Whiteout (Aurora Sky (5 page)

I wouldn't wait for Fane to ask me to run away with him. I'd say the words first. We'd change our names, along with Mom's and Gran's. I'd leave my home state in a heartbeat. I'd
leave my country in exchange for freedom. I'd do it for my family. For Fane.

Together, we'd disappear.

 

 

 4

Search Party

 

{Fane}

 

She was gone again. Vanished without a trace in an unforgiving land where disappearances were nearly twice the national average.

I stabbed the compact snow with the steel tip of my trekking pole. Beside me, Rex, my travel guide and eyes and ears in the sm
all coastal town of Seward, kept pace.

An icy chasm halted our progress. The deep blue crevice loomed abruptly over the glacier's edge, plunging into ridges of ice that could easily grind bone and mash organs into pulp.

I held a certain affinity for this o
paque mass that, like me, had been around for centuries.

Cold I could handle, and handle well. I'd become impervious to its penetrating grip long ago. Cold was life. It was preservation.

What I couldn't handle was having Aurora Sky repeatedly wrenched from
my life. There were worse things than separation… like not knowing where the hell she was. Like the time she took off for boot camp before I had a chance to share my suspicions about her blood. Those six months h
ad driven an ice pick
through my heart, esp
ecially knowing I only had myself to blame. I had hurt her. I had driven her away. Then she returned. Just when I thought I had a chance to make amends, I found out I was too late. She was with her hunting partner, Dante. The same partner she'd ditched me
for the first time I
screwed
up.

How many more times would she put her neck on the line? Play the martyr? Abandon me?

With a sharp turn, I continued along the shelf nature had beaten into the landscape over the
centuries
. The crampons, strapped securely to
my boots, bit into the frozen ground. I walked flat
-
footed, allowing each serrated point to pierce through snow and ice.

On either side of the white
-
and
-
blue
-
speckled range, wide fissures formed wrinkles across the dense ice field for miles.

There was no
sign of Aurora here, but it was the first lead I'd received since she disappeared two weeks ago.

I didn't care how many glaciers I had to cross. I'd climb every goddamn mountain in Alaska if I had to. But I would find her and when I did, I'd bind her, shac
kle her, lock her up
,
and swallow the key. The chivalrous European approach to courtship hadn't worked. It was time to go caveman on her wild, unpredictable ass.

Damn her stubborn vampire hunting hide. Noel had said Aurora ditched me for my own safety and
would return with her former partner in no time.

Right. Because when had any of Aurora's plans ever gone smoothly? I'd never known a bigger disaster magnet in all my years.

It felt more like months,
not
weeks, since I'd ripped through the streets of Anchor
age trying to track Aurora down before she got away.

The moment I realized she had taken off, I had commandeered Noel's convertible and torn through town searching for a red Camaro with black rally stripes, but by then it was too late. There'd been no sign
of Aurora or the Camaro until yesterday when Rex spotted the car being towed into Seward. He'd chatted with the tow truck driver and learned the vehicle had been seen abandoned in the Exit Glacier parking lot.

Searching the area was a long shot, but I'd e
xplore any possibility if even to find a footprint where Aurora once stood.

Rex's footsteps crunched alongside me.

“We can keep going, but there's no indication that anyone's walked this far.”

My hackles rose. “As long as there's a solid path, we walk. We
walk until it is no longer possible to continue forward without nose
-
diving face
-
first into a crevice.”

Rex put a hand on my shoulder. “My friend, I will accompany you as far as you wish, but if you truly want to find this woman, you must turn around.”

I
came to a halt, eyes narrowing on Rex's hand. He let it drop back to his side, expression hidden beneath his thick beard.

“She's not here,” Rex reiterated.

“I know she's not here,” I snapped. I snatched a cigarette and lighter from my pocket and fired
up
t
he human cancer stick. My nails nearly tore through the tobacco roll with the crushing force of my fingertips.

Rex scratched his hairy cheek. Oddly enough, I'd met him through Joss. Rex didn't run in any of my circles. The vamp lived more like a lone wolf
in Seward, fifteen minutes southeast of our current position atop Exit Glacier. The guy looked more like a yeti than a vampire. He was both an outdoor
sman
and Alaskan history buff. Joss had procured books on both topics for him on an ongoing basis.

While I
puffed angry clouds of smoke into the air faster than a runaway locomotive, Rex slipped his canteen over his head and took measured sips. He stood in place, waiting to take his cue from me.

Rex was right. Aurora wasn't here.

The only information Noel had time to pass along was that both Aurora and Dante were alive, but Jared had gotten away. She learned this from her handler soon after reporting Aurora missing.

Now Aurora was on the run with her not-big-brother, very male, ve
ry vampire, VERY HORNY, ex-boyfriend
/
partner, whatever the hell, Mr. All
-
American Hero. Somewhere in the wilderness, she was out there—this raven-haired, spirited woman I craved more than blood, smoke, or preservation.

I'd lived life and I'd lived it well.
What I hadn't done until this point
was
fallen head over tails into can't
-
think
-
straight
-
gotta
-
have
-
you infatuation for a woman
.

I was, as we say in Italy,
inamorata
with Aurora Sky.

The English word wasn't strong enough to describe my feelings for her.

And now, no doubt, she was shacking up with her ex. They were young vampires. They wouldn't be able to help themselves. They needed blood, sex—both!

Sharp, hot pain burned my fingertips. I'd smoked the cigarette so fast, the flame
had
raced up the filter a
nd reached my skin. I dropped the last bit of flaming paper and watched it land beside my boot and sizzle out in the snow.

Rex held his canteen to me. I took a swig and handed it back. After swallowing, I said, “Animal blood.” It wasn't a question. The blo
od had a dense, pungent taste.

“Moose blood,” Rex clarified, capping the canteen before slinging its cord over his shoulder.

Moose blood. Call me a true Alaskan vamp now. I drank pig's blood in Italy eons ago, but this was my first taste of big game. Had t
o say, I preferred human—fresh from the vein. Hadn't had that in way too long. Unlike new and less savory vampires, I could hold out. I also had contacts and ways of procuring blood bags. Taste-wise, it was a bit like comparing canned food with home cookin
g, but the nutrients were the same.

I chipped at the ice with the tip of my trekking pole briefly before saying, “This is far enough. We'll head back.”

“It is fortunate we did not find her,” Rex said. “The only way she'd still be around is if she were a co
rpse.” His lashes lowered. “Let us hope that Kushtaka has not claimed her.”

Ice cracked under the brunt of my pole as I plunged it beside me and came to a dead stop.

“Who is Kushtaka?” I demanded. “You never reported any big players in the area.”

I had eye
s and ears all over Alaska
—
hell, all over the world
—
and part of that duty meant informing me of high
-
profile vamps and their activities.

“Not a vampire, an evil spirit,” Rex clarified. “The Tlingit Indians say he is a cross between a man and an otter. He c
aptures unfortunate souls who have gotten lost or drowned, and takes them away to his realm, never to be seen or heard from again.”

I snorted with derision, heading with carefully placed footsteps back to the trailhead. “You've been reading too many books.
”

“Maybe so,” Rex said, falling into step beside me. “But it doesn't change the fact that an uncanny number of people go missing in this place.”

“More likely they were drained and disposed of by renegade vampires than a man
-
otter,” I said.

“That is one pos
sibility,” Rex acknowledged.

One possibility out of hundreds. Vampires and evil spirits aside, Alaska was a land of unforgiving extremes. A person could fall from a mountain, crash in a bush plane, drown, freeze, or get buried beneath an avalanche. If natu
re didn't do the trick, there were always bear attacks or
the
occasional trampling by a provoked moose.

“What are you going to do about Josslyn?” Rex asked.

Ah, yes, Joss. Unlike Aurora, I knew exactly where to find my best friend. And I knew how to get h
im back. As soon as I'd confirmed Aurora was a vampire, I'd set in motion a plan
—
unbeknownst to her, Noel
,
even Joss
—
to give me leverage over the agency and free her of her obligations when the time came.

As it were, I'd need to use the maneuver to free J
oss first.