Flutter by Amanda Hocking Read Free Book Online Page A

to see what they were like.
    “Oh… the lycans are worse than this, aren’t they?” I
groaned.
    “I don’t really understand the question.” Ezra got up
and walked over to me. “Why don’t you get some sleep, Alice? You’ve
had a long day. Get under the covers.”
    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