Read Online Burden to Bear by Amira Rain - Free Book Online Page A

watched Wilson drag Sarah into his building.  Again, he felt compelled to fight the predator and save Sarah, but knew that he would deeply regret shifting to a were-bear on a city street.
    “He must be desperate to feed,” Douglas mused.  “I’ve never seen someone so brazen with their prey in broad daylight.”
    Once Wilson had disappeared into the building, Douglas quickly crept up to the door.  The door locked form the outside.  He’d have to break in. 
    He looked upwards.  He noticed that each condo in the building had a large balcony.  Since the street was basically dead this time of day, he decided to take a gamble and just climb the balconies until he found Wilson and Sarah.  No one would notice, most likely.  “This creature’s odor is so putrid,” he told himself, “I’ll know for sure which condo is his pretty quickly.”
    He climbed from balcony to balcony, leaping and pulling himself up.  The veins in his biceps popped from the exertion. 
    On the seventh floor, he stopped.  This had to be the place.  The reptilian smell was overwhelming.  He stifled a sneeze.
    He crawled over to the balcony door and peered through.  He was right.  Sarah’s unconscious body had been tossed, face up, across the bed.  Wilson was at the other end of the room, his back to Douglas.  Wilson was undressing.
    Douglas ducked when Wilson turned to face the balcony doors.  Wilson was still in a human form, but in all other respects, he had changed completely.  His skin had darkened to a bluish-gray.  He was scaly.  He had no genitalia. 
    Douglas gulped.  He realized that this was no supernatural creature.  This was, in fact, a demon.  He watched as the naked fiend slipped slowly across the room towards Sarah, hissing.  It climbed onto the bed and straddled her.  It removed her blouse, and then, quickly, before Douglas realized what was happening, emitted long snake fangs and inserted them into the flesh over Sarah’s heart.
    Douglas crouched there.  He was crippled with fear over the petrifying scene before him.  While he and his grandfather had discussed the possibility of snake demons, his mind was having difficulties accepting the reality of one just a few feet away from him. 
    But anger overtook his feelings of fear.  The rage crept over him fast and faster, like red-hot blood pumping through his veins.  How dare this creature hurt the woman he loved!  He felt the muscles and bones in his body swell and crunch beneath his skin.  Tufts of hair appeared all over his body, and enormous carnivorous teeth protruded from his gums.
    He roared in fury and smashed through the glass of the balcony door.  The snake demon’s eyes widened as he saw the furious beast lunging toward him.  It pulled its fangs from Sarah’s body and coiled to strike Douglas.
    Douglas slashed the demon with his long claws, and then impaled the snake on one of them.  He drew Wilson towards him, snarling.  The demon’s scaly body shuddered, and he cried out in agony.
    Douglas extracted his claw from the demon’s body, then held it in his paws.  He grinned savagely, drool dripping from his huge teeth as the demon writhed in dismay.  Then, with little effort, Douglas ripped the snake demon completely in half, from head to legs.  A shimmering pink pastel liquid poured to the floor.  Douglas snorted in disgust.  The demon did not even bleed like a living creature.  It was an abomination.
    Wilson had been drinking Sarah’s lifeforce, not her blood.  Unlike most evil supernatural predators, who drank human blood or ate human flesh in order to sustain their magic abilities, the snake demon actually lived off the souls of humans.  His kind were the most dangerous of all mystical beings. 
    Douglas lumbered over to the bed in his were-bear form and studied Sarah.  He shook her as gently as he could with one paw.  She groaned and peered at him with blood-shot eyes.  Douglas could tell that she had been seriously