Demonkeepers Read Online Free PDF

of it.
    Blowing out a slow, settling breath, she said, “I came back because you haven’t been able to get into the library, and we’re running out of time and options.” She paused, peering into the darkness and seeing nothing but the shadows. “It’s not your fault. It’s a power incompatibility, that’s all.” He might have spent years collecting the Nightkeepers’ legends and reconstructing their elusive history, despite the derision the hobby had earned in academic circles, but that didn’t make him a mage. Whereas genetics and magic meant that the Nightkeepers were big, strong, and charismatic, Lucius was more angles than muscle. He was human, blood and bone. And the sooner he came around to accepting that the limitations of that had nothing to do with him being Runt Hunt, the better off he’d be . . . and, she suspected, the closer he’d get to gaining control of the Prophet’s magic. She hoped.
    “Whose idea was it for you to come?” he asked. He remained hidden in the shadows, but his voice shifted with a thread of what she thought might be acceptance.
    “Mine, start to finish.” New heat furled across her skin as the anticipation built.
    Their one spontaneous, somewhat rushed coupling in the archive had lit her up like nothing had done before, not even being with the far more polished Michael when the two of them had both been running hot with transitional hormones and their first tastes of sex magic. Where Michael had been skilled and considerate, Lucius had been raw, teetering on the borderline of control. Where Michael had held a portion of himself apart—out of necessity, as they had later learned—Lucius had been entirely there with her, making her feel like he didn’t see her as support staff, a backup, or a fill- in for what he’d really wanted. Unfortunately, that very openness, combined with a Xibalban attack on the antimagic wards surrounding Skywatch, had allowed the makol to briefly emerge from its hiding place and take over Lucius’s consciousness in the aftermath, leading to the near destruction of the archive and beginning Lucius’s downward spiral to makol possession. Despite that terrifying ordeal, though, and the strained “I don’t do love; I do friends with benefits” conversation she’d been forced to lay on him when he’d tried to make their lovemaking into more than she’d ever intended, she wanted this. She wanted him , though that hadn’t been the argument she’d used on the others. She hadn’t dared.
    “Are you doing this because it’s your best chance to finally be on the front lines, finally make a difference in the war?”
    “Do you blame me?” It wasn’t really an answer, but she didn’t want him to know that somewhere along the line, duty and desire had gotten mixed together inside her. She wanted to fix him, to help him gain the magic he’d sacrificed for. At the same time, she wanted what they had found together in the archive, when nothing had mattered but the slap of flesh, the rake of nails, the clash of lips and tongues. She missed that, wanted it. It wasn’t magic, wasn’t love, but it was a power she could summon, something she was good at.
    “I don’t blame you,” he answered, rasping voice going soft, “but I need you to understand what you’re getting into.”
    The night had gone fully dark, and the pinpoint stars did little to lighten the blackness of the new moon. The pool deck at the back of the mansion was unlit; the only real illumination came from a few gleaming windows up at the mansion, and the lights coming from a single cottage off in the middle distance. The darkness meant she felt and heard rather than saw when he moved toward her, closing the distance between them until she could feel the heat from his body, the stir of his breath. Desire tightened her inner muscles and made her acutely conscious of her own breathing, her own actions, as she wetted her lips with her tongue.
    “Light a foxfire,” he said. “Just a