Ripper (Hunter #1)(63)

The wolves are brown, two larger than the others, though they seem small compared to the way I envisioned them. They crouch down and sniff the air, but I know my dad always masks his scent. The largest of the four looks at the rest and then comes in close. I know instinctively that she is female. I never expected her to be so beautiful. She’s graceful as she approaches me and she whines a little in the back of her throat and then snorts like she’s done something foolish. She sits back and I watch as she changes. One minute she’s a brown wolf and the next she’s a girl, maybe a year or two older than me.

“I bet you don’t speak wolf,” she says with a soothing smile. She keeps her words calm. “Don’t be afraid. I won’t hurt you. Who did this to you?”

Why is she talking to me? She’s supposed to attack. Wolves don’t help. Wolves don’t have warm brown eyes. The others are changing. Two boys and another teenaged girl.

“It’s all right,” she says. “It’s just my obnoxious kid brother and our cousins. Is the person who did this to you gone?”

They’re kids. They’re just kids like me.

“I can go get my dad,” the girl offers. “He’ll track this jerk down and make sure he doesn’t hurt you again.”

The boys are young. One is maybe ten and the other can’t be more than six or seven. He sniffles and wipes his nose on his forearm.

“I think we should go, Tina,” the other girl says. “We can send the pack back for her. We should never have come this far out.”

But it’s too late. The first shot rings out and I watch in horror as the girl who offered to help me looks down at the circle of red opening on her chest like a blooming rose. The bullets are silver and her eyes are blank before she hits the forest floor.

I see the next few moments in slow motion. The ten-year-old boy is next and then the girl. The little boy stands there, looking down at the girl named Tina. He cries and I think he asks her to get up. He doesn’t leave her. He doesn’t run. He loves his sister and it costs him his young life. I watch as my father shoots him between the eyes.

My father is an awfully good shot.

The forest is quiet again and I hear the crunch of his boots as he crushes leaves beneath him. He is a large, dark figure in the moonlight, gun still in his hand. He looks over his kills.

“They were kids,” I manage to say through my tears. They wanted to help me and now they were dead.

“Yeah,” my father says with a wealth of satisfaction in his voice.

“Daddy?”

His eyes are vicious as they look at me. “Don’t you call me that, girl. You call me sir.”

It was what he insisted on. I held my tongue. He was going to realize his mistake and he was going to feel bad.

He kicks the body of the ten-year-old boy over like it’s a piece of meat. “I always like to get ’em before they have a chance to breed.”

Something snaps inside me. I feel like I am a bottle of champagne and the cork is coming out. Rage bubbles up and flows from deep within. I have been lied to. The wolves aren’t animals. They’re different. Perhaps the wolves who killed my grandmother and my aunt were bad, but these wolves weren’t evil. The girl had been like me. I realize, too, that he intends to leave me here, staked out and bleeding. He will never tell my mother. He’ll pretend he doesn’t know what happened to me. Maybe he’ll shoot me and bury my body out here, then he won’t have to deal with a muddy-eyed freak anymore.

I don’t know how I do it, but the rope tears around me. I am strong all of the sudden and the cold is gone, replaced with a hot, satisfying anger.

“What the hell?” I hear my father whisper as I shrug off the bonds.

Something dark and deep takes over. I can feel it. It’s as though a door has opened in my soul and a piece of me I never knew before has been unleashed. I’m a bundle of instincts now. Two are foremost in my mind—survival and revenge. My father lifts the rifle, but I am faster. It is in my hand as he pulls the trigger, the shot flying wildly, impotently through the air. I hold the weapon in my hands and it feels good when I twist the metal. The gun will never work again. I toss it aside as my father backs away from me. I can smell his fear.

He is prey and no longer my father. He is meat that has done wrong to me and he will pay. He attempts to hit me, but I no longer allow such liberties. As his fist shoots out to connect with my jaw, it is so simple to block him. He moves like a man in slow motion. I simply raise my hand to catch him. His fist is large but I manage to crush it anyway. He cries out as his fingers break beneath the pressure I apply.

I have legs, too. I use them. I kick out neatly like I have done this a thousand times before. I catch him in the gut, knowing exactly where to place my heel so all the breath is pushed from his body. He would fall back and away from me, but I hold his broken hand like a tether between us. He falls to his knees and I crush his nose with my free hand.

“Kelsey,” he cries, but he’s too late.

He tries to pull his knife, but I smile down. I took it from him when he wasn’t looking…




“Kelsey,” a sharp voice startled me awake.

I fought him blindly, only knowing the nightmare still had me in its clutches. Gray pinned me, his big body covering mine and holding me down.

“Kelsey, wake up,” he commanded.