Free Demon Crossings by Eleri Stone Page B

his back and breathe him in. She shouldn’t enjoy it so much. He was still a stranger, possibly insane, but he was also a nice distraction from the fact that her whole world had changed. Fire demons. Portals to other dimensions. Sword-wielding Norse gods. And the craziest part was that she half believed him. She half wanted to believe him because that would mean she wasn’t wrong about him—that he actually was a good man. And then it wouldn’t be wrong for her to want him.
    There were two other men and a woman also on horseback. One of them was Christian, cool and elegant as ever, but Aiden hadn’t taken the time to introduce the others. Since this afternoon and her admission that she could sense his daughter, he’d been very careful not to overwhelm her. He seemed to have a better grasp on her limits than even she did.
    Now, he turned his head and in an undertone told her, “Your only job is to hold on.”
    Fine by her. She didn’t want to see one of those things again but she needed to. She’d been thinking about it all day. She hadn’t taken anything to eat or drink for the last eight hours and nothing else strange had happened. If she’d been given some kind of hallucinogen, it was oddly specific. Just the one awful and extended hallucination of that monster leaping after her, fire flaring red beneath its skin as its mouth gaped open and its claws extended toward her, ripping into metal. Now she was clear-headed and needed to know if that memory was real before she made a decision about anything. In Aiden’s living room it had all seemed impossible but out here at the edge of the woods in the dark… Here anything seemed possible.
    The moon was full and high and the woods were strangely silent. Even the cicadas had stopped. A crow cawed from somewhere ahead of them, hidden in the trees. Moonlight dropped through the treetops, making shifting patterns on the ground whenever the wind blew. At the sound of a soft noise behind her, Grace turned her head.
    A rustle and heavy flap, the wind from the downdraft touched her skin an instant before the edge of a sharp feather sliced her cheek. The crow was enormous. Cackling, it landed on Christian’s outstretched arm and he grunted at the weight. The crow cocked its head and looked directly at Grace with glassy black eyes before blinking and refocusing its attention on Aiden. No one seemed to find this at all remarkable.
    After a moment, Aiden nodded and Christian tossed the bird into the air, pulling back his arm as it lifted its ungainly body into the night. Just when she thought it was too heavy to rise, the crow caught its balance and the stroke of its wings slowed into a glide as it wheeled around and disappeared into the woods.
    The change in air pressure was like a weight against her skin. She tightened her grip on Aiden’s abdomen and he touched the back of her hand. Raising her head from behind his shoulder, she couldn’t see a reason for the hush that had fallen over the forest. The shadows seemed darker. The silent sway of the trees more ominous. The others were as expectant, tense and still as the woods themselves.
    “What just happened? That bird—”
    “Shh,” Aiden whispered. “It will be soon now. Save your questions for later.”
    Her ears popped and everyone moved forward at once. Aiden led the way. She could feel the contraction of his thighs as he urged the horse onward, the minute adjustments in the muscles under her fingertips as his body absorbed the shock of each hoof beat. They weren’t moving fast, not through the brush. That warble sounded again, higher pitched this time, closer, and fear knotted her stomach. She wanted to go back home, to Aiden’s house, anywhere but deeper into these woods.
    The crow sounded again loudly overhead and as if that were a signal, Aiden turned suddenly onto a wide footpath and kicked the horse faster. Some of the others carried torches but she still didn’t understand how they could see where they were