Kong hammered away in a wild flurry of punches, and once he'd torn the roof clean off the Volturi's hall, the vampires finally got a clear look at the owner of those hairy legs.
Good grief! It's a gorilla? What has this ape been eating to grow this enormous?
Kong had spent the last stretch locked in a ten-day war with Thor, so he'd picked up a bit of experience fighting smaller opponents.
Weight was his greatest weapon.
Kong took great strides, stomping the ground like a madman, then sprang into the air and flopped down flat with all his weight, sprawled out like a great reclining idol. In the end he simply grabbed whatever he could — houses, towering statues — and hurled them into wherever the vampires were thickest.
A handful of vampire guards scrambled, utterly bedraggled, to Aro's side, and asked in a panic, "Master, what do we do?"
You're asking me? Who am I supposed to ask? How the hell would I know what to do?
Poor Aro. He had lived from the Bronze Age of ancient Greece — the Mycenaean era — all the way to the present day, more than three thousand years, and had always fancied himself worldly and wise, certain that nothing could ever stump him. Yet at this moment he was utterly at a loss.
His own ability was nothing but mind reading, and it only worked if he was holding the target's hand — a garbage gift that hadn't grown one bit in three thousand years. He'd always ruled the family through vicious cunning and underhanded means. Now nothing in his vast experience could tell him how to beat Kong. What was he supposed to do — go hold Kong's hand?
"Use the firearms! And someone try — see if we can turn this big fellow into a vampire."
He racked his brain and came up with only this — a plan that barely qualified as one.
The family guard rushed off to fetch firearms, while a few vampires who'd never been fond of thinking things through charged in to bite Kong.
The vampires had all-around enhancements to their strength and speed — but even so, once they'd run to Kong's feet, they felt hopelessly out of their depth.
They looked up and realized they couldn't see Kong's face at all — only two pitch-black nostrils. This thing was massive, easily as tall as a twenty-story building.
They jumped onto Kong's toes, grabbed fistfuls of leg hair, and gritted their teeth as they climbed.
Kong swatted at them the way you'd swat mosquitoes — smack, smack — and several vampires were flattened into paste without so much as a whimper.
Under the cover of their comrades, out of more than ten vampires, exactly one made it up to Kong's neck.
Just as he was about to sink his teeth in, he discovered a problem: the skin on Kong's neck was harder than steel, and shockingly thick, and the hair was so dense the vampire half-thought he'd crawled into a jungle. There was no way to bite through it!
Kong had eaten Bella's angel-blood-and-dragon-wing dish, and right now he was putting in the effort — not a single thought of slacking off or cutting corners in his head.
Like a tireless machine, he seized an eight-hundred-year-old tower of the Volturi and smashed it down into wherever the vampires were most concentrated.
Ordinary vampires had a weakness — a fear of silver weapons. Vampires such as the Cullen family and this Volturi clan had to be set alight in raging flame to be killed for good. But none of those limits applied to Kong.
The reason they'd been so hard to kill before came down mainly to a lack of raw power. One punch — muscle and bone, from brain to heart all pounded into pulp — and vampires died just fine.
Those crooked mages who put a single point into a light spell and dumped everything else into strength — they'd had the right idea all along. With enough strength, there was nothing you couldn't beat to death.
The Albanians had at least been able to trade blows with the Tyrants for a whole night. Against Kong, the vampires were simply steamrolled.
The vampires hacked with blades and axes, tore with claws and fangs, and emptied guns and cannons — none of it broke through his defenses!
The two elders who ruled the Volturi alongside Aro were even more spineless than he was. One of them, a blond vampire, was singled out for special attention: as he tried to flee, Kong — still sprawled flat where he'd landed, not yet back on his feet — brought a fist down on his head.
The head was driven into the neck, the neck into the chest cavity, and then the cavity itself burst apart under the immense pressure. Not one ability got a chance to show itself before he died as a lump of pulp.
The other elder was even unluckier: a falling roof beam snapped his leg, and before his body's regeneration could even kick in, Kong's enormous foot stamped him flat.
Barely ten minutes into the fight, the Volturi's lavishly funded guard had already lost sixty percent of its strength.
Kong went at it like he was playing some kind of game — the moment he spotted a vampire, he'd run over and stomp on it.
Never mind the vampire family; the whole city of Volterra was reduced to rubble in a few of his romping, joyful charges. Kong was having the time of his life, moving fast, sprinting back and forth.
Aro was cunning. Seeing his family destroyed in an instant, he wasted no words and simply took off running.
There was no need for secret tunnels now. He stripped off his gorgeous tailcoat, threw on the clothes of a human servant, watched for a gap in Kong's attacks, and shot out of the ruined city in a streak, quick as lightning.
"Where do you think you're running? Still want to kill me? Still want to turn me into a vampire? Gutted with regret by now, aren't you? Hahahaha — you dumbass!" Bella sat perched on a jutting boulder, arms wrapped around her right knee, her left leg dangling, watching Aro in a thoroughly unladylike pose.
"I'll kill you!" Aro's eyes were a mask of bloodshot red as he glared at her.
The family he'd built with such painstaking care over three thousand years had been wrecked in a single stroke, and two of his closest friends had died horribly right before his eyes. His composure had shattered completely.
His mind reading truly was garbage, but he still possessed the full vampire package — his strength, speed, and constitution were all high, and because his bloodline was more ancient, his physical prowess actually surpassed that of his descendants.
Now he became a howling gale, right hand darting out to stab straight at Bella's throat.
He was going to torment this human to death — torture her until she died.
Bella's left foot pushed off the boulder; light as duckweed on water, she flowed into a graceful backflip that carried her clear of Aro's claw. Suspended in midair, she whipped out the M500 and fired two shots at him.
Four or five years of grueling practice had long since turned Bella's marksmanship into something far removed from the raw novice she'd once been.
Both shots — in angle and in timing alike — landed precisely in the instant Aro's strike had missed and he was about to launch another.
Aro pressed forward instead of falling back. Facing 3,500 joules of Magnum pistol round — kinetic energy on par with a rifle — he never broke the rhythm of his running legs, only leaned his upper body back, and the two close-range bullets slipped harmlessly past him. His movements were elegant, unhurried. But that faintly smug smile hadn't yet left his face when he looked up and ran headlong into Bella's ice spear.
Back in Istanbul, the vampire guard Jane had traded a single blow with Bella, and had only managed to confirm the existence of her Mental Shield; she'd retreated before ever seeing the rest of Bella's spells.
Everything Aro knew about Bella came from the demon Ruby — and the Bella that Ruby knew was still the Bella of three years ago.