She's No Faerie Princess Read Free

blow and dive toward its hind legs, claws flashing. With two quick slashes, the Lupine sliced through thetendons at the backs of the monster's legs, sending itcrashing to the ground and bellowing in rage.
    Quickly, instinctively, Fiona jumped up from her tree, lightbalanced between her fingertips, and raced forward. Shestopped a few steps short of the felled demon, took aim,and sent the swirl of light flying toward the creature'sgaping mouth as if the light were a Frisbee and thedemon were an overeager border collie.
    She should have stopped a few steps shorter. As themagic missile made impact, the demon lashed out withone arm and caught her across the lower torso with thetip of one glistening claw. It sliced through her clothing asif she wore cobwebs, and she gasped at the fiery pain ofher skin parting unnaturally, leaving a crimson line in herpale flesh.
    Dazed, she looked down at her injury with wide, confusedeyes. The pain registered along with the ticklish trickle ofblood across her stomach, but she stayed on her feet,unmoving. She couldn't even raise a hand to cover thewound. Weakness crept over her, making her swaywhere she stood. Her little magic trick had taken more outof her than she had planned.
    In the background, she thought she heard a roar thatsounded more like an angry werewolf than an attackingdemon. She wanted to ask if he was all right, but she

    couldn't form the words. She just stood there and tried not to fall on her face even as the demon began to stir and struggle to right itself. The roar came again, louder this time, and then the Earth tilted on its axis as Fiona's legs collapsed beneath her and sent her sinking into darkness.

    CHAPTER 3

    Walker wanted to grab the woman and shake her forbeing so stupid as to rush up to the demon like that. Thenhe wanted to thank her for distracting the demon with thatspell of hers. And finally, he wanted to get a better look atwhat he remembered as being a truly fine backside, thistime without the distraction of a rampaging demon to dullhis pleasure. But at the moment, he had other things todo. Like getting them both the hell out of Dodge beforethe demon learned how to run with severed Achillestendons.
    Walker scooped her unconscious figure up in his armsand sprinted for home. The demon reacted about aspositively to that as Walker had expected, but thankfully,the injuries slowed it to a point where the combination ofwerewolf speed and the thick tree cover foiled its pursuit. That didn't mean Walker slowed down any.
    He ran a good two miles before he felt safe in slowing toa brisk, ground-eating trot.

    Through it all, the woman in his arms remained limp andstill. He wasn't sure if she was asleep or unconscious, buteither way, she was so out of it that he contemplatedsetting her down for a minute so he could shift back tohuman form before they left the park. The general rule for Lupines stated they shouldn't walk in were formanywhere they might be seen by humans. Wolf formcould be written off easily enough as the appearance ofan especially large and long-legged dog, but there wasnothing in the human world that could account for aseven- or eight-foot creature covered in fur with theposture of a man and the facial features of White Fang. The human mind was only so elastic.
    In this case, Walker weighed his options and decided thatif he stuck to the alleys on the trip back to his apartmentand didn't get too close to any streetlights, he'd be betteroff going as he was. If he shifted back to human, hemight not risk psychically scarring a wandering humanobserver, but he did risk spending the night in a cell witha public-indecency citation hanging over his head. Giventhe way his night had been going so far, he didn't havetime to go to jail.
    He reached the borders of the park and scanned thestreet from the cover of the last few trees. He didn't seemuch movement, which did occasionally happen even in New York, and at three-something in the morning thestreets of the