Living Nightmare Read Online Free PDF Page B

was going to be trouble; he just never suspected how much. He hadn’t had a moment’s peace since meeting her—not that he really deserved any. Still, he sometimes wondered what his life would have been like if he’d never met her.
    He’d be dead already. He knew better than to fool himself into thinking otherwise. He wouldn’t have had a reason to live. He would have given in to the pull to remove that frigid black ring, let go of the last sliver of his soul, and be set free. His brothers would have found him and killed him, but not before he’d done some serious damage to them in return.
    Who knew how many lives Nika had saved by giving him a reason to hang on? Of course, once he freed her mind and killed the last sgath, that reason would be gone.
    Madoc really needed to die before that happened. He needed to give up and let go—dive headfirst into a nest of Synestryn and take out as many as he could before they killed him.
    The problem was the timing. If he went to his death too soon, Nika’s head would still be fucked-up. If he waited too long, people he was supposed to care about would die.
    Better to err on the side of caution while he still had enough control over his actions to do so.
    It was time to let go. Hand over to another Theronai his quest to kill every last sgath. It wasn’t like he was the only one who could kill the fuckers. There was nothing special about him. He was just one more sword arm, one more warrior.
    They didn’t need him; they needed him dead before he could hurt anyone. Especially Nika.
    “I remember this house,” said Nika.
    “We brought you here the night we took you from the hospital.”
    She gave a distracted nod, staring at the modest home set inside an isolated, wooded area outside Omaha. “I tried to run away to get to Tori, but a vampire stopped me. You came in and took care of me.”
    Madoc snorted. “Hardly. I told you to get your scrawny ass back in bed.”
    “You fed me. I hadn’t eaten in so long.”
    “You’re not still having trouble with that, are you?”
    “Not very often. I’m stronger now. I can usually tell the difference between the things that happen to me in my body and the things that happen to my mind while it’s in the body of others.”
    That was some freaky shit Madoc refused to think about too long. Dealing with his own pain was bad enough. Having to also stand the suffering in someone else would be a nightmare.
    “Connal’s van is here. We should go in.”
    “I really don’t want to do this,” said Nika. Her voice trembled, making Madoc feel like the biggest dick on the face of the planet for forcing her.
    It was the right thing to do. She was bleeding. The leech would make it stop. It was as simple as that.
    “If he hurts you, I’ll kill him,” he said, meaning every word.
    He got out of the truck, and Nika scooted across the seat toward the door. She looked small and fragile inside his leather jacket. The thing swallowed her up, hanging over her hands and nearly down to her knees. Her cheeks were pink from the cold, and the dome light over her head made her white hair glow.
    Madoc’s heart squeezed, and an odd need flooded him. He’d spent centuries protecting others. It was habit for him at this point, done with no more thought than he gave to breathing. But with Nika it was different. The urge to wrap her in his arms warred with the need to growl and bare his teeth to the world, killing anyone who got close to her. The ferocity of his urges scared the hell out of him and warned him just how close he was to the end.
    He could feel the last leaf of his lifemark clinging to his skin, hanging in the middle of its descent. The black ring he wore on his right hand had slowed the leaf’s fall, allowing him to cling to the last sliver of his soul and pretend to be normal. At least for a little while. The ring had been given to him by Iain, the leader of the secret group the Band of the Barren. Like all of the men in the Band, he was