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But how?
And then, Ben recalled that Sai had dragon in him. Perhaps it gave him extra strength.
Even so, Ben was impressed. He himself would have been up a shit creek without a paddle if he didn’t have his borrowed sabre.
Annie moaned in the grass nearby, and Ben dismounted, rushing to her side. As he did so, the two demons’ bodies rustled like leaves, their forms losing substance, finally turning to smoke. Just like that, they disappeared as if they never were.
And real life resumed as if someone had pushed the “play button” on this particular movie.
“Are you all right, my lady?” one of the soldiers who’d been riding past paused to inquire from his seat atop his horse, looking down with concern at Annie as Ben helped her stand.
“That was a rather hard tumble.”
Annie blinked owlishly, looking at Ben, then the carriage with Brigid in it and Sai standing beside it, then back at the soldier in red.
“Oh, I’m fine,” she quickly replied, putting on a sheepish smile.
“How embarrassing. Pretend you fine gentlemen didn’t see my fall from grace. Quite literally. These phaetons should come with seatbelts, honestly. Especially for people as easily distractable as I.”
Ben didn’t buy the innocent look on Annie’s face, because he saw the sharpness in her eyes. Before she’d been knocked unconscious, she must have seen the demons too.
As surreptitiously as he could, Ben swiped the sabre on the grass, cleaning it as best he could of the black blood still sticking like tar to its blade. Then, he stood as well.
He hid it behind his back with one hand and tried to look as unsuspicious as possible. Praying that the second soldier didn’t suddenly look at his scabbard and find his sword missing.
“No harm done,” he said jauntily, grinning for show at Annie.
“I told you to hold on tight, cousin. You are so prone to accidents. But you look none the worse for wear. Only a little bruised perhaps?”
“Yes,” she agreed with a tinkling laugh.
“The only thing bruised besides my well-cushioned derrière is my pride.”
They chatted a bit more with the two soldiers and answered the same well wishes from other passersby. Apparently, they’d made a bit of a scene. But because they were dressed richly and looked well, thetonwas forgiving of Annie’s inelegant tumble.
No one seemed the least bit concerned that two werewolves, or whatever those demons were, almost tore four people to shreds.
When the soldiers left, and the attention died down, Ben put an arm around Annie’s shoulder and led her back to the carriage.
Sai was sitting back inside the phaeton again, one hand clutching the reins tightly, the other arm wrapped around his torso, likely blocking people’s view of the wounds he sustained. Brigid was ghostly white beside him, sitting stiffly straight. But otherwise, she seemed unhurt. And for all her paleness, she didn’t look frightened.
If anything, she looked furious and determined.
Which was when Ben finally asked, in a relative lull from the milling crowd—
“What the fuck just happened?”
