Read Online Forbidden (The Preternaturals) by Zoe Winters - Free Book Online Page A

was
inside that counted. But she didn’t bother lying.
    “I sleep like a baby.”
    “What about the murder?”
    Her eyes widened. “How did you know about that? Who the hell did you
say you were?”
    “My name is Father Hadrian,” he said, his tone turning more menacing by
the minute. “Tell me, are you sorry about the murder?”
    The woman’s anger rose, flowing off her like hissing electricity. “The
dumb bitch shouldn’t have gotten in my way.”
    “That’s all I needed to hear. I’m afraid you aren’t worth saving.”
    Hadrian let his fangs flash in the lamplight. He didn’t bother adding a
suggestion for how she should react to him. He wasn’t seducing her.
He was separating the wheat from the chaff, cleaning up the streets.
As a human, he never would have played God in this way, but the demon
side refused to follow such quaint moral rules. After all, those
methods hadn’t been nearly as effective as those he now employed.
    She started to cry and backed away, her hands raised. Her voice turned
placating. “Okay. Okay. I’m sorry. I’ll do better. Will you
hear my confession? I promise I’ll change. I’ll come to church
every week.”
    “Too late for that now.” Hadrian pulled her to him and sank his fangs
into her throat. She tasted of rage and fear with an added dash of
sociopathic spice. A bit rich for day-to-day feeding, but not bad for
a treat.
    She struggled in his arms, beating uselessly against his chest as he
drank. Eventually the fight went out of her; her breathing became
more labored and then stopped along with her heartbeat. Father
Hadrian healed the mark on her throat and dropped her.
    On his way back to the casino, he enthralled a passing thug with a gun,
planting the suggestion that the woman was alive and he should go
shoot her. With a bullet in her head, no one would think anything
else about the issue. He whistled on his way back to church, thinking
that man was lucky Hadrian would only feed from women, because the
sins pouring off him were monumental. And Hadrian doubted he was any
more remorseful.
    Now it was Angeline’s turn.
    ***
    Hadrian returned with a spring in his step, his sadness over what he’d lost
replaced with excitement over his new mission. His happiness was cut
short when he caught his sire standing in the middle of the church, a
guilty and panicked look on her face. He’d been seconds from losing
her.
    He didn’t think, he just commanded. Even a second of contemplation
would be enough for her to get away from him. “Stop right there.”
    She’d looked away as if that would stop his order from stealing her will,
but it didn’t matter. When she stopped, he knew his power still
worked. They were linked by blood. He didn’t need eye contact.
    Instinctively he strode to her, grabbed her wrist, and put it to his mouth,
drinking her blood to strengthen their connection.
    He growled as he tasted the new power. Familiar power. The witch. Was
that how she’d broken his hold? But that was impossible. There had
been many yards and a solid oak door between the witch’s corpse and
where Angeline had been. Something wasn’t right. Maybe Angeline had
a taste before he’d risen. That had to be it.
    “Just let me go.” Her voice was weary and defeated, not believing he
would stoop to releasing her. It was simply what she was supposed to
say in this situation.
    “You know I can’t do that.” He still wasn’t sure of his motives.
Though he drank up his new powers as greedily as the wino had
partaken of cheap alcohol, he was still angry with her. He was angry
there was so much out there he hadn’t been equipped to fight and
angry that becoming a priest and isolating himself from the rest of
the world as much as he had still hadn’t worked to protect him from
evil.
    The most condemning part was that he wasn’t sure he could blame the
demon for making him as he was. There had been a sharp seed of
darkness in him from the start, something he’d always pushed