Chapter 1

Göthmoor, Sweden

Present Day

Pulling the black cloak more securely around her body, Marie Robb alighted from her rental car and into the chilled night air. Her nipples hardened instantly as the cold, moaning wind seeped through the cloth of the woolen garment and permeated the single layer of the silk evening gown she wore beneath it. Throwing a long honey-colored tress over her shoulder, she visually scanned the area to either side of the dirt road.

         “Great,” she sighed. “Just great. There’s nothing around here for miles.”

Rubbing her arms briskly to ward off the chill bumps quickly forming on her flesh, she took a deep breath and blindly looked out into the night, her gaze flicking across the desolate dirt road her Saab had just sacrificed a tire to. “Dad always said never take the back roads.” She sighed again. “But do I ever listen? No way.”

Kicking the deflated Saab tire with the toe of her stiletto pump, she frowned as she thrust her hands to her hips in frustration. Of all the times not to have heeded her father’s advice, Marie thought, why did she have to go and do it while traveling in a foreign country?

Shaking her head, she opened the passenger door to the Saab, gathered up her purse, and slammed the door shut behind her. The sound reverberated into the dark night and through the forest trees that surrounded her on either side, underlining the fact that she was indeed in the middle of nowhere. Chills raced up and down the length of her spine as Marie considered for the first time just how alone she was. Alone and without any manner of protection.

Suddenly she wished she’d heeded more of her father’s advice. Namely that she’d actually showed up to those self-defense classes he’d enrolled her into, she thought as she swallowed.

Chastising herself for allowing her overactive imagination to get the better of her, she straightened her spine, took a deep breath, and determined to find a path that would lead to…anywhere.

Besides, she thought, she could take care of herself. She had come to Europe to find herself, to grow up and make her own way in life. She hadn’t come here to convince herself that her father was always right and that she’d be better off marrying a doctor, bearing a couple of children, and living in a house with a white picket fence smack dab in the middle of Green Acres. That was her father’s idea of happiness, not hers.

And this place, she told herself as her gaze flicked warily about, was most definitely not Green Acres. More like The Haunted Forest from The Wizard of Oz.

The wind began to moan, inducing a few new chill bumps to course down her spine. The sounds of unknown forest creatures grew prominent as she noticed them for the first time. A rodent of some sort scampered by, causing her to yelp.

This, she decided on a frown, was definitely not what she’d had in mind when she’d flown to Europe to experience new things.

Biting her lip, Marie scanned the area once more, trying to find a path she could traverse that would lead her to some sort of help. Her gaze darted north, south, east, west, and—nothing, she sighed.

She’d almost given up entirely when, a minute later, a faint moonbeam spilled over an area of the forest, highlighting a barely worn but definite path that led into it. Her eyebrows rose.

She stilled, considering the fact that she had no makeshift light to take with her into the forest, yet she would still have to enter it. There was no aid to be found on this abandoned dirt road she was standing in the middle of.

Ignoring the wind that whipped the heavy black cloak about her, Marie threw her purse over her shoulder and resigned herself to the inevitable. She would take the path. She had to. There was no other choice.

Her heart rate picking up inexplicably, she walked slowly toward her destination. Every step felt heavy and methodical, as if an unseen force had somehow zeroed in on her and was pulling her into its midst.

She mentally rolled her eyes at her dramatic thoughts. She should have been an actress.

When she finally made her way to the edge of the dirt road she felt tired, like she’d walked ten miles instead of ten paces. Shaking off the bizarre feeling, she stepped onto the grassy terrain that led into the gut of the forest. Her costly designer heels sunk into the muddy earth, bringing her height back down to its true five feet and six inches.

Taking a deep breath, Marie stared wide-eyed down the narrow path for as far as the eye could see. It didn’t escape her notice that she couldn’t see very far down it, and that there was no telling how deep into the woods it went…or where it might lead to.

It was the last thought that made her shiver, a condition that seemed to worsen with each bogged down step she took. “Well Marie,” she muttered under her breath, “at least you haven’t bumped into Count Dracula yet.”

A bat swooped down, hovering over her head for an extended moment before disappearing into the thick of the black woods. Her green eyes rounding, Marie half snorted and half laughed. “Damn,” she breathed out, “I better quit mumbling. Everything I say seems to be coming true.”

Reaching out in front of her, she lifted up the arm of a low hanging branch and moved to the other side of it. The branch slammed down behind her, enveloping her into the heart of the path. Muttering something incoherent about her father and where was the old bastard when she needed him, Marie shook off her misgivings and continued down the path once again.

The crisp wind whipped the black wool cloak about her legs, parting it on one side and revealing the slit the slinky black evening gown made to her upper thigh. The barrette she wore in her hair came undone, causing long golden locks to spill from it and cascade down around her waist. Marie absently drew the hood of the cloak up and around her head, not thinking twice about the black barrette now lying discarded and forgotten in the muddied path.

The trail was so barely traversed that it was hard to make out where she should and shouldn’t walk, but a faint sprinkle of moonlight continued to trickle down through the trees, illuminating the path just enough to enable her to go on.

        For miles Marie walked, each tree having the same appearance as the last, every step taking her further and deeper into the forest’s lair. She was tired, so incredibly exhausted. Every bone in her body seemed to ache, reminding her of how stupid she’d been to drive the Saab down a back road in a country she’d been in for all of two days.

And all because of him. The stranger. That mysterious man she’d met just a few hours past at the opening of the Göthmoor Museum’s exhibit on ancient cultures.

He had told her that this was a good way to come. He had claimed that he’d driven the dirt road several times en route to his estate and that it was a reliable shortcut. And Marie, naïve fool that she now realized she was, had believed him.

       And why had she taken him at his word? she asked herself for the hundredth time in the past few hours. Why, when everything about the stranger had sent little danger signals jolting through her body?

Panting heavily for lack of air, Marie sank to the ground of the forest, not caring that her cloak became muddied in the process. Closing her eyes and breathing deeply, she scooted up against the bark of a tree and considered the answer to her own question. She knew the answer already, of course. She would have to be incredibly stupid not to.

She had wanted, quite simply, to escape the stranger’s unnerving presence. She would have done anything, gone anywhere, taken any supposed shortcut in creation, to put as much distance between him and her as possible, and as quickly as possible.

Even now in her mind’s eye she could see the man’s tall, brooding form hovering over her. When she closed her eyes like this it wasn’t difficult to visualize the harshness of his austere features, the black of his short cropped hair contrasted against silver at the temples, the icy blue of his eyes…and the way those eyes had undressed her, piece by methodical piece, throughout the course of the evening.

Marie had felt the stranger’s gaze on her at all times. Whether meeting her eyes dead on or boring a hole into the back of her as she made her way by each displayed piece of the exhibit, she had felt the possessiveness in his wolf’s eyes clear down to her toes.

The knowledge of it had frightened her, and just as terrifyingly, it had also induced tremors of desire to curl up in her belly. She had never been the type to want a man at first glance. Especially not a stranger so mysterious, and if one listened to village gossip, so evil as well...