Page 15 of Hitched to the Vampire King
I raised a quizzical brow. Guess our friendly werewolf didn’t have much experience with vampires—at least, not enough to know they could track us. I spared one last glance at the window, then kicked it shut, knowing it wouldn’t slow them down. It hadn’t slowed us, after all.
Then Gabriel and I hurried after the other werewolf, the bald cypress trees blurring by at a surprising speed. I had absolutely no idea where we were, but it definitely seemed somewhere swampy. We ducked under low-hanging branches and sidestepped thick vines that seemed to snatch at our ankles. The air was thick with humidity and stunk of wet foliage and brackish water. Draped in Spanish moss, the trees towered over us, the moonlight peeking through in an ethereal glow. But the worst was the ground and how it sucked at our feet, the mud almost as thick as wet cement. After a few steps, I lost one boot, soon followed by the other.
Nothing like running barefoot through the freaking bayou. Just great.
I struggled to keep moving, the difficult terrain doubling my exhaustion. “Does…anyone…know”—I wrenched my foot out of the mud with a wetplop—“where we are?”
“Just outside New Orleans,” the other werewolf threw back over her shoulder. She gripped a hanging vine and swung over a rather large puddle of terrifyingly murky water.
Once on the other side, she threw the vine back to me. I’d never swung through a forest like Tarzan before, but I was all for new experiences.
I gripped the vine and stared at her from across the small pond. “New Orleans?” Hope sparked within me. “My sister’s husband, Sam, he’s from here. If we can find the local pack, they might help!” Excitement warmed my chest. I’d fought with the pack once before to save Lucy’s life. Surely they would remember me, and if not, I was Sam’s sister-in-law. I had to believe they’d help family.
The woman threw me a wide-eyed glance. “Sam? Sam is your brother-in-law?”
That flicker of hope flared. “You know him?”
“Of course I know him. I’m part of the pack. I’ve known him my entire life.”
Relief washed over me, and I shot Gabriel a weak grin. Things were certainly looking up. We had help—provided we made it there before the sun rose, a fear I was trying very hard not to focus on. We had enough problems without adding the inevitable sunrise into the mix.
I positioned myself, about to swing across, when I paused and asked, “Hey, uh, what’s your name?”
“Avery. And you’re Maddie.”
I frowned at her.
She crooked her head toward Gabriel as she dodged around another tree. “I heard him call your name a few times.”
Ah.
“Okay, Avery.” I took a deep breath and swung over the water. I quickly landed on the other side. Any other day, I might have marveled at all this. Swinging the vine to Gabriel, I turned back to Avery. “This is clearly your home turf. Can you get us out of here and back to the city all before sunrise?”
I didn’t love her conflicted expression.
“No guarantees.”
Yeah, that didn’t work for me. There was no negotiating this part. We needed to be somewhere a hell of a lot safer than the bayou when the sun came a-knocking. My heart pounded in my ears, drowning out the distant calls of birds and the occasional splash of something far larger that Ireallydidn’t want to think about. Sure, I was a werewolf. But it was my number one goal in life to neverevercome face-to-face with a modern-day dinosaur. A goal that I suspected might be hard to keep out here. The marshes were their home, and we were intruding.
“We can’t be out here come sunrise,” I reminded her.
Avery glanced at Gabriel, who had just landed beside me, then gave a firm nod. “The pack has a safehouse nearby. I can get us there.”
“Hopefully before Adrian finds us,” I commented.
And speaking of Adrian.
I turned toward Gabriel. “Did we lose them? Can you still hear them?” I certainly couldn’t, but I’d been a little distracted by the conversation. “And a third, but equally serious, question. If a gator eats a vampire, does it become a vampiric gator? Asking for a friend, of course.”
Gabriel shot me a bewildered glance.
I shrugged, then tapped my head. “The things I think of.”
“Right. Well, Adrian isn’t too far away,” he said. “Thankfully, the terrain is slowing them down.”
“Yeah, it’s slowing us down too,” I grumbled, still itching to know if vampiric gators were a possibility.
“Not for long,” Avery called to us. “This way. I know exactly where to go now.”
