by Anna Lowe
Sasquatch Surprise
The Wolves of Twin Moon Ranch
by
Anna Lowe
a Twin Moon spin-off story
Sasquatch Surprise
Copyright © 2016 by Anna Lowe
[email protected]
This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in articles or reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons is purely coincidental.
Other books in this series
The Wolves of Twin Moon Ranch
Desert Hunt (the Prequel)
Desert Moon (Book 1)
Desert Wolf: Complete Collection (Four short stories)
Desert Blood (Book 2)
Desert Fate (Book 3)
Desert Heart (Book 4)
Desert Yule (a short story)
Desert Rose (Book 5)
Desert Roots (Book 6)
Sasquatch Surprise (a Twin Moon spin-off story)
visit www.annalowebooks.com
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Desert Wolf: Friend or Foe (Book 1.1 in the Twin Moon Ranch series)
Off the Charts (the prequel to the Serendipity Adventure series)
Perfection (the prequel to the Blue Moon Saloon series)
Contents
Other books in this series
Sasquatch Surprise
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Desert Wolf
Sneak Peek: Damnation
Sneak Peek: Lure of the Dragon
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More from Anna Lowe
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Sasquatch Surprise
All Nala Dixon wants is to make it home to her wolf pack in time for the holidays — alive. But a simple road trip turns into a fight for survival when a gang of vampires turns up, thirsting for her blood. A damn good thing a knight in shining armor rushes to her rescue — and hot damn, it’s Harrison, the sasquatch she’s secretly dreamed of for years.
This special edition also includes Desert Wolf: Friend or Foe, where the sasquatch hero of this book first appeared.
Chapter One
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* * *
“Have a nice Christmas,” Nala called to her friend from the driver’s seat.
Kristen leaned through the open passenger door, letting the frigid winter air swirl into the car. “Thanks so much for the ride. And thanks for making the detour to take me home.”
“No problem,” Nala said. “I haven’t been to this part of Vermont in a while. And anyway, I owe you.”
She really did owe Kristen for all her help over the previous semester, and she really didn’t mind a side trip to Vermont. Throughout the trip up from Boston, they’d been surrounded by white, wintery fields and forests. If only she could enjoy the views more. For the thousandth time in the last hour, her eyes darted to the rearview mirror.
No one there. They wouldn’t follow you this far, she tried convincing herself.
“Why do you keep looking back?” Kristen asked.
She covered up by finger-combing her blondish-brown hair back into a loose ponytail. “Just trying to tame this mess. You know.”
Kristen laughed. “It’s all that running you do. Are you going to keep training right through the holidays?”
“Well, the Boston Marathon is in April, so…” She trailed off. Every wolf shifter had the permanent urge to move, and running helped keep her sane in the city — something hard to explain to her friends. She’d slacked off, though, lately, more out of fear than laziness.
“You sure you’ll be okay for the trip home?” Kristen asked.
Sure — as long as I’m not waylaid by vampires, she wished she could say.
But Kristen, like most humans, had no clue about the paranormal beings that lived among them. Nala hated keeping secrets from her friends, but Kristen didn’t know Nala was a shifter whose family led one of the biggest wolf packs in New England. And Kristen definitely didn’t know about vampires. Nala hadn’t known much about them either until—
She shivered the memory back and tightened her hands around the steering wheel.
“No problem. I’ll be home in another couple of hours. Have a great break. Don’t study too hard.”
Kristen smiled. “Don’t you, either.” She pointed to the box of books Nala had on the back seat. Dynamics of Ecological Systems stuck out the top with Environmental Law and Policy peeking out under it.
“Don’t remind me,” she groaned. “But one more semester and we’ll be framing our master’s degrees. Both of us.”
Kristen dusted her hands off as if they’d already graduated and grinned. “Can’t wait. But seriously. Enjoy Christmas.” Her eyes sparkled as she leaned in and whispered, “Is he going to be there?”
Nala faked a smile she didn’t feel. “Harrison?” The man she’d crushed on for years? The guy who probably forgot she existed? “I doubt it.”
Harrison had left the Berkshires years ago, and no one had heard from him since. Not even Nala’s older brother, his best friend. And definitely not her, who’d always followed the two of them like an eager puppy.
Except puppy love was supposed to fade, and the ache for him grew more intense every day.
“Who knows?” Kristen winked. “Maybe he’ll surprise you. You know, under the mistletoe.”
A heat wave raced through her body just at the thought of it. God knew she’d dreamed about kissing Harrison. Okay — she’d dreamed about doing lots more than just kissing. But dreaming was all she’d gotten to do in the six long years since he left.
Her heart thumped sadly at the memory of his tall, lanky form disappearing over a ridge and of all the intervening Christmases without him.
“Well, see you soon,” Kristen said, tapping the roof of the car. “And drive carefully. The snow is starting earlier than I thought.”
Nala looked at the little flurries drifting over the bucolic New England scene. The forecast called for a major blizzard to set in the next day, but she ought to be all right for the next few hours.
“I guess I’d better get going. Merry Christmas!”
“Merry Christmas!”
Nala beeped as she pulled away, heading south again. She drove past a sign that said Thank you for visiting Cold Hollow and away from the last outlying houses of the little town. Her hometown was only slightly bigger, and though the mountains surrounding it weren’t quite as grand as the Green Mountains of Vermont, she couldn’t wait to get back to the Berkshires. Even without Harrison around, it was home. Really home. Eighteen months ago, she’d been excited about moving to Boston, but now she was more than ready to move back to a place that better suited her wolf soul. And more than ready to get to work for her pack.
I’m ready for my mate, her inner wolf growled.
Yes, well… That wasn’t exactly in her control. And who knew if Harrison was really her mate? The last time she’d seen him, she’d been eighteen years old. Maybe her heart was playing tricks on her.
“Just one more semester before we move back home,” she murmured.
The beast made a face, giving her the silent treatment.
She turned on the radio, trying to lighten her mood by singing along
with the latest charity Christmas song. And for a while, it worked. Between the music and the majestic scenery, she slowly relaxed, pushing her worries further and further away.
Then, ten miles outside of Cold Hollow, she glanced in the rearview mirror and froze.
“Shit.”
A black SUV appeared on the road behind her for a split second then disappeared as she swung around a bend.
The road twisted and turned, and her eyes darted from the asphalt to the mirror. Maybe she’d been imagining things. Maybe she was getting freaked out by nothing. Maybe—
The road straightened out again, and the SUV reappeared. She squinted. A black Mercedes SUV with Massachusetts plates and tinted windows.
Shit, shit, shit. Her heart pounded in her chest as her eyes darted between the road ahead and the car racing up behind her.
Could be some other car. It doesn’t have to be the enemy, she tried telling herself.
The second she was around the next turn, though, she hit the gas and accelerated.
Please, not him. Not Hlavek. Let it not be him.
She kept her eyes on the mirror and held her breath, then expelled it when the SUV drove into view again.
Drive faster, her wolf urged. If it’s someone else, they won’t speed up to follow. If it is him…
God, what then?
She turned the radio off and drove faster despite the dusting of snow on the road.
Just breathe. No need to panic, she told herself again and again.
But if it was him?
She rooted around for her phone and pulled it out. Calling her family in a panic was the last thing she wanted to do. And shit, even if she did, how quickly could they come? She was hours away from home, which meant they were hours from coming to help — assuming she even had reception to place the call. She hadn’t told them about her stalker yet, fearing they’d never let her leave home again if she did. And anyway, she hadn’t wanted to suck them into her problems.
But did she have a choice?
“Crap,” she muttered, tossing down the phone. No reception. Not on this stretch of lonely road.
For the next few turns, there was no sign of the SUV, and she nearly exhaled in relief. But then the chrome of its bumper glinted in the sun. Two bends in the road later, it had caught up again.
Shit. It really was them. Vampires.
She gripped the wheel harder and drove as fast as she dared, but nothing seemed to shake off the SUV. A burning feeling on the back of her neck told her it was who she feared.
Andreas Hlavek. Bad, bad news.
Of course, she’d been warned that Cambridge was full of vampires when she’d first moved there. Her parents weren’t at all pleased she’d chosen to pursue her master’s degree in the city — despite the fact that she’d been accepted at Harvard — and they’d only reluctantly let her go. She’d convinced them because paranormal beings of all types — shifters, gargoyles, witches, and yes, vampires — had negotiated a truce that applied to the greater Boston area. A very fragile truce based on the notion of If-you-don’t-bite-me, I-won’t-bite-you. An individual paranormal was much more powerful than any human, but the human race was far more populous, and all paranormals feared exposure. Attacks of any kind would draw unwanted attention, so even creatures that normally warred with each other maintained a careful peace within the city. It had taken years to convince humans that their kind were the stuff of legends rather than neighbors, alive and well in the modern age.
So witches stuck to their covens and used their spells sparingly. Shifters hid their fur, claws, and tails and saved howling at the moon for weekend trips to the mountains. Gargoyles hid in open view, taking care when they shifted from stone statues perched high on the cathedral to humans who walked the streets like anyone else — if a little stiff in the joints. And vampires kept their fangs out of sight and their victims out of the news.
For the most part, the truce worked, and the paranormals stayed out of each other’s way.
Until the day she’d bumped into Andreas Hlavek, daywalking vampire. She’d been riding her bike to class when she’d hit a pothole, gone flying, and split open her knee. A couple of kind pedestrians helped her up, and she didn’t even register the vampire among them until it was too late.
“Oh, honey. Are you okay?” an older woman had asked.
As a quick-healing shifter, her biggest problem had been healing too fast — as in, skin repairing itself right front of human eyes — so she’d just nodded and covered her knee. But not before Andreas helped her up, hooking his arm through hers. The perfect gentleman — until she moved her hand, smudging him with her blood.
His eyes shot wide open. His nostrils flared, and he quietly lifted his hand to his lips. A shiver had gone through her when she realized she was standing next to a vampire.
Then he licked her blood off his hand, and every nerve in her body quaked.
She froze, watching him relish the taste. He looked for any further traces of her blood so he could savor some more, then turned to her with a whole new gleam in his eyes.
Yum, his eyes said. Want more.
It had been all she could do to hop back on her bike and pedal the hell away. Far. Fast. Frantically. That night, she’d checked all the windows and triple-locked the door, freaking her roommate out.
“What’s wrong?” Kristen had asked.
She wished she could say the truth. I had a run-in with a vampire who wants more than an appetizer.
She settled for the next closest thing to the truth. “I’m worried I might have a stalker.”
And, fuck. Suddenly, she did.
“Hello, Nala.” His too-smooth voice had made her jump when she exited a class the next day.
Crap. How did he know her name?
“Stay the hell away from me,” she’d muttered and hurried on her way.
Surprisingly, he did — sort of. She’d catch him watching her from afar. An itch would set in on the back of her neck, and when she turned, Hlavek would be there, stalking her. Or she’d turn a corner and there he’d be, waiting, even if she’d taken a circuitous route to her classes. It was as if the man had a tracking device or something.
She’d confided in no one, hoping the vampire would grow tired of waiting for her. But then the letters began.
I can’t stop thinking about you…
I dream about you every day and every night…
Every woman I’ve been with swears I’ve given her the high of her life…
In my dreams, I taste you…
The bike accident had been two weeks ago, and her life had been a nightmare since then. But vampires were city dwellers who hated the cold, so she figured she’d be all right driving Kristen to Vermont and then driving home. And there was no place safer than home. Not even a vampire would dare intrude upon the territory of the biggest wolf pack in New England.
She glanced in the mirror again, then checked the odometer and bit her lip. Yeah, she’d be safe at home. The problem was, this wasn’t home. This was a quiet country backroad, and there was no help in sight.
Chapter Two
Nala hit the gas pedal and raced onward as her mind spun. What to do? Where to go?
The little Honda she’d bought used — very used — was no match for the gleaming new SUV, for one thing. And while she’d cowed many a cocky shifter with her fighting skills, she was no match for a vampire — or worse, vampires, because she doubted Hlavek would travel so far alone.
The Honda’s engine strained as she sped onward.
“Whoa,” she muttered as the car skidded around a turn. The flurries had grown thicker. Snow was starting to accumulate on the road.
Can’t outrun them, her wolf said. Can only outsmart them.
She gritted her teeth. If it had been a slow-thinking gargoyle behind her, she might have a chance of that. But vampires were cunning, ruthless beasts.
So think. Think!
A pinkish glow filled the clouded sky, and though the sun was hidden behind
thick clouds, she knew it was dipping closer to the horizon.
“Come on. Come on…” She urged the car around another turn.
Peacham, Vermont, a sign read. 3 miles.
Three miles. Could she hold out for three miles?
She leaned forward like a rider urging on a horse, chewing her lip. Even if she beat the vampires into the village, what then? She highly doubted there’d be a gang of vampire hunters ready to greet the enemy with a row of flickering torches and sharp stakes.
She checked the phone again. Still nothing.
Somehow, she had to use the village to outwit her foe. Could she lose them at a turn? Pull over into the woods and wait for them to race past?
The SUV raced closer — so close, all she could see in her mirror was the grill of the Mercedes, gleaming at her like metal teeth. But then a car came the other way, and the SUV dropped back slightly.
Nala forced herself to breathe steadily, not gulp for air. The vampires wouldn’t risk driving her off the road with witnesses around.
What do you want with me? She wanted to scream.
The second her mind formed the words, she bit them back, because she’d actually yelled them at Hlavek in Cambridge one day, and he’d answered with a level gaze.
Your blood, he’d whispered. Every last drop.
So, no. She wasn’t going to ask again. She slammed a fist on the steering wheel. Why was he so interested in her, of all people?
Shifter blood, came a whisper from the back of her mind. Powerful shifter blood. It would feed him. Give him power. Give him strength.
She wanted to cry out that she wasn’t all that powerful. She wasn’t her older sister Lana, the alpha female of Twin Moon pack, which had rapidly developed into the strongest group of shifters in the Southwest. Nala wasn’t one of her older brothers who’d been groomed to lead her Berkshires pack someday. She was the baby of the family. A conservation expert. A nobody.
