Frostbite (Modern Knights Book 1) by Joshua Bader Read Free Book Online

syllable of that dark tongue echoed
    Over water and stone and I knew then what must be done.
    When I pause to turn the page, it is no longer Sarai on the couch with me, but Agent Devereaux. “We found my body, you know.” She pulls off her t-shirt to reveal the bloody cavity between her breasts. “Why? Why did you kill me?”
    “Blood of a virgin. How could I have known?”
    I hear Duchess’ voice whisper in my ear. “You’re clearly not human. You ate her. Every last drop.”
    I dreamed that same dream with slight variations five times that night. In the worst of them, she made love to me while I stared at the hole where her heart should have been.

7
    T he chauffeur delivered me to an IHOP six blocks from the hotel. I got quite the assortment of looks in the parking lot. I wondered whether it was my jeans, t-shirt, and leather jacket contrasting with my transportation or the fact that it was a limo in front of a pancake restaurant. I suspected most of them craned their necks to see whose bodyguard I was. Duchess wasn’t with me, so the celebrity gawkers had to be disappointed.
    I happily noted Dorothy’s presence in the parking lot, her silver hood shining under a fresh coat of wax. I took good care of her, but she looked fit for royalty after Duchess’ people got through with her. Whoever she worked for, he didn’t believe in doing things halfway. Assuming there was a new battery to go with the makeover, I would have to sincerely thank him.
    “Unless he also wired a bomb to her ignition. Don’t forget he sent Duchess to kill us,” my inner voice was kind to remind.
    “Only if I was guilty. And he wanted to kill me himself. If you’re going to spew paranoid conspiracy theories, at least keep your facts straight.”
    The restaurant was mostly empty. The senior citizen early birds had finished their meals, while the late morning brunchers were still packing their kids off to school. Kids were still going to school, right? It was mid-October, but I didn’t have a clue what day of the week it was. Windowless cells have that effect on a lot of their residents, but I wasn’t much of a calendar and appointment book guy before that. Thursday, I decided. It felt like a Thursday.
    It wasn’t hard to pick out Duchess’ boss. For starters, he could have purchased ownership of the restaurant for substantially less than what he had spent on his black designer suit. It had been tailored to his unique frame, lending him an air of grace and sophistication, while still providing hints of the iron muscle underneath. A white Nero-collar shirt with silver buttons contained his large neck and bulging chest. His black hair was neatly trimmed, every wisp held in place by a veneer of hair spray. Beyond his well-coifed exterior, however, he radiated a commanding aura. I doubted any lesser mortal could be called “boss” by Duchess Deluce.
    As I showed myself to his table, I tried to relax my vision to look through him. An old herb woman in Oregon had taught me how to see auras, a talent I didn’t practice nearly as often as I should have. I pretended I didn’t do it often because it was an invasion of privacy, but the truth was that it was too much like work. It was hard on the eyes to let loose of my focus, but it was even harder if what I saw forced me to take action. I can’t see someone depressed, in pain, or haunted by a spiritual parasite and not try to help. Deep down, I have the heart of a knight. Like most knights, I’d had the crap kicked out of me more often than I could count for sticking my nose where it didn’t belong. Both dragons and damsels can be equally resentful of outside interference, no matter how well intentioned.
    However, meeting a fae-blooded telepath reminded me that I was part of a much larger universe. If pressed, I called myself a wizard, but that was only out of convenience. I couldn’t throw a fireball or call lightning out of a cloudless sky, but I was capable of things that would make