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The demon’s eyes flashed again, and the thing shifted its weight, telegraphing its next move as clear as day. I waited for the lunge and ducked, hooking to the right. It took all of one racing heartbeat to realize just how badly I’d miscalculated. The thing wasn’t telegraphing, it was feigning, and I’d stepped right into its trap.
Fantastic.
The monster batted the blade out of my hand like I was a child and its gangly arm coiled around my midsection, drawing me to within inches of its face.
Clear liquid dripped from its pointed teeth before it closed its mouth and inhaled deeply. “Darling.” The word sounded grossly orgasmic coming from the creature, like I was some long-lost lover.
There was no way in fuck I was letting that thing turn me into its demon bride. I twisted and thrashed, fighting for even an inch of freedom, but its arm only coiled tighter, crushing the air from my lungs. Black speckles darted across my vision.
“Fight it,” I growled at myself.
I could not let unconscious overtake me. My heart was hammering in my chest and my intestines felt like they’d been caught in a vice, but I kicked and twisted and tried to scream. A vicious snarl ripped through the underbrush, and the next moment, I was airborne. The demon flung me away like a rag doll and I tumbled backward, bouncing across the ground, and losing all sense of direction as leaves and dirt swirled around me.
One thought pulsed through my mind: Run.
Another snarl seared the air, joined a second later by an ear-splitting scream. I scrambled to my feet and finally got a look at the fight raging in front of me.
Shit.
“Lily!” I screamed her name as a different kind of panic slammed into me.
My hellhound, the sweet girl who had been part of my family since long before I was born, had the demon by the leg and was thrashing wildly.
I scanned the area, spotting my blade half hidden by the monster’s body, and quickly debated whether I should go for it.
Fuck yes.
I dived forward and snagged the handle in a single move, then drove it into the creature’s side once, twice. As I drew back to strike again, it let out a scream so loud I instinctively cringed back and covered my ears, but since I refused to drop my knife, all I could do was press my fist to my right ear. It felt like my eardrum was bleeding.
The sound must have hurt Lily too, because she abandoned the demon’s leg and shuffled backward, sinking to the ground with a low whine. I’d already wanted to kill the demon, but now I wanted it to suffer.
Screw it. What’s a little hearing loss between friends anyway?
I settled into a crouch, blinking away the tears as the whine grew, and got ready to take another shot at the thing. But, instead of facing me like a big, grownup demon, it ran like a little bitch. I debated letting it go, and I was leaning heavily toward good-fucking-riddance, right up until Lily shook out her glossy, rust-colored fur and took off after it.
“I’m not in the mood to play hide and seek,” I called breathlessly out ahead of me.
She wasn’t listening. Which left me exactly one option. I chased Lily’s path through the woods because I would rather stab myself in the head with a dull steak knife than let her face that thing alone.
I rounded a corner at a dead run and barely avoided tripping over her as she sniffed, impatiently circling a small area of freshly turned dirt. It looked like someone had taken a giant leaf blower and just, poof, cleared that patch of ground.
“How did we lose that nasty smelling thing?” I asked, trying to keep my tone playful through ragged breaths. She pawed at the ground, obviously frustrated by its disappearance.
“Hey, it’s okay, girl. We’ll get it next time.”
She gave the ground a few more sniffs, sending up little puffs of dirt as she went, then she sat down and, no shit, grumbled at me like all of this was my fault.
“Honest to goddess,” I muttered back.
Matty and I didn’t agree on whether she was actually a hellhound. Yes, she looked more like a wolf than a creature who was raised from the pits of hell, but wolves didn’t usually hunt demons, and they didn’t live for twenty-five plus years. Seeing as how Lily had been around since before I was born and still looked the same as she had when I was barely big enough to walk, I was sticking with my hellhound theory.
I called Lily to my side and scratched behind her ears. “You did well. Good dog.” I said that last bit because I knew it’d get a rise out of her. And really, that was just one more point in my favor in the great wolf vs. hellhound debate.
Lily looked up at me with her big silver eyes and grumbled again, only that time it sounded like she was scolding me. Which I was pretty sure she was.
I chuckled and held up my hands. “I know, I know. We just need to figure out a way to get Matty on Team Hellhound.”
Lily tilted her head at me like I was stupid, then leaned against my leg with her tail swishing low in the night air. I scratched the top of her head gently, the way I knew would make her fall asleep with her oversized head in my lap if we’d been curled up on the couch rather than out fighting demons in the middle of a city park.
