Through the Woods Read online

  THROUGH

  THE

  WOODS

  A LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD NOVEL BOOK TWO

  Also by Cassandra Johnson

  LRR Hood

  THROUGH

  THE

  WOODS

  A LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD NOVEL BOOK TWO

  Cassandra Johnson

  Through the Woods Copyright © 2019 by Cassandra Johnson.

  All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations em- bodied in critical articles or reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Book and Cover design by Cassandra Johnson

  ISBN: 9781720224457

  First Edition: January 2019

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Dedication

  There are no words that I can use to thank the woman that this entire series is dedicated to. Making do with a simple thank you seems so little compared to all the times she encouraged me to keep going, not to give up, that writing is just like anything else we set our minds to. It won’t ever be easy, but you will get better as time goes on. Thank you, Mom.

  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER ONE

  “I think the local wildlife has enjoyed Elle’s hospitality,” Gaerik said looking over the kitchen. There were animal droppings everywhere. The strong acrid scent of piss filled the house.

  “I can’t believe no one called the cops what with the door being open,” Mark said. He didn’t like the smell of this place. It wasn’t just the animals that bothered him, it was the people. Marik could still smell them in Elle’s house. He could detect the faint whispers of perfumes and masculine deodorants. These weren’t people who were down on their luck looking for a dump to squat in for the night, they were well bred, employed individuals who took it upon themselves to come into someone’s home and stealing things of value that they could afford to buy for themselves. The thought made his skin crawl. And people considered them animals.

  Making his way into the bedroom, he went straight to her closet. There were dresser drawers thrown upon, some laying on the floor turned upside down. Marik couldn’t remember if it were like this before. That day seemed so long ago. Grabbing a duffle bag from the closet, he started picking clothes up from the floor and shoving them into it.

  “What about Elle’s phone and laptop?” Gaerik asked from the door. His light gray eyes assessing his goddesses’ bedroom. So, this was where she slept, among other things.

  “They’re still here?” Mark asked skeptically.

  “Yeah, her phone was under a canister in the kitchen, and the laptop is sitting right there on the floor next to the bed.” He pointed in that direction, at least he thought it was her laptop. It looked like some small light was blinking from beneath a discarded blouse.

  “Grab them both,” Marik said emptying a drawer full of socks and panties into the duffle bag.

  Gaerik’s heavy boots thudded along the hardwood floor of the bedroom as he tossed the blouse aside and yanked the charging cork out of the wall socket wrapping them around the computer.

  “Anything else of value she might want from here?” He looked at his brother tucking the computer under his arm casually.

  “I don’t think so. Clothes, things Elle uses for her work.” Marik paused, looking at her laptop under Gaerik’s arm. “She already has her pictures at home. Hopefully, when she wakes up, she has enough to keep her mind busy.” Marik had his doubts though. What if when she woke up, she ran as far away from them as she could? Elle was a smart woman and could find a way to leave all of this behind her. She could change her name and go to Europe, writers did that, right? Marik could feel the bond growing stronger each time he looked at her sleeping face in his bed. He didn’t want to lose her, even if she chose to sleep and never open her eyes. Marik yearned to keep her.

  “Playing guardian to her isn’t going to keep me away from her,” Gaerik told him, breaking through his brother’s thoughts.

  “What?” Marik snapped.

  “I know what you’re doing. You’re falling in love with her.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Marik said, zipping the duffle bag and slinging the strap over his shoulder.

  “Is it?” Gaerik said stepping in front of the doorway, stopping his twin from blowing past him. “You’ve slept in the same bed with her every night since we brought her back, you barely leave her side. You are falling for her.”

  “So, what if I am?” Marik spoke, his icy blues glowing electric as he looked his brother in the eyes. “You want her so fucking bad? Maybe you should have walked up to her like a normal person and introduced yourself. You do it easily enough in bars, and everywhere else you pick up women, including my goddamn office.” He fumed. “Just because I know you didn’t kill those women doesn’t mean that the boards wiped clean. You’re my brother, and I know the games that you play. You will toy with her and then toss her aside when you’ve satisfied your curiosity.”

  “You don’t know that, Marik. I found her because of what she was writing. She drew me to her just like you were drawn in by her when you were looking for me.” Gaerik snarled before turning from the doorway. “She’ll make the decision, but you can’t keep me away from her. I’ll make damn sure of that.”

  ~

  The drive back was silent. Marik thinking of all the ways that Elle would be hurt if she ended up choosing his brother while Gaerik considered the lengths that his brother would go to trying to keep him away from Elle. He’d seen her first, which to him meant he at least deserved the chance to get to know her. Marik was right of course. He should have handled the situation differently, but at the time Gaerik didn’t have any knowledge about Elle. At the time, the scenarios in his mind had been entirely different. He called himself being cautious, but in retrospect, it was still a part of the game. The predator versus the prey and Gaerik was a champion at that game. He could only assume that she would forgive him fully one day, she gave him hope the night that they found her, but Elle was dying –perhaps Elle just said those words because of the fear that she was going to her grave and she did not want to meet her maker holding grudges. Well, he would be damned if he allowed Marik to climb on his high horse and try to stop him from making amends for his mistakes.

  Alpha or not he couldn’t forbid him from seeing Elle, and if he tried to make that choice, he would find a way to break the Alpha’s command.

  He needed to get away from his brother for a little while. Put some space between them that di
dn’t feel like every breath he took wasn’t being judged. When they pulled into the driveway Gaerik was the first out of the truck, taking Elle’s things into his father’s study and disappearing through the French doors onto the deck. There was a stump in the yard, snow still clinging to it. They used it to split wood, and he needed to take out some of his aggression before it reached its boiling point. Grabbing a log from the stacks beside the house, he picked up the ax and swung.

  ~

  Gallen heard the twins return. They had been like this since bringing Elle home to heal, snapping at one another like two dogs fighting over the same bone. This would only end when Elle woke up. Gallen was at a loss as to what to do about his sons, what if Elle didn’t choose either one of them. He felt like that was the lesser of two evils. Sighing he stepped out of the living room as Gaerik departed through the French doors of the study out onto the side deck of the house and Marik was halfway down the hall heading towards the kitchen with a bag in his hands.

  Making his way down the hall into the kitchen the basement door was open. Following his sons' path, Gallen paused inside of the finished basement and found Marik loading the washing machine, stuffing too much into it at once.

  “Son, if you overload the machine the clothes won’t get clean.” Gallen offered.

  Marik flinched at the voice behind him, stopping what he was doing to hold the rim of the washer, feeling the metal beneath his palms molding to the bones inside his hands and groaning in protest.

  “He’s testing you,” Gallen told him.

  “He can’t have her. He was stalking her for Christ sake. If all this hadn’t happened, what would he have done?”

  “You still think the worst of him?” Gallen folded his arms over his chest, carefully pressing his shoulder into a post.

  “It’s not that. Gaerik isn’t a killer, but he is a womanizer. Elle deserves better than that. I’m not saying that I am the man for the job, but I don’t want to give him the chance to use her.” Marik released a sigh, letting go of the washer before his handprints were a permanent feature in the Whirlpool appliance. Too late.

  “You’ve both been going on like you know how Elle feels for you. She didn’t know Gaerik, and she just met you when we went through this ordeal together. You need to trust your brother to make the right decision. I’m not telling you to bow out, but the three of you still have a lot to learn about each other, and until she wakes up you’ve got to trust that Elle is intelligent enough to make her own decisions.”

  Marik knew that his father was right, he always was. There wasn’t an ounce of advice that he’d given him all in his life that hadn’t helped him, even when he didn’t want to embrace it.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The ax stopped mid-swing, hovering an inch from its intended target when Gaerik heard it, listening. The tiny hairs on the back of his neck stood up. In the not too far off distance he could pick up the crunch of snow under boots.

  Dropping the heavy blade of the ax at his feet, the icicles in the pines sang their cold serenade as the brisk wind swept through them, carrying the scent of mutts on its back.

  Gaerik didn’t have a visual on them yet but he knew that they would be breaking through the tree line any minute.

  In one stride he crossed the distance from the old stump to the steps of the deck, not even sure if he felt his feet touch them as he entered the house.

  “Dad! Marik! We’ve got a problem.” Gaerik called into the house, his heavy winter boots hitting the floor louder than usual as he moved into the foyer, looking down the hall into the kitchen. Just then a heavy gust of wind shook the snow clogged trees, filling his nostrils with the new scent of freshly bitten wolves.

  ~

  Gallen’s head turned, listening up the stairs for a moment.

  “It would seem we have some visitors.” He spoke, straightening the collar of his shirt before he turned motioning for his son to follow him up the stairs into the kitchen. The scent was so strong that it was almost staggering as Gallen and Marik met Gaerik in the kitchen. New wolves were never a good thing. Human’s for the most part never knew about werewolves, they were often born, and bite ins had been outlawed centuries ago in Germany when an outbreak of slayings took place and that was where the real fantasy of werewolves was born. As a natural born werewolf, you were taught how to control your baser animal instincts from the time you were a small child, bite ins on the other hand were not.

  They became slaves to their instincts and in the end, it was also their ruin because they were found out by humans and hunted. That was what happened in Germany and why for many years association with humans was widely discouraged because of the threat of accidental biting or scratching and infecting a human with the ‘were’ gene.

  “They’re here.” Gaerik nodding his head, he could see them coming through the tree line towards the back of the house –their forms visible from the kitchen window. Two lanky boys in their late teens.

  As bite ins they would be stronger for the next few months, they were also more aggressive because they’re own genes were fighting against the superior genes of the were that was infecting their blood stream, but they weren’t skilled fighters. They had the strength and aggression of a werewolf, but they hadn’t learned strategy and it took more than brute strength to bring a werewolf down.

  “We don’t want them in the house, we take them out as quietly and quickly as possible and get rid of the bodies before anyone notices.” Gallen spoke low though he knew that they two boys outside would hear him as the three Chaliceman stepped out of the kitchen door.

  “What can I do for you young men?” Gallen spoke, negotiation and civility were his strong suits, if they could walk away from this without any bloodshed he preferred finding a verbal solution, but he couldn’t see the sun setting on this day without lives being lost.

  “The council wants you.” The larger of the two thin teens spoke. “Dead or alive.”

  “Don’t you mean William Levins.” Gaerik spat the question at the teenager. Darkening hair already beginning to sprout on his lower jaw as Marik flanked Gallen’s right side.

  “And dead.” Marik noted looking the two teens over with minute acuity. There was no doubt in his mind that they weren’t supposed to walk away from this pitifully planned attempt on their lives, but William Levins was desperate to have them out of his way, but it wasn’t going to be so easy to sweep them under the rug.

  The boys rushed them, Marik reaching the one to the right first, pinning him into the snow before snapping his neck. His tongue hung limp from his mouth in a grotesque manner, he was shifting, and he watched as the fine hair along his jaw evaporated, tongue shrinking into his mouth as its normal size returned.

  Behind him he heard a high keen of pain, like a dog’s tail being stepped on. As he turned Gaerik and Gallen had the smaller of the two boys between them, his arms torn off in a spray of crimson that washed over Marik’s face and neck in sobering heat. Stepping forward he silenced the boy quickly, snapping his neck as he had the other.

  “Could have done without the blood bath.” He murmured, looking down at his sweater and then the blood pooling in the crisp white snow at their feet from the males missing limbs.

  “He was headed for the house.” Gallen breathed, dropping the dismembered arm and taking a breath, unaware that his lungs had frozen in the time it took to eliminate their immediate danger.

  Marik nodded quickly, one of them getting into the house and possibly finding Elle was their biggest problem. She was human or, so they assumed she was, and powerless to defend herself right now, she wouldn’t even be able to scream for help.

  “I’ll get some trash bags.” Gaerik said, tossing the arm he’d torn off on top of the body left in the snow.

  “What are we doing to do about the blood?” Marik asked, looking at one body, then the other.

  “It’s going to snow again,” Gallen breathed in, his nose turning up towards the sky. “That will give us some coverage.”

&
nbsp; Marik wasn’t sure how long that would be helpful, but there wasn’t a lot of call for anyone to come towards the back of the house. Hopefully there wouldn’t be any more surprise visits today. They had enough on their hands.

  “What do we do with the bodies?” Marik asked, as his brother came out, carrying a box of black garbage bags and a tarp from the basement.

  “We can’t waist time digging graves for them right now.” Gallen said, arms folding over his chest slowly as the twins laid out the tarp, wrapping the one boy’s body up inside of it, tossing his torn arms inside of the bag.

  “We can put them in the freezer in the basement for now.” Gaerik said, lifting the other body over his shoulder while Marik cradled the tarp bridal style.

  “That’s as good an idea as any for now.” Gallen sighed, walking ahead of them and opening the kitchen door, holding it so that Gaerik and Marik could walk inside, hurrying down into the basement with the two dead bodies.

  ~

  Unknown to the rest of the council, William was biting young men, some he stalked for a few weeks, others he chose at random because of their strength. One, sometimes three a month. Not all of them survived the bite, some didn’t make it through the first shift, but those that did he found he could use. They turned on the first full moon and William was there to greet them into this new and glorious life. William had just unintentionally proven the point that he had been trying to make all along. They’re bloodlines were weakening under the established rule, they needed fresh blood and the bite ins were stronger than a pup of nineteen who had been living his entire life as a werewolf.

  The uprising of a new order, an order to go back to their old ways had come about almost by accident. Himself and Jamal had spent an afternoon heatedly debating with the council upon the fact that their numbers were dwindling. With each year families either moved away or it was found that through inbreeding their children didn’t possess the specific genetic make-up that made them what they were, not only that but there were still born infants as well. They needed new blood if they wanted to survive. More wolves were marrying outside of the pack, to humans and while it wasn’t unheard of, it was becoming more and more common and the gene pool itself was shrinking. Like some Indian tribes, William was suggesting that it was made law that you could not marry outside of the ‘tribe’ as it were. Jamal thought this was a cruel and ridiculous idea, though he couldn’t dispute the evidence before him. William had verbally flayed the boy, afterwards feeling he needed to apologize. Together they went to a bar and drank themselves stupid, but it was in that drunken rambling that the truth had come out. Jamal was not an outsider to the packs, he was one of those genetic mishaps. A human born from wolves whom the gene had not been passed on to.