Darkest Hour (New Adult Paranormal Romance) Read Online Free PDF Page A

pleasure to make your acquaintance, but we both know that’s a
lie.”
    Thomas curled his fingers into
fists. His dark brows were drawn over his eyes, his jaw set at a mutinous
angle. “Why would you do such a thing? I’ve never done anything to harm you.”
    Malachi arched a brow. “Why
should I give you my reasons? You’re simply cattle. Your sole purpose is to
feed my kind. The lion does not give his reasons to the antelope before he
brings it down.”
    “Why, you—!” Thomas lunged
for Malachi
    “Don’t!” Elsbeth threw her arms
around his waist, dragging him to a halt.
    Malachi laughed. “Are you going
to let a woman hold you back? You’re weaker than I thought.
    “Don’t listen to him,” Elsbeth
hissed in Thomas’s ear. “He’s trying to goad you into attacking him so he can
finish you off without retribution. If he claims self-defense, our Mistress
won’t be able to hurt him.
    Thomas’s chest rose and fell
rapidly, his vision hazed red with bloodlust. He wanted revenge against the one
who’d done this to him. But he wasn’t so far gone that Elsbeth’s words did not
penetrate. He would not allow Malachi to make him the victim in this
cat-and-mouse game.
    He stopped struggling, and gently
removed Elsbeth’s hands from around his torso. “You’re not worth the trouble,”
he sneered at Malachi. “I’ll take my revenge on my own terms, not yours.”
    Malachi’s expression morphed from
condescendingly amused to outright livid. “You will pay for this, Elsbeth.” His
murderous gaze found hers, and a shiver rolled down her spine. “I won’t forgive
you for siding with filth like him.” He drew the shadows around him like a
cloak, then disappeared.
    The two of them stood for a long
while, staring at the spot where Malachi had been. Elsbeth was almost dizzy
with relief; she didn’t know what she would have done should Malachi have
chosen to finish Thomas off. She wondered if she should speak to her Mistress
again, but what would she say? He hadn’t actually done anything wrong this
time.
    “Well.” Thomas finally broke the
silence. “Your friend certainly has some interesting opinions.”
    Elsbeth shook her head. “He’s
despicable. I’m ashamed we’re members of the same Seethe.”
    Thomas shrugged. “It’s not your
fault he turned out the way he did.” He put an arm around her shoulder. “What
do you say we go home for the night?”
    Elsbeth leaned against his side.
“I think that sounds like a good plan.”
    She hid her smile, and decided
not to mention that he’d called her house ‘home’.
    * * *
    Over the next few days, Thomas
grew stronger. His senses grew sharp, his movements faster, and he adapted
fairly quickly to taking nourishment from animal blood. Since he needed so
little to survive, Elsbeth never tried to teach him how to hunt humans. Since
he was only part-vampire, she could easily understand how such a thing would be
abhorrent to him, even if it were only evil humans he hunted.
    “And how is it that you know
these humans are evil?” He’d demanded of her one night, when she’d come home
from a hunt. His eyes had latched onto the spot of blood at the corner of her
mouth, which she’d missed when she’d stopped by a small brook to clean off.
    “We can scent it in their blood,”
she’d told him. The corruption from evil souls often translated to the
bloodstream, tainting it so that it had a slightly bitter flavor, which could
also be scented.
    He’d shaken his head. “What if
you’re wrong? What if you’d gotten the scent wrong?”
    She’d shrugged. “We might mistake
the scent, but certainly never the flavor. It’s very distinct. If we’d gotten
it wrong, we would let the human go, of course.” Though in the case of new
vampires, they often didn’t have the tremendous amount of self-control required
to stop a feeding once started. Innocents did die on occasion, and that was
unfortunate. But such was the way of life.
    He hadn’t been