Flutter

by Amanda Hocking

  - 34 –

  Sliding through the grass, I fell more than I actually ran. Stellan was clearly giving me a head start, because I wasn’t making it very far. He was going to be awfully disappointed when he caught me, but I didn’t know what more I could do. I was running as fast as I could. If he hadn’t head butted me so hard and the ground wasn’t so slushy, I might’ve actually made it somewhere.

  I only made it about twenty feet before I felt him pounce on me. It was how I imagined a tiger attack would be. His claws dug into my back, and then I was down, the wind knocked out of me. He pressed my face into the ground, so I was drowning in the watery snow and grass.

  When he finally let my head up, I spit out chunks of grass and dirt. I tried to push myself up, with him on my back, but he was too strong and the ground was too slippery.

  In the distance, I heard police sirens wailing. It seemed very far in the distance, but that was because my level of consciousness was changing. The adrenaline and panic changed my thirst into something different. I wasn’t blacked out exactly, but I felt like I was fighting underneath water.

  Stellan laughed, and I felt the weight move off me. His hand went between my legs, and I scrambled to crawl away from him, but that just made him dig his fingers into my inner-thigh.

  When I say “dig into” I mean literally dig. His claws and fingers tore through my jeans and flesh into the muscle. I screamed as the searing pain shot through me. I turned around to fight him off, and he jerked his hand back, taking a massive chunk of my leg with him. He laughed, showing me his handful of flesh, and then disappeared.

  I tried to sit up and look down at my leg, and it was then that I realized what he’d done. The femoral artery runs through the inner thigh, and if severed, a human would bleed out in a very short time. Unfortunately, it’s not that much different for vampires.

  In an ordinary situation, my heart would be beating much slower, which would give my body a chance to heal before things got out of hand. But I was scared as hell and my heart was beating to match that. My blood was spilling out all over the ground, and I could feel it.

  When I bled as a human, it had never felt like this. It was pressure and pain and weakening. It was almost like a vacuum, and I could feel my life being sucked out of me with every drop of blood.

  Jack appeared at my side. I might’ve noticed him approaching if I wasn’t so focused on the blood. I held my hands over it, trying to stop the flow, but there was a big gouge in my leg. My hand wouldn’t cover it. The blood just flowed out over it, and it was coming too fast for me to heal.

  “Oh, hell, Alice.”

  “Where’s Milo?” I asked, and my voice sounded weak. Jack put his hand over mine, trying to stop the blood. “Is he okay?”

  “Yeah, he’s with Bobby. They’re fine,” Jack bit his lip and looked back over his shoulder. “The lycan took off when the cops showed up. We gotta get out of here before they find us.”

  After the lycan attack, dealing with the cops didn’t seem like that big of deal. Except that I was bleeding like crazy. They would take me to a hospital, where everything would get very, very complicated, and I couldn’t handle that.

  The wound itself wasn’t deadly. Or at least I didn’t think it was. I tried to remember if vampires could die from blood loss. I knew starvation could kill them, but it had to be a very long time. But by looks of the puddle growing underneath me, I had lost almost all the blood I had in me.

  My insides felt like they were burning and shriveling up. I had this weird painful sense of being deflated. My mind had fogged up so much I couldn’t understand anything Jack was saying to me, and everything I could see had blurred completely into a red haze.

  I couldn’t feel actual bloodlust because I was too weak. All the strength had seeped out of me, and it was replaced with some of the most intense pain I had ever felt. I started screaming until Jack put his hand over my mouth. I could smell and taste my blood on his hand, and my stomach lurched.

  The ground seemed to move around me, falling away. A cold wind blew over me, but I could barely feel it. I couldn’t see anything. There was just the pain.

  I could smell blood, and that frantic animal part of me was barreling in. I tried to move, to fight to get at the blood, but my arms wouldn’t work. They were shaking violently, and I wondered dully if I was having a seizure.

  The world swayed and bowed around me, and I was about ready to kill Jack to get his blood. The pain was so excruciating that I would’ve killed anyone to make it stop.

  “Alice, drink.” I heard Jack’s voice in my ear, but I didn’t know what he was talking about.

  I could smell him, but it wasn’t his blood. It was warm and fresh and pounding quickly. I wanted to drink it, but I couldn’t find it. I couldn’t speak or move.

  Warm skin pressed against my lips, and I felt the pulse of veins throbbing on my mouth. Without thinking, I sunk my teeth and drank. Almost instantly, my strength picked up, and I grabbed onto whoever I was drinking. I pressed them closer to me and drank furtively.

  My mind flashed onto when I saw Milo biting Jane and how he had looked like an animal, and I knew that I was eating like that, but I didn’t have a choice.

  The pain stopped, then pleasure slowly trickled in. Delirious heat spread over me. Pleasure exploded all through me, and I drank more deeply. I could feel how kind they were, and the acidic aftertaste from the adrenaline. They had been afraid, but they weren’t now. They trusted me and cared about me, even though I was drinking them dry.

  Some part of me knew I should stop. I had already drank enough where I would be alright, and it was almost more than a human could spare.

  But the rest of me refused. I couldn’t stop. It felt too amazing and tasted too wonderful. I needed this, and I couldn’t stop, not until I had it all.

  “Alice!” Jack shouted. A sharp pain grew in the back of my head, but I didn’t care, not until that pain started pulling me back. He was pulling me by my hair, so I’d let go, but I wouldn’t, and if he pulled too hard, I would end up tearing out the throat. “Alice! Let go!”

  “Jack!” Milo wailed. “Make her stop!”

  Jack kept pulling on me, and I literally growled at him, like a dog with a bone. He wrapped his hand around my throat, squeezing down on it. I couldn’t breathe, but more importantly, I couldn’t swallow.

  I let go, simply so I could bite Jack and get him to leave me alone, but as soon as I separated, I could think again. I felt dizzy and drunk, but I didn’t feel animal crazy anymore.

  Jack didn’t know that though, so he wrapped his arms around me to keep me from going after the blood. The neck had already been pulled away from me. It had been the instant I had stopped biting. Milo cradled Bobby in his arms, sobbing, and that’s how I found out.

  “Bobby?” I mumbled. The familiar tired haze I got after eating settled in on me. My inner thigh tingled and itched like crazy, meaning it was healing.

  “You nearly killed him, Alice!” Milo yelled at me.

  “She had to do it, or she would’ve died!” Jack shouted. He was still holding me in his arms, but more gently. He just wanted me near him.

  I wiped Bobby’s blood away from my mouth and tried to sit up. We were on black top next to a white building, and when I looked up, I realized it was a massive cathedral near the park. Jack had carried me over here, away from the police, and fixed me up.

  I felt like passing out, but I was fighting it. We weren’t safe here, not with the lycan after us, and I had to do something.

  I could hear Bobby’s heart beating, and it was still strong, I hadn’t killed him, but he had completely passed out. Not to mention the fact that he belonged to Milo, and vampires hated sharing their humans with other vampires. Even though he loved me, it had to be driving Milo crazy to let me bite him.

  “I never should’ve let him come with.” Milo stroked Bobby’s hair.

  “That is why I let him come with,” Jack said.

  “What?” Milo glared at Jac
k. “You brought him along to feed her?”

  “He saved your sister’s life, didn’t he?” Jack shot back. “She wouldn’t have died from the blood loss, but she’d have been too weak to do anything against the lycan. She needs to be strong to fight.”

  “I’m sorry,” I apologized weakly. I tried to sit up again, but that was all I had in me. Jack’s arms were strong and warm, and I finally gave into them. Darkness rolled over me, and I passed out.

  I awoke on the floor. After everything I’d gone through, I felt surprisingly good. When I opened my eyes, all I could see were the beautiful gold and white ceilings of the cathedral.

  Bobby was lying next to me, sound asleep himself, and I felt this strange pulling in my heart for him. Not like love or even a crush, but just a connection. He had shared himself with me, and in return, he’d gotten some of me as well. I had never fed on a human before, and I was surprised to find that I felt anything for him afterwards.

  I didn’t have time to ponder the details of our relationship, though, because I heard voices talking.

  I got to my feet, still feeling kind of dazed and drunk. We were in the balcony of the church, surrounded by pews and crosses, and Jack, Milo, Peter, Ezra, and Olivia were standing at the other end. They had been trying to let us sleep, which was ridiculous. I needed to be awake and strong for this. Their voices were hushed, and I tried to sneak over to them, but I stumbled and bumped into a pew.

  “Oh good. She’s awake,” Milo muttered, so apparently he wasn’t ready to forgive me yet.

  “What’s going on?” I asked when I reached them. They stood in a circle, and I squeezed in between Jack and Ezra. “What are you guys doing here?”

  “We called them,” Jack said, and I couldn’t believe that he’d called Peter. Ezra, I understood, but I was pretty sure he hated Peter now more than ever. “We couldn’t get to the car because of the police, and we didn’t want the lycan to follow us back home.”

  “I called Olivia because she’s the only one really equipped to deal with them,” Ezra said.

  “And I’d do anything for you, sweetheart,” Olivia winked at me.

  She wore leather pants and a tiny leather vest with nothing underneath it. On top of that, she had donned some kind of crossbow apparatus. The leather satchel on her back was filled to the brim with metal arrows.

  “Titanium is strong enough to break through a vampire’s sternum and go right through the heart.” She saw me admiring her weaponry and smiled. “The old wooden stake would never work, and even this isn’t fool proof, but it’ll at least slow them down.”

  “Great,” I sighed and looked around. It dawned on me that someone was missing. “Where’s Jane?” Jack pursed his lips and nobody said anything. “Jack? What happened?”

  “The lycan took her with them,” Jack said quietly.

  “Oh my god.” I ran my hands through my hair. “This is a fucking nightmare.”

  “We’ll get her back,” Peter promised. His green eyes met mine, and I felt Jack bristle, but he did nothing. “We’ll make the trade, me for her. They can’t deny it.”

  “We are not sacrificing you,” Ezra said firmly.

  “Why not?” Jack scoffed. “It’s his fault we’re in this mess! He almost got Alice killed, and who knows what’s happened to Jane!”

  “We’re not giving them anybody,” Ezra said, looking at Jack sternly. “We will stop them.”

  “What if we can’t?” Peter asked. “We should all die for my mistakes? No. I won’t let that happen. This is my fault. This is my war.”

  “We’re all involved in it now,” Ezra said. “Do you think they’ll really just let us walk away if we give them you? That would be too easy for them.”

  “You should’ve just let me die in Finland!” Peter shouted, his face raw with pain. “I told you to leave me there! Why wouldn’t you listen?”

  “I’m more than happy to let you die here,” Jack offered.

  “Nobody is dying here today!” I held up my hands to silence them. “We’ll figure something out! I don’t know what but… We’ll do something.”

  “See? Firecracker,” Olivia smiled at me.

  “We need a better plan than arguing with each other,” Ezra said. “The lycan will track us soon.”

  “Maybe sooner than you thought,” Olivia said, and she reached back for her arrows.

  As she set her crossbow, I peered down over the balcony. A dirty, disheveled lycan was walking down the center of the aisle of the church. I heard the click as she set it, and then he looked back up at us, his brown eyes wide and innocent. I can’t explain it, but as soon as I saw him, I knew he wasn’t with them.

  “Stop!” I shouted, my voice reverberating off the ceilings, and I held my hand up in front of her crossbow. Leif stood in the center of the church, staring up at us. He would willingly take whatever fate we dealt him.

  “What? Why?” Jack looked at me like I was crazy.

  “No, she’s right,” Peter agreed. “He’s not like the rest of them.”

  “Leif!” I leaned over the balcony, as if I thought that would help me speak to him.

  “I’m not with them!” Leif yelled back. “I came here to warn you! It’ll be harder for them to find you with me. I’m the best tracker they have, but you’re so close, and Stellan tasted your blood. I’ve beat them by a matter of minutes.”

  “Why would you help us?” Ezra asked. Leif looked at Ezra for a moment, then looked back at me.

  “Really?” Milo scoffed. “Does every vampire in the whole world want to tap my sister?”

  That wasn’t it, and I knew that, but I couldn’t explain it. There was nothing sexual about the way Leif looked at me, and I wasn’t even remotely attracted to him. It was something else entirely.

  “No, I don’t want to … ‘tap’ anyone,” Leif looked unsure of the word. “I’ve just had enough. They are cruel and sadistic, and I’ve seen that vampires can live another way. I don’t want to stay with them anymore. They shouldn’t even be alive. They are abominations.”

  “How do you propose we stop them?” Ezra asked.

  “Honestly, I don’t know,” Leif said sadly. “But I will help you anyway I can. Even if you just want me to bait them. If I can save you, I will do it.”

  “Do you trust him?” Jack looked seriously at me.

  “Yes,” I said, and Peter nodded in agreement.

  “I think he’s okay,” Milo said.

  “Hey, how did you find Jane?” I asked, looking down at Leif. It made sense to me that they’d be able to find me since they had met me before, but I didn’t understand how they’d even know she was associated with us.

  “She was wearing your clothes walking around downtown,” Leif said, sounding ashamed. “I smelled you on her. We tracked you down to Minneapolis by asking around. Gunnar knew people that knew Ezra.” His face flushed guiltily. “I never should’ve come with, but if I hadn’t they would’ve killed me, and they still would’ve killed you. When we got on the boat, though, I knew I had to find a way to help you. That was a complete massacre.”

  “Oh my gosh.” My jaw dropped as it hit me. “That was you? On the tanker that crashed into Newfoundland?”

  “I’m not proud of what they did, and I will pay for my sins,” Leif raised his chin when he looked at me. “I assure you that I will make amends.”

  The cathedral echoed with the sound of broken glass, but Leif stood his ground. The stained glass windows shattered, sending bits of broken glass raining down all around him, as the lycan crashed in through them. The lycan walked slowly in the pews towards him with Gunnar leading the way.

  - 35 –

  “Bear told me you were Judas,” Gunnar said to Leif. “I thought he might be right, but I knew that you would still lead us right to them. You failed at killing them and at saving them. You’re absolutely useless, aren’t you?”

  “Dying now would be far better than serving you,” Leif growled at him.

  “Stop!” I shouted, hanging over
the balcony. The lycan already knew we were there, so it wasn’t like I was giving away our position, but Jack glared at me anyway. “He’s not the one you want!”

  “You have no idea what I want,” Gunnar looked up at me. His face was that of pure evil, and a shiver ran down me.

  He walked to the center aisle, and the other three lycan moved in closer to Leif, but he didn’t run. They were going to slaughter him, but he just stood his ground and held his head high.

  “They’re going to kill him,” I said, looking at Ezra. “We’ve got to do something!”

  He looked at me helplessly. We hadn’t yet figured out how we were going to save ourselves. Jack was looking down at Leif, and I could almost see his mind racing. He wanted to think of something, but he was taking too long.

  I launched myself over the balcony and heard Jack calling my name. When I hit the ground, I expected my legs to snap, but they barely even hurt. I even landed on my feet, and if the situation weren’t so incredibly terrifying, I would’ve felt pretty damn cool for making a landing like that.

  None of the lycan looked back at me, but then again, I wasn’t much of a threat. I stood up and I heard the sound of Olivia’s crossbow click back as she loaded an arrow, but I wasn’t the only one.

  Dodge and Stellan cocked their heads at the balcony, but Bear kept his attention fixed on Leif. Dodge moved first, but he wasn’t as fast as Stellan, so the arrow sliced straight through his heart. He collapsed to the ground, and I thought he might burst into flames like in the movies, but he just laid there.

  Stellan was standing in front of me, smiling, and in a blur, he was gone. Olivia fired an arrow at him, but it flew through the air behind him and landed in a pew. Using his speed as momentum, Stellan leapt from off the back of a pew up into the balcony. No other vampire moved as fast as he could, not even Ezra, and even with the five of them up there, they could barely hold their own against him.