Immortals

Chapter 38

As the sunset hit his private island, Bella’s transformation was nearing its end. Everything had gone as planned, and the only thing left to do was wait. With nothing else to do, Harry let his mind wander. He drifted far from the secluded island paradise and the soft crackle of changing bones. His thoughts crossed seas and continents, moving faster than the speed of light. Sometimes, he projected his mind far and wide just to see what was going on in the world. Tonight, however, all his focus settled on a single city … Volterra, Italy.

He found Aro, one of the ancient rulers of the vampire world, hiding far below the surface of the earth. The air was thick and cold, and the arched ceilings and walls were lined with ancient stone. His mind's eye floated through one corridor after another, finally settling in a chamber so deep that no human bomb could ever hope to penetrate it. There, in a room almost perfectly round and reinforced like a bank vault, Aro nervously lurked. He was hunched over a stack of old books, muttering to himself, and his eyes darted to every shadow that flickered across the wall. The room was empty except for a heavy iron table and a single mahogany chair. On the far side of the room, a thick metal door was the only way in or out. It was firmly closed. Aro's newly developed paranoia had become legendary among the rest of the Volturi, and he had spent days fortifying himself against the next attack. Harry barely had to try to slip inside the room. His godly powers kept him invisible and undetectable.

As Harry entered, he took a second to scan the chamber. It was almost laughable in its austerity. There were no rugs or tapestries, and the only things flammable were the clothes on his back. The books were encased in iron, and the chair’s leather seat was replaced with an asbestos mesh. There was even an elaborate sprinkler system with pipes as thick as a man's arm and a reservoir of water in the ceiling. If Harry weren’t so annoyed with Aro, he might have admired the craftsmanship. Instead, he watched as Aro continued to mutter, his fingers drumming on the shiny, metal table top. Harry decided to have some fun.

Harry started with a mouse squeak. The imitation was so perfect that even the mice in Volterra would have believed it. The sound bounced against the stone and steel, echoing just enough to make Aro doubt its origin. Aro snapped his head up, his pale eyes flicking from wall to wall. He stood with unnatural stillness, listening. Harry let the silence stretch, then added a second squeak. This one was higher-pitched and closer to the door. Aro's lips drew back in a subtle snarl.

“Who’s there?” Aro called, his voice filled with annoyance.

There was no answer. Harry let the tension build, then, with a twitch of his finger, he sent a metallic thud reverberating through the door. It echoed like a battering ram and made Aro jump. Aro stalked toward the door, but then hesitated, his hand hovering over the manual locks. He held his breath. Harry could almost hear his thoughts. ‘It could be an enemy. It could be a trap. It could be nothing.’ But the sound came again, louder this time. Someone was definitely knocking on the door. Aro braced himself, yanked the locks free, and swung the door open so fast it slammed into the wall behind it.

The corridor outside was empty and silent. On the ground, directly in front of the doorway, was a small, smoldering package. It looked harmless at first, except for the fact that it was beginning to smoke from a small ember glowing near the base. Aro stared at the bag as if it were a live grenade. His face twisted with panic.

He saw the faint, sinister shine of oil leaking out of the bottom. He made a split-second calculation. If it were a bomb, it would be better to stamp it out now before it could ignite the entire corridor. He lunged forward, pinning the package beneath his boot. Flames shot up around the edge, licking at the bottom parts of his legs. The fire hurt. Aro wasn’t immune to pain, after all, but he was more afraid of the package exploding than some temporary discomfort. He stomped harder and harder, crushing the package until it was a greasy, charred layer on the stone. Black smoke billowed up, and Aro bared his teeth, refusing to show discomfort even in an empty corridor. Then, as the flames died down, a new scent filled the air.

It was not the smell of burning paper or the chemical sharpness of kerosene. It was something far more primal, more ancient than even Aro himself. Aro leapt back, repulsed. At first, he didn’t believe it. He bent down, peered at the smoldering pile, and saw the evidence oozing from the charred mess. His eyes went wide with horror. He looked up and down the corridor for the culprit, but found nothing. Harry, still invisible, stood just a few feet away, savoring every expression that flickered across the ancient vampire’s face.

“DOG DOO!” Aro shrieked. His voice echoed up and down the stone chambers, a sound so undignified that Harry nearly broke his own cover to laugh out loud. Aro spun in a full circle, scanning the corridor, and hissed, “Caius! Marcus! We have been breached!” He stomped his foot again, this time out of rage, and the blackened mess splattered up onto his trousers. He recoiled, then began cursing in three different languages, each more archaic than the last.

From his invisible vantage point, Harry was delighted. He waited in place, letting Aro’s tantrum play out. The ancient vampire lord scraped the bottom of his shoe along the ground, leaving a nasty smear across the polished stone. He then ran back into the bunker, slamming and locking the door behind him. For a full minute, he stood with his back against the door, breathing heavily. His dignity had taken a serious hit. He muttered a dozen different insults under his breath, each one directed at the unknown tormentor. Some of those insults were very personal, and Harry couldn’t help but take offense.

Harry snapped his fingers, and Aro’s mind emptied for a brief second. A wave of disorientation swept through him, and the effect was so instant that he staggered, dropping the antique book he’d been clutching. The book hit the tabletop with a clang. Aro clapped his hands to his temples, trying to force his focus back together. He blinked furiously, his crimson eyes rolled back in their sockets. For a second, the only sound in the room was Aro’s groan of discomfort. Then came a new sound. It was so loud and deep that Aro snapped upright.

BOOM.

It was a single, concussive slam, loud enough to make the metal table vibrate beneath his hands and the thick iron door shudder in its frame. The echo ricocheted around the circular chamber, making his eardrums throb. Aro whipped his head around, causing his hair to fly over his shoulders. He stared at the wall directly opposite the door. It was a wall lined with stone blocks quarried almost a thousand years before. His gaze moved from the blackened joints to the hairline cracks that spiderwebbed across the surface. He stuffed the book back into its iron cradle and stood, his hands twitching at his sides.

A second blow struck even harder, and this time the dust didn’t just drift from the cracks. It rained down in a visible cloud, dusting the table, his hands, and the floor beneath his feet. It was as if a battering ram was pounding its way through.

Aro stumbled backward, colliding with the edge of the table. He hissed, baring his teeth, and prepared to run for the door. But then the wall itself buckled, the ancient stones caving inward. A third blow shattered the wall completely, flooding the room with rubble and a sudden, cold wind from the tunnel beyond.

From the newly formed breach, a monstrous shape emerged. At first, it was just a blur of black limbs … eight of them, glistening with disgusting wetness and bending at terrible angles. As it stepped through the hole, Aro saw what it was. It was a spider, only larger than any that had ever existed. Its body was the size of a small carriage, and its legs were monstrous and spiny, each as thick as Aro’s own leg. Its spherical red eyes glittered like freshly spilled blood. It clicked its mandibles, and it sounded like steel hitting steel. It was a sound more chilling than any he had ever heard, and it began to crawl forward over the rubble with a disturbing grace.

Aro stumbled back, adrenaline flooding his body. His feet scrabbled on the floor, and he wrenched his gaze from the creature and spun toward the door. He flipped every lock with supernatural speed, but he was unable to unlock the last one. He tried again, and again, it wouldn’t budge. Harry snickered as he wiggled his finger at the panicking vampire. For one dreadful moment, he was trapped while the spider stalked closer.

His panic reached a crescendo. Aro drew a breath and screamed. It was a piercing, high-pitched, shrieking note that echoed up the corridor, and then, in desperation, he leapt backward from the door, intending to ram his way through with blunt force. The spider surged into the vault, its huge legs scraping and gouging the stone. It reared up, and its entire front half lifted. The monstrous spider slammed its front legs on the floor. The impact cracked the stone and sent vibrations up Aro’s feet and into his skull.

He tried again for the door, this time using sheer brute force. He slammed his shoulder into the thick metal, hoping to make a quick escape, but the door did not yield. At the last moment, as the spider loomed above him and was poised to strike, Aro tried one last time. He threw his full force into the door, but unfortunately, the door simply disappeared. It vanished, as if it were never there. Aro’s momentum sent him tumbling through the now-empty doorway, and he slipped on the still-slimy patch of dog shit left from Harry’s previous prank. He skidded, arms flailing, and crashed headfirst into the stone wall of the corridor, leaving a sizable dent in both.

He lay sprawled on the floor, dazed, for half a second. The stench of burnt shit and singed paper filled his nostrils. As he pushed himself up, the spider reached the empty doorway and began ripping at the metal frame, clicking and hissing with a terrifying hunger.

Aro screamed again, this time with less dignity and more raw terror. He sprinted down the corridor and into the upper levels of the castle. The spider gave chase, screeching menacingly the whole way.

Immortals

Above, in a lavish hall lined with velvet drapes and gold-leafed mirrors, the rest of the Volturi were holding a council meeting. Caius, Marcus, and a dozen lesser members were clustered around a long table, sipping blood from antique goblets and discussing the mental decline of their leader.

“I told you …,” Caius said, “... the paranoia has become self-defeating. He trusts no one, not even …”

“My lord!” shrieked one of the guards, bursting into the room so quickly he nearly tripped over his own feet. “Aro is in peril!”

Before anyone could react, Aro himself careened through the double doors, clutching the sides of his head and shrieking, “There’s a creature after me! It’s in the walls! It’s in the walls!” His eyes were wild, and his lips frothed with spittle.

The entire council stared at him in absolute shock. Some rose to their feet, others simply gawked. “Don’t just stand there!” Aro howled, pointing a shaking finger down the corridor. “Do something! It’s coming for us all!”

There was a pause and a moment of mutual confusion, before the rest of the Volturi realized that Aro was not just panicking … he was deranged. He was completely and utterly unhinged. Caius raised one eyebrow and asked, “What are you wearing?” Nobody saw Harry invisibly standing there with a smirk on his handsome face. Harry jabbed his finger at Aro, and his eyes suddenly became less glossy.

Aro, still hyperventilating, glanced down and finally saw it. His robes were gone, and they were replaced by a pair of cutoff Daisy Dukes so short they revealed nearly all of his translucent thighs, and a pair of pink, glittery, five-inch stilettos. He lifted a hand to his chest, only to discover that his usual elegant shirt was replaced with a mesh halter top with rhinestones spelling out “Juicy” across the front.

Marcus, a vampire who had once led armies into battle and crushed empires without blinking, sniffed the air with regal disdain and wrinkled his nose. “Did you shit yourself?” he asked, his voice flat. The other Volturi snickered behind their hands, and one or two openly cackled.

Aro’s eyes went red with rage. He reached for the nearest goblet and hurled it at the wall. The blood splattered artfully against the expensive wallpaper. “WHO DID THIS?” he screamed as the veins bulged out on his pale throat. “WHO DARES TO MOCK ME?”

For a moment, Harry considered pranking him some more, but he decided that Aro’s dignity had suffered enough. He let the illusion fade. Harry left Aro screaming and stamping his stilettoed feet in the middle of the council chamber and retreated from the scene.

Aro, sensing that the laughter would destroy him faster than any enemy, spun on his heel and stormed back through the corridors, nearly slipping twice on his own high heels. He descended to the lowest levels of the bunker, locked himself in, and spent the next several hours plotting. He made a list of possible enemies and revenge strategies. Practically everyone he knew was on the list.

Harry took a moment to savor his triumph. He knew there would be consequences. Aro would never let such an insult pass without retaliation, but he also knew that the Volturi were more rattled than they pretended to be. There was nothing Aro could do without Harry knowing about it. Whatever Aro tried next would undoubtedly backfire spectacularly, and Harry couldn’t wait.