Not his concern, he told himself as he sliced out with his blade, used his legs for leverage, knocked one beast to the ground and whirled on the other. If she wasn’t going to listen and split, he couldn’t be responsible for what happened to her. But he kept her at the edge of his vision just the same. Made sure the daemon close to her stayed on the ground. Blood spurted, howls echoed, and just when he thought the fight was almost over, the hybrid she’d originally hit with her arrows—the one who hadn’t yet shifted—let out a bone-chilling scream and morphed from human form into the biggest damn daemon Orpheus had ever seen.
The blond cursed. Orpheus looked just in time to see the daemon closest to her scramble to his feet, then backhand her across the face and send her sailing twenty feet. Her body slammed into the ground. Her bow and arrow went flying. The throwing star in her hand became a whir of silver as it ricocheted against a tree trunk. From across the clearing, the big daemon—the leader—growled, “She’s mine.”
Orpheus had a split second to decide what to do.
He let go of his daemon. The glow consumed him. Clothing ripped, bones cracked, and another roar echoed through the forest, only this one, he knew, came from him. From that part hidden deep inside. The part he rarely let out. The part he’d been cursed with from birth. The part that, even now after three hundred years, he couldn’t totally control.
Beast replaced man. Instinct overruled logic. Through hazy vision he watched the blond scramble backward on the moss-covered ground, her violet eyes wide and fear-filled. And though déjà vu filtered through his turbulent mind as he looked at her, his plans, his one true goal, what he was doing out here in these woods to begin with, began to slip out of his grasp. Only one thought spiraled in, swirled, and took hold, replacing everything else.
One thought that consumed him.
Feed.
***
I shouldn’t have been so eager to prove them wrong.
The thought revolved in Skyla’s head as her fingers closed around the rock. Athena, the head of the Siren Order—Zeus’s personal band of highly trained assassins—had tried to talk the King of the Gods out of sending Skyla on this assignment, but Skyla had argued she was ready for action again. Never mind that she was only weeks out of a battle that had nearly left her dead. She wasn’t about to let some shitty hybrid force her into retirement.
Of course, now, surrounded by three—no, make that four—hybrids, all bigger than the one who’d left her bloody and bruised in the first place and who were each eyeing her as if she were prime Grade A beef, she thought that maybe she shouldn’t have been so bullheaded. Maybe just this once she should have at least listened to Athena’s rationale.
Damn it, if she could just reach her dagger. It, like her bow and arrows, was charmed and could inflict more damage than a regular weapon. But daemon hybrid skin was tougher than most, and since her arrows weren’t doing much to stop these monsters, even it was no guarantee. Her mind raced with options. Feminine charms definitely weren’t going to work in this situation. Her only hope at this point was to deflect and incite.
The closest daemon growled and stepped toward her. But a voice at his back stopped his feet. “I said she’s mine.”
Skyla looked past the first to see another—bigger—daemon stalking across the ground with murder in its glowing eyes. Her adrenaline surged. She gripped the rock and glared up at the closest daemon, the one who was backing off to make room for the big one.
“Can’t do it yourself?” she taunted. “Oh yeah, you’re a real badass, aren’t you? Do you wipe his ass for him when he asks too?”
The smaller daemon’s eyes flashed, but he stepped aside for the big one. If she could get them to turn on one another, she might have a chance. A slim chance.
“No one touches her but me,” the big daemon growled.
She lifted the rock. Ground her teeth together. Felt the weight of her dagger in its sheath against her lower back. But before she could swing out and make contact with the rock, the daemon at the back of the pack—the one who’d only recently appeared—wrapped his meaty claws around the neck of the big monster and jerked him backward.
A roar poured from the mouth of the bigger daemon as his feet left the ground. The other two turned to look with shock and awe across their grotesque faces. The big daemon sailed across the small clearing, slammed into a tree trunk. Crumpled like a rag doll. A blur of claws slashed out until there was nothing left but bones and blood. The other two daemons, sensing fresh meat, turned and charged.
Skyla scrambled to her feet, grasped the dagger at her back and hurled it through the air. It hit one daemon square in the back of the head. He slammed into the ground face-first with a thud. As the other charged the remaining daemon, Skyla darted for her bow and arrow. She ran hard, slid across the damp ground, scooped up her weapon, then lined up her shot and hoped like hell she was aiming for the right one.
Her arrows sailed through the air in succession. Stuck into the back of the daemon still wearing a trench coat. Another slash of claws and all that was left was her, a bloody mess, and the man named Orpheus she’d followed into the trees.