Immortals After Dark 12 - Lothaire Read Online Free PDF Page B

coat he wore. His hair was pale blond, his features chiseled. And those eyes . . . otherworldly.
    “Another demon!” She blindly rooted her hand through the snow, automatically reaching for the shotgun, but he stepped on her wrist.
    When she gave a cry of pain, he pressed down harder, his lips drawing back to reveal . . . fangs. “You dare risk my female?” His voice was deep and accented, his tone filled with scorn. At his words, the baying dogs immediately fell silent.
    “Wh-what are you talking about?”
    “Your attempted blaze of glory, Elizabeth. And all because of a few murders?” He gave her a look of disgust, as if to say, Grow up.
    The sheriff ordered, “Put your hands where I can see them!”
    Instead, the pale-haired demon hunched down beside her, cupping her nape to snatch her closer. With his other hand, he tossed her gun away.
    When another bullet plugged him in the back, he hissed over his shoulder, baring those fangs. “One— moment ,” he snapped.
    Ellie sneaked a glance at the cops; they looked too confounded to
react.
    And behind them, Ephraim and some of her cousins had come running up the mountain, rifles in hand. They’d slowed in shock upon seeing the demon.
    The male sneered, “Mortals,” then turned back to her. “Listen very carefully, Elizabeth. I am Lothaire the Enemy of Old, and you belong to
me. After considering my options, I’ve decided I will allow you to go
to jail this eve.”
    “Y-you’ve got the wrong girl! I don’t know you—”
    Talking over her, he said, “In your human prison, you’ll be hidden from my kind, which means you’ll be relatively safe while I continue my search. I will return for you in two years. Or so.” He gave her a harsh shake. “But if you try to harm yourself—and therefore my female—again, I will punish you beyond imagining. Do you understand me?”
    “Your female? I’m not yours!”
    “I wouldn’t have you .” He narrowed those red eyes. “The glorious being who lives within you, however . . .”
    “I don’t understand! What’s inside of me?”
    He reached his free hand toward her face, his black claws glinting in the moonlight. Ignoring her question, he huskily murmured, “I will have her , my queen, forever.”
    When he brushed a strand of hair from her face, she flinched. “Unhand me, demon!”
    He stared down at her even as he addressed another in that deep,hypnotic voice: “Saroya, if you can hear me, sleep until I return for you. When all my plots and all my toiling come to bear.”
    Saroya? It has a name?
    With inhuman speed, he rose, looming above Ellie. More words in another language followed, then he disappeared into thin air.
    The shaken deputies closed in on Ellie, their jaws slack. Sweat ran from their foreheads even as their breaths smoked. One cuffed her silently, while the others aimed their pistols in all directions—even up.
    Ephraim and her cousins looked stricken; they could do nothing to save her, short of killing four cops in cold blood.
    Her stunned mind finally registered that she would be taken alive.
    The red-eyed demon had prevented her death. And Ellie burned to kill him for it.

2
    Ridgevale Correctional Center for Women, Virginia
    PRESENT DAY
    D oes the condemned have any last words?” the warden intoned.
    “No!” Ellie squirmed against her bonds on the gurney, pulling taut the electrodes dotting her chest. With each of her frantic heartbeats, the nearby EKG monitor spiked. The IV tubes snaking from each arm swayed back and forth. “No, I’m ready!”
    She might have felt dread that she was about to die, but urgency overwhelmed all other emotions. She’d had death snatched from her grasp once before.
    And the demon was stirring inside her.
    Fearing “Saroya” would rise and attack everyone around her, Ellie had taken no last meal, had met with no family or chaplain. She’d inventoried her worldly belongings—ChapStick, college textbooks, four dollars in change, and her journals—with a