the future

Carlisle and Edward had not been able to catch up with Ivan before his trail disappeared into the river. They'd swam to the other bank to see if his trial had picked up in a straight line, but there was no trace of him for miles in either direction on the eastern shore.

It was all my fault. Ivan had come, as Alice had seen, to make peace with the Cullens, only to be angered by my camaraderie with Jacob. I wished I hadn't been experimenting with the effects of not hunting, if my senses had been at their normal sharpness, I would have noticed Ivan's presence before Jacob had phased, before Ivan had gotten anywhere near us.

There wasn't much to be done. Carlisle had called Taras with the disappointing news. Taras and Kate hadn't seen Ivan since they'd decided to come to my wedding, and they were distraught that Ivan had come so close and yet not returned home; it wasn't easy for them to lose their brother, however temporary the separation might be. I wondered if this brought back the hard memories of losing their mother so many centuries ago.

Alice was able to catch a few glimpses of Ivan's immediate future, nothing too concrete. He wasn't going back to Denali, as far as Alice could tell. The picture was hazy. All Alice could see was that Ivan was visibly upset; he wandered in the snow-swathed wilderness—to the north? To the east?—with a devastated expression. He made no decisions for a new course beyond his directionless grieving.

Days passed and though, of course, I forgot nothing, Ivan and his pain moved to the back of my mind. There were more important things to think of now. I would leave for Italy in just a few days.

I hadn't told Charlie about the trip, and I stewed about whether or not I should. Edward and Carlisle discussed the plan for the hundredth time. If I were to tell Charlie, how to break the news to him just right?

Meanwhile, Emmett and Jasper were busy discussing the possibility for some sort of family vacation after I returned. South America seemed to be on their minds. Carlisle had some friends in the Amazon, and Emmett told me I'd enjoy hunting jaguars and panthers for a change. He had a whim to wrestle with an anaconda. Esme and Royal were looking at plans for the new kitchen Esme wanted to add to mine and Edward's cottage. Jacob was off with Liam having a conversation about where they stood with each other.

Alice moved slowly—for her—around the big room, unnecessarily tidying the already immaculate space, straightening Esme's perfectly hung garlands. She was re-centering Esme's vases on the console at the moment. I could see from the way her face fluctuated—aware, then blank, then aware again—that she was searching the future. I assumed she was trying to see what my trip for Italy had in store for me until Jasper said, "Let it go, Alice; Ivan's not our concern," and a cloud of serenity stole silently and invisibly through the room. Alice must have been worrying about him again.

She stuck her tongue out at Jasper and then lifted one crystal vase that was filled with white and red roses and turned toward the kitchen. There was just the barest hint of wilt to one of the white flowers, but Alice seemed intent on utter perfection as a distraction to her lack of vision tonight.

Staring out the window, I didn't see it when the vase slipped from Alice's fingers. I only heard the whoosh of the air whistling past the crystal, and my eyes flickered up in time to see the vase shatter into ten thousand diamond shards against the edge of the kitchen's marble floor.

We were all perfectly still as the fragmented crystal bounced and skittered in every direction with an unmusical tinkling, all eyes on Alice's back.

My first illogical thought was that Alice was playing some joke on us. Because there was no way that Alice could have dropped the vase by accident. I could have darted across the room to catch the vase in plenty of time myself, if I hadn't assumed she would get it. And how would it fall through her fingers in the first place? Her perfectly sure fingers...

I had never seen a vampire drop anything by accident. Ever.

And then Alice was facing us, twisting in a move so fast it didn't exist.

Her eyes were halfway here and halfway locked on the future, wide, staring, filling her thin face till they seemed to overflow it. Looking into her eyes was like looking out of a grave from the inside; I was buried in the terror and despair and agony of her gaze.

I heard Edward gasp; it was a broken, half-choked sound.

"What?" Jasper growled, leaping to her side in a blurred rush of movement, crushing the broken crystal under his feet. He grabbed her shoulders and shook her sharply. She seemed to rattle silently in his hands. "What, Alice?"

Emmett moved into my peripheral vision, his teeth bared while his eyes darted toward the window, anticipating an attack.

There was only silence from Esme, Carlisle, and Royal, who were frozen just as I was.

Jasper shook Alice again. "What is it?"

"They're coming for us," Alice and Edward whispered together, perfectly synchronized. "All of them."

Silence.

For once, I was the quickest to understand—because something in their words triggered my own vision. It was only the distant memory of a dream—faint, transparent, indistinct as if I were peering through thick gauze... In my head, I saw a line of black advancing on me, the ghost of my half-forgotten human nightmare. I could not see the glint of their ruby eyes in the shrouded image, or the shine of their sharp wet teeth, but I knew where the gleam should be…

Stronger than the memory of the sight came the memory of the feel—the wrenching need to protect those around me. For the first time since I'd been reborn, I felt cold.

I barely heard the confirmation of my fears. I didn't need it. I already knew. "The Volturi," Alice moaned.

"All of them," Edward groaned at the same time.

"Why?" Alice whispered to herself. "How?"

"When?" Edward whispered.

"Why?" Esme echoed.

"When?" Jasper repeated in a voice like splintering ice.

Alice's eyes didn't blink, but it was as if a veil covered them; they became perfectly blank. Only her mouth held on to her expression of horror.

"Not long," she and Edward said together. Then she spoke alone. "There's snow on the forest, snow on the town. Little more than a month."

"Why?" Carlisle was the one to ask this time.

Esme answered. "They must have a reason. Maybe to see..."

"This isn't just about Beau," Alice said hollowly. "They're all coming—Aro, Caius, Marcus, every member of the guard, even the wives."

"The wives never leave the tower," Jasper contradicted her in a flat voice. "Never. Not during the southern rebellion. Not when the Romanians tried to overthrow them. Not even when they were hunting the werewolves. Never."

"They're coming now," Edward whispered.

"But why?" Carlisle said again. "We've done nothing! And if we had, what could we possibly do that would bring this down on us?"

"There are so many of us," Edward answered dully. "They must want to make sure that…" He didn't finish.

"That doesn't answer the crucial question! Why?"

I felt I knew the answer to Carlisle's question, and yet at the same time I didn't. Like it was just there, waiting for me to realize it.

"Go back, Alice," Jasper pleaded. "Look for the trigger. Search."

Alice shook her head slowly, her shoulders sagging. "It came out of nowhere, Jazz. I wasn't looking for them, or even for us. I was just looking for Ivan. He wasn't where I expected him to be…" Alice trailed off, her eyes drifting again. She stared at nothing for a long second.

And then her head jerked up, her eyes hard as flint. I heard Edward catch his breath.

"He decided to go to them," Alice said. "Ivan decided to go to the Volturi. And then they will decide.... It's as if they're waiting for him. Like their decision was already made, and just waiting on him..."

It was silent again as we digested this. What would Ivan tell the Volturi that would result in Alice's appalling vision?

"Can we stop him?" Jasper asked.

"There's no way. He's almost there."

"What is he doing?" Carlisle was asking, but I wasn't paying attention to the discussion now. All my focus was on the picture that was painstakingly coming together in my head.

I pictured Ivan poised on the cliff, watching. What had he seen? A half-vampire and a werewolf who were best friends. I'd been focused on that image, one that would obviously explain his reaction. But that was not quite what he'd seen.

Ivan had seen someone who didn't look like a vampire, or even a half-vampire. Someone who looked remarkably human.

Ivan…. The Denali Orphans… Carlisle had said that losing their mother to the Volturi's justice had made Taras, Kate, and Ivan purists when it came to the law.

The Denali's mother had broken the law; Carlisle himself had told me the story: She broke the rules. She clung too deeply to the mortal world and hid nothing.

With Ivan's past, how could he apply any other reading to what he'd seen that day in the narrow meadow? He had seen me, looking entirely too human, happily bragging about how I had everything—the immortal and the mortal—and wanted for nothing. Exactly what Ivan's mother had been executed for, exactly what Ivan and his siblings were nearly executed for.

The Denali clan knew of the precarious situation we all were in; the Volturi had demanded I be turned. I was to be turned, or we would be punished.

In addition, the Cullens were in league with werewolves, the Volturi's greatest enemy. From Ivan's point of view, it was all too clear; we had broken the rules and the Volturi would punish us and anyone involved with us.

Ivan, wringing his hands in the snowy wilderness—not mourning Laurent, after all, but knowing it was his duty to turn the Cullens in, knowing what would happen to them if he did. Apparently his conscious had won out over the centuries of friendship. Or perhaps his fear of retribution for his association with Cullens, their human, and their werewolf allies made the decision for him.

The Volturi's decision was already decided; it was an automatic response to any kind of infraction.

"Think of what Ivan saw that afternoon," I said in a low voice, interrupting whatever Emmett was beginning to say. "To someone who lost a mother because of involvement with humans, what would I have looked like? Especially after not hunting?"

Everything was silent again as the others caught up to where I was already.

"Human," Carlisle whispered.

I felt Edward wrap his arms around me.

"Still human, despite the laws. I told Jacob I had everything—All of you, my human friends and family—Ivan must have heard. He thinks we're blatantly defying the Volturi. And more than that, we're associating with werewolves."

The icy tension in the room only mounted as they realized I was right. The room just seemed to get colder.

No one spoke for a long time.

Then Edward whispered into my hair. "They're not coming to hold trial." He said quietly. "Aro has seen Ivan's proof in his thoughts. They're coming to destroy."

"To kill me because they think I'm still human…" I trailed off.

"And destroy us for associating with werewolves." Carlisle finished, darkly.

"But Beau isn't human, anymore!" Emmett growled.

"They won't wait for us to show them that." Edward's voice was still quiet, gentle, velvet… and yet the pain and desolation in the sound was unavoidable. His voice was like Alice's eyes before—like the inside of a tomb.

My eyes unfocused, seeing nothing. "They'll destroy all of us… The wolves… What's to stop them from killing everyone in Forks?" I gasped.

Little over a month…

Was this the limit, then? I'd had more happiness than most people ever experienced. Was there some natural law that demanded equal shares of happiness and misery in the world? Was my joy overthrowing the balance? Was four months all I could have?

"What can we do?" Royal demanded.

"We fight," Emmett answered calmly.

"We can't win," Jasper growled. I could imagine how his face would look, how his body would curve protectively over Alice's.

"Well, we can't run. Not with Demetri around." Emmett made a disgusted noise, and I knew instinctively that he was not upset by the idea of the Volturi's tracker but by the idea of running away. "And I don't know that we can't win," he said. "There are a few options to consider. We don't have to fight alone."

My head snapped up at that. "We've already sentenced the Quileautes to Death, Emmett! We can't ask them to fight, too!"

"Chill, Beau." His expression was no different from when he was contemplating fighting anacondas. Even the threat of annihilation couldn't change Emmett's perspective, his ability to thrill to a challenge. "I didn't mean the pack. Be realistic, though—do you think Jacob or Sam is going to ignore an invasion? But I was thinking of our other friends."

Carlisle echoed me in a whisper. "Other friends we don't have to sentence to death."

"Hey, we'll let them decide," Emmett said in a placating tone. "I'm not saying they have to fight with us." I could see the plan refining itself in his head as he spoke. "If they'd just stand beside us, just long enough to make the Volturi hesitate. If we could force them to stop and listen, see that Beau's not human anymore. That might take away any reason for a fight…"

There was a hint of smile on Emmett's face now. I was surprised no one had hit him yet. I wanted to.

"Yes," Esme said eagerly. "That makes sense, Emmett. All we need is for the Volturi to pause for one moment. Just long enough to listen."

"We'd need quite a show of witnesses," Royal said harshly, his voice brittle as glass.

Esme nodded in agreement, as if she hadn't heard the sarcasm in Royal's tone. "We can ask that much of our friends. Just to witness."

"We'd do it for them," Emmett said.

"It will take more than that," Alice murmured. I looked over to see her eyes were a dark void again. "The Volturi won't honor a truce with the wolves."

"So how do we protect them?" I asked, watching Alice. Her eyes glazed over.

"Gather witnesses. Taras's family," she said. "Siobhan's coven. Amun's. Some of the nomads—Garrett and Mary for certain. Maybe Alistair."

"What about Peter and Charlotte?" Jasper asked half fearfully, as if he hoped the answer was no, and his old brother could be spared from the coming carnage.

"Maybe."

"The Amazons?" Carlisle asked. "Kachiri, Zafrina, and Senna?"

Alice seemed too deep into her vision to answer at first; finally she shuddered, and her eyes flickered back to the present. She met Carlisle's gaze for the tiniest part of a second, and then looked down.

"I can't see."

"What was that?" Edward asked, his whisper a demand. "That part in the jungle. Are we going to look for them?"

"I can't see," Alice repeated, not meeting his eyes. A flash of confusion crossed Edward's face. "We'll have to split up and hurry—before the snow sticks to the ground. We have to round up whomever we can and get them here to show them." She zoned again. "Ask Elena. There is more to this than just a human and werewolves."

The silence was ominous for another long moment while Alice was in her trance. She blinked slowly when it was over, her eyes peculiarly opaque despite the fact that she was clearly in the present.

"There is so much. We have to hurry," she whispered. "Witnesses in place. Stop Aro."

"Alice?" Edward asked. "That was too fast—I didn't understand. What was--?"

"I can't see!" she exploded back at him. "Jacob's almost here!"

Royal took a step toward the door. "I'll tell him to come back—"

"No, let him come," Alice said quickly, her voice straining higher with each word. She grabbed Jasper's hand and began pulling him toward the back door. "But I'll see better away from him and his pack. I need to go. I need to really concentrate. I need to see everything I can. I have to go. Come on, Jasper, there's no time to waste!"

We all could hear Jacob on the stairs. Alice yanked, impatient, on Jasper's hand. He followed quickly, confusion in his eyes just like Edward's. They darted out the door into the silver night.

"Hurry!" she called back to us. "You have to find them all!"

"Find what?" Jacob asked, shutting the front door behind himself. "Where'd Alice go?"

No one answered; we all just stared.

Jacob shook the wet from his hair and pulled his arms through the sleeves of his t-shirt, his eyes on me. "Hey, babe! I thought you guys would've gone home by now..."

He saw my eyes, blinked, and then stared. I watched his expression as the room's atmosphere finally touched him. He glanced down, eyes wide, at the wet spot on the floor, the scattered roses, the fragments of crystal. His fingers quivered.

"What?" he asked flatly. "What happened?"

I couldn't think where to begin. No one else found the words, either.

Jacob crossed the room in three long strides and dropped to his knees beside me. I could feel the heat shaking off his body as tremors rolled down his arms to his shaking hands.

"Are you okay?" he demanded, putting a hand on my arm. "Don't mess with me, Beau, please!"

"It's… It's…" the words caught in my throat, my voice breaking strangely.

"Beau, babe, what's going on?"

"It's over, Jacob," I whispered. And it was there in my voice, too—the sound of the inside of a grave. "We've all been sentenced to die."