Read Refuge Book 1 - Night of the Blood Sky for Free Online Page A

she managed to ignore it. Outside, the bell was so loud it hurt her ears. She turned toward the church and saw Pastor Dodge, Radar and Lisa Howard standing in front of the church, alongside a few others who had gathered to behold the spectacle. But most were backing away with their hands over their ears. The sheriff was nowhere in sight, which meant she’d probably gone inside.
    Of course she’s inside , Frost thought with a pang of jealousy. Of all the nights for the town to get restless, it had to be the one she was on office duty.
    “Want to go check it out?” Griffin asked.
    She nearly replied in the affirmative, but caught herself. With Avalon in the cell, there was no way she could leave.
    Griffin seemed to understand her hesitation and added, “Ava’s not going anywhere.”
    Frost sucked in a quick breath. Only Jess had called Avalon by that nickname. Griffin usually used her full name, unlike everyone else in town, who called her ‘Lony.’ The use of the nickname reinforced the idea for her that Griffin was off limits. “Can’t.”
    But then, the bell stopped ringing, and despite her determination to shirk her feelings for Griffin, she was secretly pleased, because it meant he might not leave. When his hand wrapped around her arm and he spoke her name, “Helena,” with a calm sense of wonder, she became gripped by worry that he was going to break her rule for her. When she turned to look in his eyes, he wasn’t looking at her, he was looking up.
    She followed his gaze and found the sky above was moving and flexing like a great big red blanket, lit from the back side, as if it was being shaken over Refuge. She could hear the people by the church shouting now, but paid them no attention. “What is it?”
    “Nothing good,” Griffin said.
    Despite the beauty of the sight, Griffin’s confident declaration concerned her greatly. It wasn’t the words exactly, but the fear behind them. Griffin Butler didn’t scare easily.
    He dug into his pocket, pulled out a cell phone and quickly dialed. The phone rested against his ear for just a moment. When he yanked it away, even she could hear the high pitched squeal emanating from the speaker. She quickly tried her phone and got the same result. She tried the radio next, intending to check in with Rule, but it shrieked at her too.
    For a moment, she locked eyes with Griffin, and then they ran inside the station, each trying a different landline phone. “Dead,” she declared.
    “Same,” he said moving to a computer. He clicked the mouse three times. “No internet. Do you have a satellite phone?”
    “Why would a small-town police station have a satellite phone?”
    “Right,” he said, heading for the door.
    “Where are you going?”
    “I have one.”
    “Of course you do.” She nearly said she was coming, but she remembered her job. She couldn’t leave Lony here, even if the sky was falling. She could, however, double-check whether the sky was, in fact, falling. She stepped outside with Griffin and looked up.
    The sky warbled with rolls of red, like the night itself was bleeding.
    A tightness gripped her chest. She reached out instinctively, grasping Griffin’s arm. She knew others might see her fear as a sign of weakness, but if she could share her inner frailty with anyone in town, it was Griffin.
    “Something’s very wrong,” she said.
    He checked his phone again. It no longer shrieked at them, but there was still no signal. “There’s a lot wrong tonight.”
    “I don’t hear anything,” she said and then specified, “We should still hear the fireworks.”
    “They probably stopped them when...” He pointed to the sky, “...you know.”
    Maybe, she thought, but the fireworks in Ashland had become a pretty big deal because they were one of the few towns in the region to have a big fireworks display. She was pretty sure the whole show was run by a computer that wouldn’t stop because of some lights in the skies, and it was possible that the