Shadowstorm (The Shadow World Book 6) by Dianne Sylvan Read Free Book Online

everyone. David was rather adorably besotted with Nico, and being good to the Weaver endeared Kai to the Prime…a little.
    “ My lady? ”
    The voice startled her so badly her hand banged down on the piano keys. “Yes, Harlan?”
    “ Ready to go when you are.”
    Heart still pounding, she got up from the bench, grabbed her bag, and hit the door. “I’m on my way.”
    She’d been using the coms to track Deven’s movements in the city for three days now, and while the first night he’d been to several locations in town, including the Black Door and two addresses that weren’t labeled as businesses, the second two nights he’d taken the exact same route. Chris dropped him off in the same place as before, but he walked almost two miles farther, up near the interstate and not far from UT campus: the University Medical Center, Brackenridge Hospital.
    He was there for a couple of hours each night and then went to a nearby park and stayed there for several more. She wasn’t sure specifically what building or floor he’d gone to; she might have been able to get a reading that precise but it would have required logging in to David’s office, and for the moment at least she just wanted an idea where to find him and if there was a pattern.
    Harlan bowed and held open the car door, and within minutes they were on the highway.
    She pulled up the tracking app on her phone; they were about ten minutes behind Chris. Good. She hadn’t told Chris what they were doing—even the slightest blip in her usual behavior would tell Deven something was up. Even now, Miranda knew there was little that he missed.
    Miranda had no idea what Deven might be doing at Brack. She could only guess he was after blood—he might be hitting their blood bank, or worse, feeding on patients. But why? He’d never had a problem hunting live humans, and he hated bagged blood. Had he developed his own impulse to kill, and taken it out on terminal patients? It seemed unlikely—Miranda had entertained the idea herself until David pointed out that disease made blood unpalatable.
    The thought of killing made her stomach tighten. Even now, two weeks out from the New Moon, her body responded to the idea as if it were starving; luckily it wasn’t the overwhelming need it would be that night, just a momentary pull.
    She was getting used to it...which bothered her, but what choice did she have? David had been absolutely right that the guilt would drive her mad if she let it, so she had focused on what positives she could: she had chosen exclusively humans guilty of disgusting or horrific crimes that had gone unpunished. Her empathy allowed her to find them easily, and there were always more. It wasn’t really the fact of killing a human that she found so terrible…
    …it was how much she enjoyed it.
    Most of the month she could be a regular vampire—well, as regular as a Queen could get. She could hold on to her semblance of humanity and keep her darkest impulses reined in. On the New Moon those impulses broke free, and she hunted the way vampires were meant to hunt…the way their bodies had been designed to hunt. The fear, the panic, the will to survive filling the blood with adrenaline and power…and that last second as a living, breathing person suddenly stopped …that final burst of life energy was an undeniable high.
    “We’re here, my Lady,” Harlan said from the driver’s seat.
    Miranda sighed. “Thanks, Harlan. I’ll call you when I’m ready to head home.”
    “As you will it.”
    She hopped out of the car and stared up at the hospital’s main building, dread burning a hole in her belly. Hospitals were not good places for her. She knew her shields could withstand the onslaught, but took a moment to shore them up anyway, adding an extra layer of protection between herself and the pain and sadness that were sure to pummel her from all sides as soon as she walked in the sliding doors.
    Now that she was within a square mile of Deven she could