Knights of Souls and Shadows, Book 1 Read online

  About This Book

  When a portal of darkness opens, do you go through it or run the other way? Sometimes there’s no choice.

  Part II: Lost

  Sixteen years since the war. Sixteen years since the Age of Angels began. And still, Demons roam the Earth, the dead are more likely to reanimate as zombies than vampires, and black magic permeates our world—doing its best to destroy any progress we make in rebuilding civilization. Through it all, we’ve managed to prevent any more wars, but peace constantly dances on the edge of a blade called desperation. Especially in recent months.

  A dark energy is building, advancing around the world and feeding malice and aggression. Demons are changing, growing stronger. Humans are evolving too, gaining dangerous powers they can’t control. If we don’t find the source of this dark energy, war will be inevitable.

  When my daughters go missing, an enigmatic portal swirls in the last place they were seen, the same dark power pulsing from its depths. We have no choice but to go through to find them, only to discover the cold, hard truth. Our family has survived so much already, but can it survive this and what’s still to come? Can the world?

  Knights of Souls and Shadows

  Kristie Cook

  Books by Kristie Cook

  Soul Savers

  Recommended Reading Order:

  A Demon’s Promise

  An Angel’s Purpose

  Genesis: A Soul Savers Novella

  Dangerous Devotion

  Dark Power

  Sacred Wrath

  Unholy Torment

  Fractured Faith

  Age of Angels Part I: Awakened

  Age of Angels Part II: Lost

  Age of Angels Part III: Marked

  * * *

  Prophecy of the Wolves: (A Soul Savers Tie-In Novella)

  Wonder: A Soul Savers Collection of Holiday Short Stories & Recipes

  * * *

  Knights of Souls and Shadows

  Knights of Souls and Shadows (Spring 2021)

  Havenwood Falls

  Recommended Reading Order:

  Forget You Not

  Lose You Not

  Break Me Not

  The Collector: Awakening

  Savage Salvation (Sin & Silk)

  Sun & Moon Academy Book One: Fall Semester

  Sun & Moon Academy Book Two: Fall Semester

  * * *

  The Winged & the Wicked (with T.V. Hahn)

  Havenwood Falls Short Story Anthology 2018

  Havenwood Falls Short Story Anthology 2019

  Havenwood Falls Short Story Anthology 2020

  * * *

  Book Of Phoenix

  The Space Between

  The Space Beyond

  The Space Within

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Epilogue

  Glossary & Cast

  About the Author

  Connect With Me Online

  Acknowledgments

  Copyright © 2021 by Kristie Cook

  * * *

  All rights reserved.

  * * *

  Published by

  Ang’dora Productions, LLC

  Naples, FL

  * * *

  Ang’dora Productions and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Ang’dora Productions, LLC

  * * *

  Cover design by Lily Rowserein

  * * *

  Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the copyright owner.

  * * *

  Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  * * *

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and events are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  * * *

  First Edition March 2021

  To Belinda

  I can never thank you enough

  Chapter 1

  The moment I stepped through the gates of Misery’s Edge, my inner beast lifted her head, twitching her ears and sniffing the air. She undoubtedly felt what I did: a trace of something dark and dangerous slithering in the shadows, almost like it followed us. Perhaps it did. We tended to attract such things of darkness and shadows. After all, we were one, too.

  Dark, dangerous, and sometimes feral—

  “Elliana,” Brielle hissed in my mind, “you’re doing it again.”

  I scowled at the accusation in my twin’s mental voice. “Doing what?”

  As far as I knew, I was simply walking down the avenue with her on one side of me, our combat boots thudding on the cracked asphalt as we followed our parents and the mayor toward the center of town.

  “Scaring the natives.”

  All of my senses had been sweeping the area non-stop, monitoring for any kind of threat. We’d been trained since we were tots to always remain vigilant, but the attacks the other day had me on high alert. Now, I slowed my gaze to better see the people eyeing us as we passed by, watching each one I made eye-contact with as their pupils flared before they immediately turned and hurried away. One young mother with a red rag over her dirty blond hair squeezed a scruffy-looking toddler against her chest and ducked into a doorway as though she thought I’d eat her child if she didn’t get away fast enough.

  My scowl morphed into a frown, but I shrugged. “Whatever.”

  Brielle and our best friend Charleigh often teased me about how I scared some of the natives of Ravenbury, a small town near our home bunker that we frequently visited. Mom called it my RBF—resting bitch face—that I couldn’t help. Brielle and Charleigh called it my IFOF—intentional fuck-off face. They were a lot closer to being right than Mom, although it wasn’t always intentional. Now, though? Totally.

  “Something’s not right here, Brie,” I said through our linked minds. We weren’t telepathic per se, not like our mother, the only living telepath in the world. She could hear thoughts at will, mind-talk, even open her mind to several people at once. Brielle and I could only communicate with each other. It was a twin thing.

  “I feel it, too.” Brielle’s brown eyes shifted sideways in my direction as her head tilted, causing her long black braid to fall over her plaid-covered shoulder. My sister had no fashion sense. Not that we had many choices, enchanted black leather fighting gear comprising most of our wardrobe, but I swore she wore the ugly flannel shirt over her leather tank and that plain, fat braid just to irk me. At least it set us apart, our clothes and hairstyles being about the only things that made us distinguishable to most people. “Do you know what it is? Where it’s coming from? I can’t nail it down.”
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  My own hair fell loosely in waves down my back as I shook my head before glancing over my shoulder. The armed guards remained at the gate, several more spaced apart along the protective wall that encircled the town. They had watched us carefully as we entered, but now they’d returned to observing beyond the wall, to the outside world where zombies and violent gangs remained threats. The sensation definitely came from within the walls, where we passed rows of what appeared to be housing—lines of rusty train cars, semi-trailers, and silos—where some curious eyes still watched us, although most people simply went about their day. They were all human, as far as I could tell. Normans, as we called them, or norms for short.

  Until recently, Misery’s Edge only allowed humans through its gates. The founders of the town despised all supernaturals, because the supes—the demon-led Daemoni, more specifically—had brought the human world to its knees when they came out of secrecy twenty years ago. Shortly after came nuclear and black magic bombs, sending any survivors underground for years. The norms heard rumors of the big battle between angels and demons that followed, but many didn’t know what to believe. The humans couldn’t see the demons in their true forms, and they wouldn’t know if one possessed their own loved one. All they knew was that the vampires, mages, and shifters caused the end of the world as they knew it. To many, such as those here at the Edge, we were the enemy.

  Then along came Camila, the new mayor who walked with our parents now. She was human, but friendly with the supernatural, opening the Edge’s gates to us for the first time ever. Thus, everyone’s curiosity.

  Well, that and the fact that we were practically royalty, a whole entourage of guards surrounding us, many of whom were like aunts and uncles to us. The angels themselves appointed Mom to lead the rebuilding of humanity. She had done her best, but things had been deteriorating and the threat of another war loomed—with Brielle and me at the center of it all.

  “It’s nowhere and everywhere,” I said, also unable to pinpoint the sensation. “But we were promised safe refuge here. You know Mom and Dad wouldn’t have brought us otherwise. Dani wouldn’t have, either.”

  Brielle let out a soft snort at that. She liked Dani, but not in the same way I did, which meant she didn’t quite trust the young woman like I did. I could understand. We hadn’t exactly known her for long, but I didn’t need to. We had an instant connection. I knew Brie would come around eventually.

  I glanced at the woman on my other side, Daniela. My girlfriend. The idea of which seemed preposterous, but here she was, looking back at me with eyes so dark they were almost black, but in a soft, sparkling human way, not like the flat black void that filled demons’ eyes.

  “We’re almost there,” she said, her Portuguese accent thicker than usual with her excitement. Her hand swung out and brushed against mine, sending a wave of tingles up my arm. I was tempted to grab it, but Dad had already warned us that we were on a diplomatic mission and needed to be careful of showing any kind of special treatment or alliance yet.

  I understood Dani’s enthusiasm when the avenue finally opened up to Market Square—the wonders of which I’d only heard stories about until now.

  “Oh, my angels,” Brielle gasped.

  “Holy shit,” I said more bluntly at the sight before us.

  We had “merchants” at the Loft, the enormous underground bunker where we’d grown up and called home. They had “shops” to trade their goods, things they made out of scavenged scraps, offering little extras that went beyond the basics Mom and the council provided for all of us—shelter, food, clean water, and clothing. The stories about Misery’s Edge said Market Square was like our merchants’ section of the Loft, only times fifty or a hundred. They’d totally undersold it.

  “I knew you’d love it.” Dani’s full lips stretched into a wide smile, revealing gleaming white teeth against her dark golden skin, as my own mouth opened in awe.

  Rows and rows of tents and tables filled what had been the town square park in the Before time, colorful though faded fabrics whipping in the breeze, and items of just about everything imaginable stacked and hung every which way possible. Tools, textiles, old tires, hunting and fishing gear, furniture, dried meats and fruits . . . That’s only what I could see in the first row. And I’d never seen so many people in one place, not even when the entire population of the Loft gathered at once. They talked animatedly with each other while they investigated offerings, sometimes even shouting as they negotiated for the best bargain. The beat of a drum came from somewhere I couldn’t see, and the melody of a string instrument floated from somewhere else. The fragrances of baked bread and cooked meat wafted on the air, almost but not quite disguising the sour scents of human sweat—and something else that eluded me in the same way that I couldn’t pinpoint the strange energy threading itself throughout the town.

  “I can’t believe Charleigh’s missing out on this,” Brielle said as we closed in on the first row of merchants.

  A small pang of guilt stabbed at me, but I quickly dismissed it. Charleigh was our best friend, our cousin—by choice, not by blood—and a powerful witch. She’d been longing to come here as much as we had.

  “She’ll see it soon enough,” I said. “You know Mom will make Uncle Owen go get her as soon as everything is settled here. She’s now our sworn protector, after all.”

  “Tell me again why you need a sworn protector,” Dani said at the same time Sasha, our lykora, jumped from her hiding spot in Brielle’s backpack, landing on all fours. “Isn’t that Sasha’s job?”

  In her current state, Sasha looked like a toy-sized white dog sniffing the ground ahead of us, following the myriad scents of the marketplace. When we were threatened, though, she took her true form, an otherworldly creature somewhat like a wolf, but with feathered wings and the black stripes of a tiger, able to grow to whatever size necessary to protect us. Lykoras were known for their unending loyalty to their masters, and Sasha belonged to Brielle and me. It was her current form that kept me relatively calm despite that strange energy. If something were wrong, she would surely know.

  “Besides, aren’t you supposed to be the biggest, baddest thing on this planet?” Dani’s gaze traveled over my shoulder, where she knew my wings and weapons were hidden by magic.

  “Us and our brother,” I murmured as we sauntered past a shop offering containers of all kinds—buckets, crates, baskets, and jars to name a few. “He’s part of the problem.”

  “You have serious family drama,” Dani teased. She wasn’t wrong, but she didn’t even know half the story. I hoped she never did.

  I’d shared with her the news Mom and Dad had dumped on Brielle and me two days ago—right before the attacks that drove their point home. Well, not everything. Not the things I worried would send her far away, to never have anything to do with me. When we’d met in Ravenbury a few weeks ago, she hadn’t immediately rebuffed me like most people did. She was the first gay woman I’d met, and we’d connected right away. I couldn’t risk losing her. Not when I finally found someone who could possibly love me. No, some secrets needed to stay that way.

  Like the one Brielle and I kept—how sometimes it felt like the very fabric of our beings was woven of the darkest threads, and not just because the DNA of demons, vampires, shifters, and sorcerers tainted our angel blood. That all came from our parents, plus fae blood in our dad, but they didn’t harbor this kind of darkness. They had their own, but not like ours. We were an anomaly. Some believed we should have never been born, and perhaps they were right. We attracted the worst kind of energy, pulling it to us as energy does—like to like—even across dimensions and worlds. Not kidding, either. At six years old, we unintentionally opened an inter-dimensional gate to a world of evil. That same energy seemed to live inside us. Or, at least in me—my beast, whom I could never unleash. As our parents had revealed to us the other day, if not suppressed, our powers could literally destroy worlds.

  Not that the news had surprised Brielle and me. We’d always suspected
our powers were beyond anyone’s understanding—or control—and it was probably a good thing we were cursed by a spell that bound them.

  No, I didn’t tell Dani any of this, nor other secrets about the darkness, some I even kept from Brielle.

  I did tell her how the Daemoni, the demons, and the fae all wanted to capture my sister and me—how they wanted to use us for our powers or kill us because of them. How close they’d come the other day, when they attacked. It wasn’t like the potential of our powers was a secret. After all, everyone knew who our parents were, both their leadership roles and the forces they could wield, which were unlike anything in the world. At least, until they brought Dorian and then Brielle and me into the world. Dorian was like us, but he embraced the evil energy fully, abandoning our family to lead the Daemoni, our sworn enemy.

  “Enough drama to fill a book or two,” I agreed. “You and Papa Miguel are lucky in that regard.”

  She snorted. “I suppose that is the benefit of losing everyone you love.”