Invincible (A Centennial City Novel) Read Online Free PDF

of the mirror, or so to speak.
    Should I stop? Should I keep on walking?
    I stopped.
    So, too, did the steps.
    Fingers creeping up my wrist where I could feel the warm metal of the dagger on my fingertips, I took a deep breath. “May I help you?”
    “Leave the man alone.” A feminine, husky voice. “You’ll leave him alone or else there’ll be hell to pay.”
    I resisted the urge to turn around. What if she should flee? “And who would I have the pleasure of speaking to?”
    “I’d rather not say,” she said. “You don’t need to know who I am. Leave him alone. If you attempt to contact him, I might as well finish you off here.”
    “Will you? You speak such words, but I don’t think you have what it takes to actually pull it off.”
    The woman let out a small sound low in her throat and I stepped aside as a rush of air brushed past my bare neck.
    I flicked the dagger into my hand, felt the reassuring leather handle in my palm and turned to face the woman who would have slashed my throat open.
    Crouching low on the balls of her feet, hands extended out to her sides, her light brown hair glimmered like honey, tied back in a simple knot at the nape of her beck.
    This far from downtown, the streets were deserted, the apartments all dark with a decrepit, depressed appearance. “How convenient for you. You have no weapon, so you could stand to attack me in public without worrying about someone calling the cops. Whereas I…am not like you.”
    Her eyes narrowed. “What are you?”
    “Human.”
    “Liar.”
    I shrugged. “I suppose I’ve been called that as well, although it is through no fault of mine, I assure you.”
    The dagger seemed woefully inadequate when she had the equivalent of ten at her fingertips, literally, but I kept it out. Better to be a perceived threat than nothing at all. Besides, it was all I had. I couldn’t pull out the sword, not here in the middle of town, and my martial arts were not so good to battle a vampire head on, even one as young as the one in front of me. Not when I had no allies within eyesight“What do you want?”
    She straightened up to her full height, which wasn’t very impressive. “The man you’re with. Stay around him any longer and you’re going to find yourself in a fuckload of trouble.”
    “Fascinating. Why would you go out of your way to warn me?”
    When she grinned, her sharp canines caught the light in a rather convincing way. “Let’s just say I’m someone who considers his well-being to be in the best of my interest. We know about you and your habit of getting people killed around you. I’d like him to survive, even if it’s just for a little while.”
    “Does he know about you?”
    “He knows nothing about me nor the organization that supports my action.”
    “I don’t suppose you could enlighten me as to which organization this would be?”
    She had no discernible marks that would put her in a certain House or gang, but perhaps they were hidden behind her knee-length black trench coat. “We’d like to keep our name under wraps. For now.”
    “I see.”
    For the moment, it seemed as though I was safe, that is to say, she wasn’t in an immediate position to disembowel me. Then again, it doesn’t take much for a vampire to do it. I am, after all, only human. “What can you tell me about the man I was with?”
    She let out a small laugh. The vampire was quite pretty, but they were all very nice to look at. Too bad beauty really only went skin deep with them. “Not much, I’m afraid. Just stay away from him His safety is assured by me and my organization.”
    I stowed the tiny bi-su back up my sleeve, all the while aware of how her shoulders seemed to relax almost infinitesimally. “And if I stay away from him?”
    “Then you will continue to breathe,” she said with a broad wink that just seemed wrong, coming from a bloodsucker. “I think you’ll find this arrangement to be comfortable for all parties involved.”
    “Of course, I