A Shade of Vampire 28: A Touch of Truth Read Online Free PDF

hair, which almost matched their eye color, was cropped short. But it looked thin—for both of them. I could almost see their scalps beneath it. And their lips were an odd color—almost the color of someone who’d gotten frostbite. Slightly blue and purple. It struck me all of a sudden just how much their sickly appearance reminded me of Lawrence.
    Orlando’s brows were heavy and severe, forming almost a unibrow when he frowned, as he was doing now.
    “Wh-Who are you?” I stammered.
    “There may be time for that later,” Orlando replied.
    May be time… I found his phrasing discomforting.
    “We need to keep moving,” Maura pressed.
    They both put on their masks after breathing in deep, concealing their faces once again.
    Before I could utter another word, Orlando grabbed my right arm and pulled me none too gently to my feet.
    Then, to my deep despair, they led me to the other side of the roof, attached to which was another dreaded cable leading to the next roof. Maura mounted it, attaching the hook before launching off and ziplining to the building opposite.
    Oh, no .
    Orlando seemed to catch the crestfallen expression on my face.
    “Yes,” he said, pointedly. “We have some way to go yet.”
    “ Where are we going?” I asked.
    “Back to base,” he replied even as he attached his own hook to the cable and launched off.
    Where is “base”?
    I was leery of anyone using the word “base” by now. It made me think instantly of the hunters’ headquarters.
    Once Orlando reached the other side, he threw me back his belt. And once again, I was forced to undergo the traumatic process of ziplining from one building to the other. As I hit the other side and Orlando helped me climb onto it, I couldn’t help but ask, “Why not just travel on the ground? You have a powerful weapon.” I eyed the rotor that Orlando was coaxing along with us.
    “It’s for use in emergencies,” he replied, before the three of us walked to the other side of this third building. “Besides, although it can be effective on small crowds, it’s way too risky to rely on for large ones. Sometimes the rotor breaks down.”
    Large crowds . The crowd that had been chasing me had appeared to be large in my eyes. I dreaded to think what Orlando’s definition of “large” was.
    No more words were spoken as we continued traveling from building to building. After the fifth stretch, I hoped that I would’ve gotten a bit more used to it, but each one was as hair-raising as the last. I found myself constantly expecting something to go wrong: for the safety belt to give way, for the cable to snap… Finally, after what felt like over twenty rooftops, we stopped in the center of a roof.
    I was still alive. Shivering from cold and still in gut-wrenching pain from the stinging in my legs, but alive.
    Relief washed over me as Orlando and Maura did not move to the ledge of this building, as I’d been expecting them to. Instead, they headed to a door, which I guessed led down into the building. It was secured with a heavy-duty lock. Maura withdrew a key from one of the many small compartments in her wide belt and unlocked the door. Orlando lowered the blade-wheel to the floor and stalled it before picking it up. We stepped inside, out of the pounding rain, and emerged at the top of a rundown stairwell whose olive-green walls were peeling. Maura quickly slammed the door shut behind us and locked it again. She began hurrying down the stairs with Orlando following after her. I, however, could not move so quickly. The gliding certainly had not done any favors for my injuries, and I was only able to move at half of their pace. Orlando, appearing quite exhausted himself, did not offer to carry me again. Instead the pair slowed down a little, so that I would not get so far behind.
    Thankfully, they stopped after two flights of stairs. We parted from the staircase through a brown doorway and emerged in a narrow hallway, so narrow that it would be a stretch to