Ban Together Chapter 15

No one had moved for nearly an hour; which wasn’t really a problem for vampires. But Jasper was starting to feel the tension around the room a lot more keenly than the others in the room. Everything had been fine until Alice had her vision. Alice hadn’t even been given a chance before Edward opened his mouth and told everyone Victoria had left the States and went to Italy.

The idiot redhead did exactly what Alice had warned not to do and went to Italy, to the Volturi stronghold, to likely just get herself killed.

In all reality, they had actually expected Victoria to do just that; they just had wanted it to happen so quickly. They were planning on keeping in the States for just a little longer to try and wait to allow the Volturi to fall into a false sense of security. If there was anything vampires had, that was time and Carlisle and themselves were more than willing to wait as long as they needed. They were really only being restricted with Bella and her mortality. But that was Edward’s problem.

Alice and himself were more interested in seeing how far Carlisle was willing to go and what the actual outcome would be. Alice had found that since Edward was acting mostly on instincts to get closer to his singer, whom he still foolishly wanted to believe was his mate, she wasn’t able to see what the end result of everything would be. Alice was so unused to knowing how everything would turn out that she was completely drawn to Carlisle’s convoluted plan just so she could see how it would end; her curiosity was getting to her.

Jasper thought it was a little humbling for Alice to realize she couldn’t see everything; but at the same time, he wanted to help her get what she wanted. And what she wanted wasn’t all that hard to obtain; she was just wanted to see the end result of Carlisle’s plans and Edward’s delusions. Edward was still of the belief that they were all going along with his idea’s, not Carlisle’s. Alice had done an amazing job in making sure that they were well prepared to make sure Edward hadn’t caught on to their plans.

Edward sill believed Bella was his mate and still believed the three of them were trying to help him get his mate back. Even with his gift, he was still blinded to their real goals. He had no idea that he and Alice were just in it to see what happens and Carlisle was only in it to see what would happen when a vampire lost his singer and when a mate loses a mate. Carlisle was working on experiments on both Victoria and Edward; Edward just didn’t know it. Edward was foolish enough to think that vampires couldn’t evade his gift when in fact, given just a little practice any vampire could.

Truthfully, since Jasper didn’t have to play being human and he wasn’t required to fight, he was actually having a nice time as he watched his mate do her best to add her own manipulations to Edward and what his actions without Carlisle noticing. He would help her of course, he was her mate after all and only wanted her to succeed. Jasper figured as long as they were safe and his mate was happy and having fun, he was okay with going along with everything. He would only start refusing to do something if his mate was in danger and thus far, they were both safe. He would make sure it stayed that way.

***

Carlisle was bent over his desk, going over all of his notes and plans. He couldn’t help the gleeful smile that crossed his face as he looked at how well his plans were working. He hadn’t found a vampire that lost their mate and had lived for so long before. He was completely ecstatic that his chance had presented itself.

When Edward had first claimed that the human was his mate, Carlisle at first was genuinely happy for his first turned. Edward had been so depressed and unhappy with his undead life that Carlisle was concerned that he may get himself killed someday. That would have been unfortunate but not the end of the world. But then he brought home the human and seemed to become happier.

Then everything went wrong. Jasper attacked the human.

That would have been fine; Carlisle would have been okay with the human’s death. His mate may have been sad for a little bit, but she would have been fine in the long run. But then Edward did what any teenager seems to excel at: he made things worse.

But that was okay because then Edward did what Carlisle hadn’t expected and made his experiments so much more worthwhile. He left who he was determined to believe was his mate and created his own suffering. There was the unfortunate side-effect of Edward bemoaning to everyone how miserable he was without his mate and how he wanted to hunt Victoria down to finish what he really should have in the first place.

That was when Carlisle decided to try an experiment. He decided to reach out to Victoria to offer his help for her to capture the human she wanted revenge on while on the other side he was ‘doing his best’ to help Edward track down Victoria to kill. It was so fascinating to Carlisle to watch Victoria’s thoughts and actions turn more and more primal as her search for Bella escalated. They knew it was only a matter of time before she abandoned them to go on her own to work faster. Truthfully, they hadn’t really been helping her in the first place. She only thought they were.

Carlisle had hoped they would have kept her a little longer as their tool, but that was fine. He would be able to work things about, especially with Esme working him. They really were a perfect pair. While Carlisle was very good at coming up with goals and what he wanted to figure out, and a general plan, Esme was very good at thinking through all the details. She would always make sure he never got ahead of himself or ignored a small detail that could explode into a bigger problem on them.

Now that Victoria was out of their control, Carlisle really had to focus on Edward and seeing how far he could push him. There were several more experiments he wanted to try on him before seeing if he could get Edward to storm Voltera and possibly either attacking the Volturi or Victoria. But he had to play his cards right and make sure he didn’t wait too long. That was where Alice came in. Timing was very crucial to make sure Victoria didn’t act too soon before they were ready and that they were able to get Edward to Italy. They also still needed to figure out where they were going to be. They knew they should at least be in Europe, but likely not Italy. At least, that’s their thought process for now; that could change any moment. They just needed to wait and see and plan and just make sure they don’t overlook any detail.

***

Emmett and Rosalie had decided that swimming would be their best bet. Mostly because that meant that wouldn’t exactly know where they were going and therefore couldn’t make a decision on where to go. Rosalie was truly the better one at not making decisions so Emmett had decided to just follow Rosalie. Whatever Rosalie did, he would mimic. That didn’t necessarily protect them from Alice seeing Emmett’s mimicry, but it gave them their best shot at not being caught.

They didn’t know exactly where the Cullen’s were, but they were sure they were still in the States. They were hoping once they crossed the Atlantic they wouldn’t have as much to worry about. They knew most, if not all, of Alice, Jasper and Esme’s connections were from the States. Of course, there were the occasional nomads they had met and made friends with that could very well be in other parts of the world, but they were willing to bet they would be safe from any of their friends.

It was Carlisle’s friends they were unsure about. He had been around a lot longer than any of them and had a lot more friends around the world than even Jasper had. The biggest problem with that was that they didn’t know all of his friends. They didn’t know how involved his friends were with his games. For all they knew, Carlisle could be doing their bidding or they could be completely unaware of what he was doing. They really had no idea and that was their problem. So, until they were safe, Emmett was going to follow Rosalie’s lead and do what she said.

Once they got to Italy though, they had no idea what kind of reception they would receive. Rosalie had always been very close with the Denali’s, the sister’s even having made serious offers for Rosalie to join their coven at one point. But now, now that his Bella Bear was with them and seemingly upset at all of them for leaving like they had, he wasn’t sure how they would be greeted.

But Rosalie was sure that they would be safe in Voltera. Neither of them had ever been there and they had only heard what Carlisle had said, which wasn’t overly positive, but some of their friends from Europe had positive things to say about the Volturi. But whether the Volturi were good or bad, Rosalie said that was their best bet and Emmett was confident in Rosalie. She had never steered him wrong before and he wasn’t going to start believing she would now.

So they would swim and hopefully be able to just run straight to Voltera with no interceptions from Victoria or Carlisle’s friends. Emmett was sure that if they did run into trouble, he would be able to fight their way out of it and Rosalie would be able to help trick their way out. Rosalie could be tricky when she wanted to be and Emmett’s strength was nearly unparalleled. Hopefully that would be enough to get them to what they believed to be safety.