Vampire Down (Blood Skies, Book 7) by Steven Montano Read Free Book Online Page B

towers just slivers of shadow against the horizon.  The air was stale and calm and ice cold.  Cross’s throat burned from the temperature, and every breath frosted and collapsed.
    “ Looks like a bleeding,” Cross said as he stood up, his legs stiff.
    “ Suckheads?”
    “ I think they caught something and fed out here.  That’s why there’s so little blood, and it didn’t spray, it dripped.”
    “ And there are signs of a struggle,” Danica said, indicating several flattened patches of peat moss and broken twigs off the side of the path.  “There, there...and there.  Awesome.”
    “ Listen,” Cross said.  Standing side by side on the headland, both Cross and Danica heard a sound that had been building all day: a crackling hiss, like lightning touching down on water.  It came from the same direction as the columns of smoke in the distance, those dismal and ominous funnels of grey-white fumes.
    “ Should we be going this way?” Danica asked.
    “ Probably not,” Cross said, “but that means we’ll have to backtrack and head straight into the foothills instead of taking the lowland path.”
    “ That’ll be tough with our cargo,” Danica said with an eye on Ronan and Shiv.  “God, I wish I knew what was wrong with them.”
    “ Me, too,” Cross said, but he didn’t really want to know, because he had a feeling the answer would be something they could do nothing about.  “What do you want to do?” he asked her.
    “ Well...people have been through here,” Danica said.  She’d been showing him the signs on the trail as she and her spirit discovered them: footprints buried just under the frost-laden moss, human hair snagged on the bark of dead pines, fresh ice recently broken. 
    Cross looked back behind them, at Thornn’s shadow.  I saw Bloodhollow , the boy had said, like it was some sort of paradise.  What was it?  And why had he wished to go back?
    What are we doing?  Why aren’t we just finding a place to hide and hold up? Surely they’d done enough already.  If things were as bad as they suspected there wasn’t even a war left to fight.  Haven’t we earned our rest?
    But he and Danica kept moving, an unspoken understanding between them, a need to learn more.  There were too many unanswered questions, and too many events had converged for them to quit now – meeting Shiv, finding the swords, everything Cross and Danica had been through and somehow managed to survive.  It all meant something, it had to.  He couldn’t believe Azradayne was behind it all, that she’d perfectly maneuvered all that had occurred, even with what he knew she was capable of. 
    There is no rest.  Not for us.  We’re here for a reason, and we have to find out what it is.
    They’d both known the bliss they’d found those past few days wouldn’t last, and neither of them expected it to.  They had to return to reality, even with as much as they would have liked to stay hidden from the world.  Only by finding the truth would they know if they were safe, if they’d earned their rest. 
    Cross took a breath and held it, trying to steady his nerves.  It was getting harder to will himself out of her arms, and it felt like throwing away a gift to keep carrying on when they both knew trouble and pain were all that waited for them.  Danica and Ronan and Shiv were all he had left, and their unconscious friends seemed dead already. 
    Danica met his gaze.  It was impossible to measure all they’d been through together, how far they’d journeyed, how much they’d shared.  Together they’d learned how to deal with fear, and that the only way to live with loss was to carry on.  Their arms knew what it felt like to bear each other’s weight. 
    All of my dreams of the future are about you.  When all of this is done and this nightmare is finally over I want to find a place without fear, a place without horrors, a place where I can go to sleep and know that when I wake there will be a better