We lurched forward, but the truck didn’t move fast at all. It chugged through snow. The back tires spun before getting a grip and propelling forward, the engine wheezing in protest. Dante alternated between the clutch and gas pedals, pumping, pressing and letting up, and pressing again.
The way the truck rose and fell over snow drifts reminded me of a ship at sea. We’d been on some bumpy roads during our flight, but nothing like this. No one spoke as Dante navigated the road... or what used to be a road.
Dante yanked the wheel to the left and the right, fighting with the truck to stay straight. If the truck stopped at any point, it wouldn’t be moving again. We’d be stuck walking the rest of the way and we’d be without a vehicle.
We entered the forested path and Dante pressed on the gas. When the tires started spinning, he let up. Winter driving. Didn’t miss it. But if anyone could get us through, it was Dante.
It stopped snowing, and it took Dante a moment to turn off the wipers. His hands were occupied with the steering wheel and gearshift.
When we reached the plowed road adjacent to the highway, Dante gave a whoop of joy. “Made it!”
“Yeah, we’re definitely not going back up in the truck,” I said.
We turned onto the highway, heading north. Snow crept right up to the edges of the road on either side. The particles lifted and floated around the truck like vapor as we zipped forward.
Dante slowed the truck to thirty-five miles per hour a short ways up as we entered a tiny town encroaching along the highway.
Out of the blue, a ringing filled the truck. I gave a slight jump, realizing where it had originated when it rang again. Dante reached inside his pocket, pulling out the phone he’d gotten off our midnight visitor.
“Here, answer it,” he said, handing it to me.
“What?” I asked in disbelief.
My fingers closed around the phone. That didn’t mean I’d answer it. As it rang a third time, I saw the name “Pierce” on the screen. Hearing the phone ring was like listening to my own language after an extended sojourn in a foreign land. It had been far too long since I’d heard the familiar jingle associated with the civilized world.
“Here,” Giselle said, holding out her hand. “Give it to me. I’ll toss it out the window.”
That decided it. I touched the answer button just to spite her. Giselle scowled but said nothing. We were all silent as I pressed the phone to my ear.
“I got your message,” a man said impatiently. “What is so important that you wanted me to call right away?”
I held my breath, waiting.
“Hey! Nelson, I’m talking to you.”
“This isn’t Nelson.”
Two seconds of silence followed before the man said, “Pixie?”
Pixie? Seriously? Who named this chick? Sarah Palin?
Sure, why not?
“Yeah,” I replied.
“Where’s Nelson?”
“He’s, uh, indisposed at the moment.”
Creases appeared across Dante’s cheeks as a beguiling smile formed over his lips. His grin triggered my own, as though we were sharing a private joke or prank calling some fool vampire out in the boonies. The whole thing was ludicrous.
“Well, he must have been on a bad trip the other day because he left me a whacked out message about a guy wanting his help tracking down some hunters.”
My heart sped up, absorbing and storing the information in my head.
“I don’t know anything about that,” I answered with nonchalance. “But he has been extra paranoid lately. I told him to go easy on the grass, but you know how he is.”
I had to bite my tongue to keep from laughing. Bullshitting wasn’t usually my thing, but something had come over me and I couldn’t stop myself. This was the best entertainment I’d had in weeks.
Pierce sighed through the phone. “Nelson needs to get his priorities straight. Speaking of which, have you lined up more girls?”
My previous humor dissolved faster than snow over a hot iron grate.
“Lined up girls?” I repeated.
“Are you stoned too?” Pierce asked in an exasperated tone.
More like disgusted by the implication of his words. Was Pixie a vampire or a traitor to the human race rounding up girls for vamps to feed on? Because that’s exactly what it sounded like.
“I’m fine,” I answered coldly.
“So did you find some girls or not?”
“One girl,” I said between clenched teeth.
One girl who wanted to smash this sucker’s face in. I’d almost forgotten how depraved the underworld could be. I didn’t like vampires preying on humans any less than Dante. Most young women didn’t have the advantage of poisoned blood or combat training.
“One’s plenty,” Pierce answered.
“She won’t get hurt?” I asked.
“Not if she keeps her mouth shut. The last girl wasn’t our fault. I thought you said she was cool.”
Ice filled my veins. “I thought she was too,” I said, disgusted by the charade. I wanted to reach through the phone and remove every last one of Pierce’s teeth so he’d never be able to bite anyone ever again… and take out his tongue while I was at it. Maybe rip out his throat.
And whoever this Pixie was, I wanted to grind her to dust. What kind of sick bitch rounded up women like cattle for vampires to feed on? Everything inside me twisted in on itself.
“Where do you want her?” I forced myself to ask.
“We’re switching locations. Arlo found a cabin that hasn’t been occupied in at least six months.”
Guess we weren’t the only ones breaking and entering our way around the backcountry.
“What’s the address?” I asked.
“Nelson has it.”
“Nelson’s baked.”
“Nelson needs to lay off the weed.”
“I’ll tell him you said so.”
Pierce sniffed. “Fat lot of good that will do. When can you deliver?”
“I can pick her up right now,” I said.
“Where does she live?”
“In town.”
I figured the less detail the better. The conversation had turned into a verbal game of ping-pong. My objective: keep the ball on the table long enough to extract an address out of Pierce. This he did with his next serve; he took it one step further by providing directions. The place turned out to be a cabin roughly thirty miles from where we’d taken down Nelson.
I listened carefully, repeating the number 1451 in my head. The address was spray-painted on a rock at the end of a wooded driveway with reflective markers. Sportsman Road. Apparently Pixie was like an overzealous sheepdog rounding up victims before throwing them to the wolves. Not this time. This time the predators would become the prey.
“Will you be there?” I asked almost eagerly.
Pierce must not be very close to Pixie to not recognize her voice. The phone could be deceiving, but I wouldn’t have been at all surprised if his contact with the woman was minimal. I hardly recognized my own voice since answering the phone.
“I’m driving down from Fairbanks, but Arlo will be there. What’s the girl’s name?”
“Anna.” I smiled as I said it. No more Wendy. I was going with Anna from Frozen. Dante could be my backup/sidekick, Kristoff.
“Okay,” Pierce said. “Arlo will be expecting her.”
Well, Arlo was in for an unexpected treat.
“Toodles,” I chirped into the phone. It sounded like something a Pixie would say. I ended the call and dropped the phone in my lap.
Giselle twisted in her seat and leaned into me. “What are you doing?” she demanded.
“Slight detour,” I answered.
“Now we’re talking.” Dante sat up in the driver’s seat, eyes shining.
I knew he’d be on board and, for once, his obsessive desire to hunt didn’t bother me. Even Giselle seemed to realize it was futile to argue. She leaned back into her space, but not before crossing her arms in s
ilent protest.
“We need to turn around,” I said.
Dante glanced in the rearview mirror as he eased his foot over the brake. There wasn’t anyone coming from either direction. Dante made a U-turn in the middle of the road. The sick pit in my stomach turned with the truck, lifting with conviction.
My shoulders and neck ached. They’d tensed up the moment Pierce mentioned the girls. Going after him wasn’t enough to ease the stiffness out of my upper body. The best way to get the kinks out was by ending this disgusting bloodsucker.
“What’s the lowdown?” Dante asked.
“These vamps are accustomed to having girls delivered to them. From what the deviant said, something happened to the last girl. She might be dead.”
“We’ll make sure that never happens again,” Dante said.
“This is a bad idea,” Giselle muttered.
“We have a duty,” Dante responded.
They were both right. But whether I liked it or not, I was an experienced vampire hunter and these ones needed stopping before they hurt anyone else. I could no more turn my back on this than on a drowning child.
Like other missions, this felt equal parts wrong and right. The thought of ending murderous vampires from preying on girls gave me an unexpected thrill, like I really could make the world a better place. This is what we’d trained for and nothing boiled my blood more than women being turned into victims. I knew what it was like to be at a vampire’s mercy. It was one of the worst feelings in the world.
Arlo and Pierce were the type of predators I had no problem taking out.
The drive to Arlo’s cabin lasted roughly twenty minutes. Half of that time was spent jostling around on more dirt roads. You’d think I’d be used to it by now.
“Sportsman Road. This is it,” I said.
Dante took a right onto a gravel road worse than the one before. This one was filled with potholes. A frozen lake appeared through the skeletal trees. There were houses farther in, encroaching on the icy shoreline. Some had smoke rising from their chimneys and some looked vacant.
As we drove down the road, the properties became less distinguishable. Soon we were passing narrow driveways that led into a thicket of spruce trees and alders. The spruces became so dense we could no longer see the lake.
“Look for a rock with the numbers 1451,” I said.
Giselle stretched her neck toward the window. “There,” she said at the same time my eyes landed on a boulder with the numbers spray-painted on it in orange.
I sat up in my seat. “This is it.”
Dante passed the driveway, and he didn’t stop the truck until rounding another bend farther down the road. Once the drive with the reflective lights was out of sight, he put the truck in park. Dante looked at Giselle.
“Aurora and I will go in first. We’ll take care of Arlo and wait for Pierce to show up. Once they’re both disposed of, I’ll radio you. Same as before. Stay out of sight.”
Giselle gave a curt nod before opening the door and stepping down. I slid out after her. While she walked around the front of the truck to the driver’s side, I headed down the road. Dante caught up, jogging up beside me.
“Three down and another two this afternoon. We’re on a roll. Who needs the agency?”
Dante bumped my shoulder with his when I didn’t answer.
“This really isn’t the kind of detour I had in mind,” I replied, cool air slipping down my throat as I spoke. “The plan was to lay low. I know it has to be done, but I can’t help thinking this is reckless.”
“No one will ever know.”
“Right. Dead vamps tell no tales,” I said with an eye roll.
Dante grinned deviously. “They also don’t bite.”
My boots left faint imprints in the dusting of snow along the gravel road. We’d backtracked south a bit, but the storm that had hit the fishing lodge earlier could easily work its way down at any moment. The entire state was in the grip of an early winter.
Dante and I walked side by side. I could sense him inching closer to me. A quick sideways glance confirmed he had a big ol’ smile pasted on his lips.
“What?” I asked.
Dante’s grin widened when he spoke. “I’m proud of you. At the beginning of the year you were a newbie recruit fumbling her way through her first mission. Now you’re taking initiative, tracking down your own leads.”
“Excuse me? Fumbling! I killed Ivo and Patrick with no help from you. You weren’t even there. You were off… fooling around,” I finished, wincing. I hadn’t meant to bring up the fooling around part. It was irrelevant, but Dante clearly didn’t see it that way.
It shouldn’t have been possible for his smile to get any wider, but it did.
“Oh, I see,” he said, sounding way too delighted. “You weren’t upset about the mission. You were jealous.”
“No!” I hated how my voice sounded as if the opposite were true. I stopped in my tracks. Dante stopped with me, a look of challenge flashing across his face.
I put a hand on my hip. “I was angry and annoyed. You left me alone with killer vampires my first time in the field.”
Fane would have never, EVER put me through something like that.
My throat tightened.
Get over him. You’ll never see Fane again. Time to move on. This is your life.
Shut up, I snapped back at myself.
Dante straightened. The smile dissolved off his face. “Preparing you for active duty was my responsibility. This isn’t the Girl Scouts. I’m not going to always be there to hold your hand.”
My nostrils flared. “You know what? I’ve got this. Give me the radio. You can go wait in the truck with Giselle. I’ll radio you when it’s done.”
I held out my hand. As Dante stared at me, his shoulders began to sag. When he didn’t hand the radio over, I started forward at a brisk clip down the road.
Fine, he could keep the damn radio. I’d walk in and walk back out once I’d finished the job.
Dante hurried alongside me. I quickened my pace, but he closed in without hesitation. “I should have waited in the car,” Dante said, somewhat breathless, like he’d been holding the words in all along. “I should have been on standby around the block, nearby—not gone back to the cabin with Janine.” He took my shoulder, stopping me and turning me until our eyes met. My breath hitched when I saw the sincerity in his eyes. “I should have waited out front.”
My lashes lowered as I looked at his fingers, which had slid across my upper arm. It had been so long since I’d felt close physical contact or compassion from someone. Warmth spread through my cheeks, unbidden. A rush of emotions flooded me. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to lean away or allow myself to be sucked in by Dante’s apology.
My body ached for reckless abandon. A desire all too familiar came over me to grab Dante by the back of the neck and mash his lips against mine, to make the world melt away for a few minutes, to act on primal instinct the way I’d reacted to Fane the time he followed me onto the public bus after school. The bus incident had been purely physical—a reaction to a male body next to mine.
But a kiss could change everything.
A kiss could capture the heart and bind it to another for all eternity.
The times Dante and I kissed had been good—there was no denying that—but nothing that united our souls. I wouldn’t kiss him again.
I took a step away, cold air rushing in to replace the warmth of Dante’s hand.
“Hell,” Dante said, pressing his palm to his forehead then running it through his hair. “I should have never left Ivo’s house to begin with.”
“Don’t worry about it. That was a long time ago,” I said.
“Sometimes it feels that way, but it hasn’t even been a year.” He stepped toward me again.
I had to put a stop to this.
“You were only trying to help prepare me to hunt vampires, and it worked. I’m prepared.” The conviction of my words propelled me forward. I was both vampire and hunter.
I’d battled. I’d killed. I’d drunk blood. There was no going back. I wouldn’t if I could. I’d already forgotten what it was like to live a normal life.
A pair of familiar reflective markers flanked the driveway up ahead. Beside them, a spray-painted rock confirmed the address. Dante caught up to me, surveying the overgrown road leading in. At least his mind looked like it had switched back to the mission.
“Me and my bleeding heart,” I muttered. “Giselle’s right. This is a bad idea. We should be off securing winter transportation and supplies, not attracting unwanted attention.” I gave a derisive snort. “I left the agency and here I am still hunting vampires.”
“There’s no denying natural instinct,” Dante said. “It’s in our DNA.”
“It’s also in our DNA to suck blood.”
“Not mine.”
“Yeah? Well, you’re stubborn.” With that, I started down the wooded road. This was all beginning to feel like déjà vu. At least this time I knew what I was walking into. Another vamp cabin. There were too many of them, if you asked me. What was it about Alaska that attracted bloodsuckers to the state with the same ferociousness as mosquitoes? Cold, dark, and savage. Dante had once said it was the equivalent of Florida for seniors.
As soon as I caught sight of a cabin through the trees, I stopped and waited until Dante walked up next to me. Smoke streamed from a chimney pipe, rising above the trees.
“He’s expecting a lone woman,” I said. “I’ll take care of this one myself.”
Dante folded his arms. “What if he saw you on one of those flyers?”
“When I spoke with Pierce, it didn’t sound like Nelson got a chance to tell him anything about us, let alone get flyers into his hands.”
“What if he did?”
I patted the gun hidden beneath my coat in my holster. “Then I’ll shoot first.”
Dante glanced at my hip, eyebrows furrowing, as though unsure. “Okay, but be careful and yell if you need me. I’ll circle around and make my way up to the cabin from behind.”
“Sure,” I said dismissively.
Without a backward glance, I continued down the drive.
My heart beat at a steady pace as I walked up to the cabin. Once at the door, I curled my fingers into a fist and pounded on the door.
Whiteout (Aurora Sky Page 7