Page 3 of Midnight Coven

He lived a whole other life, in a whole other world.

It felt so real.

Perhaps that was unnatural, too. Perhaps it was more proof of his decay, to live two lives, one here, the other only in his mind.

But he knew it was even less than that.

It wasn’t his life he relived in that other place.

The voices he heard, they weren’t speaking to him.

Shewasn’t speaking to him.

She didn’t see him, even when she seemed to be looking right into him. None of them saw him. None of them knew he existed.

None of them knew he listened.

None of them knew he saw.

None of them knew he tasted, touched, felt.

Not even the man whose life he borrowed knew he was there.

He was invisible even to him.

The Shadow.

Stranger and Shadow.

Shadow and Stranger.

He couldn’t even be certain which was which.

The Stranger tasted salt and copper on his tongue and wondered at the sharpness of its bite. He had lived this way for years… so many, many years… yet never could he remember tasting the One Source so distinctly or intensely.

Was it because the other tasted it this way?

Was it because he tasted her blood, still on his tongue?

He saw the Shadow feed on her, and he felt an envy and longing so intense he could not breathe, could not taste anything, smell anything, but her flavor and scent.

Or maybe it was the creature he held in his hands now. Perhaps it was that ancient blood connection that lingered, even here. The Stranger remained connected to them, even now. He drank of them, and he tasted that connection.

It made their blood all the sweeter.

He had lived as a ghost for so long.

He had drifted on the edges of this world.

He had lost everything, mourned everything, hated everything, and yet he endured.

Year after year, decade after decade… century after century.

Until now, he had been cautious.

Discreet.

Silent.

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