Scarlet and the Keepers of Light Read Online Free

darker before them as they entered.
    Scarlet’s father put Melody down and swept his wife and daughters behind him. He looked fierce and brave now, and somehow younger.
    “The girl,” all three figures said in unison, their voices like every awful sound he’d ever heard. It was babies screaming and dogs whelping, nails across a chalkboard, a mother wailing and bones breaking.
    “Get out of my house,” Scarlet’s father said, teeth clenched, his knuckles white where he grasped the ax handle.
    “Not until we have the girl,” the dark ones lilted, this time in a mystical song, compelling and all-consuming. Their voices seemed rooted in Scarlet’s brain, festering.
    For a fleeting moment, unbelievably, it looked as if her father was considering obeying. He turned to look back at Scarlet, and she felt her stomach lurch at the blankness in his eyes. But a moment later the light came back into them. He swung back toward his tormentors. “Over my dead body!” he shouted, lifting the ax handle.
    The figures stepped toward him again.
    “And over mine.” The voice from behind the girls was deep, and seemed to roll over each word like a growl.
    Scarlet whipped her head around, expecting a new enemy. What she saw was even more shocking. Moving up to join them, teeth bared, hackles raised, unearthly blue eyes trained on the intruders, was Dakota. Scarlet shook her head to clear it. There was no way the dog could—
    “Follow me,” said a new voice, similar but somehow softer and more feminine. “Dakota hold them off.”
    This time there was no doubt. Cricket, the black Labrador, had spoken.
    For a moment Scarlet was frozen to the spot. She looked from the figures to Dakota and back again. Any youthful playfulness had vanished from the scrawny pup her father had rescued only five months ago. What she saw now was something so impossible, so fierce, it defied imagination.
    “Now,” Dakota growled, and Scarlet’s father caught her hand and tugged her out of her trance, pulling her after Allie, Melody, and Cricket down the stairs. It felt as if the darkness were chasing them, and above she could hear terrible snarls, thuds, and the sound of snapping teeth.
    “Hurry,” Cricket called from behind them, running to the back door. “We must make woods.”
    Suddenly the basement door flew open, snow rushing in with a howl of wind. The family halted. It’s over, Scarlet thought. We’re surrounded.
    But it wasn’t more of the dark figures—though to Scarlet it seemed worse. Her father pulled her and Melody tightly to his chest, reaching out for Allie.
    Five massive wolves, each easily twice the size of Dakota, were slinking into the basement.
    ***

Scarlet wasn’t afraid of the wolves. After all, she had seen them before. This very night, in fact, she’d been running with them in her dreams.
    “You make it!” cried Cricket. “Dakota say you come.”
    “It’s a long journey,” the biggest wolf growled. “Where is . . . er . . . Dakota?” But the commotion upstairs told him before anyone could answer. “Hurry, into the woods!” he barked, before rushing up the stairs.
    In a flash Scarlet was running, her mother gripping her hand. They staggered through the backyard after Cricket, trying to keep up with the leaping dog as they floundered through the deep snow. It was like one of those nightmares where every step is a struggle. She could hear her father’s heavy footsteps right behind her as he ran with Melody in his arms.
    Any second they would break through the trees and be in Mrs. Anderson’s backyard. They would use her phone to call the police, and this would all be over. After all, the little stretch of woods behind their house was only five or ten trees deep. First their yard, sixty feet of grass, a playground with a swing. Then the tree house their dad had built for the girls, in the large maple at the edge of the woods. Maybe eight trees beyond that, some brush, and then . . . this should be Mrs.