deep breath, intending to catch their scent and commit it to memory, but the fresh coppery scent of blood filled my nose: Melisande’s blood. I heard her gasping breaths beneath my chest.
Prince Leviathan’s aura grew closer, furious power rippling from him. The demon Prince came into sight, accompanied by several Witches who trailed behind him. The tang of magic drifted from them, but Leviathan took one look at the bleeding angel beneath me, and his eyes darkened behind his mask.
He closed them, tilting his head upwards. The sun gleamed off the bright bone of his mask, and another cloud drifted by, casting us into shadow again.
He raised one hand and opened it, then snapped it closed.
A strangled scream came from the tower. The would-be assassin floated through one of the lower windows, twisting and writhing in midair until he came to a halt in front of the Prince.
Leviathan held power over blood. He gripped every drop of it in the demon’s body, contorting the assassin into terrible shapes as he controlled the ebb and flow of the blood in his body.
The assassin screamed again, a sound of pure agony as Leviathan studied them. “One of Mammon’s loyalists,” the Prince said dispassionately. “I sentence you to death for desecrating the laws of my Circle, and for the attempted murder of a Prince’s consort.”
If I’d been thinking more clearly, I would’ve taken the assassin prisoner and questioned them until there was nothing left of them but shreds of flesh.
But I wasn’t thinking clearly. The smell of Melisande’s blood was still in the air, the copper scent coating my throat.
Leviathan’s lips tightened, and he stretched his fingers wide.
The assassin was still hovering several feet above the ground, and the first drops of blood splattered across the obsidian below him like rain. He groaned again, unable to make any other noise as the blood leaked from his eyes, ears, and nose, and finally poured out of his mouth in a river.
Melisande made a small noise of horror as Leviathan ripped the blood through the demon’s pores, creating a red mist and leaving the body nothing but a dry husk.
The Prince of Heresy lowered his hands, letting the husk drop to the street. The crunch of dry bones and skin against the wet smack of blood was music to my ears, an agonizing death for the man who’d tried to kill my woman.
“Do you need help?” Leviathan asked Melisande. His mask was splattered with blood, his hands wet with it.
Melisande climbed out from under me and stood up. She’d ripped off a length of her skirt and held it pressed against the wound in her shoulder, but the cloth was already soaked. She shook her head. “Belial was the one hit,” she said, her voice tight. “This is just a graze.”
She knelt by my paw, and I realized my fur was wet with my own blood. The bolt was still buried deep in my flesh, a slowly leaking wound.
With the danger completely annihilated, I shifted back to human form, where the pain was much more apparent. It sent barbed shafts of agony through my arm, but I had to stop myself from snorting in amusement at Melisande’s concern.
“Just a splinter, angel,” I assured her, and gripped the bolt in my forearm to rip it out.
She winced, drawing a sharp breath between her teeth as the sound of steel being yanked from flesh filled the air.
“Belial,” she whispered, but my muscles were already knitting themselves together, the skin closing over the hole in my arm.
I held out my bloody arm for her inspection. “Good as new. The bolt wasn’t poisoned or holy. But you were hit.”
I batted her hands away and forced her to hold still so I could inspect her shoulder. She frowned and gave me a look that told me I’d catch hell later, but let me lift the sodden mass of cloth off her bare skin.
The bolt had just missed her wing, only catching a few downy feathers, and had left a graze no more than a few centimeters deep. I released a breath of relief. She’d bled quite a bit, but the blood flow was already slowing to a crawl.
Her face was pale. “Belial, the other day when I was coming home, I was sure someone had been following me.”
I held back a sigh. “And you didn’t mention it until now?”
Melisande raised an eyebrow. “I was distracted. There was a lot happening.”
I wasn’t going to put the blame on her shoulders. Not