Haven

HAVEN

HAVEN

KAY HOOPER

BERKLEY BOOKS, NEW YORK

ALWAYS LEARNING

PEARSON

At the request of many readers, I decided to place this note at the front of the book rather than after the story, so as to better inform you of the additional material I am providing for both new readers and those who have been with the series from the beginning. You’ll find some brief character bios, as well as definitions of various psychic abilities, at the end of the book, information that will hopefully enhance your enjoyment of this story and of the series. I promise to do my best to avoid spoilers!

This is #13 in the Bishop/Special Crimes Unit series, but I assure new readers that if this is your first experience with the series, you need not fear being lost in a sea of characters you’re expected to already know or an ongoing plot whose threads were woven into the story six or eight books back.

This series is made up of trilogies, each connected not by plot but by a theme or idea I chose to explore, usually indicated by a keyword I use in each of the three titles. (The only exception to this rule is the Blood trilogy, which is connected by a single plot thread.) There are some recurring characters in virtually every book, but I
trust I provide enough information in the text so that you’re able to enjoy the story without the need for extensive background on those characters. I do provide a few footnotes throughout the story when a reference is made to an earlier event important to a recurring character, but, again, it is not necessary to have read all the previous books to understand and hopefully enjoy this one.

That said, if you are interested in reading the series from its beginning, a complete list of the titles, in order of their publication, may be found at my website:
www.kayhooper.com
.

If you are a new reader, welcome to the world of the Special Crimes Unit and of Haven, where psychic abilities are used and useful as investigative tools, and the people who live with those abilities are all too human, with strengths and weaknesses and the courage to hunt human monsters.

And if you’ve been with me from the beginning, or joined in somewhere along the way, welcome back. I know it’s been a while, but let’s go see what Bishop and the extraordinary people he’s brought together are involved in this time.

Prologue

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

In the first few minutes of Catherine Talbert’s escape, she did her very best to be as quiet as possible. She thought he was gone, but she wasn’t at all certain of that, and in her terror she just wanted to run.

But she crept instead, out into the darkness, not daring to take the time even to look for something to cover her naked body. If there was a moon, it was hidden behind a heavy cloud cover; either way, Catherine had no idea where she was. Strain her eyes though she did, she couldn’t see any sort of artificial light anywhere that might have meant a house nearby.

Stupid. Of course there’s no house nearby. Someone would have heard you screaming.

Surely someone would have.

She was dizzy, faint with hunger and exhaustion, and sore to the bone with bruises and internal injuries from the beatings, but all she felt was the desperate drive to escape. She chose a direction at
random and struck out from her prison, moving as quickly as she could manage and still remain quiet. With no road to be seen—or, more accurately, felt—beneath her bare feet, she just made her way toward the deeper darkness of the looming woods, instinctively seeking the closest cover in which to hide herself from him.

There was a shallow stream she splashed through as quietly as she could, beyond worrying about snakes or mud or anything else the girly girl she used to be would have concerned herself with.

She wanted to live. That was all.

She just wanted to live.

Past the stream, the terrain changed, and she realized she was working her way up into the mountains. Mountains that had seemed so pretty to her when she had come to admire them. But now…Her bare feet were bruised and scraped by the granite jutting up unexpectedly here and there, and rough roots exposed by the heavy spring rains weeks before caused her to trip and stagger. Sometimes she fell.

But she kept getting back up.

Branches tugged at her as the undergrowth resisted her efforts to move through it, and she was vaguely aware that fresh wounds were being added to the cuts and bruises her body already bore.

The night was almost unbearably still and quiet, with not the slightest breeze to relieve the oppressive heat, and all Catherine could hear for what seemed a long time was her panting breaths. Then a brittle fallen branch cracked loudly beneath her foot, panic rushed through her in a surge of adrenaline, and she threw caution to the wind.

He might not have left. He might be right behind me. And this is his place, his home; he knows it, I’m sure…Oh, God…

Faster. She had to move faster.

As fast as she could.

As far as she could.

Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness just enough that she was able to keep from running headlong into a tree, but otherwise all she really saw were varying shades of black.

Still, she climbed as fast as she possibly could, grabbing rough, knobby branches and leafy bushes and stinging brambles to help herself along, at first not even feeling the slashes of thorns or the raw friction of bark and spiky leaves sliding through her fingers. Her breathing came in sobbing gasps now and her legs burned as she climbed and climbed and climbed. There was no path; there was just an unyielding steep incline studded with granite boulders and towering trees whose roots snaked out far and wide to anchor them to the mountain, and when she wasn’t tripping over the roots, she was fighting her way through the thick underbrush.

She reached the top of a ridge, clung dizzily to a sapling for a few moments, then pushed herself onward. Downhill should have been easier but wasn’t, because now she could feel the pain of her bruised and scraped feet, the hot pain all over that told her just how much the thorns and branches had torn at her naked flesh, and still she had to push on, through even more of the treacherous undergrowth. And now she had to fight to keep her balance because there was the danger of falling and rolling, of losing her footing and not being able to catch herself.

She lost track of time. She climbed to the top of one ridge only to stumble down with wavering balance and find another, again and
again. She thought hours had passed, must have. Her breath rasped and muscles burned.

Gradually, the adrenaline of her escape wore off, and exhaustion pulled at her. She staggered, weaving left and right. Falling down, getting up.

Climbing.

Always climbing, maybe to the top of the mountain.

She didn’t know anything except the drive to keep going.

Her raw hands grasped whatever might help her to climb, whatever might help keep her on her feet, but more and more often when she did go down, she stayed there for a while.

Resting, she told herself.

She breathed in the musty smell of the earth, her scraped cheek pillowed only by broken branches, rotting leaves, and sometimes granite. She was so tired she didn’t really care. She might have dozed now and then before picking herself up and going on.

It occurred to her, finally, that her escape might well leave her lost in these woods forever, lost and unable to find help.

That realization drove her to her feet again, and she grimly pulled herself up. Hours. Hours, which meant the sun would be up soon. And surely she could find help once there was light.

Surely.

Because she wanted to live. To survive this, and remake what had been a fairly useless life so far, a careless and unthinking life. She wanted more now. She wanted to have a family, have children and grow old and forget about horrible darkness and agony and terror, and the face of unspeakable evil.

She wanted to live.

She was working her way up yet another slope, squinting because she fancied she could see a lightening of the darkness. And the undergrowth seemed to be thinning out.

One step at a time, pulling herself with numb hands and leaden arms, she climbed. She thought she was near the top of the ridge, and told herself she would rest there, maybe sit for a while and wait for the sun to rise and tell her that, despite everything, she was going to live to see another day.

It caught her unawares even so. She pulled herself on, and a pale orange beam of light struck her in the face, blinding her.

It was warm, and so, so bright after the darkness of hours. The darkness of days. It was wonderful.

She wanted to come fully into the light. To bathe herself in it.

She wanted to feel warm again.

If anything, she pushed herself harder, grasping another sapling to drive herself on, into the light, but this time the tree was stiff and snapped forward with more force than she’d expected, propelling her, almost launching her. And her numb feet gave her no warning that this time, a sharp granite edge meant more than the top of another ridge.