Cold As Ice

Chapter 7

Ingrid had been right, the warm weather and sunshine made the drive to Seattle gorgeous. As they wound their way through the piney forests and alongside the rugged mountain vistas of the Pacific, each passing mile made the buzzing in Allie's head fade a fraction. Ingrid had rolled the windows down, and the salty sea air whipped through Allie's hair. She let her head lean into the headrest behind her as her eyelids fluttered close, breathing in the tang of the ocean and basking in the sunlight.

"You've gotta love the rain to make it here, but damn it sure is beautiful when the sun comes out!" Ingrid said, her voice loud to talk over the sound of air rushing past the car and the Cranberries CD playing out of the speakers. Allie smiled by way of response.

"You OK if we stop for a photo op?" Ingrid asked, pointing to a pull out ahead of them. Allie nodded, reaching into her purse for her cellphone so she could take a few pictures.

Ingrid decelerated and pulled off the highway, her tires crunching with the gravel underneath as she rolled to a stop next to the guardrail. The pull out was at the edge of a sharp cliff overlooking a beach below. Spread out in front of them was the Pacific Ocean, and despite the sunshine, it looked dark and stormy. If Allie squinted, she thought she could make out storm clouds along the hazy horizon way out to sea. The waves were choppy and white capped from the warm, blustery wind that smacked against the coastline.

When the car stopped, Ingrid switched off the engine but left the radio on, the creamy sound of Dolores O'Riordan's alto singing 'Dreams' still cranking out of the speakers. Allie and Ingrid stepped out of the car, their clothes and hair whipping around them as they each took in the scenery. The road behind them, despite being a highway, was quiet. It was a sleepy part of the state that they were driving through; although Allie hadn't explored it much, she'd heard enough local talk to know that there wasn't much of anything between Forks and Seattle except the Quileute reservation (which they'd long passed) and a few whale watching companies.

"Here, let's take a selfie," Ingrid suggested, beckoning Allie over. She obliged, cozying up to her cousin. The girls chuckled as they waited for the wind to die down so their hair wouldn't obscure their faces. After a few seconds of repositioning the camera so they could see the ocean in the background over their shoulders, Ingrid snapped the photo. Allie squinted against the light as they both looked at the photo.

As Allie looked at it, a spot on the beach below them caught her eye.

"What's that?" she asked, pointing to the smudge. It looked something like an animal. Allie looked behind her, scanning the beach, which was completely empty except for a few washed up logs. Ingrid zoomed in on the picture, shading the screen from the sunlight so they could see better. Allie furrowed her brows as the shape came into better focus: it was a man. He was too far from the camera for his features to be clear, but Allie thought she could see the outline of a ponytail at the base of his neck. He seemed to be facing the girls, and based on the angle of his head, looking at them.

Ingrid scanned the beach too, but it looked empty. It had looked empty when they'd first pulled in, too, which was the reason it felt a bit unsettling to see a silhouette in the photo. Allie idly wondered if it was a trick of the light in the photo.

"Weird," Ingrid mumbled, shooting Allie a glance. Allie shrugged.

"Let's get another," she volunteered. Ingrid agreed, and they reassumed their position next to one another with the ocean behind them, both smiling but a bit less carefree this time.

Ingrid didn't have time to snap the photo before Allie felt something collide with her from the back, lifting her off her feet and sending her into gut-wrenching motion. The world blurred by around her, and she heard the distant sound of Ingrid's screams, faint and grower fainter by the moment.

Allie struggled to figure out what had happened. Had she been hit by a car? Fallen off the cliff? She was moving too fast to have a sense of up or down, and she knew she was going to vomit in a few seconds.

As suddenly as the motion had started, it stopped, and she felt herself come down hard on her knees. Her body involuntarily hunched as she vomited on the ground in front of her, her head dizzy and her back screaming in pain. As wave after wave of nausea overtook her, she noticed with curiosity that her hands were on something soft. Moss, she realized as she dug her fingers into it. What was she doing in the forest?

She raised her eyes up. Standing a few feet in front of her was a man. He had thick, honey blonde hair tied back in a low ponytail and curious red eyes. He was studying her with a curious tilt to his head, and she noticed his lips were pulled back over his teeth in some sort of sneer. Allie couldn't be sure, but she swore from this distance that his teeth looked pointy. She recoiled from him, instinctively, as her mind tried to make sense of what was happening.

She tried to speak, to ask him where she was, but the nausea made it near impossible. Instead, her words came out garbled and pitiful sounding.

"W-where am I?" The man sighed with exasperation.

"It's always the same, inane questions," he commented. His voice sounded cold and indifferent. He didn't move towards her, to help her, nor did he look particularly surprised to find her. Allie couldn't imagine why a man wouldn't be surprised to have a woman collapse in the middle of nowhere directly in front of him, unless...

Allie shook her head as if willing the thought away. There was no way a human could run that fast, she told herself.

She looked up at him again, trying to quell the slowly subsiding queasy feeling. There was something about the man that was familiar to Allie, although she felt certain she'd never met him before. He was deeply unnerving, and she felt positive she'd remember him if she'd ever crossed paths before.

"What?" she managed to stutter out, incredulously.

"It's always 'who are you?' 'Why are you doing this?'" He stood up, his eyes fixed on her as he began to circle her. Allie was reminded of the way wolves or lions circle their prey as it bleeds out. She tried to turn to keep herself facing him. As she did, a flash of red caught her eye. She snapped her head in the direction of the flash just in time to see a woman materialize out of the forest. She was tall, with a shock of curly, bright auburn hair framing her face. And the same unsettling red eyes as the man.

"Now, James, didn't anyone teach you not to play with your food?" The woman chuckled darkly, her voice just as cold as the man named James. Allie felt her heart freeze in her chest as she started to piece together the dots.

She was the food.

Allie braced herself to rise up and start running, but before she had a chance, she felt something rock hard collide with her side, knocking the wind out of her lungs. Unlike the last time, she didn't snap into neck-breaking speed, although she did feel her right arm being wrenched out from underneath her. Hovering above the exposed skin of her forearm was James. His hands were ice cold and felt like marble against her skin.

Allie tried to pull her arm back, screaming in the process, but he held her like a vice. Terror began to white out all her thoughts as she saw him take a deep inhale, almost as if he were smelling her skin.

"Aaaahhh," he sighed out, his tongue running over his sharp canines as his red eyes lit up with blood lust. "If you taste half as good as you smell, I'm in for a treat."

Before Allie could process the words, James sunk his teeth into her skin. Her whole arm erupted in white hot pain at the same instant as the buzzing in her head exploded like a bomb. Allie had never felt anything like it before: it was as if someone had pulled the stopper in a full sink and her thoughts just washed away, swallowed under the buzzing. Between the pain in her arm and the buzzing, Allie felt herself slip into unconsciousness. Just as she was on the edge of blacking out, she felt strong, cold arms lifting her up, cradling her and launching back into gut-turning motion as she sped off through the forest...