Flutter mba-3

by Аманда Хокинг

  “It’s the sun,” I told him, and my words had already started getting that slurred edge to them. All the colors in the room were spectacularly bright, and this deep relaxation flooded over me. “The sun is super draining. I don’t think I can go back out in again, not like that. And then walking around for like seventeen hours? It’s just too much for me…”

  “It’s not too much for you,” Ezra shook his head again as he watched me struggle to stay sitting up and conscious. “You have almost infinite power, Alice. You’ve got to stop thinking like you’re human.”

  “You are!” I spouted, but clearly, that didn’t make sense.

  “Yes, of course, I am,” he rolled his eyes.

  When he opened his own canister to drink, my body tried to insist that I was still thirsty. I craned towards him woozily, and he smiled at my own greed. There was no way I could get up and walk across to his bed, so it wasn’t like I could steal it from him. He drank his at a much slower rate, and I wondered how he could do that. As soon as it hit my lips, I had to have it all, as fast as I could.

  I started to ask him a question, but I didn’t even know what it was, so I let myself fall back on the bed.

  Pleasure was rolling over me, and I didn’t want to fight it anymore. I know Ezra wanted to me express more self-control, but then again, he already claimed that I was expressing self-control. If this was me under control compared to other vampires, then I’d hate to see what they were like.

  “Oh… the lycans are worse then this, aren’t they?” I groaned.

  “I don’t really understand the question.” Ezra got up and walked over to me. “Why don’t you get some sleep, Alice? You’ve had a long day. Get under the covers.”

  Naturally, since I couldn’t even really sit up, I couldn’t crawl under the covers. Ezra lifted me up, drew back the covers, then laid me back down and tucked me in. There was something really great about that, even without the whole blood-high. I couldn’t even remember the last time I had been really tucked in. Jack would kind of do it sometimes, but it was different because he was my boyfriend. Before I had time to really figure out how this was different, I passed out.

  Chapter 5

  Dazzling green lights flashed across the clear night sky. We had been crossing another river when I happened to look up and notice the aurora borealis dancing above us. I stopped where I was on the frozen shore and just stared at them in awe. They were breathtakingly beautiful, and even Ezra had pause and look, and nothing stopped him in this trip.

  If yesterday Ezra had been driven on his pursuit of Peter, today he was relentless. I refused to go out in the sun, so he let me sleep until four in the afternoon, but I’m not sure how much sleep he’d gotten himself. Using his phone and his laptop, he’d been busy trying to get coordinates for where he thought Peter would be. I’m still not entirely sure who or what his sources were because of his insistence on everything being so anonymously vague.

  When I got up, I responded to a couple text messages to Jack, got ready, and over ten hours later, I found myself in the middle of the Finnish Laplands, staring up at the spectacle of lights above me. Smartly, I’d just put on boots, a sweater, and jeans, so I wasn’t suffering from all the constraints I had been the night before. Plus, since I’d avoided the sun and actually slept, I felt surprisingly good on our hike.

  My attention shifted from the Northern Lights when I heard a crackling rustling sound coming from the woods. I could see something dark shifting through the trees, and then I caught a whiff of the familiar farm-y smell of reindeer. A few yards down the river from us, six huge reindeer came barreling out through the trees and charging across a shallower part of the river.

  “Alice,” Ezra whispered icily. He took a step back towards me, holding his arm out in front of me.

  “What? They’re just reindeer. Did you have a run in with Blitzen once?” I teased, but he hissed at me.

  “They wouldn’t be running like that at this time of night unless something was chasing them.” His words were nearly drowned out in the splashing of their hooves as they tore across the river, but they made my heart freeze solid.

  Cautiously, I moved closer to Ezra, and strained to see what could be following behind the reindeer. I crossed my fingers for wolves, but I had a feeling that it was a something a little more anthropomorphic than that. Once the reindeer had plummeted back in the woods, other than the sound of their depleting hooves, there was an odd silence.

  Straining, I realized that wasn’t exactly right. There was silence, but not silence. I could see things, but not things. It was like every time I almost caught something, it was gone before I could even register. Almost as if there was a ghost spooking the deer, and then I thought hopefully, maybe it was just the run-of-the-mill ghost. No extra brutal crazed vampires.

  “Alice!” Ezra shouted suddenly and grabbed my arm.

  I was about to scream what, but the splash in the river directly in front of us answered my questions completely. Literally out of nowhere, a man had leapt into the river. When the black water settled around him, I got a look at him under the glowing green lights. He was shirtless, but he appeared to have pants on, although it was hard to tell when the water came up to almost his waist. His arms and chest were very well muscled, more than Jack or Peter, and covered in dark hair. Not like an animal or a werewolf, but rather, just like a very hairy man. He had jet black hair that went past his ears, and his strong jaw had a thick stubble. He was very attractive, but there was something about his black eyes that didn’t sit right with me.

  He stared at us for a moment, making my heart hammer nervously in my chest, and I was about to say something, just to break the tension, but then I saw movement from behind him. Across the river, walking deliberately slow, two more vampires came out from behind the trees, going down to the shore opposite of us. They were flanking in the one in the water, but they looked much less imposing.

  For one thing, they were both fully clothed, even though their clothes were rather ragged and they were barefoot. The one on the right had blondish hair and light facial hair, and he looked totally amused by all of this. His jeans were in pretty sorry shape, but his hoodie looked fairly new. He had surprisingly happy eyes, reminding me of Jack’s, only with a menacing edge to them.

  The other one appeared to be embarrassed about this little confrontation. His jeans and long-sleeve tee shirt were filthy and badly worn. His thick, dark brown was shorter than the other two, but he had a thick stubble on his face as well. While he was well-toned, he was smaller, probably closer to Peter or Jack in size.

  His eyes were the thing that caught me the most. They were gentle and large, reminding me of that of a puppy. He didn’t have even a hint of rabid intent about him.

  The one in the water crouched down lower, looking poised for an attack, and my mind raced to think of a way out of it. Everybody had warned me just to run, but there was no way I could out run these guys. I wasn’t even sure if Ezra could. They had some kind of super running trick that I didn’t even know was possible.

  “We don’t mean to bother you,” I said weakly, and Ezra squeezed my arm.

  From the water, the lycan growled at me, but the one with the kind eyes looked surprised by me. He kept staring at me, but when the one in the water made some infinitesimal movement towards us, he stopped him.

  “Stellan!” he snapped.

  The one in the water turned to look at him and started to make what sounded like a confused argument in Finnish, but he just shook his head and cut him off. Quietly, I asked Ezra what that was about, but he just silenced me.

  “You’re American, yeah?” the amused vampire asked, his tone lilting with an unfamiliar accent.

  “Yes, we are,” Ezra responded, his voice sounding more resolute than ever before. “I’m Ezra, and this is my sister, Alice.” He had never referred to me as his sister before, and I realized that I was kind of was, and I liked it. Or at least I would’ve if I hadn’t been worried about the lycans ripping ou
r throats out at any second.

  “Dodge,” the amused one smirked at us. “I’m from Boston.” Okay, so his accent wasn’t that exotic, but it wasn’t like I’d ever been to Boston before to really pick up on it.

  “Leif,” the gentle one gestured to himself, and then to the bewildered vampire in the water.

  “That’s Stellan. He’s Finnish, and he refuses to learn any other language. He’s a class act.” Stellan turned back to him and retorted something in Finnish, but Leif just shook his head.

  “What are you doing out here?” Dodge cocked an eyebrow at us. “It doesn’t look like you’re on a friendly hike.”

  Nervously, I looked up at Ezra and waited for him to speak. He had let go of me but kept his arm shielded in front of me. There wasn’t really a good answer to the question. We didn’t look like we were just passing through, but I was pretty sure that these were the lycans after Peter, so we couldn’t exactly announce that we were here to rescue him.

  “She’s never been here before,” Ezra chose his words carefully. “She wanted to explore.”

  “I’m very curious,” I chimed in, and Ezra shot me a look.

  Dodge chuckled, but that only seemed to infuriate Stellan. He stood up straighter, making himself look larger and more imposing, and his eyes glared down at us. To Dodge and Leif, we appeared to be some kind of curiosity, and Leif especially looked at with us affection and tolerance. I’m not sure if it was because we were speaking English or what, but Stellan definitely thought we were a threat.

  Glancing back at Leif, Stellan shouted something in Finnish again. His eyes almost instantly returned to us, even though he was still talking to Leif, but I suspected that was because he didn’t trust taking his eyes off of us. Ezra could understand everything he said, but he was purposely trying to play dumb, in hopes that Stellan would inadvertently confess something.

  “Did you know this was our territory?” Dodge asked when Stellan finished his rant.

  “No. This is a National Park, isn’t it?” Ezra continued to pretend to be dumbfounded.

  Leif and Dodge exchanged looks. It was clear that both of them were skeptical of Ezra’s performance, even though I thought it was top notch. Then again, they probably had keener vampire senses than I did.

  However, based on Dodge’s casual shrug and Leif’s nod, neither of them thought we were a danger to them either. We probably weren’t, so that made sense.

  “This is lycan territory,” Leif explained, looking gravely at us. “It’s best if you don’t wander around here too much.”

  “Sorry. We’ll be more careful in the future,” Ezra apologized.

  “Make sure that you do,” Dodge winked at us.

  Ezra nodded at them, then started ushering me away, back the way we came. The lycans didn’t move from where they stood, and I felt their eyes watching us as we hurried through the forest towards the car.

  Ezra kept his hand on my back, making go at a much faster rate than I would’ve enjoyed. I started to say something several times, but he shushed me every time until we got to the car.

  “What are we doing?” I asked when he unlocked the Range Rover and got inside.

  “Get in,” Ezra commanded and then slammed his door shut.

  “It’s only one-thirty,” I insisted climbing in after him. “We have plenty of time to look for Peter.”

  “If they caught us in the woods again tonight…” He trailed off.

  When he threw it in drive, he made sure that the doors were locked before racing down the snowy road. He kept glancing in the rearview mirror, making me increasingly nervous. I turned around, half expecting to see a pack of wolves chasing after us, but there was just an empty road. His demeanor did nothing to calm me, even though I couldn’t see exactly what had freaked him out so much.

  The lycans hadn’t been all that terrifying. Other than their insanely quick speed and appearing act.

  “What’s going on? They didn’t really seem that bad. In fact, other than the Finnish one in the River, they just seemed like your ordinary vampires.” I’d actually seen scarier vampires at the club in Minneapolis, and I assumed that Ezra had seen much worse.

  “That’s not the whole pack,” Ezra answered softly, his eyes flitting back to the rearview mirror. “They were following us back, and that’s why I wouldn’t let you say anything in the woods. Now they’ve seen us and they know what vehicle we drive. One of them is probably following us back to find out we’re staying. We can’t do anything more tonight.”

  “You’re just being paranoid,” I shook my head, but his certainty was unnerving.

  The road had patches of snow and black ice, and the signs on the side of the road warned that it was reindeer crossing all over. In spite of all of this, Ezra sped faster than I had ever seen him drive before, and his eyes very rarely stayed on the road on front of us. The green glowing in the sky had started to disappear, so I stared out my window at the fading display.

  “I don’t want to freak you out,” he confessed randomly.

  “Thanks,” I replied dryly.

  “I’m not sure how many lycans are in his pack anymore. At times there were as many as fifteen or twenty, and other times there were as few as four. It just depends on what kind of mood he’s in. He’ll wipe out his entire pack for the hell of it, and start over fresh,” Ezra talked as if he was explaining something to me, but he was starting in the middle of the idea, making it hard to follow.

  “Who are you talking about?” I looked over at him.

  “Gunnar.” His eyes went to the mirror again, as if by seeing his name he could summon him. “He’s being leading a pack in the Lapland for the better part of the past three centuries. They winter up there, and summer in Russia and Siberia.”

  “How do you know that he’s still the leader? When was the last time you saw him? Have you ever even saw him, or is this all just gossip?” I pressed, trying not to let any of this faze me.

  “It’s been fifty years or more,” Ezra admitted. “But others have seen him, had run-in’s with him.

  When I was told of Peter’s troubles, they specifically mentioned Gunnar by name.”

  “So you knew exactly what you were getting into when we came here?” I narrowed my eyes at him, and his pursed his lips in response. “Then why are you so freaked out by this? If you knew that’s who were dealing with.”

  “I was hoping to avoid him entirely. I thought we could just find Peter and get out of here, before they even knew that we’d been here,” he sighed. “And that’s also why I think Peter’s on a suicide mission. He was with me the last time we encountered Gunnar. We’re just lucky that we didn’t see him in the woods. He’d know exactly who I was and what I was doing there, and we wouldn’t be on our way back to the hotel now.”

  I sank back in the seat and finally started to get a grasp on what had frazzled Ezra so much.

  There were there lycan back there, and if one of them had been Gunnar, it would’ve been impossible for us to get away. They outnumbered us, and I’m sure I would be useless in a fight. We had just very narrowly escaped death, which is saying something for us.

  “How do you kill a vampire?” I breathed.

  With my murder becoming increasingly imminent, I thought it would be good to know the method of my demise. Ezra had once mentioned that starvation lasting for months or years would lead to death, but that seemed like a very unlikely course of action in this scenario. I imagined something more instant, more violent, more bloody. Less than a month into immortality, and I was already facing death. That’s just my luck.

  “Head. Heart.” He shifted uneasily, but the car started to slow, meaning that his initial panic had started to ebb. “Our bones are nearly unbreakable, though, so it’s incredibly hard to damage either of them.

  Another vampire could rather easily do it. We’re our only enemy in this world.”

  The imagery of my heart getting ripped out was enough to keep me silent for the rest of the car ride back to the hotel. When we
parked, Ezra didn’t check behind him for lycan, but I did.

  Apparently his paranoia had transferred to me. The clerk behind the desk made googley eyes at me when we came in, but I barely even noticed. There were far more important things on my mind. Like how I planned on surviving this trip.

  Chapter 6

  We made our circles wider and wider around the lycan territory, but after three days, we had no choice but starting moving in closer again. Besides that, all of the intel that Ezra had been getting suggested that Peter was imbedded in lycan land. It was all part of his suicide plan, I guess. Hang out around them long enough until they slaughtered him. The only problem was that we had now way knowing whether it happened yet or not.

  Since we had seen the lycan, Ezra had had been kind of hesitant about bringing me out with him. His whole plan for getting Peter rested on my ability to convince him, but that wasn’t fool proof either. Neither of us were exactly sure how he’d respond to me, since I had been the reason for his heartbreak and subsequent meltdown.

  Except… the last kiss we shared, the only time he had every truly kissed me, I felt something different. When he met me, he definitely hadn’t wanted me, but after I almost died and he took off, something changed in him. When he came back, he was different towards me, kinder, more understanding.

  Something in the way he had felt about me had shifted. Maybe it was because he felt guilty about hurting me, or maybe it was because he had learned what it was like to live without me. Or maybe something else entirely.

  Whatever the reason, Peter had actually started to let himself care about me.

  In the chaos of everything that was happening the last time I saw, his sudden appearance and the impending fight between him and Jack, I hadn’t been able to really understand what had been going on. Only in retrospect, when I looked back on everything, I realized something, and that had been the catalyst that kept me searching the trees for fifteen hours a day with lycan threatening us.

  Peter had tasted Jack’s bite on me, he had known that Jack had bitten me, but he didn’t come back to kill him. He had been trying to let me go. Even though everything inside him, the insistent bond in his blood, screamed that he should kill Jack, and probably me too. But he hadn’t. Instead, he planned on really letting me go, not because of his own fears or what his body demanded, but because he knew that would be what made me the happiest. The one true kiss we had ever shared had been a kiss good-bye.