Night Whispers: ShadowLands, Book 1 by Alisha Rai

and shot him, grimacing at the fine mist of pink blood. The Shadow lurched backwards and fell on his back, still.
    She didn’t waste time to check and see if the deed had been done. She pivoted and ran to the teenager. Even as she ran, she knew she was too late. The Shadow’s mouth was moving on the girl’s shoulder, sucking away at her blood, and the kid was even paler than before, her eyes vacant and officially checked out of reality.
    No way. Jules refused to lose someone in front of her very eyes.
    She grabbed the Shadow’s brown hair and threw all of her weight into a solid heave. The thing staggered back and fell to the ground, slow in her glutted state. She blinked as Jules straddled her.
    The Shadow went limp, all fight gone. Her face relaxed in blissful acceptance. For a split second, Jules could swear coherence shone out of the female’s silver eyes, replacing the madness that had just been there.
    But then it vanished, and she began to struggle like a wildcat, twisting and bucking underneath Jules.
    Sending a quick prayer upward, Jules took care of the creature with a single, well-placed shot between the eyes.
    The sound of the gun was extremely loud to Jules in the now-silent night. She stood on shaky legs and walked back over to the teen who lay on the ground, her pretty amber eyes staring up at the sky. Her dirty brown hair was wet with sweat and clung to cheeks barely beginning to lose the chubbiness of childhood. Bright red blood stained her shoulder.
    Jules knelt next to the teen and easily ripped the neckline of her shirt until the bloody wound high up was visible.
    Compromised.
    The word was what they used for people who were bitten by the Shadows for blood. If the Shadows were ravenous, they feasted on the human’s flesh long enough to kill them, which Jules privately thought was the better option. Better to be eaten alive than be compromised. Because if a person was compromised, then whatever virus the Shadows carried in their blood and saliva was transmitted to the human. And the human, after the hellish three-to-four-day-long Illness, either turned…or died.
    “What do I do?” she murmured, half to herself. She had never come across such a recently compromised individual, let alone one so young.
    She had never had to watch anyone actually get bitten.
    Basic puncture wounds, those she knew how to treat. Clumsily, she pulled her own shirt over her head, leaving her wearing only her tank top. She was amped up enough that the cold didn’t bother her.
    She pressed the cloth to the teen’s wound. The shirt was hardly sterile, not with her sweat and dirt covering it, but it was better than nothing. And really, infection was the least of their concerns, not when the mother of all blood-borne diseases was coursing through the girl’s system.
    So focused was she on the girl, she didn’t hear the footsteps. The displaced air behind her was her first sign they weren’t alone.
    “Fuck,” she muttered in a whisper. Not more Shadows. She was wiped.
    Her body turned fast enough that the blow meant for her temple glanced off the back of her head. She fell to her butt, stars temporarily bursting in front of her eyes. Despite her incapacitation, she fumbled for her gun, unsurprised when a boot slammed down on her hand, forcing her to drop her weapon. Tears sprang to her eyes. Not Shadows. Human.
    She tried to gasp out an introduction. “I’m here to help. Don’t—”
    A hard hand grasped her by the hair and arched her neck backwards before smacking her head into the tree. The sound of more footsteps had her lashing her arms out at the knowledge that she would have to fight two or more people shortly.
    Who was crowing about being such a tough chick yesterday? Pride goeth before the fall.
    No, no way was she going out like this. She’d fought Shadows. She could take a couple of humans.
    Unless, of course, she thought as an all-too-familiar prick on her neck gave her a slight warning before she became