Read Online The Bloodshade Encounters & The Songspinner (Shadeborn Book 2) by K.C. Finn - Free Book Online Page A

feed upon the blood of the shadeborn. It is an abomination.”
    There was something far more important than a simple feeding going on now, but Lemarick was too preoccupied by his other realisation to concentrate on Elise’s words. His eyes watched Yannick’s thoughtful form absently, his mind flushed with new hope. If vampires didn’t usually drain the blood of shades, then Edvard and Ugarte were probably still alive.
    Yannick’s neck snapped in two before he could utter a single word in reply.
    As the vampire lord’s body crumpled to the ground, Lemarick felt Elise being forced away from the space behind him. He got to his feet as she flew into the wall, watching in relief as Edvard’s steady hand controlled her every move. Ed looked down on Yannick’s body with disgust, a fierceness in his form that Lemarick hadn’t seen since their first encounter with the lord over a century ago.
    “He ruined my orchestra,” Ed mused bitterly.
    Elise struggled against her invisible bonds, but to no avail. Ugarte came to help Lemarick stand, moving him to face the starlight that she too could sense streaming down from the roof. The injured shade stood in its dim glow, basking for a moment more before considerable chunks of the ceiling started to fly away from the gap. He offered a smile to Ugarte as she focused hard on the spot, dismantling more of the roof to give him a greater chance of regaining his strength.
    “I daresay your opening night will not be received in the way it was intended,” Lemarick said with a dry rasp in his voice.
    “They say all publicity is good publicity,” Ed replied, but he was frowning all the same. “What do we do with these two?” he asked, looking between Baptiste and Elise.
    “We take them to our elders,” Ugarte replied. “It is not for us to decide their fates.”
    She was looking at Yannick’s broken neck as she spoke this last. Lemarick sensed that she and Ed weren’t going to have a very pleasant conversation about the impulsive killing of the vampire lord later that evening. Edvard Schoonjans didn’t kill, as a rule, but there was a part of his bloodline that still favoured such barbaric means of problem-solving, and a shade could never fully escape his blood. Lemarick faced the hole in the roof once more, breathing deep and feeling the glow of the starlight as the shademagic returned to his veins. The rush of renewed strength forced a grateful smile to his lips.
    A sudden flash illuminated the theatre, blinding Lemarick as impossible rays of daylight blazed into the space all around him. It took him a moment to register the sound of smashing glass before the memory of Living Daylight came to his mind. The hanging bats started to swarm once more, impervious to the light but enraged by its presence. Lemarick fumbled in the momentary chaos, feeling around for Baptiste’s unconscious body on the stage.
    He didn’t find it.
    “Thank you for destroying my lord, Monsieur,” Baptiste said with a chuckle from somewhere nearby. “I thought it was about time I became a free hunter again.”
    In the moment when Lemarick’s eyes adjusted, the sunlight fell away, leaving the bats to scurry out of the hole in the roof. Elise screamed in agony from her place against the wall, falling to a crumpled heap and clutching at her once-beautiful face, now burned to cinders by the stinging light from Baptiste’s familiar potions. He was a hunter through and through, solitary and even willing to harm those who had given him eternal life.
    Lemarick expected to hear the sounds of Ed’s power raging as he rushed to attack Baptiste, but instead the exuberant shade was perfectly still, a look of abject fear on his young face. Lemarick’s eyes finally found Baptiste standing atop the body pile in the orchestra pit, and he understood why Ed had not moved in for a swift attack. Baptiste held Ugarte in his strong arms, with a blade at her throat. The blade was marked in runes from an ancient tongue and