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

He called me. I was at the Z Bar, and I went to him. Told him I’d help him hunt, but he was out of his head. Said he’d get his own damn blood and then he’d kill the bitch if it took him a lifetime to find her.”
    The words spilled out, but Derrick understood. Some female had staked Colin and injured Mitre, who was now on the hunt, searching out healing blood.
    “Mitre said she was good. Trained. I gotta think maybe she’s the one who’s been—”
    “Giving us all the problems,” Derrick finished for him. “Yes, I’m inclined to agree.” He turned away from Jonathan for long enough to school his expression into one of calm control. It wouldn’t do for one of his men to see how deeply the news had cut him. When he turned back, he knew that the younger vampire would see nothing but a veneer of determined strength. “Mitre will be in touch once he feeds. And then we’ll have him take us back to the place where the woman attacked him. We’ll find her scent. We’ll track her. And then I will personally make sure that she understands why it was a very bad decision to go meddling in the affairs of vampires.”

 
    Alexis winced as Leena pressed an ice pack against the knot on the back of her head. “Thanks,” she said, then reached up to hold the pack in place. “I appreciate you being here, but you should have gone home. You look wiped.”
    “Bet I don’t look as bad as you do. Besides, I wanted to wait and see how it went. I’m glad I did. You got hurt because of me.”
    Alexis had been inspecting an abrasion that ran down the side of her thumb and over her wrist, but now she looked up into Leena’s face and saw the guilt and regret in her friend’s eyes. “That is such bullshit. You don’t have a thing to be sorry about.”
    “How many vamps have you staked since I told you the truth? You’ve been training like a … well, like an I-don’t-know-what, and you’ve nailed almost a dozen now. And
this
one you miss? Not once but three times?”
    “Thanks so much for reminding me.”
    “I shouldn’t have told you. It messed up your concentration. Got under your skin.”
    “Conversation over,” Alexis said, because Leena was right. But no way was she going to admit it.
    “Want to talk about it?”
    “I just …” She trailed off, glancing at the diamond-shaped scar on her wrist as she tried to gather her thoughts. “What if I don’t get the chance again?”
    “You will. That’s why you came to LA. To find the vamp who killed your sister. And you’re not even certain that the one who got away was the guy. Maybe you did dust him.”
    Alexis shrugged. Leena was right, of course, but until she knew for sure, the thought was cold comfort. They’d known only that the vampire who’d killed Tori was in that alley. They didn’t know which one he was.
    “You’ll get him,” Leena said firmly. “
We’ll
get him.” She gave Alexis a stern, motherly glance, ironic since she was the younger of the two. After a second she reached for her cane and stood. “Coffee or ibuprofen or both?”
    “I’ll get it.”
    “Sit. Keep the ice on that knot. I’ll bring you coffee first, and if that doesn’t work we’ll shift over to the hard stuff.”
    “Bourbon?”
    Leena snorted. “Whatever works.” She limped off toward the kitchen, and Alexis realized that she was smiling despite the pain in her head and her frustration at having missed the second vampire. And why not? She had an important mission and a damn good friend by her side.
    Hard to believe that so much had changed so fast. She’d once been hopelessly naïve. Now she wasn’t.
    She could remember with absolute clarity the day it had all started. She’d been a young FBI agent, ridiculously proud at having been handpicked for a newly formed national task force with only one year out of Quantico under her belt. She’d been assigned to the New York office, where the task force was based. It had been created to investigate a series of