Bella didn't stop anywhere along the way, and soon, at the very center of a magnificent hall, she came face to face with the ones in charge.
Three golden thrones, inlaid with countless precious gems, sat at the heart of the great hall.
Seated on them were three vampires, each with a different bearing, all dressed alike in soft, finely tailored black robes.
The vampires on the left and right seemed lost in thought, their gazes a little vacant, and they gave no reaction at all to Bella's arrival. Only the one in the middle heard her footsteps and slowly raised his head.
His skin was very white, like the papery layer of an onion; his hair was jet black; and paired with a smile as pretentious as it was false, the whole effect left Bella feeling as though she were facing a viper.
"Truly admirable courage — daring to come alone into my family's house. Welcome, child. I am Aro of the Volturi. You're welcome to join my family."
His opening lines weren't exactly warm, but they got the essential points across. To his mind, Bella coming here by herself was no different from walking to her death — a sign she'd already surrendered. There was really no need to waste many words.
"Why come after me? There's no reason at all — surely there should be one? Can't you at least let me die knowing why?"
Bella put her question straight out. This was intel even Alice and the others hadn't been able to uncover.
That false smile still on his face, Aro thought it over, and decided that, given how things stood now, he could reveal a little to Bella.
"It is an Antediluvian's will."
Bella pressed on, keeping her face unreadable. "Which Antediluvian? An 'Antediluvian' worthy of the name from your lips — would that be one of the thirteen Third Generation vampires?"
This time Aro didn't answer. He spread his hands. "Child, once you complete the Embrace and render the Volturi a great service, I will take you to see the forebear."
Bella had meant to string him along a while longer — but she was realizing that the conspiracy aimed at her was like a set of nesting dolls, one layer inside the next.
At first she'd thought it was the Albanians; then she'd found the demons; the demons seemed to be in league with the vampires; behind the vampires there was some Antediluvian; and tangled in with all of it was a Russian who might well be from the future.
She felt as though a fog had settled over everything, countless threads knotted together.
Bella let out a sigh. If she couldn't untangle it, then she'd just cut it.
"Take our guest below to bathe and change. I can hardly wait to witness her outstanding performance."
Aro was all warmth and eagerness, thrilled as though he were bestowing some tremendous honor upon her.
I'm doing this for your own good, so I'm going to kill you. I'll destroy you first — and then you'll come to appreciate my kindness.
As two pale-skinned vampires stepped up to grab her arms, Bella got ready to act.
Sensing her hostility, Aro smiled. "You wouldn't want to make an enemy of our entire family, would you? We're no ordinary vampires."
Bella's own smile held not a trace of warmth. "Oh, of course it won't be me. It'll be a — hmm, how should I put it? A handsome fellow you vampires love best of all. His style might differ a little from yours, but I promise you, he's a gentleman of extraordinary grace… mm, here's hoping you all become the best of friends. And one last thing — just one: screw you, you old bastard."
Bella flipped Aro the middle finger, and in that instant her form vanished. On the other end of the magical swap, the great ape Kong was teleported into the Volturi's hall in her place.
Kong pounded his fists against his chest and loosed a howl at the heavens. The ceiling, low for him, burst apart the moment he appeared.
Two months of eating dragon meat — clone dragon meat, granted — had made Kong two meters (six and a half feet) taller, and the high energy in the dragon flesh had piled on another five hundred–plus tons. Now, at seventy-two meters (236 feet) tall, he loomed absurdly large over modern buildings that stood twenty meters (65 feet) at most.
Kong was thoroughly displeased with his surroundings. There was a stench everywhere — worse even than the Skullcrawlers.
The Volturi's vampires were stunned dumb.
What in the world is this?!
From their vantage point they could only see Kong's two hairy legs; everything from the waist up was still outside.
They couldn't make sense of it at all. How on earth had a beautiful woman suddenly turned into a pair of hairy legs?
Vampires lived on blood, and they were experts at reading lifeblood. Where humans relied on sight, hearing, and touch to make sense of the world, the vampire's first principle for judging anything was the flow of blood and vital force within it.
And so the assembled vampires stared in disbelief at those two hairy legs — the sheer richness of the lifeblood in this thing was beyond anything they'd ever heard of.
If an ordinary human's blood was, to them, a kind of gourmet delicacy — a five-hundred-milliliter drink — then the strange hairy legs before them were a river. An entire sea.
Seeing that the other two vampire elders who ruled the family alongside him were still frozen in a daze, Aro hurriedly hauled them to their feet and then bolted.
The next second, Kong's enormous foot came down, stomping the three resplendent golden thrones — and the entire hall — into powder.
"It's a monster! Kill it! Kill! Kill it!"
At Aro's booming command, the vampires of the family guard sprang into action, one after another.
Their abilities were bizarre, of every strange variety.
Alec was a vampire Aro had turned with his own hands; he could sever every sense of any target, human or vampire alike.
His twin sister was Jane — the one who had exchanged a single blow with Bella earlier, capable of making a target feel excruciating pain on the level of the mind itself.
The vampire twins, one shutting down the senses and the other inflicting agony, could often kill an opponent outright without a sound.
Now they turned their gifts on Kong…
A strong mind meant a strong body along with it; by the same token, a powerful physique carried with it a slight boost to mental resistance as well.
Kong had grown naturally — he hadn't been min-maxed by some cheat code's skill points. Any single point of enhancement to his body was an all-around enhancement.
Greater strength reinforced his constitution, and that sturdier constitution in turn pushed his already fearsome speed up another notch.
Bella's own mind control couldn't touch Kong. An enraged Kong was like an enormous, super-sized Hulk, immune to whole categories of magic and psychic effects.
The vampire twins' powers — the ones that had never failed them — didn't so much as ripple against him. The great ape's mind was full of nothing but fury. With a roar, he stepped out with his left foot, and the twin vampires, too slow to dodge, were mashed into a single lump of pulp.
The Volturi's vampire guard really was strong. They were famed throughout the entire race of vampires for their mastery of mental powers — mind reading, mental paralysis, mental torture, a whole arsenal of them. In the original timeline they'd been thoroughly shut down by Bella's Mental Shield. Here, they had it even worse…
A whole crowd of vampires fought and fought — and had managed to knock exactly one point of HP off a Kong with 99,999.