Read Revelations: Book One of the Lalassu for Free Online

none of those warnings had done a bit of good in the past. They hadn’t saved Gwen or her father.
    Dani took a deep breath, pushing her anger down. Gwen wasn’t taking sides, only repeating garbled and confused messages. She knew about Dani’s struggles for freedom, the hard-won balance with the Huntress. She knew about the guilt gnawing at Dani’s core, the twin fears competing for dominance: that she would someday fail to contain the Huntress and that she would disappear into the alien predator. Gwen had only been seven when she encouraged Dani to flee, telling her it wasn’t time and that if she stayed and completed the ritual, the Huntress would swallow them all.
    Dani cupped her sister’s face with her hand, bringing Gwen’s focus back to the present, although it was a visible struggle.
    “You don’t have to be afraid of the dark,” Dani whispered, the refrain familiar from their childhood.
    “Because you’re nastier than anything else out there.” Gwen smiled, twisting around.
    “Damn fucking right.” Dani smoothed her sister’s wet hair against her skull, smiling back.
    “But this is bigger than you. Old wounds come back to bleed again. I can hear his footsteps echoing all around us, walking over our hiding hole. Too close to chase away. If you hunt alone, you’ll fall,” Gwen insisted.
    “I don’t do partners.” The thought of being responsible for someone else turned her stomach. She was failing enough people as it was.
    Gwen looked up with stricken eyes, muffin crumbs tumbling from her chin. Dani immediately relented. She couldn’t bear seeing her sister hurt.
    “I’ll be careful,” she promised. Gwen’s gift gave her access to the past and present with ease, along with occasional glimpses of the future. But she couldn’t always tell one from the other. The visions had driven her mad long ago. Sometimes her advice was right on target and other times she begged Dani to stop atrocities from hundreds of years ago.
    “If you hunt alone, you’ll fall.” Gwen’s bony fingers cut into Dani’s wrist, surprisingly strong. “Find the invisible man who sees the hidden truths. Find him, Dani.” Gwen’s eyelids sagged, her spate of prescience exhausting her.
    Dani finished washing and rinsing her hair, combing it out and drying it with a towel. The plate of food lay forgotten on the floor. She helped her sister into bed—a thick, feather-stuffed mattress on a sturdy wooden frame. Plenty of heavy quilts and duvets were heaped on top to keep Gwen warm. Her drawing materials were scattered all over the uneven stone floor.
    Tidying the room, she’d gotten a better look at the sketch pad. A weedy field with a cat sitting at the edge and a crescent moon rising above.
    Exactly what she saw now in the gas station’s parking lot.
    “Damn. I hate it when she’s right,” Dani whispered to the sky. Just when she thought this day couldn’t get any worse.
    Find the shadow. Gwen’s final warning echoed through her head. Spinning on her heels, she went back to the rubbish heap. She dug through the trash, searching.
    Beneath a rusted-out muffler was a patch of shadow slightly darker than those around it. When she touched it, instead of cool concrete, she found smooth plasticized fabric. Pulling it out, she discovered it was a torn fragment from a lightweight jacket, dark blue nylon. The shadow was found. Now she supposed she’d have to track down this invisible man. She sniffed at the nylon, catching a hint of gun oil and cheap deodorant. Was the jacket his? Or another path of investigation?
    “You could have been a little clearer, Gwen,” Dani muttered at the sky, tucking the fabric away in her pocket. She’d hang on to it and search for this invisible man. But meanwhile, she would check into other leads.
    Whoever took her brothers had made a serious mistake. Danielle Harris did not fuck around with anyone who threatened her family.
    The Hunt was on.

 
     
     
    THURSDAY

 
     
     
    Chapter