Red Rider RIsing: Book 2 of the Red Rider Saga by D.A. Randall (best books to read for beginners .TXT) 📗

can stay here for as long as you wish. I will gladly shelter you and feed you, and give you whatever you need to live a full and rewarding life. But I cannot help you kill.”

I kept my back to him. I couldn’t expect a priest to help me kill anyone, beast or not. It seemed he was doing everything for me that his faith would allow. Which made me question my own faith. Was I truly seeking justice or merely revenge? Yet how could I let them ravage our people, our world, while I retreated into a safe, 277

warm house and pretended there were no monsters outside my door? When I could do something to stop it.

I turned to face him. “Right now, what I need most is your confidence in me.”

“I have every confidence in you, Helena,”

he said. “But I cannot help you take up a sword. I might as well be putting it to your throat. It will only end in death.”

I kept my body rigid. I couldn’t let him know the fear I felt, or let him put any of his own fear into me. I had no choice but to fight these beasts. Except to retreat, and wait to die.

I lifted my chin. “Then let’s say we understand one another, and agree to disagree on what must be done.”

He looked sad and distant, as if I were his own daughter leaving home, never to return. As though he was mourning the loss of my soul. I prayed he would be wrong.

“I will accept that, for now,” he said. “I only want to help you, Helena. You’re all the –

You are the only one left from your family. I don’t wish to lose you, too.”

“I’ll do everything I can to see that you don’t. I promise.”

He glanced aside, shuffled his foot, cleared his throat. “Come. Finish your supper and you can get some rest.”

I followed him to the table without another word and did as he said, like a condemned man marching to the gallows.

278

Crimson woke before me. He stood in the darkness, where stripes of light shone through the cracks in Father Vestille’s floorboards above us. I ignored both Crimson and the light and shut my eyes, drifting back into a swallowing sleep.

I woke perhaps an hour later, feeling refreshed and stronger. I sat up on the cot and had an odd feeling. A feeling of freedom and security.

Of home. The underground cellar held little light or fresh air, but it was safer than any place where I could take refuge above ground. Where the wolves reigned.

I stood to my feet and stretched. I wore one of Father Vestille’s old nightshirts, which hung down to my knees. But it kept me warm through the night, along with the blanket, and helped me feel human again for the few hours I slept.

I looked about for my clothes. Then I remembered Father Vestille had offered to scrub them clean for me, despite my protests. I smiled now at the thought of him with a basin of soapy water and a washboard, working away at the filth on my pants. The pants he was embarrassed for me to wear in public, as anyone would be. The pants I wore to move freely enough to kill the wolves, which deeply disturbed him. Yet he cleaned them for me, despite his discomfort with my new life.

It almost felt like having parents again.

Someone to care for me. To accept and support me, even if he didn’t agree with my choices.

I started toward the ladder to retrieve my clothes. Then I found them right in front of me, 279

folded in a basket at the foot of the ladder, along with my cloak and boots. The basket had a rope tied to its handles, which lay in a