When Darkness Hungers: A Shadow Keepers Novel (Shadow Keepers 5) Read Online Free PDF Page A

him more aware of his hellish condition.
    That was when the months ticked by at a painfully slow pace. No longer was his consciousness swirling with no conception of time. Instead, he felt the turning of the earth. Saw the shift of light in the dim seams of the ceiling above him. The light was odd, and he realized later why—it was streaming in through the stained-glass window of the family crypt beneath which he was trapped. Just as well. Had he been bathed in a full sunbeam, he would have truly met his end. Most days, he wished for exactly that.
    Slowly, though, his strength grew. Worms and leeches and all manner of disgusting creatures nested within him, and though their bodies gave him no relief, when there was blood it added to his strength. After a time, he was able to move his jaw and his tongue, and that victory.allowed him to snap down upon the creatures. He could kill, and he could feed. And because their rotting carcasses remained in his mouth, more scavengers would come to meet their demise, and nourish him in the process.
    Over a century passed with Derrick trapped inside his own head, his daemon roaring and unable to hunt. His mind spun, full of fury, madness kept at bay by the simple act of plotting revenge. Even that happy thought was ultimately defeated. By the time Derrick had regained his senses and could move his weakened body enough to slide out into the world, the Dumont men were long dead, entombed above the very crypt where Derrick had suffered his long imprisonment.
    He’d made his way to the house, setting out at dusk and arriving only an hour before dawn, so slow was his progress. Once there, he slit the throat of the first person he found, and drank his fill of fresh, flowing human blood.
Ah, the glory. The power
.
    Not even close to sated, he drank again from the next human to pass through the back door. Only then did he look around and note the changes to the world. Strange enclosed buggies that moved under their own power. Lights that burned without gas or wood. He marveled at these things—but even such wonders could not keep him from his goal. Stronger now, he accosted the next person he encountered—a female who arrived in one of the metal carriages. She quivered in his arms, said that she was only the maid and didn’t know where the family kept its money. He assured her it wasn’t money he was after, and asked the name of those who lived in the house. Her reply—“Dumont, sir”—sent great shivers of joy through him. His tormentors may have alreadypassed from life, but Derrick could still feast upon their heirs.
    Once he learned that the family was asleep upstairs, he feasted upon the maid. Not because he was still weak, but because he’d wanted to quash her humanity. Humans had tormented him, and now humans would pay. Starting with the Dumonts, of course, but he had no intention of stopping there. They thought they’d beaten him? Trapped him and bound him? Perhaps for a time, but they were nothing but food for the worms now, whereas he had been resurrected, much like their God. Hell, he
was
a god, and it was by his hand that they would live or die.
    He’d crawled from that wretched tomb almost fifteen months ago, and had spent the last year meting out his own justice against the humans, rallying other vampires to rise up against them, too. What was the point of being a god if you allowed the baser creatures to bind your nature? Why did the PEC punish those vampires who acted in accordance with their natural urges and fed off humans? His race was becoming weak, and it disgusted him. And he had made it his mission to bring as many of his kind as possible around to his way of thinking—in the process thinning out the humans, even while growing stronger on a diet of their rich, delicious blood.
    Tonight, he’d invited two of his most impressive protégés to join him in his penthouse at dawn. They were young vampires, still able to go outside during the day, and he intended that