Free Demon Storm: Belador book 5 by Dianna Love Page B

to find petite, curvy Adrianna there. Adrianna Lafontaine, a Sterling witch who had nursed Storm back to health while Evalle had been locked away in a VIPER prison.
    The Sterling name belonged to a dynasty of witches who practiced black majik.
    Does my day not suck enough? “What do you want, Adrianna?”
    “It’s not what I want, but what you require.”
    “Then thanks for coming by, but I don’t need anything you’re pedaling.”
    “Evalle?” Nicole called from behind her.
    “Yes?”
    “You know that suggestion I was talking about?”
    “Yes.”
    “It’s standing in front of you.”
    Nicole wanted Evalle to ask for Adrianna’s help to find Storm? Oh, hell no.

Chapter 6
    D oes my father wander through a morbid realm like this, forever searching for a resting place he’ll never find without his soul?
    Storm had backed into a recessed area in the cavernous Mitnal. He’d found a spot where no demon could sneak up on him. He shook with the constant assault of icy film on his skin and a heat roaring inside his body. Hanhau kept his demons perpetually on the edge of violence so that when he pointed one at a target, the demon needed no encouragement to unleash all that pent up fury.
    I can’t let Nadina and Hanhau win. I will not allow my jaguar to shift at will. I will not become a demon.
    Storm had repeated that mantra over and over, but he was no fool. If he didn’t escape soon, his body would give in to the cursed witch doctor blood that had battled his honorable Navajo ancestry his whole life.
    His father had traveled to South America with the sole purpose of helping the reclusive Ashaninka tribe hold on to its heritage in the face of corporate mining and farming operations threatening every inch it owned. His father had lost faith in his own people back in North America, specifically his immediate family who’d traded their heritage for money. Storm never doubted his father’s love for his Navajo people. But after years spent fighting changes that he believed would destroy all he held dear, his father had packed up and gone in search of places he could make a difference.
    His father once told him, “I grew tired of fighting my own people and decided I needed to take a break and come back with a fresh outlook, so I went far away to South America and what I found rejuvenated me. The Ashaninka are kind people with no champion. I decided to be theirs.”
    But a witch doctor had stolen even that from his kind father.
    A swirl of energy disturbed Storm’s moment of peaceful memories.
    He should have clear night vision in this dark due to his Skinwalker traits, but he stared out at pitch black.
    His jaguar would be able to see in here.
    Storm shook off the tempting thought.
    Maybe Hanhau thought to drive him from his hole. Not happening. This was the best place to avoid fighting. That didn’t mean he had any way to prevent the threat that was currently slithering toward him.
    He opened his empathic senses. Ah, now he recognized the smell and feel of the menace approaching him.
    The same demon that had paused nearby a while back, then crept up close until Storm had growled in warning, sending the demon fleeing.
    His growl alone hadn’t actually accomplished that feat.
    In that same moment, Storm had begun to change, because his control had fractured. When he put the brakes on his change, he’d stopped as a half-formed jaguar, half-human that had been scary enough to make a demon think twice about attacking.
    Shifting into a jaguar here was nothing like in the mortal world. Normally, his jaguar weighed two hundred and fifty pounds. When he’d started changing here, he could tell his animal was going to be much larger and a far more dangerous beast.
    His shifting involuntarily in Mitnal would be the final victory for Nadina. Once Storm grew into a full-fledged demon, right down to the glowing red eyes, it wouldn’t take long for his dark blood to claim any ounce of humanity he had left.
    Then there would be