Read Online When Darkness Hungers: A Shadow Keepers Novel (Shadow Keepers 5) by J.K. Beck - Free Book Online

harm, but she was trained not to be stupid. And she’d never been one to trust easily.
    They reached the bottom of the stairs, then moved down a dark hall barely illuminated by widely spaced yellow bulbs. Finally, they reached a steel vault door, the shiny metal looking out of place against the ancient brick-and-mortar walls. The door was sealed with an intricate locking mechanism. Alexis watched, curious, as Leena operated the lock and opened the door.
    Alexis gasped. The room was much brighter, lit by candles tucked into depressions in the stone. And there, at the back of the room, was a shirtless man chained to the wall by his ankles and his wrists.
    “Dear God,” she whispered, reaching for her gun. “Shit, Leena, what have you done?”
    “He’s not a man,” Leena said, not the least bit perturbedby Alexis’s reaction. “And neither was the monster who killed your sister. It was a vampire.”
    “Have your sick fun on someone else’s time,” she said, pulling her weapon. “Now unchain him, and then put your hands against the wall.”
    “Shit, Alexis. Do you have to be so goddamn pedantic?”
    “
Excuse
me?” The gun felt heavy in her hand, and she realized that whatever drug had been in the air in the other room was still affecting her.
    “Watch. Just watch.” And with a speed that defied Leena’s limp, she lunged forward and shoved a wooden stake into the trapped man’s stomach.
    He roared, then flailed against the chain, some pitiful, trapped beast.
    But Alexis didn’t feel sorry for him. Not anymore. Because she got a look at his mouth. At his fangs. And then, just when she was about to tell Leena to back off so that she could have a second to think, Leena plunged the stake in a second time—this time into its heart. And the creature in front of them immediately dissolved into a pile of dust.
    “Told you,” Leena said. “And now that you know, nothing’s ever going to be the same.”

 
    “Alexis? Hey. Wake up, girl.”
    Alexis peeled her eyes open and tried to focus on Leena, who was carefully depositing a cup of coffee on the table in front of her. “Sorry,” Leena said. “That bump on your head makes me nervous. I’m not sure if I should let you sleep.”
    “I’m fine,” Alexis said. She’d slid sideways into the chair, and now she righted herself, shaking out her arms to ward off the urge to sleep. “But you really have to tell me the truth. Is he still alive?”
    “I swear, I just don’t know.”
    Alexis bit back a frustrated groan. “There were two vampires in the alley,” she said. “I know that one of them was the one who killed my sister—you’re the one who told me. So how can you not know if the killer is the one I dusted?”
    Leena reached across the table and took her hand. “Alexis. You know why. I’ve already told you how all this works. Or doesn’t work, as the case may be. It’s mysticism, not science. Nothing’s exact.”
    “But you have the map. You saw. Can’t you do it again? Can’t you see if he’s still out there?” She looked at her friend’s face, at the pale skin, almost paper-thin from exhaustion, and immediately felt like a total shit. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked. I know I shouldn’tpress. I mean, you told me how much it drains you, but I’m just—”
    “Eager?”
    “That doesn’t even begin to describe it.” Dear God, this was why she’d come back to Los Angeles: so that she could find and kill the vampire who’d killed Tori. And now she was so close, she could almost touch the truth. Except somehow it kept escaping her.
    No matter what else happened, she was eternally grateful to Leena for revealing that horrible truth about Tori’s death. But that wasn’t the only thing for which she owed Leena. Because it turned out that Leena Dumont was descended from a family of vampire hunters who’d made their home in New Orleans. Leena herself was descended from a plantation owner and a slave named Evangeline, who just