chapter 21 : Human nature
Olivia's pov
Like Carlisle had aid, I needed to talk to Sam. Obviously, being my second in command he new something of our situation. But Michael and me spent most of our time in human form, so a big part of the information didn't go through, unless we actually decided to let them know when we shifted. But with all that had been going on, it hadn't crossed either of our minds. We knew that the Volturi had given up taking out the participant of the averted battle one by one, so the state of emergency was over.
Now however, we were getting closer and closer to taking the initiative in this conflict. And considering that the Volturi had decided that every participant of the first round was coming back for more, we had to include him in the decision making. As far as the number were concerned, his pack, sorry my pack, counted for approximately half of our side. Some vampires would say that for the ”fire power” it was a different matter, I say let them talk. Anyway, I managed to get a hold of Sam.
'I'm not sure how much you know, but we have a situation.' I told him.
'Do you remember when I told you that, if you were to be stupid and simply tell the Volturi about yourself, you were on your own?' He asked me immediately, anger seeping through his every word.
'Right, so he doesn't know everything' I thought, and obviously he heard me.
'What do you mean, I don't know everything? If you didn't just go and tell them, explain to me how they know already.'
'It's really a terrible coincidence. You remember the first time you fought alongside my family?'
'Yeah, that newborn army. What of it?' And so I showed him what happened the day we came back from visiting our cousins. When it was over he said.
'OK, so you didn't go and tell them. But Edward knew he was going to see them. Why didn't you stop him?'
'Maybe you don't know that, but sometimes grandpa Edward and Alice have these weird silent conversations where Alice has a vision, Edward sees it then decides to do something about it, the vision changes, he sees it, and so on and so forth. Well they had one of these that day, and nothing we could have done would have changed anything.'
'Here is a thought, you could have killed him. There, problem solved.'
'I'm going to pretend you didn't just say that. We don't just kill people because it's convenient.'
'Sorry. So when are they coming?'
'That's the thing, we're not sure they're even going to come. Their first move was to try and take out every one involved 27 years ago. But Alice saw it in time, and we managed to warn everyone involved. At the time we didn't ask you to join us because it seemed easy enough to shield you if the need had presented itself, but now the situation has changed. It's getting more and more likely that they're going to wait for us to go our separate ways and give another try to picking us one by one. Basically it's a never ending nightmare.'
'So that's why I heard you were planning on going there yourself. For a moment I was a little concerned for your sanity, now I understand. What's the plan?'
'It hasn't been decided yet, but since you are concerned just as much as us now, your input would be welcome. I think you should take the senior members of the pack and meet us. I'm sure it beats 27 vamps showing up in Forks.'
Emmet's pov
Saying that everybody was thrilled by the idea of making the trip to Italy and provoking those who had ruled our world for millennia on their turf would be a bit of a reach, to say the least. But there was only one of us who was really and openly against it. I'll give you three guesses who ... yeah that's right, Amun the one and only. Why this coward was ever friends with Carlisle is beyond me, but who knows, he might have been a nice fellow at a long forgotten time. But I digress, let's get back to the juicy stuff ... Carlisle pissed off, yeah it happened and I was there to see it.
”Amun, we don't like it either. As a matter of fact, of everybody here, us and the Denalis are probably the most peaceful. If we could avoid this, we would. But do you honestly see yourself living with us indefinitely?”
”Of course not, I don't even like this place. But there has to be another solution. And anyway, this is only happening to us because you asked for our help 27 years ago. We didn't ask for this, we're certainly not responsible for what's happening, so why would we have to fix it?”
”Because you think we asked for this. All we ask, is to be left alone. We have an unorthodox lifestyle, so what? We don't pose a threat of exposure, and they know it. You know as well as everyone else that their purpose is to protect the secret of our world, nothing more. But they do much more than that, they try to eliminate us because they think we could be competition, when we have no design of the sort.”
”So they are corrupt, what's new? We've known as much for 27 years now. You should have stayed under the radar, the rest of us do and our lives aren't worse for it.”
”On some level I can understand your instinct to flee. It's the natural first reaction, one that you had 27 years ago, and we don't fault you for it. But when living under a despotic rule, the reaction that follows is to rise up and fight. it's human nature. The French did it with their revolution, people all over the world did it with the 3rd Reich. From woodcutters in Belarus, and sheep herders in Morocco to American soldiers and Russian commoners, some of them in the thick of it, others so far that the danger to them was minimum, some with no skill or training in warfare, others professional soldiers. None of them had asked for it, none of them were to blame, all of them wanted to put an end to tyranny. You were human once, somewhere deep down you have this longing for freedom I'm sure of it.”
”I'm not human anymore, haven't been for a long time. Now I eat a couple of humans once a week.”
”Alright, come, don't come, it's up to you. But if you don't come, and some of them manage to slip past us and get to you, we will let them dismember you and burn you to a crisp before taking care of them. You have to take responsibility for your own life.”
You may think it's not much of a show of anger. But trust me, the guy is the most gentle and controlled vampire there is, not an ounce of blood-lust in him. if it wasn't for the unmistakable disco ball effect one might even wonder if he is a vampire. But there, in front of all of us he actually threatened the life of someone he considered a friend for a big part of his life. That was an unprecedented event. When you think about it, pretty much everything that happened after that was unprecedented. Vampires listening to their human nature, talk about a first.”
