Highland Moon Sifter (a Highland Sorcery novel) Read Online Free PDF Page A

us the unmakerrrr.”
    So the creatures could talk. And apparently reason. Interesting. “Unmaker?”
    The monsters heads turned toward the woman as one. So they wanted the lass.
    “Say that I do. Then what? I simply walk away?”
    The woman’s head jerked.
    The beast nodded.
    Interesting. Also not something that was going to happen.
    Shaw moved sideways into the space the lass had left between them, keeping her close. He wasn’t foolish enough to take her by the arm and drag her back to his side, not without getting stabbed for his trouble, yet he wasn’t going to leave her vulnerable.
    She had attacked him, yet the monsters clearly wanted her, were in fact, willing, or so they said, to leave him be. The little minx was proving to be quite the puzzle.
    “What do ye want with her?”
    Pale lips rolled back over gleaming teeth. “Unmakerrrrr. Naughty naughty girrrl. We hungerrrr.”
    Disgust pulled in Shaw’s belly. Well, that was out of the question.
    His bow twanged, taking the creature in the veined translucent skin where an eye should be. It shrieked, charging at him for the kill. Shaw momentarily froze in astonishment. It kept coming where a lesser beast would already be dead from that injury.
    Claws grazed his forearm. Shaw turned his own body into the woman’s, shielding her even as she lunged to knife the beast. Liking her tenacity, Shaw plucked the blade from her grasp, reaching back to skewer the creature rushing them.
    Its companions got to it first, and instead of joining their brother in the attack on him, they tore into the first beast with claws and teeth and fury. Hot breath washed across his arm before the others bore it to the ground, spraying his back with hot gray blood as the beast’s entrails were torn out and flung aside.
    Shocked, Shaw rolled to his feet, dragging the lass with him. The two Sifts just killed one of their own to keep him alive. What by all that is holy was going on here?
    The lass pulled him back and away as the shrieking, ripping beasts tumbled toward them.
    “Give me the knife,” she hissed. “I can kill them now!”
    Her scowl suggested fierceness able to do it, though he was loathe to let any slip of a lass get near such a whirlwind of savage shredding. If the creatures needed killing, he’d be the one to do it and the fact was he didn’t want their viciousness in his forest, especially this close to the village.
    Yet the two shredding the other one to pieces had done it to spare him and he wanted to know why.
    Drawing forth his magic, he thrust strands of moonlight out to bind them…and nothing. The silver threads hit the beasts and melted away. His magic did not work on them.
    Déithe!
    The woman lunged for his knife again and when he turned it away she grabbed an arrow out of his quiver and ran toward the beasts, plunging the shaft’s tip into a meaty thigh.
    The creature twisted, slapping out, knocking the girl across the ground and lunged over her.
    Shaw roared, running into the fray, knife grazing across thick muscle— rood’s dung , they were as hard as stone—and rolled with the beast to the ground, knocking it off the girl.
    The beast leaped over him, bowling Shaw over onto his back, spun, then jumped on to him, claws extended to rip into his chest, saggy face wobbling in rage, nostrils wide, then just as quickly stopped and slammed claws into the ground on either side of his head.
    “No, Fatherrrrr,” it hissed, washing putrid breath over his face. “No.” And as quickly as they’d appeared, it leaped backwards and scrambled up into the trees.
    Twisting to his elbow and stomach, Shaw saw the second one flee just as quickly, leaving a trail of swaying foliage and leaves and pine needles spiraling to the ground.
    Nothing about that encounter made sense. Father?
    He wasn’t one to spread his seed around, not as a cursed Moon Sifter, and he knew he’d never bedded a wench that uncomely, but a monster? Never.
    The woman wasn’t stirring. The length of