Ban Together Chapter 21

Running through the woods always felt so freeing; like there was nothing that could catch her and keep her bound to any one spot. To say Alice was a free spirit was a gross understatement. She may not actually remember her human life but the feeling of being trapped, of being controlled and confined was very much present from her human. So in her vampire life, she did everything she could to escape those feelings. When she found her mate, he gave her the perfect excuse to let loose everything she had tried to hold back to try and regain the humanity she had lost.

Jasper Whitlock was a man of action and of greed. All he wanted from life was to thrive and to survive. His time as a human was spent making sure his family survived, he did everything he could to ensure they lived on, even at the cost of his own life. Soon after Jasper was turned, he learned the cruelty that vampires were capable of and all he focused on was his continued survival. He was good at surviving, reading people’s emotions to make sure his goal of enduring won in the end. But after his time with the newborn armies in the south, he had learned one thing: humans were weak and vampires that were strong were the ones that ruled and survived. While he had no intention of going out to slaughter as many humans as he could, he had no love for them. They were far too greedy, far too weak and as far as Jasper was concerned, they weren’t worth his time. If it wasn’t for the fact he could feel their fear and pain every time he killed them to eat, he would have continued on with the normal diet, but after meeting his mate, things changed.

Alice wanted to learn what it was to be human; by any means necessary. She was obsessed to learn what it was she had forgotten. Jasper was obsessed with surviving, to make sure he and his mate were untouchable. Together, with Alice’s visions and Jasper’s empathy and war experience, their experiments began.

Alice wanted to learn what it was she lost. So she took humans and put them through various situations of her design. She would see what would happen if a child got lost in a store, if a faithful husband suddenly wasn’t faithful, if a good teenager decided to run away from home. There were lots of scenarios that she wanted to run, that she wanted to learn from. With Jasper’s help, there was very little she couldn’t do and with her visions, they could literally get away with murder and never once be suspected.

When she met Carlisle and learned of his experiments, what she wanted to do took on a whole new level.

“They should be tied in a basement in that cabin.” Jasper said with his Southern drawl and that always made Alice crave him in the most delicious of ways.

They were tying up loose ends before they made their way across the water. Alice was running an experiment on ‘two lovebirds’ and how much they would offer to do to themselves to save the other… or the opposite, how much they were willing to do to each other to save themselves. Honestly, she was just bored and decided to do some things she had seen from horror movies; humans were so good at coming up with ways to torture and kill each other that she couldn’t help but borrow their ways sometimes.

Alice’s visions were becoming cloudy and she didn’t like that. There were too many people involved that were able to make decisions and sway others’ decisions her own power was having trouble figure out what was going to actually happen. Carlisle believed that if they were closer to the decision makers, not too close of course because they didn’t want to get captured, Alice would be able to get a clearer picture of what was going to or what could happen. Truthfully, Jasper didn’t want to go anywhere near Europe while he knew the Volturi were there and that it was practically guaranteed that Rosalie and Emmett had run off there was well. But he was willing to do whatever was necessary for Alice to no longer be blind; he knew they were safer with her power working than any amount of danger they could be in while in Europe and so close to Italy.

Alice and Jasper stopped just inside the long abandoned cabin. Originally they had thought about killing the humans and to be done with them. Alice was more than okay with killing as long as Jasper wasn’t close enough to feel their emotions. Instead, she had one more game she wanted to play with them before they met up with Carlisle and Esme. Alice wanted to see what the two humans that were already starved and on the brink of death, what they would be willing to do to save their own life. She wanted to see if she could get them to hurt each other at one last chance of freedom. Jasper would wait in the cabin while Alice climbed down the well that lead to a very deep cellar.

“Try to be move quickly darling, we have a time table we need to keep.” Jasper cautioned more than aware that Alice could easily get carried around with her games. He wanted her to have her fun but they also didn’t want Carlisle didn’t impatient with them. Alice had too much fun with his experiments and since he knew the best way to keep out of the Volturi’s radar, she felt it best to keep with him. So for now, Jasper would do what would make his mate happy and keep ties with Carlisle.

At least until his usefulness ran out or he became too brazen with his experiments. He was already likely already on the Volturi’s kill list now that everyone was there, but until Alice said to leave, he would stay until he could verify their safety was in question.

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Carlisle and Esme arrived in London with relative ease. Carlisle wasn’t sure exactly what access the Volturi had when it came to their credit cards, but thankfully Alice and Jasper had so many aliases made for them with so many different cards from many different countries of origin that Carlisle was sure if he used his cards just once or twice he would be safe. Not even Rosalie and Emmett knew of all their aliases.

Edward was off securing them a decent and safe place for them to lay low for an unknown amount of time while they waited for Alice and Jasper to meet up with them. Apparently Alice had a few humans she needed to kill off from her games before meeting them in Europe. Carlisle personally thought she could have just left the humans rot where they were but Alice felt it was safer to kill them instead of risk them escaping or being found. There was one thing Carlisle never doubted since he had met the couple: never go against Alice. For as much as Alice, and therefore Jasper as well, listened to and did what Carlisle told them to do, Carlisle was under no illusion that if provoked or if she felt it in her best interest, she could easily turn on Carlisle and everything he had studied and worked towards would be wasted.

Carlisle and Esme relied, perhaps a bit too much, on Alice and her gift. While her gift was very useful, Carlisle felt it made him take too many risks because he was so sure Alice’s gift would catch if they went too far. Case and point, his goals with the newest human Bella. While Edward hadn’t caught on to his true intentions, it was far too easy to hide thoughts from someone that thought they were impervious to such things, Carlisle felt he should have just killed Bella when Edward decided they should all leave. But his desire to see what would happen with separation from a singer while the vampire knew very well the singer was alive and well was just too tempting.

“Do you think we’ve gone too far?” Esme asked as they looked out the window of the restaurant they were waiting in. It was a cute little bistro that seemed quite popular with tourists and locals alike. They were only there because it offered them shelter from the sun that had just peaked out from the clouds.

Carlisle decided to come to Europe for one reason and one reason only: he wanted to see what Edward would do to save his beloved Bella. The fool was still under the impression that she was sent to him to be his mate as a challenge from God. The boy was a fool but because he gave Carlisle a lot of protection with his gift and now with a very good final experiment with him, Carlisle couldn’t help but have a soft spot for the boy.

As soon as they were all together again, Carlisle would get Alice alone and have the two of them come up with a plan to get Edward captured. Hopefully Alice would be able to get enough visions to learn what would happen to Edward once they send him to lions’ den, to his final death. Alice may want to see how far humans would go for their loved ones, Carlisle wanted to see what the more possessive and territorial creatures, vampires, would do for their loved ones.

All he had to do, with Alice’s help to spin the tales, is convince Edward that his mind reading abilities would be more than enough to get him into the castle, find Bella and then to rescue her. He would be captured and Sulpicia would read all his thoughts, but by the time that happens, he and Esme would be long gone. He was also hoping that with Victoria on the warpath to kill Bella, she would another distraction for the Volturi that would allow Carlisle and his mate to disappear. Alice and Jasper would be on their own and perhaps after they were forgotten about they could reunite to begin their experiments again.

But he was getting ahead of himself. For the time being, he needed Alice and her visions to get rid of Edward and his godlike superiority complex.

“No, I believe we have only toed the line and once we rid ourselves of Edward, we will be just fine.” Carlisle was sure that he and his mate would be forgotten about in time once they were both forgotten about laid low long enough. “We will be able to start my work again once they have forgotten us. Edward will take the fall with walking into their castle in attempt to save his mate and we will be safe, far away from Italy and eventually forgotten about.”