Read Online Spirit by Shauna Granger - Free Book Online

direction and began to gallop toward me. His eerie red
eyes locked with mine, holding me to the spot as I watched him barreling for
me.
    I was screaming
in my mind to run, to turn away and just fucking go, but my body wouldn’t obey
me, and just as the dog’s massive paws launched him from the ground, I
screamed. The dog crashed into me with the force of a small car and my body
slammed into the ground, pushing all the air from my lungs and successfully
breaking my cracked rib. White hot pain lanced through my body. The pain of
breathing silenced my screams as the dog stood over me, two of his massive paws
on either side of my head, standing on my hair as his giant face leaned close
to mine. His nose was wet against my cheek and his breath hot and damp against
my face. I shut my eyes tight, not wanting to watch that mouthful of teeth
coming at me just before he ripped my face off.
    When a few
moments passed and my face remained intact, I slowly cracked an eye open. The
hound still stared down at me with his fiery red eyes, but he wasn’t baring his
teeth. Instead, his mouth hung open as he panted and his tongue lolled out
before he licked the side of my face.
    “Ugh!” I
managed, feeling the hot saliva coating the entire side of my face, even
catching a little of my hair.
    “Balor!” a voice
rang out, making the hound pick up his head suddenly. “Balor! To me!”
    The hound, Balor
I assumed, looked over his shoulder toward the voice but didn’t budge. He
whimpered and whined, his tail swishing through the air in his excitement.
    “Balor, you blasted
mutt!” the voice rang out again, louder and closer now.
    “Oy! Lookie what
he’s caught!” a gravelly voice said from my side, but I couldn’t turn my head
toward it because Balor was still standing on my hair. The next moment, one of
the green-skinned goblins stared me in the eye, his face mere inches from mine.
I tried to scream, but the pain in my side turned it into a pathetic whimper.
    “What’s this?”
the first voice asked just as the goblin disappeared from my line of sight.
Dark grey boots stopped right before my face. I tried to look up at him,
knowing it was the silver-maned elf I had been admiring earlier, but I knew if
I turned my head even a little, Balor’s weight would rip out a chunk of my
hair.
    “Is a girl,” a
second goblin hissed, crouching down by the boots and my face. His forked
tongue shot out, tasting the air and making me cringe.
    “Oh, nay,” the
elf said, one boot nudging the peering goblin out of the way before he crouched
down in front of me. His wrists were propped on his knees, and his hair pooled
on the ground like a puddle of quicksilver.
    “Nay,” he
repeated, “this is no girl.” He said girl like gel. His accent spoke of all of the British Isles, not just one.
“Here we have a fallen angel.”
    A chorus of
noises rang through the group. Some hissed, others laughed, but mostly they
made noises of dismissal. I guessed fallen angels weren’t that big of a deal there.
    “Did they cut
your tongue when they clipped your wings, girl?” he asked, his black eyes
boring into mine.
    “No,” I
breathed, wincing in pain at the effort. “But if it slipped your notice, I have
a massive dog standing on my hair at the moment.”
    “Aye, yeah,” he
said, one hand shooting out to slap the dog on the hindquarters. “Off with ye,
Balor!” The dog cantered away, the rough pads of his paws taking a few strands
of my hair as souvenirs.
    “Thanks,” I
mumbled, carefully pushing myself to my knees before sitting back on my heels.
I wrapped my arms around my ribs and closed my eyes for a moment, trying to get
a handle on the pain. After going so long without feeling anything whatsoever,
to have so many sensations suddenly assaulting me made me dizzy.
    “Hurt, are we?”
the elf asked, and before I could answer him, I felt two of his fingertips
touch my forehead. Just that quickly, the pain disappeared. My head stopped
spinning,