I avoided him and focused on the demons I could sense. It takes immense composure to stand still and close your eyes when faced with hungry hounds of hell. But I had them now. I cast out my element, hooking it into each burning beacon of hellhound. Once I’d coiled my touch around their heat, I opened the veil between the two worlds with a mental slice, gasped as raw heat washed over me, and then thrust it through my link to the beasts. The ones I’d tagged burst apart in superheated clouds of ash. Demon howls filled the air. Their fear burned my soul, rousing my lust for destruction.
More.
With a flick of my wrist, I lit the others up like fireworks. A click of my fingers—gone. Embers floated in the air like fireflies. I laughed, caught the runners, and burned them from the inside out. Yes. More.
A huge source of heat loomed out of the mist. Ruby eyes delivered a hungry glare.
The voice, gruff and beast-like, spoke directly into my mind.
I stood my ground and glared up at the hideous face of the pack leader. Its hot, stinking breath blasted me like a furnace. We shared a moment of recognition before I felt the soothing balm of ice coil around me from behind. The beast pulled back and fixed its glare over me, fury flaring bright in its eyes. That’ll be Stefan behind me then.
A volley of gunfire rained over us, seemingly from all directions. Several rounds grazed me before I ducked down. The beast flinched, its flanks rippling as the rounds hit home, it yipped—once, twice. A mass of vaporous red tendrils unraveled from inside the beast, knotting around it, and then the beast was gone. The veil snapped closed. It should have been over, but the gunfire rained on, ricocheting off the street.
Stefan. I turned and found him shielding himself by curling his wings around him. Bullets slammed into his ice-armor, sending ice-chips flying. He searched the mist for the shooters but struggled to see them. I knew where they were. I’d tagged them, as I’d done with the hounds. The thirst for the kill stoked the fire of lust in my belly. I gulped the choking urges back, both physical and those in my mind. I had to hold on. Just a little longer.
Stefan’s sharp gaze narrowed. He wouldn’t hesitate to kill the enforcers. It didn’t help that they wouldn’t hesitate to kill him either.
Darkness pulsed through my veins as I crossed in front of Stefan, putting myself between him and the two dozen or so beacons of heat fanning out behind me. Stefan’s eyes blazed. The demon in him glared back at my fire-draped body. His face had hardened as though cut from solid ice. He glared with cold, empty eyes.
A bullet twanged off the road beside us. A warning shot. We both stood too still to be anything but targets. I really didn’t want a bullet in the back of my head, courtesy of the Institute’s finest.
“Stefan…” I kept my voice low, aided by the demon accent. “Don’t.” The oily touch of Damien crept out of its hiding place, seeking my resolve in an attempt to weaken me. “Please.” I couldn’t stay demon for long. Too soon, I’d need to drop the fire or risk losing myself to the chaos. Stefan’s expression twitched. He’d sensed my internal battle. Of course he had. Chaos rushed through his veins.
Stefan’s hand shot out viper-fast and closed into a fist beside my head. I flinched away, about to turn on him, when I heard the crack of sniper fire. He opened his palm and presented me with a perfect ballistic-tipped bullet, captured in ice. It should have warped or exploded, but he’d somehow caught it midflight and deflected the pressure into the ice.
He leaned into me, the frosted tips of his hair melting as my fire lapped at him. “They just tried to kill you, and you want me to let them take a second shot?”
I flicked my gaze up. “Leave them. This isn’t our fight. Not yet.”
The sound of boots crunching in the frozen snowfall bounced around the mist, making locating our hunters virtually impossible. But I could see them in my mind, flanking us on either side, fencing us in. I could end this very quickly. They obviously knew that, hence the kill shot.
Stefan unfurled his glorious wings, sweeping them back with dramatic flare.