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

up in a neat row. There were five left, but something told Harold that he wouldn’t live long enough to see all of them shot. Because Frank pointed the crossbow right at Harold’s forehead, with only about two inches of space between the deathly tip and the skin and only about an inch of skull separating the tip from Harold’s brain, and the end of his life.

C HAPTER 8

    Everything in Frank’s body, mind, and spirit told him to pull the trigger. Let the arrow lose into the Demon’s head, get your revenge. The nightmares would stop then, wouldn’t they? Except they were no longer nightmares — not even something he could classify as night terrors, though they were terrible. To Frank, they had felt so real and a part of his very soul that he’d label them as visions. Horrible visions he no longer wanted any part of, or ever wanted any part of in the first place.
    Yes, an arrow dipped in the antidote and jammed through the Demon’s head would solve all his problems.
    But they won’t bring Travis back, will they, Franky? the voice in his head asked him. No, he’ll be six feet underground for the rest of time. The worms will chew at his flesh until they’re fatter and plumper than a Thanksgiving turkey. And it’s all your fault. Go ahead and kill that Demon. Get your revenge. But you’ll never feel full again. You’ll be empty for Eternity.
    Yet those eyes. They watched him with a controlled fear. Never blinking, never wavering, always intent on meeting Frank’s. He could be wrong about the creature staring down the sight of his crossbow, couldn’t he?
    Yes.
    But the forest and the large trees. The blood Shadow had told him to go to the forest, and there he would find him . Him , the one Frank had wanted — no, needed — revenge against.
    “Well, what are you waiting for?” the Demon who named himself Harold Storm said.
    Frank’s fingers shook. His right index finger rested centimeters away from the trigger, brushing against the cold metal.
    “Kill me or don’t…shit or get off the pot, buddy.”
    A fresh stream of blood rolled from the man’s quivering lips, running over the various craters and scabs and popped blisters — the skin yellow near the mouth, milky white under his sunken eyes, and dotted bits of fiery red in other places; the skin of a Demon, of a creature born in Hell.  
    But the eyes, the way he looked at Frank. There was no possible way Harold Storm was a man of Hell, Frank could see it in that look. A Demon would’ve put up a fight, wouldn’t have succumbed so easily.
    But an innocent man wouldn’t either.
    No, Harold Storm was not an innocent man.
    “Take a fuckin’ picture, it’ll last longer,” he said, blood spraying from his mouth in a fine mist.
    Frank grunted in an attempt to hide his cowardice, dropped the crossbow to his side. Then his shoulders slumped, buckling under the weight of his heavy heart.
    “Well, you aren’t as dumb as you look, I guess,” Harold Storm said.
    Frank lifted his boot off of the man’s chest. A crude imprint of the number 14 showed on his red skin in a heavenly white, tinged with blood.
    “Be quiet. And be grateful I’ve shown you mercy.”
    “No need to get all macho on me, man. Just admit that you’re batshit crazy and move on.”
    “Not without a thanks,” Frank grumbled. He kicked the dead Demon at his feet with the toe of his boot. A black stream gushed out of the wound of its neck, reminding Frank of a dreadful river, but he smiled nonetheless. There was nothing like ending the life of a supernatural — slitting the throat of a creature supposedly more powerful than you. It had been nearly a year since Frank tasted the sweet blood of death, and god, he missed it. He would’ve put it up there with sex, cigarettes, and health insurance — three things his life had lacked as of late.
    “Thanks for what?” Storm said, trying to pull himself up, frankly looking like a corpse rising from the dead. Watching made Frank’s stomach