Bound by Danger (The Alliance #6) - Brenda K. Davies Page 0,102

demon staggered, and when it did, Lucien crashed into its back. Wrapping his arms around its waist, he lifted it and slammed it into the ground. He wanted to let his fists fly until it was nothing more than mush beneath his hands, but if they could take it alive, they might be able to learn something more about it and its brethren.

Even as he thought it, the demon backhanded him across the face. The blow split his cheek open, and blood flooded his mouth.

The demon punched him again, and this time, his nose cracked and gave way. It moved so fast Lucien could barely keep up with it, but he managed to dodge the next punch before delivering one to the demon’s face.

In return, one of its punches connected with his ribs, and one of them gave way with a crack. The broken rib shifted inside him, and the jagged edge of it pierced his flesh. As the demon was about to deliver another blow, a hand seized its fist and yanked it back, pulling it off him and smashing it into the ground.

An eerie, awful shrieking erupted from it. Lucien had heard the same sound in the tunnels when the one they battled there released a similar sound. Then, he believed it was alerting the others to its death. Now, he couldn’t help but speculate if it was calling for help.

Needing to silence it, Lucien hammered his fist into its face. The demon’s head shot back, and the tip of Willow’s sword thrust between them to rest against its throat. The demon ceased its struggles as it realized that so much as a centimeter in the wrong direction could end its life.

Its thin lips skimmed back, and its white eyes illuminated the night as it glowered at Willow. Hatred oozed from its pores, but it didn’t move.

Declan snarled at the look on the creature’s face and unleashed a series of blows that battered its revolting face before knocking it out. Though its head lulled to the side and its eyes closed, Lucien didn’t dare ease his weight off it. He didn’t trust it not to be faking, and he refused to lose it.

Lifting his head, he gazed at the bodies littering the ground as what remained of the Savages fled into the woods as the sun began to lighten the sky.

Chapter Forty-Four

The demon remained unconscious as they bound its hands and ankles. When they finished doing that, they tied those binds together with a rope and cinched its wrists and ankles behind its back, effectively hog-tying it.

When his hand brushed against the thing’s clammy cheek, Lucien’s skin crawled. Its smooth skin reminded him of the feel of a snake’s belly. Saber wanted to put a bag over its head, but Willow argued against it.

“We won’t know if it’s awake,” she said.

“It won’t let us know if it wakes up anyway,” Saber replied. “It could be faking now, and we wouldn’t know.”

They all leaned closer to inspect the unmoving monstrosity, but if it was awake, it was hiding it well. Lucien rocked back on his heels as he resisted the impulse to kick it. It was a monster, but he couldn’t kick a helpless prisoner no matter how badly it deserved it.

This thing was a big part of the reason why Callie was in the back of an SUV with Simone, fighting for her life. That reminder caused his hands to flex as the color seeping through his system pulsed and shifted.

He had so much pent-up anger he had to release, but the Savages who hadn’t fled were dead. All that remained was this creature, and Lucien couldn’t take his wrath out on it… yet.

“We might see something in a flicker of its eyelids or a flare of its nostrils,” Willow argued. “We might be able to figure out if it’s awake that way.”

They all studied it, but Lucien couldn’t tell if it was still breathing beneath its cloak, and he had no intention of stripping that from it. Looking at it with the cloak on was bad enough; he’d prefer not to see it naked.

“We need chains,” Killean said. “These ropes won’t be enough to keep it restrained when it wakes.”

“Once the sun rises and takes care of these bodies, we’ll stop at a hardware store,” Lucien said.

He gazed at the dead Savages spread out across the rest area before shifting his attention to the road. They weren’t next to a highway, but the road was busy enough