Elijah. Jacquelyn Frank

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СКАЧАТЬ her head, ignoring the droplets of blood that sprinkled from the torn ends of the severed strands that yet remained attached to her scalp. She leaned over the Demon, pushing open the once-fine silk shirt he wore, licking her full lips slowly as she took the coil of golden hair and let it curl like a braided carpet, around and around, until it covered the wound in its entirety.

      Blood immediately seeped into the gold filaments, blending with the droplets already welling out of their severed ends. The wound instantly began to coagulate, the hair turning into a red and gold bandage that stayed fast to the gaping hole, plugging it quite effectively.

      She could do nothing about his blood loss at the moment and could not leave him where he was lest his attackers decide to return and finish him off. His breathing was so shallow, so weak, that if not for her keen hearing she would not have been able to mark it. Luckily, she knew these woods well and could find some excellent shelter. Then she would see what she could do to aid him.

      What the Demon was doing in Lycanthrope territory would be something to discover at a later date. Right now, she had to get him away from the approaching dawn. Though sunlight did not char either of their species with the agonizing pain and the promise of death in the way it did Vampires, it was no friend to any Nightwalker race. For Demons, its effect was like that on the nocturnal cat, making them feel fat, lazy, and lethargic. Many Demons actually loved the invading warmth of the sun, finding the daylight to be the best time to succumb to comfort and sleep. Unfortunately, this reaction was often an involuntary one, making them desire nothing but sleep to the point of distinct vulnerability. In this case, any further weakness caused by the light could depress the warrior’s autonomic systems completely, finishing the task his attackers had begun.

      For the Lycanthrope, it was a little bit more hostile. A changeling became ill in the bright light of day, a literal version of sun poisoning. Since they were a species inherently guided by moon phases, it seemed to make sense that the sun would feel unnatural to them. Being part cat herself, Siena was doubly inclined to remain active in the dark of night when she was most powerful, and to find rest and shelter out of the reach of daylight when she was susceptible to its effects. She did enjoy a higher resistance to the sun than most if she kept mostly to the shade, but it was not something she enjoyed doing.

      Siena needed to decide the best and shortest route to reach where she would be able to care for him, and the best way to get them both to that place of concealment. Her people were too far to travel to, and she sensed none but herself in the area. It would be a good choice to find aid, a place where she would find a little assistance in his care, but it was not a logical option given the clear urgency of the situation. The ideal alternative of taking him to his own people, well, that was an even farther-fetched possibility considering they were even farther away than her people were. Besides, the most renowned Demon healer in all of the world was at her court at the moment.

      The warrior was not a slim man. He was built in every way a warrior needed to be built to maintain his strength and prowess. The Captain of such warriors…well, he was of a most impressive stature, to say the least. Though Siena was tall and quite strong in her own right, his biceps could very well be larger than her muscular thighs.

      The distance from help worried her most because the warrior needed medical aid and she doubted she would be able to give him anything near what he would require. He was an entirely different species and probably not as receptive to Lycanthropic ways of healing. It could very well be the equivalent of giving a human patient to the care of a veterinarian. The veterinarian medic could be at the height of his expertise, but even his best care could do more harm than good.

      Her people had been at war with the warrior’s race far longer than they had been at peace with them. Their knowledge of Demon anatomy was fairly limited, and even that information was restricted to which vital organ would make for the quickest death. With peace only fourteen years old between their races, who would have thought to trade medical knowledge? As it was, they had only recently traded ambassadors.

      The Queen rose to her feet, her form lengthening into a proud and Amazonian stature. Nude, as she was at present, or fully clothed, there would never be a doubt as to her sex. She was golden skinned and lushly curved in spite of the obvious cut of her muscular, fit body. She was a huntress and warrior in her own right, a proud and pure Diana, and it radiated from every inch of her. However, the contradiction of a head full of thick, golden, spiraling curls that tumbled down to the middle of her thigh, and the bold curves of her sex made her appear no less feminine than Aphrodite herself. Her enigmatic way of smiling and the natural flirtation in her stride only added to the imagery.

      The Lycanthrope goddess seemed to make a decisive choice on her next course of action as her sharp, golden gaze took in all of her surroundings one last time. Soon after, she shook her head again, the long coils of her hair coming to life as she did so. They began to slip silkily over her skin, wrapping her almost lovingly in their soft length. The spreading coat of hair became fur once more, only this time the form she became was half cat, half woman.

      This was the shape of the Werecat, Siena’s third and final form. Tall and beautifully shaped as the woman she was, but with the fur and claws, ears and face, and whiskers and tail of the mountain lion. Half woman, half cat, with the best of both worlds at her disposal. And that included the strength that would be required for her to lift the warrior into her arms.

      The warrior, she noted to herself as she began to gather up his dead weight into her cradling grasp, was brawny and well muscled, weighing in significantly for his height of over six feet, even if he had not been completely unconscious. He had remarkably broad shoulders, almost too wide for her to encompass with her arm. There wasn’t an ounce of lighter fat marring his trim waist and thighs. It was all the heavy thickness of a finely honed physique, muscled from head to toe, no part wasted, nothing of his structure resembling softness.

      In spite of this impressive mass, she lifted him in her arms almost easily, drawing him close to herself as she began to stride across the field. Her sight was made for darkness, everything lighting up in sharp contrasting shades of black and white. It was bright as day for her as she carried her burden into the trees.

      They might have presented quite a sight had anyone been close enough to see them, but a quick scent of the air assured the Queen that all enemies had retreated to places unknown, and all other living creatures had pretty much followed suit. They wouldn’t even know that the mountain lion’s scream came with a fear compulsion that was so powerful, it would force almost anything within its range to run in terror—even some of the more powerful Nightwalkers.

      As the Werecat moved through the forest, picking her way with purpose of direction and leaving as little a trail as possible, she recalled that there had been more than humans in the party that had ambushed this warrior. She was aware of the renegade Demon females, mother and daughter, who had chosen to align themselves with their race’s enemies out of a disproportioned sense of revenge, all for a tragic mistake no one could have prevented, not even the powerful Demons.

      It had been nearly half a year ago, the eve of last Beltane, that the Demons’ usually festive holiday had been shadowed by the aftermath of the war these traitorous females had begun. Siena was part of the Demon forces the day they had been forced into a massive battle in order to protect their own from a slaughter directed by the warped will of those females. It was this battle that had given her a glimpse into the capabilities of the great Warrior Captain. He had impressed her. So much so that finding him in this predicament was somewhat baffling.

      Besides his fighting prowess, she had noted the Demon had been particularly affected by the fact that the female Druid who had been targeted had been pregnant at the time. The child she had carried was just as much the focus of retribution as she and her Demon mate were, and the warrior had been incensed to a personal level, though the child was not his, nor did he have any of his own.

      Lycanthrope СКАЧАТЬ