Free Shadowbound: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Realm Protectors Book 2) by Spencer DeVeau

sight. He hoped it wouldn’t lead to a full scale plague somewhere down the road.
    Further on, John sat against a tree, looking peaceful until Harold got closer and saw the gash in his neck, and the glassy-eyed, dead look on his face. On the other side, a hand poked from a pile of splintered wood. The nails were painted a bubble-gum pink and alternating black. Harold’s stomach roiled. It was Cinder — or at least part of Cinder. He didn’t have the courage to keep going. Didn’t want to see anymore destruction. After all, Harold Storm was the cause. There was no denying that. They wanted him, and they wanted Sahara.
    It was the end.
    He shook the thought away, then took a look at the battered Protector in his arms, and remembered the fact that he might not be the new Harold at all.  
    The Protectors were weak; the evil, strong.
    And here Harold stood the sole survivor of a battle he would never be ready to face.
    “The G-Grand Witch,” Sahara said. “We m-m-must see the Grand Witch.”
    Harold’s ears perked up. Her voice sounded as if Death had a firm grip around her ankles and was dragging her down, but the softness was still there. And in the dead — literal dead — silence of the forest, it was a gift from the Heavens.
    “Where, Sahara? Where?”
    “The Lake — sh-sh-she lives on the Lake.”
    “What lake?” Harold asked, but her eyes were already fluttering closed, the whites showing. Her lips parted once more, but only a rattling wheeze came out, followed by a streak of black leaking from her mouth, which he had set her down to wipe away, then scooped her back up as fast as he could. Though his arms cried out in protest.
    But the few leaves that hung from the great tree hundreds of feet up into the dark sky rustled, and a few birds — or possibly bats — flapped their wings as they fled. A roar rippled through the entire girth of the trunk, a satisfied, almost pained roar.
    The Demon had to have been through with Frank now, and Harold didn’t want to hang out and see that horrible face again, especially if it was smeared with the blood of what might’ve been a potential friend.
    No, he didn’t want that at all, and he headed for the Audi, mumbling to whatever gods would listen, praying that the thing was still in one piece and he could stay conscious long enough for him to get to whatever lake his delirious partner spoke about.
    The only lake close by was Lake Shallows. Years of pollution had made it less of a lake and more of a toxic waste dump now. A person with as much gumption to dub themselves the Grand Witch couldn’t have the nerve to live at a place like that. Could they?
    He didn’t know, but Harold Storm was prepared to find out if it meant saving Sahara.

C HAPTER 11

    The sports car roared to life.  
    Harold felt the engines rumble under the tight grip he had on the steering wheel. Sahara laid in the back, mumbling. She had felt so hot as he strapped her in, using all three seat belts, because the way he intended to drive from that forest was that of a drunk Nascar driver.
    But he was so exhausted.
    He’d done so much, and as he backed down the worn path until the trees opened up and he could swing the car around one-eighty degrees, his ruined eyelids grew heavy. He wondered if he could still sleep at all. How did one do that without eyelids?  
    Awkwardly, he supposed.
    The air conditioning was on full-blast. He’d noticed an increase — maybe a few degrees — since leaving the terminal, since the Portal had been opened.
    The Portal, right. He’d forgotten about the Portal. What with the Vampires nearly killing him, then the Demon, and a giant bat-freak, and then some crazed old man…oh, and Sahara descending into a buzzing delirium and his own dark thoughts.
    (You’re not supposed to be here.)
    The Portal was the last thing on his mind, though it probably should’ve been the first.  
    He pulled out onto the highway, engine roaring, a/c blasting, and the radio tuned at a