Jenna Ryan - Raven's Hollow

Easing back a tempting inch, she regarded him through her lashes. “I can feel the conflict in you, Eli. I know what it’s like to want but know you can’t or shouldn’t have. I think.”

“That’s part of our problem, isn’t it?” His eyes traveled over her face. “We’re always thinking.”

Her smile widened. “Not sure I’d say that, Lieutenant.”

And yanking his mouth back down onto hers blasted everything that didn’t have its roots in need from his head.

It might have been lightning or the glow from the taper that caused the darkness to shift.

Whatever the source, when he spotted a shadow that shouldn’t be there, his body stilled …

www.millsandboon.co.uk

JENNA RYANstarted making up stories before she could read or write. As she grew up, romance always had a strong appeal, but romantic suspense was the perfect fit. She tried out a number of different careers, including modeling, interior design and travel, but her one true love has always been writing. That and her longtime partner, Rod.

Inspired from book to book by her sister Kathy, she lives in a rural setting fifteen minutes from the city of Victoria, British Columbia. It’s taken a lot of years, but she’s finally slowed the frantic pace and adopted a West Coast mindset. Stay active, stay healthy, keep it simple. Enjoy the ride, enjoy the read. All of that works for her, but what she continues to enjoy most is writing stories she loves. She also loves reader feedback. E-mail her at jacquigoff@shaw.ca or visit Jenna Ryan on Facebook.

To my dad, Bill Goff.

It’s been a long road, and there’s more to go.

Please, don’t forget …

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Excerpt

Chapter One

She was being hunted.

The darkness seethed with the bloodlust of the fanatics behind her. She couldn’t see them, couldn’t see anything except the shadows of the hollow that twisted branches into skeletal limbs and turned everything that moved into her persecutors. The shadows hid their faces, and their bodies, but the footsteps shaking the forest floor told her they were closing in.

An ancient name swam in Sadie’s head even as desperation drove her deeper into the woods. Nola Bellam. Not her, not quite, but someone who was part of her.

The knowledge did nothing to alter her flight. Fear gathered like a fiery liquid in her chest, blocking logic, preventing clear thought. The trees, misshapen and grown together, bent lower. The ground grew rougher, the bushes more tangled. Wind swooped down in bursts to claw at her black robe.

She’d run from these same pursuers many times before tonight, as herself and as her ancestor. She was fast, but they were faster, and one of them was equally desperate.

Ezekiel Blume had raped Nola Bellam, who’d been his brother’s wife. Nola had taken her child and escaped, but not to safety. Nowhere was safe in Raven’s Hollow. Ezekiel had been hell-bent on capturing her before his brother returned to the area. On killing her before the truth came out.

Because ignorance was the mightiest weapon of all, he’d branded her a witch and set a group of fearful townspeople on her. He’d died for that in the end. They all had. His brother, Hezekiah, had ensured it.

Words and images blurred. Ravens dived now with the wind. One of them, as large as a man, landed on the path several yards ahead.

Something about him penetrated the haze in Sadie’s mind, and she slowed.

“Keep running,” he ordered, but she wouldn’t. It was time to make things right.

Moonbeams silvered the trees. Ezekiel’s knife slashed the air while his mob of followers held their torches high, circled and salivated.

Smiling at their fervor, Sadie raised her arms and let the glittering darkness enfold her.

When Ezekiel’s blade struck, pain shot through every nerve in her body. A single cry kept the man-sized raven away. Tonight, the war was hers to wage.

So let it hurt. Let her blood be spilled. This time she wouldn’t try to trick death. She would accept her fate, and in doing so, she would save a man from the evil that stalked him here in the heart of the hollow.

As she lowered her arms, a knife slid from her sleeve into her palm. Resolved, she closed her fingers around it. She saw Ezekiel’s face in the gloom, lit from within by the madness that consumed him.

When his blade fell yet again, she aimed and plunged her own into his chest.

His eyes widened, his hand stilled. His body froze beneath its cloak.

Ezekiel dropped to the ground at her feet, blood flowing like a river from his wound.

Sadie’s breath rushed out. She’d stopped him. There was no longer a reason for the evil to be called up, no need for the poison within it to destroy an innocent soul. The man-sized raven would turn back into what he had been, what he still should be, and life would resume its normal rhythm.

Yet when she turned to watch the separation occur, her heart stuttered.

The raven stood, as solid and malevolent as ever, half bird, half man, staring at her through eyes that glowed red and vengeful.

“What is done cannot be undone, Sadie Bellam. You have your own battle to fight, and he who is me to help you conquer what comes.”

What did he mean, he who was him? Frustration linked with fear even as the creature closed enormous black wings around his body and dissolved into the night.

It started slowly, a mere thread of sound beneath the raging wind. She spun back, but saw nothing. No one.

“Daughter of the witch.” Laughter permeated the silky voice slithering into her head. “Do not be deceived. There is no one in the hollow who can help you. All that you see tonight, your mind has conjured...except for me!”

The voice rose to a roar as another cloaked shape reared up. This one wielded a much larger knife than Ezekiel’s. She saw a gleam of insanity in the eyes that locked briefly on hers.

“Your blade struck a false mark, Sadie Bellam. Be assured, mine will not!”

As the knife pierced her skin, pain exploded in Sadie’s chest. She knew then what it was to die. The taste of it was bitter copper in her throat.

The hollow faded in and out, and her mind spiraled into a pool of black. An iron fist closed around her lungs. She saw claws reaching for her from above.

And woke as she always did—gasping for air on the floor beside her bed.

Chapter Two

“Variations on a theme.”

Standing on the sidewalk outside the pharmacy in Raven’s Hollow, Maine, Sadie rubbed the lingering chill from her bare arms and willed the nightmare that had spawned it away.

But the ice in her veins wasn’t something her mind, or the unseasonal warm spell that had the early October temperatures hovering in the low eighties, could affect. It was simply there, so often in recent days that she was growing inured to it.

“You could exercise before you go to sleep,” her cousin Molly suggested.

“Tried it. Didn’t help.”

“You said the dreams vary. In what way?”

Sadie considered for a moment. “The cast of characters is always the same. It’s the setting that changes. But no matter where it plays out, I wind up on my bedroom floor, gasping for air and checking for blood.”

“It sounds—not like fun. Especially the checking-for-blood part. Do you think you could be possessed? Or maybe channeling our ancestor?”