Kissed by a Dark Prince(104)

“Olivia!” Loren bellowed and her gaze darted to him. He stood below her, a wild panicked look on his face.

Bleu and Vail fought nearby, and beyond them were the witch-bitch and the huge man from the Archangel cafeteria. He fought like a demon, swinging an enormous sword with no visible effort.

She kicked her legs and tried to pull herself up to relieve the pressure on her neck, but the chain slipped through her hands and she skidded further down. A hot sting slashed around her throat and she gasped, her eyes shooting wide.

Olivia’s hands slipped again.

Loren roared below her and his fear flooded the link between them, forcing it back to full strength somehow.

She was going to die.

She lost her grip on the chains and dropped.

Warm hands grasped her forearms. “Got you.”

She had never been more glad to hear Sable’s voice. Never again would she moan about her friend’s requests for painkillers so she could go out and hunt when she should have been resting her injury or how she liked to tease Olivia whenever she was bored.

Olivia looked up to find her laying on the scaffolding boards above her, her hands locked tightly around Olivia’s bare forearms. Sable growled with effort and pulled, and the pressure on Olivia’s neck lessened.

Olivia held on to her friend’s arms as she slowly raised her.

“Do you have her?” Loren shouted from below.

“I have her,” Sable hollered, steely determination in her golden eyes. She added quietly, “Only bloody thing I’m good for is saving your arse. Go get the bastards, big guy.”

No. Olivia panicked and grabbed the edge of the wooden board as soon as it was within reach. She hauled herself up on trembling arms and Sable grasped the belt of her jeans and pulled her awkwardly onto the scaffolding.

Olivia quickly removed the makeshift noose from around her neck and ground her teeth to bear the pain as she pulled the thin wire away from the groove it had cut into her flesh.

“You okay?” Sable said and Olivia nodded, pushed to her feet and looked around. “Take it easy. The guys have this one. I pretty much failed to make an impact and bloody Bleu had to save me.”

Olivia could tell how much that had irked Sable but she didn’t care right now.

“I have to get down there, Sable.” Olivia didn’t want to see what was happening below them but she couldn’t stop her eyes from drifting to the battle.

“No way.”

“I need to get down there now.” Olivia spotted a ladder off to her left, towards the end of the scaffolding, and started for it.

Sable grabbed her arm and stopped her, and she went to snap at her friend but lost her voice when she saw the fight below them.

Loren and Bleu were battling hard against Vail, all of them bleeding from gashes in their black armour. The demon was changing, his horns curling around his pointed ears now and his eyes glowing like the fires of Hell as he attacked the redheaded witch and did his best to block her spells. Wounds from where Kordula’s attacks had hit covered his broad muscular chest and he seemed to be moving more slowly than before.

Kordula hit him hard with a left hook that was impossibly strong for such a frail looking female. It knocked the demon backwards, sending him stumbling and struggling to keep upright.

“Damn. Thorne’s going to get himself killed at this rate. Bloody idiot,” Sable muttered and unhooked the crossbow from her belt. She opened the quiver-pouch there and danced her fingers over the bolts in it. She pulled out one with a thick pointed tube secured to the end and grinned at Olivia. “Let’s see the bitch dodge this.”

Sable loaded the explosive bolt, aimed and fired. It whizzed towards Kordula and the demon Sable had called Thorne. The demon’s pointed ears perked up and he shot Sable a glare and then disappeared.

The action distracted Kordula and Sable’s bolt hit her shoulder and exploded on impact, sending her spinning through the air and crashing to the ground in a blaze of fire and smoke. Had it killed her?

The smoke cleared to reveal the sorceress lying on the gravel, blood covering the right side of her body and pooling beneath her, black in the bright floodlights. The slinky material of her dress was shredded and smouldering, and the top right side of the metalwork corset had blown open, the silver curling outwards in places.

A dark snarl came from behind Sable.

Sable tensed and her eyes edged towards her shoulder. Olivia’s gaze leaped to the demon towering over her friend.

Thorne’s eyes burned bright crimson, his huge body hunched over in the small area between the two levels of scaffolding, his broad shoulders almost spanning the width of the frame.

“You seek to harm me, little female.” His deep voice vibrated through Olivia and Sable slowly shook her head and pointed towards Kordula who lay in a smoking heap on the drive.