  "Talk to him?! After what he did to you?!"
   "Alec just hear me out. Uncle Lorne and I have been talking...if we can just get Michael to listen to us, he'll either stop and lay low, or he'll stop and leave. Uncle Lorne is good at reasoning with him, and I think I can get through to him."
   "He's hurt you and Lorne! What makes you think that he'll even care?"
  "I know he's done awful things, but he isn't bad all of the time. He was a decent person when he wasn't doing his experiments. I know this isn't something anyone wants to hear...but just please don't rule it out yet."
   "That goes against what Marcus wants to add to our laws."
  "I know...but if we can jut talk to him before I present the idea to Caius and Aro, it could work."
   "I won't say no now, but you better make your plan full proof before you do anything. We don't even know where he is."
   "No, but Uncle Lorne got a hold of his phone number thanks to Fred and George."
   "They are in on this too?"
   "No, but they were still able to find it for him." I sighed.
   "Can we talk about this later Katerina? I just want to forget about all of this for now." She nodded.
  "Sorry, I got a little bit carried away. I have an idea! How about we promise to not talk about anything about the Morgynstein case unless absolutely necessary?" She asked me with a sweet smile.
  "I can promise to that."
  "Alright! So it's settled. I'm going to go to my room and get ready to leave." She pressed a kiss against my lips before running off. I sighed as I watched her go. What did I do to deserve a wonderful woman like her? I decided to leave the mystery alone this time.
   I left the room and began walking down the hall. I had to get everyone together to discuss what's going to happen while I'm gone and to tell than that Marcus knows everything. I saw Felix first. All I did was look at him and he sighed.
  "I'll go round them up. You are lucky this time Alec, all they are doing is fooling around. The last time I had to round them all up, I ended up with an empty vase of water dumped on my head."
  "Then wouldn't be you who is lucky?"
   "I suppose so wise guy. Although you are lucky too because last time I struggled to not strangle you." He said with a smile before patting my back and walking back in the direction that he came.
  "Well then..." I mumbled to myself before beginning my walk to Rebel H.Q. When I got there, all of the newborns, minus Katerina were there. I can inform her of what happened here later.
   "Hey slow poke!" Demetri teased as he waved to me.
  "I didn't think you all were going to run here."
  "We didn't, we've been waiting for you for a while now." George said, pretending to yawn.
  "Oh really?"
   "Yeah, a full .46 seconds." Caleb added sarcastically.
  "Why are you so late?" Fred asked in an innocent tone. We all know that question would lead to less innocent ones.
  "Is it because perhaps you were with our dear, beloved Kat?" George questioned as he appeared behind me and abruptly placed both his hands on my shoulders.
"Alright boys, that's enough." Jane said.
"Thank you sister."
"Don't worry about it brother. What you do with Katerina late at night is none of our business." She teased. If I were human, I would have been blushing a very strong shade of red.
"If you must know why Katerina stayed with me last night, it wasn't because of what you all are thinking. She had a rather awful nightmare. I was more than happy to comfort her so she could sleep."
"Aw see...he was just being sweet." Brynn sighed happily, eyeing Demetri as she did. He quietly chuckled to himself and shook his head.
"Or he's just saving all that stuff for Rio." Andi said, wiggling her eyebrows. I slapped my forehead which earned a few laughs from around the room.
"Okay people, we don't have time to make fun of Alec for what he does with Kat. Let's just get on with this please! After he tells us what he has to, then you can all proceed to make fun of him." Adeline told them.
"Uh...thanks...I think." She gave me a short nod and shot a glare to Andi who was making kissing faces at Caleb who was trying his best not to laugh. They straightened up quickly.
"We need to move Rebel H.Q. to somewhere outside of the castle." I stated blatantly.
  "Why?" Demetri asked.
  "Marcus has discovered that we have been doing something in here and he told me that we had to do it outside of the castles."
  "He didn't tell anyone did he?" Jane asked.
  "Not to my knowledge."
  "How are we supposed to move everything out?! Where are we even going to move all this equipment to?" George exclaimed.
   "It better have wifi and cell reception, none of it will work without those." Fred added in a panicked voice.
  "I don't know where we can move it to...do any of you have any place where we can move to?" I asked.
  "You don't have a place?" Caleb asked. I shook my head.
  "I'm honestly not sure what we should do about this."
   A loud knocking came from the other side of the door. We all shot each other frantic looks. Fred and George began shutting the computers while Brynn and Adeline took two boxes off of the floor. They were setting up a board game. It was a good enough facade I suppose. Everyone else positioned the chairs around the floor and Felix pushed me forward and gestured for me to open the door. I slowly did so.
  "I may have a place you can move to." A familiar voice said. I opened the door further to find Pauley standing there. Felix grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him in. I quickly shut the door. Felix had Pauley by the throat against the wall.
  "How do you know about this?" He asked Pauley. Asked is too much of a general word. He growled at Pauley whilst asking the question.
   "I'm one of Katerina's advisers...wouldn't it make sense for me to know about this since the man I'm working for is the one who gave you all the flash drive with all of the information you have been using in the first place?" Felix let him down.
  "Sorry Pauley, we have to take every caution when working with sensitive information such as this." I apologized.
  "Don't worry Alec, this was what I expected. Good job, I would have been scared for my life if I didn't know better." He shook Felix's hand before walking to the center of the room.
  "I would be more than happy to offer my services to you so you can find a new hide out."
  "It isn't a hide out..." Fred and George said in unison.
  "Well, whatever this is gentlemen, we can put it somewhere else."
  "As long as the place has wifi and a shit ton of cell towers around it, we can move it to wherever." George told him.
  "That can be arranged. Ah! I've got it. There is a wonderful apartment building that I own not two minutes from here that fits your description. I can show it to you if you'd like." Fred and George looked at me, as if to ask my permission.
  "You can take a look. If the place is what you two need to work the computers, move everything there while I'm gone with Katerina. When I come back, we can jump right back into this mess and work on ending it."
  "Don't we need to wait for the invitation to "the funhouse" before we can end it?" Adeline asked.
  "Possibly." I said.
   "I have a feeling he'll invite you there soon, but it's more like a mad house then a fun house." Pauley stated as he shuddered. We all have him a confused look.
  "You speak of it as if you have been there? What are you hiding?" Demetri asked.
  "I have never been there! But I can bet you more than my life savings that whatever he has planned for you is going to be on the wrong side of insanity."
   "Fair enough."
   "Hold up! How do we know we can trust this guy? He just waltzed in here with the perfect plan. It's so perfect that it's almost too perfect. How do we know he isn't going to just throw us to Aro right away?!" Andi exclaimed.
  "My dear Andrea, I cross my heart and hope to die that I will not double cross all of you. I'm only helping you because of the greater good that will come from it."
  "Brynn, did he just call me Andrea?" Brynn smirked.
  "I think he did..."
  "Definitely did." Adeline told her. Andi was silent for a moment, with a glaze of hurt covering her eyes. Then an animalistic growl ripped through her.
  "Oh shit..." The three newborn boys mumbled.
  Andi went to pounce. Felix caught her in the air and she began thrashing around trying to fight him off. Because of his size and strength, he was able to subdue her quickly. But she definitely didn't give up without a fight.
  "Easy..." He murmured to her. When she stopped fighting he slowly let her go. She shot Pauley a death glare.
  "If you ever call me Andrea again, it will not end well for you. Are we clear?"
  "Crystal." He replied with a smile. "My apologies."
  "I'm going to go see how Katerina is doing." She told us. She walked up to Pauley and put her hands on either side of his head. She put the mental block on his mind before walking out the door.
  "Ouch..." Pauley said, gripping his head. "What did she just do?!"
  "She put a mental block on your brain. I'm not sure what for, but I believe it would be for entering the fun world of Rebel H.Q." Brynn told him sarcastically. "Consider this your initiation."
  "That girl is a firecracker isn't she?" Pauley questioned.
  "Who are you talking about; Brynn or Andi? Because they both possess the qualities of a firecracker."
  "Shut up Caleb!" Brynn shouted. Her attention turned to me. "Do you need us anymore?"
  "No, I think we are good. Fred and George will go with Pauley to look at the apartment building and if that place looks good to them, we'll move everything there."
  "Alright." She began to exit. "Demetri, would you be a gentleman and walk me back to my room?"
  "If Alec doesn't need me anymore."
  "I don't, unless you want to talk about the newborn's training still."
  "Oh right! I completely forgot about that. I will walk Brynn to her room and then come back. That should give you enough time to finish up?"
  "Most likely." He walked over to Brynn (who looked extremely angered) and the two left the room.
  "Geez, I wish those two would admit they are a couple already!" Felix said.
  "I know right. They would be much happier if they did." Jane agreed, looking over at Caleb who was smiling at her as if he was just shot with an arrow by Cupid himself.
  "Anyway, I can take the two of you to the apartment building now if you wish. Then I can come back here and take Katerina and Alec to the airport." I raised an eyebrow.
  "Katerina told me you'd be sending a car."
  "That I did, but I didn't tell her who was driving it. Sometimes the best way to get things done is to do them yourself."
  "Alright...thank you then."
  "It isn't a problem." Pauley turned to the twins. "If you two would follow me." The two gave each other a nervous glance before getting up out of their chairs and following him out. An awkward silence followed.
   "Well, its obvious that you four have something to talk about." Caleb said.
  "Yeah. I'm going to do something that not in here." Adeline agreed.
  "I'll go with you. I'm sure there's something we can do." And with that the remaining newborns left.
  "Oh where, oh where, has Demetrius gone, oh where, oh where, can he be?" Felix sang. I chuckled.
   "Doesn't he hate it when you call him that?"
  "Yeah, but that's the fun part of it." Jane laughed.
  "Until you got that out of him, I would have never thought that Demetri was a nickname." She said. The door opened and in came a rather angry looking Demetri.
  "I could hear your singing from all the way down the hall." He told Felix.
  "It was a nice song wasn't it?" He teased.
   "Most definitely." He responded with and eye roll.
   "Now what is it that you wanted to talk about?" I asked him.
  "How much more physical training do you think the newborns need?" I thought for a moment.
  "I don't know. I feel like they are pretty good at fighting now. I mean, we don't have anyone flopping down on the mats just so they don't have to fight someone. And they fight pretty well too."
  "When we added their gifts into their training, that worked well too." Jane added. "They don't need much more if any at all."
   "I agree. They don't struggle so much with anything anymore. Our little babies have grown up so fast." Felix said.
  "I know. It feels...odd. Is this what it's like when a mother's children grow up?" Jane asked.
  "It must be. Oh, now I'm gonna cry! They don't need us anymore!" Felix slammed his hands on the wall, leaving tiny cracks in it. "They grow up so fast..." Demetri and I glanced over at him in confusion. "I'm sorry! I can't help it. I just remembered when little Brynn was throwing herself down to the ground before her fights even started and now she always makes the first move..." The look on his face right now was priceless. He looked really torn up about this, even though he was just joking.
  "Okay Felix, settle down man." Demetri told him. "I think you are growing soft for the newborns."
  "Am not! I don't even think that we can call them newborns anymore because they have all grown up and their first year of life is almost up!" Demetri rolled his eyes as Felix laughed.
  "What about their gifts? Are we still going to train those?" Jane asked, changing the subject.
   "I think we should just as a precaution. They all have really strong gifts and they have all almost mastered them, but there is still that little smidgen of hesitation that I have about this just because we still have a little less then four months left to train them." Demetri said.
  "Alright. So how about this? What if we continue to train their gifts, and have them do physical training every two weeks instead of almost everyday?" I suggested.
  "I am all cool with that. This will give all of us time to work on the Morgynstein case." Felix agreed.
  "That's fine with me." Demetri added.
  "I'll go tell Aro so you can finish whatever you need to before you leave." Jane said and she quickly left the room.
   "I wonder what got into her." Felix commented.
  "She's probably just wants to get back to Caleb." I told him.
  "I hope so. After all this time, it's weird seeing her like this."
  "I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels that way. She's my sister and as much as I want to see her happy...it's weird. It's hard to make the adjustment; after all, she hasn't been this happy since we were human." We made our way out of Rebel H.Q.
  "Thank you two for taking over while I'm gone."
  "Don't worry about it dude." Felix told me.
  "Yeah, you've turned yourself inside out trying to do all of this...whatever you call what we're doing. You deserve a break." Demetri said.
  "And so does Kit Kat. You know I still can't believe Aro put her half in charge of the Morgynstein case. It's been eight months and I still can't get over it. That wasn't like him. I mean, she's doing great, but I can't see why he would. He didn't know her that well back then, and I doubt her really does now."
"I don't know Felix." I sighed. "I haven't got the slightest idea why; I've never had; other than she's seen everything Michael has done first hand so she knows the real horror behind it."
"But I doubt she knows everything. Half the things that happened before her mother's death she can't remember because Fern wanted her to forget it. What happened that was so bad? I mean the whole thing is awful, but what happened to that Fern would want Kit Kat to forget?" Demetri asked. Felix bit his lip nervously before speaking.
"I don't know, but I feel like we need to talk to Lorne. He's the closest thing that we've got to the whole story other than Michael himself. We need him to tell us everything so we can understand Michael's world before we confront him. We aren't going to get anywhere without knowing everything. For the longest time we have thought that Katerina's story was enough, but she isn't telling us everything."
"I mean, at first we thought she was a newborn vampire, and then we figured out she was half fae half vampire, or at least stuck in between the two, and as the time progressed we figured out that she knew more than she was letting on in the beginning. This whole thing has been lies and truths mixed together in a huge mess that we still have yet to figure out. If we could get the jumbled story out of the way, we are one step closer to getting rid of Old Man Morgynstein for good."
  "I think you're right." I told him. I looked down at my watch. I have about an hour before Katerina and I have to leave. "I'll call him now. The sooner we do this the better, and Katerina knows nothing about this until I tell her about it." I didn't want Katerina to feel as though we don't trust her anymore. I do trust her. She had her reasons for lying, and so does Lorne, but why did they lie in the first place? And why do they feel the need to hide information?
  "We are doing this now?!" Demetri asked.
  "Well yes, I don't want to wait until after I get back to, and he is less likely to tell you two everything. I know he will tell me if I can convince him that this will help us stop Michael." I pulled out my cellular phone and dialed Lorne's number. He answered on the third ring.
  "Alec. What is it that you want from me now?" He asked me.
  "What makes you say that I want something?"
  "The fact that my daughter singing in the shower caused me to have a vision about our conversation now. If you want to know everything, I will come down there and tell you, but we do it on my terms." He hung up the phone. Demetri and Felix looked at me, awaiting my response.
  "Get ready to learn the real story of the Morgynsteins." And hopefully this story is the real one, not one manufactured to hide the truth once more.