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

a pair of twins to satisfy them in time. And their demands kept growing higher. As Maya continued to expand our family over the centuries, so the pile of souls grew into a small mountain. The price for another vampyre prince now is steep, much too steep.” He raised his head, eyes sinking under guilty weight, and I froze in place.
    “The forty girls…”
    “She told you a half-truth. She does need new brides to give the princes sustenance. But she still owes the Dark Spirits for Duck Young. They have made a very special demand. So far, Maya has had no luck in answering their command for a ‘changeling’ soul.”
    I brushed my hair aside, fear stirring. “Is that why…you hunt my family? You think it’s one of us, don’t you?”
    “We’ve had great luck hunting your family before. You come from a strong line of spirits; fierce, bright warriors capable of shaking civilization to its bones. My mother thought the eldest sister must have inherited the gift we sensed.”
    “But it wasn’t Marisol.”
    “No.” He gazed at me, through me, and I shrank away, both curious and scared of what he saw.
    “So the innocent pay the price for our immortality,” he said quietly. “Our own wicked souls escape upon death. They know what we are. When we accepted the Dark Spirits’ gift, we were banished from the eyes of God.”
    “You drink our blood. You brainwash us. You wear our bodies ,” I choked out, an image surfacing in my mind of Marisol’s head, bobbing around like a spring.
    “Waste not. Maya needed to wear new a new body after the Weres ignorantly attacked her,” Khyber said in a low voice. “Foolish things. As long as she’s tied to me, she can’t die. Neither could I, when I barged out into the sun to save her. But even though we can’t die, it doesn’t mean the pain is any less. Sometimes it’s a thousand times worse.”
    “That’s why you asked me to help you die,” I said, “but I don’t see how that’s possible. Unless we retrieve your soul from the Dark Spirits?”
    “And find Maya’s. Otherwise she’ll be a loose specter hanging around Eve forever. She’s close enough to assuming Dark Spirit form already. I almost have all of them, you know.”
    He rushed on to answer my puzzled expression, as if relieved to finally impart all of his hard work to someone: “My brothers’ souls. I’ve been hunting them down over the centuries. We must herd them all up and usher them into the Beyond, or else their specters will continue to haunt Eve after death.”
    “Which ones are you missing?”
    “Duck Young’s.” Khyber scowled at this. “Thanks to your dear sister . And Donovan’s. He’s kept it jealously locked away for some centuries.”
    I felt a flutter of nervousness when he spoke of the golden Frenchman, remembering his vacant teal eyes, his lips raking my ear as he promised to hurt me.
    “You will help me find his.”
    “What? Whose? Donovan’s? ” I backed away with arms folded, fingers digging holes into my skin. “No. There’s no way. You can’t ask me to get close to him. You can’t.”
    “I didn’t ask.” When he spoke, I felt the air snap around me, pulling me toward his words no matter how hard I dug in my heels. “You don’t know how long I’ve had to play this game, constantly ducking and hiding my true intentions from my mother and brothers. I’m tired of all this, Raina. I’m tired. I don’t care anymore. And a vampyre who doesn’t care is a vampyre at his most dangerous.”
    “If you didn’t care, then you wouldn’t be concerned with sending off your brothers’ souls,” I replied. I felt the weight of his gaze ebb slightly.
    In the next second, darkness drowned my senses; I fumbled around, blind and deaf, on my knees. My fingers groped about, and I felt a toe, as cold as a dead fish. I sprang back.
    Somehow, even in the darkness, I could spot the black wings beating, and I crawled toward them. When I touched his leg, I could dimly hear again, even