Just kidding - they anticipated this and took a flight that avoided the volcano's path; Going Seattle to New York to Cairo to Rome was time consuming, but well worth the wait.
Just kidding again, since Twilight wasn't ripped from today's headlines. By the way, I was thinking about just how fast vampires are. We know that Edward is particularly fast, and that when he takes Bella to the meadow, he takes about five minutes to travel over five miles. Even with Bella on his back, he's moving at about 60 MPH. At that pace, he's still around the same speed as the rest of his family, and Bella isn't slowing him down that much, so I guess he probably hits 70-80 , maybe 90 under carefully controlled conditions. So liking fast cars makes sense, since (unless there's a great shortcut you can take by foot), it's still faster to travel in them than with your vampire speed.
Anyway, Alice makes some calls to call off all the Cullen dogs. She knows that the minute Edward senses one of them approaching, he'll find a way to get himself killed immediately. They also have no chance of outfighting the Volturi to save him. The only person who can get close without setting off his alarm bells is Bella -- with the added benefit that seeing her will probably prove to Edward that she's not dead.
Bella and Alice discuss all of this on the plane. Nobody is listening, but that still seems a little careless to me. Bella wants to know more about the Volturi, which means Alice can pass the first few hours of the plane ride with some lengthy exposition. So, it's rare for lots of vampires to live together -- they mostly travel alone or with a mate/life partner. The Cullens are, in fact, the second biggest group of vampires in the world (to the best of Alice's knowledge), with the exception of the Volturi. There are five family members (all over 3,000 years old), along with nine permanent guards and a larger number of temp-pires.
With that kind of power, nobody screws with the Volturi -- they really are treated like royalty in the vampire world. They take that position seriously, aggressively enforcing the only rule of Vampire Club - you do not talk about Vampire Club. Sometimes someone goes crazy or gets bored, and they threaten to make the secret sparkle society public, so the Volturi step in and put them down before it's too late.
Edward is actually headed to them to request death, which is odd; there aren't many suicidal vampires out there. There's only one chance to save him; hopefully, the Volturi won't honor his request, and then he'll decide to be overly theatrical in his method of forcing their hand. Maybe this will give them just enough time for Bella to dramatically arrive and save him from himself, seconds before death -- although that would be horribly cliche, and as we all know, Meyer is way too clever to let that happen.
Sure enough, Alice sees the Volturi decide to reject Edward's request. They think his ability could be very useful in their organization, and would hate to see it go to waste. So there's still hope...who could have guessed?
Bella asks about Alice's abilities some more, then says she wishes she was always right, and that she really could have become a vampire already. Alice has a great (and very unexpected) response: she thinks the whole "will they or won't they" situation has gotten way out of control, and that it's time for Bella to lose her vamp-ginity already. In fact, Alice wants to do it herself. The amount of Bella/Alice slash fanfiction just tripled.
Bella makes the horrible (and loud) suggestion that Alice bite her right now to get it over with, forgetting that she's not going to be much help with Edward if she's writhing in pain for the next few days. Oh, and Alice might just kill her rather than stop in time. For some reason, Bella feels like that's a chance worth taking, likely because Bella is an idiot. Alice reminds her that this isn't happening until they get out of Italy alive anyway, so they can always discuss it again later.
Bella sleeps for a while, then Alice wakes her to tell her that the Volturi have, in fact, said no to Edward (something Bella could never do, am I right?). Edward's first plan -- at least the first one Alice sees -- is to go hunting in Volterra, but then he changes his mind, probably to avoid disappointing Carlisle. Instead, he's going to walk out into the sun, in the main plaza of the city, at high noon.
The plane arrives in Florence. Alice steals a very fast car, because Alice is awesome and does things like that. More fun information: today is Saint Marcus Day, so there's a festival in Volterra which honors St. Marcus for driving all the vampires from Volterra 1,500 years ago before being martyred in Romania. In reality, he's still living among the Volturi today. Hilarious!
Alice reaches the city in record time. Her last piece of advice for Bella?
"Try not to trip," she added. "We don't have time for a concussion today."
Haha, Edward is DOOMED.
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