Shadow Bound

Shadow Bound
Rachel Vincent

IF ALL YOU KNOW IS SHADOWS, YOU BEGIN TO FORGET THE LIGHT… Shadow-walker Kori, able to travel from one human shadow to another, keeps her powers hidden from the world. Until supernatural crime lord Tower imprisons her and suppresses her magic. Freedom for her, and her magician sister Kenley, now comes at price. The job? Recruit Ian Holt, a man who can manipulate darkness – or kill him.Yet Ian has a mission of his own: assassinate Kenley, whose unique powers give Tower a deadly advantage in their underworld. Fighting for two different sides, Kori and Ian can’t deny the desperate magnetic pull that draws them together. But in a world of black and white, of good and evil, can their love survive in the shadows? A MUST-READ for fans of KELLEY ARMSTRONG

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 fromRachel 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 (http://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.