Читать онлайн «Dark Side of the Moon»
Автор Шеррилин Кеньон
Sherrilyn Kenyon
Dark Side of the Moon
For the most important person in any writer's life… you, the reader. Thank you for taking this trip into the Dark-Hunter realm with me.
Acknowledgments
For the entire team at SMP for all the hard work you guys do on my books. I have no idea what I'd d without you, and I don't want to find out.
For Monique, who definitely needs an award for going above and beyond the call of duty. Thank you. And for Merrilee, who had no idea what she was getting herself into.
Most of all, I want to thank all the readers and fans who visit the Dark-Hunter. com bbs and loops. You guys are always a joy to see. To my RBL women, who never fail to entertain and inspire. And to my personal friends, who give me encouragement and strength when I need it most: Janet, Brynna, Lo, Carl, Loretta, and Christine.
And last, but most definitely not least, my family, and that includes my brother Steve, who wanted to be named. I love all of you. Thank you so much for making my life what it is and for taking this journey with me.
He [the ravyn] is the warrior's bird of battle, exults in slaughter and carnage…
Prologue
The air whispered with psychic electricity. It was a sensation that could only be felt by a particular nonhuman sect or by humans with highly developed senses.
Ravyn Kontis was most definitely
Now Ravyn walked the earth as something else. Something soulless.
Something ferocious and even deadlier than what he’d been before. There was no heart left inside him. No pity or compassion. Nothing but a pain so deep, so profound, that it lacerated what little humanity he had until there was nothing left but a beast so feral that he knew it would never be tamed again.Leaning his head back, he roared the cry of the angry beast that snarled inside him. The stench of death encircled him just as the blood of his enemies coated every inch of his human flesh. It dripped from his hair and his fingertips in slick rivulets that dappled the battle-trampled earth at his feet.
Still it wasn’t enough to appease the rage that lived inside him.
He’d foolishly expected it to ease some of the crippling grief that haunted him. It hadn’t. It only left him even colder than the betrayal that had caused his death.
Ravyn winced as he saw Isabeau’s beautiful face in his mind. Even though she’d been fully human, they had been chosen as mates. Thinking that she loved him, he’d trusted her with the secret of his world.
And how had she repaid him? She’d told the humans of his small clan of brethren and they had attacked the women and children while he and the men had been out on patrol.
No one had been left alive.
No one.
The males of his clan had returned to find the smoldering remains of their village… the scattered bodies of their children and women.
