Queen of Shadows Read Online Free

They’d lock her away just like her mama, and poke and prod her and drug her until she was a drooling mass of atrophied muscle and brain.
    No. Never. She’d die first.
    Probably .
    Kat’s concern stayed with her, rubbing around the edges of her mind, as she hurried along the four blocks from the club to the bus stop. It was almost one A.M., and for a Friday night downtown Austin was unusually quiet; she didn’t realize why until she heard a crash of thunder that shook her out of herself long enough to look up at the billowing dark clouds that had blotted out the moon.
    “Fantastic,” she muttered, and picked up the pace. Her keys and a few loose coins jingled in her purse and her guitar case bumped her butt as she trotted along the sidewalk. A couple of people moved out of her way, avoiding a collision with the instrument by inches.
    The first few fat drops of rain left dark circles on the still-hot pavement, and she felt them on her hair. The pressure in the atmosphere echoed the pressure building in her mind. She had to hurry, had to get home before every heart in Austin bled into hers and she got lost in their pain and petty grievances.
    If only positive emotions were as strong as negative ones. They were, in their way, but they were so quiet that the bad stuff drowned them out. Sometimes she felt love, sometimes she felt joy, but they were quickly bogged down in the surrounding fear and anger of everyone around them. The few scraps of beauty she dug out of the dung heap had once been enough to keep her going—the potential in people for good was what she drew out when she played—but as time went on those small, sweet voices were lost, and the weeping of the world was all she knew.
    It was starting.
    Another day in paradise. Wasn’t that a song? She started humming, trying desperately to concentrate on something, anything else: Hallelujah . . . Leonard Cohen understood her tonight. Her own thoughts had already started to submerge under the emotions of the rest of the city. Someone was beating a child tonight . . . someone wanted steak for dinner and got meat loaf . . . someone was faking it . . . someone had “Angel of the Morning” stuck in his head . . . someone hated her mother . . . someone was going to pay . . . someone liked to be tied up . . . someone forgot to set the DVR to tape Ghost Whisperer . . . someone—
    —someone was following her.
    Darkness. She could feel darkness. The same as in the club? Probably. A sane woman would have run, but she was so tired . . . so tired. Her legs suddenly felt like lead. It was as if she could see herself from a distance, and see what was going to happen, and there was nothing she could do but get out of the way of her fate.
    Hallelujah . . . hallelujah . . .
    There were four of them. One followed her from the club, the others emerged from an alley. Their minds were like oily black snakes, slithering toward her with the dull glow of lust and repressed rage. One of them liked her hair; another one was thinking about her breasts. A third figured she had money in her purse.
    The hand that clamped on her shoulder was thick and meaty, and it yanked her backward off her feet. She cried out, but the noise was muffled as a second hand clapped over her mouth, and she was hauled back against a sweaty T-shirt with a pounding heartbeat beneath. None of them spoke until they had dragged her off the street, into the alley.
    She watched the darkness of the alleyway close around her and heard the sound of her guitar case scraping along the ground. One of the men already had her purse and was rifling through it while the one dragging her threw her to the ground.
    She wasn’t afraid. Fear was for the unknown. She knew exactly what was going to happen.
    Hallelujah . . . hallelujah . . .
    It disconcerted them that she didn’t fight, but they beat her anyway, a sharp kick to her stomach causing her body to involuntarily curl around itself to protect her abdomen. Another kick to her