Howling Sacrifices Read Online Free PDF Page A

that’s exactly what he intended. The warm furred strength was somehow reassuring, but then the figure on top of her started to change. Before her very eyes, the wolf’s frame lengthened and widened. Fur was replaced by warm, smooth skin. It seemed to her to be a fluid transition, but there was a tight grimace on the face of the man who took the wolf’s place, suggesting that whatever strange and scary magic—or hallucination—had just taken place, was not completely pain-free.
    Blinking hard to bring everything into focus, she somehow wasn’t surprised to see that it was Dougald’s face gazing down at her. She was a little surprised to discover that he was as naked as she was, even as she instinctively strained to get closer to him. As close as she could while still tied down.
    As soon as he saw her trying to move, his hands reached for the rope and he made quick work of her bonds. “Aileen. Where—?”
    “Yer friend is all right,” he assured her in a low voice. For some reason, she believed him. She automatically assumed that somehow the other wolves were…like him and they had already taken Aileen somewhere safe.
    “Why did you let him take me?” Panic and fury choked her. “You just sat there in the carriage and—”
    “I’m sorry, lass. We knew the bastards were goin’ ta perform this ritual tonight, but we didn’a know where.”
    “Who’s we?”
    “The wolves. This has been our territory for hundreds o’ years, but every so often, the witches and their devils try to take it from us.”
    “What? Why?”
    “Because o’ the magic properties of these woods.”
    “Magic?” It made an odd kind of sense. How else would one account for a pack of werewolves running loose? She gasped. “So you used me as bait?”
    Dougald moved aside as Lucy tried to sit up, but at the loss of his warmth, she immediately started shivering again—with cold and probably shock—and he wrapped her up in his arms.
    “How come you’re naked?” she murmured, wondering if she was going to pass out.
    He gave a low chuckle that she felt all the way to her toes, and shrugged. “It’s rather difficult to carry a set of clothes in wolf form, aye?”
    Glancing over his shoulder, she gasped at the death that surrounded them. The fire still raged. It probably would for hours, given how fiercely it had been fed by the priests in preparation for their disgusting ritual—the ground was covered in blood and torn red silk. And bodies.
    A sob caught in her throat, but not for the priests. Try as she might, Lucy didn’t have a lot of sympathy for the men who’d died here tonight. Not when the body of the girl they had broken and mutilated still lay spread-eagled not five feet away. Not when they were going to do the same to her.
    Oh God. She needed to get out of here. Now.
    Maybe sensing her rising panic, Dougald stood with her and stepped down from the stone slab. Lucy closed her eyes and held on to him as tightly as she could. Burying her face in the curve of his neck, she didn’t even notice where he was taking her until long moments later when he stopped walking and sat down with her in his lap. She realized that they’d left the circle and had retreated deep into the thick of the surrounding woods.
    “What about—”
    “The others will take care of yer friend and arrange for the dead girl to be brought home to her family.” Lucy nodded and let out a long breath, relieved to know that the poor soul would at least receive a proper burial.
    “Are all Canadian women as much trouble as ye’ve been?” His breath teased the fine hairs at her temple and then she felt his lips on her forehead. She lifted her face and he dropped a soft kiss to each of her closed eyelids, the tip of her nose, cheekbones, chin.
    Her mouth.
    He kissed her softly until Lucy became more insistent, needing his lips to erase the stain of evil those awful men had forced on her. She was suddenly desperate to reinforce the fact that she was indeed