If it was, it meant Lleweyn had lied to her. She ground her molars at her brother’s stupidity that had now placed her in these circumstances.
“We’ve only been waiting for the day that one of you would be stupid enough to leave your glen again.” Rayale snorted, petting the head of a mouse resting on her shoulder.
“I’m getting bored of this.” Karis clenched her jaw.
Lilith was a predator; she knew the signs of a pending strike and Karis was broadcasting all of them. Her muscles were tense, her knees bent, her wrists rigid, and her eyes cold as ice.
But what caught Lilith’s attention more than all of that was the thin silver chain hanging around Karis’s neck. It was her mother’s pendant.
Licking her front teeth, she moved back onto her heels ever so slightly, affecting a nonchalant attitude and evening out her breath as she prepared to strike. There’d probably be no chance that she could deliver the attack before one or both of the other two women took her out, but she wouldn’t be waiting around to let them kill her either.
“So what now?” she asked, trying to distract them. “I’ve told you I don’t have it.”
Rayale nodded. “True. But I’m almost positive you know all of Lleweyn’s hiding places.”
“What’s so important about that little bit of jewelry anyway?”
They all three hissed at once, if as she’d delivered them a blow.
“That is not for you to ask, wolf,” Karis spat.
Licking her lips, moving ever so slowly into position, she asked the one question that nagged her.
“How did you even know it was me in that pub to follow me out here?”
Ying laughed and clapped Rayale’s shoulder. “Should I tell her or you?”
Rayale flicked her wrist.
But neither one of them wound up telling her. Karis glowered as she said, “Rayale set her mice all around that glen, ready to let their piper know the instant your clan stepped foot out of the protection of the glen. We’ve been following you all along. You almost got away when you became the crone though—”
Ying nodded. “Except for the fact that you travel with that hell spawn.”
“Giles is not a demon,” Lilith snapped, offended by their words though he wasn’t even here to be insulted by it.
Karis shrugged. “Whatever. This is what you’re going to do, she-bitch.” She tipped her sword down a bit, relaxing her grip, and Lilith saw her moment to strike. “You’re going to take us back to—”
She dug her nails into the soil, just a second away from springing into action when a throaty voice sliced through her concentration.
“She’s not going to do any damn thing you say,” Giles growled, materializing as if from nowhere and gripping Karis by the shoulders. He dragged her down with him, pinning her to the ground.
Ying had a flaming arrow nocked in her bow quicker than Lilith could blink and aimed it square at his chest. “Let her up, devil.”
Lilith could barely recognize Giles. Gone was the urbane-looking demone. His hair stood up on his head and his red eyes were wild, shifting between all four of them before finally setting on Lilith’s face with a sort of manic frenzy gleaming inside them.
“Lilith, are you hurt?” His voice rolled with a shot of thunder.
Lilith’s heart doubled in speed; he was a wild looking creature. His skin gleamed like hot coals burned beneath it. Making him appear the devil they thought he was.
Her breathing increased as his scent of smoked cherries pervaded her senses.
“Have they hurt you?” he asked again, snapping her from her heat-induced trance.
“No,” she whispered softly, more grateful to see him than she cared to admit, and crawled toward him, snatching the necklace off of Karis.
“Hurt our sister and we will kill you,” Rayale said menacingly.
“Shoot that flaming arrow at me—it cannot harm me,” he said as though taunting, turning his face toward Ying. “I was born of fire, I cannot die of it.”
Moving her shot down an inch so that it now rested on Lilith instead, Ying smiled. “I’ve got no beef with you, demon. Give us the wolf and you can go.”
Lilith was literally outgunned and out-magicked. It’d taken a pack of ten, her, and her brothers along with a few cousins to get the women out of their woods, spreading the word to kill them on sight should they ever attempt to enter their glen again.
Karis glared at Lilith with fury in her brown eyes, but she didn’t move an inch.
Lilith had to admit to being a tiny bit awed by Giles. Here was a creature more fearsome than any she’d seen before, and he wasn’t doing much other than sitting on Karis.
Rayale inhaled, lifting the flute to her mouth.
“Breathe on that thing and I will possess your soul.” Giles held out a hand that now glowed with an orange, hazy hue.
Hands trembling just slightly, Rayale lowered the flute.
Ying pulled the arrow back tighter.