Touched (The Marnie Baranuik Files) Read Online Free PDF

pale circle of the streetlight. The frosty brush of the rogue revenant raising my hackles as he brazenly walked past us despite Batten's barked orders and drawn gun. As he defied us, the whole alley frothed in his wake, rolling up off the cement like the mist from Niagara Falls. Savage was his hunger, unrelenting, breathtaking, coursing through my veins, blocking out coherent thought until all that was left were base urges, primal needs.
    Not in pursuit of justice, no, but rushing toward his company, delirious in my desire to present myself in submission before him. I had taken three sprinting steps after Prost when he spun (he'd won, dear God, he'd already won, with the first step) grinning around an enormous pair of fully extended fangs, and drew from a shoulder holster no one expected him to be wearing. He fired a .22 three times before I knew what was happening, hitting me once in the shoulder and spinning me backwards off my feet. The second bullet took me high in the back, missing my spine by a hair. The third bullet sang down the alley, jerking Batten out of the revenant's mind control. There'd been a jumble of activity, Batten calling for backup, giving a brief chase with his kit clanging open and stakes scattering in the grit, before he'd thrown himself to his knees beside me. Jeremiahhad melted into the distance, and I, heels digging asphalt, bled into the rotting sludge behind a dumpster for a good five minutes before the ambulance got there.
    Harry's grip hit the countertop and something cracked. He said thickly, “Please, stop that.”
    “Sorry.” I brushed the bitterness aside. “Like I said, the gun made no sense. Then again, Prost was being arrested by the FBI for killing…” Don't say the number, “Children. He was obviously capable of abnormal behavior. I should have known to expect anything.”
    Harry nodded. “Mr. Prost was hungry, yet he chose to execute you instead of draining you.”
    “It was just me and Batten in that alley.” And we might have seen the homicidal revenant lurking in the shadows if Mark and I hadn't been fighting like a couple of stray cats in heat. Harry didn't need to hear that part. “If Jeremiah wanted to feed, he could have taken his time, sat me down across his lap, ripped my heart out of my ribcage and chowed down. But I wasn't his preference.”
    “Love by the dram,” Harry said quietly, almost to himself. “Poor little bobbins.”
    “As it was, only the sound of the gunshot snapped Batten out of the spell or whatever.”
    Harry smiled indulgently. “Or whatever.”
    “Spell, Mojo, juju, the Blue Sense, psi… magic is all the same no matter what you call it.” Sometimes the word “whatever” encompassed everything best, but Harry didn't share my opinion; Harry was a stickler.
    “So you do not blame Agent Batten?” he probed, putting away his oval hairbrush and returning it to its spot on the shelf. He took a bottle of vitamins out of the medicine cabinet and shook two into his palm.
    “Not for that.”
    “Just for instigating the intercourse.” Harry passed me a pumice stone and two small white pills, barely worth taking. I dry-swallowed, then sighed at him.
    “No,” I said, rolling my eyes at ‘intercourse’. “I blame him for instigating the sex even though he was engaged, for neglecting tomention that he was already engaged before the sex, for being a total jerkwad after the sex. And for not coming to see me in the hospital.” And for being unforgettable.
    “And for having the appalling taste to propose to Danika Sherlock?” Harry unfolded a towel and fluffed it while I pulled the plug.
    “That's his problem, not mine.”
    “Yes, I imagine it probably is.” He wasn't buying it. He wrapped the towel around me while I pointed at my chest.
    “Seriously, if he wants to screw Plain Jane and then marry Bimbo Barbie…” I didn't know how to finish that. It was pointless to pretend it hadn't hurt. Finding out the facts had sent me reeling, but