Year of the Tiger (Changeling Sisters) Read Online Free Page A

and I could see normally again.
    “Nice try,” I said, panting, “but you’re the prisoner now.”
    It strained and clawed at the red collar, whining piteously.
     I smiled and turned to survey my rain-shrouded kingdom. There was work to be done. Winter’s chill had closed in around my numbered heartbeats.
     

Chapter 4: Revelations
     
    The quiet of the night was unsettling after the downpour of unceasing rain in the memory well. Khyber kept an icy arm around my shoulder as we strode through the long halls of the palace, as if worried something might jump out and grab me. Memories were indeed powerful. I was no longer uncertain that I’d bought Khyber the wrong wedding gift.
    “You’ve said nothing about what you saw.”
    “Why did the white tiger ever help her?” I exploded bitterly. “Why couldn’t she see what a delusional, back-stabbing bitch Maya was?”
    Khyber chuckled. “You sounded like your half-sister right then.”
    I blinked. Citlalli. I had to cut through murky webs just to see her face clearly. The euphoria of Khyber’s bite was wearing off, and a queasy feeling, like slimy snakes, slipped up and down my stomach. The white tiger had been an ancient, beautiful creature, a power that existed before time. When Maya had killed it, the shock had cut through the bliss sugar-coating my mind. I glanced at Khyber suspiciously.
    “When Maya killed the white tiger, she upset the balance of power in Eve, didn’t she? She released those…Dark Spirits.”
    “The vampyre’s true nature.” Khyber’s pace quickened. “The longing hunger that can never be filled.”
    “She lost her son…so she made you.”
    “She made us,” Khyber responded harshly. “I was the sacrifice. Her…payment for a free-reign-immortality, to spend however she liked. Maya performed many tasks for the Dark Spirits, before she desired to be independent of them. They told her that could happen.”
    I looked swiftly at him. Una had said Khyber was the first vampyre Maya ever created. He clenched the balcony, pebbles crumbling beneath his fingers.
    “An innocent. In order for Maya to gain her vampyric freedom, she needed to give the Dark Spirits an innocent soul. Hers hardly qualified. The Dark Spirits like bright, brilliant souls, burning with energy. So. Maya offered to give the Dark Spirits another.
     “She intended to go after my sisters.” Khyber bowed his head, black hair hiding his face like a raven’s wing. “I waited to climb the rope last. I knew I could make it. Micha and Sunni were never good at climbing, but me, I could scale the highest tree faster than a squirrel. I told them I’d see them up there. But she was so fast. She grabbed me. And I fell. The only time I really needed to climb, and I fell.
    “Maya was greedy. It wasn’t enough that she’d harvested my soul for the Dark Spirits. After she drained me completely of blood, she laid me in the ground for three days, with the mark of the Dark Spirits upon me. When I awoke, I was a vampyre. And we were tied together. Now, as long as Maya lives, I live. So, too, as long as I live, she lives on as well.”
    “Are your brothers like you?” I whispered.
    “No. After Maya forced me to hunt down my own sacrifice to the Dark Spirits, she killed the girl. A fisherman’s daughter. No one else could have the special bond we shared. Otherwise it could threaten her power.
    “We returned to see what had become of her old kingdom, which had long since been transformed by the Romans. We went on a killing spree of politicians she deemed to be fools. They were all old men who couldn’t so much as feed themselves by the time we murdered them in their nightgowns. That’s where we found Aaron. But the Dark Spirits began to demand more. This time they wanted two innocent souls capable of lighting up an entire town. The deadline was always the same. In the seventh year after the vampyre was born, at midnight on Lunar New Year, the sacrifice must be made. We barely found