Shadowbound: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Realm Protectors Book 2) Read Online Free PDF Page A

his father’s wisdom never expired.
    Hell had its claws firmly in place of Gloomsville’s gullet, and Hell was not something Frank wanted to deal with, something he wasn’t prepared to deal with. But somehow he knew he’d have to if he wanted to get revenge for Travis. Wanted to gut the Demon who’d gutted his son.
    Those eyes. Black pools submerged in piss-yellow.
    Shit only gets worse from here.
    That night, looking onto the electrical dark form of energy, Frank had made up his mind. He wouldn’t die unless the Demon died with him.
    “The forest. The Vampire’s Haven,” the Shadow said, before vanishing with a splash.
    Frank fiddled with the light switch, yanked the cord down nearly hard enough to rip it from its socket. Still, the light flooded the room, and the stain of blood on the hardwood was still there, except it shimmered like flames dancing on crystal.
    The Shadow was gone. And Frank sat on the bed in empty silence. A thought rolled in his mind over and over again: Shit only gets worse from here. The forest. Find the Vampires and you will find him .
    He’d fallen asleep easily enough after that, not bothering to gather his blanket or his pillow. The nightmares hadn’t left with the Shadow. And he dreamt of a huge oak tree burning with Hellfire, and a river of blood flowing near its roots.  
    Frank smiled as it washed over his boots.

C HAPTER 5

    “The funeral will be at sundown,” the King said.
    Harold knelt at the threshold of the door, a few feet behind Sahara who also knelt.  
    The trek through the forest was something of a wonder to Harold, having seen The Blair Witch Project at the height of its popularity in the late 90’s, barely a teenager at the time, the utter horror of the movie had never left him. And in the forest with all the dead trees, gnarled branches, and the eerie quiet, that movie flooded back into his brain like war flashbacks and he nearly had to stop and turn back around. Until he remembered how there were a group of Vampires mourning a dead Vampire who he had basically killed. Suddenly Harold didn’t want to head back that way anymore.
    They had come upon a tree in the middle of small clearing, much bigger than the rest and much healthier, too. It seemed to stretch up into the black clouds beyond the branches as far as the eye could see like a great tower or a city skyscraper, reminding him of his home, his lost city, Gloomsville. Sahara had walked straight up to the tree and looked like a dwarf when next to it.  
    The wooden grooves in the base of the trunk reminded Harold of the way a candle looks after the wax has melted and hardened, seemingly deforming the thing. Except with the tree, it was about a million times larger than any candle he could picture in his head.
    Sahara’s hand brushed the wood, searching, until it had stopped in between a crevasse closer to the bottom. She looked over her shoulder, and smiled. “Watch this,” she said, like a child ready to show off a new trick they learned on the playground. Then her hand had erupted into a sea of fire. Smoke clouds funneled up around her face, but she showed no signs of pain despite the smell of burnt wood and singed flesh — a smell Harold knew all too well. And soon the front of the tree showed the faintest outline of a large, looming door, glowing with the same fire that had engulfed Sahara’s hand.
    Harold could do nothing but stand there with wide eyes and a shaky frame. Still, part of his mind told him he shouldn’t be shocked at all. He’d been to Hell, fought Demons, Vampires, watched a Wizard get murdered, was friends with a Witch, oh, and yeah, had a goddamned sword shoot from his forearm more than once. And that’s not all of it. Why would a hidden door in the base of gigantic tree shock him?
    He didn’t know why, but he knew that in the back of his mind, where the darkness loomed and rolled over his brain like lava from a volcano, that he was not in the right place. Knew he didn’t belong