see what exactly was going on, but they clearly sensed something was wrong.
Vaughn’s body hit the ground, Quinn still half on top of him.
She tried to pull her arms out from under him. Rough hands grabbed her hair, pulling upward. Quinn snarled an inhuman sound of rage.
That seemed to pull the Ciseans back to attention. Several of them went for him and the others went for her as they tried to pull them apart.
“Stop,” she said in Cisean. “That’s not Vaughn. He could—”
The beast wearing her friend’s skin smiled.
Then it twisted. His fist came up, kicking one man in the head. He spun, flinging the other holding his arm at Quinn. While she had greater strength and speed than most men twice her size, she already had three holding her back and now a fourth thrown into her.
The wind left her lungs, and Quinn groaned.
“Potes,” she cursed.
Quinn evaporated once more and the men around her dropped to their knees. She wasn’t trying to harm them. It wasn’t intentional, but when pure fear touched them, humans couldn’t help their response. They weren’t built to handle it. Handle her.
While she’d been a force to be reckoned with when she was living . . .
She was something else dead.
Something more than they could even comprehend.
Quinn reformed in the flesh behind the creature wearing Vaughn’s skin. He had turned on his final guard and grasped his head between two hands. His thumbs pushed into the eye sockets. Blood leaked from them and the other warrior screamed.
Quinn placed a well-aimed kick at his leg, swallowing down her discomfort at the act. This wasn’t Vaughn, her friend. It was a beast. A monster. One that would kill without regard.
His knee popped. The demon grunted as it fell sideways, dropping the warrior’s body. Vaughn hit the forest floor, and Quinn kicked him in the side before leaning down to turn him over. His hand flashed out, trying to strike, but Quinn was faster.
She grabbed his wrist and dropped down on top of him, her knee in his sternum and her other leg extended out, digging into his arm.
Quinn pressed her forearm into his neck and leaned in close.
“Be gone, beast.”
He laughed, crimson coloring his teeth.
The creature spoke, and the only words she understood were “kill” and “him.”
Her blood ran cold.
It might not have been meant to reveal anything, but its words alone did just that.
Whatever was inside him spoke Trienian.
Vaughn didn’t.
Quinn grit her teeth.
She couldn’t understand it even if she wanted. While she could interrogate, the words would be lost on her . . .
Quinn lowered her head and exhaled a breath of black smoke.
The demon thrashed beneath her, but she held tight.
Forcing it to feel her fear.
“If you will not leave, I will smoke you out,” she promised.
Hate glimmered in its unnatural stygian eyes.
More footsteps came, but these did not try to remove her. They gathered around and a quiet hush fell over the Ciseans.
“What is that?” Thorne asked.
“I’m not entirely sure,” she said. “I found a creature lurking beneath your hut. I attacked it, and it went inside Vaughn. I cannot kill it without killing him.”
The beast let out another slew of words she largely didn’t understand apart from the occasional curse. No one spoke, but a gasp of surprise rippled around them.
They recognized the language too, at least some of them.
“He’s been cursed,” one man said.
“We should kill him. It would be a mercy,” another echoed.
“No,” Quinn said. “I will find a way.”
She peered deep into its black eyes as she released another breath of fear. The arms she held down fought against her. His chest attempted to rise, but Quinn pressed down harder.
“What way?” one to her left said.
“I’m not sure just yet,” she said slowly. “But I tend to get what I want in the end.”
“Too much fear will break him just as surely as death,” Thorne said.
Quinn pressed her lips together. Sweat slicked her forehead. Her naked body was widely on display, but if she moved, the creature was free.
“Bind his arms,” she commanded. The warriors moved with haste, securing rope around both wrists and ankles. “Two men to each rope. We’ll need to secure them.”
“We only have six,” one of them said.
“It’ll work,” Thorne answered before she could. Quinn frowned because she wasn’t sure it would.
“I’m going to move, and when I do, you must keep him here until we can tie him to something more permanent—” Quinn lifted herself off him, and his arms surged forward.
Just before his fingertips