Free Red Demon by Deidre Knight Page A

this particular human female, as he should have done months ago, but out of some paltry need to—what? Protect the annoying, compassionate little bitch?
    Disgusted by his ongoing obsession with Sophie Lowery, he galloped down to Whitaker Street, vowing never to return in search of her again. As he reached the intersection, however, he found himself unable to continue, and instead cut a turn, heading back to the brownstone where she lived. He would wait, hidden as always, until he saw her arrive, reassured of her safe return.
    Just once more, he promised himself, hissing in revulsion at his inability to stay away. He blamed the mortal for the alteration in his otherwise robust and hateful demonic nature. If she’d not healed him, not taken those hands of hers and . . . He flinched, closing his eyes and battling away the memory of her soft fingertips moving across his chest.
    A thin, feminine cry pierced his consciousness, and he glanced down the street. She was back: that damned apparition he’d been seeing ever since he started lurking around Sophie’s house two months ago. The same one who always nodded politely every time they met, as if he wasn’t half-covered in horned protrusions, and his body, once winged and beautiful, now cursed into the gruesome form of a centaur.
    Yet no matter how rude or insultingly he treated the spirit, she never ceased to be horribly gracious. He shivered, keeping his distance now, but oddly enough, she seemed unmoving tonight. Normally she floated along the street, head held high. Didn’t she realize that she was dead? He’d even tried, once, to point out that pitiful fact. All in the name of helpful cruelty, of course, but she’d maintained her poise, smiling up at him.
    Tonight she seemed to have become tangled in the branches of an oak. For a moment, he stepped forward to help her, but then started to laugh. He owed kindness to no human, dead or alive. But she’s one of them , an inner voice murmured. She’s like Sophie. With the same annoying, beautiful, cursed blue eyes.
    He slid back into the shadows, concealing himself. Why by Ahriman or Zeus or any other deity did his path keep colliding with Daughters of Delphi? Well, you fool, perhaps because that same blood—piddling trickle that it is—flows in your own half-demon veins.
    Perhaps that was why he’d been susceptible to Sophie, allowing the skinny imp of a mortal to approach him right after that recent battle when he, along with the Spartans, had taken up arms against Ares. Perhaps that was why he’d actually allowed that particular Daughter to touch him. To heal him. To take on some of his pain.
    He frowned at the memory, torn between fury and revulsion, but much as he hated the fact, he did rather owe Sophie. Because of her, he bore only half as many of the hideous horns across his body as he’d had before she’d laid her warm hands upon his body. Not that he’d asked for help, not that any Djinn worthy of the name ever would.
    He sighed. And so he found himself here once again. Night after night, out of some—he spat over his shoulder in disgust at the thought—obligation. Had he lost his demonic mind? He should trot on down the cobblestone street and find a soul to suck dry. Locate some depressed art student to siphon, mainlining their suicidal tendencies like the pleasing, heady drug such emotion truly was. His mouth curved upward in a smile at the thought, but another urge snuffed it out.
    Shame. When had he ever felt shame for his wicked desires?
    Never. Until Sophie had touched him.
    He blamed her. All her fault, all her problem, and now his burden. As if in reaction to the litany, that smooth skin along his chest grew warm, the place that had been littered with aching horns until she’d healed him. Every time he thought to turn back to his basest desires, his simplest needs, his chest grew hot—as if she were touching him all over again.
    Damn it, Sophie , he thought, glancing up and down the street. It