The Demon Creed (A Demon Outlaws Novel) (Entangled Edge) by Paula Altenburg Page B

small face flashed into her thoughts and strengthened her courage.
    She forced herself to lift her eyes to Bear’s.
    “First, where is my son?” The tremble in her voice felt very faint to her, hopefully leaving it undetectable to him.
    The fingers on the table curled. “Don’t play games with me.”
    She was too terrified for games. “You made me a promise.”
    Thick gray brows formed a single, ominous line above the bridge of his nose. His expression turned ugly. He hooked an elbow over the back of his chair and stared at her with cold eyes, and she tried not to shudder.
    “I don’t have to make promises to you, or to keep them,” he said. “I could kill you and no one would care. You have no one but me to look after you, and if I don’t want to keep you here any longer, what do you suppose will happen to you then?”
    A sick sense of dread edged out her fear. Bear did not like to be opposed and he’d had all night to think about how best to deal with it.
    She had lost everything. He had no intention of telling her where her son was. Once she told him what she had learned about Creed, he planned to kill her. No one would care if he did. It would matter to no one.
    Except to Ash.
    She had one card left she could play.
    “What do you suppose a demon might do to the mortal man who harms a woman it’s claimed?” she asked.
    He laughed, ugly and mean. “Demons are gone.”
    “No,” she said. “They’re not.”

Chapter Four
    Creed awoke to a feeling of pressure crushing his chest that caused him difficulty in drawing breath. A sense of impending disaster had him on his feet in an instant, his gun in his hand.
    His demon, normally so easily contained, had come unleashed while he slept. That could only mean trouble.
    As he cast a glance around the stable’s gloomy interior, struggling to inhale, all appeared to be in order. He peered between the wide doors into the yard outside, and listened for long moments, but saw and heard nothing.
    And yet he knew there was trouble close by. His demon refused to be calmed. He slid the pistol into the waistband of his trousers at the small of his back so that it was within easy reach but left his hands unencumbered. The threat of doom had not faded although he could breathe again. Someone’s life was in danger, and if not his, then whose?
    Nieve .
    He had been dreaming of her, and her name came to him with such certainty that he could not ignore it. If he did not act now, she would be dead.
    He squeezed through the stable doors, not wanting to open them enough to allow the sand swift access to the restless hross inside, then loped across the yard and around the ranch house to the kitchen.
    The door, when he tried it, was locked.
    Through the long, narrow side window, he saw Bear. The man’s back was to him. Facing Bear was Nieve. Creed tasted her terror, burning like acid on the back of his tongue.
    There were other emotions bleeding from her, but as Bear drew back a fist, Creed did not take the time to identify them. This was why he had awoken, unable to breathe. The demon inside him was struggling for freedom in response to her distress.
    Always, in the past, Creed had been able to restrain it without effort. Now, the flesh across his shoulders crackled and split, and strained against the seams of his clothing before he managed to subdue it. He capitalized on the physical strength it unleashed in him to smash through the kitchen door with his shoulder, blasting it back on its hinges. It struck the interior wall with a solid crash.
    Bear half-spun to face him, fist still cocked. “ This is your demon?” he demanded of Nieve. “A Godseeker assassin? Are you certain of it?”
    Nieve nodded, even as she took a step behind him so that he formed a barrier between her and Creed.
    A shard of incredulous outrage slid into Creed’s thoughts, still partially possessed by his demon, that she had turned to a man who beat her and intended to kill her for protection from him.
    He