Hunting Human - Amanda E. Alvarez [3]
Liz shivered. Nights in Estonia, even in the height of summer, were cool. As silence settled around them, cold began to creep in, spreading across the cobblestones and seeping through her clothes. Liz looped her arm through Rachel’s and urged her to walk a little faster. “Come on Rach, a couple of blocks and you can be horizontal in no time flat.”
“I’m dreading the morning.” The giggle attached to the statement said Rachel had no idea what she was in for. With any luck, she’d sleep straight through the worst of it.
They rounded the last turn and started the uphill walk, their destination finally in sight. The street, with lots of little shops and cafés, was empty but well lit. A white delivery van sat parked in an alley, nestled between a bakery and a tourist shop. In just a few hours, the street would start to come alive with residents and tourists walking up and down the cobblestone ways. There wasn’t a chance in hell she’d be awake to experience it.
Rachel let out a long yawn followed by a groan. “I’m exhausted. Are we there yet?”
Liz shot her an amused grin over a shoulder. “Watch it, missy. Or you could share his fate.” She inclined her head toward the kid slumped on the stoop of a small shop. He was propped up sideways against the brick wall and the store’s blue door. His head hung at an undoubtedly uncomfortable angle, curly brown hair obscuring most of his face, an open bottle of beer next to him.
This was their routine. Rachel partied, Liz studied. Rachel drank, Liz drove. Rachel got them into trouble, Liz got them out of it. It had been that way since they were kids, and as annoying as it was, Liz wouldn’t change it. It was who they were; it just worked.
Up ahead on the other side of the street, someone leaned against the wall, the red embers of a cigarette the only thing distinguishable in the shadows. The small flame arched through the air. A man emerged into the lamplight, crushing out his dying cigarette as he went. Liz’s pulse stuttered into overtime as she recognized him as the man from the bar. She pulled Rachel closer and focused on the hostel up ahead in the distance.
Walking parallel across the street, the man called out, “I figured you for the hostel.”
His words shot through darkness, thick and heavily accented, clearly Eastern European. Increasing her pace, Liz narrowly avoided a collision with a man who stepped out of a shadowed doorway and into her path. He was shorter than the man across the street, but broader in the shoulders. The sleeves of his dingy white shirt were pushed partway up his forearms, revealing angry vines of tattoos that disappeared under his shirt and reappeared at his neck, twisting around his throat like a noose.
“Lizzy?” Fear now, more than alcohol, tinged Rachel’s voice.
“It’s alright,” Liz murmured. “Excuse us.” She focused past the man and stepped off the curb with Rachel clinging to her side. In her peripheral vision, she tracked the other man moving parallel along the street. They were only two hundred yards away from the hostel. It felt like miles.
Liz stumbled as Rachel jerked away from her, letting out a terrified squeal. Refusing to relinquish Rachel’s hand, Liz spun. A third, younger man had grabbed at Rachel’s shoulder. Fear slid down her back. The kid from the café doorstep stood grinning, rocking back and forth on his heels, looking neither drunk nor harmless. Rachel backed up, pressing herself as close to Liz as she could. They took a few steps back in tandem.
Staccato barks sounded next to them, sending Rachel spinning wildly in panic. Liz forced her fingers into an iron grip on her friend’s sweater and yanked, keeping Rachel from bolting from her side. Tears of fear and frustration welled in Rachel’s eyes.
“Shh. Listen to me. Stay with me,” Liz murmured, trying to keep Rachel out of panic’s grasp. The man across the street stepped off the sidewalk, ego lengthening his stride.
“Poor little Americans. Alek, I think you’ve frightened them,” he taunted.
Alek’s face stretched into a wide, pleased grin, his mass of tattoos contracting over the muscles