The Red Wolf (The Wolf Fey #2) (16 page)

The skies had opened up – as they so often did in Northern California – without any warning, without any hesitation. It was as if the smooth blue glass ceiling of the world had shattered all at once, letting the primordial oceans pound down upon the pavement. He could see her consternation, her irritation – she wanted nothing but to get out of the rain, to dry herself off, to curl up into

something warm and dry.

But Jaegar loved the rain. He loved the energy – the pulse of life beating down upon the earth. He could hear the scattered raindrops in their rhythmic approach to earth and pretend that each fall of rain was a beat of his dead heart. And she was alive with the energy, too –
alive
as he had never seen a woman alive, tossing her hair back, running into shelter, and her lips were pink and her cheeks were red. He remembered that his lips would never again be pink, that his cheeks would never again be red.

She was so young
.

Humans so often surprised him in that way. They looked no different from him – he could have been seventeen; he had been seventeen for so long – but their youth never failed to surprise him. The way the world was so new to them – that rain could still take them by surprise, when he had seen so many rainfalls.

He could smell her. The wind carried her scent to him like an animal's scent, and it was all he could do to keep his fangs in check. He leaned heavily upon the branch and parted the leaves to get a better look at her. He could feel the blood – stagnant in his veins – begin something like a torpid, sluggish, shift towards life – the closest thing he would ever get to a heartbeat. She was the sort of girl who made young boys' hearts pound, he thought – and they never knew how lucky they were to experience that sensation.

For it was the physical aspect of it, he thought, that humans understood least of all. They romanticized vampires, of course – how terrible it would be to live at night! To drink blood! To prey upon humans! These were things they could intellectualize, understand. Humans had been forced to commit murder. Humans had been forced to bite back their most natural, primal desires – and so they could almost understand, when they imagined vampires, what it was like to feel that insatiable hunger for a woman's throat, her breast, her wrist. But not a human in the world had ever been alive without
living
, without a heartbeat – and so they took it for granted – what it meant, that constant linear throbbing, clock-like, towards inevitable death. For Jaegar was a vampire, and he was not alive, and the dull ache in his chest where a heartbeat should have been was for him one of the most agonizing things in the world.

They don't know
, he thought.
They'll never understand
.

He had been told that she was the one. He had waited for her until sunset – the sun agonizing upon him, even with the ring around his finger. Vampires were not meant for light, and even the strongest magic could not take away the pain, searing, burning, aching, in his flesh. He was unnatural in sunlight, and only now that dusk was beginning to settle over him could he find relief. He sat perched in the tree, obscured by the leaves, staring at her as she ran down the street.

He leaned in too closely – the birds noticed at last that something was wrong in their midst and took flight; a flurry of wings beat up around him and the branch snapped from the tree and plummeted to the earth below.

It was enough time to make a distraction.

He concentrated, and in half a second he was behind her, so close he could feel the wind blow her hair upon his lips, and then he opened the umbrella above her.

“Miss,” he said.

She startled.

“What the...” She rounded on him.

“You looked wet,” he said. She did not seem amused.

“I'm warning you,” she said. “I know kung fu.”

He had learned kung fu once, many centuries ago. He thought it better not to mention it.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “I was just trying to help.”

She softened.

“Thanks,” she said, lamely. “I'm sorry – I didn't mean to snap at you. But you need to learn not to sneak up on people like that. You scared me.”

Her eyes remained fixed upon the tree from which he had come. A suspicious glare clouded her gaze. Had she seen – was she wondering? He knew she knew something was wrong. He tried to maintain whatever pleasant normalcy he could. The sequoias were tall, after all. No human could survive a jump from them – he knew she knew this. He knew she thought he was human.

Excerpt from

Wicked Woods

Book 1

kailin gow

Prologue

B
riony Patterson was in bed, unable to sleep, fearing that simply closing her eyes would bring forth the monsters she thought lived in the dark. Except for the full moon shining through the window of her room, it was dark. Very dark. So dark Briony could barely see her fingers in front of her. Scary things happen in the dark. Bad things happen in the dark. As far as Briony could see, there was a lot of darkness in front of her, laid out in acres over acres of woodland.

Briony could not close her eyes into blissful sleep, for this was the same house her parents and little brother had stayed in before they vanished forever, leaving her an orphan, leaving her alone, except for Aunt Sophie, who owned this little bed and breakfast at the edge of the Wicked Woods.

Briony turned, trying to make herself more comfortable in the rickety antique bed. It was the wrong bed. Briony’s bed was small, and comfortable, and hundreds of miles away. The Edge Inn was nice enough, but Briony still couldn’t think of it as
her
room. Thinking that would be like admitting that she would never be going back, that her parents and little brother weren’t waiting for her in her real home. Of course, they weren’t, but that only made it worse.

This wasn’t home, this old-fashioned little place in the town of Wicked, Massachusetts, even though her aunt was working hard to make it feel that way. It was too antiquated, with its exposed beams and its leaded windows, too isolated, and above all too
different
feeling. Had her brother had this room? No wonder Briony couldn’t get to sleep.

She closed her eyes for a second. It was still hard to believe her entire family was gone. Missing. Vanished. Into the woods, never to be found…into the very woods staring at her right outside the windows of this seemingly cozy little guest room.

Although Aunt Sophie was kind enough to take her in after her parents and little brother’s disappearance, Briony knew Aunt Sophie didn’t want her here to complicate her life. Aunt Sophie lost Uncle Pete in the same excursion into the woods that took away Briony’s family. The last thing Aunt Sophie wanted in her life was probably a teenager.

But Aunt Sophie was the only family she had now, and Briony was Aunt Sophie’s. Briony didn’t want to be here, away from her home in Florida, away from her friends, away from the life she once had. Briony took a deep breath. Adjusting to this new life would be hard. She missed her old life, she missed her parents, and even her irritating little brother Jake, but it sure beat being homeless. She experienced being that for about one week after her family’s disappearance, and her house was sold to pay bills she didn’t know about. Briony found herself without a home for nearly a week, staying with friends, then a shelter…until Aunt Sophie could claim her as her legal relative and move her over to Wicked. Somehow, there was a paperwork mixed up, which Briony couldn’t understand. Great Aunt Sophie and Uncle Pete had always been part of her family, but Briony had never understood her mother’s connection with Aunt Sophie, besides Aunt Sophie being a distant relative.

Briony got up and went over to the full-length mirror in one corner. Her honey blonde hair was a mess from all the tossing and turning she had been doing, trying to get to sleep. Her blue eyes were just starting to take on that hollow look that came when you went without sleep too long, making her normally pretty features look older than their sixteen years.

Outside the window, something howled. Briony was used to Florida, where the only sounds at night were of cars, and horns and occasional sirens. Now though, she found herself living next to about a thousand acres of woodland, complete with mysterious howling creatures. She didn’t even know if what was out there was a stray dog or a wolf deeper in the forest.

Briony moved over to the window, staring through the diamond pattern of the glass at the world outside. Even with the moon out, there wasn’t much to see here on the very edge of town. It was so much darker out here at night than in the cities she was used to. It took some getting used to.

She should have been getting used to it last month, when her family came up to stay with Great Aunt Sophie and Uncle Pete. It hadn’t sounded like much fun, even then. Slogging around in the wilderness wasn’t really for her. Thankfully, Briony’s parents had agreed, and she had gone off to cheerleading camp instead. That had been so much better, right up to the point when the phone call came through to tell her that her mother, father, brother and uncle were gone, just like that.

Something moved in the darkness, out beyond the window. Briony forced herself not to jump. It was probably just a small animal or something. Except that when it came again, Briony couldn’t see anything. Instead, all she could see were shadows, shifting as a deeper darkness on the edge of the trees around the inn. Oh yes, the Edge Inn, run on the edge
of the forest by Sophie Edge and her husband. That seemed
so
funny now that there were
things
out there, didn’t it?

Wrapping a thick robe over her nightclothes, Briony set off downstairs, knowing that there was no way that she would sleep yet. She had only gone to bed because Aunt Sophie had suggested that it might be good to get an early night, what with starting at Wicked’s High School tomorrow. Well, that and she suspected that her great aunt probably needed some time alone. It couldn’t be easy trying to be strong for Briony when Aunt Sophie had her own grief to deal with over the loss of Uncle Pete. Briony knew that her aunt would never show any hint of it around her, because that wasn’t the kind of thing Aunt Sophie did.

Briony tiptoed downstairs, determined not to wake anyone, though with no guests currently at the inn, there was only Aunt Sophie to worry about. Briony found her asleep in the lounge. She lay in an armchair, wrapped in a robe so voluminous that it made her look vaguely like a yeti and snoring in tones that probably accounted for the lack of guests. Two fluffy pink slippers poked out of the end of the robe. Her graying hair was tied back. It made Aunt Sophie look older than usual, showing all of her fifty years.

Briony crept quietly past her to the lounge’s television, turning it on with the volume barely audible. The local news was on, which was probably good. So little seemed to happen around Wicked that Briony would probably be asleep in seconds. Alright, so that was probably unfair. Even so, there didn’t seem to be much in the local news beyond the usual round of minor events. There was a Fall Moon Festival coming up, and apparently it was due to be the biggest for years. The local high school football schedule was announced, and people were urged to support the team on their big days. There were a few more announcements about tryouts for local sports teams, but again, it was nothing that seemed important.

When that was done and the news gave over to the weather, Briony decided that it was probably time to get back to bed. As quietly as she could, she switched off the TV and started to tiptoe back past her aunt, who was still snoring loud enough to wake the dead. Briony didn’t want to disturb her.

She had made it almost as far as the stairs when the doorbell rang. Briony didn’t bother looking around for a clock. She already knew that it was far too late for people to be showing up looking for a room. On the other hand, though, it wasn’t like there were any guests at the moment, and Aunt Sophie would probably be glad for the extra business.

“I’m coming,” Briony muttered under her breath as the doorbell rang again. “Can you not hold on one minute?”

Briony hurried for the door, but she was not as quick as her great aunt. In the time it took Briony to cross the hallway, Aunt Sophie managed to wake up, leave her chair, and place herself firmly between Briony and the door. Briony found herself smiling at the thought of the sight Aunt Sophie probably presented as she opened it in that huge, furry robe of hers.

She was certainly a contrast to the couple waiting on the doorstep. They were so glamorous that they could have passed for Hollywood celebrities, though possibly ones from the nineteen-forties, given the way they dressed. The man had slicked back blond hair, a suit that was complete with waistcoat and pocket-watch, and even old-fashioned spats on his shoes. The woman was resplendent in a red dress that matched her lipstick, while her hair fell loose in blond waves. Both of them seemed very pale to Briony, who was used to people who got out in the Florida sun. Also, there seemed to be something slightly odd about their eyes. Maybe they were wearing colored contact lenses?

“What is it you want?” Aunt Sophie asked. Her voice wasn’t friendly. She probably didn’t like having to answer the door dressed as she was in the middle of the night.

The man smiled. His voice, when it came, seemed a touch too smooth. “We’re sorry to call on you so late, ma'am, but we were just at a party. We have been driving back through the woods, but it occurred to us that we didn’t really want to drive all night. We were hoping that you might still have some rooms.”

The woman clung to his arm as he said this. She directed a smile at Briony.

“Oh, look, Philip. Isn’t she sweet?”

Briony was a little surprised when Aunt Sophie edged a little further in front of her, though not as surprised as at what she said next.