Little Red Riding Hood: Werewolf Slayer (Merlin's Hoods Book 1) Page 8

  Our house. My heart broke at the thought, and suddenly I let out a wail. The place where I had been born and grown up. The place where I’d slept, eaten, trained, and dreamt for my entire life. The place where I’d comforted my mother—though she hadn’t wanted to accept it—the night my father died. The place where I moved into a position of adulthood, helping her around the house and learning how to take on the responsibilities of an adult.

  The house was blackened now, and destroyed. Just like my life. Dead, along with my mother.

  I pulled my eyes back down to the freshly dug grave, and then to the sack sitting next to it. “Mama,” I whispered, and my voice shattered in my throat. My mother was dead, and she had used her last breaths to save me. Had she been dead when they took her up the stairs to her bedroom? When they set fire to the house in an attempt to smoke me out of my hiding place?

  I hoped and prayed that she had been, that she’d been saved any further pain. That day as I had crouched down in the room behind the pantry, my heart hammering away at my ribs, my senses preternaturally keen with the hood’s presence, I’d thought she was dead already. I must cling to that thought, I told myself, and believe that she’d been spared the pain of burning to death.

  Either way, she was gone, and the fresh realization seemed to drive a hole straight through my heart. My mind ran over the years of my childhood and the times we’d shared—both good and bad. The training, the meals, the rare laughter and displays of affection … I would have bargained with the foulest of demons or sold my soul to the devil himself if I thought it would bring her back.

  I closed my eyes on the thought, knowing that it was a hopeless wish, and when I opened them again I noticed there was a grave next to Mama’s. Merlin was burying her next to my father, then. At least they would be together in death, though their time together in life had been cut so short. This brought a slight smile to my mouth, and I lifted my eyes up to the heavens, wondering if they were looking down on me right then, watching over me, perhaps even guiding me on my journey.

  When my eyes dropped again, by chance they settled right onto the last person I wanted to see: Alison. She was standing directly across the circle, with Claude at her side and a smirk on her lips as she met my eyes.

  I snarled and yanked my hand from my grandmother’s, my heart instantly filling with more hatred than I’d ever thought I could hold. “You!” I yelled, not caring whether I interrupted the service. “How dare you come here? How dare you show your face? Murderer!”

  Before I knew what I was doing, my feet were flying over the forest floor toward the woman who had killed my mother. I’d sworn revenge, and now I would have it. The hood on my back sang with vengeance and glee at the thought, and I felt its power running through me—over my shoulders and down my arms, until it tingled at the tips of my fingers.

  Without thinking, I reached toward my belt, grasping for the knife I always carried there. I bared my teeth and lunged at her, the knife aimed directly for her throat. She would die just as she had killed my mother, her blood staining the ground beneath us, her screams echoing into the depths of the forest.

  But just before I reached my aunt, I was yanked back and thrust behind someone.

  “Stop, child!” snapped a deep voice. “Now is not the time for your vengeance. We are here to mourn your mother.”

  I glanced up, shocked and furious. Who would dare to stop me now, when I was so close to my goal? I was met with a gaze that was older than the woods around me and sadder than my own. Deep blue eyes bored into mine, willing me to hear what he was saying, and to respect it. Merlin.

  “She killed my mother,” I gasped, grunting and twisting in his grasp. “Her own sister. And you want me to let her off freely? To stand by and do nothing while she disrespects my mother’s memory with her gloating?”

  Merlin sighed and pulled me against him. “I know of what you speak, child. I know,” he murmured gently. “She has long envied your mother, who received the red hood when your grandmother relinquished her title. She has long lusted after the hood for herself. I never thought she would go so far as to kill her own sister. Perhaps I was blind to her … shortcomings.”

  There was a long silence, and though I continued to struggle, furious that Merlin would restrain me, I felt first Théodore and then Grandmère come up behind me and put their hands on me.

  “Be still, child,” Grandmère said quietly. “Fighting her now will do no good. She has her dog with her, and he would overpower you. You must first train yourself to fight his kind.” Her voice broke on the word “dog,” and for a moment I wondered what she was talking about.

  Then I realized. Claude. He was a werewolf—that was why he smelled so strongly of dog. I’d seen him change, the day they’d killed my mother. Could he change at will? Would he change in front of all of these people? And if he did, how would I defeat him? I did not know the lore of the werewolves, though my grandmother obviously did.

  And she was right: I did not know how to fight them. Even if I succeeded in getting close enough to Alison to kill her, I would never be able to fight off a full-grown werewolf. I’d barely managed to get away from Bernard. I needed to learn what they were—and how to kill them—before I faced that challenge.

  I took a deep breath and stepped back, my eyes on Alison’s.

  “You’re safe today, murderer,” I said coldly. “But you will not be safe for long. I am the Red Hood now, despite your plotting. I am the one with the power. And you … you will never be safe from me. You took my mother from me, and I will have my vengeance. No matter where you go, no matter what you do, I will hunt you. I will find you. And when I do, I will kill you. You are not wanted here. If you leave now, you will leave with your life. But know, I will see you again soon.”

  I whirled around without waiting for an answer and stalked to the other side of the clearing, where I dropped to my knees at my mother’s grave and put my hand gently on the sack that held all that remained of her.

  “You died needlessly, Mama, and I will avenge you. I will be the Red Hood, and those who do wrong will learn to fear me. Starting with your sister. That, Mama, is a promise.”

  I stood, without bothering to acknowledge the rest of the crowd, and strode into the forest to make peace with myself. My enhanced senses told me that my aunt and her dog had already turned and fled, and that the crowd around my mother’s grave was slowly filtering away.

  I’m sure my grandmother and Théodore watched with shock. I was no longer the girl they knew. On the other hand, I could sense that Merlin watched with expectation and perhaps some pride. My family no longer knew me, but Merlin … Merlin had just seen precisely what he’d come to see.

  The hood told me that I was becoming exactly what Merlin wanted.

  5

  Alison dropped to her knees outside the ruins of her sister’s home, gasping, and looked up at her coach. The coachman stared down at her, shock and dismay written on his face, and asked stutteringly if she was okay.

  “She’s fine,” Claude chuckled. “Just got a taste of her own medicine, is all. That niece of yours is a spitting cat, Alison. Methinks you’d best beware of her malice.”

  “She’s nothing!” Alison snarled. “Nothing but a stupid girl who should never have been given that cloak.”

  “Perhaps we should not have convinced King Philip to allow us to represent him at the funeral,” Claude said, more gently this time. He reached down to pull Alison up, and she let him.

  Perhaps, after all, he was right. She’d heard about the funeral through her contacts in the forest and had sent Claude to Philip, knowing that the king would be unable to say no to her intended. They’d been sent—by royal decree, no less—as the king’s representatives. Alison narrowed her eyes at the implication: that the king himself wasn’t attending his own Red Hood’s funeral. It had been a sign of disrespect, and even in her hatred, she’d seen it.

  Adela had spent her life serving the man, and he’d refused to go to her funeral. />
  Alison, for her part, had known that she needed to be there. She’d believed in what she was doing when she challenged Adela to the fight. She’d known that she was doing the right thing. The hood should have come to her, not Adela. Alison herself had always been more graceful, more beautiful. More deserving. She was also taller, stronger, and faster than the older but smaller Adela. Alison should have been first in line. She’d spent her entire life training for it.

  And then, when her mother—her own mother—had finally taken the hood off, she passed it casually to Adela, as if there’d never been any doubt.

  Alison had run from her mother’s house and traveled to Paris to make her own way in the world. But she knew she would find a way back to that cottage in the woods to take back her birthright. She’d never stopped believing that the hood was rightfully hers.

  However, she never would have believed it would lead to killing her own sister. And she’d been regretting it ever since. Now her eyes began to well with the tears she never let herself shed.

  “I thought I would beat her. And I thought she would give it up willingly,” she sighed. “Never did I dream we would end up here.”

  “Then you were a fool,” Claude growled. “The magic of the hood does not work that way, and well you know it. The hood chooses the wearer. It chose her, rather than you. And it was not your place to try to force it. Now stop sniveling about, and get into the coach. We’ve places to be.”

  Alison drew herself up, offended that he would speak to her this way, but then caught his eyes on her. They glowed a deep, otherworldly red, their meaning clear, and she took several steps back, frightened. Dealing with Claude was well-nigh the same as having made a deal with the devil himself, and though she hadn’t regretted it often, there were times—like now—when she was reminded of her position. How risky it was.

  How she had taken so lightly the sale of her soul.

  “I did not want to kill her,” she whispered coldly. “It should not have come to this.”

  Claude grabbed her arm and shoved her toward the carriage. “And yet it has,” he said roughly. “You’ve made your deal, and I will not allow you to go back on it now. You have promises to keep. Things to take care of. Have you forgotten what you told me?”

  Alison climbed into the carriage, her pride and her arm smarting in equal measure, and dropped into the seat. “No,” she replied tersely. “I haven’t forgotten.”

  She wanted the hood. She’d always wanted the hood. She’d seen how much respect the other foresters had for her sister Adela, and how that respect had now transferred to the girl Giselle. It only made her realize even more how much she desired it.

  Suddenly, her mind flew back to years before, when she and Adela had been children. They’d been out in the woods together, having tricked their mother into letting them out alone, and were overjoyed at the freedom.

  “I cannot believe she let us out!” Alison giggled, her hand to her mouth.

  “She wouldn’t have, if she’d known we were going farther than the outhouse,” Adela said, grinning.

  Suddenly she stopped and put her hand out to grasp Alison’s arm. Her shoulders grew tense and her nostrils flared, scenting the wind. Alison took one look at her sister and turned her eyes quickly to the forest. What had Adela seen? She’d always had better senses than Alison, and had learned early on to pay attention to her surroundings, no matter where they went.

  Alison, in turn, had learned to count on her older sister to tell her when danger was near. She knew the look on Adela’s face now, and it meant that something was wrong. Very wrong.

  “What?” she whispered. “Where?”

  “Someone is coming,” Adela answered, her voice low and ominous. “Someone who isn’t supposed to be here. There, on the other side of the trees.”

  She lifted her chin in the direction of a dark, dense copse across the clearing, and Alison turned to look. There was something wrong with that grouping of trees, she thought. Though they were surrounded by the normal stately oaks, their branches spreading gracefully overhead, the copse in question held a different sort of tree. Something that Alison didn’t recognize.

  Something different.

  Before she could open her mouth to say so, a man came striding out of the copse, heading directly for them. His face was cold and terrifying, half covered by a thick black beard. His eyes, nearly hidden by the creases of skin around them, appeared to glow.

  He lunged at the girls before they could move and grabbed them both, snarling. “You’re to come with me,” he snapped.

  Alison froze, too frightened to move, but Adela went into action. She dropped to her haunches at his feet and swept one foot out, trying to take the man’s feet out from under him. When her foot hit his ankle, though, he merely grunted in surprise and yanked her back up.

  “You are but a girl, and yet you would fight me?” he growled. “Who do you think you are, the Red Hood?”

  “I will be the Red Hood, and you will know your enemy when you come upon me!” she spat, tearing at his face with her hands, and turning to bite his arm in her fury. “You shall not take us!”

  The man snatched his hand from between her teeth, took a step back from her flying fists, and then lashed out himself, slapping her across the face and sending her to the ground.

  Alison gasped and suddenly found her feet again. She lunged toward her sister, horrified. Was Adela all right? Had she been killed? She wasn’t moving, but Alison pressed her hand to her sister’s neck and felt the slow, steady heartbeat there. She was alive, at least. Just unconscious. Knocked into the darkness by the man’s blow.

  She turned to look up at him, her blood boiling. “How dare you!” she hissed. “Who are you?”

  “No one to be trifled with,” he answered coldly.

  Without another word, he reached out and took her by the scruff of her neck, yanking her to her feet and dragging her along after him. Alison struggled for a moment, trying to get back to her sister, but quickly realized that it was useless; the man was far too strong for her to overcome him. She had known how to fight a man, she knew—her mother had taught her. She knew how to use weapons and how to get away from someone that held her. But now, with the enemy right in front of her … all that training deserted her, as if her body had forgotten everything it had ever learned.

  She went quietly, hating herself for it.

  And so they walked forward, toward the copse of trees, Alison’s heart hammering wildly in her chest. Where was he taking her? Who was he? Would Adela be all right? Would she and their mother come after Alison?

  Would they be able to find her?

  Without warning, a small figure flew out of nowhere, attacking the man with a vengeance, her small fists moving more quickly than Alison could follow. Adela! Her sister clung to the man’s back like a squirrel, hitting him about the head and neck and screaming her anger. When he whirled around, furious, she dropped to the ground and did a quick turn, her foot flying out at the end of it to connect with his knee.

  Alison heard a juicy crunch—the man’s knee breaking—and he fell to the ground, howling in pain.

  Then they were running, Adela’s hand clasping hers and yanking her toward the trees. Their feet flew over the leaves and ferns on the ground as they dashed for cover, running through bushes and behind the boulders they found, seeking any hiding places. Alison felt the branches of the trees whipping at her face and hands, but paid no heed; she didn’t know who that man had been, but she did know that they had to get away from him. He was on the ground in pain, but he might have friends, and if he did …

  “We have to get home,” Adela huffed. “When we get there, Mother will protect us.”

  Suddenly Alison shook herself, bringing her mind back to the present. Yes, their mother had protected them that day. Other men had come for them, but she’d been the Red Hood, and she had defeated them all without raising a sweat on her brow. But it had all started with Adela—the one who said that she would be the Red H
ood one day. The one who had shown no fear of the man in the woods.

  “If I have that hood, I’ll feel no fear, either,” Alison murmured. “I must have that hood.”

  And she would get it. No matter what it took.

  WAIT! THERE’S MORE!

  You just read an excerpt of the sequel to Little Red Riding Hood: Werewolf Slayer (Book One.) Keep turning to read an excerpt of the prequel to that story.

  In the prequel, Vampire in the Woods, you’ll learn how Giselle’s grandmother decided which of her two daughters would be the next Red Hood.

  Sign up for the author’s New Release mailing list to find out when both the sequel and prequel are released. Also learn how you can get both books for free.

  Click on the link below to learn more.

  www.BrightSons.com/RRH2Update

  1

  France, 1171

  Cedric stared at the creatures around him, shocked nearly beyond comprehension. In all of his thirteen hundred years—had it truly been that long?—he could not remember having seen the like.

  Still, he’d hailed from Rome when he was alive and since then had sought out situations that suited his upbringing. Civilized locations. People—even humans—who catered to him, and showed the proper respect. In life, he had been one of the highest generals in the Roman army and as such was still an important man. A man to whom others had come with their problems. A man who had been given a wide berth when he was on the streets. His life as a vampire had been much the same.