CHAPTER 44
She ran.
She ran, chest heaving painfully. Alice could feel her heart booming from within her ribcage, sometimes faltering. The gray trees and white forest blazed past her. She felt like she was stabbed all over with small little knives. Alice couldn't feel her toes anymore, but she knew they were bleeding. Lots of blood. Her head squeezed, blood oozing on the side. The bullets wounds were never going to close, were they? She wished she had her glasses, because right now, she was sure that she was going to die in that blasted forest.
She bleeding everywhere, slowly getting frost-bite, weaponless, blind, and alone.
Yeah, she was fucked.
Alice scrapped up a hill, feeling the killer behind her. Alice's leg jotted out, hitting something and knocking back the killer. Stupidly, she looked behind her. She couldn't make out much in the blurry weather and without glasses, but she saw enough.
The man had a sculptured jaw, tousled and greasy blonde hair and glacier blue eyes. A scar ran along the side of his face, from the top part of his ear down to his pale, thin and cracked lips. Their eyes met and Alice felt like her heart had frozen, along with the rest of her body.
She swallowed, stalling for time. "You might as well tell me the name of my killer."
The man didn't protest. "Lutz Beildschmidt."
"Beildschmidt?" Alice backed up unconsciously, "Then, you mean-"
"I'm that moron's cousin." He made a gruff noise, jerking his head back to the direction from where they had run. From Ludwig. "I know what you are." He hissed at her. Alice watched his hard, cold expression, silently. "You're a witch. A monster. A child that should have never been born. You killed your own mother. You're a murderer, just like me."
"Why?" Alice managed to choke out. "Why did you do all this?"
"All those years ago, in Sicily." Lutz explained. "I watched you save those two morons. I watched, completely useless as that Swiss filth killed the man I loved."
"Venziano."
"He. Was. Supposed. To. Rule!" Lutz growled. "He was meant for greatness and that stupid boy, Lovino, couldn't see that. He was too wrapped up in his own selfishness to see. To see that Venziano was the true ruler! So, now? Now, I will destroy everything Lovino loves, just as he did to me."
"And me?" Alice asked. "And Vash?"
Lutz gave a playful sneer that struck a lightning bolt of fear in her heart. "You were the bitch that just had to be there. You were so selfless and threw yourself in front of two strangers to save their lives. You couldn't just run like the rest of them. No, you and that bastard are the reason that he's dead."
He continued, "Vash needed to pay for what he did. So, I set him up with little Isabelle and Olivia. The bastard could never keep it in his pants. All I needed to do was drive him mad. He hated knives, really. His father killed his little sister with a knife. It was so easy to watch him crumble when the two women he was sleeping with be killed with knives. Pity I didn't get to watch his face as he swallowed that poison, though."
"Is that why you waited? To see me crumble?"
"No. I never truly waited." Lutz said. "I'm the one who spiked your fiancé's drink and introduced him to the soprano slut. I'm the one who arranged the 'accident' in America, the one that sent Dylan back to London. I've always been here."
Rage overtook her. "You bastard." Her hand reached out blindly and grabbed a thick stick that was about the width of her arm. She took the heavy stick and whacked him right across the head. Twice, and then took off again, this times towards a bakery. Alice pushed through the rusted, iced doors. They screeched and squealed at her, but she didn't notice. Flashes of pale and stained walls rushed past her as she dashed through the building.
She didn't know what to do. She didn't know where to go. Lutz was catching up to her and fast. He had a weapon, she didn't. Alice could hear her heart pounding in her chest. Ba-dump-ba-dump-ba-dump-ba-dump. "You're going to die." A voice said in her head, "Why are you even running?"
She kept going. Alice crashed into another room, this one with large and rusted metal doors. They swung behind her noisily as Alice ran through. The silvery kitchen was abandoned, completely. The drawers and appliances were trashed, swinging open. It was obvious that the place had been ransacked more than a couple of times. The building was crumpling, debris scattered across the dirty, white, hexagon tiles. Lutz crashed in from behind her. Her raw, bleeding feet pattered across the frigid tiles of the kitchen, Lutz right on her trail. She looked around wildly, but there was no knives or forks or even spatulas that could help her now.
Damn it, a Kirkland never had much luck in the kitchen.
And then... that. At first, she didn't notice it. She hadn't felt anything. And then she did, like it had always been there. Like it was a part of her body. The freezing feeling hissed in her body and for some reason, her ribcage was warmer than she remembered. Blood spurted out of her mouth and warm liquid dripped down from her torso. Alice looked down with shaky hands.
A silvery knife glinted at her in the dim light, like a grin of a cat.