The Celestial Kiss Read Online Free PDF Page B

shook me so hard my head hit the wall, blurring the world before me, but I was grateful at least to be able to breathe again as I gasped to fill my lungs.
    This man was strong—more so than I imagined any human to be—and with the blow to my head, I felt a little faint, unable to attack or defend myself.  I blinked slowly, and opened my lips to say something, anything, when a roar ripped through the air.  The man turned slowly, as if he’d been expecting this new addition.  When the weak morning sunlight broke through a crowd and fell on his face, I recognized my attacker was Julius from the diner.  “I’ve got this one, James.”  His voice was wrought with irritation, but that didn’t stop the other figure from charging.
    It moved too fast for me to register it, but in a matter of seconds, the thing was upon me, its teeth buried in my shoulder.  The force of it was completely new, and paramount to the bites of vampires I was accustomed to.  Unable to do anything else, I screamed.  In the very next second, it released me as if my scream really were some sort of deterrent.  With nothing to hold me up, all my energy finally exhausted, I slid to the dirty ground with a hand pressed to my bleeding shoulder, my teeth bared against another scream.
                  Everything burned, a pain unlike anything I thought was possible, but in the seconds following that didn’t seem to matter.  Nothing did, except for the creature before me, easily twice my size from down here, with massive paws that could cave my chest in within seconds.
    I could smell it now, something I’d heard of, something I’d read about.  My vision blurred, my heart slowed, and my eyes grew heavy as I realized—I’d been bitten by a werewolf. 
    There was no holding it back this time.  I screamed again, as fire and ice spread through my veins in quick succession, a white hot symphony of barbed flames that tore through my skin straight into my veins.  The world was shaking as it turned white, like the blinding pain.  And then…black.
     

Chapter Three
    That blackness held me tight, refusing to release its hold on me even the next day.  I fought the dregs of darkness, but woke up to darkness of another kind. 
    I immediately noticed the cold—the hard concrete beneath me allowed the frigid air to seep straight through to my bones.  The next thing I realized was that the pain, which had been present at the back of my skull while I was unconscious, had taken over practically every inch of my body.  It wasn’t a typical pain though—it was like waking up with a hangover and realizing I’d been hit by a truck.  Blood coursed through my temples, making the ache there more pronounced.  I tried to gather myself into a sitting position, but felt too heavy to move.  I braced myself to try again.  That’s when I noticed the thick iron shackles on my wrists, their weight holding me in place.  I pulled on them, testing their strength, but the effort was exhausting so I lay my head against the wall, trying to recall where I was, and what had led me here.
                  “Nice of you to finally join us.” A voice broke the silence, echoing off the walls.  I winced, not only at the voice that stirred some memory in me, but at the way his voice echoed through my skull.
    Confusion steeped my brain for a long moment, and then I placed it.  Trying to dredge up the memory hurt too much, but it came to me in flashes—the men outside the diner, the one who threw them away—Julius, who I’d thought for a fraction of a second was going to help me…then the creature, something between a man and animal, it’s eyes full of fury as it’s teeth clamped around the hollow of my shoulder.  Recalling that extraordinary pain…incisors digging through flesh and tearing into muscle… I reached for my shoulder, the cold metal chains scraping over my body, and felt the ridged skin healing there.
    The sound of a chair grating