Shimmer

By Kailin Gow

If you like Sarah Maas or Anne Rice fantasy books, you will love Kailin Gow's fantasy series. In the small charming resort town known as Wicked Woods, Massachusetts lies an age-old secret. Newcomer Briony Patterson, who has recently lost her parents and her younger brother, will soon to find out what it is...

Books in the Wicked Woods Series

Wicked Woods

Shimmer

Silver

Silence

Sight

Shifter

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sparklesoup Inc.
• Release date: Nov 26, 2010
• ISBN: 9781597481359

Kailin Gow

It's official! Read about Kailin and her books being adapted into films and tv series here: https://filmdaily.co/obsessions/kailin-gow-loving-summer/ FIND OUT MORE ABOUT KAILIN GOW AT: https://linktr.ee/KailinGow including how to get a free book from her! Kailin Gow is a million-selling international and USA Today Bestselling author of over 680 published books! She writes in many genres under her name and other pen names. She has been an invited speaker on Book Expo America, appeared on CBS News about writing books with social issues, and the Top 15 National radio regularly on women's issues, women in film and Hollywood, and leadership. She holds a Masters in Management from USC and degrees in Social Ecology, Criminology, and Filmmaking. She is an author influencer on Instagram, owns a podcast network with multiple channels, is a multi-award-winning filmmaker, screenwriter, producer, actress, and host. Her books have been made into games, animated short films, and series. Currently, a number of her book series have been optioned, are in development, or pre-production, including her YA Fantasy Sci Fi Thriller FADE (which has been optioned) and Red Genesis (also optioned) by Netflix producers. Kailin Gow is a regular guest in radio and television on women in Hollywood and filmmaking, naming the top Women Execs to Watch. She is a judge in film festivals, writing contests, and is also a voting member in the Academy Awards. AWARD-WINNING INTERNATIONAL MILLION-SELLING AUTHOR, PRODUCER, AND TV PERSONALITY Kailin Gow is an internationally-recognized multi-award-winning multi-genres USA bestselling Asian American author and woman director/filmmaker who has written and published over 400 books under Kailin Gow and her pen names. She is both traditionally-published as well as indie. Considered a digital publishing pioneer, her books have been downloaded over 10 Million times around the world. She is known as one of the most prolific authors internationally who not only writes novels but screenplays fast, but of world-class quality they win prestigious awards like the ALA YALSA Awards and Los Angeles Film Awards. Besides having gone to law school, she holds a Masters Degree in Communications Management from USC and Drama/Film and Social Ecology Degrees from UC Irvine. She has also been a longtime member of TED Talks. She is the first Asian American author to have sold over 1 million books and to be featured on Amazon.com's homepage as an indie Author Success Story. Her success as an Indie Author and advocate for Indie authors during the early Kindle days has inspired many to take a plunge to become authors. The first Asian American woman who is independently published to appear on Amazon's homepage as an Author Success Story, she also represented Amazon as an author spokesperson during Amazon's Kindle Family Launch press conference in Santa Monica and at Book Expo America where she was an invited speaker. A digital publishing pioneer, she was one of the first authors and publisher to publish digitally back in 2001. Prior to becoming a full-time author and filmmaker, she worked as an Exec in Legal and Production at Walt Disney Company, a writer/producer for Cable Television, an Exec at high tech start ups, and Exec at Fortune 100 Hotel and Travel Corporations where she has managed and trained hundreds of employees on world-class service and operations. She has also been a professional model, a tour director, journalist, re-organization consultant, a secret mystery shopper/consultant for top brands, and professional speaker who has been an invited speaker at Book Expo America, Girl Scouts, Asian America Heritage Week, and more! FUTURIST AND SOCIAL INFLUENCER A social influencer, she has over millions of views on her YouTube channel and her Vimeo channel with over 1.5 million views on her Bitter Frost trailer and award-winning animated short film alone. She is a judge on writing contests for writing incubator social sites, has been a member of TED Talks, and is one of the most quoted modern living authors today. She has also been regularly published as a contributor on Fast Company magazine on articles about publishing, leadership, business, and social issues. https://www.fastcompany.com/1800256/social-media-and-future-publishing-industry

Book preview

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 wasn’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 working 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.

Briony paused as she realized who it was. "Kevin? What are you doing?"

Starting an escape, obviously.

While attracting every vampire in the place. You didn’t want to use the door?

Kevin shook his head. They reinforced the doors. They forgot that these houses sometimes have thin walls, though. Idiots. Kevin held out his hand to her. So are we getting out of here or not?

Chapter 2

Briony took Kevin’s hand gladly, easing with him through the hole that he had created in the wall. She made it through just in time to see a vampire, a young man in his twenties, arriving. He was obviously there to see what all the noise was about.

Kevin threw himself at the vampire without warning, tackling him to the ground, his hands going to the creature’s head, forcing it well clear of his throat. Apparently, the blood loss from Pietre’s drinking hadn’t slowed him down much. The vampire struggled beneath the young werewolf, rolling so that it was above him and then rearing back, its fangs out for the bite that would follow.

It didn’t get the chance. Briony stepped forward smartly and slammed one of her makeshift stakes into the creature’s back, driving it forward with all the force she could muster. As she did so, Kevin shoved it back, making sure that it impaled itself fully on the splintered point. The creature burst into cold flame, burning into ashes.