Page 6 of Meeting Her Mate
Chapter 3: Alexis
Afew hours ago, my first order of business was to escape from this town and never return. Of course, now, given the serendipitous events of the last few hours, everything had changed, prompting me to rethink my entire strategy.
I had always imagined I would find myself blissfully fated to some hipster-looking guy with a full face of facial hair, smoking an elegantly rolled cigarette in the back of some antique bookshop in Maine, perusing some Victorian-era literature. I’d walk over to him in the aisle, he’d notice me, we’d touch hands accidentally, and then boom, we’d both bond with each other.
Except now this had happened. Instead of some covert werewolf in a Maine bookshop, here I was, bonded with someone I had spent my entire childhood hearing tales about. The great Grimm wolf, the savior of the pack. Will, who by all reckoning should be in the nineties but looked no older than I did.
What unspeakable horrors had he been through? Who had mutilated him so much?
“As much as I would love to stay here,” he said sarcastically, “those vampires are closing in on us, girl. And we have nowhere to go!” His voice was a pendulum oscillating between panic and disbelief. But it served the purpose of bringing me back to reality.
“I…” Truth was, I had frozen in fear. Off the top of my head, there was nothing that I could think of doing that would save us both in the face of this new threat. I had spent weeks trying to chart a course out of the forest and had planned impeccably for each step of the way. Even with all that planning, the margin of error had been quite significant.
Now, I had no plan. There was no contingency in my mind for such an event.
“Listen to me, girl. I have not survived the depths of a dungeon and the tortures of a madman only to be smitten by a horde of brainless bloodsuckers. Let’s get out of here this instant!” Will snapped.
“You have no recourse either!” I snapped back. “What are you hassling me for?”
“I happen to have a recourse,” Will stated. “Vampires tend to instill fear in the hearts of their enemies via numbers. But they’re always overcompensating; remember that. They have a weakness that makes their numbers pointless. Can you tell me what that is?”
My eyes shot wide open as I understood what he was saying. “The sun!”
“Yes, girl. The sun, indeed. And when it comes up, no matter if there are hundreds or thousands of them out there, they are going to have to seek shelter unless they want to die.”
“Right on,” I said. “So, what do we do now?”
“Look to the sky. It is at its darkest now. If anything, that’s a prelude to dawn. The stars have dimmed their shine, and the moon is receding along the horizon. Any moment now, the sun is going to emerge from behind the mountain and burn these vampires,” Will said.
I clamped my hand over his mouth before he could utter any more words. The vampires had covered great distance and were now standing on the other side of the clump of bushes we were hiding behind. The air around us became stagnant with the smell of stale blood.
Will’s eyes grew wider as he, too, saw what I was seeing: The barrels of the vampire’s guns prodding the bushes, the beams of their torches penetrating through the darkness of the forest. It would be foolish to wait for dawn any longer.
I nudged Will to come closer. When his ears were within whispering distance, I said, “When I distract them, you head north. You keep running in that direction, and you don’t look back. You’ll find your way to Fiddler’s Green.”
“What about you?” Will whispered back, his face contorted with concern.
“You let me worry about myself. I’m going to distract them. You get to safety. When you head into Fiddler’s Green, head over to the Grimm Abode. They’re bound to recognize you as I did. Okay?”
“It is not the mark of an alpha to leave a member of his pack behind. I cannot doom you to danger,” Will growled.
“Between the two of us, I’m in better shape. I’ll give them a chase, and by then, the sun will come up and do its bit. I’ll come back for you,” I said. “Don’t you worry. Just run north so that the vampires don’t see you.”
Will cast me a wounded look, a look that tore through my heart and made me feel terrible for abandoning him like this. But this was his plan. He was the one who had suggested that whole Gandalf-turning-the-trolls-into-stone idea. I was just implementing it.
“Farewell, Alexis,” Will whispered.
“Take care, Will,” I said. Then I shifted, rising above the thick overgrowth of bushes that we were cowering behind, and howled fiercely to draw the vampires’ attention.
“Do not spare her!” A vampire shrieked and opened fire in my general direction. This was soon followed by a flurry of more gunfire issuing from the weapons of other vampires.
As I ran zigzagging through the woods, my peripheral vision was lit up with flashes of muzzles, and my ears rang with the sound of bullets whirring by me. Despite my aching foot, I ran like the devil himself was on my tail.
The strain on my injured foot would have impeded me had my will not been so adamant. It wasn’t just about me anymore. Back there, there was a weakened wolf who relied upon me to save him.
Wolves are at their strongest when they’re part of a pack.
I powered through the pain and raced along the forest path. At first, the fact that none of the bullets were hitting me was a little hard to believe, but then it dawned on me that it’s hard to keep one’s aim true when one is running. Still, I was not out of danger. The bullets were still soaring around me, and dawn seemed like a far way off.