Chapter 23

She had been on planes before, but then completely numbed down as the Cullens had been afraid of her. But Bella absolutely enjoyed the trip to Rome, Italy. She loved seeing the clouds from above and she was glued to the window with her sketchpad. It was only when it got dark that she had to stop drawing and fell asleep against Kol.

“Oh, I can’t wait to go to our home in Rome,” Rebekah sighed happily. “The Italians taste so delicious! Must be their diet, surely.”

Myriam pouted. “I wish I could eat humans.”

“Oh, don’t worry, darling,” Rebekah smiled at her. “I’m sure Niklaus won’t mind gorging on pastas and garlic so you can have a taste… Oh, we can go shopping!”

“We’re here to kill the Volturi and the newborns and hopefully that will send a message to the rest of the Cold Ones who still are doing unspeakable things. If not, I’ll keep hunting them down,” Myriam countered as she pointed at her sleeping sister. “Who knows there might be more Bella’s hidden amongst them.” She then smiled at Klaus. “Of course, only when the intel is solid and when we have nothing else on our hands. Bella and I appreciate it a lot that you’re all willing to help out to cut off the head of the snake.”

Elijah took a sip of his bourbon as he contemplated on what he was going to say. “All nightmares need an ending and we’re in the position of ending one.”

~o.O.o~

They first went to their house in Rome. Kol, and especially Klaus, were certain that both Myriam and Bella were going to like it, as it had a view on the Coliseum and the Imperial Forum. The Mikaelsons owned the entire late 1800’s building, but the best sight was of course on the top floor, to be taken up there by a wonderful elevator. It was almost as if it was the New Orleans compound, but then more elegant with a welcoming entrance, a double living room with a fireplace, six bedrooms and 4 bathrooms, a large kitchen and a dining room. There were also two extra rooms, one completely fitted as a library, the other as an art studio. And, not to forget, the large balconies on both sides of the building were spacious and enjoyable.

They hadn’t been in their Rome home for years, but loyal staff kept the place spotless in case they’d drop by. The home was quite different from the home in New Orleans, but they had liked it when buying the properties all those years ago to make every home a comfortable place, yet different from what they owned; to stave off boredom for one, and also every country had its own charm.

Bella and Myriam were surprised and charmed by the beauty of the home and so was Kol, having missed so much during his time in his box. He had to admit that, so far, this was their best home yet. Granted, New Orleans was beautiful, but there were too many shitty memories attached to that city that he couldn’t enjoy it like he felt he could enjoy Rome. “Right!” Rebekah announced as she put both of her arms around the sisters. “Since we’re traveling light, we’re going to need some clothes, and that means, we’re going shopping. Now.”

They had agreed upon a few days of ‘downtime’ for everyone to get their rest, fighting Cold Ones was never easy, let alone an army of Newborns; they all needed their strength and be on their best. Being vampires, they wouldn’t have much issue with the time difference, but Bella might now that she was used to sleeping regularly in peace.

“But we just got here!” Bella objected as she looked at Kol for help. The last time she went shopping with her sister had been Walmart and that had been a disaster. She wasn’t keen on a repeat of that happening in a city that she didn’t know and didn’t speak the language.

“Yes,” Rebekah said as she blocked Bella’s view of Kol and smiled at her. “And we’ve been on a plane with my siblings for the last 10 hours or so and I’ve had enough of them for now. We’re going shopping. Let them work on their own affairs. Don’t worry, Bella, I’m not afraid of Nik so when your sister tries to do something that’ll make us look bad, I’ll hurt her,” Rebekah smiled at her before flashing a grin at Myriam. “I mean that. We’re not home. We’re in a different country and yes, we can compel people but not to ruin everyone’s day, got it?”

“It was just messing around in Walmart, in that pit of desperation, funny smells and incapable managers,” Myriam defended herself. “And it was fun. What happened at Walmart stays at Walmart, although I can’t unsee some of those questionable outfits…”

“We’re going to Piazza di Spagna,” Rebekah mused. “Gucci, Prada, Versace… Louis Vuitton… Jimmy Choo…”

“Ohh,” Myriam said, immediately perking up. “Let’s go!”

While Elijah got their affairs in order; getting a cook and extra servants for blood, Klaus retreated to his studio to sort through the art equipment he had there. Kol was hanging out in the library, finding a lot of grimoires that they could use in New Orleans, knowing that Freya would get a kick out of these. He also recognized a lot of the books as his own, thinking they’d been lost previously. He was annoyed that he found a book chronicling the lives of a Cold One tribe in Egypt, and he was going to show it to Myriam. There was no doubt in his mind that she’d find the book extremely interesting and would love to go after them.

Kol was worried about Bella being in Rome without him, but with her sister and his sister. Now, he trusted Rebekah in looking after her, of course, but he’d rather have wanted to tag along, just in case. He could have, if it hadn’t been for Rebekah’s death glare. Yeah, perhaps he was spending too much time with Bella, but he didn’t care. She was fun to spend time with, even when she was focused on drawing.

The girls had been gone for hours, and the cook had just finished cooking when they came back, Myriam carrying Bella in her arms, with not an amused look on her face. Bella looked even more bemused and in pain. “Before anyone is killing someone, let me explain,” Rebekah said as she walked in behind them with bags. “We had Bella try on some heels, she fell over and hurt her ankle and she made us return her to you. We weren’t allowed to give her our blood to heal her.”

Myriam set Bella down on a chair and scowled. “It’s just blood! Had she taken our blood, we would still be out there, having fun!”

“Well, you’re just in time for dinner,” Klaus said, amused as he put an arm around his girlfriend. “Did you have fun?”

“Of course,” Myriam huffed. “Shopping is always fun, especially when there are expensive stores around. We had fun until she fell over and made us go back. Like made us go back. Nice power and all, but to use it for a little thing as a hurt ankle?”

“I know, love,” Klaus said sweetly as he guided her to the dining room. “But I am glad that you had fun. You can go back shopping in the morning.”

Kol gently touched Bella’s ankle, noticing the swelling. At least it wasn’t broken. She winced and retracted her foot from his hand. “You should have allowed your sister to give you her blood,” he said as he looked at her, curious. “Why didn’t you?”

Bella shrugged for an answer.

“Are you going to allow me to give you my blood or are am I going to get the same treatment as our sisters?” He asked playfully before moving and softly kissing her. “No heels, huh?”

“No,” Bella shook her head. “No to the heels, yes to the blood please,” she smiled at him.

He grabbed an empty glass, bit his hand and poured some of his blood in it before handing it to Bella. “Did you have fun?”

“I still don’t understand the idea of buying clothes because of it being pretty and making you look pretty instead of it being useful, but they found me some pretty dresses.”

Kol laughed. “You’re going to fight Cold Ones in a pretty dress?”

Bella shrugged as she closed her eyes and drank the blood. Oh, he knew she hated it and she looked so cute trying not to taste it. “I’ll wear whatever, I could go naked.”

He took her now empty glass and pulled her up, giving her ankle some more time to heal as he brought her to the dining room. “You could, but I’m afraid that I can’t allow you to do that.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’ll want to have sex with you while we’re trying to eliminate your nightmares,” he grinned as he set her down on the chair. “Which is fine, but not fair towards our family. We’re not going to slack off.”

“I don’t want to slack,” she replied as she felt Kol’s blood do its magic in her body and started to heal her ankle. “I want to put them all down, as much as I possibly can.”

“That’s the spirit!” Rebekah cheered as she raised her glass. “I’ll drink to that!”

~o.O.o~

Jetlag really set in for Bella the next day where she stayed in bed all day, drawing or sleeping and he took her into Rome the day after, and it was hard to keep his hands off of her as she wore a bright yellow Versace dress with ballerina’s underneath them to walk on. She still didn’t like shoes very much but the ballerina’s weren’t that bad to walk on.

He took her to Trevi Fountain, threw in a coin in the fountain to make a wish before going to the smaller fountain on the left to have a drink from it. Bella liked the idea of knowing that when lovers drank from that fountain, they’d be faithful to each other forever. She also loved the surroundings of the Fountain, as it was situated at the end of an aqueduct that had been constructed by the son-in-law of Emperor Augustus nearly two thousand years ago.

Kol quipped that he hardly came across things that were older than him, and he thought that Rome in particular was absolutely wonderful because of it. Through Bella, his own wonder and fascination got sparked, seeing things in a different, new and exciting way.

After that, they went Pincio Gardens for a nice stroll around the little lake, and saw most of the beautiful buildings of Rome while walking around. There were beautiful little cafés in the park where they sat down and enjoyed the sunshine while looking at the people passing by them. The pathways of the Gardens were lined with busts of famous nineteenth century Italians and Europeans, in various states of disrepair. Bella was enthralled by the water clock, finding it beautiful. She snapped some pictures of it and hoped she could draw it and made it so the water would appear to be flowing. She wanted to put more motion into her drawings.

He took her to the best restaurant in town. He didn’t need to impress her with fancy food, which was more of a Nik thing to do, anyway, and instead went to a family run restaurant which only seated about 50 people. The staff was very friendly, they had excellent, traditional Italian food and homemade bread. Bella absolutely loved it and she hated that her stomach was full, she wanted more of that food!

Nik announced when they got back to their home that they were going to go to Volterra the following day, and that Bella should get a nice rest from her day out and about – and that there was already a servant running her bath for her. Of course, Kol was more than welcome to join in, but Klaus also reminded him to go out and feed as they didn’t want to drain their servants and they weren’t going to stop on the way to Volterra unless the immortal human needed a pee break. After all, 4 hours in a car were quite hellish, although they didn’t have to hold themselves to the speed limit, especially not since they were going in two cars. Mini vans were so not stylish.

~o.O.o~

Bella was dressed to kill. Myriam and Rebekah had put her into a red dress, fixed her hair and she was wearing light makeup and bright red lips. Kol definitely didn’t want to share a car with Bella by himself; Rebekah had to join them so he would keep driving and keep his hands off of Bella. She was so fuckable. All three the girls looked stunning, and Rebekah explained to him in the car that it was so that the Volturi could see not to mess with beautiful women, they’d be the last thing they’d see before getting killed.

In the trunk of both cars were cases of Molotov Cocktails, which would make it easier to set fire to the Cold Ones, as they weren’t sure how many of them were in Volterra. Elijah believed it to be in the hundreds, if not thousands, as word spread around like wildfire that the Olympic Coven had been murdered and most of the Cold Ones in the United States, and they’d all come next. Klaus couldn’t wait to set fire to Volterra. He really wanted to level the entire ancient city so something new could be built on its ruins and hopefully something beautiful.

And, of course, with the explosives in the boot, they had to drive a bit more careful, and Kol didn’t like to stick to speed limits in a beautiful car. It made the trip to Volterra even more agonizing, especially since Bella wasn’t paying attention to the way she sat in her chair, constantly moving around as she stared out of the window, looking at their surroundings. Sitting on her knees, then back on her ass, back on her knees, much like a small child and while he liked her excitement, he wanted to fuck her mercilessly. Bend her over on the hood of the car.

It was then when Bella looked at him with a cheeky smile on her face. Oh, she knew. She knew what was going on in his mind and she was actually doing things on purpose, knowing how much he loved seeing her skin. “You’re so not being fair,” Kol laughed, shaking his head. He still allowed her inside his mind, as it gave them both a sense of security, but in this situation it was a dangerous thing, because he would pull the car over and snap his sister’s neck to have his way with his girlfriend. “Get out of my head, you minx.”

Bella pouted as she sat back down in her chair, crossing her arms over her chest. “I can still function after sex, you know. All I have to do is knock Rebekah out and then you can drive us somewhere safe and we can have sex the way you want us to.”

“You will do no such thing!” Rebekah objected. “Wait until we’re done! You can have your celebratory freedom sex afterwards!”

Bella sat still for a few minutes before she started to fidget with the hem of her dress. Just as Kol thought; the only reason she was thinking about sex was to keep her mind off of what they were going to do in Volterra. He found it endearing that she pretended to be brave in the last few days but now that they were actually going to do it, he could see that she was nervous. “Bella, you do know that you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to, right? We’re all a bunch of vampires and we’re armed with molotov cocktails to make things progress faster. If you don’t want to help, that’s okay too.”

“I do want to help,” she said quickly, still fidgeting with her dress. “But there will be many, and maybe the newborns won’t be all that bad, there are good Cold Ones too, like Myriam’s parents.”

“Trust me, ducky,” Rebekah said as she gently squeezed Bella’s shoulder. “Anyone who’s standing with the Volturi is an enemy. And yes, maybe the newborns didn’t choose to become a vampire, we’ve created pawns ourselves too back in the day, but it’s war. And now they’re standing with those who have treated you so wrong. They’re no longer human, it’s alright to get rid of them. Because if we don’t, they will come after you.”

“The best defense is a great offense,” Bella nodded, her voice barely audible as she looked out the window. “But still, you don’t have to do this, you’ve already done so much.”

“We’re family now, Bella, this is what you do when you’re a family. You fight for each other, with each other and between each other,” Rebekah replied as she saw her brother grip the wheel tightly in annoyance. Ah, so he didn’t like everything about Bella! Rebekah had truly believed that the girl couldn’t do wrong in Kol’s eyes. “Honestly, get it out of your head that you’re alone and that you don’t deserve a happy, loving life.”

“I don’t want you to get hurt, that’s all.”

“And we don’t want you to get hurt, either. We’re doing this. As a family. End of.” Rebekah said as she slouched back on the backseat. “It’s been awhile since we’ve launched a big assault like this by ourselves, it’ll do us all good to stretch our fighting muscles and release some energy.”

“And when we’re done, we’ll find ourselves a beach with a great house and relax. Soak up the sun and no worries in the world,” Kol smiled at Bella. “And a lot of sex and nakedness.”

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