Chapter I

In which we find vampires in a graveyard

It was an unusual night in Volterra: stifling, airless, dry. The dark sky seemed to hover closer and closer over the earth, until it felt like the lid on a boiling pot, making the sounds of the crickets seem like metallic echoes. Waves of heat were rolling slowly over the graveyard, making the scent of honeysuckle even more unbearable for Jane. She exhaled. She felt as if she had sand in her throat and her tongue was almost stuck to the roof of her mouth. On nights like these, everything seemed to smell ten times stronger. It invaded her nostrils and lodged in her brain, pervasive and lingering. She longed for the cool and damp underground passageways that led to the Main Hall. Instead, she found herself standing on the paved narrow path between two cross-shaped gravestones. Dried-up lavender was adorning the grave to her right. With a slight tug, she pulled the dead plant from the cracked soil and threw it away. Her palms were covered with a fine powder as a result, and she clapped them together. A faint hint of lavender, rust and decay tickled her nose. It is no good, she thought. One cannot plant lavender in such conditions and expect it to survive.

"Jane, please try to be a little more discreet in your gardening efforts. The crickets are making it hard enough for me to hear anything."

Jane turned in the direction of the voice and saw Corin's head rise from the sea of crosses and statues. "The smell is unbearable" Jane said, crinkling her small nose.

"There are people rotting here. It is to be expected!" Corin answered her cheerfully before disappearing behind a bulky tombstone.

"It's not that strong, thank all that is just in the world" the little vampire retorted, walking towards her through the maze of crosses and weeping angels and small plots of land covered with wilted poppies. With one hand, she was trying to brush away the dozens of delicate black insects that had landed on her summer dress, attracted by its light color. By the time she reached her, the yellow frills were stained with small brown dots.

"Do explain to me one thing: what purpose are you trying to achieve, again?"

Corin was sitting cross-legged, her back against a smooth marble gravestone. Jane could make out an oval indentation with the black and white photograph of a man half hidden behind Corin's shoulder.

"I have been rather vague, haven't I? Well my fair lady, the nature of my purpose here is scientifical-"

"- loosely speaking, of course" interjected Jane.

"Mock all you want, non-believer, but even you cannot deny the validity of the premise that brought us here."

"Your boredom?" a boy's voice came from behind an old, crumbling gravestone.

"What are you doing there, Alec?"

"I'm trying to improve old Signor Lorenzo's face sculpture. They got his chin wrong. He'd roll in his grave if he knew."

"How marvelously wonderful of you." Corin gave a distracted smile. Alec's fingers made a scratching sound on the washed-out stone bas-relief.

"Brother, please stop vandalizing graves."

"What she means by that is that Signor Lorenzo was a drunkard who held three mistresses, sired half a dozen children and had a scandalous incident involving a donkey and the confessional in the Cathedral, and does not deserve an accurate post-mortem sculpture."

"Excellent memory, Alec!" Corin gave a chuckle.

"What, it only happened one hundred and fifty years ago" the boy smiled a thin smile and went to poke his sister in the ribs.

"Not all of us are so devoted to the lives of humans" Jane swatted his arms away, her mood sour. Alec knew his exit cue when he saw it. "Well then, I shall go see my love now, if my dear Jane does not mind."

"By all means, go. I would hate to stay in the way of your happiness."

Corin listened to the echo of Alec's fading footsteps for a while and then turned her head to face Jane.

"Now then, where were we..."

"You were about to bore me into an ashen grave" Jane dutifully recalled.

"You are made of puns today, aren't you. However, even you cannot deny that we're not exactly on a wild goose chase here. You and I have both seen and heard some things which science, logic and our senses simply cannot explain. Since we are blessed with excellent hearing, we often hear very odd sounds, do we not? We hear voices when there is nobody around for miles and miles."

"It's called a telephone, Corin."

"Wish mine had a recorder so I could preserve your witty banter for posterity's sake. The voices I was referring to are speaking so softly that a normal human ear could not register them. At times, there are three people in a room and yet we hear a fourth voice who seems to carry its own little chat. And most bizarrely, sometimes we hear ourselves. "

Despite herself, Jane had to admit that Corin had a point there somewhere. Becoming a vampire was a difficult experience in itself, but the enhanced senses came with an extra price. Hearing voices was a more frequent occurrence for a vampire than for a normal human. After a while, though, one learned to tune it out whenever it happened, just like the swarming voices that buzzed around the main plaza. Still, Jane had much better things to do with her immortality than spend it in a graveyard studying ghosts.

"I fail to see how we can find out something that other vampires haven't."

"You used to have a sense of adventure, Jane."

"If I had, then it ran off to Paris with your common sense. They're stargazing from the rooftops of Versailles now and laughing at their former owners."

Corin smiled at her, a sweet and gentle smile like the touch of a feather on a cheek. Jane felt a little cruel. She crouched down next to Corin, less sullen and suddenly amused by a witty epitaph on a certain Lucrezia di Gallo's tomb.

"There was this funny, but little spoken-of episode that took place while you and your brother were away hunting for werewolves in Asia on behalf of our beloved Caius. You know how he likes to call them filthy curs?"

"I do seem to recall an entire creative lexicon of names he used to call them" Jane smiled as she gave her dress a shake, trying to get rid of the glass-winged insects crawling on it.

"Yes, but we're interested in this particular one, for the sake of our little story. So one day, a pair of vampires from Wales visited us. They were brother and sister, and extremely talented. Caroline could make people forget things."

"So her power was basically Alzheimer's."

Corin ignored her companion's little jape and continued. "And Gordon could make someone believe anything he wanted. Wonderful gifts. We made chitchat with them, invited them to stay for dinner and Aro showed them his art collection to give Eleazar the time to figure out their talents. He'd sensed something interesting, but couldn't figure it out immediately. Their gifts worked in a subtle, long term way, but were quite efficient. You can imagine how thrilled Aro was."

Jane was silent.

"He was trying to show them the benefits of joining our family when suddenly we heard Caius' voice saying filthy curs." Corin sighed and made a spiral motion with her hand. "Gordon was a little hot headed and ended up spitting on Aro's robe and that made him upset, which in turn got everybody else murderously angry, except Marcus, of course, he just shook his head, and Felix and Demetri minced him. His mate tried to defend him, so they minced her, too. We put them together afterwards and I and Chelsea did our best to make them more pliable, but it all ended when Gordon boy lunged at Aro despite having only a leg and a hand. And that concludes today's episode of Volturi Bloopers."

"Master never spoke about that incident. It must have affected him greatly."

Corin clacked her tongue, climbed on a tombstone, placed her legs around the cross and let herself hang upside down. The loose silk top she was wearing whispered down and pooled on her chin, revealing her milky white breasts. Jane tried not to look at the body she would never have.

"What I am trying to understand here is how such phenomena work. How to distinguish intelligent spirits from recorded pieces of conversations that start playing at seemingly random times? It's difficult. Intelligent spirits are almost always whimsical and often tell you what they want and not what you need to know from them."

"Dead man's prerogative" replied Jane dryly.

Corin unclenched her legs, let herself fall on her hands and tumbled twice before stopping in a cross-legged position. "How is a conversation recorded and replayed? Is it the environment? A certain emotion that is more likely to be recorded? Or one that triggers it? Is it completely random on both sides? I want to know."

"What I want to know is why Master chose this approach to the problem. Why do we have to be here?"

"He has to start somewhere" replied Corin, picking a cricket from her knee and throwing it at bullet speed in a rosebush.

"Listening for dead humans does not seem like a very productive activity. Master may be overzealous. We can afford to lose a few potential guard members once in a while. It was not even a mistake per se. Does Master really believe that this piece of information is vital to the Volturi?"

"Perhaps he is just his usual curious self. In any case do help me here, Jane. I cannot hear anything pertaining to the supernatural."

"Perhaps we should move."

"Capital idea. And if that doesn't work, we can always come back tomorrow night."

Jane's eyes narrowed.

They began walking randomly among the white graves, cypress trees crawling with ivy, the pale moon drifting above. Corin was glad to be out in the open air. Only rarely could she afford to leave the wives alone. She could not help but pity those ancient, somber women who were sentenced to spend their forever in a tower. Eternity was a heavy burden when one's world was made of square feet, bricks and spiders. Sulpicia's eyes were covered by such a dense milky white film that her pupils were pink rather than red and her skin had developed a texture verging on transparency, as if she was turning into a glass doll, layer by layer. Athenodora was most vocal about her discontent. Unlike her gilded cage mate, she had tasted freedom and found it sweet. She was the child of a brutal, beautiful world long gone and she had traveled and seen and felt and listened. She had tasted the smoke of a burning Rome on her tongue, she had heard a thousand battle cries and swam through the bellies of the Mediterranean's sunken ships. She'd searched in vain for Scylla and Charybdis and climbed Mount Olympus to see if there were any gods left. Countless centuries later, she would know for certain; there aren't. A tower is all there is.

Making people content came naturally for Corin. Seeing others at ease gave her peace of mind. As a young girl, she'd tell her many siblings about how good their lives were when in reality they weren't. At least we aren't sick. Look how healthy and strong we are, we can do anything we want. I know we haven't eaten today, but there are people who go for weeks without anything but rats or dogs. We, on the other hand, will be feasting on something tomorrow. Look how pretty you look, sister... Even though her siblings were so long dead that it was tragic, Corin found herself doing the same thing for countless centuries. Soothing people and tying herself to them. It took her a while to notice the addiction caused by her talent. Even with that knowledge, Aro had asked her to cheer his wife and sister-in-law and she found herself unable to leave their side for more than a few days. The unhappiness that slowly engulfed the women in her absence was almost palpable and soon enough Corin would be there, all cheerful smiles and honeyed words and pity behind her eyes. No rest for the wicked.

"I wonder if vampires can haunt" she asked herself aloud.

Die and let's find out, thought Jane wistfully.

"Have you ever heard the voice of a departed vampire?"

"I thought we were supposed to be quiet."

Corin grimaced. "You have no spirit for research, Jane."

"Then that makes two of us. You talk so much that you leave no room for any actual research."

"A small flaw."

"I never said it was your only fl-"

"Sshh!" Corin raised one hand towards her. Normally, she wouldn't have dared to cut off Jane, sweet, painful Jane, but she could hear a sound trickling through the dry air, almost impossible to pinpoint. Child's laughter. They sat in silence for a minute, but nothing happened. Then, a soft voice whispered into Jane's ear.

I am here

Jane snapped her head to the left, instinctively clasping a hand over her ear and making an angry noise from the back of her throat. Corin's face lit up with excitement, but she did not have time to stretch her lips into a smile when Jane exploded.

"I have had enough! I first thought this was pointless and boring as sin, but now it's making me angry. I am nobody's fool!" Her voice was gaining pitch as she spoke. "I care little about living humans and even less about dead ones!" Corin looked as if she wanted to say something, but thought better of it. "We will go and get my brother and then we will go home" said Jane in a tone that dared anyone to say otherwise.

Corin knew not to argue, especially when she felt as if a thousand needles were about to be pressed into her skin. In complete silence, they walked to the place where they knew Alec would be and found him standing in front of a grave half covered in brambles. On the tombstone was a round indentation containing the black and white photograph depicting a young woman with thick, long hair spilling over her shoulders and arms. The first time Alec had spied the photograph, he had declared himself in love with the girl. With her wide cheekbones, thin lips with corners slightly drooping down and small eyes, she was certainly not a picture of beauty. Yet her eyes, forever gazing off in melancholy had a certain sweetness to them and her hair was "fantastically beautiful" according to Alec.

"Shall I paint you a replica of it so that you may carry it close to your heart at all times?" teased Jane as she approached him.

"If you paint it, my dear Jane" he smiled, offering her his arm, "then I might really fall in love with it."

"You are nothing but flattery today."

"Never has the truth been shunned more than in this present day and age" he said woefully.

"You have been saying that for the past century or so."

"And was I ever wrong?" he asked as he hopped on a tomb and placed his elbow on the shoulder of an old, grave-looking angel.

"You were never completely right, though."

"One can never be completely anything. I thought we discussed this dozens-"

"Or hundreds-"

"No, thousands of time before." Alec left the serious angel, climbed on a nearby crypt and declared to the rusty cherub on top: "We have too much free time."

"And we will soon be making a hole in someone's crypt if we don't climb down at once."

"Oh, what do they care, they are long gone from this world. And if I do end up making a hole in here they will be gone with the wind as well."

"Silly me, and I thought your marvelously witty phase had passed" said Jane with a half smile.

"Silly you indeed! I was just lulling you into a false sense of security."

Corin was watching the twins in silence, amused and a little sad at the same time. They keep each other content. They don't need me. That's good, though. They won't be another weight on my chain. An image of Sulpicia etching patterns into the tower wall with her nails flashed through her mind, as sudden as lightning on a warm spring sky. The phone in her pocket began to rang, and Jane and Alec turned expectantly towards her.

"Judging from the ringtone, that must be Felix" Corin fished her slim phone out of the pocket of her jeans and answered. Felix's pleasant voice reached three pairs of enhanced ears. "Corin, Aro wants you and the atomic kids back home, we have a visitor."

"Finally, real business" said Jane, relief in her voice.

The three proceeded to the gate of the graveyard, the twins ahead and Corin following from behind. She could tell that Alec was in a good mood. Unlike his sister, who was walking with stiff shoulders on the stone path, Alec hopped with grace from tombstone to tombstone, making comments about people long dead that he had known and nobody else in the world remembered now, finding faults with their sculpted likeness and kept trying to steal the small pearl clip from Jane's hair. He never did that with anyone else but her. Even though Corin had known Alec for centuries, there was a part of him that would forever belong to his twin and only to her. Alec was not a particularly playful character, but he jested and horsed around Jane to amuse her. Alec would burn the world to see his sister smile.

"For still she haunts me phantomwise, Alice moving under skies, never seen by waking eyes" he recited, circling the tombstone of a little girl. He didn't remember who she had been. Children died a lot back in the days. One more soul for heaven. What do children do in heaven?

"Keep doing that and one will follow us home" warned Jane in a voice that clearly advised compliance. They left the cemetery and its crickets behind and began walking on Porta Diana street. Like almost all vampires, the trio did not like walking at human speed but dura lex, sed lex, as Caius would say. In earlier times, they would have ran like the wind on the then-paved street, as long as they could not hear any signs of human presence on their path. Now, human technology was everywhere, meticulous and invasive, recording reality through camera lenses.

"Wonder who this visitor is" Corin asked nobody in particular, as they made their way onto Piazza del Bastione. Somewhere on the steps of the Roman theatre, a group of men were chatting loudly.

"Heaven sent."

"Jane, you wound me. I cannot possibly be that boring."

"It's not about you, Corin" Alec was quick to interject. Jane gave him a look before replying: "I just don't like to waste my time in a graveyard and be harassed by some ghost child who obviously takes too much advantage of its lack of body."

"I just don't understand you, Jane. Didn't you two have psychic powers before you were-"

"That was different" Jane cut her off. "The mind is a powerful thing. Now I have had quite enough of this talk." Corin could feel the needles looming closer to her skin now.

"I do hope we get to go somewhere, whoever this visitor is" Alec slid gracefully between the two and gave them his arms. Corin gave his a grateful squeeze as they reached Matteloti Street. They crept along the brick walls with the art gallery and the still-open Etruria restaurant and the half dried potted plants below the iron cased glass panel filled with old film posters. Night in Volterra was a game of blue and orange and light and shadow in a maze.

Once they reached the square, Jane led the party in a winding alley and down the open hole at the end. Alec winced as the metal grate automatically slid into place. "That thing is too loud" he said as they made their way through the dark tunnel which they knew by heart.

"Your hearing is too good" Corin was checking the time on her phone. "We should hurry, I'd hate for them to start without us."

They shot like arrows through the darkness, barely touching wet stone and dirt, water drops colliding with their foreheads. By the time they stopped in front of the massive wooden door that led to the hallway, Jane's feet were wet from the puddles she had stepped into while running. She kicked her sandals away and entered the hallway barefoot. They boarded the elevator. Jane gave her dress a blank stare and muttered something about cloaks.

"Greetings and salutations" chirped Corin as the elevator doors opened and they entered the office. Afton looked up from his desk, a pile of papers as thick as a telephone book in his hands.

"How did the experiment go?" There was genuine curiosity in his tone. Ever since Gianna had been disposed of, a great part of her responsibilities had fallen on Afton's shoulders, at least until a new woman seeking immortality applied for the job. Afton was not happy with the arrangement and it was Corin's job to sprinkle a little contentment in his direction. They all knew why he was in the Guard in the first place.

"So and so. One spirit tried to contact Jane via her left ear" answered Corin as she made her way to the coat hanger in the corner and grabbed the three cloaks hanging there.

Afton did not have the courage to appear amused. The three donned their cloaks and Corin gave Afton a friendly pat on the shoulder as they passed him and headed to the end of the hall. After more walking, they stopped in front of the concealed door. Alec slid the piece of paneling and opened the wooden door that led to the Main Hall's antechamber. Jane grinned at him, her eyebrows raised in anticipation, took his hand and pulled him through, followed by Corin.

As the three vampires stepped into the light of the Main Hall, they came face to face with the most unusual visitor the Volturi had had in a long time.