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him, they weren’t taken completely off guard. It didn’t take long for the men to recover from the initial shock of his shift. If they hadn’t believed in demons before, though, they certainly did now.
    Bullets hammered into his armor, each a blow. One or two seared over his skin.
    For all his speed, for all his skill, there were just too many of them.
    A glance over his shoulder as they closed sent a chill through him.
    Miri saw the men move to intercept her even as Ash fought the others. With her hand in her laptop bag, she pulled it off her shoulder and ran for her life, not bothering to hide from them the fear she felt as they closed on her. She had a surprise for them all.  She waited for her moment, knowing what agony it would be for Ash to see the men drawing close to her but she needed them close.
    The wind was in the right direction.
    In one motion, she spun and sent the heavy laptop bag with the laptop in it flying toward one of the men even as she pulled her other hand free to direct the burst of pepper spray into the face of the one closest to her. He swore furiously, temporarily blinded as she dropped to her hands and swung her legs around in a leg sweep, taking his out from under him. Caught off guard by an attack from an unexpected quarter, he went down.
    She had her own surprises to offer. Years of self-defense classes.
    Even as she scrambled to her feet again, she ducked and dodged away from another of them. Trapping his arm as he grabbed for her in the crook of her own, she turned into his motion as she threw her shoulder into it, used his momentum to keep him going as she bent to throw him, slammed him to the ground. As he went down she spun into a flying back kick that took out the next.
    The one thing they hadn’t expected was a fight from her.
    A part of her was exultant that all those lessons had paid off.
    Her foot hit the man’s armored helmet jarringly but it was still enough to knock him off balance for a moment.
    Ash, seeing another come at her from the corner of his eye, spun and took that one with a quick slash of his sword before joining her.
    Their eyes met for just a second, Ash’s clearly surprised and, Miri thought, quite pleased.
    She grinned, absurdly happy with herself. She’d taken martial arts all her life and been forced to use it a time or two.
    “When you’re the smallest and smartest kid in third grade you’d better be able to fight,” she gasped, setting herself as she looked briefly into his sharp handsome features. “I couldn’t then. But I learned.”
    Ash smiled. It was good to know. They fought, he and his mate, back to back. Like Gabriel, she was a force to be reckoned with all on her own.
    Pain burned in his arm where a bullet had pierced and across one thigh but it wasn’t hopeless. Not now. Not with Miri with him.
    Now with all these out in the open where he could see them he could chance the use of magic and must if they were to have even a chance at escape. With a gesture, he gathered lightning in his hands and loosed it.
    The parking lot lit up with blue-white light, arced from one gun to the next, the men holding them jittering as the muzzles of the guns rose to empty harmlessly into the night sky as he and Miri backed toward his motorcycle
    Shifting back to human form – a tail and wings being difficult to manage on a motorcycle and a tail being uncomfortable in jeans – he dressed himself with a quick spell, swung on and started it in virtually the same motion as he mounted while Miri scrambled up behind him. The moment her arms wrapped securely around his waist, he gunned it and shot for the exit.
    The question was whether the enemy had had time to block it.
    “No, that way,” Miri shouted, pointed to one of the narrow concrete walkways with their dips to accommodate wheelchairs.
    With a nod, he turned the bike. She knew this place better than he.
    Ash shot them down the narrow walkway through the trees into the heart of the campus.
    At this hour