Hammer Down: Children of the Undying: Book 2 Read Online Free PDF Page A

hunched over the open panel on top of the truck, focused on her work. Devi could barely see her over the top edge of the trailer, and then something flew overhead, large enough to cast dark shadows on the light-colored metal. “Fuck.” She hurried to the second ladder. “Get up there, Juliet!”
    The woman had already turned to scramble up the ladder. Devi had almost made it to the top rung when a strong hand closed around her calf and pulled—hard. She tumbled off the ladder to the ground, and vivid light exploded behind her eyes as her head slammed into the hard-packed earth.
    A shot exploded above her. At first, she thought her ears were ringing, but the noise crystallized a moment later into a high, wordless scream.
    Cache. Devi struggled to sit, to find her friend, but a scuffle in the dirt nearby drew her attention. A demon, maybe the one who’d grabbed her, held Shane’s head between his hands, and the man was seizing as the creature tried to force him out of his own body.
    She’d dropped her rifle, so she pulled her hunting knife free of her boot and brought it down as hard as she could into the demon’s back.
    Blood—or whatever demons had in its place—splashed everywhere. The skin roared in pain and twisted away, taking her knife with him.
    Cache screamed again, and bodies tumbled to the ground a dozen feet from Devi, obscured by the cover of enormous, membranous wings. Shane recovered enough to roll to his knees, but he couldn’t seem to get to his feet, not even when the nearby bodies rolled, giving them both a glimpse of purple hair.
    The skin she’d stabbed snatched Devi up by the shoulders and slammed her against the side of the trailer. “Breaking you will be a pleasure,” he rasped, blood seeping from the corner of his mouth, splashing hot on the flesh bared by her ripped shirt.
    She had to get away. She didn’t know where Tanner and Juliet were, and Cache and Shane were both down. Not to mention the passengers—
    The demon’s hands slid up to her face, and Devi’s vision swam as heat and blazing whiteness closed in on her. She felt the first stirrings of panic for herself as she realized the bastard was trying to pop her out of her body.
    She screamed, clawing at his face, finally gouging her thumbs into his eyes. A shriek rewarded her, and the fingers clutching her face slipped away as another roar, this one of challenge, split the air.
    The blurry shapes surrounding her doubled, and with them the sounds of combat. Grunts of pain, gunfire and shouts. When the haze clouding her vision cleared, she saw the man from the Pit Stop standing over Cache with the wing who’d attacked her in his grasp. Devi watched, primal satisfaction burning through her as Zel drew a blade, deep and sure, across the demon’s neck.
    Juliet dropped off the trailer, and a few men Devi didn’t recognize swarmed the trucks. They’d obviously arrived with Zel, and Devi ignored them all.
    She scrambled to where Cache lay, still, barely breathing, and touched her face. “Come on, sweetie. Open your eyes.”
    Cache didn’t stir. Blood seeped from a shallow gash just above her temple, but it was impossible to tell if she had any internal injuries. Behind them, Shane lurched to his feet with an incomprehensible mutter.
    Devi watched him, dread growing in her chest, and Juliet knelt beside her. “Flipped?”
    “No.” Shane was human, and there was only one thing a demon could do to human consciousness—pop it out and replace it with his own.
    Devi reached for the gun at her hip and watched Shane—or what used to be Shane—shuffle closer. His eyes were flat, blank, and his body jerked like a marionette in the hands of an unpracticed puppeteer.
    She shot him before she could talk herself out of it, before her own doubts got someone else killed. He hit the ground in a boneless heap, limbs grotesquely askew, and a snarl cut through the sound of battle. The skin who’d attacked her and Shane stared directly at her