Page 78 of Thane's Demon
I moved before the man could attack. One heartbeat, he stood in the doorway, the next, he was crashing into the wall with a force that shattered plaster and bone. Another manlunged with a knife. I twisted out of the way with ease, grabbed him by the arm, and snapped the bone with a single flick of his wrist. I silenced his scream up before it had even properly begun with a single thrust that sent him to the floor. A gunshot pierced the air, but before it could even leave the barrel, I was behind the shooter. I grabbed the second intruder by the throat, lifting him off the ground. His feet kicked uselessly in the air, his eyes widening when he saw the monstrous reflection of himself in my gaze. The demon's voice was heard by all this time as it came from my lips.
‘You dare enter my home.
You dare touch what is mine.
I will tear the marrow from your bones!’
My body twisted with inhuman speed as I threw him across the room without thought, my claws leaving trails of fire in the air. The demon reveled in the chaos, pressing me further, urging me forward in a wave of brutal, euphoric violence.
More poured into the apartment, guns raised, voices shaking. But they did not move like predators. They moved like prey. I lunged for them, my body moving with a fluidity that was no longer bound to human limitations. My hand closed over the barrel of a gun and crushed it like wet clay. I slammed another man into the floor so hard the boards buckled beneath him. Fear saturated the air, thick and metallic, and the demon inhaled it like incense. It growled in my mind in all its fury, demanding I take their lives. That I kill every last one of them.
‘They dare come here.
They dare threaten her.
End them all.’
A man lunged at me with a knife. One I twisted, the blade scraping harmlessly along the spikes jutting from my shoulder and seized his wrist. Bone snapped beneath my grip, loud and sharp. He screamed, but the demon was already looking for thenext heartbeat to claim. I barely noticed when someone grabbed me from behind. I simply arched backward, my spine bending too far, bones shifting as I tore out of his hold and drove my elbow into his face with a wet, sick crack.
More came. More fell.
Then everything shifted.
I tore through the first wave of intruders with the kind of violence I no longer tried to restrain. The demon surged inside me, climbing through my veins like fire, sharpening every instinct until my body moved in perfect synchrony with its hunger. Bones shattered beneath my hands, guns bent like softened metal when I seized them, and screams ricocheted off the walls as bodies struck the floor with sickening impact. I destroyed the men who had dared enter my world, feeling nothing but the cold, lethal purpose of protecting the girl who had been sleeping in my bed. Every motion came too quickly for human eyes to track, born not from thought but from something older deep within my blood.
The last of the first group fell beneath me, his body crumpling as the boards cracked under the force of the throw. I stood in the center of the room, breath heaving, the demon’s heat rolling off my skin in waves that warped the edges of the shadows. My claws dripped with blood, my horns cast jagged shapes across the walls, and the building trembled faintly beneath the weight of the power shifting through me. The demon pressed against my ribs with a hunger that pulsed like a second heartbeat.
‘Kill
Protect
None will reach her’
I turned toward her, expecting to see her with her eyes closed. Instead, the sight that met me struck harder than any gunshot. She stood frozen behind the door, her wide, horrifiedeyes fixed on the monstrous shape I had become. Her gaze moved across the curling horns, the jagged spikes that jutted through my shoulders, over the darkened skin that flickered with red light where veins glowed hot and molten. She saw everything I had worked to hide from her. The claws, the fangs, the living nightmare beneath my human shell.
And she looked at me as if she no longer recognized the man she had kissed.
Fear consumed her expression with such raw intensity that it carved right through me. For a moment, both my demon and I went still. My mouth opened, but before I could speak, before I could reach out and soften the terror in her eyes, she backed away. Backed away with a small, wounded sound and ran. She did not flee from the intruders, she did not flee from danger. She fled from me, and the ache that split through my chest felt more violent than any blow I had ever taken.
‘She fears us.
She flees us.
Why does it hurt?’
I stepped toward her, meaning to catch her, to stop her, to explain, but I did not make it far. The apartment windows shattered behind me in a deafening explosion of glass and cold wind. Three more intruders crashed through the broken frame in a storm of boots and gun barrels. The demon’s response was immediate. It surged up with a roar that shook the walls, ripping away the last remnants of restraint.
‘FIGHT.
TEAR.
KILL!’
I launched at the closest man before he could even raise his weapon. My claws sliced across his ribs as I hurled him into the broken window frame, the force sending him tumbling back into the night air. The second attacker fired wildly, bulletstearing through the air, but the demon twisted my body with inhuman swiftness. The rounds grazed past harmlessly as my hand snapped around his throat, lifting him off the ground. His legs kicked in panic, but the demon slammed him into the floor with enough force to rattle the entire building.
The third man tried to catch me from behind. I felt his presence before he moved, the shift in the air giving him away. I spun, spine twisting unnaturally as I drove an elbow into his face, feeling bone collapse beneath the blow. The room filled with the metallic stench of blood and the sharp scent of terror, a scent the demon inhaled greedily. The violence tasted electric.
Another intruder rushed me, his gun aimed directly at my head. The demon’s fury rose so violently that my vision blurred at the edges. Something inside me tightened, a pressure building as though the power within me strained against its boundaries. I did not reach for him. I did not cross the space between us. Instead, I felt the strange, ancient pulse of energy that did not belong solely to me but to something older and deeper.
