Prince of Demons 2: The Order of the Black Swan Read Online Free PDF Page A

animal noises getting louder and, perhaps, more excited.
    “Do you know where we’re going?” she managed between pants.
    “Yes. The sulfur pits will throw them off. The smell is so strong, they’ll lose the trail.”
    That didn’t sound like a bad idea to Lana until she got her first whiff of the sulfur and stopped dead in her tracks. Brave forged on, not realizing at first that she was no longer with him. He had to backtrack three minutes to find her.
    “Lana! You can’t stop! We have to go!” She stood looking wide-eyed and shaking her head. “No? What do you mean no? We can’t stay here.”
    She looked at Brave. “What could they do to us that could possibly be worse than that smell?”
    He pointed behind her as he gaped. “You really want to find that out firsthand?”
    “I can’t go in there, Brave. You’ve got to go without me and I’m not joking this time.”
    He let out something that sounded like a frustrated growl and bent down. Before she had a chance to register what had happened, he had picked her up, folded her over his left shoulder, and was jogging toward a smell that was the worst fate Lana could even begin to imagine. In addition to blood rushing to her head, her diaphragm was being squeezed in a very unpleasant manner and the sulfur smell was making her wish she was dead. She responded by squirming, kicking and beating his ass in the literal sense, but Brave ignored it all and kept moving doggedly forward.
    Oddly enough, in the middle of all that was happening, she did have the errant thought that he would have to be extraordinarily strong to withstand her best assault without being fazed. As the smell grew even worse, she fought harder. Just as it reached the point where she thought she might pass out from the fumes, Brave stopped, set her on her feet and held on until she was steady.
    Lana jerked away from his hold as she looked around. They appeared to be in the middle of a farting yellow swamp. It had pools that were hissing, bubbling, popping and making farting noises so loud it drowned out the sounds of straithgard. Whatever they were. The cause of the bubbling and popping wasn’t apparent, but she didn’t really want to examine the why of it too closely.
    When she started to take a step back, Brave grabbed her and pulled her toward him. “Watch out behind you. If you take a dip in one of the pits, you’ll smell like that forever.”
    At that moment she was ready to push him into the one behind him and walk away. “I will NEVER forgive you for this,” she said through clenched teeth.
    To her amazement, he laughed and said, “Yes, you will.”
    When she opened her mouth to expound further on her feelings, he pulled her the rest of the way into his body and drowned the words in a kiss, which she should have resisted, but didn’t. She wanted to resist. She even thought about biting down on the tongue that was winding her body up into a molten dance of pleasure. But it seemed Brave had told the truth about being a good kisser. In fact, she would even say that he was being humble.
    It seemed that Brave was the sort of masterful kisser who was capable of making a woman forget all other kisses before his such that in essence, if not in fact, it was a first kiss.
    When he pulled away and broke the connection, she remembered that she was in the middle of a nightmare and infuriated with her escape mate.
    “Look at it this way. If you expel gas in here, no one will know.”
    “I can’t believe you just said that.”
    He laughed. “Stay right behind me. Step where I step.”
    He didn’t have to ask twice. Lana was really sure that she didn’t want to experience a liquid sulfur dunk. So she did all possible to mirror his footing, but some of the solid ground paths he chose were so narrow she had to place one foot in front of the other. The stress of the fear eventually began to take its toll and her legs started shaking.
    Brave reached behind him until he could feel her. “Lana, are