Author's Note: And another short chapter, sorry guys.

Tell me if I missed any minor details, such as whole sentences and pieces of plotline. ;) I was writing this at about 11:00 at night. More is coming soon, I promise.

Again, THANK YOU TO ALL MY REVIEWERS. It's like hugging a werewolf when I get new reviews-- I get warm and fuzzy all over.

Hey, and just as a side note, I thought you music lovers might want to know the inspiration for this story. Well, there's pretty much two songs I think of when I hear the title 'Without You':

Without You -- by Plumb

and (surprise!) Without You -- by Shaun Groves

Both are a little tame compared to the story, actually, but they got my brain juices going. Listen to those, if you dare! :) Enjoy!

27. Interval

"Carlisle!" My eyes popped open.

"Alice," groaned Emmett, "just tell us what the problem is."

I sat on the ground, gaping at what was left of my family: Esme, Emmett, and Edward. The three E's. Just lovely.

"Alice!"

"I--I can't," I stammered. "I don't know what happened."

That was a half-truth; I didn't know what the terrible blackness that blotted out the vision had been. It wasn't a good blackness, if there was such a thing. Vampires don't just pass out like mortals, so Carlisle's apparent fainting spell had me a tad disturbed. I did know that Carlisle and Rosalie were alive, for the moment.

But. Wait--

"Okay," I breathed dizzily, understating the well of warm feelings bubbling up through my heart. "Well, for starters, they're alive."

"What?" gasped Esme, Edward, and Emmett, all at once. Given my present state of giddiness, it was comical to watch.

Up to that point, we'd all been wallowing in abject misery, dwelling on our family's unraveling. Carlisle and Rosalie were presumed dead-- there was no evidence stating they weren't-- and all we had uncovered as to Jasper's whereabouts were his and Bella's scents next to a chunk of smudged writing on the cave wall. The message had been swiped clean, thoroughly unreadable. So we'd gone along without hope, pathetically consoling one another with the promise of saving Bella before Jasper got to her.

But now we had the beginnings of hope.

"They're alive!"

"They're what? What did you say?" Emmett's brain had obviously turned to sludge at the words 'they're alive'.

Esme's reaction was more touching. She put one hand to her cheek, her eyes beginning to shine. "He's alive," she whispered. Her mind was focused on one thing: Carlisle. She would be useless for a good twenty minutes.

Edward didn't say a word, but I knew what he was thinking. What is the bad news, Alice?

"The bad news is I have no earthly concept of where they are, but I think it's still Ireland." That wasn't even the bad news, to be honest. I chose to relay the bad news directly to my brother, now leader of our coven. That's not the worst of it, Edward. I don't know how long Carlisle and Rose will stay alive. In fact, by my vision, I'm not sure they're alive anymore.

Keeping his gaze neutral, Edward scoured my memory of the vision with a poker face, but I saw the sparse color in his skin die away entirely. He gave me a look that said if I wanted to live, I would remain optimistic for my family, then put his arm around Esme. "This is good news," he said gently, "but we need to move on. Jasper and Bella have been gone now for over three hours."

"We can't go after them!" Emmett was aghast. "We have to find Rose and Carlisle!"

"We have a good lead on Jasper, but we have no lead on them," Edward sighed irritably. "I know they're in danger, but we need Jasper--" here he stumbled "and Bella with us. Jasper's our military man, the one with the good attack plans. If we find him, we'll have a better chance of finding our family."

"But Jasper doesn't want to be found, Edward."

"Well, he went down this tunnel, didn't he? It's coated in Carlisle and Rosalie's scents, so maybe he does want us to follow him."

The unspoken objection was there in all of our minds, but the three of us hoped Edward wouldn't read it there. Jasper was after Bella. Why would he want us to see him murder her?

The vision of them together had reappeared in my cycle of flickering images, the one where Jasper was restraining Bella. I saw it in a whole new light, though. Jasper was holding Bella in order to drink her blood, which would explain Bella's screams. With a shudder, I took Edward's side of the argument. "He's right, Emmett. If we want to help Carlisle and Rose, we need Jasper first." When my older brother didn't look convinced, I added, "Bella needs us too." I didn't like admitting that the love of my life was hunting my best friend, but I had to face the facts.

Reluctantly, Emmett nodded. "Fine. You're right, I guess. It's our fault Bella's in this mess." Edward's pained expression made him tack on, "But seriously, dude, it's not your fault. Jasper just needs to get a grip."

"Hey," I growled. Jasper did the best he could.

"Oh, come on, Alice, don't pretend this doesn't annoy you. Bella's your best friend."

"Yes, she is, but I can't blame Jasper for being what he is." We couldn't blame any of us for being vampires. Sometimes, we did what vampires do. We slipped up, it wasn't anything we could help.

"We're wasting time," I said, climbing to my feet.

"Let's go," urged Edward, pushing Esme forward. "Who knows, maybe we'll come across Rose and Carlisle while we're looking for Jasper."

Blinding light! The spark of flares, emergency flares like policemen used at roadside accidents. Jasper's face, amidst the inkiness of twilight. Bella was lying on the ground, apparently unharmed, but with a taught expression. "Be careful," she said, but to whom, I didn't know.

Then there was a vampire with messy black hair and muted burgundy eyes, holding his head in his hands. He was in a shadowy place, maybe a warehouse--that was it, an old abandoned building on a riverbank, mid-nineteen hundreds, perhaps. Lying next to him was--

"Oh, there they are again!" I stopped in my tracks, and Emmett ran into me. "Do you see this, Edward?"

"Yes." Edward's eyes were unfathomable. "Keeping going, Alice. This tunnel can't be much longer."

I had seen Rosalie in the warehouse, still unconscious. And I had seen the woman entering the building, and the twelve vampires behind her as well.

"But--"

"I know," he said, now hustling me along. "But in order to find them, we have to find Jasper."

"What kind of backward logic is that?" I demanded. What did Jasper and Bella have to do with Rosalie in a warehouse with thirteen not-so-friendly vampires?

"Really, Alice, didn't you see your own vision? Did you notice what Bella was holding?"

Huh? He was going to have to do better than that.

Huffing in exasperation, my brother stepped out of the cave and into the sunshine, his skin lighting up with diamonds. "Think hard, sis. Think extrememly hard. Use your semi-photographic memory."

I put my brain to the task, rifling over the images in my head. Jasper's face, the signal flares, the warehouse. Ah, there she was, Bella on the embankment. I froze. Bella, on her stomach, behind a rock, on some dirt. On an embankment.

An embankment.

In frightening clarity, there it was, looming up in the distance in front of Bella. A building probably constructed in the eighteen-seventies or so, complete with slightly romanesque arches.

A large, cumbersome, panic-inducing warehouse.

We had to hurry.