LIAM (The Rylee Adamson Epilogues, Book 2) by Shannon Mayer Read Free Book Online

didn’t want to lose that safe place if I didn’t make it through the ogres we were going to have to face.
    “Don’t worry about Rylee. If anything happens she won’t blame you, kid.”
    Faris was proof enough of Rylee’s ability to see all sides of the story.
    I could almost feel the vampire laughing softly and I frowned. He was gone, his soul having crossed the Veil to the other side when the sunlight burnt him out of his body.
    But . . . now and again, I could still feel Faris, almost like a ghost only I could sense. It was another thing I wasn’t prepared to talk to Rylee about. At least not yet. I wasn’t sure if it was his memories coming through the synapses of a brain we’d shared, or my imagination.
    Not your imagination, you know that , he whispered as if he stood beside me.
    I hurried through the trees, picking my way easily in the dark, ignoring his voice. My eyes adjusted, but of course—behind me Levi crashed to the ground.
    “Sorry. I can’t see,” he mumbled.
    I turned, adjusted the bag on my shoulder, and opened it. At the bottom was a small flashlight. I pulled it out, flicked it on, and pointed it at the ground. “Keep it away from my eyes and yours.”
    He took it with a nod. With him and the light behind me, the way ahead was clearer yet.
    We moved—well, not silently—but quickly through the trees. I had to give Levi credit, he didn’t complain, not even when I heard him stub his toes, or stumble into a hole he didn’t notice. He just got back up and hurried to catch up. We cut across the green space, heading west toward the scent of animals that called to the wolf in me. What the hell were those fucking ogres up to?
    I paused as the trees thinned and drew in a deep breath.
    My wolf stretched forward, identifying everything I picked up on. Every kind of mammal, birds, reptiles, the numbers were staggering. I shook my head. That wasn’t possible. I had to be getting something wrong. I hurried forward, drawn by a curiosity that detoured me from the reason we were there.
    Or perhaps the wolf in me knew something I didn’t. I was betting on my wolf. He was a tough bastard.
    A large fence grew out of the forest, wrought iron, twelve feet high, razor wire at the top. I stared at it, thinking. Was it possible that the ogres had a second compound within this green space and we’d stumbled on it?
    No, even my luck wasn’t that good. Logic kicked in and I knew exactly what we were looking at, and it wasn’t an ogre compound.
    “That looks . . . bad,” Levi said. I reached back, grabbed him around the waist by his jeans and threw him up and over the fence. He screeched in mid-air and an answering screech from a nearby aviary burst through the night like a series of gun shots.
    “Shut up,” I snapped as I climbed up the fence, pausing at the razor wire. I swung my bag first, covering the worst of the wire. Hanging by my hands, I swung my legs up and over, landing on top of my bag. From there, I leapt down on the inside of the fence line and landed inside the enclosure.
    I climbed back up the wrought iron and pulled my bag down. There was no guarantee we were coming out the way we came in.
    “Seriously, a little warning would have been nice, dude,” Levi muttered, brushing himself off.
    I shrugged. “We’re in a hurry, I didn’t need a vote to tell me what I was going to do.”
    The signage as we hurried along the path stopped him in his tracks. “If we’re in a hurry, then why are we going through a zoo?” he asked, not a drop of heat in his voice. Very unlike the other teenagers I knew. Then again, he’d had the shit beaten out of him regularly by his father. That didn’t leave much room for defiance in any soul.
    I didn’t have an answer for him, not really. Why the hell was my wolf taking me through a damn zoo? I didn’t have a clue, but it felt right. Almost as if someone called to me.
    “Turn the flashlight off,” I said.
    He did as I asked, again without question.
    I let