Read Online Defying Instinct (Demon Instinct Series) by Jaye A. Jones - Free Book Online Page B

on the counter, channeling Benn and his human fidgetiness.  “You
must be here for a reason.”
    Hadrian
made a sound, and it could have been a sharp laugh.  “You know what I have come
to do.”
    Yes,
I did.  He was what my three sentries were trying to warn me about.  He was the
one they needed to protect me from.  Yet, here he was.  And I was no more
emotional than I’d ever been.  I didn’t want to die.  But I couldn’t find the
feelings inside to go along with it.  Human instincts told them, fight or
flight.  Demon instincts told them, reason or ruin. 
    All
I did was stand with my hands on the counter, waiting for what was to come.
    “If
you’re here to destroy me, can we get on with it?” I said, annoyed by my lack
of whatever fundamental thing I’d lacked all my life.
    “With
pleasure,” the Sorcerer pulled his red, waxy lips away from his yellow teeth in
a wicked smile.
    Something
crackled in the air around us, trapped within the protective shield the
Sorcerer cast.  The smell, the taste, the awful power of malevolence surrounded
me, got inside me.  Finally, I felt a semblance of what I should have been
feeling all along.  Terror.
    Agony
ignited.
    It
forced me forward against the check-out counter.  My skin froze and burned,
stretched and crackled like flesh wasn’t meant to.  I couldn’t see through the
brightness of The Bookstore lights.  I was suddenly so sensitive, the feel of
my clothes, my hair, even the dust in the air landing on my skin was
excruciating.
    “Why
are you doing this?” I grated out, knowing the irrationality of my pleading
words considering the view of evilness looking down at my crumpled form.
    “Nothing
personal,” another bolt of pure agony.  “Highest bidder wanted you unhidden.”
    Only
then did I realize what he was doing.
    It
occurred to the part of me that could still comprehend logic even while I writhed
in relentless pain that I should have seen this coming.  Shouldn’t it have been
obvious?  Why didn’t I know this was inevitable?  Maybe a part of me never
fully believed the way I looked was a glamour.  After all, wasn’t it more
likely I was naturally ugly?  Part of me resisted the hope of ever looking
socially acceptable. 
    Did
I even want to look different?  What if I were pretty under all my ugly, like
that blonde human Holly had said?  I wouldn’t know what to do with such a
thing.
    There
was a reason there weren’t half-castes walking the streets, why I’d never met
another like me.  Most were too obvious in their otherness.  Demon genes were
too dominant.  We had no natural glamour to hide from it. 
    As I
squinted through burning eyes at the hideous demon, yellow, pointed teeth
gnashing as if the sight of my lifting glamour was turning him on, or making
him hungry—I doubted there was a difference in this awful creature’s eyes—I
knew what I’d really feared all along.  That what I truly looked like was worse,
far worse than big ears, frizzy hair, and narrow eyes.
    I
knew it as my body changed, as my clothes stretched and the sensations I felt
became utterly alien.  As my A-cup bra snapped at the clasp, and my jeans
bought in the men’s section hung from my waist but dug into my hips, I knew
without a doubt I’d no longer be able to hide.
    When
the pain amplified, even though I couldn’t imagine it getting worse, the Devil
flashed me one more, piranha grin of satisfaction, then surrounded himself with
a cloud of red that smelled of sulfur.
    Hadrian
didn’t come here to kill me.  I couldn’t be a half-caste in secret anymore.  I
was truly exposed now.  The Scion, and unhidden.  I’d be forced away from the
life I loved regardless of its disappointments.  I’d never see my bookstore
again.  Never see Dad.  Never see Benn.   
    He
didn’t kill me, but he did what I expected.  In one, simple flick of his
proverbial magic wand, this Devil took my life from me.
    As
my body collapsed to the floor, the feel of