Dark Needs at Night's Edge by Kresley Cole Read Free Book Online

the tools we do,” Nikolai answered. “We’ve agreed to spend a month trying to rehabilitate him. If he shows no signs of improvement, then we’ll do what must be done.”
    Conrad’s listening to them . Intently. She wondered what he must be thinking.
    â€œThat was before I saw him, Nikolai. Maybe we need to…to put him out of his misery.” Is he in misery?
    Conrad’s jaw clenched, and his expression grew deadly. Yet then his brows drew together as if he was considering the possibility right at that moment. When he frowned and closed his eyes, she felt a twist in her chest.
    The vampire is in misery. And he’s sane enough to know it.

    Misery? What the fuck do they know of it? He shakes his head as if to jar loose the thought.
    He easily hears them downstairs as Murdoch explains what he’s learned about the Fallen, vampires who kill by drinking blood. “Loud sounds other than their own yells enrage them. Quick movements do as well—they react to them as if they’re threats, no matter how benign. Being taken unaware would send one into a fury. Any sense of their own physical vulnerability triggers rage.”
    â€œWhy don’t you just explain what doesn’t enrage them?” Sebastian asks.
    There is little that doesn’t, he thinks, just as Murdoch says, “That would be a short explanation.”
    He blocks them out, his musings turning to the mysterious entity again.
    The being can be one of three things. He thinks. An echo from a fractured memory, a hallucination, or a ghost. He has nearly three hundred years of experience with the first two possibilities—and none with the latter. The first pair are figments of his twisted mind. The ghost would be unimagined.
    Can’t determine what’s real or what’s illusion. For the last week the being has returned to his room. He’s begun seeing her again, though not as much as that first night. Only a faint, glowing outline now. But he can scent her presence. Even now, he’s awash in the smell of roses.
    Whenever she comes to him, so do flashes of his lucidity. He doesn’t understand the connection, just knows he’s beginning to crave the focus of his thoughts.
    A mystery . How could a figment of his mind clear his mind? Even as he’s debating her existence—he’s realizing that something is actually making him coherent enough to fucking debate her existence.
    Maybe the shots they keep forcing on him are helping.
    He can’t recall much of what happened the morning he’d tried to escape. But he thinks that she’d been trying to undress him and possibly had attempted to kiss him—before casting him about the room.
    Yet the being never attacked him again. Usually she stays near the window seat. Though he has sensed her at the foot of his bed on more than one unnerving occasion.
    For years, he’s constantly felt as if he was being watched by something unseen—now he actually could be.
    No. He sees shadowy figures every day. Why should he think she’s different? Because she has a scent? Because, for the first time, he wants a hallucination to be real?
    He knows there’s a line between suffering from hallucinations and interacting with them. You can live with the former; the latter means you’re lost.
    Over the last century, he’s held on to the last of his sanity by his fingertips. Acknowledging her might just be the weight around his ankles needed to drag him down.
    Even as he knows this, he speculates about her constantly. If she exists, then she’s a ghost. Weren’t ghosts born of violent deaths or murder? So how did she die? And when? Is she even sentient? He’s seen her eyes and her long hair. What does the rest of her look like?
    Why are my goddamned thoughts so lucid around her?
    His brothers sound as if they’re about to come to the room. He doesn’t want this. Each day the entity grows clearer as the sun sets