The Harvest (11 page)

“But I—”

“But you're lying next to a murdered woman. And you, Griffin Shaw, are
alive
.”

He couldn't comprehend it, but the burning skin, the pulsing blood, the breath in his chest . . . “It's too much.”

It was all too much.

Another knock at the door, louder, accompanied by annoyed voices on the other side.

Anas was right; the time for privacy was over.

“Just enough then,” Anas said impatiently when he still didn't move. She pursed Rockwell's blue lips. Everlast washed over him in a cooling balm and he could sit, and then stand.

“It won't last.” And the burning eyes dulled, then snuffed out completely, leaving behind Rockwell's black, sightless pupils.

Yet the small hint of Everlast had cleared his mind and Grif could see what Anas had, and what anyone else would when they entered this room: a man standing over a woman's blood-splattered body.

Whirling, he darted into the bathroom, and wedged open the small, single-paned window. He heard the door to the room open just as he clambered through, and reached the rusting ladder right before screams sounded behind him. Half-falling, half-jumping, Grif hit the ground seconds later, and ran from the voices and the building. He ran blindly. He ran until the sliver of Everlast wore off.

He ran until he could run no more.

About the Author

The
New York Times
bestselling author of The Signs of the Zodiac series and
The Taken
, and former showgirl,
Vicki Pettersson
was born, raised, and still lives in Sin City, where a backyard view of the Strip regularly inspires her to set down her martini and write.

 

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Also by Vicki Pettersson

The Signs of the Zodiac Series

The Scent of Shadows

The Taste of Night

The Touch of Twilight

City of Souls

Cheat the Grave

The Neon Graveyard

 

Celestial Blues

The Taken

 

And Coming Soon...

The Lost

Copyright

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

The Harvest
originally appeared in the print anthology
Holidays Are Hell
, published in paperback in 2007 by Harper Voyager, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

Excerpt from
The Taken
copyright © 2012 by Vicki Pettersson.

THE HARVEST
. Copyright © 2012 by Vicki Pettersson. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

EPub Edition NOVEMBER 2012 ISBN: 9780062249739

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