A Cursed Embrace

“No, Celia and Shayna are here, too,” Danny answered. “Don’t worry about us. We’re safe and nowhere near the fight.”

Danny disconnected the phone prematurely. The cyclone of earth churned once more, bringing forth that biting, unnatural cold.

And another demon lord.

CHAPTER 22

The demon’s skin shone lime green. Like his brother, he bore wings the size of sails and clawed hands and feet. Except he had four arms, and four legs, and a tail as thick as a baseball bat. A white stripe of fur covered the top of his wrinkled and turtlelike face. He grinned with four very long and extra-pointy teeth. His tongue slurped across them as if he could already taste our livers. Somehow I thought we’d gotten the short end of the demon stick.

The clang of Shayna’s sword as it left its sheath cut through the sounds of Bren’s roars. But I paid them no mind. All my thoughts and instincts focused on attacking and making it bleed.

I changed, barely feeling my form shred through my clothes and how the tattered bits of sweat-soaked cotton fell against the earth. My tigress made contact first, slamming the demon into the side of the gorge, one paw against his throat while the other ripped an arm free from its socket. My aggression enlivened my beast until the long wet maggots slithering through the amputated limb left the demon and crawled along my back. That’s when my inner girl rose to the surface. I jerked back, narrowly missing his seven other angry limbs before Shayna sliced a leg off at the knee and Bren’s fangs crunched through the bone of another arm.

More maggotlike entrails exploded out like confetti as the demon shrieked. Dirt coated the insides as they scurried along the ground before quickly shriveling in the baking sun. We gagged like idiots and backed away. But we’d injured the demon. And now he needed to eat to replenish its strength. Like a true predator he picked the weakest among us.

Danny.

The demon tackled him and took flight. Shayna screamed, “No!”

Bren and I jetted after him. My claws dug through the hard soil and up the steep incline. I pushed harder and quicker than I’d ever moved, urging my legs to dig deep. Within seconds I passed Bren. He snarled with panic and frustration. He didn’t think I could fight this thing alone. And neither did I. But I owed it to Danny to try.

The demon soared higher and faster, his need to escape with his feast making his wings flap harder. I was keeping up, but just barely. He’d soon leave me far behind. I needed to act before he vanished with Danny. Thankfully I spotted a stack of boulders and cut right, passing the demon above me. I clambered up and used my hind legs to propel me forward seconds before the demon veered in the opposite direction. My jaws clenched onto his tail and I jerked my body hard, trying to use my weight to bring the demon down.

The demon tilted upon feeling the mass of my body, but recovered as my back paws hovered inches aboveground. Yet even my hard pulls weren’t enough. His wings remained intact and incredibly strong. He flapped them left, right, compensating for the odd angles in which I twisted his body.

The miles passed in a rush below me as we fought. The demon’s remaining limbs expanded their talons and grabbed at my body. I answered with my claws. There was no strategy, no perfect choreographed strikes, no smooth fighting techniques. There was only survival. I batted, I kicked, I scratched, wildly, while holding tight to a mouthful of leathered nastiness my jaws beseeched me to abandon.

My fangs held tight to the demon’s tail in order to hang on, but their sharpness eventually sliced through the demon’s thick hide. The muscle and tendons split and began to pull from the bone. I changed, keeping my claws and using them to scale up his back in human form.

Danny hollered with gut-wrenching terror and agony, “Help me! Help me!”

I threw out my arms and pierced my nails through the upper arch of the demon’s wings, forcing them to tilt down. The wind slapped at my body and dried my eyes, making it hard to see. He was brutal and attacked any way he could. But, damn it, I was brutal, too. I hung on tight and pulled my legs beneath me so my back claws stabbed into his shoulder blades. I ground my teeth, cursing and grunting until I finally forced his rapid descent.

My long hair belted me in the face and blocked my vision. I threw my head back, allowing the wind to whisk it behind me. I managed just in time to see the mountain of boulders we were about to crash into. I leapt off the demon’s back and shifted into the earth. The speed plummeted me deep into the mountain. I couldn’t slow quickly enough and buried myself deep before I could begin to surface. My lungs shrieked from the pressure and demand for air. I broke through the ground just above my breasts, coughing and wheezing. The stress against my ribs and diaphragm made it hard to draw a breath. I finished my shift in short spurts, clawing my way along the searing and jagged rocks.

Oh God. I didn’t know where I was—just far, far away from where the demon had first emerged. And crap, the traveling, winged, evil monster assured the weres wouldn’t be able to track our scent.

I forced myself to a kneeling position, scanning the area in search of the demon. Splattered blood dripped from a collection of boulders high above me. My lids peeled back, hoping my attempt to save Danny hadn’t killed him. I staggered to my feet and forced myself to climb, still too oxygen deprived to call forth my beast.

My fingertips were slipping over the first traces of blood when I heard the demon’s hiss echo. I clambered faster, ignoring my racing heartbeat and the alarm pooling my palms with sweat. The demon hissed again. It was then that I saw his head jutting into a crack between two boulders. A stick protruded from the small opening and nailed the demon lord in at least three of his testicles.

I launched myself on top of him and ripped off one wing, then the other, before it wrenched me off and threw me against the side of the mountain. My spine cracked like a pile of falling LEGOs. For a moment I thought two demons stalked toward me before my vision merged them into a single, mangled, royally pissed entity.

Shit.

I dug my heels into the rock and tried to rise. The demon was nice enough to help by grabbing me by the throat and hauling me upward. My power had returned enough to shift his three legs into the stone. He was trapped up to his knees, enough to momentarily confound him, and prevent him from crushing my larynx.

My limbs flailed wildly and my energy had wavered down to mere trickles when Danny’s warrior scream blasted from the crack in the boulders. He rushed out, gripping an old tree branch in his hands, and struck the demon with all his might. The wood splintered in his grasp, but he wouldn’t abandon me. He jumped on his shoulders and pounded his angry fists into the demon’s head. The demon ignored him. After all, to him, Danny was just another morsel waiting to be eaten.

The red irises of his turtle gaze glowed as his maw opened wide and his tongue slithered out to lick my chin. I ignored his taste, gathered my remaining strength, and punched through his chest. His head lolled forward in shock as his heart pulsed one last time in my hand.

The demon dropped me as his body bopped and rolled like some sinister and twisted Weeble. I landed hard on my side, shaken, severely oxygen deprived but alive. Very, very much alive.

Danny fell backward, groaning when he hit the slab of stone and gagging when the demon burst in an explosion of moving innards. He rolled onto his side and crawled toward me, fighting back his nausea. Maybe I would have had to beat down bile, too, if I hadn’t viewed the blast of guts as the equivalent of drop-down balloons to our very nasty, very gruesome victory.

“Oh Gawd. Gawd,” Danny spit. He trekked across the squirming intestines, slapping a few of the more ornery ones away, until he reached my battered body. He froze, realizing clothing was something my tigress had long since pooh-poohed. I’d crossed my legs and covered my breasts, but that didn’t matter, did it? Fact remained, I didn’t enjoy anyone but Aric seeing me naked. And hell, I didn’t even want him seeing me covered in demon organs.