Read Online Blood Moon by Alexandra Sokoloff - Free Book Online Page A

had been the last time Erin had seen her, where she might be now…
    Roarke is trying to find her, going first to that scum Trent, and then Erin. It is not an unreasonable plan. She has not contacted Erin over the years but she has always been aware of where she is, what she is doing. Erin is perhaps the only living being she feels any pull of connection to. Before, briefly, the boy Jason Sebastian.
    She watches Roarke on the sand below her, and she listens to the whispers of the wind and tide and rising moon. They had led her to the boy, and the boy had led her to the nest of monsters, and Roarke had followed her path and had been there to save her that last bloody night. One clear step after another, a perfect trail.
    Now Roarke is following the same sort of trail, and it will lead him to her.
    The night at the house he had told her he’d gone into law enforcement because of her, because of the night , that it had set him on the track of hunting monsters. They are the same that way. Different, because he hunts and has never been hunted. But the same.
    He is the only one who has ever seen her. The only one who understood from the start who she once was, what she does.
    He saved her life, under the full moon. Now he is after her to arrest her.
    And that, she will never let happen.
    Never.
     
    On the beach, Roarke sat up suddenly as he caught an arcing gleam against the water, backlit by the sun, and then a series of identical arcs, in perfect, fluid rhythm. His heart flipped as he realized he was looking at a pod of bottlenose dolphins, their sleek, streamlined bodies leaping and plunging through the swells of the surf, silver flashes against the dying sun.
    And then, not knowing why, he looked back toward the cliffs. They loomed, silent… and empty.
     
    He climbed the trail in rapidly encroaching darkness, knowing full well he had stayed too long past the setting of the sun. Not the smartest move on his part. One false step and he would tumble to his death on the rocks below. He had a small Maglite on his keychain but it would be next to useless in the deep blackness of the night. He brushed his hand along the rock wall beside him, and tried to tamp down a growing anxiety as he concentrated on finding his way up in the shadows.
    He made the top of the cliff with his heart racing, not just from the climb. He turned back to look at the vast and slowly rolling carpet of ocean below him, thundering softly against the shore. Then he wound his way along the sandy trail through the silky whispers of the pines.
    As he turned back toward the trail, a twig snapped and he spun, his weapon already in his hands.
    His eyes searched the shadows… but he saw nothing.
    He reached his car with no idea what could have had him so spooked. He stood and looked out at the spiky silhouettes of pines against the blue-black sky. The beach had put him in mind of the Sebastians, the father and son with whom Cara had taken refuge in the middle of the killing spree leading up to the anniversary of the massacre of her family. They had found her on the beach, not knowing she’d cut the throat of a trucker in a rest stop bathroom just hours before.
    His thoughts focused on Jason Sebastian, the five-year old she had abducted. Or saved, depending on your point of view. He was the most recent witness to anything Cara had done or thought or planned.
    Roarke had questioned the boy about Cara’s possible whereabouts, but he had to be entirely honest with himself: he had no particular skills for extracting information from a five-year old. Maybe the boy knew better than Roarke how to say what Roarke wanted to know.
    He was restless, wired. It was barely 8:00 p.m., and the Sebastians lived in San Luis Obispo, en route to San Francisco. He could stay where he was and get a hotel and pace the room for the rest of the night. But from San Diego, now that it was after rush hour, the Sebastians were about a five-hour drive up the coast.
    He looked out on the softly