This was done by the fabulous KTBass. Credit her.

I stood silently, the pieces of the girl piled awkwardly before me like the rubble of a ruined empire. The beast that had fought so hard for her lay in bloodied pieces, the kerosene I had doused the bodies and house with doing nothing to hide the unbearable stench. Still, I waited, for my business was only half done.

Impatience began to gnaw at me, and I chuckled ruefully. Half a century had passed as I’d bided my time, waiting for The Strange Ones to forget, to fall under the mistaken impression that life had marched forward. Now, at the end, the waiting was becoming too much. I strained my senses, seeking the familiar tug of a person’s life force. Feeling nothing, I kicked at the rubble in annoyance.

As I saw the red-brown curls of the girl’s head flop over to cover her vacant brown eyes, the familiar anger began to surge violently through my veins. Being half-human, half-vampire had always been a difficult existence, particularly in the context of the Volturi. Then, the only sense of normalcy – the only constant in my life – had disappeared into the wind with the ashes of my father.

A normal seven year old child might have felt confused, sad even, at the unexpected and violent loss of a parent. I, however, was no normal seven year old child. I felt the fear and pain rip at me. I saw the greed in the eyes of the only family I now had as the extent of my power became known. And then, I saw the fear and sensed the plots. For fifty years I had lived a half-life: half-breed, half-alive, half a step ahead, half the power of my captors. For fifty years I had plotted my sworn vengeance.

Nothing would bring my father back. Nothing would help me capture the normalcy or the intimacy of the existence I’d observed amongst the strange coven I’d spent the last six weeks stalking. Nothing could bring me happiness…but killing the two beings that were about to enter this cursed house certainly couldn’t hurt.

I felt the crooked grin contort my features and knew my expression would appear psychotically maniacal, though I’d never felt saner. My whole body tensed as I waited, burying my thoughts as deeply into my brain as I was able. I knew the powers of the formidable pair that was now moving with alarm toward the elegant music room I stood in, and I tensed in excited anticipation.

They rounded the corner in a blur, freezing when the smell met their sensitive noses. There was a strangled cry from the woman as she moved toward the mangled mass of body parts that used to be her daughter. I hissed at her and she halted, surprise, shock, and anger mingling in her delicate features.

“Jasper?” she whispered, taking me in.

“No,” the man spoke, his topaz eyes locking with my own gray ones. “Not Jasper.”

“Then…” The woman trailed off, her attention focusing so completely on her husband that I knew they were having a silent conversation.

“My name is Caine. But you already knew that, didn’t you?” I asked the man.

He didn’t respond, merely shifted the woman quickly behind him. But she had another idea, and threw herself at the pile of limbs that used to comprise her daughter.

“You place yourself between your wife and me, but she is the one with the power to protect you both. A pity she wasn’t here to save the life of your daughter or the thing watching over her.”

I had expected at least one of them to lash out, but neither did. The man just walked slowly to the woman and fell to his knees at her side. As he gently removed the severed hand from her vice-like grip, his eyes met mine. I saw in them defeat and disappointment seeped into my consciousness. I had been looking forward to the challenge of a violent clash for my whole life, and now I feared I wouldn’t get the fight I so desired.

“What is there that is left to fight for,” the man asked, his queer golden eyes fixed on my face. “You have taken everything from us.”

The woman choked and looked at her husband. “Edward…everything…”His gaze switched to her and their eyes melded together. “No,” she whispered. “No! They weren’t even a part of this. Carlisle, Esme - ”

“Rosalie, Emmett, and a contingent of wolf-men. Yes. All of them,” I stated, my deadened voice finishing her thought.

“How…how could you…how did you?” she sobbed.

“Even the imprints?” Edward asked, his voice torn between debilitating grief and absolute outrage.

“I am unfamiliar with the term, but I killed their mates if that is what you are referring to.”

“You are a monster,” he replied, and I could tell by the subtle touch to his wife that they were again communicating silently.

“I am a product of the life you and your family forced upon me.”

“It was her choice!” the woman exclaimed suddenly. “I never asked or wanted her to go. I didn’t – “

I held up my hand to silence her tirade. “The woman is irrelevant. I am here for my father.”

“Your father was a son of a bitch and a bastard,” the man spoke. “And quit thinking of me that way. My name is Edward, and I know you know it.”

“Bastard though he may have been, he was still my father. He was still your brother.”

“Is that what Aro told you to spur you on this mission?”

“Aro tells me nothing,” I replied, brushing my nails against the soft wool of my black sweater. Without being able to stop myself, I grinned. “Aro doesn’t tell anyone anything anymore.”

There was a moment of ringing silence as my words sank in. “You lead the Volturi now,” Edward whispered.

“Yes, I do,” I replied, my own sinking to match his volume.

“How – “

“How I did it is irrelevant.”

“Even Alec…How is that even possible?”

I knew the question was not intended for me, but I answered it anyway. “Many things which are not possible for others are possible for me. Alec’s strength was dependent on Jane’s. A simple separation weakened him sufficiently to overpower him.”

“You’re lying” the woman cried. “No one is this powerful, not even – “

“Not even you?” I hissed. “Your power is weak in general, but worthless against me.”

I saw fear flash through her husband’s eyes at my statement. “Yes, her power is worthless. Observe,” I said casually closing my eyes and stretching out my hands. I immediately focused on her life force, smelling the sickeningly sweet scent of freesias as I began to pull it toward me. I heard the man, Edward, begin to scream, heard him crush her to him, but none of that was enough to stop the steady retreat of her life force from her body.

I felt the familiar tingle, the rush of power as it began to seep into my consciousness. I had lied when I called her power weak and laughed as it integrated into me. I opened my eyes to the woman’s limp form being cradled in the man’s arms as he shook her over and over, screaming her name.

“I don’t know how you could stand the smell when she was human,” I said casually. “I can almost taste the freesias.”

His hands stilled, though they didn’t move away from the woman’s face. “Is it my turn now?”

“Obviously not. There are things to discuss.”

“I’m not – ”

“You are in no position to bargain with me.”

“I don’t need to bargain with you,” he said, his voice strained. “You’ve taken everything. All of it. I have nothing left to lose.”

“Oh but you do,” I said, smiling. “You have your life.”

“Take it. It means nothing to me now.”

“Exactly. Death would hardly be a punishment for you. I’m offering it to you as a reward.”

“You can’t stop me dying. You aren’t a god.”

“Very true,” I acknowledged. “However, I am in charge of all the demons. I’ve already made it very clear that you aren’t to be harmed, even upon request. And yes, that includes exposing our kind. I’m not as concerned about the implications of that as Aro might have been. If you expose yourself to humans, I shall merely kill them…not you. I don’t care how many there are.”

“What do you want from me,” he begged, pulling the stiff body of the woman closer to his chest as he sobbed tearlessly.

I reached into my pocket, pulling out the ruby pendant on its battered chain. “You recognize this?” I asked as he gasped.

“It belonged to my sister,” he whispered.

“Yes. The woman. Do you know how I came to possess it? Of course you don’t. You didn’t even wait for his ashes to be taken by the wind before you abandoned him. Again.”

“He deserved it.”

“No,” I said calmly, fingering the blood red stone. “He did not. And I think that, deep down, you already knew that. What happened to the woman was not of his making…it was of yours.”

“I begged her not to. I begged. So did…so did…” he choked on a sob as he trailed off, unable to say his mate’s name aloud while she lay dead in his arms.

“But why did you have to? You had created an abomination. You sought to hide your secrets, to skirt the laws of our kind. Had you merely informed Aro of your child’s existence…merely acknowledged and respected his power, you would still have your wife and child, your sister and my father would still be alive, and I would not exist to destroy everything that you hold dear.”

“It wouldn’t have made a difference.”

“You are not unintelligent,” I scoffed. “And you had met Aro – your coven leader had even lived with him. He was a man who recognizes the rules, but he was also a politician.”

“He would have killed her,” he cried out.

“So you delayed the inevitable, sacrificing two members of your so-called family in the process,” I scathed. “No wonder he hated you.”

“You mean Jasper?”

“Obviously. I am going to tell you something that he never told anyone. I am going to tell you of the burden he bore.”

“He had my sister killed!” he yelled, showing the first real spark of fight since his wife had crumpled in his embrace.

“He saved your sister!” I roared. “Can you imagine what it would be, to have a mate, to devote yourself to them, only to have to watch them waste away in front of your very eyes? Alice would never have been happy, isolated as she was in Volterra…forced to use her gift for evil. My father was a soldier! And he was strong! He was smart enough to know that if he didn’t submit to Aro that they would go after her. He was smart enough to know that Aro hadn’t seen Alice’s addition as the boon that he once had…he was smart enough to know that Aro wanted him. That he wanted a stud and used her self-sacrificing nature to get it!”

The man moaned, low and full of pain, and I couldn’t help but growl.

“My father was a strong man. He deprived himself of the one thing he loved – the one thing that made his life worth living – in order to set her free. She wanted to die. She’d followed your ridiculous example and exposed herself to a group of schoolboys in the square, and Aro put it to a vote. If my father hadn’t had the strength to raise his hand, she would have rotted alone in a cell for the rest of eternity. Alone and forgotten by the family she had always devoted herself to.”

“I didn’t know. I only – ”

“You trusted what Marcus told you. You played directly into his hands,” I scowled. “I suppose in some ways, you did my father a favor. His Alice had ruined him…had ruined them both when she so stupidly offered herself up – offered herself up knowing that he would follow! – and you came and ended his misery. But you didn’t do it as a brother and a friend. You didn’t even do him the favor of gathering his remains to rest with his wife’s. And you didn’t think about the consequences of your actions…the fact that your brother might be to someone what your child was to you!”

“So what now?” he asked, his voice trembling almost as much as his hands. “What happens now?”

I walked slowly to his side, wrenching the body of the woman from his grasp. When he began to fight me, I hissed at him.

“If you do not release her I will pull her into a thousand pieces while you watch.”As his hands went slack, I slung her body over my shoulder. “You will follow me.”

“My…I must tend to my..to my family,” he sobbed.

“Oh, believe me, they will be tended to.”

He followed me from the house, the silence broken only by his hollow sobs. When we reached the door, I took a small silver lighter from my pocket, slipping it open with a clink. As the flame popped into existence, Edward’s eyes widened in horror.

“No, please no,” he whispered, his voice hoarse and strained.

“Yes, oh yes,” I sighed, flicking the device toward the stately white house.

Within minutes, the entire structure was consumed in flames. As I watched the gold tones flicker in the reflection of his glassy eyes, I couldn’t help but smile. Revenge, as it turned out, was a dish best served hot. Very hot.

“Come,” I said. “A jet awaits us.”

“My…my wife.”

“Oh, she is still alive,” I said. “Simply lacking a soul…a lifeforce if you will. And you will come with me, or she will never, ever get it back.”

“You won’t give it back anyway.”

“That is certainly possible. Still, you never know. Would you rather I just destroy her now?”

“No!” he cried. “No, please, I’ll do whatever you ask.”

“I knew you could be reasoned with. Follow me, Mr. Cullen. Volterra awaits us…Volterra, then the world.”

I laughed, cackled almost, as the house began to collapse and he fell to his knees, his face in his hands. My father would not have been proud of what I’d done, but I knew he could appreciate the accomplishment of a battle successfully waged and a war successfully won. Fifty years of scheming, plotting, and planning had built to this point, and now he was avenged. And if not proud, he would be glad that his wife’s ashes were now mingled with those of the family she so longed to protect and be with.