Blood & Dust (Lonesome Ridge Book 2) Read Online Free PDF

The house, the barn, everything. I want it gone. Burn it to the ground.”
    Connor looked between Jasper and Abby. The deputy bobbed his head gently. Connor looked up at the clouds again. “Storm’s comin’ soon. If you wanna burn it, we gotta do it now.” He pulled a little box of matches from his pocket and handed it to Abby.
    They set up camp under the small copse of trees where they had tied their horses and watched the flames lick the night.

 
     
    CHAPTER 5
     
     
     
    The wind pawed at Summer Rain as she pushed through the expanse of land that wound between two cliffs. The rain pelted her with fat droplets that splashed across her bare skin and fell through the hole in her cheek to coat her tongue. Her hair plastered itself to her face and neck and obscured her vision. With a growl, she shoved the black strands away from her eyes and lowered her head.
    For the last week, she had called this place home, hunting the deer and other wildlife that came to drink at the river that snaked across the valley floor, only venturing out once to attack a homestead very near the canyon. She had stumbled upon the refuge as she fled Lonesome Ridge with a hole in her face and another in her back. Bitter hatred flooded into her, drowning out the rain. She hated that town. She hated it with every part of her being. For the briefest of moments, she had dared to hope that she could be something more than just a ruthless killer, that she could be part of something great, but it had fallen to pieces in spectacular form. The citizens of Lonesome Ridge had defended their town and they had defended it well. Summer Rain’s fellow undead fell to pieces around her.
    Summer Rain swerved around a bush that danced in the wind and headed toward the cliff face. A black mouth gaped at her and she made a beeline for it. The hole was in a piece of rock that jutted out from the wall and hidden by two large boulders that pressed together. The small cave inside was protected from the elements and served as a nice hideout.
    She stumbled inside and sank against the wall. A dark figure rose up further inside the cave, near the back where she often waited out the sun’s deadly rays. It stalked toward her with its shoulders hunched and its head low to the ground. It advanced upon her, but she just watched it. The faint light around the cave’s entrance illuminated the wolf’s head. One ear was torn and a scar traced across his snout, curling one side of his face into a sneer.
    The wolf walked up to Summer Rain and sniffed her wet clothes. As he did, her hand came up and brushed along his scruffy fur. She stared into his orange eyes and he stared back.
    The wolf broke the trance first. He leaned forward and licked the hole in her cheek. Despite the rain, a small bit of blood still dripped from it, leftovers from her earlier hunt.
    “Here,” she said as she lifted her hand up. In her fist dangled the remains of her meal, a scraggly rabbit she had managed to catch further down the canyon before the rains came up so quickly.
    The wolf sniffed at it before snatching it from her grasp. He padded back to the end of the cave and curled up. His movements were obscured by the darkness, but she could hear him ripping into the meat, tearing the flesh from the bone. She had drank all the blood and eaten many of the organs, but she saved the meat for him. She always did. Together, they had become a team, a pair of ruthless predators feared by the weak animals of the canyon.
    “We have to leave,” she said out loud.
    The wolf raised his head to her for the briefest of moments before returning to his meal.
    “We must avenge the dead.” This time, the wolf didn’t respond at all.
    “Yes,” she said, to herself more than the wolf this time. “We must avenge. It is why we were made. Vengeance. Pain. We must avenge the dead.”
    She turned her head away from the wolf and looked back out into the storm howling outside her cave. She wasn’t far from Lonesome Ridge.