Authors: Delsheree Gladden

Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Action & Adventure, #Survival Stories, #Love & Romance, #Paranormal

Wicked Hunger (29 page)

I’m not sure how he hears me over the yelling, but he does. He glances down at me in response, a look of consternation on his features. “You’re not going to go, are you?”

“Not if I can help it.”

He nods slowly. “But what if you have no choice?”

“I…don’t know.”

I can hear Grandma throwing out every argument she has, but I get the feeling nothing is going to be enough. In the midst of yelling and fighting, the weight of everything that has happened suddenly turns into an avalanche that buries me, buckling my knees and dropping me to the couch. I can feel Ketchup sit down beside me, but he’s only in my periphery. Too many other distractions are flying around in my head.

This isn’t just about my family. Ivy wasn’t only here to uncover
our
secret. She was a trained sacrifice. A sacrifice who failed. What does that mean? Will her own people kill her for her failure? Will she be sent after some other innocent person trying to live a normal live? All my life I have wanted answers. I’ve wanted my curse to be explained, to be bigger than me. To mean something. I don’t want to leave my friends or my job, my life…but what if this is my only chance to find out what I really am? Who I am? I don’t know if I can pass that up.

I look up, and discover Ketchup’s eyes waiting for me. As soon as we find each other, he sighs. “You’re going to go, aren’t you?”

I want to have a different answer, but I say, “I think I have to.”

“I don’t trust this guy,” he argues.

“Neither do I, but what if he can teach me how to control my hunger?” My heart lurches as a thought occurs to me. “What if he can teach Zander?”

That grabs Ketchup’s attention. I can feel his pulse speed up. It may be a false hope, or at the very most, a slim one, but it’s there. Ketchup latches onto it, his voice cutting through the raging argument and leaving only silence when he turns to David and demands, “Can you show them how to keep their hunger under control?”

David’s red-faced irritation drains back to a smug expression. “Of course I can.”

The words poised on Zander’s lips fall away.

“I can teach you to control your hunger,” David promises. “I can teach you to control it, and turn it into a power you’ve only dreamed of.”

Suddenly, Grandma looks white as a sheet, but Zander and I are both mesmerized by his promise. I have a hard time believing this curse is anything but evil, wicked in the truest sense of the word, but his promise is so hard to resist. Wicked hunger turned into wicked power. I am positive this man is no more trustworthy than Ivy was, but if he can give me back what I’ve lost to this curse, if he can make up for years of being ridiculed and hated, if he can give me back Oscar, and Ketchup…I’ll go wherever he tells me to go.

End
of Book One

Thank you to Susan Stec for reading and helping with the initial editing. Your insights were invaluable and your enthusiasm was much appreciated! Thank you to Liz Hathenbruck for reading this book and writing such a wonderful recommendation. Thank you to Betty Goodwin for helping me come up with a new name for the series when I realized the original title was already taken. Thank you to the other awesome ladies in my writing group who helped me fine tune this book and work out all the kinks.

A big thanks to the Clean Teen Publishing team, Rebecca, Courtney, Marya, and Dyan for welcoming Wicked Hunger into the CTP family. I know all of you are behind this series one hundred percent and I am so excited to be working with you. I also wanted to thank Heather Goodall for putting a final polish on Wicked Hunger and getting rid of those last few stubborn typos.

And as always, thank you to my husband Ryan for his ever insightful help with this novel and his continual support of my writing. He really is the best.

DelSheree Gladden lives in New Mexico with her husband and two children. The Southwest is a big influence in her writing because of its culture, beauty, and mythology. Local folklore is strongly rooted in her writing, particularly ideas of prophecy, destiny, and talents born from natural abilities. When she is not writing, DelSheree is usually reading, painting, sewing, or working as a Dental Hygienist. Her works include Escaping Fate, Twin Souls Saga, The Destroyer Trilogy, and Invisible.