Shadow Visions: Shadow Warriors, Book 2 Read Free

life.
    “Salvatore Galante. There’s no way you can be out. I locked you up for life.” Half man, half skeleton, he looked like the walking dead. What the hell had happened to him?
    “So nice to see you again, Ixa.” When he said her name, a chill ran up her spine. Memories from the past blew through her mind in a flurry of images. A man twenty years younger with the same smug expression on his face, wearing the colors of his gang, aiming a gun right at her father’s heart.
    Which was exactly where she was pointing her gun, except this time the tables were turned on him.
    “You think your bars could hold me?” He laughed. The sinister sound echoed between the two warehouses. “Just like you, I made a pact with a god—one far more powerful than yours.”
    She heard his words clearly but refused to accept his meaning. “I don’t know what you are talking about.”
    “Of course you do.” He sneered with half his face. “I know what I saw that night—a child who blew me away. Literally. That was some trick.” He put his hands in front of his face and blew out a gush of air over his fingers. “And poof, an instant hurricane.”
    Ixa hated to remember, hated giving credence to his words, even though she knew exactly what he meant. She had been so frightened. She had just wanted the flames to go away, to make the bad man stop hurting her family. It was the first time she had felt her power over the wind rise, and she had no control over it. The wind should have blown out the flames but instead it had fed the fire and made it grow bigger, hotter and higher. The screams of her sister and mother tore at her soul. She squeezed the gun, never taking her eyes off the killer in front of her.
    “You’re not going to play your mind games with me. You’ve been messing with the product. Too much meth turns you into a dumb shit.” To think otherwise would drag her back into a world she wanted no part of. “Hands behind your head, pendejo ! Get down on your knees. Do it, Galante.” The man was a vicious drug lord who’d left a trail of bodies behind him. She didn’t know how he’d gotten out of prison, but he was going back.
    He laughed hard and harsh. “Nothing can stop me! Metztli will reign supreme and I’m going to rule this town again. But first, I’m going to take you out. Something I should have done a long time ago, when I capped your old man.”
    “Don’t you mention my father. You have no right!” Deep inside, something shifted. She actually felt the instant her elemental power released and expanded. The feeling grew, pushing upward, a pressure she knew intimately but hadn’t experienced in years. Her anxiety increased tenfold. All around her the wind kicked up. Debris in the alley smacked up against their bodies.
    Galante raised his hands to the wind. “Just like old times. You freaked me out then, but not now. I’ve got my own power.”
    Galante rushed at her in a blur of speed before she could even get one round off. He slammed into her hard, knocking her flat on her back. Her gun flew out of her hand and skidded under the dumpster.
    Ixa swung for his jaw, but he pinned her arms down, his superior strength immobilizing her. He had to be hopped up on meth. She clutched at the explanation, conveniently ignoring everything else. She twisted and heaved with all her might, trying to knock him off her, and shouted for help at the same time.
    Where the hell were the other cops?
    Galante stared down at her, a cruel smile on his lips. His eyes appeared flat, as if his very soul had been sucked out of his body. His skeletal face pressed closer. He opened his mouth and green goo oozed down the side of his chin.
    Anxiety rose and adrenaline kicked in. She couldn’t afford to panic, but she couldn’t fight her growing apprehension. He would kill her. She knew it.
    Ixa feared the man on top of her, but she feared her destructive wind power more. It was unpredictable and she had no control over it. The wind