by Allie Santos
A branch protruded from her stomach as she lay against the upright tree.
I did this. I killed her. This was all my fault. My hands pressed against my pounding head, and bile rose up my throat. Her stomach, it was split open, and the sharp branches that had gone through her were covered in the purple oil.
What the hell…? It was coming from her stomach.
A voice finally registered through my hysterical thoughts. I looked at the woman and realized she was talking—no, cursing at me.
“Are you done crying, you sniveling little idiot?” she spat vehemently.
I jerked back and fell on my butt.
“Get off the ground, you worthless little human. I require your assistance.”
I pushed myself up mechanically. She was asking for help? She was still alive. That thought whirled around my brain as I got up from the chilling snow and approached her. The wound was open and angry. I fell to my knees and lost all the junk food I had stuffed my face with.
“Save me from pitiful humans,” she muttered. “Now! I don’t have your time.”
Her words startled me out of my disbelief, and my consciousness seemed to float off. Everything seemed so surreal. Maybe I had died, and this was all some weird manifestation.
She leaned her head back and closed her eyes, angry exasperation written all over her face. At her expression, what she’d snapped registered in my mind. I rushed to her and opened my mouth, but nothing came out. Clearing my throat, I tried again. “Wh-what do you want me to do?”
She gazed at me apathetically and made an exasperated sound. “Un-impale me. There is no exaggerating the uselessness of your kind.”
Not knowing what else to do, I stood in front of her, a hairsbreadth away from the sharp tip of the branch. What I had seen earlier finally clicked in my brain. Was that her blood? Why was it purple? Questions thundered around my brain, but I wasn’t able to voice them before she gripped my shoulders. Hard.
I grasped her arms and looked into her slightly pained eyes. I could ask questions later. Whatever purple stuff I saw could be explained after I helped her.
“When I pull, take a step,” I said.
She gave me a look, but I counted to three, not letting her eye-roll deter me. She was way too spry for having a stick through her.
I didn’t have time to dwell on it before I reached three and yanked. A sickening sucking noise emitted from the wound as she stepped forward and only got halfway down the branch. It took everything in me not to wrench myself from her grasp and barf all over the ground—again.
To distract myself, I gazed into her inhumanly beautiful face. The epitome of what an ice princess would look like. A blank-faced ice princess.
As I looked at her, I found myself enraptured by her porcelain skin. It was so smooth, almost pore-less in its perfection, like a doll, but that would be impossible. Accompanied by the blankness to her face, it was easy to doubt the reality of what was happening.
“Can you keep going?” she bit out, irritated.
My gaze flicked over her tightened lips, which were the only indication of her pain. “I think we sh-should let you rest,” I said worriedly.
“No,” she snarled and grasped my shoulders, digging her long nails into my skin. With a hard yank, she jerked herself down the branch, using me as an anchor to pull herself.
I braced myself, knowing full well that I would join her on the branch if I didn’t, and I had no desire to be a shish kabob. Not now, not ever.
She screeched as she threw herself forward, wrenching herself off the tree and falling to her knees on the ground. I fell at the same time, sprawling on my back. Groaning, I rubbed the back of my head and sat up.
“Are you crazy?” I rose to my knees and crawled over to her hunched-over form. It didn’t occur to me until then that this was all so unreal.
How had she survived? Any person would have died, if not on impact, then from the shock of going through it again. Not that I wasn’t thankful she hadn’t died, but how?
I patted my jeans in search of my cell so I could check the reception. My shoulders slumped. Shit. I’d thrown it. Like an emotional idiot, I’d thrown it who-knew-where.
She abruptly stilled, breathed in deep, and whipped her head in my direction, gazing at me calculatingly. “I can practically smell the innocence on you.” She tilted her head to the side. Her smile sent shivers down my spine.
Oh, boy, that did not sound good. Not at all.
“Let’s go.” She sprung to her feet in a swoop of energy, her stomach wound still open and raw.
“Wh-where are we going?” I squeaked as she grabbed my arm. The snow scraped my jeans as she dragged me behind her. I managed to find purchase and maneuvered myself onto my feet. Her quick pace didn’t stop, and I almost had to run to keep pace with her.
“To join my mate.”
“What? Why? We need to call a tow truck and an ambulance.”
“Forget about this existence. You are now my captive.” Her words stunned me into disbelieving silence. I tugged on my arm again, trying to make her release me, but her grip tightened like a vise. I muffled a whimper.
I surveyed the wreckage behind me, the only indication of my life, and my eyes welled. The last thing I saw before the iced-over trees swallowed me was the flipped, broken-down Toyota.
2
I cringed at the pain in my wrist from where she yanked me, at the cold seeping through my thin, stained sweater. I didn’t know how long we’d been walking, but the light from the sky had dimmed significantly. Where the wound had been gouged through her back remained open. The purple dribbling stains around it had dried like my own blood-crusted forehead.
I now realized she wasn’t human, but I still couldn’t wrap my mind around how she was walking around like nothing had ever happened. She’d even had enough energy to bark orders back at me when my steps stuttered with tiredness.
It wouldn’t be long before I wouldn’t have enough energy for anything, much less running. I’d waded through my shock enough to realize I had to escape. Considering I wasn’t too sure what exactly she was, I thought about what I had seen from her. She had a high pain tolerance for sure, and she was strong. I narrowed my eyes at her, and my gaze started at the top of her head and perused down. Her long, pale hair remained perfectly straight all the way down her back, and her dark clothing stretched across her body, molding to her.
My gaze flicked down to the unevenness in her gait. She was injured. She favored her left side, and with every step, there was a hitch. It was the side she’d had the branch through her.
I was glad she no longer held my arm in her bone-crushing grip. It actually gave me a chance to make a run for it. As the distance between us got wider, I started backing up slowly, and when she didn’t turn around, I took off sprinting.
The pace was unforgiving, and the ache in my joints screamed for me to stop, but I pushed my burning legs past the ache. Running was difficult in itself, but add in snow, and it was a new kind of hell. Air puffed out of me in a rush, and my steps faltered slightly. I looked around, feeling frantic when I didn’t recognize anything around me.
The cold air burned my throat, and I blinked away the sting in my eyes. I kept going in the opposite direction from that thing. As I rushed past another similar-looking tree, I saw her leaning against it with a smile stretched across her face. With a lurch, I took off in the other direction, and again she appeared leaning there. A sob wanted to explode from me, but I bit my tongue until I tasted copper and pushed on.
I wasn’t sure how long I ran, but I finally gave in to my body’s desire and fell to the ground with a dry heave. She was laughing at me, the tinkling sound echoing off the trees and surrounding me.
Panting, I curled up on the freezing snow, a whimper escaping my lips. I rubbed my achy wrist and squeezed my eyes shut. Wrapping my arms around my sore, numb legs, I tried to block everything out, but the elements wouldn’t let me. Neither would the crazy person who had been laughing at my att
empts to escape.
“Get up, human.” All her chilly voice succeeded in doing was make me tremble more. Who was she? What was she? It had seemed like she teleported to different locations, but when she appeared right by me, I realized she was just that fast.
Shock and numbness had been my two companions the last couple of hours, manifesting the moment I’d looked up at her in the middle of the road, and it had only worsened as time passed. Part of me hoped I was going to wake up from this surreal experience. I was just so tired and cold.
So, so cold.
The chilled air roused memories to the forefront of my mind. About the long, desolate winters in Oregon. Of growing up and never feeling safe. Just the bone-chilling cold that seemed to stifle my spirt. In a sense, the snow had become an elemental manifestation of all my pains. And this experience wasn’t helping one bit.
“I said, get up,” she hissed. I squeezed my eyes shut, wallowing in the despair that threatened to suck me down. Before I could fall into my mind, the cold hand that seemed imprinted on my skin returned to the grooves it had dug into my wrist.
My body followed my arm as it was yanked up. I found myself standing on trembling legs and then back on my side in an instant when her hand cracked across my face. Reeling from the sting in my frozen cheek, I stared up at her in shock.
“You sad, useless creature. When I tell you to do something, do it.” She sneered down at me, her cruel beauty breathtaking in the fading light of day. “He’ll be thanking me for getting rid of you. Who would want you?”
The words echoed in my brain, rattling around and swirling with the rest of the familiar words that had been thrown at me throughout my life. Useless. Waste of space. I wanted to do nothing more than curl into myself on the ground and wallow in those words, words I’d tried my entire life to shake.
Fighting against those thoughts, I dug deep within me and searched for logic within all of this. Some way to reason with this monster.
“He? Who’s he?” When her eerie grey eyes settled on me, I choked the rest of my sentence out of the tight tunnel of my throat. “I-I mean, you said you had a mate, right? So, like a friend?”
Her expression seemed torn between anger and an odd look that was too cruel to be called happy. It was more like glee. It was that very emotion that won out. The very essence of it was portrayed in the cruel upturn of her lips and the malice in her eyes.
“Yes, human.” She began striding away but paused with her back to me, looking around as she talked. “A special friend.” She put emphasis on the word. “How would your little mind process it? Let’s say he’s my other half, like a fiancé in your human world.”
I looked behind me as she mused, seeing nothing but the long expanse of snowy trees lining the forest. The desire to take off again and try my chances against nature’s elements pounded within me, but the memory of her speed kept me in place.
“All you will succeed in doing is making me angry.” Her mocking words made me pause in my contemplation.
What the hell was I thinking? If that tree literally going through her stomach had been unable to kill her, what chance did I have?
Defeat slumped my shoulders. Getting to my feet, I trudged after her almost floating steps. I kept my mouth closed as my brain rushed to process my current situation. Human. She’d called me a human, which only confirmed my suspicions. What was she?
The question swirled in my mind for what felt like hours of dragging my feet through the thick snow. My socks were wet, my feet felt like ice chips, and I shivered until there were no more shivers left in me. My sore legs wanted me to give in again, but I pushed on after her, not wanting to incur her wrath. I tried stepping into the indents of her barely-there footprints, so I wouldn’t fall into a random snow-covered hole. It felt like this hell would never end.
I looked back at the contrast of the ankle-deep holes my own feet left. My brain thought back to the fantasy novels my sister had gone on and on about. About vampires and werewolves. I gazed back at her, at the straight spine, ethereal beauty, and pale skin. Then my brain jerked me to what had happened earlier with the crash. She had been impaled on a tree and survived. All of it made me think vampire.
What if I was food? The thought sent a shiver down my spine. It was the first thing I’d felt since I lost feeling in my body. I’d become numb from the cold.
She came to an abrupt halt, too fast for me to realize and stop in time. I bounced against her and fell back at the impact. Again. My body felt like it had slammed into a brick wall. She whirled around, and I couldn’t help but cringe back.
I peeked through my eyelashes to catch her look of distaste as she turned around and placed her hands on her waist, gazing at our surroundings. It wasn’t long before she started walking again.
I hated myself for my fear, but at the same time, I wasn’t stupid. I was a survivor. I had to live so I could reach Annie and Hash. I would live to see them, no matter what it took.
The thought of them sent a bolt of pain through me as it did every time my mind wandered to them. Annie needed me. I should have called her back to tell her I was coming for her. But if I had, she would have expected me, and it would have worried her when I hadn’t shown up. This way, she just thought I was a shitty person. I’d rather she be disappointment in me than to worry.
Annie’s pubescent face flashed across my memory with every shutter of darkness. Wavy hair, just like mine, framed her youthful, round face. Five years younger than me, she would be eighteen now. Almost the same age I was when I left. Another pang shot through my chest as I pictured her grin. That smile became rare when she was old enough to realize how crappy our home situation was.
Then there was Hash. The thin, flea-riddled street dog I’d saved from starvation when I was seventeen. He’d grown into a beautiful white German Shepard mix once I’d bathed him and gotten food into him. I’d had to keep him secret, because if my dad ever caught wind of him, he would’ve snapped his neck. I’d left him, too. Not for any other reason than I’d wanted him there for Annie, but how I missed that damn mutt.
Now, this happened… this abduction? I needed to find a way to survive this for Annie. I owed it to her to try to find a way.
“Here we are,” the woman said.
I looked up, drawn out of my angst, and followed her gaze. All I saw were trees and snow. The exact same view that had been present the entire time walking. I shot her a dubious look, pursing my lips.
She turned around, and her steady silver gaze assessed me. Seconds went by and then minutes, and my palms began to sweat. I fisted them. Without conscious consent, I took a step back, shivering at the cold, then she was in front of me. I couldn’t hold in the yelp that escaped me, and I swallowed harshly as my chest rose in panic.
The last thing I saw was her fist flashing toward my face. A wave of pain shot up my jaw. Then darkness swallowed me.
All I felt was aching cold. It was a different kind of chill than I was used to. This one reached for your bones and curled around them.
Realizing my body was shivering, I started to come to my senses. There was a sharp jabbing in my stomach, along with an almost swaying motion. Blinking my eyes open, I came face to face with fitted black leather. It looked like the material the woman had been wearing. If a light could have blinked on above my head like a cartoon, it would have.
The crazy asshole had punched me, and now I was being toted around like a thing over her shoulder.
I wrinkled my nose when the pounding in my head registered, and I couldn’t help the groan that slipped out of my lips. The shoulder under my stomach tensed and the hard grip on my legs loosened. I tilted sideways onto a hard, compact ground.
“Good, you’re awake. I was getting sick of having to touch you.”
Prostate on the chilled ground, my hands went up, and I gripped my head. I didn’t know what was worse. The pain in my head, stomach, or the painful cold that felt like it wanted to eat me alive. Oregon winter nights had gotten colder than what I r
emembered. I massaged my temples and squeezed my eyes shut. I heard the crunching of snow but didn’t bother looking as I gathered my bearings.
“This will do.” The crazy vampire’s voice drew me out of dwellings.
I opened my eyes and saw her surrounded by snow. She remained chillingly still as she gazed into the dark distance. The place where her soft black leather clothing had been ripped by the branch no longer seeped blood. I squinted, trying to get a better look in the falling light. The wound was completely closed. How was that possible?
She stayed in her too-still position for moments longer. What was she staring at? I could barely see her shape as the wind picked up and whipped my hair around. She moved suddenly as if coming out of a trance. She used her foot to mark a small indent in the snow.
“Dig here until you get to the dirt.” That was all. Jeez, that sounded super easy. Not.
I walked forward and looked down at seven inches of snow. That was a guess considering I could see nothing at all. Regardless, my hands would surely fall off if I stuck my hands in there.
My gaze flicked up to her. She was walking around, observing the area. She removed something strapped to her back. Squinting, I saw what seemed to be a featureless bag, so thin I hadn’t processed its existence when I’d first seen her. Or maybe I’d just been so distracted by being kidnapped. I rolled my eyes at my sarcastic thoughts.
She fished inside the thin sack and pulled out a square of material. She set it down after glancing over to where I was, roughly ten feet away. With a satisfied nod, she muttered some words I couldn’t make out from the distance. If I hadn’t been pinching myself, I would have thought I was seeing things. Yet the sting of my fingers squeezing my flesh made me acknowledge that what I saw was real.
The piece of cloth unfolded and expanded. It all took about five seconds and what was left was a dome the size of my apartment. I stared in open-mouthed amazement.