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of your natural skills for almost two millennia doesn’t mean you can’t come up with a—
    A hand slid around her arm and she screamed.
    ***
    Cal was congratulating himself for getting rid of Tessa with a minimum of hysterics when her scream rang clear into the house. Adrenaline dropped into his system and he raced for the door, wrenching it open before he even realized he’d moved.
    Then the sound cut off as abruptly as it’d started, and he tore off down the rutted dirt path that led to his house.
    Fuck, this was his fault. He shouldn’t have let her go.
    Before he got to the blind bend about a quarter mile from the house, he slid into the trees, heading in the direction he’d heard her scream. Through the breaks between trunks, he caught glimpses of a small blue car.
    He slowed to a stop behind a huge old oak, then peered around the side. What he saw inside the car made him freeze.
    A blue-skinned demon with long black hair held Tessa’s pure strawberry-gold waves in one hand and a knife at her throat with the other. Tessa’s hands gripped the steering wheel, her knuckles white with strain. Her face was just as pale, and those same damn tears he’d cursed her for earlier ran down her cheeks.
    Shit. Shit, shit, and double shit.
    If he rushed the car, the demon, probably one of Charun’s minions that Tessa had mentioned, would have enough time to hurt her, even though Tessa had said Charun wanted to consume her. That meant the demented god probably wanted her alive and the demon couldn’t kill her.
    But it could injure her. And that would seriously piss him off, which was fucking stupid logic, considering he’d just kicked her out.
    Pushing those thoughts out of his head, he dropped to the ground and crawled through the underbrush toward the car. Since Cal was really good at what he did, the demon never made any indication that it heard or saw him.
    Cal would have been awfully fucking offended if it had. Still, he wasn’t inside the car yet.
    Ignoring the scratching of fallen branches against his bare chest and stomach, he reached the back end of the car then carefully dragged himself around to the passenger’s side. Luckily, Tessa had parked close to the side of the road so he didn’t have to crawl into the open.
    Getting to the door only took seconds but it felt like forever because he could hear snatches of conversation from the open car window. The demon wanted Tessa to drive, but she was arguing that she couldn’t drive with a knife at her throat.
    Her voice sounded slow and sure, but it held a tremor of fear that infuriated him. He wanted to reach inside the car and pound the demon into oblivion for putting that tone in Tessa’s voice. But that wasn’t the best course of action. So he waited.
    And, after a few more seconds, he got the opening he needed.
    The demon must have moved the knife because the car started. Before Tessa could drive away, Cal reached up, opened the door, and grabbed the demon’s arm.
    In that split second of surprise, he managed to drag the demon out of the car and onto the ground before it started to fight. Dirty. And like a girl. It pulled his hair and grabbed his ears. It used long black fingernails to scratch at his face and brought its feet up to gouge its toenails into his legs.
    Cal fought back, punching the demon in the head and kneeing it in the side. Ignoring the blood running down his face and legs, he heard Tessa gasp but couldn’t take the time to see if she was okay. The demon was stronger than it had any right to be for its size, but Cal knew that wasn’t unusual for lower-plane creatures.
    To subdue it, he tried to roll and trap it under his body, but the demon rolled the other way and punched its fist toward his face. Cal dodged at the last second, but the demon brought its knee up and caught him in the balls. Good thing Cal didn’t feel pain because that one might have really hurt. He’d have to check later to make sure the kick hadn’t done any lasting