Read Online bedeviled & beyond 06 - bedeviled & befouled by sam cheever - Free Book Online

opposite side of the wide hallway. A large hand grasped my forearm and yanked me out from behind the door, flinging me into the center of the roiling mess of savage dark worlders.
    I stumbled backward, ducking just as a wide, heavy blade whizzed toward my head, and spun. A lower devil dipped its head and charged, the sharp points of his curved, black horns heading right for my midsection. I spun again and had the satisfaction of watching the horns skewer the royal behind me.
    Pain blossomed in my back as the handle of a sword bludgeoned me and my breath momentarily left my lungs. I dropped to one knee, struggling to breath and just missed being impaled as a knife flew overhead.
    A roar to one side had me lifting my hands in a defensive maneuver that, infused with a jolt of my borrowed power, allowed me to use my attacker’s momentum against him. I shoved hard on the demon’s wide chest as he flung himself at me, and sent him flying over my head. He hit the wall behind me with a wet thump. I jumped to my feet and started running.
    I didn’t get far.
    At the first turn in the hallway a large, scaly red arm reached out and hooked me around the waist, dragging me into a covered alcove. I pulled power into my fingertips and then stopped as a massive paw wrapped itself over my fingers.
    I looked up into Gerch’s worried, red face; one side of which was covered in blood, the eye swollen shut. He held a thick finger in front of his craggy lips and pushed me deeper into the alcove, pulling the heavy wall hanging over the opening.
    “What the hell’s going on, Gerch?” I whispered.
    He shook his head and peered down the hall through a crack between the wall and the hanging. After a moment he turned to me. “You need to get out of here. If one of the council sees you you’ll be dead before you can blink.”
    “Not until I find Dialle.”
    He grabbed my arms and looked down at me, his uninjured black eye swirling with irritated color. I’d never seen Gerch’s eyes swirl before and was surprised by it. Though I knew he was just about one of the highest level non-royal devils I knew. “I can’t protect you both, Astra.” It was a measure of his distress that he called me by my name instead of his usual, snark-infused address of “my queen”.
    “Where is he, Gerch? Is he safe?”
    He swore, looking past the hanging again. “No one is safe in the court anymore, my queen.” And he was back. “But you and the king are especially vulnerable given the current situation.”
    “What exactly is the current situation?”
    “I don’t have time to talk about this now. You need to shift out of here and I’ll bring the king to you as soon as I can.”
    I shook my head. “I’m not leaving without him so you might as well take me to him, Gerch.”
    He swore again but crossed his massive arms stubbornly over his broad chest.
    We indulged in dueling gazes for several beats and then I sighed in defeat. “All right, you’re not giving me much choice.”
    The muscles in his jaw relaxed and his shoulders came just a fraction of an inch off square. “That is the point, my queen.”
    I nodded. “Fine.” He turned away to look back out at the action and I lifted my hands, grabbing the heavy wall hanging in both hands and jerking it loose from the wall. As it dropped I ran forward, shoving the dense hanging before me like a shield. The hanging gathered dark worlders as I ran and I used my power to smack them hard into the wall.
    I spun, swinging the heavy material around me like a bludgeon. The power-infused swing took the legs out from under two demons and a royal who were coming at me with blade and claw. As they hit the ground I shot them in the chest with a jolt of magic, killing them. “To Hades with you fools, for God hath tired of you.”
    I ran toward the end of the hall, heading for Dialle’s throne room. Trouble dogged my heels. I wasn’t sure how I heard him coming over the rest of the noise, but my senses seemed