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

there amongst the Vampires, amongst a Realm Protector.  
    But where did he belong?
    The duo had entered the tree and were graced by rows of endless stairs, only lit by torches on the walls — walls that weren’t made of wood, but rather something more organic. Harold made sure not to touch anything.
    Now as he stared at the man they called the King, Harold swallowed hard. The sight of this creature unnerved him. He was a very large man, the type of man who’d build his throne in an equally large tree, with skin a dusty shade of milk and eyes that sagged lower than his loose jowls. Thunderbolts of wrinkles zagged their way through his forehead and near the corners of his lips. Lips, that were the color of blood, and had Harold questioning whether the man had put on a bunch of makeup when he woke up. That was, if he woke up.
    The daily routine of Vampires were still a little hazy to Harold. Yet things just kept getting weirder and weirder.
    “You may rise,” the King said.
    He sat in a wooden throne, which matched the same color and texture as the tree they were in. His stomach rolled over the arm rests of the large chair. Behind him was a wall made up of chalky gray bricks. A banner with the front of a bat, wings outstretched, and the points at the apex of each wing matching the same shade of red that dribbled from its fangs, hung overhead, somehow rustling in the still, earthy air of the underground palace.
    Harold stood up after Sahara did, fingers clasped behind his back.
    The King rolled his hand out in front of him so his palm faced up towards a ceiling that didn’t seem to be there, seemed to stretch on forever. Harold had begun to feel small again, a feeling he’d also grown used to.
    “To what do I owe the pleasure of housing a Realm Protector and…a corpse?” the King said in a voice that sounded a lot like a man spitting out disagreeable food. His gaze found Harold’s eyes. And Harold couldn’t help but shy away from the man’s stare. It felt like looking into a dying sun. There was chaos in the King’s look — death, blood.
    “This is Harold Storm,” Sahara said.
    The King stopped looking at Harold, blinked slow, and seemed to shrink a couple hundred pounds as he scrambled up deeper into his pointed throne, almost as if his mass wasn’t swallowing up the poor chair, but it swallowed him up instead.  
    “ The Harold Storm,” the King asked, incredulous, voice shaky.
    Sahara nodded.
    A feeling of fear struck Harold’s gut. What kind of rumors were floating around already after what happened in the terminal station? Had he been deemed a savior, or a war criminal for failing to finish the Shadow Eaters and nail the Portal to Hell shut?
    “I’ve heard pleasant things about you, young Storm.”
    He sighed.  
    “Haven’t heard a thing about you,” Harold replied.
    “Good. That is my intention,” the King said, smiling. “Our little band of Vampires like to keep to the Shadows — ”
    Shadows. The Shadows. Come with us, Harold. Join me and together we can conquer this puny Realm.
    Harold stood slack-jawed, staring at the King, but not seeing him. His mind was elsewhere, drifting amongst the stars. A black tidal wave of Shadows rolled over him, took him. He screamed. There or here? He wasn’t sure.
    “ — Without the security of the forest, we’d be exposed to all types of threats.” The King continued, plump skin shaking as he spoke. Harold hadn’t screamed, at least neither the King or Sahara had given him any inclination that he had. So he nodded with agreement, trying to look as interested as possible, no matter how uninterested he actually was. And he couldn’t shake the feeling of wrongness, of someone calling to him far, far away. That dark voice practically begging him. But for what?
    Looking down at his hands, he noticed how shaky they were, so he stuffed them inside of the pocket of his trench coat. Except, his fingers poked out of the bottom of the liner. He’d been to Hell