Whiteout (Aurora Sky

by Nikki Jefford

  Dante took his pack from me, slipping it over one shoulder. He stopped and faced the car, feet shoulder’s width apart, and arms folded, clearly not trusting Ashley to stay put any more than I did.

  “Well, this sucks,” I said.

  “I disagree,” Dante answered. “We’ve been given a unique opportunity.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “I mean a chance to turn Ashley into a double agent.”

  Oh, sure, like that would ever happen. It took me a moment to respond to such a bullheaded idea.

  I put my hands on my hips. “And how the hell would we do that?”

  “Convince her. Make her see reason. I don’t know. We need someone who can get to Sergeant Holmes undetected. Who better than an informant in dire need of training?”

  I took a steadying breath. “First of all, that’s never going to happen. She’s as stubborn as you.”

  When Dante opened his mouth to protest, I lifted a finger to shush him.

  “Even if we could persuade her, it would take time—time we don’t have. And even if, by some miracle, we could super accelerate the process, it wouldn’t matter. You gave our position away when you contacted Melcher on her phone. He knows we kidnapped her.”

  Dante jumped in to say, “That’s why we arrange for her to get away. It gives us an even greater advantage. What better reason for Ashley to request a trip to boot camp than after being abducted and barely getting away? She’d want training so she’d be ready next time.” Dante stroked his chin. “Noel was never a plausible bet. Melcher would never trust her. She’s too close to us. But Ashley is perfect. She tailed us like an obedient informant before we captured her.”

  “She won’t go for it,” I said with finality.

  “We have to at least try.”

  “We have to get out of here,” I countered.

  “Agreed, but Anchorage is no longer a viable option.”

  “Why?” I demanded. I didn’t like where this was headed.

  “They could have agents searching for us all up and down the highway. We spend another night at the lodge, two tops, and explain everything to Ashley. We need her to take our side in order to execute the rest of the plan. Once she’s convinced, we’ll let her go. After that, we need to head into the mountains and hole up for the winter while Ashley does her part.”

  “And if she can’t be convinced?” I asked.

  “Same plan,” Dante answered. “We let her go, get on the snowmachines, and find a remote area to take shelter until it’s safe to try a new approach. We may have to live off the land for a while, but we can get by.”

  The scream burning up my throat prevented me from responding right away. If anger could melt snow, there’d be a crater-sized circle penetrating the terrain around me.

  I’d done my part at Chillers so that we could get back to Anchorage and get additional help from Noel and Fane. I hadn’t put my neck on the line only to head for the hills. Backcountry cabins with no electricity or water were roughing it enough already. What Dante was suggesting sounded way too primitive… not to mention utterly hellacious. He’d probably have us holed up in some snow cave in one of the wildlife refuges, hundreds of miles from the nearest town.

  My fingers balled up. “Easy for you to say,” I ground out. “You never really wanted to get back to Anchorage, did you? This is just another mission to you. That’s all you care about.”

  “That’s not true,” Dante said. “We have a moral responsibility to report Melcher to a higher authority.”

  Oh, a moral reasonability was it? Listen to Dante, Mr. High and Mighty all of a sudden. Why couldn’t he admit he lived for this shit?

  At the moment, I couldn’t care less about the future of the agency, rogue vampires, justice, or even revenge. I wanted to find Fane, get my family out of the country, and disappear for good.

  “Look,” Dante said, “we’re wasting time standing around talking about it. Let’s get the informant to the lodge and start assessing the likelihood of bringing her on board.” To show he meant business, Dante headed back to the car without waiting for a response.

  Shit! Of all the no-good, rotten ideas. I hated this plan.

  Cold air gripped my face. It chilled my teeth and made my gums sting.

  I couldn’t move. I had no desire to return to the lodge. I didn’t want to subsist in the wild. I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.

  Dante looked over his shoulder and called out, “We need to hustle.”

  Bite me, you bullheaded snow-cowboy, I thought.

  Like Ashley, I had nowhere else to go and that pissed me off even more. I walked slowly toward the car. The chill from the frozen ground worked its way up my legs and surrounded me on all sides.

  When I caught up to him, Dante rested one booted foot on the vehicle’s bumper.

  “They’ll be looking for her car,” he said. “We need to ditch it on a private road farther down the highway. I’ll take Ashley to the lodge then come right back. Once I return, you’ll need to drive her car down the road—look for a pull-off or someplace where we can conceal it a bit longer. I’ll follow behind you on the snowmachine and zip us back to the lodge once we ditch the car. Are you okay waiting in the car until I get back?”

  “Sure,” I said, because more than ever I wanted to be alone. I wanted to scream. I wanted to sob. Just when I didn’t think my spirits could sink lower, they’d slipped down an icy abyss.

  Dante pulled his backpack off his shoulder. From inside, he pulled out a walkie-talkie. “Take this,” he said, coming around to hand it over. “I’ll radio you once I’ve dropped Ashley off and am headed back.”

  “Okay,” I said. I wasn’t in the mood for anything more than a one-word response.

  “Can I have the flashlight?” Dante asked next.

  Once I handed it to him, he clicked it on and headed through the snow, following the tracks he’d made earlier.

  “Be back in a flash,” Dante called out, a thin beam of light following him into the darkness.

  I slipped into the driver’s seat and started the car, and more importantly, started the heat.

  “What are you going to do to me?” Ashley demanded.

  I turned in the seat and stared into Ashley’s icy blue eyes through the dim light.

  “We’re going to let you go. You just have to hang tight a little longer. We can’t free you immediately. The first thing you’d do is alert Agent Melcher. Even if you don’t believe us, I want you to know everything we’ve said is true. Melcher is a vampire. He works closely with a recruiter named Jared, a vampire who targets candidates with AB negative and positive blood. He harms them so the agency can step in and alter our natural physiology. We’re all undead. You, me, Dante… every agent and informant ever recruited by the agency. I’m sorry to be the one to tell you, but there it is.”

  See? Blurting it out wasn’t really that difficult. I still didn’t understand how Noel and Fane had managed to keep it from me. I figured it out pretty quickly myself. Didn’t have to wait five or ten years to notice I wasn’t aging.

  Ashley’s nostrils flared. “That’s insane.”

  “No argument there.” When my reply was met with silence, I asked, “How long have you been with the agency?”

  Ashley straightened her back, eyes remaining zeroed in on mine. “Couple months,” she answered.

  Two months? That was weird. Noel told me she’d been the last AB positive experiment. Melcher knew the toxin didn’t mix with their blood. Maybe it wasn’t all about toxic blood. Maybe Melcher wanted recruits he could keep around as long as he wanted. He’d droned on about what an expensive investment I’d been. We all were with our initial medical bills and training. That expense would pay off far better if we never aged. After witnessing him recruit a former target, I wouldn’t put anything past him.

  “Look, we don’t have a lot of time,” I said. “Have you noticed a decline in appetite? A loss of taste for solid foods? Ever experienced blood cravings? Sexual cravings?�
�

  Ashley’s cheeks flamed. I could be wrong, but from the glare on her face I guessed it was more out of outrage than embarrassment.

  “What happened?” I asked, trying to approach things from an alternate direction. “I mean, what sort of accident were you in to land you with the agency?”

  Ashley sat against her seatback and pursed her lips.

  “I was in a car accident,” I said conversationally, turning down the heat for volume control rather than feeling overly warm. “Only it was no accident. I later found out Melcher’s minion, Jared, had rammed into me head-on. Uncanny number of us ABers getting into accidents, wouldn’t you say? Some are truly accidents. Like Dante. He wiped out on his snowboard. Not on some ski slope either. He was dropped off on top of a mountain by helicopter. Headstrong, but his heart’s in the right place.”

  “Are you two together or something?” Ashley asked, narrowing her eyes.

  Her attitude was rich coming from someone whose assignment was obviously to date a vampire.

  “No.”

  “Then why did you run off together?”

  I gathered my hair over my shoulder and twisted it. “We had no choice. He was kidnapped. In order to get him back I had to trade Jared for Dante, which was fine by me. If everything had gone according to plan, Jared would be dead and we wouldn’t be having this conversation. But Jared escaped and, before he did, I tried to shoot him. Well, actually, I did shoot him. Unfortunately, he loaded his gun with blanks.”

  I stopped talking, curious to hear Ashley’s response, but she sat back, mouth shut. Come on! I dropped a bombshell on her. She had to have some kind of reaction, even if it was to call me a no-good, dirty liar.

  “I’ve never met this man,” she said finally.

  I waited for more, but she didn’t continue. Really chatty, this one. At least I tried warning her, but she was about as tight lipped and unresponsive as Giselle. And I thought blonds were supposed to be bubbly.

  Well, if she wasn’t going to talk, I might as well turn the heat back up to full blast.

  A light appeared to the right of the vehicle, a single beam moving toward us through the dark. As it neared, the hum from the machine’s engine cut through the sound of the heater. Dante pulled up along the car and left the machine running while he dismounted and opened the back door of the car.

  “Where are you taking me?” Ashley asked.

  “Someplace safe,” Dante said. “Don’t worry, it’s only temporary.” Dante sounded a lot gentler now that he wanted to bring her on board.

  Good luck with that. Conversion didn’t happen overnight. I got the feeling this one wouldn’t budge.

  “I’m going to free your ankles now,” Dante said, pulling a knife from his pack. “Hold still. I don’t want to cut you.”

  Ashley ground her teeth together as though Dante’s mere proximity was painful. While his head was bent slicing through the tape above her feet, I kept an eye on Ashley to make sure she didn’t try and beat in his head with her fists. She met my eyes and looked away, as though being caught considering just such an action.

  Once finished, Dante backed out of the car and straightened to his full height. “Okay, let’s head out.”

  At least Ashley had enough sense to step outside without forcing us to drag her out of the car. I joined them beside the snowmachine. Dante got on first. “Hop on back,” he said to Ashley, who scowled in response.

  “How do you expect me to hold on with my wrists bound?” she asked.

  “Put them over my head. You’ll be extra secure,” Dante replied, reaching a hand around his back to pat the seat behind him.

  “Get on,” I said. “There’s no sense standing around freezing our asses off.”

  Ashley shot me the stink eye before hoisting her leg over the seat behind Dante. She’d been wise to put leggings on beneath her dress, otherwise she literally would be freezing her ass off. She lifted her bound wrists and looped them over Dante’s head, pausing around his neck.

  “You’re not going to try and choke me now are you?” Dante asked, amusement lacing his words.

  “Wouldn’t dream of it,” Ashley answered sweetly.

  Her arms slid down Dante’s chest, resting above his hips.

  “Be right back,” Dante said to me. He turned his head, calling out, “Hang on tight,” before twisting back the handle and zipping away.

  I watched them until they disappeared from sight, a sinking feeling weighing down my gut. Tears pooled in my eyes. They froze just as suddenly. All I’d ever known was the bitter cold bite of winter. It lasted longer than any season should. There was no big, bright future for me out there. No getting the guy. No happily ever after.

  Fane and Noel would never know what had become of me. Neither would my mom or Gran. Mom would keep checking in with the neighbor from time to time as Dante had instructed her. There’d be no news. I couldn’t imagine her worry, the stress and fear of hiding out, keeping herself and Gran safe, and wondering how I was doing. Mom might have signed me over to the agency, but she had no clue how to navigate the trenches. I didn’t want that kind of life for her, especially not when she’d finally let go of depression and guilt and made a new life for herself.

  I was tired of hiding.

  Screw that! I was getting myself out of this shithole. If Dante wanted to stick around, that was his choice.

  I had to get out of there. I had to get back to Fane. There wasn’t anything more I could do. Dante was right. We needed someone on the inside. If Ashley didn’t play ball, it was up to me to get to Noel and find someone who would. If anything, my leaving would double our chances of success.

  I wasn’t about to hibernate in the mountains while the agency and their vampires for hire tracked us down like rabid wolves going after rabbits.

  I marched over to Ashley’s car, my determination soaring with each step, excitement building inside me like a caged animal about to break free. Inside the car, I snatched the walkie-talkie and waited, heart pounding.

  The hardest part would be telling Dante what I was going to do. My fingers itched to grab hold of the wheel and take off right away. The gas tank was half full. Probably not enough to get me back to Anchorage, but I didn’t want to risk driving an informant’s car all the way in anyway. I’d push it to Willow, ditch the car, and hitchhike from there.

  Accepting a ride from a stranger didn’t sound so scary when I’d done battle with the undead. Besides, I was the one with the gun and knife. If anything fishy happened, I had no problem stealing the vehicle at gunpoint.

  Hey, go with what you know.

  What I didn’t know was how to hot-wire a car. Threatening a creeper with a gun I could do. Blood type didn’t matter if the intentions were bad. I’d blast someone with O positive if they tried to hurt me.

  As time passed, my stomach tightened. Could I really go through with it? Could I really tell Dante I was leaving?

  I didn’t think I could. Then again, I couldn’t go off into the wilderness with him either.

  By the time the walkie-talkie crackled to life, I was about ready to vomit from stress and indecision.

  “Sky, you there? Over.”

  I lifted the speaker to my lips. “I’m here… over.”

  “Sorry, that took longer than I thought. Had to take it slow with the limited visibility and passenger. The informant is secure. I’m headed back. See you…”

  “Dante!” I cried into the speaker, sending the radio into an epileptic fit of static. I let go of the “talk” button.

  Dante’s voice returned. “Say again. Over.”

  Radio gripped tight in my palm, I said, “Stay where you are. I’m going back to Anchorage. If Ashley doesn’t cooperate, we’re going to need Noel. Our chances of success will be much better if we split up.”

  I wasn’t sure if Dante heard the last bit. The radio crackled and screeched when he tried to cut in.

  “Dante, you’re breaking up. I’m going to head out. Good luck. I’ll see you once it’s s
afe.”

  More crackles came through. It didn’t make parting any easier. There was so much left unspoken. It was an abrupt way to part, but I didn’t see any other way.

  Suddenly the static cleared and Dante’s voice burst through. “Aurora, stay where you are. I’m on my way. I repeat, stay where you are. Over.”

  The radio felt like a grenade in my hand about to explode. I wanted to chuck the thing out the window and get far, far away.

  I held “talk” and said, “I won’t be here. I’m sorry.” I released the button and turned off the radio.

  My stomach sank. I’d spoken the words, cut the cord. Now it was time to fly free.

  Except I wasn’t free. My photo was printed on wanted flyers, and the agency was still tracking me down. Only now I was all alone.

  I buckled in.

  Not for long.

  Life is a dark and lonely highway, one I hoped led me back to the one I loved. The first five minutes of the drive were freeing, like I’d just broken out of prison. All too soon, reality began raising pesky objections. I hadn’t been released. I was making a run for it. Again.

  I tried to sing “Life Is a Highway” by Tom Cochrane. My voice started out loud, shouting the lyrics more than singing them.

  “I’m going to ride it all night long!” I yelled out, gripping the wheel and shaking my arms as though spurring a horse on with the reins.

  Ride it all night? Or was it drive it all night? Or both?

  My voice began to drop and eventually fade. Singing made me think of Dante. Dante, whom I’d left behind to fend for himself. And who did I leave him with for company? The vampire who’d kidnapped and threatened his life.

  My gut clenched.

  It wasn’t like I wanted to leave him that way. We had big problems. I was only trying to make things better and lessen the risk to the people I cared about.

  But when had that ever gone according to plan?

  For all I knew, I might not make it back to Anchorage. The agency could have a whole convoy on the way up at this moment. They could spot me from the road. It wasn’t like there were alternate routes into the city.