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

– I can ensure your survival. However, if you continue this reckless endeavor …” He raised his hands in surrender. “There is little I can do to protect you. You can see how angry my friends are. I believe they want your blood.”

“Blood, flesh and bone,” another man snarled beside me, his hair and eyes wild.

“So as the last living member of your family,” Laurent continued. “If you place any value on your life at all, you’ll take this chance now to leave, unharmed. Otherwise, I cannot be certain what will happen to you.”

He seemed to expect me to believe his lies, the way Papa did. I no longer bothered to hide the trembling throughout my body, even from Simonet. Despite my fear, I now shook with 293

something else: rage. “Nothing is ever certain in La Rue Sauvage, Monsieur Laurent. Except death.”

I pushed the chair away and stood. My cloak whirled behind me as I strode toward the door.

“Where are you going now, little girl?”

Sharrad called across the room.

I spun back at them, the blood filling my cheeks as they laughed. Sharrad meant to unnerve me, using the same words the black wolf had used.

His own brother, the Lycanthru with shining eyes who killed my Grand’Mere and left me scarred.

They wanted to remind me that, after all these years, I would not find anyone to believe my reports about them. About men who changed into talking wolves and threatened to gobble up little girls in the night. They meant to remind me that I was completely alone in my fight against them.

But I already knew that.

I raised the repeating crossbow to my shoulder and they abruptly froze, falling dead silent. Two of them shrank back. Other conversations stopped abruptly around the large room.

“Hunting,” I said flatly.

Everyone in the tavern watched me, with what might have been awe or revulsion. Either way, it was mixed with fear, which was what I needed. I had made the Lycanthru afraid. If the rest of the town feared me as well, so be it.

I stepped outside and mounted Crimson, anxious to ride off and get my shaking under control. They had unnerved me, but I had also 294

unnerved them. I simply needed to focus on quieting my fears and unleashing my anger.

They would remain in the tavern,

deliberating over how to deal with me. I would have to be even more cautious about my contact with Touraine and Pierre, to keep them from linking us to one another. Which left me even more alone.

I had no choice. I knew what I had to do.

What I alone could do. I had destroyed a handful of them. There were seventy-five Lycanthru left. I would start keeping count.

I rode hard into the open plain and galloped toward the forest.

295

32.

Over the next two months, I fought the wolves, beat them down, struck fear into their hearts. In the waning hours of the night, I snatched one person after another from their jaws. Killed one wolf after another with a silver bolt.

Until the whole village knew that someone was fighting for them, and had started to refer to me by the name the wolves had given me: The Red Rider.

I couldn’t get at Duke Laurent, but I had reduced his numbers, and I could feel his rage at 296

every wolf I struck down. Knowing I would not give up. Knowing I was thinning his ranks.

I continued to take refuge in the

underground longhouse beneath Father Vestille’s hovel, while I received secret supplies from Pierre and secret information from Touraine. Though I had to maintain greater caution, now that people were watching me