Goddess in the Middle by Stephanie Julian Read Free Book Online Page B

bone.
    Healing Rom would drain her. She’d need help returning home afterward. She had to hope Rom and Remy would be able to get her there.
    Taking a deep breath, she closed her eyes and let her power rise.
    His pain hit her first. It always did. She gasped as she took it in, accepted it, although it made her nerve endings scream and her muscles tighten.
    She kept her hands steady and let the power seep from her into Rom. It sought out the pieces of him that needed healing.
    She replaced the chips of bone that the demon had broken off, not a difficult task but necessary. Then she tackled the muscle tears. That required a delicate hand. And though she was out of practice, she thought she did a respectable job. She was confident he would regain full use of them.
    Moving on to the rips in his skin, she knit them back together, making sure she left no scars. She didn’t want him to have a constant physical reminder of this encounter.
    She didn’t know how long it took. She only knew that when she opened her eyes, the sky was pitch black and she saw the flashing lights of a police car as it stopped at the top of the hill, less than a quarter of a mile from where they were.
    “Oh, dear.”

Chapter 4
    The cold, wet swipe of a wolf’s tongue brought Rom back to full consciousness with a shudder.
    “Damn it, Remy. What the hell?”
    His cousin nudged him with his cold snout as he heard a woman’s heartfelt sigh.
    “Oh, thank the Blessed Mother Goddess,” Amity said. “I was afraid the police were going to come down here and find you all bloody and unconscious and arrest me for assaulting you.”
    Sitting up, Rom instinctively grabbed for Amity as she trembled on her knees next to him.
    “Are you okay?” he demanded. “Were you hurt? Bitten? Are you bleeding?”
    She shook her head though it seemed an effort. “No, but you nearly died. And Remy’s injured as well.” She nodded to the wolf sitting and panting beside him. “We need to get out of here before the police see us and decide to investigate.”
    He’d nearly died? Is that why he felt like he could sleep for a week?
    Didn’t matter. Right now, he needed to find the strength to get the three of them away from here before anyone noticed that they looked like survivors of a massacre.
    Standing, he pulled Amity to her feet as he glanced around.
    They’d gotten lucky so far. The clouds hid the moon and the museum had no guards at night. It’d just been dumb luck that they’d ended up in an area of the park that had some cover from bushes and trees.
    He didn’t know how long it’d been since Amity—that wasn’t her real name, was it? The woman who’d introduced herself last night as Amity was really the Goddess Munthukh. How was that for a twist in their screwed-up tale?
    Well, it wasn’t one he could spend any time thinking about right now. They needed to get back to the car.
    Remy bled from several cuts on his body. Amity looked pale and disheveled and shaky. Rom looked down at himself. He looked like he’d just killed something and bathed in its blood.
    Great .
    Remy’s wolf gave a low whine, his eyes vaguely dazed. No help there. But at least Remy was alive.
    Focusing his attention on the goddess swaying in front of him, Rom reached for her, drawing her close to him and holding her tight. He couldn’t believe neither he nor Remy had recognized her last night. His only excuse was that, for the past several years, he and Remy had been single-minded in their pursuit of the demon now turning into a pile of ash a few feet away.
    They’d had no time to attend the rituals still held at Uni’s Temple just across the Schuylkill River in center-city Reading.
    But why hadn’t Amity told them last night? Surely, she’d known they were lucani , Etruscan wolf shifters.
    “Rom,” Amity’s voice sounded even more weak. “We need to get out of here.”
    Time for questions later. She was right. They needed to get moving.
    He looked into his cousin’s eyes and