Claimed by the Demon Knight: Book One by Cryptic Fawn Read Free Book Online Page A

on. And look what had happened without Tenuxhal around to keep the girl on her game. Rhoads had let herself go in the worst way. She'd become a total fucking embarrassment.
    The knight couldn't leave her like this, lying there all pitiful and dying in a morose little puddle of blood. The gracious thing to do would be to just kill her. But Tenuxhal was not merciful. There was no place in his life for that. But there was room in his life for Elsi, in the short term.
    The more he thought about it, the more he realized that Elsi clearly needed him. He could easily build the witch backup and restore her to her former level of power. And then Tenuxhal would deliver a good death, a spectacular death, one worthy of their particular brand of loathing.
    So now he had a problem, one that disgusted him. If he wanted to get another round out of her, he'd have to heal the woman. He wondered briefly how was he going to do that. All of the knights in Beelzebubs army had received some medical training from their overlord, a necessary tool in their line of work. A few had absorbed the knowledge with ease, like him. Tenuxhal, though uninterested, was intelligent and capable of wrapping wounds and setting bones if he needed to. But what a pain in the ass it would be. And slow. He really didn't want to wait for the witch to heal.
    And then he remembered the human boy. What was his name again... Mason? He could heal injuries like these in minutes.
    He reached out with his spiritual awareness, with long practised ease, searching for a small green flame that represented the human man. There was nothing. He was nowhere near Boulder. Well, that sucked. Maybe he was dead. Oh well
    But what was he gonna do with the woman now? Her injuries were far more than any normal human could withstand, and even her witch enhanced body could be, and apparently was severely damaged. That was part of the fun of being a witch. You could kick the living shit out of one another and they would mostly walk away in one piece. Just one of the perks of being the guardians of the living world.
    He huffed in irritation. So that idea was out.
    He exhaled a long suffering sigh and toyed with Zareite, using it’s sharp tip to etch pale lines through the thick blood on the concrete, the marks quickly filling back in each time, leaving him with a fresh palette. Idly, he traced out a dome-shaped image that reminded him of home, before it too disappeared. What the fuck to do?
    He blinked. Of course. He'd take her back to the energy particle rich plane of Hell. Elsi would naturally absorb the energy she needed there and she'd be fixed up in no time at all. Question asked. Question answered.
    The corners of Tenuxhal's mouth twisted upwards to form an unnerving expression of depraved delight. The thought of having the woman all to himself, trapped and alone in Hell, prompted an unexpected shift in the knight's mood, lightening it from just plain murderous to a haughty feeling of smugness and self-satisfaction. He almost felt content, and maybe even a little frisky.
    "We're going to do this again, Rhoads. And we're going to do it right."
    Tenuxhal stood up, towering over the pale body beneath his legs. Stepping back aside, he clipped Zareite back onto his hip before quickly searching out for the diamond staff, only a few feet away, and fastening it on his other hip, bent down, scooping Elsi up with extraordinary care, for him. He wanted her to live, after all. The knight looked down at his prey again, a dead weight hanging limp in his arms like a half empty bag of trash, arms out flung, neck extended back, splashes of blood falling from her hair and mouth agape. Tenuxhal could see far back into her throat.
    A crooked grin stretched across the smooth side of his face at the sight of Elsi. What a beautiful fucking mess she was.
    Well, healing might take the little wretch a bit of time, he mused. And if he had to wait, he had to wait. After this long, what were a few more days to him,