Read Online Keeper Chronicles: Awakening by Katherine Wynter - Free Book Online

fireworks. The lights deepened the contrast with his dark nature. Each shadow was a hiding place. Shelter. He moved among them easily as their darkness welcomed his own, conformed to him.
    He paused next to her bed, letting the need build until it hummed inside him, waiting to explode. The girl was a pale yellow like fresh flowers, vibrating with each pulse of her soon-to-be-deceased heart. The thrill built inside him as sparks of red fired through. She dreamed of the boy; he could taste her desire on her dreams. Humans were pathetic. A blight on the world. One day soon, his kind would again be free to hunt the cities and villages, free to teach these humans their natural place in the order of things: the bottom.
    The girl moaned and started to turn over. This was it. His wait was over.
    Punching his hand through her chest, he yanked out her heart and brought it to his lips, sucking her blood through her aorta like a straw. When the faint yellow of her spark faded completely, he devoured her heart in two succulent bites.

Chapter Seven
    Tuna casserole wasn’t Gabe’s favorite, but since eating was better than responding to his father’s rather bold announcement, he took his time chewing. Then swallowing. Then taking a drink of water.
    “No.” Gabe pronounced the word slowly and definitively so that there could be no mistaking his meaning.
    His father’s face reddened all the way to the top of his balding head. “Now, you listen here, son. I’m the Elder of this region, and if I give you a direct order, you will obey it.”
    Gabe took another bite of casserole. His mother watched his every move and gesture, silently pleading with him to repent. Gabe should have known better than to spend the night at his parents’ place after everything that happened with the storm and then Lorek. If he had just listened to his instincts, he wouldn’t have to sit here over breakfast and be bullied. Setting his fork down on his napkin, he folded his hands in front of his plate and stared at his father.
    “No.”
    Before he could argue or scream or throw his knife at Gabe’s head, his father’s cellphone rang, vibrating against the wooden table like it too, wanted to run away. Gabe’s father hesitated a moment, and then picked it up. “McDaniel here.” A pause. “Uh-huh.” “Are you sure?” “Okay, we’ll be right there.”
    “What is it?” Gabe’s mother asked, pushing away from the table. Her wavy, dark hair nearly reached her waist with only a hint of gray around the edges. Although she had been born in Oregon, her father had been Japanese, and she got the best of her features from him. Keepers were a small community, so members sometimes had to move to different countries in order to keep the bloodlines from becoming stale. Though he kept his own hair cut rather close, Gabe’s short dark curls could only have come from his mother.
    “Been a murder. Nasty one, too.” His father’s tone was accusatory. “Cops are thinking it’s some kind of animal attack and asked us to check it out. Might as well come, Gabe. Do you good to see what kind of work we do here landside.”
    Gabe knew better than to refuse this invitation, even though his uniform was still in the wash. Only a special detergent could get out the smell of rotting demon. Following his parents into the hall, he slid his black jacket over his shoulders but didn’t fasten it up. The spare drawer of clothing had been his mother’s idea when he first moved to keep watch at Killamook. At the time, Gabe thought it sentimental, but over the years, it’d turned out to be useful when things inevitably went sideways. Logistics weren’t always easy when only a long boat ride connected him with the rest of the world.
    Sitting in the back of the patrol car, he felt like a criminal or, worse, a child again. Silence settled on the black leather seats, a thick sludge through which no movement or sound could penetrate as they traveled south on the 101 to Florence. His