Birthright - Book 2 of the Legacy Series (An Urban Fantasy Novel) Read Online Free PDF

ten seconds but the image of Amaymon slowly squashing two severed heads together, with bone, teeth, blood and, worst of all, brain matter dribbling between his clawed fingers as he smiled maliciously, will haunt me for the rest of my life.
    He rubbed his hands together, as if washing them in the soup of blood, ash and brain, and offered a gore-splattered hand to Abi. She looked away sharply and made an effort not to throw up. Amaymon looked from her hunched position to his hand.
    “My, my. I wonder which one of us really deserves to be called a pussy,” he said disappointedly, before leaving her in the middle of the street and walking back toward the office. Halfway there, he began licking his hands clean, and he winked at me. That’s when I almost threw up. Taking in deep breaths, I pointed at the shrubbery and watched him revert back into a feline. He dug his stained paws in soil and entered the door I opened for him. I ignored the mud he left on my wooden floorboards. Anything was better than vampire brain-matter paw prints.

6
    “Try to hold still.”
    She winced every time the thick point of the whiteboard marker came in contact with her skin. Although it might have had something to do with the small protrusion coming from her ribcage where the bone was broken. Abi’s injured side was covered in small, one-character symbols spanning from her left hip up toward the ribcage. She stood inside a circle of candles, holding up her shirt from the side. Larger symbols were drawn between each candle. That had been the easy part. The trick was drawing the minute energy-channeling symbols that had to cluster around her broken rib. Screw one up and I would have to start the whole thing over.
    “I can’t, Erik. It’s an involuntary pain reaction,” she replied through clenched teeth.
    I was about to reply with something sharper when Amaymon padded in silently. Abi gave him a look of both fear and disgust. After the Hannibal Lector stint with the vampires, I didn’t really blame her. Except I knew Amaymon, and there is a very good reason why I keep him on a leash.
    “I can help,” he said, and got in between us.
    Abi gave me a look, silently asking whether she should let him that close to her or not. I nodded. Amaymon’s nature was a strange one. He was a monster and relished the hunt and the macabre. And yet, he was also very loyal. I theorized it was because of the contract with me. It wasn’t as simple as signing a piece of paper and abiding by it. When I first got him, the demon was just that — a demon. He wanted death, destruction and chaos. And he wanted to do it in various imaginative and graphic ways. But demons like Amaymon, who are older than time itself, tend to be more than just harbingers of chaos. They were built upon a set of principles too, resembling more the deities of old rather than the horned depictions the Catholic Church tries to sell. It was thanks to those principles that Amaymon could serve so loyally under the Demon Emperor. Once he made his contract with me, willingly, that loyalty shifted to me. But it wasn’t as simple as helping me up when I fall down. His personality had changed, too. He had become more like me, as if someone had implanted my personality in his and removed all the inhibitors. And like his dual form, my familiar’s personality stretched to two extremes, one lusting after blood and gore, the other focusing on his role as my familiar. The problem was that sometimes these extremes were at odds with each other, and it was a psychological coin toss which one would win.
    It wasn’t my life that was at stake when the vampires injured Abi, so he didn’t need to help her. The fact that he asked me, however, showed that he was becoming more… human. Or, at least, human-attuned. Which was a good thing. And he had technically saved her life. He just did it in his own graphic manner.
    I nodded at her, certain that the cat wouldn’t snap and tear both our throats out. And besides,