Twilight Guardians Read online



  Praise for Maggie Shayne

  “My inspiration has always been Maggie Shayne and her Wings in the Night Series. Sexy, thrilling, a must-read!” ~#1 New York Times Bestselling Author CHRISTINE FEEHAN

  “Maggie Shayne’s books have a permanent spot on my keeper shelf. She writes wonderful stories combining romance with page-turning thrills, and I highly recommend her to any fan of romantic suspense.”
~KAREN ROBARDS

  “Readers will feel as if they can touch the connection sizzling between the duo. This story will have readers on the edge of their seats and begging for more.” ~ RT BOOKCLUB MAGAZINE (Review of Twilight Fulfilled)

  “One of the strongest, most original voices in romance fiction today.” ~ Bestselling Author ANNE STUART

  “Creepy, chilling and compelling. Simply spellbinding!” ~ New York Times Bestselling Author SHANNON DRAKE

  TWILIGHT GUARDIANS

  Copyright © 2014 by Maggie Shayne

  Edited by Jena O'Connor

  www.practicalproofing.com

  Ebook formatting and Graphic Design by Jessica Lewis

  www.authorslifesaver.com

  Cover Model: Lisa Benson

  Cover Photo and Photo Finishing by Paige Wissenbach

  www.paigewissenbach.com 

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the author.

  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Killian Garone was the last of his kind. So yeah, he was lonely. But he’d had no idea what lonely was until her.

  He wandered, Killian did. Had ever since his building had been torched by vigilantes back in the wars of 2011. When humankind found out the boogiemen of Bram Stoker’s inkwell were real, they decided pretty quickly that they had to return vampires to the realm of fiction. And they’d pretty much succeeded.

  Killian had survived the fire in his home, and the extermination of his species. As far as he knew, he was the only one left. So he wandered, and he avoided humans, and he survived by drinking the blood of wildlife, rather than feeding on humans. He didn’t mind so much that animal blood left him weak. A watered down version of a vampire.

  And then one day, he’d dreamed of her.

  He’d dreamed of her.

  Everyone knows vampires don’t dream. The day sleep is death. It’s nothingness. But he’d dreamed of her. Could two years of isolation make a vampire go crazy? He didn’t know, and who the hell was he going to ask?

  She came to him in flashes. Hair as red as a new penny, lots of it, rippling down way past her shoulders. Huge blue eyes that held the world inside them. A white owl. And the feeling that she was in trouble and didn’t even know it.

  He knew two things about her right from the beginning. She was one of The Chosen. That is, she had the rare Belladonna Antigen every vampire had as a human. Only The Chosen could become vampires. They would bleed out easily if cut, and they tended to die young unless they accepted the Dark Gift. It would be almost impossible for a vampire to harm one of The Chosen. They were compelled to protect them, instead.

  Charlie O’Malley was one of The Chosen. And Killian was drawn to her like he’d never been drawn to one of them before. There was something off about that.

  The second thing he knew about her was that she was dreaming of him, too. He felt it in brief, strobe-like glimpses inside her mind.

  What is this?
Who is he?

  Am I losing my mind?

  God, I wish this was real.

  He’d been trekking through the cathedral forests of northeastern Oregon when he’d started experiencing her. And he’d changed directions, because he couldn’t help himself. She exerted some kind of force on him, pulled him to her. It felt like a long rubber band had been snapped around the two of themF and stretched to its limit. When he tried to go the other way, it was like he just couldn’t stretch that band another inch.

  He had to go to her.

  And now he was as close as it was safe to get, but he knew he’d keep moving closer. He stood on a winding road, looking down on Portland, and he knew she was there. Somewhere in that mass of human beings who would kill him on sight if they found out what he was. But he didn’t care. He had to get to her. He didn’t know why, and he didn’t know what he was supposed to do once he did. But he had to get to Charlie.

  He pulled up his hoodie and headed into the forest to seek shelter. Dawn was calling. But when he woke tonight, he was going into that city. Maybe if he kept his head down and his mind open, he could get to her before the humans got to him.