Read Online Chasing Shadows (A Shadow Chronicles Novel) by Christina Moore - Free Book Online

have a younger sister and an older brother. Both created, not born. Evangeline paid me a visit today, not that her doing so is any concern of yours.”
    Juliette’s eyes blazed for a moment as she stood, leaning across my table at me. “It is every concern of mine now that my brother is living here. I am Mark’s guardian, and I will not allow you to put him at risk.”
    I stood as well, slowly, and stepped closer. My proximity forced Juliette to stand upright, and so I moved even closer, until we were nose to nose. I could feel my canines descending, my sudden anger kicking up my adrenaline.
    “Let’s get one thing clear right away, dog ,” I seethed, my voice dangerously low so that she knew I meant business. “You will watch your tone when you speak to me in my own house—or didn’t your mommy ever tell you it was a bad idea to piss off a vampire?”
    “Now you look here—”
    “I told you before that Mark is very important to me. As such, I am not about to knowingly put his life at risk, and I am a dhampyr , so I daresay I can take care of him myself. I would even go so far as to say that your services as guardian, whatever the hell that means, are no longer required.”
    Juliette surprised me then by laughing. She turned and dropped back into the chair she had vacated, throwing one arm over the back with an air of nonchalance. “I am astounded by your arrogance, half-breed. But please, tell me why my brother is so important to you, when you’ve obviously just met him today.”
    “That’s where you’d be wrong, at least in part. Mark just met me today, but I met him over two hundred years ago.”
    She scoffed again. “That’s impossible; he’s only thirty years old. The only way that could be is if…”
    Juliette’s eyes widened when she looked up at me. “You mean vampires imprint too?! How can that be—you’re all dead!”
     
     
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F our
     
     
    It was my turn to laugh sardonically as I retracted my fangs and returned to my seat.
    “For someone who claims to know so much about vampires, you sure don’t know a lot,” I said. “Don’t you read Vivian Drake novels? Vampire magazine, maybe?”
    Juliette scoffed. “Please,” she lamented. “You’re not going to tell me that all that crap is true, are you?”
    I grinned slightly. “Most of what she’s written about vampire biology is true. We don’t know the origin of vampires—that’s too steeped in myth—but we do know that no human ever became a vampire after dying. Dead blood is like poison to vampires because it lacks the life-sustaining properties of the living. And take me for instance: I’m half vampire, half human. How could I and others like me possibly exist if vampires are dead? Everyone knows that a dead man can’t conceive a child with a living woman—because he’s dead, for crying out loud.”
    She sat up straighter. “So vampires really are like the X-Men? They’re mutants?”
    I shrugged. “That’s the closest analogy, yeah. Same could be said for shifters, if you think about it. We’re all of us mutated forms of the human animal.”
    “How does Vivian Drake know all that stuff?” Juliette wondered. “I would think that vampires would want to keep that stuff secret.”
    “They do,” I replied as I rose and fetched myself something to drink. As I poured myself a glass of iced tea I went on. “The belief is that she’s getting her information from a vampire.”
    “Or she is one.”
    I turned around slowly with the glass of tea in my hand. “There is that possibility, yes,” I conceded. Shaking myself mentally, I set my glass on the table and then returned the pitcher to the fridge before I rejoined my guest.
    “Anyway,” I said, “to answer your earlier question, yes. We call it pair bonding, though—possibly another indicator that vampires are alive, because they almost always bond with humans.”
    “And why would they bond to a human if they were dead,” Juliette broke in. “Yeah,