No Safe Haven: A Last Sanctuary Novel

by Kyla Stone

  “I told you, I’m not a killer.”

  But you are. She pressed her trembling hands against her thighs. They wouldn’t stop shaking. “And yet I still find that hard to believe.”

  “I’m just trying to survive like everybody else. That doesn’t mean I like what I have to do.”

  She regarded him with narrowed eyes, still wary. “I don’t understand you.”

  He gave a helpless shrug. “I do what I can to help, when I can.”

  “As long as it doesn’t cost you anything.”

  He glanced away, stiffening, that muscle in his jaw pulsing. He turned and met her gaze. There was an odd look in his eyes. Part angry. Part ashamed. “You’re right. I’m a coward.”

  “Then we agree on something.”

  “I guess so.” There was no sarcasm or defensiveness in his voice. Only a weary resignation.

  A scratching, shuffling sound came from behind them.

  Damien went rigid. Raven tensed, holding up one finger. Eyes wide, Damien nodded. He gripped his rifle, pointing aimlessly into the fog.

  She strained her ears, trying to make out the source of the sounds. The mist was thick as soup around them—she couldn’t see a thing. For a panicked instant, she imagined the tiger stalking them, creeping closer, closer, unsheathed claws clicking the flagstone.

  But no. The sounds were wrong.

  More heavy, shuffling steps. A low whoof.

  A dark shape reared out of the murk behind Damien, a huge looming shadow.

  Damien whirled, squeaking in alarm.

  “Don’t shoot!” Raven hissed. She lunged forward, grasped the barrel of Damien’s gun, and slapped it down.

  Damien shot her a horrified look.

  “Stay still and he won’t hurt you.”

  The enormous black bear emerged from the thick fog. Damien made a strangled sound in the back of his throat.

  Kodiak lumbered toward them, his huge head low as he sniffed hungrily at the bushes along the path, searching for potential dinner. His heavy body was thickly furred, all black but for the white, star-shaped patch between his eyes.

  He hesitated about ten feet away. He looked at them curiously, small eyes glancing from Damien to Raven. Damien’s face was so pale, his freckles stood out like drops of blood.

  “Don’t move,” she murmured. “He’s more curious than anything.”

  The bears were big, lazy oafs. Dangerous, sure, but not aggressive. Not if you knew what you were doing.

  “No food here, boy,” she said. “Exit’s back the way you came.”

  Kodiak snuffled eagerly and lumbered on, passing not five feet from where she and Damien stood. She could smell the dankness of his fur, make out the individual hairs along his broad back.

  Damien stared after the black bear until he vanished into the fog, his mouth slightly opened. He turned back to Raven with a shake of his head. “I thought he was gonna try and eat us.”

  “Most animals aren’t a threat to humans unless the humans are a threat first,” she snapped.

  He ran his hands through his hair and took a steadying breath. His gaze fell to Ryker’s body. His face darkened. “I have to go back and alert Cerberus and Ryker.”

  She’d dallied here for far too long. Every second she stood here with him increased the chance of discovery. She picked up her knife, wiped it clean on her pants, flicked it closed, and crammed it back in her pocket.

  You killed someone with that. Part of her never wanted to see it again. Part of her couldn’t bear to leave it. It had saved her life. And it was her mother’s last gift to her. “I’m already gone.”

  “Wait.” Damien swiftly crossed the space between them and seized her arm.

  “Let go!” She tried to wrench free, feeling his touch like a shudder all the way up her arm. The buzz of fear, the prickle of alarm, but also something else, something she couldn’t name, that turned her stomach inside out. Her skin felt too tight, the air too dense.

  He was stronger than she was, but he released her arm with a frown.

  “What do you want?” she asked harshly.

  “There’s something you need to know.”

  The fog thickened around them in a murky white soup. They stood facing each other, tension sizzling between them like electricity. Her muscles were taut, ready to flee at the slightest provocation.

  If he touched her again, she was gone.

  “They’ll hunt you now,” he said hoarsely. “They were losing interest, but Ryker won’t stop. He’s like a dog with a bone.”

  She stared at him, numb. “It was an accident. Self-defense.”

  “Do you think they care about that? Do you think Ryker will care? This isn’t just anybody.” He inhaled sharply. “Jagger is—was—Ryker’s brother.”

  His words sent a frisson of dread down her spine. All the blood rushed to her head. Ryker was dangerous. She’d known it the moment she laid eyes on him back at the pharmacy. The images seared her mind—Carl’s face imploding, blood spraying everywhere, Ryker’s flat, dead-fish eyes.

  Now those eyes would be focused on her. Before, she’d been invisible. She could have left like she’d planned and none of the Headhunters would’ve been the wiser for it. But now, she would be pursued, stalked, hunted.

  Damien’s mouth tightened. “You need to understand. Cerberus wanted to take you in alive, before this. It wouldn’t matter what Ryker wanted—he’d have to obey. But now he has a blood debt against you. Cerberus won’t stop him. Ryker will kill you. And not nicely.”

  “I got that part.”

  “Want to know why I was hiding in that back room?” Damien asked.

  She glanced at him.

  He shook his head as if angry at himself, again not meeting her gaze. “Because I felt like I couldn’t breathe anymore in there, with them. Every time Ryker looks at me, I don’t know if he’s gonna smile that slick, sly smile of his or slide a blade between my ribs. He sees me as a threat because of who I am to Cerberus. He’d take over if he thought he could get away with it. He’s dangerous, is what I’m trying to say.”

  She nodded and licked her dry lips. Her scalp prickled with cold sweat. “I’ll hide the body—”

  “There’s blood all over the flagstone.”

  “They’ll think it was one of the wild animals. The tiger or one of the bears.”

  “Even I know animals leave a carcass behind.” He grimaced. “I have no choice. I have to tell Ryker. If I don’t, they’ll discover the body anyway and he’ll suspect me, too. He knows Jagger and I went out together.”

  Impotent rage filled her. At Damien, at the Headhunters, at her dead father, her mother who wasn’t here, who’d left her all alone, at this whole stupid sick and dying world.

  “You have to get out of here,” Damien said.

  Once again, she found herself running for her life.

  25

  Raven fled.

  She ran and ran, her legs pumping, her pack thumping against her spine, her pulse a roar in her ears. Tears burned her vision. She blinked them away fiercely.

  She sprinted between the bear and hybrid paddocks, nearly tripping over one of the peacocks that veered into her path, finally reaching the wide double gates at the back of Haven Wildlife Refuge.

  She pressed her palm to the bioscanner to unlock the security panel. She swiped the buttons, opening the gates and disengaging the electrified wires along the entire exterior perimeter fence.

  The gates creaked open.

  The forest was a black wall before her—bleak, foreboding, full of terrors.

  Voices echoed behind her. The Headhunters. They would find Jagger’s body soon. And then they would come for her.

  She hesitated for the barest moment, glancing back over her shoulder, peering through the fog. Come on, Shadow. Come on, Luna. And Vlad, Suki, Kodiak, all the others. She couldn’t wait for them. She had to trust that they could find their way out.

  She ran into the woods. Burrs and brambles clung to her clothing, thorns snagged her
hands. The underbrush was thick and dense. The woods smelled of crushed pine needles and damp, dark earth.

  The moon glimmered between black tangles of branches. The skeletons of the trees stretched long bony fingers to scrape the sky.

  The darkness closed around her like a fist.

  She kept her eyes open wide, wary of every flicker of movement, every sigh of the leaves, every pulsing shadow in the underbrush. A second of inattention determined the difference between living and dying. A single wrong move—tripping on a tree root, stepping wrong on a felled branch, brushing too loudly against a bush, bumping into a tree and rattling its leaves—would alert predators to her presence.

  Brambles, burrs, and thorns tore at her pant legs and jacket sleeves, snagged on her boots and laces, seeking the tender skin of her hands and neck as she moved, swiftly but carefully, shadows spilling all around her like ink.

  Sweat beaded her forehead and dripped between her shoulder blades, her muscles strung taut. Her every footfall, no matter how precise and careful she tried to be, announced her presence to the night, to all the creatures that called this wild forest their home—and to some that did not.

  Raven searched the darkness for shifting shadows, for the gleam of predatory eyes. She strained for the sound of padded paws slinking through the forest, creeping closer, closer, while she was effectively stumbling blind.

  A flash of silver streaked through the trees on her right. A twig cracked on her left. She halted, going completely still, gripping the rifle.

  Ten yards away, Luna stepped between two trees. Shadow glided up beside her, a shadow among shadows. Raven crouched against a large log. Relief flooded every cell of her body. Wetness blurred her eyes. She choked it back.

  “You came back for me,” she whispered. “You came back.”

  Shadow brushed his powerful shoulder against hers. Knocked off balance, she fell back against the log. Her pack took the brunt of the impact. She grunted, tried to rise, but abruptly her legs were like water.

  She looked down at her trembling hands. Blood stained her fingers. Blood from a dead man.

  And then the weight of it struck her, unbearably heavy, like a thousand bricks pressed against her chest. She’d just killed a human being. With her own two hands.

  She was a killer. A murderer.

  No. It was self-defense. Like every wild creature, she’d instinctively protected herself. The drive for self-preservation was innate. Still, the brutal images crashed through her mind—the plunge of the knife, slick in her hands; the wound gaping open like a raw, red mouth; Jagger’s stunned expression, eyes going wide; the blood spraying, gurgling from his throat as he gasped for breath.

  She leaned over and vomited.

  Shaking, she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

  She had to pull herself together. She couldn’t stay here. She needed to get to the safety of the cabin. Then she could fall apart.

  She took several steadying breaths and glanced at Shadow. He was watching her, ears pricked, tail swishing slowly. She managed a grim smile. “You have no idea how happy I am to see you.”

  Gradually, her mind-numbing terror faded. Now that the wolves were here, she felt immeasurably better.

  She had never been afraid of the dark or of these woods. But tonight, surrounded by predators of all kinds, the last thing she wanted to be was alone.

  Would the wolves follow her? She almost didn’t dare to hope. She wasn’t sure she could bear the profound disappointment—of loss—if the wolves left her again. She felt stronger just being in their presence. Braver.

  She dug inside one of the outside compartments of her pack and withdrew three strips of dried venison. She gnawed on a strip herself and tossed a piece to each of them. Shadow sniffed his, unconvinced.

  She took a long swallow from her water bottle and wiped her mouth. “It’s good, I promise.”

  He licked it, gave a little whine, then wolfed it down in one gulp. Luna sniffed hers daintily and lifted her nose in disdain. Shadow happily ate her share.

  Luna and Shadow regarded her, their heads tilted, as if asking, what now?

  “The cabin,” she said, climbing to her feet. “There’s more jerky where that came from. But you have to come with me.”

  Shadow’s ears flattened. Luna growled low in her throat.

  Raven froze, her hands going to the rifle.

  Simultaneously, both wolves whirled and bolted into the darkness.

  She was alone again. She shivered against the chill snaking cold fingers around her neck. She could do it alone if she had to. She was used to it, after all. They would come back. They’d found her once. They could do it again.

  A wave of dizziness flashed through her. She fought it off. The adrenaline from the fight was wearing off. She was incredibly weary. Her eyes burned. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d slept.

  Something rustled behind her.

  She spun around, heart clenching. “Shadow?”

  And then she heard them, crashing through the underbrush, grunting and swearing. A gunshot went off. Then another.

  The Headhunters.

  26

  The hairs on Raven’s arms lifted, her scalp prickling. Something—or someone—was close. She could feel it. She didn’t have time to run.

  She scanned the forest, looking for a place to hide. Near the roots of the fallen tree, a sliver of space gapped between trunk and earth, no taller than a foot. It was enough.

  The Headhunters crashed and blundered behind her. They were big and clumsy in the dark, but they were also strong, angry, and well-armed.

  She scrambled over the side of the log and burrowed in the deep underbrush growing along its flank, managing to jam most of her body beneath the log, the rifle butt jammed against her shoulder, the barrel digging into her thigh. Except for her pack. Swiftly, she reached up and bent a few low branches of an oak leaf hydrangea, covering herself and the pack with its reddish-purple leaves.

  The gnarled roots of the tree rose in pale and tangled knots above her. A centipede crawled beneath the sleeve of her jacket, onto her bare arm. Something else crawled along her ankle. She stilled, inhaling the decaying scent of dead leaves, the sharp scent of pine.

  If the Headhunters took the easy path, bypassing the log, they would miss her.

  Nearby, another twig cracked. A bush rustled. Something was moving only ten yards downwind of her. She steadied her breathing, sure whatever it was could hear her thumping heartbeat. Disappear. Disappear.

  And then the Headhunters were upon her. They crashed into the small clearing, breathing hard, cursing.

  “You find anything, Ryker?” Cerberus asked.

  “Found some footprints a ways back,” Ryker said, his voice so close she flinched. “If it wasn’t so dark and damn foggy…”

  She hadn’t even heard Ryker. He must have been the source of the rustling sound she’d heard—he’d gotten far too close for comfort.

  “We’ll find her,” Scorpio said. “She can’t have gone far.”

  Ryker’s voice was filled with raw fury. “No one touches her but me.”

  “Don’t worry,” Cerberus said. “You’ll avenge your brother. I’ll make sure of it.”

  Raven closed her eyes.

  “You positive you don’t got any idea which way she went?” Scorpio asked gruffly. She could hear him stomping around the underbrush a few yards from where she hid.

  “I told you,” Damien said, sounding frustrated and defensive. “As soon as I went to help Jagger, she took off. I didn’t see anything.”

  “I found blood on a leaf forty yards back.” Ryker’s voice was low and deadly, sharp-edged as a knife. “My brother’s blood.”

  No one asked him how he knew it was Jagger’s blood. They didn’t have to.

  “We’ll keep looking,” Cerberus said.

  “What about the animals?” someone asked. “She released them all.”

  “Scorpio already got one of the foxes,” Cerberus said. “We w
ant these pelts, we need to get them now, before they scatter. It’s hunting season, boys.”

  “And the tiger?” Damien asked, a hint of unease flickering through his voice. “The bears?”

  “We have automatic weapons.” Cerberus snorted. “And they’re caged beasts trained to bask on fake rocks all day. It’ll be like shooting fish in a barrel. Only much more fun.”

  “Just get me that damn girl,” Ryker sneered.

  “You’re all angry,” Cerberus boomed. “You all want blood for Jagger. He was one of us, one of our own. I’ll give you that blood!”

  Several Headhunters shouted, jeering, cheering.

  She heard the cock of a rifle. “Find the girl. Kill everything that moves.”

  Raven waited, completely still, as the Headhunters broke off into pairs of twos and threes and headed deeper into the woods to hunt.

  If she were stealthy, she could still get past them. She knew how to be quiet, how to stay hidden.

  But that meant leaving Shadow, Luna, and the others behind. Leaving Zephyr and Suki and Sage to fend for themselves. Her stomach roiled.

  Cerberus was right. They’d spent their lives in captivity. They didn’t know to fear humans. Kodiak would come right up to them if they offered him food. So would Loki, the other two foxes, even grumpy Electra.

  She had to pull herself together. Right now.

  She hadn’t freed the animals just so the Headhunters could hunt them down one by one. She rose to her feet, wincing as her muscles ached in protest. She tightened her grip on the rifle.

  The Headhunters weren’t the only human predators in these woods. Raven was a hunter, too.

  27

  Raven hunted.

  She caked her face and hands with red dirt. She smeared the bottom of her boots and stuck them full of leaves and twigs to mar her footprints. She adjusted the rifle, strapping it over her chest and checked the tranq gun, still tucked into her waistband. She kept the knife folded in her pocket.

  The Headhunters were loud. They stumbled and thrashed through the underbrush. If they were hunting wild creatures, they never would have found them. But the captive animals were confused, anxious, and frightened. The alien scents and strange sounds were alarming and disorienting.