Long Shadows David Baldacci Novels & Stories

“What in the world—” A shadow came out of nowhere; snatching Helick around the waist, his gun fell from his hand. When he tried to fight the shadow, his hand went through the mist, jolts of electricity running into him. The shadow could hold him, a solid, but he had no defenses. Helick felt his body being wrenched from the grasp of the shadow as he went hurtling through the air. He landed on the ground in a roll. On the sidewalk, his body in shock from the charges, he stared up at the sky. “Heard you needed a hand,” Daniel said, coming to stand over him.

I really, really wanted to. Instead, I closed my eyes and let him fuck the worry out of me, knowing that when the sun rose, everything would be waiting. The councilman, Malachi, is the shadow over Damon. But for now, there was just Lucas, burning away the dark with the heat of his body and the force of his will. I held onto that as long as I could.

Xander chuckled softly, his eyes gleaming with malicious delight. "Rescue, you say? Oh, how predictable. But know this, Dakota, the shadows are my ally. I command them, and they will be your undoing." As Xander finished speaking, the room plunged into darkness, enveloped by an inky blackness that seemed to devour all light. Dakota's heart raced as he relied on his acute senses to navigate through the void, his movements cautious yet purposeful.

The crescent scar glowed through my shirt like a quiet moon and then subsided, as if promising to wake when it was again needed and not a second before. Ronan is still out there. The cameras will come back with cheaper eyes. Men who like rules more than people will raise flags over hallways that don’t need them. We will count fenceposts. We will fight and forgive and do the ugly work of making law useful. Orion will decide again, and again, until his name sits easy. Edda will carry water until she knows it weighs more than shame. Jasper will be bored when the hall committee argues about where to put the windows and that will be the best day either of us will have had in years. The shadows wi

"I got the feeling they were young. Younger than you'd expect for someone so powerful." A young killer with shadow magic, talking to invisible partners, accelerating their harvest of sacrifices. Hope's mind races through possibilities. A young wolf means someone who might be here under different pretenses. Someone no one would suspect. "Lux, can you use David as a connection point? Track the shadow magic signature from his memories?" "That's incredibly invasive and potentially traumatic," Lux warns. "Memory diving isn't gentle." "I'll do it," David says immediately. "If it helps catch whoever killed Alpha Ryker, I'll do whatever it takes."

Hunters. “Shadowthorn sends a message!” one roared. “The Alpha wants his heirs!” Aria shoved the twins behind her, blades already drawn. “Over my dead body.” Luka’s shadows flared. Lila growled, tiny body vibrating with power. The lead hunter lunged. Aria met him mid air, driving both blades into his chest. Hot blood sprayed across her face. She twisted, using his momentum to slam him into the second attacker. Luka’s shadows wrapped the third wolf’s legs, yanking him down. Lila pounced, ripping out his throat with a snarl that was far too mature for her age.

There was a narrow staircase behind a door in the east corridor that Aldric had noticed on his third day and filed away the way he filed everything: quietly, without drawing attention to the filing. He went up on the eleventh night, when the palace had settled into its late-hour rhythm and the corridors held only the occasional guard doing rounds he could time by now with his eyes shut. The library was large and badly lit and smelled of age and something faintly metallic he couldn't immediately place. He moved along the shelves with a small candle, reading spines, not yet sure what he was looking for. He told himself this was reconnaissance. He told himself it was useful to understand the ki

It took them awhile, but they managed to go through everything and pack up the useless stuff. Angel was in the office going through the desk while two of staff members were packing up the books inside when one of them went to grab another book and the whole shelf moved. Her father who had just been standing there looked at her oddly and she shrugged, she hadn’t known the room was there either. When they opened it, they found what appeared to be a secret office in what was intended to be a panic room. There was a lot of paperwork, financial information, a lot of things that didn’t make sense right off. Until Angel looked at it closer and saw the pattern. It turned out Kingsley hadn’t just bee

“The Alpha of Shadowed Banes.” *****

Every step was fraught with danger, and the air crackled with tension. As we neared our destination, a sudden realization struck me. The Shadows were not just an external threat. They had infiltrated our lives, entangling themselves in our past and present. We had unwittingly played into their hands, dancing to their tune without knowing the full extent of their control. The final confrontation loomed before us as we entered a vast chamber bathed in eerie blue light. The enigmatic leader of The Shadows stood before us, a figure shrouded in darkness, his identity concealed. His voice reverberated through the chamber, chilling our bones.