Аманда Хокинг - Flutter

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 our 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.