Free Shadow Rising by Yasmine Galenorn Page B

appearance of Gulakah, the Lord of Ghosts, I wasn’t so sure. Then, he’d vanished, and I’d hoped that—with the spirit seal in his possession—he’d gone back to the Sub-Realms and stayed there.
    “Do you think Gulakah’s in town?” Delilah shifted to her right foot. She was tall—six one—and athletic as hell. Compared to her, and to Camille’s five seven of voluptuousness, I might as well be a shrimp. Barely five one, I was small-framed and small-breasted, and when I’d died, I’d been slender, so I always would be. But tiny or not, I could tear through the toughest of enemies. Well, most of them. My size belied my vampiric strength.
    I glanced to the side. Shade was so focused he didn’t appear to hear us at all. “Ten to one he’s back,” I said, reluctant to admit it. “I’d hoped that stealing that spirit seal from us might buy us some time, but now…I don’t think it did. Shadow Wing is on a high. He’s hyped up from claiming another of the seals. He sent Telazhar to Otherworld. Chances are Gulakah’s back. And if so…”
    “If so, the ghostly activity around Seattle is going to soar.” Delilah winced. “I hate that.”
    “Me, too.”
    A rustle of wings, and the shadow creatures came rushing back to Shade. He held out his arms and they made a beeline for his chest and vanished into him. The moment they’d reentered his body, Shade turned abruptly.
    “They’re near the rogue portal. And they’re headed our way.”
    “Any idea of
what
they are?”
    He paled. “I don’t know, but I
can
tell you they’re nasty. And they’re on the move.”
    “How the hell can we fight them if we don’t know what they are?”
    He shook his head. “Delilah, you and Vanzir head back to the house and send Camille and Morio out here in your place. We need their magic to go up against these things because I haven’t the faintest clue if physical attacks will work on them.”
    Delilah gave him a swift nod as she and Vanzir turned tail and raced back to the house. Meanwhile, Shade started toward the patch of woods where the rogue portal had opened onto our land. We had guards watching over it but none of our efforts—or those of Queen Asteria’s mages—had been able to close it. As for where it went—the destination changed every so often, and there was never any guarantee where it would lead. Which was why we tended to avoid it.
    Roz and I fell in beside Shade. We’d gone only a few yards when the energy thickened and I could hear Roz’s sharp intake of breath. The beating of his pulse beckoned me, and my fangs descended, but I pushed the urge out of my mind. I didn’t feed on friends, not even when they invited me to. More than one person had offered their services, but I had never taken a bloodwhore and I wasn’t about to start.
    We slowly approached the sparkling light that filtered from between the trees, and Shade parted a tangle of vines that thrived in the area. Even in the early spring, they coiled, tendrils burgeoning forth to cover the walkway.
    I debated whether to call ahead to the guards, but hesitated. I’d alert the spirits if I yelled. But if I didn’t, the guards would be in danger—
    “Crap.” Roz’s voice cut through the night. “Look.”
    And then I saw them. Bodies, prone on the ground. Two elven guards, and they looked terribly, horribly dead. There was no blood, not even a whiff, but they were pale as snow, pale as a clean sheet on a cold morning. I glanced around but couldn’t see anything else out of the ordinary. As I knelt by the corpses, Shade, Smoky, and Rozurial kept watch.
    There didn’t seem to be any wounds—no marks, nothing to indicate why they died, except the extreme pallor of their skin. That might indicate a vampire, but there were no fangmarks that I could see, and something else felt off, but I couldn’t pinpoint just what.
    “I want a Corpse Talker.” I glanced up at Rozurial. “We need to know how these men died. They’re Queen Asteria’s