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“Actually, I’m bitter as hell. You’d choke on me.”
Will gave a lopsided grin and winked. “I bet you’re like Sour Patch Kids. Sour and then sweet.”
Mina marched over and decked him in the arm. “You’re disgusting.”
“Hey!” He rubbed his bicep. “You’re my twin. You’re supposed to be all supportive and shit.”
So theyweretwins. A ghost of a smile tugged at my lips as I thought of Mike and Josh. They fought like cats and dogs but would have done anything for each other, even die.
Had one of them tried to protect the other before Fane’s brother killed them?
Invisible Ice-cold fingers suddenly dragged down my back, and I tensed as the air thickened. The shifters also noticed the change, their conversations shearing off. I searched through the tall trees and shadows.
“Something’s out there,” Mina said, her irises taking on an unnatural glow.
“No shit.” Dorian flexed his fingers, and his skin twitched as his wolf form grew closer. “It’s not a shifter, though. What do you think it is?”
I rubbed the rune on my hilt and drew out the sword, a silver note whispering through the forest. “If I had to guess, I’d say it was the thing that killed the deer.”
Jake let out a low huff. “He wasn’t talking to you, little munchkin.”
“Are you still going to call me little munchkin when I’m saving your ass?” I continued to scan the perimeter. Where the hell was it? My teeth ground as I tried to focus on the shifter form hiding inside of me along with the Infernal Sol.
After a few moments, the forest brightened and shadows retreated as I pulled on my supernatural senses. That sinister darkness didn’t slither through my veins, so maybe I’d only tapped into the shifter part.
Dorian let out a string of curses, and his upper lip curled in derision. “Your eyes.”
The pupils must have thinned into slits. “Yeah, freaky. I know.” The wind blew, causing the tree limbs to creak and sway while my ponytail danced between my shoulder blades, dragging across my leather jacket.
My nape prickled. A dozen invisible eyes seared into me like a pack of predators had wrangled their prey into one spot and were ready to pounce.
A pinecone dropped to the ground at my feet, bouncing on the crunchy leaves and then rolling into Dorian’s boot. My head slowly craned back to look into the boughs, frost crystallizing over every inch of my flesh.
Movement shook the branches high above us. Familiar ticking noises echoed, and my hand tightened around the sword’s hilt. “In the trees.”
As the warning fell from my lips, a figure plummeted toward us.
My muscles went into action, and I crashed into Dorian to knock him out of the way. Anything that large falling from that high would have crushed his skull. We hit the ground with a thud, and he rolled us over, cursing up a storm—until he saw the thing that dropped out of the tree.
The hard exoskeleton of the sub-demon gleamed in the moonlight, and his eight beady eyes locked on us.
That was not a baby agrigon demon. This monster was fully grown with a set of toxic pincers that could kill us.
Chaos unfurled, and we scrambled up. The agrigon—the size of a small cow—let out a piercing wail and scuttled over the leaves and vegetation toward us. Bones cracked as Dorian shifted behind me.
“It’s poisonous!” I warned and then lunged forward, stabbing the sword into the sub-demon’s side.
He screamed and used his hard, spindly legs to pry itself from the blade before charging me again.
This time, I jumped over it, whipped around, and sliced off his head. His shriek died as his body hit the ground, his extremities twitching a few more times before he stilled.
My ragged breaths sounded through the forest, and as goose bumps spread over my skin, I knew this was only the calm before the storm.
Like bombs dropping from overhead planes, more agrigons leaped from the trees to surround us.
ChapterThirty-Three
Shrieks filledthe air as the sub-demons dropped on us. Dorian, a sleek golden wolf, bounded forward and jumped on one, trying to sink his teeth into the creature’s neck, but the hard exoskeleton wasn’t making it easy. The agrigon tossed Dorian off, and he rolled into a tree with a snarl.
