When Passion Lies: A Shadow Keepers Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

“It’s a deadly beauty.”
    “I know.” He was looking at her hard, and she could smell the truth on him. He knew what she was, and damned if that didn’t excite him. The prospect of blood teased her daemon, the dark malevolence that lived deep inside every vampire, and her hunger grew.
    The wolf stirred, too. The secret beast inside her.
He’d
made her this way, and she’d come to kill in payment for his dirty little tricks. For turning her into walking death. An outsider in her own damn world.
    For making her a hybrid.
    Can’t go there, Caris. Don’t even think it
.
    “I want what you can give.” He looked at her with eyes wide and wild, like a junkie staring into a candy jar filled with meth.
    “Death?”
    “The rush.” His chest rose and fell with his breath, the scent of desire wafting off him. He licked his lips and took a step toward her. “I know what you are,” he said, then tilted his head to the side. “Feed.”
    Something raw and angry welled inside her. “You have no idea what I am,” she said. “You don’t have a goddamned clue.”
    “You’re a vampire.”
    The word hit her with the force of a slap, and she stepped closer, so close she could feel the heat of his excitementrising from his bone-pale skin. “I’m not,” she said. “Not anymore.”
    She looked into those dark eyes and saw the fear growing, a fear that fed and fueled her, that primed her and begged her to take, take,
take
. To get revenge. Against the man she hunted, yes. But more against the man who’d loved her until the day he’d banished her. She wanted to give Tiberius the big Fuck You. And right now … right now it was this guy standing in front of her. This guy, waiting for her to take his blood, his life …
    She fought it down, fought it back.
    Not now. Not when she was on the hunt.
    “Go,” she said, pressing her palm against his chest and pushing him away from her. “Find yourself a less dangerous game to play.”
    He went, hurrying back into the shadows of the bar to find another playmate.
    She shook her head, sorting her thoughts, making a plan. She’d hit the next bar, then the one after that if she had to. She’d find her quarry. She’d come to this town with a purpose, and she didn’t intend to be distracted. Not even by the goddamned memories of Tiberius.
    It took her a while to navigate through the crowd, people crushed together, their hot breath warming the air, the scent of sweating bodies beneath thick sweaters teasing her senses. She paused for a drink at the bar and searched the crowd for her quarry. He wasn’t there, but humanity pressed all around her, and the scent of it both taunted and saddened her. She’d been human once, too, but Tiberius had changed all that. He’d promised her forever and she’d believed him.
    She’d been a fool.
    She burst through the door, and the cold air stung her cheeks and cooled her thoughts. She started down the street toward the next pub, snow crunching beneath her feet.
    A scream ripped through the night as if echoing her own need to rend and tear. She told herself to ignore it—not her problem. But the smell of fear permeated the air. Whatever was happening, it was close. And, dammit all, she was already heading in that direction.
    She found them in the alley behind the bar—the two vamps and the idiot patron with Tiberius’s eyes. One of the vamps leaned lazily against the rough-hewn wooden wall while the other held the human in a mockery of a lover’s embrace, his teeth sunk deep into the male’s flesh.
    She started to turn away—she wasn’t with the Preternatural Enforcement Coalition. It wasn’t her job to arrest vamps who ran around feeding on humans, even dumbass ones who’d been begging for trouble. Especially not dumbass ones who reminded her of Tiberius. And wasn’t there some sort of sweet justice in seeing the life sucked out of him?
    She watched for a second, breathing in the scent of fear, the aroma of death. She watched,