Love is Darkness (A Valerie Dearborn Novel) Read Online Free PDF

hadn't been in control of her actions, she felt a little better, like she'd kind of done it, and could maybe protect herself in the future.
     
    He was like Lucifer, the angel so beautiful that all others paled in comparison. Men didn't look like him, features so bold and striking, so harsh and perfect that he was frightening. When she thought about boys, she thought about Jack. She spent most of her time imagining kissing Jack, she'd even dreamed about it.
     
    Lucas was not a boy.
     
    Lucas wasn’t the stuff of girlish fantasies. He was too predatory to fantasize about. It was like a kitten admiring a lion. Val pushed the uncomfortable thoughts away, and was glad she’d decided to say nothing about Lucas. She didn’t want to think about him, have Nate and Jack talk about him. They couldn’t do anything anyway. Lucas had crushed that other vampire with a punch. She knew who Lucas was. All the Hunters did. He was their leader. King . And he could kill her and her family with one careless swipe of his arm.
     
    And if she told them about Lucas they’d have questions. Questions she didn’t have the answers too and that she didn’t want said aloud.   She was alive tonight because of him.
     
    Why did he come for me?
     
    Why did he save me?
     
    What does he want?
     
    And worst of all…when will he come back for me?
     

Chapter 2
     
    San Loaran , California
     
    5 years ago
     
 
     
    Jack was sitting in the kitchen, his mouth watering in hunger as he listened to his parents bicker about the Italian government.
     
     
                A pot boiled on the stove, steam hissing and rolling outwards. But it wasn’t just ready, it was…jumping, lightly hopping on the stove —   like it had a message of life and death, if only someone would take off the lid.
     
     
                He didn’t want to dream this again .
     
     
                He stared at the pot, its shiny silver surface and- there it was - a faint blue, twinkling reflection. The twinkle altered, changed shape until it was a blue form, small and distant but becoming larger.
     
     
    She’s close now .
     
     
    The sound of birds, wings flapping, their bodies sighing, filled his ears and echoed off the kitchen walls. He could feel them beating against his eardrums.
     
     
    That’s not right.
     
     
    There were no birds, it was the heavy swish of rustling silk, and it grated on his nerves, like biting into chalk.
     
     
                Time to turn around now.  
     
    Time to see her coming.  
     
                His heart thumped and he picked up his butter knife. His father laughed. His mother smiled. They didn’t know that death was hurtling down the corridor like a freight train.
     
     
                And then she was there. His mother fell to the ground, neck broken, happening in between one blink and the next. His father’s face was in his food, body limp, soul already gone, leaving Jack sitting at the kitchen table, a butter knife clenched pathetically tight, a useless protection against her .
     
     
    Marion’s sapphire silk skirts blotted out the rest of the world.  
     
     
                She walked around the little kitchen table where he’d eaten every meal of his life. She whispered to him and teased, sounding like a coquette.
     
     
    Three, four times, she walked around the table. Like playing duck, duck, goose: the agony of her walking behind him, the tension of knowing she’d passed him, but was coming around again. And when she picked him, he’d be dead.
     
     
                He saw her make the decision, a slight pout marring her dark smile, as she reached out, in infinite slowness, her bony hand outstretched towards him.
     
     
    Move. Run. Scream. Do something!
     
     
    Instead, he sat frozen, looking at his mother and then his father, memorizing their features and this moment….
     
     
    The barest tip of her finger touched him, like an ice cube