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  Shimmer

  The Wicked Woods

  Book 2

  kailin gow

  PRAISE FOR THE WICKED WOODS

  Another addicting new series from Ms. Gow. Briony is the perfect mix of kick-butt teen heroine, flaws, and teen angst. The town of Wicked is vivid, and the colorful inhabitants there are at once familiar, yet new. I love the relationship between Aunt Sophie and Briony best, but the two hot brothers vying for Briony’s love spices things up, too!

  Naya's Girls Night Out Book Picks

  Intrigue, mystery involving a missing family, creepy setting, colorful characters in an idyllic resort-like town and a paranormal plot filled with twists and turns delivered in a fun and engaging style; the Wicked Woods is now one of my favorite *spoiler* werewolf young adult series. The family relationship theme, the handling of difficult teen high school issues such as bullying and trying to fit in puts this teenage series in the must read for teens book list.

  Amber Johnson, age 24

  Mysterious, scary, fun, funny, and promising. Wicked Woods rock!

  Susan, early 20s.

  I’m hooked. Wicked Woods is a fictitious place, isn’t it? You could have fooled me. Like Forks in Twilight, I totally thought this was a real place. Gow’s world-building is amazing. Briony seems so real in how she thinks and acts. I can’t tell you how much I love Aunt Sophie. Truly a book and promising book series where the women, young and old, are amazing.

  Scarlett, YA Fantasy Book Club

  Other Book Series Available from the same author of The Wicked Woods

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  What happens to the Phantom after the tragedy at the Paris Opera House is the basis for this fantastic tale of The Phantom Diaries, loosely based on Gaston Leroux's classic, The Phantom of the Opera, but with a new tale and a modern twist. This new series for older teens and young adults is told through the eyes of 18 year-old Annette Binoche, who lands a job at the New York Metropolitan Opera House as a seamstress' assistant only to become the lead singer of the Opera House, with the help of the mysterious, yet highly-seductive Phantom.

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  All her life, Breena had always dreamed about fairies as though she lived among them...beautiful fairies living among mortals and living in Feyland. In her dreams, he was always there the breathtakingly handsome but dangerous Winter Prince, Kian, who is her intended. When Breena turns sixteen, she begins seeing fairies and other creatures mortals don t see. Her best friend Logan, suddenly acts very protective. Then she sees Kian, who seems intent on finding her and carrying her off to Feyland. That's fine and all, but for the fact that humans rarely survive a trip to Feyland, a kiss from a fairy generally means death to the human unless that human has fairy blood in them or is very strong, and although Kian seemed to be her intended, he seems to hate her and wants her dead.

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  Secretly in love with her intended Winter Prince Kian, now Breena is faced with the realization of war, and the possibility of Kian as her greatest enemy. To help her navigate through the politics within her court and Feyland, help comes in the form of an old friend. Before she knows it, Breena's heart is torned between two loves, just as torned as Feyland. The fate of Feyland depends on her choices, can she make the right ones even if it means turning away from her love forever?

  The Stoker Sisters

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  Shimmer

  The Wicked Woods #2

  kailin gow

  Shimmer, Wicked Woods #2

  Published by THE EDGE

  THE EDGE is an imprint of Sparklesoup LLC

  Copyright © 2010 Kailin Gow

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the publisher except in case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  For information, please contact:

  THE EDGE at Sparklesoup

  P.O. Box 60834

  Irvine, CA 92602

  www.sparklesoup.com

  First Edition.

  Printed in the United States of America.

  ISBN: 1597486329

  ISBN: 978-1597486323

  DEDICATION

  For my amazing team of editors, cover artist, PR and marketing team. Thank you for helping me continue the story of Briony and the people of Wicked Woods.

  Thank you to my husband, who every month, takes me up to the mountains and into the woods to this little town that inspired Wicked Woods. The town is fascinating, yet the woodland beyond is even more fascinating. Who lives in that vast wilderness, I do not know…I only know that whatever you do, enjoy your trek…into the woods, the wildly wicked, Wicked Woods.

  Prologue

  Briony did not know much about Wicked Woods when her parents and little brother went out to Great Aunt Sophie and Uncle Pete’s bed and breakfast inn at the edge of the Wicked Woods in Wicked, Massachusetts. She was able to avoid knowing more about the Wicked Woods by attending cheerleading camp instead, rather than visit her elderly relatives with her family. That had been months ago, and now Briony wished she knew more about Wicked Woods, wished she had bothered before her parents and brother Jake went missing there. If she was
n’t so caught up in her cheerleading, her high school social life, and drive to be popular there; her parents, Jake, and Uncle Pete might still be here today. If she had known about the inhabitants of Wicked Woods, she would have warned them, kept them from going. But it was too late.

  And everything was different.

  Chapter 1

  How long had it been? How long had Briony been sitting in this armchair, in this pointless, old-fashioned room that served as her prison now that the master of Wicked’s vampires had captured her? Had it been hours? Longer? However long it was, it was enough that her tears had run out long before. Even with her family transformed into the undead, even with Kevin and Fallon locked in the room opposite of hers, even with them all at the mercy of a vampire who clearly did not care whom he hurt, the tears couldn’t last forever. Nothing could.

  The furniture, including the armchair that she sat on, had the look of things that had been magnificent a hundred or more years ago, and which had been left almost ignored since. There was not much dust anywhere, which showed the house was occupied enough for dust to not collect.

  Briony found an old mirror in the corner, set with ornate scrollwork and with a sconce for a candle just in front of it. She did her best to collect herself as she stared into the blue eyes reflected there, running her hands through the honey blonde mess that a couple of tangles with vampires and a brief session of being threatened had left her hair in.

  She had to stay calm. Had to think. Lives might depend on it. Her life, for a start. And Kevin’s. And if Fallon was not technically alive, then that didn’t make the thought of losing him any easier. The last Briony had seen of him, he had been chained to a chair with silver, while his werewolf brother was a semi-conscious mess after being bitten by Pietre.

  All of this because the master vampire hadn’t liked how his relationship with Aunt Sophie had ended decades earlier? More than just this too, because Pietre had targeted Briony’s whole family in an effort to get to her great aunt, had set them up, picked them off, turned them into his kind, attacked their town… it was insane. There must be something else that he did not tell. Of course, it must have something to do with Aunt Sophie.

  Almost as insane as the notion that Aunt Sophie would have willingly gone out with a vampire of any kind in the first place. Yet that was exactly what she had done. Briony was as sure of it as she was of anything in her life. Aunt Sophie had as good as said it, back when Fallon had nearly bitten Briony after the Homecoming Dance. The only part she hadn’t mentioned was that her boyfriend was a crazy, powerful, freakishly dangerous vampire who was likely to want revenge because Aunt Sophie had tried to kill him. On the whole, Briony rather wished that she had.

  Briony took another look around the room. The remains of the chair she had been tied to were still there, broken into ragged fragments by the force with which Pietre had ripped her from it before, on his way to make her watch as he bit Kevin. Some of the pieces of wood looked sharp enough, and long enough, that she might be able to use them as stakes if she wanted to. The only question was: did she want to? Did she dare to risk it?

  Briony padded around the thick carpet of the room, trying to think. Some small part of her told her to go back to the armchair, curl up, and let the rest of the world sort things out for once. Briony did her best to ignore it. She could not afford to just sit there, could not afford to just give in to despair, even if there seemed to be plenty of it to go around at the moment.

  For one thing, it seemed like it would be only a matter of time before Pietre came back and started snacking on her. He obviously wanted to. He had come close before, and the thought of that mouth closing down on her throat made Briony shudder in revulsion. She could not let that happen. She would not let that happen.

  More importantly, Briony was determined that she would never let Pietre get around to what came next. She wouldn’t let him turn her into something like… like Fallon? A small part of her demanded an answer. Like your family? Briony shook her head. They hadn’t had any choice in it. Briony would die before she let Pietre do that to her.

  More than that, she would die before she let Pietre do something like that to hurt Aunt Sophie. She could just imagine the pain it would cause her, knowing that her last remaining relative had been transformed into one of the things she hated so much, knowing that her duty would be to drive a stake into Briony’s heart before the hunger got too great for her great niece to handle. It would be an impossible choice.

  The only question, really, was why Pietre had not done it already. Biting Briony made sense, after a fashion. Changing her into a vampire made sense. Even just killing her would make sense, though it wasn’t really the sort of sense Briony liked. Leaving her alone in a nicely furnished room while he did other things just… didn’t.

  The answer probably lay with Aunt Sophie again. If Pietre had turned the rest of her family, and she still had not come for them, then maybe he thought that transforming Briony too was not the answer. Pietre wanted Aunt Sophie to come to him, after all, to beg for forgiveness for all that he thought she had done wrong before he killed her. Maybe he thought that having the last of her relatives alive and well as a hostage might do the trick.

  If so, Briony knew that she could not stay there. She had to find a way to escape before Aunt Sophie found herself lured to her doom. Before Pietre decided that Briony was not any further use to him, too, because he looked like the kind who might kill her in front of her aunt just to get a reaction. She had to do something, and she had to do it fast.

  Her silver cross was gone, taken from her back in the woods so that the vampires could take her prisoner in the first place. She had no way out of the room. Even if she could get away, hadn’t Pietre told her that they were miles away from anywhere safe? Far enough away that the vampires could hunt her down if she ran?

  “Stop it.” Briony told herself aloud. “Don’t say what you can’t do. Think about what you can.”

  She started by snatching up a couple of the pieces of chair from the carpet, wincing as splinters stuck in her hands. Still, at least it showed that they were sharp. They weren’t as good as the silver blade that would have come out of Briony’s cross at the flick of a catch, but she had spent enough time learning to fight with stakes under the tutelage of her great aunt and George, the ex-military diner-owner.

  She had weapons, at least. Now for the question of getting out of the room. Briony tried the door. It didn’t budge.

  Briony took a step back, let out a deep breath, and kicked the door as hard as she could. It shuddered, but did not give. She kicked it again, then again, stopping when she realized the door had been extra reinforced.

  What did that leave? Three options, as far as Briony could see. She could wait for Pietre to return, hope that she was quick enough with the stake to stab him in the heart, and then walk out. That sounded like an incredibly bad risk, and one that would probably get her killed or worse if it went wrong. Much, much worse, if he decided to turn her or torture her.

  Then there was the window. It did not have bars on it, so presumably Briony could break through it and climb out, but one look confirmed a twenty foot drop below. How far would she get with broken bones resulting from a fall like that? Besides, how would it help Fallon or Kevin? Not to mention her family.

  That left finding some way to pick the lock, assuming that Briony could find something to pick it with, and work out how you went about doing it. It wasn’t like she had a hairpin readily to hand. A quick search of the surrounding room did reveal an ancient manicure set though, containing an old nail file, a couple of pairs of nail scissors, and some tweezers.

  Briony spent the next ten minutes working on the lock. Or trying to, at any rate. It wasn’t like she actually had a clue what she was supposed to be doing. Weren’t you supposed to jumble the tumblers around until they went into the right spot? Something like that, anyway. Only the prospect of what might happen if she did not get the door open before Pietre came back kept Briony worki
ng at it.

  As a result, she was close to the door when she heard a thump from the other side of it, followed by an almighty crash of splintering wood. Footsteps sounded outside the door. What was it? Was Briony too late? Was Pietre coming back? Had he already come back to amuse himself by beating up the boys? That might account for the crash. Briony winced at that thought.

  She also snatched up her improvised stakes again. If this was it, then she was at least going to try to kill Pietre. After all, he might not be expecting an assault the moment he came into the room, so there had to be at least a chance that it could work.

  Briony found her thoughts cut off by another crash, this one from just beside the door to her room. The wall buckled, and then exploded inwards as something hit the wood and plasterboard from the other side. Briony leapt back, raising her stakes in an effort to defend herself as a figure ploughed through the resulting hole, filthy with debris, his shoulder length dark hair caked with blood.