Witch Blood - By Anya Bast Page 0,27

child and ran as fast as she could without looking back.

Thomas called her name right before a blast of magick hit the men like a lightning bolt. The backlash of power rippled and rolled like a tidal wave behind her. Isabelle heard the rush of it, tasted it like dirt on the back of her tongue, but she couldn’t outrun it.

It hit. She tripped and toppled face forward. Right before they made impact with the pavement, she twisted to break the child’s fall. White-hot pain washed through her chest, making her vision spot.

It was nothing like the magick that followed it.

It seared her skin and filled her nostrils with sweet-burning yuck. Gasping, unable even to breathe, she rolled over onto her stomach and saw the girl sitting a short distance away, a look of horror in her dark eyes, her long chestnut-colored hair a tangle around her face.

“Run!”

The demon was coming.

“Run!” Isabelle managed to scream at her once more as a meaty hand closed over her ankle and pulled her backward.

Gravel scraped her skin where her shirt had ridden up. Her fingernails clawed the pavement as she attempted to find some kind of purchase to halt her backward slide into hell.

She was going to die like her sister.

Isabelle reached into her left sleeve and grasped the handle of the last tie to Angela she possessed in that moment. A pretty bit of artistic fluff disguised as a knife.

It came down to this; an earthly weapon to use against an unearthly beast.

Oh, this so wasn’t going to go well.

The demon flipped her like she was made of aluminum foil and came down on top of her. He looked less human now, maybe because of the power he’d relinquished to defend himself.

And how had Adam and Thomas fared under that power, anyway? Lady, she didn’t want to imagine.

Boyle’s skin glowed with an unnatural reddish cast and his eyes had bled to complete and utter black, disconcertingly like Thomas’s. Then Boyle’s lips peeled back and Isabelle got a glimpse of a double row of too sharp teeth bracketing a whiplike tongue.

Teeth strong enough to crack human bones for the marrow.

“I know you,” he said in a low, soft voice, like a lover’s. His gaze traced the lines of her face and bitter vomit crept into her throat. “I’ve been hunting you.”

Images once again flashed through her mind of Angela’s ruined body, but this time they came from her own subconscious instead of the demon’s.

She choked down an anguished sob. “I’ve been hunting you, too,” she gasped through the demon stench a second before she brought her fisted blade upward, straight into the thing’s jaw.

The wound smoked and the demon screamed. She watched in surprise and horror as the stab wound opened even more, the flesh peeling away at the edges like burned parchment.

Blood dripped onto her chest, singeing a hole right through her shirt and burning her skin. Isabelle screamed and pushed herself away from him. In the melee, she’d forgotten about the blood.

She expected him to come after her, but the thing recoiled, screaming, and holding his jaw. Her realization came swiftly—for some reason the demon had trouble healing injuries made by her blade.

Looking down at the knife in her hand, she examined the beautiful, intricately etched copper handle and shiny blade.

Copper? Could it be?

Maybe she had a proper weapon after all.

Isabelle ripped her shirt off, trying to get the acidic blood away from her skin. While the demon turned away from her, nursing his injury, she wound the fabric around her right hand and wrist to protect her as she wielded the knife.

Just in time.

The demon turned and roared, his jaw nearly healed. The skin where she’d wounded him looked red and puckered but no longer smoked and bled.

She didn’t waste a moment. She rushed the demon and stabbed him in the chest, in the leg, in the arm, anywhere she found available flesh.

More smoking, burning wounds. More demonic bellowing. More acidic blood that Isabelle danced to avoid.

The demon backed away from her, obviously in pain. He roared again, this time sounding like a wounded animal. Boyle lifted a well-clawed hand and then disappeared.

Quiet. Silence.

Isabelle stood on shaky legs, staring at the empty space in front of her with wide eyes. All of her injuries rushed up to meet her…just like the ground. The last thing she remembered was the vision of the newly starry sky above her head.

And then darkness.

NINE

“ISABELLE?”

She winced as pain registered in her chest—a long, slow rip