Flutter (6 page)

If Ezra had been driven on his pursuit of Peter the
first day, the next day 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. Using his phone and his
laptop, he’d been busy trying to get coordinates for where he
thought Peter would be.

When I got up, I responded to a couple text messages
from Jack, got ready, and we left. Over ten hours later, I found
myself in the middle of the Finnish Laplands, staring up at the
spectacle of lights above me.

Dazzling green lights flashed across the clear night
sky. We had crossed a river when I happened to look up and notice
the aurora borealis dancing above us. I stopped on the frozen shore
and stared at them in awe. They were breathtakingly beautiful, and
even Ezra paused and looked.

My attention shifted from the Northern Lights when I
heard a rustling sound coming from the woods. I could see something
dark shifting through the trees, and 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
charged across a shallow part of the river.

“
Alice,” Ezra whispered. 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 as they tore across the river.

I moved closer to Ezra, and strained to see what
could be following 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 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 it. Almost as if there was a
ghost spooking the deer, and I thought hopefully, maybe it was just
the run-of-the-mill ghost.

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

- 6 –

The river splashed directly in front of us. Literally
out of nowhere, a man 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, revealing well-muscled arms. His
black hair went past his ears, and he was very attractive. But
something in his black eyes unnerved me.

He stared at us, making my heart hammer nervously in
my chest, and I was about to say something to break the tension,
but I saw movement behind him.

Across the river, walking deliberately slow, two more
vampires came out from the trees. They stood on the shore opposite
us, flanking the one in the water, but they looked less
imposing.

They were barefoot and wore ragged clothes. The
blondish one on the right looked amused.

The other one appeared to be embarrassed about this
little confrontation. He kept his dark brown hair shorter than the
other two, but he had a thick stubble on his face. While he was
well-toned, he was smaller than the others.

His eyes were the thing that caught me the most. They
were gentle and large, reminding me of a puppy.

In the water, the first vampire crouched down lower,
poised for an attack, and my mind raced to think of a way out of
it. Mae and Jack warned me to run, but I couldn’t outrun him. I
wasn’t even sure if Ezra could. He had to have some kind of super
speed to appear out of nowhere like that.

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

From the water, the vampire growled at me, but the
one with the kind eyes stopped him.

“Stellan!” he snapped, and the vampire in the water
made an argument in Finnish, but he cut him off.

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

“Yes, we are,” Ezra responded. “I’m Ezra, and this is
my sister, Alice.”

“I’m Dodge,” he smirked at us. “I’m from Boston.”

“Leif,” the kind vampire gestured to himself, and
then to the vampire in the water. “That’s Stellan.” Stellan turned
back to him and retorted something in Finnish, but Leif 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.”

There wasn’t really a good answer to the question. We
didn’t look like vacationers or skiers, and these were probably the
lycans after Peter.

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

“I like exploring,” I added, and Ezra shot me a
look.

Dodge chuckled but that only infuriated Stellan. He
stood up straighter, making himself larger and more imposing. To
Dodge and Leif, we appeared to be a curiosity. Leif especially
looked at us with tolerance, but Stellan seemed threatened.

Glancing back at Leif, Stellan shouted something in
Finnish. He kept talking to Leif, but he didn’t take his eyes off
us. Ezra could understand everything he said, but he played
dumb.

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

“No. This is a National Park, isn’t it?” Ezra
pretended to be confused.

Leif and Dodge exchanged looks. They seemed skeptical
of our intentions. But based on Dodge’s casual shrug and Leif’s
nod, they didn’t think we were a danger to them. We probably
weren’t, so that made sense.

“This is lycan territory.” Leif looked gravely at us.
“It’s best if you don’t wander around here.”

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

“Make sure that you do,” Dodge said, abandoning his
earlier humor. His face and voice hardened, resembling Stellan’s.
They were threatening us.

Ezra nodded at them and ushered me away, back the way
we came. The lycans didn’t move, and I felt their eyes on us as we
hurried through the forest. Ezra kept his hand on my back, pushing
me to go faster. I started to say something several times, but he
shushed me 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 slammed his door
shut.

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

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

He made sure the doors were locked before racing down
the snowy road. He kept glancing in the rearview mirror, and I
turned around, half expecting to see a pack of wolves chasing after
us. But there was only an empty road.

“What’s going on? They didn’t really seem that bad.
In fact, other than the Finnish one in the river, they seemed like
ordinary vampires,” I said.

“That’s not the whole pack.” His eyes flitted back to
the rearview mirror. “They were following us, and that’s why I
wouldn’t let you say anything in the woods. Now they’ve seen us,
and they know our vehicle. 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 warned of reindeer crossing. In spite of that,
Ezra sped up faster, and his eyes rarely stayed on the road in
front of us.

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

“Thanks,” I said.

“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 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 started in the middle of the idea.

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

“Gunnar.” His eyes went to the mirror again, as if
saying his name summoned him. “He’s led a pack in the Lapland for
the better part of three centuries. They winter up here, and summer
in Russia and Siberia.”

“How do you know that he’s still the leader?” I
asked.

“It’s been fifty years or more since I saw him last,”
Ezra admitted. “But when I was told of Peter’s troubles, Gunnar was
mentioned by name.”

“So you knew
exactly
what you were getting into
when we came here?” I narrowed my eyes at him, and he pursed his
lips. “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’d
find Peter and depart, before they knew we’d been here,” he sighed.
“And that’s how I know Peter’s on a suicide mission. He was with me
the last time we encountered Gunnar.”

I sank back in the seat and finally grasped what
frazzled Ezra so much. They outnumbered us, and they were pissed
off. We had just very narrowly escaped death.

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

With my murder becoming increasingly imminent, I
wanted to know possible methods for my demise. Ezra once mentioned
starvation lasting for months or years led to death, but that
seemed unlikely here. I imagined something more instant, more
violent.

“Head. Heart.” He shifted uneasily, but the car
slowed, meaning his initial panic ebbed. “Our bones are nearly
unbreakable, but another vampire could do it rather easily. 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.

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.

We made our circles wider around the lycan territory,
but after three days, we had no choice but to move in closer.
Besides that, everything Ezra heard said 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.

Since we saw the lycan, Ezra became hesitant about
bringing me with him. His whole plan for getting Peter rested on my
ability to convince him, but that wasn’t fool proof. Neither of us
were sure how he’d respond to me.

Except… the last kiss we shared, the only time Peter
truly kissed me, I felt something different.

Peter tasted Jack on me, he knew Jack had bitten me,
but Peter didn’t come back to kill him. Everything inside him, the
insistent bond in his blood, screamed that he should kill Jack, 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
ever shared had been a kiss goodbye. Underneath all of his
chemicals and reservations, Peter had to have genuine feelings for
me, otherwise he never would’ve let me be with Jack.

That just happened to be when Jack walked in, and he
set off an entirely different chain of events than what Peter had
in mind.

That’s what kept me coming back out in the woods,
even with the full understanding of what we were up against. I
thought that Peter might really listen to me, and even if he
didn’t, I had to try.

We walked through the woods in silence, but I knew
when we got closer to the lycan homeland. Ezra walked faster but
made sure his steps matched mine. He looked around more and kept
incredibly close to me, so sometimes I was almost tripping over
him.

Ezra would risk anything for Peter, but he didn’t
feel the same way about me risking everything. In the hotel today
before we left, he asked if I wanted to stay behind. I said no, but
he continued recommending it until I refused to talk about it
anymore.

We were going back to the exact area the lycans had
warned us away from, but that had to be where Peter was, assuming
that Peter was still alive.

“Shouldn’t we be calling his name or something?” I
asked when the silence and the search became too much for me.

Ezra shook his head, and I ducked underneath a
low-hanging branch. The one thing I could say for this was that I
was getting a lot more nimble and agile. I wasn’t getting as tired
out as I used to, and I hadn’t been quite as hungry. If nothing
else, this would get me through vampire boot camp.

“I just don’t think we’re doing that much,” I said,
keeping my words hushed. “We’re just wandering around the trees.
How are we supposed to find Peter? You have this carefully
calculated plan of where to look, but when we get here, we don’t
even do anything.”

“They can’t know we’re looking.” Ezra was barely loud
enough to be heard over the crunch of our boots in the snow.

“I get that, but Peter has to know. Or how else will
we find him?”

“Smell him. Hear him. See him.” He shrugged but
slowed, almost pausing to look at me. “Can you still… feel
him?”

Whenever I had been around Peter before, my body
automatically pulled towards him. My natural inclination had been
to be with him, and that would be really helpful in a search
party.

“I don’t know,” I said, although I didn’t think
so.

If I thought about Peter or talked about him, I
didn’t get all fluttery and intense anymore. I have a bond with
Jack, and I feel things like that for him, which means that I
probably can’t for Peter anymore.

“Oh well.” His pace picked up again, and I scampered
behind him to catch up. “We’ll find him anyway.”