Shadow Bound. Rachel Vincent

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      Praise for the novels of New York Times bestselling author

      RACHEL VINCENT

      ‘I liked the character and loved the action. I look forward to reading the next book in the series.’

       Charlaine Harris

      ‘Vincent is a welcome addition to the genre!’

       Kelley Armstrong

      ‘Compelling and edgy, dark and evocative, Stray is a must read! I loved it from beginning to end.’ Gena Showalter

      ‘I had trouble putting this book down. Every time I said I was going to read just one more chapter, I’d find myself three chapters later.’

       —Bitten by Books on Stray

      ‘Vincent continues to impress with the freshness of her approach and voice. Action and intrigue abound.’

       —RT Book Reviews

      Find out more about Rachel Vincent by visiting

       mirabooks.co.uk/rachelvincent

       and read Rachel’s blog at urbanfantasy.blogspot.com

      Also available from Rachel Vincent

      The Shifters series STRAY ROGUE PRIDE PREY SHIFT ALPHA

      Soul Screamers series MY SOUL TO TAKE MY SOUL TO SAVE MY SOUL TO KEEP MY SOUL TO STEAL IF I DIE

      And look for the thrilling third instalment in

       Rachel’s new Unbound series

      OATH BOUND

      coming soon

       Shadow Bound

      Rachel Vincent

       www.mirabooks.co.uk

      This one is dedicated to my editor, Mary-Theresa

       Hussey, who seems to see what I envision for a story

       even before I’m able to make that clear in the

       manuscript. This book was tough. Shadow Bound is the most difficult book I’ve ever written and there were days when living in Kori’s head put me in a very scary place. My editor reminded me that shadows cannot exist without the sun. Kori needed balance. She needed Ian. And Mary-Theresa helped me find the man Ian needed to be, both for Kori and for their story.

      I learned a lot with this book. Thank you.

       Acknowledgments

      Thanks, as always, to my critique partner, Rinda Elliott, the first to read everything I write. Thanks most of all for your willingness to tell me when I suck. The truth is greatly appreciated.

      Thanks to #1, my husband, for endless patience. This book and the subsequent revisions took up a crazy three and a half months of our lives and I may not have been the most pleasant person during that time.

      A huge thank-you to the MIRA Art department for the SHADOW BOUND cover art. The models are perfect. The colors are beautiful. The tone is dead-on. I love it.

      And, of course, thanks to all the readers willing to give this dark and twisted world a chance. I promise, there is a light at the end of the tunnel….

       One

       Kori

      If you live in the dark long enough, you start to forget what light looks like. What it feels like. You may remember it in an academic sense. Illumination. A possible source of heat. But after a while those abstract memories are all you have left, and they’re worth less than the memory of water to a man dying of thirst.

      I didn’t know how long I’d been in the dark. Long enough for most of the pain to fade into dull aches, though the latest batch of bruises would still have been visible, if anything had been visible. Long enough that I couldn’t remember what shade of gray the walls were. Long enough that when the light came on without warning, it blinded me, even through my closed eyelids.

      I’d lost all sense of time. I didn’t know when I’d last showered, or eaten, or needed the toilet in the corner of my cell. I didn’t know when I’d last heard a human voice, but I remembered the last voice I’d heard, and I knew what the sudden light meant.

      Light meant a visitor.

      And visitors meant pain.

      The door creaked open, and my pulse leaped painfully—fear like a bolt of lightning straight to my heart. I clung to that one erratic heartbeat, riding the flow of adrenaline because I hadn’t felt anything but the ache of my own wounds in days.

      If not for the pain, I couldn’t have sworn I was still alive.

      “Kori Daniels, rise and shine.” Milligan was on duty, which meant it was daytime—outside, anyway. In the basement, it was always night. There were no exterior windows, and no light until someone flipped a switch.

      The dark and I used to be friends. No, lovers. When I was alone, I walked around naked just to feel it on my skin, cool and calm, and more intimate than any hand that had ever touched me. The dark was alive, and it was seductive. We used to slide in and out of one another, the shadows and I, always touching, caressing. Sometimes I couldn’t tell where the dark ended and I began, and at some point I’d decided that division didn’t really exist. I was the dark, and the dark was me.

      But the darkness in the basement was different. It was false. Broken. Weakened by infrared lights I couldn’t see, but I could feel blazing down on me. Caging me. Draining me. The shadows were dead, and touching them was like touching the stiff limbs of a lover’s corpse.

      “Kori,” Milligan said again, and I struggled to focus on him. On my own name.

      The guard shift change had become the ticking of my mental clock—the only method I had of measuring time. But my clock skipped beats. Hell, sometimes it skipped entire days. If there was a pattern to the granting of meals, and showers, and company, I hadn’t figured it out. They came when they came. But mostly, they didn’t.

      I didn’t sit up when Milligan came in. I didn’t even open my eyes, because I didn’t have to. I hadn’t sworn an oath to him, and I hadn’t been ordered to obey him, so participation was at my discretion. And I wasn’t feeling very discretionary.

      I rolled onto my stomach on my mattress, eyes still squeezed shut, trying not to imagine how I must look after all this time. Skinny, bruised, tangled and dirty. Clad only in the same underwear I’d been wearing for days, at least, because humiliation was a large part of my sentence and I hadn’t been granted the privilege of real clothing. My period hadn’t come, which meant I wasn’t imagining not being fed regularly, and water came rarely enough that I’d decided I wasn’t being kept alive, so much as I was being slowly killed.

      I’d been a bad, bad girl.

      “Kori, did you hear me?” Milligan asked.

      I’d had no problem with him on the outside. He’d respected me. At least, he’d respected the fact that the boss valued me. Milligan had never gotten grabby and he’d only leered when he thought I wasn’t looking. That was practically chivalry, on the west side of the city.

      Now, I hated him. Milligan hadn’t put me in the basement, in that rotten fucking cell of a room. But he’d kept me there, and that was enough. If I got the chance—if I ever got out and regained my strength—I’d put a bullet in him. I’d have to, just to show Jake Tower that I was down,