Revenant's Kiss (Chronicles of the Afterlife) by Joyce Robles Read Free Book Online Page A

out
there dragging the monsters into the light to watch the skin peel from their bones. She had met enough
vampires to understand where the misconception might have come from. They were always beautiful, if
you were going to live forever she supposed they found it easier to want to look at ones self in the
mirror and then surround yourself with beauty, though it only lasted on the outside. She’d met more
than one that had managed to hide their true nature from her for a little while, but the monster eventually
peeked it’s head out. They looked human enough but in the end they were after one thing and little
else, blood. But vampire was no longer a sufficient word to describe them to people, monster seemed
more appropriate, nobody romanticized the word monster. It was the thing that stole your children
away in the dark, that raped and burned it’s way through villages, monsters were plagues that you
looked for a way to wipe off the face of the earth. That was what vampires were, not lonely heros, not
something you put on a t-shirt or start a fan club for. Jennifer had quickly come to hate the word
vampire and so replaced it in her mind with the enemy, monster, killer. The fact that most of them
couldn’t even look at a cross without physical pain was proof of that for her, not that she needed more
proof then simply seeing what it was they were capable of.
                 "Are we sure that this is him," Jennifer finally asked pulling herself out of her thoughts enough to
try and focus back on this one vampire instead of everyone she’d had to face. She turned in her seat
so that she could see Manson, he was better then her when it came to focusing on the details.
                 "It’s him," was all he said, "seven dead, sloppy this time, he didn’t even bother to hide the trail
of bodies." Jennifer shook her head facing forward again, this was the second time she would be facing
this one, she didn’t know it’s name not that it mattered in the end, she’d dispatched more than she
could count who were nameless. This one she could tell would be different, he was savage, he was
powerful, which usually meant he belonged to someone with even more power. Jennifer’s mind
wandered to Ada, one of several vampires with a name she’d been forced to learn by necessity and
couldn’t help but wonder if this one was hers. He was up to her standard of beauty, she shoved the
thought aside, one way or another it didn’t matter this time he was going to die. She refused to retreat
again, she would take this one down even if he took her with him. Seven was a bigger body count than
she’d seen a vampire accumulate at once in a long time, she just hoped he was sticking around so she
could add his own death to the number.
     

     

    Chapter 3
     
     
                 Malcolm pulled the van over by an apartment complex that was very much like the one that
they’d been at yesterday. This was the building where the seven people had been killed, if they were
lucky their murderer wouldn’t have gotten far. This guy had a bad habit of staying close to the murder
scene, maybe he thought it was funny, or maybe he was just stupid. It was time to find out which,
without looking she knew that Manson had opened the door nearest him and was making to climb out
of the vehicle. For a moment Jennifer paused in her actions to do the same, there had been a time not
long ago that before each one of her dangerous excursions in hunting when she would have stopped
and kissed the man in the drivers seat before she climbed out. A part of her would always miss him, or
at least the person that she’d thought he’d been. Now when she paused it wasn’t to kiss him good-bye
because they had both known each time she’d left this vehicle that might be exactly what the kiss would
have been, because she might die. Instead she paused and leveled a serious look in his direction,
"don’t stay parked here, if he’s close we don’t