Shady Lady by Ann Aguirre

Author:Ann Aguirre
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fiction > Urban Fantasy
ISBN: 9780451463258
Publisher: ROC
Published: 2011-04-04T22:00:00+00:00

Demon in the Dark

The ground trembled like the precursor to an earthquake. I scrambled away as the air thickened, gaining volume. And then it tore, something I’d never heard of or even imagined. I thought demons were evil spirits, some powerful, certainly, but lacking form in our realm.

I had never been so wrong.

Darklight swelled through the hole in the world, and then a powerful black-scaled shoulder wedged its way through, followed by a long arm topped in razor-sharp talons. It was like watching a hideous, unwholesome birth, and every inch of the demon was worse than what came before. The thing had a ridged skull and deep-set eyes that glimmered in the dark; it wore a spiked leather-and-metal harness emblazoned with infernal sigils. If only I could read demonic script, but I had never studied such things. One of the symbols looked faintly familiar, as if I had seen it before. Possibilities flickered through my mind, but horror and fright warred against coherent thought.

My guardian rolled to his feet. The monster pushed all the way through, nostrils flared as it cocked its head as if listening to unheard orders. Instinct shouted at me to flee, but like a mouse mesmerized by a snake, I couldn’t make my muscles respond. Violence clung to this creature like oil on its back, tainting the air around it. The beast shook off the disorientation and charged.

In one hand, Kel wielded the kukri-style machete; in the other, he held the slim, silver blade I’d seen him fight with in Laredo. He didn’t look my way as he placed his body between the beast and me.

“Run.”

“Can you kill it?” My fingers closed on my backpack, and then I realized it was fruitless. I owned nothing that could hurt it. “Will your flash do it?”

The demon lashed out with an enormous claw. Kel blocked with the machete, still taking a deep slash along his forearm. His tats blazed nearly incandescent, kindling a halo about him. His beacon probably wouldn’t do anything against an otherworldly monster like this; the Klothod had been spirits inside the monkeys, and the destruction of the demons inside burned up their bodies too. This thing unquestionably came from elsewhere.

“He cannot. It will not.” The deep rumble of a voice sounded as though it came through a fissure in the earth created by the slow grate of obsidian and basalt. “I am here for you, and I cannot be slain or unsummoned until I have tasted your blood. But I do not mind at all playing first with this little fallen angel.”

“This what?” Maybe I could stall. Distract it. Give Kel a chance to kill it, even if the fiend claimed invincibility. Demons lied; there had to be a way.

“How rich. How delightful. You don’t even know who he really is, do you?”

Kel landed a blow that should have decapitated the thing. But it didn’t.

“So tell me,” I begged.

“He is Nephilim,” the monster roared. “Half-blood offspring of an angel and a human female, born of lust.

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