Shadow's Awakening: The Shadow Warder Series, Book One (An Urban Fantasy Romance Series) by Molle McGregor Read Free Book Online Page B

battered face. Soon the weather would heat and her third floor room would be unbearable. Today, after a dull, gray winter, she treasured the golden sunlight. A shout drifted up the stairs. Hannah opened her eyes. Seconds later, she heard a loud bang. The farmhouse shook around her. For a moment, Hannah wondered if she was dreaming. The short chain hanging from her ceiling fan swayed in a lopsided circle, convincing Hannah that she was wide awake. Something was going on, something big enough to shake the three-story farmhouse.
    Ignoring the protest of her bruised body and aching head, Hannah eased to her feet. It might be suicide, but if whatever was happening provided a diversion, she could get another chance to escape. Odds were, it had nothing to do with her and no one would come upstairs. But if they did. Hannah wasn’t going to waste the chance.
    Glenn thought her immobile from the damage he’d inflicted. He wouldn’t be expecting her to try again so soon. In truth, her body was one deep bruise from her shins to her shoulders. Her jaw hurt so badly, it probably had a hairline fracture. Lying in the sun had seemed to be helping. Maybe it was just the rest. Either way, she felt steadier on her feet than she’d been so far that morning.
    Hannah braced herself for the rush of pain in her head as she leaned over to dig beneath the bed. In her excitement at knocking out the mountain of a man the day before, she’d forgotten her emergency bag. Cobbled together out of an old laundry bag and the shoulder strap from a long misplaced suitcase, the bag contained what Hannah considered to be her essentials. One pair each of underwear, socks, and jeans. A torn sweatshirt from her high school volleyball team. A thin t-shirt. A five dollar bill she’d found in the back of a dresser drawer. And the most important item: a photograph of Hannah with her mother.
    Taken at a barbecue in the summer between Hannah’s freshman and sophomore years in college, the photograph showed them sitting on the front porch of the farmhouse, arm in arm, laughing. In her light tan and summer dress, Amy glowed with happiness and good health. She was a woman newly in love, with no hint of the heart attack to come. Hannah always thought they looked more like sisters in that picture than mother and daughter. Their love for one another was so clear, sometimes Hannah couldn’t bear to look at it. Glenn didn’t know the photograph existed. It was the one thing Hannah would have killed to protect.
    The bag was light in her hands. As the sum of her possessions, it made a pathetic statement about what Hannah’s life had become. She slung the bag over her shoulder, arranging it behind her back to hide it from immediate view. If she didn’t make it out, she hoped Glenn wouldn’t notice the bag and take it from her.
    Hannah’s heart swelled with hope as she heard the rhythmic thump of feet climbing the stairs to the attic. She pressed herself flat to the wall, just to the side of the doorway, leaning back so that her feet stuck out further than her body. Three deadbolts snicked in quick succession and the door slammed open, flying toward Hannah’s face before it hit her feet and rebounded into Glenn. He swore loudly and looked around the room.
    “Where the fuck is she?” he said. He moved deeper into the room and began to toss the blankets off her bed.
    Hannah started to ease around the door, hoping to escape down the stairs while Glenn’s back was turned. The first time she’d tried this, it had been a miserable failure. Now, with Glenn so distracted, she might have a chance. Heavy feet pounded up the stairs below her. From the pace and volume of the footfalls she could tell that whoever it was, they were a lot bigger than Glenn and moving fast. Hannah froze. Was this the man Glenn said he was going to give her to? Were the two men she’d injured already healed? Hannah eased back, watching as Glenn heard the newcomer and turned to face the doorway. His