Ula.
A scream ripped from his throat, ringing as a howl through the darkness. Going up on two legs, he opened his mind, sought the nearest Harrowgate. North. Several blocks away. Too far, but his only hope.
He loped toward it, no longer bothering with concealment. Operating on instinct alone, he rounded a corner and slammed into a woman. She smelled of rage and hurt that veered instantly to stark, icy terror. The emotions collided with his identical ones, intensifying them in a massive explosion.
Out-of-control hunger, the need to take something apart, made him tremble as he towered over her.
“Run, Little Red Riding Hood.”
In beast form, his words came out as a snarl, and she screamed like a fucking B-movie horror actress. The slayers would hear. Panic eroded what little remained of his humanity, and he struck, sinking his teeth into the soft spot between her shoulder and neck. She pounded against his chest, kicked wildly in futile defense as he shook her like a terrier with a rat.
“This way!”
A slayer’s voice broke him out of his murderous rage. The woman moaned, hanging limp from his jaws. In the distance, the sound of pounding footsteps echoed off the surrounding buildings. Time’s up.
With a toss of his head, he flung the woman’s unconscious body behind a Dumpster and sprinted down the sidewalk, bouncing off light posts and street signs in his insane bid to get to the Harrowgate. To the hospital.
Suddenly, something like a fist to the kidney knocked him off his feet. Another crossbow bolt. Blood splashed all over the pavement, and it took all his strength to stand, to limp toward the sewer grate ahead, all the while holding on to his beast form, which was far stronger than his human one.
Each breath was like breathing water, each step was agony. He welcomed the pain, encouraged it, because it kept him from passing out.
If he passed out, The Aegis would have him.
And he had a sneaky suspicion that if they took him alive, he’d wish he were dead.
Demons and netherworldly creatures rarely gave up the ghost without a fight, and tonight, Tayla was glad for that. She needed to cause pain. She needed to purge herself of everything that evil, lying demon doctor had said.
But no matter how much she pummeled the drekavac, a spindly, long-limbed demon with an oversized head and fangs as long as her forearm, she couldn’t get Eidolon’s words out of her head.
You are half-demon.
“No!” she shouted, and drove her heel into the drekavac’s midsection. The ugly creature crumpled to the floor of the abandoned warehouse, a shooting gallery for drug addicts, where she’d found it searching for humans to sicken with its breath. Beneath the demon, a dark stain marked the floor, and she wondered if it had been made by birth blood.
Hers.
Letting loose a roar of rage, she kicked the demon, kept kicking it, long after it was dead, until the sound of footsteps broke her out of her mindless violence.
“ ’Sup, honey.”
A man was walking toward her, his gait ambling but predatory, as though his body couldn’t quite keep up with his intentions. His glazed eyes gave nothing away except that he was stoned off his ass.
“You got some sort of dog, there?” Then he blinked, and she knew the drekavac’s body had disintegrated. Aboveground, all demons disappeared within moments of their deaths unless they died in an area specially designed to keep bodies intact. Aegis labs, for example.
“Worse,” she muttered, and stepped around the junkie as she headed toward the exit. She’d always hated this place, but it was a demon magnet and made for a rich hunting ground.
The man’s grimy hand closed on her shoulder. She froze, her fists clenched at her sides.
“Get your fucking paw off me.”
“Or what?”
“Or you lose it.”
The guy yanked her backward, and her tenuous hold on her temper snapped. She grabbed him by his ragged Army jacket collar and lifted him off the ground. With a hard shove, she drove him into the warehouse wall. He laughed, too shitfaced to realize the danger he was in.
“Take it easy, bitch. You want me, you only gotta ask.”
A shudder ran through her. This was the kind of guy her mother used to hang out with, the kind she’d always assumed had fathered her. She’d thought this was as bad as it could get. But now she knew the truth could be far worse.
“Shut up. Just shut up.”
“Bitch ain’t playin’ nice.” He started to struggle, but she shoved harder, felt the strain of his clavicle bones as they bowed, on the verge of breaking. “Ow, fuck!”
The scent of his anger, tainted with a touch of fear, got her heart pumping faster. Good. Because someone else should feel the way she did, as if their world had crashed in. Misery loved company.
“Does this hurt?” she whispered, and his glassy eyes went wide with terror.
The sound of multiple footsteps barely registered in her mind, but her body revved with adrenaline. She was ready to throw down and take no prisoners.