The first book in the Oregon Coast – Wicked series, 2009

Special thanks to Terry of Iron Station, North Carolina, for supplying the character name for Butterfinger, the cat in this book.

St. Elizabeth’s campus

February 1989

Midnight…

Mother Mary, help me!

Oh, please…save me!

The girl rushed headlong through the maze and rising mist. She stumbled, her face grazed by a poking branch.

“Damn.” Clapping a hand to her cheek, she instantly felt the warmth of blood welling against her fingers. It spurred her onward. She kept running, moving, breathing hard. Her calf muscles ached, her lungs burned, and still the midnight rain washed over her, cold and cruel.

This is wrong. Oh, God, so wrong.

It shouldn’t be this way! Couldn’t!

Glancing over her shoulder, she listened hard, deafened by her own heartbeats. She wasn’t lost. She knew where she was. She knew the twists and turns that would take her to this maze’s center, and once there, she believed there was another exit-maybe two-though it had been so long since she’d seen them. She thought for an instant that she might be leading him to her own doom, to a trap of her own creation. She just had to keep moving, recalling twists and turns…

But it was so dark.

And he was getting closer. She could feel him. As if his breath was already brushing across her skin.

Fear clutched at her throat and she nearly slipped around a corner of shivering laurel. He knew about her and now was running her to ground.

How had he known? When she’d spent so many years-her entire life, it seemed-learning the truth herself!

Then, foolishly, she’d goaded him. Dared him. Brought to the maze by her own invitation as she’d hoped to learn more; to expose him. She’d believed she could turn the tables on him, avert the very doom she now faced. But things weren’t going as planned, she thought, her shoes slipping on the long grass. Somehow the hunter had become the hunted.