Free Demon's Daughter (Demon Outlaws) by Paula Altenburg

mother could travel in greater comfort on the back of this creature he called Sally.
    Without another word, she passed her mother to him and reached out a hand to take the creature by its lead to steady it.
    “Careful!”
    Hunter’s warning came too late. The animal’s tongue flickered out to encircle her wrist. It was rough and sharp, and under normal conditions might have torn flesh. Airie, however, was not so fragile. She rapped the beast’s ugly snout with her other fist, and it quickly released her. She then scrambled onto its back with less grace than she would have liked, still holding its lead.
    Hunter’s frown darkened. He lifted Desire up in front of Airie, and as he did so, another tremor shook the earth, harder than the first.
    “That does it,” Hunter said when it passed, sounding grim. He took the lead from Airie’s hand. “We’re getting off this mountain.”
    “No!” Panic seized her. “If we take my mother away from the temple, the goddesses might not be able to claim her!”
    “The goddesses are gone.” He jerked the beast’s head around, toward the foot of the mountain.
    Despite the awkwardness of her mother’s limp form in her arms, Airie made a move to slide to the ground. “If the goddesses are gone, why do I feel their presence in me? Why do they speak to me?”
    “That’s not the goddesses you feel or hear. Sit still,” he commanded.
    Airie clutched her mother tighter to her chest. Already, the first claws of grief tore at her heart.
    “Have you no respect for the traditions of the priestesses whatsoever?” she asked him, hating that she had to beg but willing to do so for her mother’s sake. She swallowed past a painful lump in her throat and blinked back tears of desperation. “Please,” she whispered. “Does it not bother you that you’re making a dying woman abandon her faith at a time when she needs it the most? Have you no decency?”
    He stared at her, speechless. His eyes, the deep blue of a mountain lake’s clear, crystal depths, swirled with such hostility that it took her aback.
    “You’re a—” His eyes narrowed. “You dare speak to me of decency?”
    He swore under his breath, but he yanked the beast’s head around, and they started up the steep path toward the temple.
    …
     
    Hunter continued to swear to himself as they climbed.
    It was the underlying touch of disbelief he felt that fed his anger, he knew, because he had not bested a spawn. If not for the intervention of the priestess, she could have torn him to shreds or drowned him in the lake. His amulet had been useless against her.
    The priestess’s knowledge of the amulet had caught him off guard as well, almost as much as the fact that it hadn’t reacted to the spawn’s presence until her true nature emerged. His ribs creaked with every breath he drew, and he winced. It should have given him her demon strength. Why had it not?
    Anger was the emotion he chose to cling to. It burned to think she dared challenge his decency. His . He should walk away now, while he still could, and leave this…this creature to whatever fate the mountain dealt her.
    He shut his mind’s eye against the nightmare vision of his sister’s mutilated body, and the grotesque parody of human life that had scrabbled in the dirt beside her remains.
    Was it possible for a spawn to be female? Were the stories so completely wrong, then? Were there more spawn like this one out there in the world, masquerading as mortal women?
    The thought chilled him. Demons were one thing. They had their own world to return to if and when they could be persuaded to leave this one. But a spawn born to the mortal world, and mortal in appearance…
    His initial attraction to her made him feel somehow unclean. Spawn were an abomination, tolerated in no world. He wondered what the Demon Lord would do to her before he killed her, because kill her he would. He did not permit spawn to live, any more than a mortal who stumbled upon one would.
    If