“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.
Unknown
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. 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.