Chapter 4
After a restless night, Alice left Jasper in their room and went downstairs. She smiled at Nessie as she observed that she was clearly growing more mature and grown up every day. "Aunt Alice, mummy and daddy are gonna be home soon!" Renesmee said in an excited voice. "I know honey, not long now," Alice said with a strained smile. She felt a weight of dread settle in the pit of her stomach, today would be the day that she had to tell the rest of her family what was going on. Esme came into the kitchen, followed by Rosalie, laughing and smiling with each other. Alice felt guilty for inevitably dropping a bombshell on them that would wipe the smiles of their faces.
The rest of Alice's day passed with a blur, full of false smiles and meaningless conversation. She noticed Jasper keeping his eye on her all day as if when he looked away she would suddenly be snatched away. Alice snorted to herself, Jasper needed to gain some confidence in her, she could reasonably protect herself! When the clock struck six, all the inhabitants of the house gathered in the living room to welcome Edward and Bella back. Renesmee in particular was bouncing around in excitement at seeing her 'mummy and daddy' again. However, as time wore on and on there was still no sign of them. At half six, Carlisle had developed a crease between his eyebrows and Esme was drumming her fingers on the table top anxiously. By the time the clock read seven o' clock, Carlisle stood up and took out his phone, "I've no idea where they've got to, I'll call Edward now," he said.
He typed in the number and waited for 30 seconds. "It rang out," he said hollowly. Everyone rose from their seats and Nessie looked around, confused. "What's going on?" she said in a loud voice, "why aren't they here yet?" Esme hurried over to Nessie and muttered reassurances about there being lots of traffic and that they would be here soon. Alice felt extremely worried, what if her visions about Aro were somehow connected to this disappearance of her best friend and her brother. One glance at Jasper's face showed that he was feeling as worried as she was.
Alice grabbed her phone and said in a relatively calm voice, "there's got to be some kind of rational explanation for this, I'll call Tanya in Denali, they must have just been delayed." She typed in the number and after the third ring she was greeted by Tanya's bell like voice. She sounded relaxed and Alice felt herself calm down. "Hi Tanya, it's Alice, I was wondering what time Edward and Bella left your house, it's just they haven't come home yet." "Oh, well they left here hours and hours ago, they should be in Forks by now," Tanya said in a cautious voice. Alice forced her voice to sound carefree, "Well, no matter Tanya, they must have just stopped off somewhere on the way, thanks anyway, bye," Alice flipped her phone shut and recounted her conversation to the rest of her family. "There might just be traffic," Emmett said, "I'll see if there's anything on the local news."
He grabbed the remote and flicked the channel over to the local news. The main stories were just coming up and the first story was the announcement of a car crash a few miles out of Forks. Alice's mind went into panic overdrive as they showed some photos of the battered up car which looked an awful lot like Edward's silver Volvo... Clearly, everyone was thinking the same thing as they travelled faster then the speed of light towards the television and listened intently to what the overly smiley news presenter was saying. "...the car, which has been identified by police as a silver Volvo, has had its registration plate smashed beyond recognition. The police have also stated that the force of the crash would have instantly killed anyone in the car but strangely, no bodies have been found, the police are appealing for witnesses to the crash which happened at approximately 10 minutes to six this afternoon. " At that, the programme cut to the latest weather forecast.
Alice felt that if she could cry, she most certainly would. Despite being crashed, the car looked almost identical to Edward's and the time of the crash worked out as well. Although, the crash wouldn't have hurt either Edward or Bella, they were vampires after all, they must have ended up somewhere that wasn't home. Carlisle looked round at them all and told Rosalie to take Nessie out of the room and Rosalie obliged by scooping the little one into her arms and strode out of the room.
Alice suddenly felt a flash of pain in her head, her vision swam in front of her and she collapsed to the floor, she knew that it was happening again. The last thing she saw was Jasper's stormy eyes staring into her own before her mind was cast to a high ceilinged room. There in front of her, sat on thrones were Aro, Marcus and Caius looking regal, pompous and extremely proud of themselves, their blood red eyes shining with glee. Alice gasped, as there lying on the floor in front of the thrones were Edward and Bella, there faces twisted in pain and their eyes almost black. Aro let out a high pitched cackle that made Alice's blood boil, and said, "You will never see your specimen of a daughter again you pathetic excuses for vampires." "No!" screamed Bella, "What did we ever do to you? We never hurt any of you; you have no reason to do this!" "Quiet you stupid girl," muttered Caius, "We have every reason to do this, you humiliated the noble Volturi and insulted all of us, our wives and the entire Volturi guard, you deserve this punishment," "and the rest of your family, including your daughter will suffer next," Marcus added.
Alice cried out and she found herself back on the floor of her house with all of her family crowded around her. She knew now that all of them would die unless she stopped it. It was time for her to go to Italy.