"Are you all right? Can I call someone for you? The priest, perhaps? Your family?" "There is no one, not anymore. I'm Rudy Romanov. You must have heard the news about my parents." An unholy vision burst in her head. She saw wolves boiling from the forest, red eyes gleaming fiercely, a huge black wolf leading the pack and bearing straight down on Hans Romanov. From the young man's head, she picked up the memory of his mother, Heidi, lying on her bed, her husband's fingers around her throat. For one awful moment she couldn't breathe. What this man had suffered! Both parents taken from him in a matter of hours. His fanatical father had murdered his mother. "I've been ill with the flu; this is my first time out in days." She moved closer to him beneath the outstretched limbs of the trees. She couldn't very well tell him the truth--that she had been involved in the entire horrendous affair." --