Free Taming the Demon by Doranna Durgin Page A

around in her seat.
    Devin opened watering eyes, scrubbed them clear with hasty fingers. “What—”
    Natalie jabbed a thumb back. “Speed-fucking-bump,” she said matter-of-factly, challenge behind the slight raise of her chin, three-quarter profile showing that slight bump at the bridge of her nose. “ My way.”
    He figured it out, then. Realized they’d swerved onto the edge of someone’s lawn, missing most of the misshapen speed bump and somehow missing the homeowner’s fence, too. And realized that their pursuit had been too close to see that speed bump coming, and sure as hell hadn’t realized its worn, uneven nature—but that Natalie had known about it from the start.
    The SUV sat skewed across the road, deployed air bags visible, passengers stunned.
    Devin grinned. Fiercely. “Sweet,” he told her, and sprung the seat belt loose, unlatching the door in swift follow-through.
    “Wait—what’re you—” Panic flickered across her face, erasing the satisfaction. “Let’s just go. ”
    He shook his head, short and sharp, and slid out of the car. “We don’t learn anything that way.”
    “But you—” Her voice grew filtered as he stood and glared down the SUV, finding the blade in his hand without conscious awareness of having reached for it—no longer just the pen knife, but an agate-handled tactical knife, solid in his hand. Her car door open and she stood tucked inside the shelter of it. “You can’t! You’re still—they could have guns —you have no idea what they’re after—”
    “Exactly.” He stalked for the SUV, the blade held down and away; the energy of it surged up his arm, swirling a tight weave of molten light—a net, clamping down around his arm and setting hooks of light and pain. Bold. Bolder than it had been, crawling up along his flesh to find his thoughts, inflaming them with vengeance.
    The blade grew to a saber, beautifully balanced, aching to sing. The pavement slapped hard against his feet, and the rest of the world—the fields, the fences, the livestock—went hazy and unimportant. Only those men in the vehicle before him—men who had chased Natalie, men who had threatened her, men who could never be allowed to do it again—only they mattered.
    Their bloody-nosed expressions sharpened, cycling from confusion to high alarm. One fumbled with a gun, briefly sighting down on Devin through the windshield—but his buddy smacked it away, snarling a few words at him.
    The man didn’t stick around to argue. He bailed—and by then Devin had made his swift way to the driver’s side; when the door started to open he instantly kicked it shut again. The man gaped at him—down at the sword, at the bloodstained sweatshirt. But it was what he saw in Devin’s eyes that triggered the flood of response—hands up, gesturing and warding at the same time. Big guy, no neck, no hair, tough written all over him, fear in his eyes. “No harm, no harm,” he said, words tripping over each other. “We weren’t going to—”
    Devin slammed the closed window with the saber guard; the glass shattered, crumbling away; the rest of the world crumbled away in the periphery, and the blade sang of righteous hunger, pushing against the notch of the man’s throat and jaw. “I didn’t come to talk.”
    Blood trickled down that beefy neck, mingling with sweat; the man’s breath puffed hot panic.
    Another’s words reached him, so faint. He shrugged them off. He shrugged off the faint struggle remaining in the back of his own mind—a voice from a different time and a different man. He pressed—
    Natalie’s blue peacoat, Natalie’s gleaming ash-blond hair, Natalie’s blue eyes wide and frightened—all slamming up against him, shoving him away from the car; all suddenly in startling focus.
    Not that it stopped him. Not that it would have stopped him—if he of the beefy neck hadn’t scrambled out from behind the wheel and across the seat, spilling out the other side of the car to his