Free Yield the Night by Annette Marie Page A

wasn’t it? She didn’t want this, did she?
    The woman grunted. “The devil did a fair job of it after all. The spell doesn’t want to budge.”
    “Can you—”
    “Hush!”
    Piper’s head felt hotter. Little flashes of fire sparked in her skull. She wanted the woman to stop. It hurt. The pain swirled through the mist, growing stronger, threatening her safe, peaceful lassitude. The fire spread to her chest. Her arms jerked and a whimper scraped her throat. Stop now. Make it stop.
    “You’re hurting her—”
    “Quiet, Mona! Let her finish.”
    Hotter and hotter. Flames inside her. Little lightning bolts in her skull, shooting down her spine. The mist in her head turned red with pain. The insulating cloud thinned.
    Agony blasted through her skull and she screamed.
    The pain stopped, vanishing like a popped bubble. She panted in the sudden cessation of agony, struggling against the haze that immediately swept the thoughts from her head.
    Helaine flung her hands wide. “It is done!” she crowed.
    The crowd cheered, pressing closer to the dais. They called encouragements to Piper.
    Walter gave her a pat on the shoulder before returning to the podium. He switched on the mic.
    “Let us congratulate Piper—as well as the haemon race—in this historic moment! For the first time in two centuries, we have a hybrid haemon among our ranks!”
    Shouts of agreement. More cheers.
    “Now, before we conclude, I would like to—”
    The lights went out with a pop, plunging the sprawling room into darkness.
    Startled voices exclaimed in the crowd and the Council members grumbled. Power outages were regular enough not to cause a panic, but the timing was terrible. Piper sat in her chair, blinking in the darkness.
    “We ask for your patience, please, everyone,” Walter called. “We will have someone check the—”
    With a flicker, the lights came back to life, flooding the room. The Gaians looked around, smiling in relief. Walter began to speak again but stopped as a strange hush fell over the crowd, starting from the back of the room. In a surge of movement, the haemons nearest the double doors backed away, bumping into the rest of the crowd.
    One lone figure stood in the middle of the new gap, no one within twenty feet of him. He stood casually, hands in his jeans pocket, pale blond hair tousled, golden eyes flashing, catching Piper’s attention even from across the room.
    Euphoric delight swept through the fog in her head.
    Lyre let out a low whistle as he surveyed the crowd.
    “This here’s a mighty big group of Gaians,” he drawled, his smooth voice filling the room in a way Walter’s couldn’t. His teeth flashed as he grinned. “What a gathering! I didn’t know murderers had a support group.”
    A heartbeat of silence.
    “It’s not murder when it’s just daemons,” someone shouted.
    “Just daemons?” Lyre repeated. He pressed a hand to his chest. “Wow, I’m hurt. Your mothers didn’t think we were just daemons .”
    Angry shouts and hurled insults.
    Walter stepped up to the mic. “Restrain that intruder immediately!”
    A dozen haemons pushed their way through the crowd to the open space where Lyre stood. As they rushed him, he pulled his hands out of his pockets and flicked them, a casual shooing motion as though he were swatting flies away.
    All the attacking Gaians were blasted off their feet and sent crashing to the floor, stunned.
    “Oooh, sorry,” Lyre said with a sympathetic wince. “I was expecting you all to shield or ... something, you know.”
    “Walter, that’s not a random intruder,” Mona hissed. “That’s one of Piper’s daemon friends. He’s come for her!”
    “Take that daemon out now!” Walter shouted. He slashed a look at Mona. “Get Piper out of here before that other one shows up. If he’s here, we’ll have to use Piper as a hostage to stall him until we can get the ultrasound speaker up here. Mona? Mona, are you listening?”
    A moment of silence.
    “Too late.”