Sadie Hart
Authors: Cry Sanctuary
Tags: #werewolf romance, #werewolf serial killer, #romantic suspense, #werewolf, #shapeshifter, #paranormal romance, #paranormal romantic suspense, #serial killer, #shapeshifter romance
Cry Sanctuary Blurb
After being held captive at the hands of a
serial killer, Holly Lawrence is the only one who’s ever managed to
escape the werewolf known as the Hunter. As a Hound for Shifter
Town Enforcement, it was her job to track and find the killer;
instead another girl died the night that she escaped. Now, the
Hunter is changing his game and he has Holly in his crosshairs, all
he needs is a good chase.
But when he targets the pack of Sanctuary
Falls, alpha werewolf Caine Morgan is determined to protect
them–and he’s not the only one. The Hunter is using Sanctuary Falls
in a terrifying cat-and-mouse-game as he zeroes in on the one prey
that ever got away: Holly. As Holly struggles to stay one step
ahead of the Hunter, it’s up to her and Caine to work together to
save herself and his pack...
But with the body count rising with every
full moon, this killer won’t stop until Holly cries sanctuary...and
runs.
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2012 Sadie Hart
Cover Art Designed by Sadie Hart
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Author’s Note: This is a work of fiction. The
names, places, characters, and incidents are products of the
writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to
be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead,
actual events, locales, or organizations is entirely
coincidental.
All Rights Reserved.
Cry Sanctuary
By Sadie Hart
Table of Contents
Also Available from this Author
Lennox Donnelly’s
voice came sharp and clear over the phone. “Dammit Ollie, answer
your phone. You’ve missed two check-ins. We need to hear from
you.”
The voicemail clicked over and Holly Lawrence
bit back the urge to scream. She’d have given anything to call her
boss back and check in, but she couldn’t. Not with her hands strung
up over her head as she hung from the rafters in a dilapidated
shack in the middle of nowhere. Her arms trembled under the strain,
the muscles in her shoulders slowly tearing, and she had to fight
the urge to whimper as the Hunter stepped closer, head cocked as he
grinned at her. It wasn’t his name, she didn’t know his real name,
but it was what the press called him now. Ever since someone had
let it slip in an interview that he liked to hunt his victims down
before he killed them.
“Your boss sounds so worried about you.”
He reached out to touch her and Ollie jerked
before she could stop herself, a pained hiss sliding out between
her teeth. Damn. His grin flashed wider, the shadowed line of his
dimple almost mocking in the dark. His canines were too long to be
human teeth. This time when his fingers reached for her, she didn’t
jerk away. Instead she let the son of a bitch run his hand over her
hip, down her thigh, watched the frustration flare in his eyes.
“You think you’re so strong.” The Hunter drew
his fingers in a circle over her belly, and she had to force
herself to hold his wolf-bright eyes. Do not flinch. Don’t give him
the pleasure of making you squirm. The muscle in her jaw
twitched.
“But they all break. You will, too.”
He pulled back and rammed his fist into her
gut, driving the air straight out of her lungs in a hollow grunt.
Her body swayed. The barren wood shack blurred around her, the
Hunter’s face the only thing that stayed clear while the rest of
the world spun.
“Just like you,” he crooned, and Ollie
watched as he knelt by the woman on the floor, his fingers twisting
through her long blonde hair. He yanked Rosalie Myers’s head back,
exposing the long, pale line of her throat. Her glasses lay smashed
in the corner, pink cat’s-eye frames that were now nothing more
than bits of shattered plastic. The Hunter leaned in close, and
Rosalie flinched, her eyes squeezing shut. Fear radiated off her.
It hung in the air, smelling like thick sweat, clammy skin, blood,
and urine. Ollie’s heart gave a painful, longing twist. The woman
had been trying so hard to believe her, to listen, but as the
Hunter ran his thumb over her cheek, Ollie could see she was ready
to break.
He leaned in close enough to brush a kiss
against Rosalie’s forehead. “You want out of here yet?”
His finger trailed down Rosalie’s throat, and
Ollie watched as the woman shivered, while her own fear rose like
bile in her throat. “Don’t,” Ollie whispered, pleading with the
woman on the floor every bit as much as the Hunter. Don’t run.
Don’t hurt her. They were twin chants she’d been begging and
screaming since he’d dragged her in here. “Don’t.”
The Hunter spun on her, tossing her phone
aside as he yanked Rosalie Myers backwards, dragging her across the
concrete floor. “Shut up. Fucking Hound, shut up.” Her phone hit
the ground with a clatter, and he stomped on it, the black case
shattering under his boot.
Combat boots, laced halfway up his shin.
Ollie forced herself to focus on the details, her gaze traveling up
the length of him to his face. He could say whatever he wanted to
say to her, she didn’t care. As long as it gave the woman on the
floor a chance. And every extra detail she could remember would
help her later if he got away. If she was still alive.
He yanked Rosalie Myers to her feet, and
Ollie saw tears brimming in her blue eyes. The woman had been
missing for eight days before Ollie got lucky. The Hunter liked to
let his prey go on the full moon. Nights like tonight. He caught
and kept them for weeks until then, raping them but otherwise
keeping them healthy, fit, and strong. Then as dusk ate away the
sky on a full moon night, he let them go.
Only to hunt them down in the woods and kill
them.
The final chase was why he hunted.
He hunted them down as a wolf, proving his
predatory superiority again and again, but for the actual kill he
always shifted back. Always shot them.
He’d been trying to get Rosalie to run for
the last two hours, beating her, screaming at her, threatening
everything she held dear. So far, she’d held strong. But as Ollie
met those shimmering blue eyes, she knew Rosalie was about to give
in. Ollie shook her head. “He wants you to run. He can’t kill you
if you don’t run,” she whispered.
He laughed at that, a thick, menacing sound
that echoed through the shack as he pulled Rosalie’s head back,
forcing her to look at him. “Like I couldn’t hurt you? You going to
keep listening to her, or do I have to keep proving her wrong?”
“He lives for the hunt. Rosalie, if you run
out that door, you’re going to die.”
“Maybe.” His hand tightened in Rosalie’s
hair, his eyes locked on hers. “But you’ll also have a chance to
get free. Just shift. Be a good little tiger and run. You’re bigger
than me; fight me if I catch you. Surely a big cat like you can
take on a puny little wolf like me.” He caressed the ugly bruise on
her cheek. “Or stay here and let me rip you apart slowly.”
Rosalie glanced between them, and the Hunter
snarled. The sharp crack of his hand against her face filled the
shack.
“She thinks she knows me? This bitch doesn’t
know shit. She’s here just like you. Mine.”
“I do know you.” Ollie tensed. Desperation
and anger made her voice low, harsh. “I study bastards like you for
a living. I know every case. I know what makes you tick. I know if
she doesn’t run and the sun comes up, you’re fucked.”
His hand slammed down against Rosalie’s back,
claws sprouted from his fingertips, and he raked them down the
woman’s spine before pulling back, barely keeping the wolf under
his skin. “Run or die.”
His boot swung back, and Rosalie threw one
last desperate glance at Ollie hanging above her. She couldn’t
blame the woman at all. Rosalie Myers didn’t have the luxury of
confidence. She was running and hoping that the lies he was feeding
her were true. That running gave her a shot. That maybe as a tiger
she could beat him.
“Don’t,” Ollie managed to whisper right
before the woman darted out the front door.
The grin that slid over the Hunter’s face was
triumphant, the harsh edge of his dimple suddenly carved into his
face. Mocking. He turned those gold eyes back towards her. I win,
that gaze told her, screamed it at her. Then he shuddered as fur
washed out over clothing and in a blink of an eye, the monster that
was the Hunter—the man who had killed fourteen people over the past
two years—became a lean, black wolf.
Dark and deadly, he slipped out the door into
the dwindling evening light, and Ollie Lawrence knew that,
tiger-shifter or not, Rosalie Myers didn’t stand a chance.
***
“Damn. Dammit.” Ollie squeezed her eyes shut
against the rush of tears. Crying wouldn’t get her down from the
rafters, it wouldn’t get her out of this shack, and it damn well
wouldn’t save the fool woman running through the woods. Her arms
were going numb from the lack of blood and the pain. She didn’t
have long to come up with a plan.
Breathe. Unlike the last time she’d tried
this, the Hunter wasn’t standing in the room to beat her for trying
to escape, and the man had been just stupid enough to use normal
rope. No, not stupid. He wanted his victims to escape. To run.
“Gonna get what you wish for, then,” she muttered and called up her
inner dog, felt the shape-shift start in her bones.
The faint tingle of magick slipped through
her, and Ollie focused on her wrists. Her limbs thinned, her
normally chubby body twisting into the lean form of an Irish
wolfhound. Even as big as her shaggy dog-self was, the noose
wrapped around her hands was too big. She slipped loose and hit the
ground with a yelp. She gave the broken cell phone one last look of
longing, then shook off her fall and bolted out the door. Scruffy
gray muzzle pressed to the ground, she loped after the combined
scent of woman and wolf, smelled the moment Rosalie Myers became a
tiger. Please, please don’t let me be too late.
About a mile from the shack she heard Rosalie
roar, the sickening snarl of a wolf after that. They were close. A
hundred yards out, max.
Ollie shifted back, her empty gun holster
swinging at her hip. She wished he’d left her gun. But as much as
he’d wanted his victims to run, wanted them to fight back, a
still-armed Hound from Shifter Town Enforcement was apparently a
bit too much for the cold-blooded bastard.
Her boots broke through the layers of dried
leaf litter on the forest floor, acorns cracking under her weight,
just as a gunshot ripped through the darkness. A sharp, piercing
boom that eroded the peaceful quiet of a summer night and left it
hollow. Barren. Even the crickets stilled in the grass. Ollie heard
the tiger give one last snarl, and the gun fired again, followed by
the heavy thud of Rosalie Myers’s dead body hitting the ground.
Too late.
Ollie stood in the darkness, the black arms
of the trees waving in the wind as she listened to the Hunter’s
boots crunching over the forest floor. She heard his low, satisfied
chuckle. The deep bass of a howl tearing out of his throat. Wrong
coming from a man rather than a wolf.
“Your turn,” he called out of the darkness,
but Holly didn’t move.
The crack of his gun sounded again and pain
lanced through her upper arm as the bullet ripped through fat and
spun her around, knocking her to her knees. But there was no burn
of silver on top of the pain. It was about the only luck she had
going for her tonight. He hadn’t been out here to maim. He’d
intended to shoot Rosalie Myers dead with the first shot, he didn’t
need the torturous, slow burn of silver eating through her blood
like poison.