Heart of the Dead: Vampire Superheroes (Perpetual Creatures Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page A

into this world.
    A scree of rubble rattled down the side of the cliff fifty feet to his right. Tight-woven black cords spilled over the side, and three men in body armor and night vision goggles repelled into view.
    “Target acquired,” one man called into a radio attached to his shoulder.
    The men, each positioned lower on their rope than the one behind him, raised their weapons, painting his skin with glowing red dots. In the distance, the helicopter’s engine powered up as it rushed toward his hiding spot. The men fired their weapons, discharging high velocity tranquilizer darts.
    He leapt across the open void of the chasm, spanning the twenty feet as though it were inches. The darts clattered and ricocheted off of the stone face of the mountain.
    He moved along the nearly vertical mountain face, clinging to the stone like a spider, leapt back across the void, and crawled around a bend of rock, taking him out of the gunmen’s line of sight. He scrambled up the side and pulled himself atop a small plateau.
    He was tired of this chase, of the icy mountain air. He didn’t want to kill anyone else, but sooner or later, they would force his hand. If only he could get some distance between him and his hunters. He could outrun the men on foot easily enough, but what of the helicopter? He possessed unmatched speed, but he did not believe he could best the machine’s endurance.
    If only he could get somewhere warm. Somewhere green and alive. Somewhere he might find another like himself.
    He closed his eyes, no more than an extended blink, and when he looked again, the world around him had changed.
    The mountain no longer rested beneath his feet. Instead, he stood upon the cool, mossy earth. Tall trees, with springtime buds, swayed in the gentle breeze as though they were trying to dust away the stars. And before him stood a young woman with a look of terror distorting her beautiful face.
    She stood in the deep shadows of the trees, her pale skin as radiant as the moon. She seemed such an unlikely presence in this forest that, at first, he wasn’t sure if she was a phantom of his imagination or not.
    “Hello.” He didn’t get a chance to say anything else. The woman turned and darted off through the trees faster than a frightened rabbit. He wanted to go after her, to assure her that he meant her no harm, but he understood what it was like to be chased, so he decided to let her go.
    She had been such a strange creature, though. He still wasn’t sure she had been real.
    He moved about the forest, wandering without purpose, until almost dawn when he caught the sound of movement in the distance. It was footsteps, subtle, light and precise. For a moment, he thought it might be the strange woman, but then he realized there were actually two people walking in perfect unison. They were headed right for him.
    Had the Light Bearers found him? Impossible. There was no way for them to know where he was. He didn’t even know where he was.
    Still, he preferred not to be discovered. Using his unique gift of travel, he vanished from the ground and reappeared in a branch thirty feet off of the ground. The footsteps continued. He could hear the sound of their breathing, but it was much too slow and methodical to be human.
    Two men passed beneath the tree, pausing for just a moment, as if they sensed something amiss.
    Both men were dressed in expensive clothes and shoes, and though he had only been in this world a short time, even he knew those were not the kind of clothing you would wear to hike through the forest.
    He couldn’t see much of them from his hiding spot, except that one man was of average height with a crop of dark hair and that the other looked like a giant with long blond hair pulled back into a ponytail.
    He tried to touch their minds as he had done with his captors in the mountain fortress and found he couldn’t. After a moment, they continued on their way.
    He followed behind them, using his unique gift, tracking them