[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
Midge shook her head, her face serious. No one will take better
care of you than those boys. Now, you never answered my question.
What freaked you out more?
Ryah sucked her bottom lip between her teeth and gnawed on it
for a long time. I guess that these things exist at all. She suddenly
felt the need to defend her actions. I mean, what the hell was I
supposed to do? Just nod and smile and act like it s perfectly natural
to turn into a damn wolf?
It s natural for us.
So you said, Ryah mumbled under her breath. Her head hurt,
and her stomach cramped painfully from the stress of the past hour.
Midge leaned forward and kissed Ryah s temple. You can stay
here as long as you like. Take some time to sort out your thoughts.
Just remember we are no different than we were before you knew
about our gifts.
Ryah snorted. Gifts indeed.
Midge pulled away and headed toward the door. Just think about
it. The answer will come to you. I have to let them know you re safe,
or those two will tear the entire town apart looking for you. I won t
tell them you re here, though.
Ryah nodded gratefully but couldn t form words. She watched
Midge slip from the room and shut the door.
Propping her elbows on the bar, she dropped her face into her
palms and groaned. The entire town had gone insane and pulled her
46 Gabrielle Evans
kicking and screaming behind it. With a deep sigh, she thought back
to her arrival in the little rural community.
Carson moved them to Wicked River, Alabama, nearly two years
ago to be closer to his family. Ryah had still yet to meet a one of
them. She had never even heard of the place and doubted it existed on
any map.
The residents of the small, sleepy town had seemed like a strange
lot. Within the first few months of working at the diner, she noticed
people were a lot more active after dark. Most customers ordered their
steaks rare. Gross, but not concrete evidence of anything amiss within
the city limits.
She also noticed people seemed to sniff a lot. They sniffed at
everything their food, themselves, each other, the air. They growled
when they were angry. Not the normal human sounds of agitation, but
low, feral sounds straight from Animal Planet.
Strange stories about the little creek south of town that shared its
name with the community circulated through the restaurant.
Supposedly, the stream ran red on the full moon, the water tainted in
blood. Ryah shivered at the image. She had yet to see it, never
venturing anywhere other than home or the diner, so she couldn t
confirm the legend.
The strangest thing had to be the wolf population. She had even
seen them roaming the shadows of the city during the nighttime.
While not overly educated, even she realized how odd it seemed for
so many different breeds to live within the same area. She had seen
gray, red, tan, silver, and black since her arrival. On the nights of the
full moon, the animal population seemed to double, while the humans
of Wicked River were all but nonexistent.
Asinine thoughts of sentient monsters chased themselves around
her overworked brain. An image of a huge black wolf with menacing
yellow eyes flashed behind her closed eyelids. The wolf stared back at
her, baring his fangs, saliva dripping from his snarling lips.
Ryah squeezed her eyes tighter, trying to hold on to the image, to
Keeper of the Light 47
follow the thread of remembrance back to its origin. Moving from the
creature s face, she travelled along its furry chest to the massive paws
resting on the faded and cracked yellow planks of&
Her eyes flew open, and she gasped aloud. The wolf crouched on
the porch where moments before her husband had stood, screaming
obscenities at her. Then with a loud yell that turned into a spine
tingling howl, his body had begun to melt and reform, the bones
crunching, and sick popping noises emanated from him as he
changed.
Ryah had screamed over and over until her throat became raw and
her voice died away into a hoarse cry. Then she had fainted.
Jumping down from her seat, she paced the tiny room, her hands
fisted in her hair. When she d awoken alone on the sofa that night,
she d naturally assumed she had dreamed the entire thing. Carson,
Damon, Tate, Midge. She ticked them off aloud as she continued to
walk in circles. It followed logically Midge s partners, James and
Lydia, were shifters as well.
How had she not put the pieces together before? Perhaps she was
the only human in town. Now, she just had to figure out how she felt
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]