Shiver Trilogy (Shiver, Linger, Forever) by Maggie Stiefvater Read Free Book Online Page B

It’s almost dark. How would they see her?”
    The hunter stared at me for an agonizingly long moment before nodding. He reached for his walkie-talkie and unstrapped it and lifted it up and brought it toward his mouth. It felt like he was doing everything in slow motion.
    “Hurry!” Anxiety shot through me, a physical pain.
    The hunter clicked the button down on the walkie-talkie to speak.
    And suddenly a volley of shots snapped and snarled, not far away. Not little pops, like they were from the roadside, but crackling fireworks, unmistakably gunshots. My ears rang.
    In a weird way, I felt totally objective, like I was standing outside my own body. So I could feel that my knees were weak and trembling without knowing why, and I heard my heartbeatracing inside me, and I saw red trickling down behind my eyes, like a dream of crimson. Like a viciously clear nightmare of death.
    There was such a convincing metallic taste in my mouth that I touched my lips, expecting blood. But there was nothing. No pain. Just the absence of feeling.
    “There’s someone in the woods,” the hunter said into his walkie-talkie, as if he couldn’t see that part of me was dying.
    My wolf. My wolf. I couldn’t think of anything but his eyes.
    “Hey! Miss.” This voice was younger than the hunter’s, and the hand that took my shoulder was firm. Koenig said, “What were you thinking, taking off like that? There are people with guns here.”
    Before I could reply to that, Koenig turned to the hunter. “And I heard those shots. I’m fairly sure everyone in Mercy Falls heard those shots. It’s one thing, doing this” — he jerked a hand toward the gun in the hunter’s hands — “and something else flaunting it.” I started to twist out from under Koenig’s hand; he tightened his fingers reflexively and then released me when he realized what he was doing. “You’re from the school. What’s your name?”
    “Grace Brisbane.”
    Recognition dawned on the hunter’s face. “Lewis Brisbane’s daughter?”
    Koenig looked at him.
    “The Brisbanes have a house right over there. On the edge of the woods.” The hunter pointed in the direction of home. The house was invisible behind a black tangle of trees.
    Koenig seized upon this bit of information. “I’ll escort you back there and then come back to find out what’s going on with your friend. Ralph, use that thing to tell them to stop shooting things .”
    “I don’t need an escort,” I said, but Koenig walked with me anyway, leaving Ralph the hunter talking into his walkie-talkie. The cold air was beginning to bite and prickle on my cheeks, the evening getting cold quickly as the sun disappeared. I felt as frozen on the inside as I was on the outside. I could still see the curtain of red falling over my eyes and hear the crackling gunfire.
    I was so sure that my wolf had been there.
    At the edge of the woods, I stopped, looking at the dark glass of the back door on the deck. The entire house looked shadowed, unoccupied, and Koenig sounded dubious as he said, “Do you need me to —”
    “I can make it back from here. Thanks.”
    He hesitated until I stepped into our yard, and then I heard him go crashing back the way we’d come. For a long moment, I stood in the silent twilight, listening to the faraway voices in the woods and the wind rattling the dry leaves in the trees above me.
    And as I stood there in what I had thought was silence, I started to hear sounds that I hadn’t before. The rustling of animals in the woods, turning over crisp leaves with their paws. The distant roar of trucks on the highway.
    The sound of fast, ragged breathing.
    I froze. I held my breath.
    But the uneven gasps weren’t mine.
    I followed the sound, climbing cautiously onto the deck, painfully aware of the sound of each stair sighing beneath my weight.
    I smelled him before I saw him, my heart instantly revving up into high gear. My wolf. Then the motion detector light above the back door clicked