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  PRAISE FOR

  OF SHADOW BORN

  “Fans of Sylvan’s Shadow World series won’t be disappointed by this tale. The saga of vampire mates Miranda Grey and David Solomon is one roller-coaster ride featuring complex plots, intrigue, and devastating emotions. Sylvan is slowly revealing more of her overarching conspiracy plot, promising spellbinding drama to come!”

  —RT Book Reviews

  “This series is getting more interesting by the book.”

  —Mystifying Paranormal Reviews

  PRAISE FOR

  SHADOW’S FALL

  “Dianne Sylvan is truly a remarkable storyteller. With the ability to bring her characters to life and make their hearts pound with action, readers will salivate for the next installment of the Shadow World series.”

  —Nocturne Romance Reads

  “The third Shadow World urban fantasy is a great, exhilarating entry with several stunning twists, including a fabulous, shocking cliff-hanging climax . . . Fast-paced with backstabbing and betrayal, Shadow’s Fall is superb.”

  —Alternative Worlds

  “Shadow’s Fall is an exciting, well-executed third installment to Ms. Sylvan’s wonderful Shadow World, and I now wait impatiently for the fourth installment.”

  —Smexy Books

  “Exceeded my expectations since the last book! It was awesome and mind-blowing.”

  —Mystifying Paranormal Reviews

  “Sylvan continues to impress with her ability to wring emotions from her readers and give us the right balance of action and romance . . . It’s the true talent of a writer who can have her readers feeling the same things as her characters along with them, and Sylvan’s highly developed characters do just that.”

  —SF Site

  PRAISE FOR

  SHADOWFLAME

  “I absolutely loved this book! . . . Fans of vampire books everywhere, I have found the next big thing, and it is the Shadow World series by Dianne Sylvan. The twists and turns that Sylvan placed in this book kept me flying through the pages . . . Queen Miranda is one of the strongest female characters I have come across, and hands down this series is going to be sensational! I cannot rave enough over this one . . . Shadowflame gave me all the high-impact action, romance, and gore that I want in a book.”

  —Fresh Fiction

  “Dianne Sylvan’s writing is captivating. She creates a world that will suck you in from the get-go. Her writing style is fluid and unrelenting. Shadowflame follows the same near-flawless writing style that book one did . . . I enjoyed the suspense and Dianne Sylvan’s creative way of keeping readers on their toes.”

  —Nocturne Romance Reads

  “Miranda was the sort of heroine I enjoy reading about; she didn’t just suddenly fall for David, she made him work at gaining her trust . . . The overall book was refreshing.”

  —Night Owl Reviews

  “If you thought Queen of Shadows was fantastic, you are going to be blown away by Shadowflame . . . Dianne really knows how to rip your heart out and get you feeling everything the characters are feeling as you read.”

  —Urban Fantasy Investigations

  “Dianne Sylvan has truly created a vampire world that I would want to be a part of for years to come . . . A phenomenal book from beginning to end.”

  —Mystifying Paranormal Reviews

  “Dianne Sylvan is the queen of emotional storytelling. She takes the story exactly where she thinks it needs to go, even if it’s not pretty . . . I loved it.”

  —The Spinecracker

  PRAISE FOR

  QUEEN OF SHADOWS

  “Sylvan’s powerful debut is packed with startling action, sensual romance, and delightfully nerdy vampires . . . [Her] compelling take on vampirism, her endearing characters, and a complex, unabashedly feminist plot will have readers hungry for a sequel.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “Queen of Shadows pulled me in . . . Dianne Sylvan’s rich, dark, sexy reimagined Austin is filled with people I want to visit again and again . . . Sylvan’s got voice, doesn’t miss a beat, and rocks it all the way to the last note . . . Looking for a new addiction? Go no further.”

  —Devon Monk, national bestselling author of Stone Cold

  “Dianne Sylvan has created an original take on vampires that I thoroughly enjoyed, and I’ll be looking for her next book with great anticipation. She’s a skilled and talented storyteller who definitively knows how to deliver one hell of a book!”

  —Angela Knight, New York Times bestselling author of Master of Darkness

  “Dianne Sylvan is an incredibly talented writer. She draws the reader not only into the story but into the very marrow of someone who is starting to question their grip on reality . . . Queen of Shadows concludes with a great flourish, leaving the reader euphoric.”

  —Sacramento Book Review

  “Well written . . . The relationship between the empath and the vampire makes for a strong Shadow World thriller that will enthrall the audience with a sense of awe, as supernatural Austin comes across [as] realistic through the filters of the flawed lead protagonists.”

  —Alternative Worlds

  “My favorite book of 2010 so far . . . Moving, well written, suspenseful, and sensual, this is a novel you won’t want to miss.”

  —Fantasy Literature

  Ace Books by Dianne Sylvan

  QUEEN OF SHADOWS

  SHADOWFLAME

  SHADOW’S FALL

  OF SHADOW BORN

  SHADOWBOUND

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) LLC

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

  USA • Canada • UK • Ireland • Australia • New Zealand • India • South Africa • China

  penguin.com

  A Penguin Random House Company

  SHADOWBOUND

  An Ace Book / published by arrangement with the author

  Copyright © 2014 by Dianne Sylvan.

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  Ace Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group.

  ACE and the “A” design are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) LLC.

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) LLC,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  eBook ISBN: 978-0-698-14328-9

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  Ace mass-market edition / April 2014

  Cover art by Gene Mollica.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  Contents

  Praise for Dianne Sylvan

  Ace Books by Dianne Sylvan

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  PART ONE: The Eight of Pentacles

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  PART TWO: The Ten of Swords

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Four
teen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  To my mother: for golden summers, Jell-O fingers, and endless slumber parties; and for knowing I was your daughter the first day we met

  Prologue

  TEL AVIV, 2003

  The earth shook.

  There was nothing to do but run.

  Avi did not run. His sword flashed in the night, and he and Elite 7, the only other survivor of the Prime’s personal guard, fought back-to-back, keeping the enemy busy while the others escaped the Haven. There seemed to be a thousand of the adversary, their blood spattering the pristine walls and centuries’ worth of treasure passed from one Signet to the next. Whoever was behind this would have a lot of stains to wash out of his new carpets.

  “Go!” Elite 7 shouted. “Get the women to safety! I will hold them off!”

  He wanted to protest—there would be no leaving this hallway for 7 if Avi left him to fight alone—but they both knew the mind of their Prime, and knew that in the absence of a Queen, he valued his wife and her two sisters above all else in the Haven. The Prime would want them delivered to the safe house, and he would not have trusted anyone to the task but his Second.

  “For God’s sake, Avi, go!”

  He caught Elite 7’s eye. “Shalom aleichem,” he said.

  Elite 7 smiled at his old friend. They had greeted each other the same way for eight years . . . and said farewell the same way, too. “Wa-laikum as-salâm.”

  He returned the smile. Only then did he run.

  The world was on fire—smoke was thick in the air, leaving his lungs burning as he crossed the compound amid flying crossbow bolts and flaming arrows. Servants, Elite, anyone caught by surprise would be cut down mercilessly . . . and they had all been caught by surprise. No one, not even the intelligence operatives he had trained himself, had any idea this was coming. Their Prime had ruled for four decades without a single challenger—more than any other leader could say in this part of the world.

  The women’s apartment was on the far western side of the main building. He angled away from the Haven’s main concourse and took a side corridor the enemy wouldn’t know about unless they had memorized every meter of the property’s layout.

  Before he could reach the door, a sword swung toward his throat; he spun around, meeting it with his own blade, hitting hard enough to knock the weapon out of his opponent’s hand. Another quick stroke took the invader’s head.

  He looked up and saw three more coming toward him. “I do not have time for this,” he said.

  For all their ferocity and overwhelming numbers, these would-be Elite were nowhere near skilled enough for the second in command of Israel. He had them all down inside ninety seconds and was at the door in another ten.

  He jerked the door open, twisted inside, and shut it, slamming down the steel security bar. “Geveret Amit,” he said, “you and your sisters must come with me now—”

  He turned . . . and froze.

  The cozy room was a shambles, furniture broken and curtains ripped down. The window had been shattered, leaving shards of glass everywhere. And all around him, lying headless or with hilted stakes jutting from their chests, were dead men, none of them Elite.

  The women were gone.

  The devastation, however, was not what gripped his attention.

  At the far end of the room, in the only upright chair, a man sat calmly watching him, wiping blood from a blade. Dressed in black leather and almost certainly American, he was completely unaffected by the blood and death all around him.

  The Second knew why without doubt: He had killed all of these men himself.

  “Ah, there you are,” the man said. Even sitting still he had the preternatural grace of their kind . . . a very, very powerful one of their kind. His pale eyes swept the Second from head to foot and back up again, his expression one of a certain provisional approval. “The women are safe,” he stated in flawless Hebrew. “You should be far more worried about yourself.”

  He stood. Normally, the Second would have laughed—this was hardly an intimidating figure—but there was such strength in his young-seeming body, and such great age in his eyes, that a towering giant would not have been half as frightening.

  “Avishai Shavit,” he went on, sheathing the blade. There were at least four other visible weapons and signs of half a dozen more under his coat. “We have a mutual friend in the Mossad. He speaks highly of you.”

  He had to mean Director Dagan. “Who are you?” he finally asked.

  “I may be your salvation,” was the answer. “The men who have murdered your Prime will hunt you down and leave your head on a pike outside these gates before they will risk you making a play for the Signet yourself. One way or another, you have to leave Israel.”

  Avi made a sardonic noise. “Yes, I figured that much out already. And?”

  A slight smile. “You are fearless in battle—I was watching. You’ve been in military intelligence your entire life. Second in command is as high as you can go unless a Signet takes you, and you know, in your heart, that you are not a Prime. You are, however, exactly what I’m looking for.”

  There was a pounding outside the door. They had to know their men were dead by now. “To what end?”

  “You have heard the whispers,” he said. He didn’t seem to notice the people trying to break down the door. “When a despot falls dead in the middle of dinner from no discernible cause . . . when Death comes like a thief in the night where no mortal hand could reach . . . you hear someone say it, and someone else call him a fool, because no such thing exists.”

  Avi stared, nodding slowly. “I have heard.”

  “Then you know exactly who I am.”

  “There are many warriors greater than I. Why go through all this trouble just for me?”

  “You mean this?” He gestured at the bodies. “You will soon learn, if you accept my offer, that this, for us, is no trouble at all. Now . . . if you would like to hear more, I suggest we take our leave of this mess and go somewhere more private.”

  “How do you propose we do that?”

  A smile, amused but also sinister, leaving Avi uneasy . . . but also intrigued. “One moment.” The visitor drew a mobile phone from his coat and, when the other end of the line picked up, said only, “Activate.”

  Beyond the door, a half-dozen piercing screams went up, screams of terror and agony that were all cut short, a strangled silence left in their wake.

  “What did . . .”

  The man met his eyes, and again Avi had to steel himself against an instinctive ripple of fear. “Lesson one,” he said. “Do not ask questions whose answers you don’t really want to know.” He opened the door and looked at the Second. “You have nothing to lose, Avishai Shavit. Will you come?”

  He did not hesitate. “I will.”

  “Good. Follow me.”

  “What do I call you?”

  His quiet, commanding voice held all the authority of a Signet—and all the warmth of the Arctic. “You will call me Alpha.”

  PART ONE

  The Eight of Pentacles

  One

  Just another night at the office.

  The venue’s stage door swung open and several black-clad security staff emerged, trying to clear a path from the door to the car waiting nearby. Dozens of cameras clicked, lights flashing. A cacophony of voices erupted that drowned out even the sounds of nearby traffic. A moment later, a curly-haired redhead bobbed through the crowd, politely refusing interviews.

  “Miss Grey! How are you feeling since you recovered from the shooting?”

  “Miss Grey, have you started work on your second album yet?”

  “Miss Grey, is it true that the man who shot you was killed while in police custody?”

  She kept walking, letting Minh and Stuart keep the way open, until she’d passed through the reporters and hit the small knot of fans that had managed
to get to the door before her guards blocked anyone else from entering the alley.

  Most of them were bright-eyed young women who reminded her so much of herself . . . when she was mortal . . . before she’d gone insane.

  These were the people who had given her a career. She made a habit of pausing with them for just a moment to sign a few CDs and give a hug captured on a phone camera—the image would be blurry, but with the chaos they would blame the phone itself. It wasn’t much of a stretch; Miranda almost never got a decent shot with her own phone, and hers was ten-years-beyond-state-of-the-art by virtue of her being married to the Fanged Wondergeek.

  Finally with a parting smile she took pity on her bodyguards and headed for the car. Harlan held the limo door open for her and she slid in, dragging her guitar along with her onto the seat.

  As pretentious as she’d thought it was the first week, she had to admit the limo was a comfortable way to travel; the Lincoln had thrown a rod or something and had to go to an actual mechanic for a change.

  The car pulled away from the curb, and she reached into her coat pocket for her phone. The usual patrol status reports were coming in: situation normal.

  “Straight to the rendezvous, my Lady, or did you need to stop along the way?”

  She had already fed tonight, but as the high from the show began to abate, already her body was whispering pleas for more blood, and she was starting to get that itching, gritty feeling in her veins. Just thinking of fresh blood caused her stomach to lurch painfully.

  Miranda sighed. “Stop before we leave downtown, please.”

  She’d expended a lot of energy performing tonight. That must be why she was hungry again so soon; she was just getting used to being back onstage. Modulating her energy was different now—on the one hand she was stronger, but on the other, working her empathy through her new power was taking some adjustment. All of that extra power could burn out quickly, leaving her exhausted, if she got it into her head that she was invincible.

  But even as she told herself she was just tired and overworked, she wanted to curl up and weep . . . because she knew it was a lie.