Authors: Zoe Archer

Tags: #Romance

Demon's Bride (28 page)

BOOK: Demon's Bride

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His fingers brushed against her ring. Images suddenly besieged him—creatures of foul shape, with leathery wings, jagged long teeth, curved claws, and yellow eyes. He could smell the rot of their flesh, hear their shrieks of hatred.

“Stay.” He shook his head to clear away the images.

She pulled hard on her hand, trying to free herself. “Is this how it’s to be? Using force to keep me?”

“Hate me if you have to. But don’t go outside.” He drew one of his pistols.

She froze in place. “Why? What’s out there?”

Then the shrieks sounded, not merely in a vision, but here. And now.

Two creatures darted into the building. For a moment, Anne could only stare, for these were the beasts of a fever dream—grotesque fiends that had vaguely human shapes, with monstrous faces and horns. Serrated teeth crowded their mouths, and instead of hands and feet, they had claw-tipped talons. Ash-colored skin, sticky yellow eyes alive with rage.

Demons. She looked upon actual
demons.

And they wanted her and Leo dead.

The demons rushed toward them, their claws scraping at the painted floor. Fear tightened her throat. She looked around wildly for something to use as a weapon.

“Behind me.” Leo roughly shoved her back, putting himself between her and the advancing creatures. Fluidly, he drew his pistols, aimed. Fired. The powder exploded in a flash, filling the pavilion with two loud booms.

One of the beasts immediately crumpled to the ground, a hole in the center of its forehead. The other screamed and stumbled, then lurched to its knees. It clawed at the wound on its shoulder, black blood pouring down its arm.

Leo flipped the pistol in his left hand, holding it by its barrel. He rushed forward. His arm swung out as he clubbed the demon with the heavy butt of the gun. The creature toppled back, lashing out with its talons.

Anne winced as the demon’s claws caught Leo across the thigh, but he made no sound of pain, did not hesitate in his movements. He swung the pistol again. It slammed into the beast’s head, and the demon shrieked in outrage. Claws striking out, it tried to fend off Leo’s attack, but Leo was relentless, wielding the pistol like a brutal club. He bared his teeth, savage, as he struck the demon. Again and again.

She had no love for the creature, but she turned away as its thick blood splattered on the ground and Leo’s clothes and face. Its screams came fainter, wetter, subsiding into a gurgle. Then it fell quiet.

Turning back, she saw Leo standing over the body, his face dark with fury. Blood everywhere. He looked wild and fierce, terrifying and unquestionably male. Her heart seized, partly in fear, partly in amazement. She barely recognized the man she had married. And yet this seemed his truest self, standing over his fallen enemy.

His gaze rose and met hers. She saw it in the savagery of his storm gray eyes: he had just killed for her. This wasn’t the first time, and it would not be the last.

He holstered his pistols, then held out a hand for her. Despite, or perhaps
because of,
what she had just seen, she hesitated.

“There will be more.” His voice was chipped obsidian. “We must leave.”

“Why have they come?”

His face became a hard mask. “Because I’ve turned my back on the Devil. I’m no longer his bondsman, but his enemy.”

Anne gaped at him. She did not know what to think. Could he be telling the truth? He had woven so many lies, choking them both in the shroud of deceit. Burying them alive.

Instinct forced her to move. If physical safety could be found anywhere, at this moment, nowhere was as safe as being at Leo’s side. She hurried forward and took his hand, knowing full well that she could trust him with the safety of her body but not her heart.

He looked down at their joined hands. His jaw tightened, his expression enigmatic. And then they were hurrying outside.

Inhuman screams sounded in the night, the noise of giant, leathery wings beating the air. Anne pressed back as four winged demons swooped down. She clapped her hands over her mouth to silence her reflexive gasp. Only once had she seen beasts like this—in a medieval painting depicting the terrors of Hell. She had shuddered delicately at the painting, grateful that such monsters were not real.

But they were. And they now dove down to attack.

Leo released her hand. In a blur of movement, he took the musket that hung on his back, and aimed it at one of the demons. He fired. The demon screeched, then fell to earth. It lay still upon the ground as its blood coated the gravel path.

“Three left,” Leo muttered. He glared at his firearms. “No time to reload. Damn me for not being a soldier. If Bram were here ...”

Anne knew a well-trained soldier could prime and load a pistol or rifle in a single minute. She had seen demonstrations of the skill. But adept as Leo was, he did not possess this aptitude.

He slung the musket onto his back once more and looked about for another weapon. There was little time, though. The remaining demons saw their compatriot dead and new fury resounded in their shrieks. They dove down, heading straight for Leo.

She had to do
something.
Would that she had a weapon of her own ...

Anger, fear—they coalesced within her, both cold and hot. She felt it gathering in the labyrinth of her body. Vivid blue energy. It had burst from her when she had no control, in moments of panic. She had thrown Leo across the room with it. Yet it belonged to her, was part of her. A weapon given to her by Livia. She was not so powerless.

Anne fought to summon this power as the demons flew toward her and Leo. She grasped at it, but it was strange and new, slipping from her hold.

One of the creatures dove down, raking Leo’s chest with its claws. He grunted in pain and staggered back. The other two, scenting blood, swept low to join the fray.

Fury scoured Anne. And suddenly
there
it was, the power, potent as a storm.

She flung up her hands. Waves of energy poured from her in an arctic blast of air. She muscled for command, her body aching as she fought for control over the magic. It threatened to overwhelm her.

No.
She had been powerless before, in so many ways. But no longer.

Gritting her teeth, Anne directed the energy toward the attacking demons. They roared as squalls pushed them back, their wings beating against the ferocious gale. Anne shoved them away from Leo, gaining him distance.

He glanced over at her, brow lifted in surprise. Clearly, he did not expect her to come to his aid.

She could not examine her motivations now. Her heart still bled. But this was a battle they must fight together.

Clenching her teeth, she sent another surge of energy through her body. One of the demons went careening backward into the branches of a nearby tree. Boughs splintered and snapped. A thrill of bloodlust shivered through her. She wanted to hurt these beasts, cause them pain.

Leo bent to load his musket, but he had only gotten as far as pouring powder into the barrel when a demon attacked. Anne moved to push it back with her power, yet Leo acted faster. He gripped the musket’s barrel and swung out. The stock slammed into the demon’s leg, and the crack of shattering bone echoed over the manicured grass. Whatever foul magic had created these beasts, they still possessed corporeal bodies—muscle and bone. They could still be hurt.

She readied herself to hurl more energy at the demons. Then she fell backward, thrown to the ground by Leo. His body covered hers. A loud crash rang out.

Peering up from beneath the heavy shelter of Leo’s body, she saw a thick, jagged tree branch on the ground behind her. The demon she had pitched back into the tree shrieked in frustration as it hovered nearby. Anne glanced back and forth between the branch and the demon. It had hurled it like a spear, intending to hit her. And would have, had Leo not flung her down and shielded her.

It would not have been a scratch, the damage from the thrown bough. The jagged branch would have pierced her chest. Killed her.

Leo rose up onto his elbows, his body a lean weight atop hers. “Hurt?”

She shook her head.

The outraged demons howled. Anne already knew the sound. It meant they planned to strike again. Leo also seemed to recognize the creatures’ noises. He rolled off Anne, then helped her to stand.

Shoulder to shoulder, they readied themselves for the next attack.

The three beasts dove down. Anne summoned her magic to push them back. Two could not withstand the force of her energy, flapping hard against the tempest but still finding themselves shoved away. The third was bigger, stronger. She could not hold him back. It swooped close, a terrifying winged force of claw and tooth.

Leo swung at it with his musket, but the demon flew out of reach. They were locked in this dance, back and forth, the demon lunging near, Leo pushing it away as he brandished his weapon.

Anne’s glance fell on the gravel path beneath her feet. Her answer.

Swirling her magic, she used the energy’s force to scoop up gravel. Then she flung it with all her strength toward the demon. It shielded itself from the onslaught, throwing up its arms to cover its face. But its wings were spread wide. Unprotected.

Gravel tore through its leathery wings. It gave a scream of pain and anger as membranes perforated. It could no longer keep itself aloft. It spun as it crashed to the ground.

Leo wasted no time. He ran to the creature and clubbed it with his musket stock. Over and over. This time, Anne
did
watch as Leo turned the demon’s head into a mass of sticky pulp. The creature twitched, then was still.

Infuriated, the final two remaining demons charged. Anne hurled the force of her tempest at them, but the maddened creatures plunged forward. She crouched low as one dipped down, reaching with its taloned feet, and the stink of the thing as it swooped close nearly made her gag. She came out of her crouch to see Leo holding back the other demon, swinging with both his fists and his musket.

The first demon charged her again, and she bit back a hiss of pain as it cut her arm. Leo saw this. His face twisted in fury. He ran toward her, but the other demon held him back, its wings beating at the air, claws slashing.

Terror, exhaustion, and anger all seethed within her. This nightmare world—she wanted nothing more to do with it. Energy coalesced through her limbs, the force of a hundred storms. When the first demon rushed her once more, she let out a primal, furious scream, a battle cry, as she flung out her hands and unleashed the tempest inside.

“I have been lied to, manipulated, betrayed,” she said through clenched teeth. “Made fearful.
No more.
”

The beast made a frantic, enraged sound as it fought against the gale. But Anne’s wrath could not be contained. She let everything run riot, letting slip any control she might have possessed. The demon struggled, and then, with a shriek, it was caught on the storm she had created. Like a leaf, it spun on the wind backward. Higher. It clawed uselessly at the air to stop its mad flight. She was unrelenting.

Anne continued to blast the creature with the force of her magic, and it tumbled back through the sky. Toward the nearby towering Pagoda that rose ten stories above the ground. The demon tried to stop its ascent by clinging to a gilded dragon on the corner of one of the Pagoda’s roofs. The ornament snapped away, and the demon was flung high, higher. Until it reached the very top of the Pagoda.

It saw Anne’s intent and let out one final scream of outrage. She refused to yield. Manipulating her magic, she brought the demon up, then dropped it—directly onto the Pagoda’s spire. Skewering the demon. The spire stabbed through its chest, and the creature’s dying howl rose up to the dark night sky before trailing away into silence.

The last remaining demon looked to where its compatriot lay dead. It turned panicked eyes to Anne, then to Leo. She reveled in seeing the creature’s fear.

With a frightened yelp, it spun around and flew away. Its wings beating against the air, it disappeared into the darkness like the last vestiges of a bad dream.

The dream, however, was quite real. Demons’ bodies lay strewn about, becoming only carrion, their inky blood spread on the ground and splattered on Leo’s clothing, his face and hands.

In the aftermath of violence, the silence became its own war. Anne felt the magic within her recede, its blue energy a quieting storm, and as it ebbed, she was left shuddering and dizzy. The ground rushed to meet her.

Strong arms wrapped around her, holding her steady. She caught the metallic scent of blood, the warmth of Leo’s body, the fierce beat of his heart.

“I have you,” he murmured. “I have you.”

She struggled to push away from him.

“Stop fighting me. You haven’t the strength to stand on your own.”

“Give me time, and I will.”

BOOK: Demon's Bride

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