Twilight Illusions Read Online Free PDF

having gained as much satisfaction from the exchange as he had.
    Had he gone too far? Had that desire inside him overwhelmed him to the point that he’d drained one of them and not even been aware of it? Could it?
    That’s right, Damien. I’ve won. You’ve not only surrendered, you’ve joined my army. Joined it alongside sickness and war and famine. One of my horsemen now, Damien. An instrument of death.
    He moaned in agony and folded his arms around his middle. No one despised the shadow of death more than Damien. No one. Death was his enemy. His greatest foe. If he’d reached the point where feeding his own demon meant feeding death another victim, then he’d end his existence tomorrow. He’d walk naked into the sunrise. He’d…
    No.
    He straightened his body and stared into the blackened remains of the photos in the hearth. Red still glowed around the edges of the letter, and bits of white showed amid the charred paper. Before he did anything, he needed to learn the truth. If he’d killed, if indeed he had taken a life, then he deserved to surrender his own.
    But if not, then there was someone else.
    He paced the floor, deep in thought. Someone who, perhaps, wanted the world to believe Damien was guilty.
    His steps stopped near the first archway. Someone who was doing it by preying on the women whose blood he’d tasted?
    No, how could anyone know that? He would have been aware if anyone had seen him, wouldn’t he?
    Preying on the women who’d assisted him onstage, then?
    His gaze flew to the spot where he’d last seen Shannon.
    If he didn’t go after her, watch over her, and his theory was on target, her life might very well end tonight.
    If he did go after her, as his every instinct was screaming at him to do, and his greatest fears were true…her precious life might end anyway. Anu, how could he risk killing someone he wanted only to protect? How could he risk his need for solitude by giving in to the urge to protect her, when his mind was telling him to run in the opposite direction?
    What the hell was he going to do?

Chapter 3
    T he raven soared into the night, its glistening blue black wings spread as it rode the wind, spiraling upward, ever upward. Then, folding those gleaming wings to itself, it dove at dizzying speeds, until anyone watching would have caught his breath in alarm, fully expecting to witness the death of a once-graceful bird. Instead, though, the wings unfurled. The bird slowed, arched upward and, with gentle flapping, alighted upon the rail of a balcony on the twenty-third story.
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    She slammed the apartment door, turned the lock, shot the dead bolt, fastened the chain. Breathless, she leaned back against the door, closed her eyes. The courage, the defiance, had been flawless right up until he’d grabbed her and told her she wasn’t leaving. At that moment, with that iron manacle of a hand gripping her arm, those cold, sure words hanging in the air and those unnaturally gleaming, jewel black eyes holding her captive, she’d felt pure, undiluted panic.
    Instantly his image flashed into her mind, a snapshot of the way he’d looked at that moment. What had happened to him? He’d released her all of the sudden, his hands going to his head as if it were splitting in two. His eyes squeezed shut tight in apparent pain.
    And she’d run like a rabbit.
    She’d climbed over the fence to make her escape, no longer caring how many alarms she set off. Her rope and grappling hook still hung from the monster of an oak tree out front. Her Cat Woman hood probably still lay on his front step. She’d forgotten the photos of Tawny and the autopsy report. She’d forgotten everything except that she didn’t want to die. When he’d grabbed her arm and told her she wasn’t leaving, she’d thought she was about to.
    She squeezed her eyes tighter to prevent the stupid tears that tried to leak through, and