Page 47 of The Demon's Pet

“Uh… one day,” I said.

Griffin laughed, a slightly mocking edge to his tone. “Then you have no idea what he’s capable of.”

“Probably not,” I admitted. “But what choice does either of us have?”

Griffin looked at the ceiling, frustrated, his huge muscles flexing. “I suppose you’re right.”

“Your animal is so beautiful,” I said, softening my tone. “It would be a sin for anything to happen to it. Or you. I can already tell you’re a good person.”

Griffin laughed. “That obvious? Well, I am.” He put his hands on his hips and stared at Sam. “I’ll do it. For her.” He waved a hand at me. “I don’t like her being alone with you.”

Sam’s lip curled in a sneer. “Like I would get ideas about some human-dog hybrid.”

His words stung me to my core, and Griffin looked over at me, shocked.

Sam turned on his heel and left the shack, pine needles crunching under his feet. “We need to leave.”

Griffin’s eyes watched me with apologetic softness as we walked out into the clearing.

“Wait,” Sam said, holding out his hand and staring at it. In a twinkling of light, a collar appeared, and Sam held it out to Griffin. “Put this on.”

Griffin fastened it around his neck. “What does it do again?”

“Binds any demons within you.”

Griffin reared back. “There are no demons in me. I would never—”

“Put it on, then,” Sam said simply.

Griffin clasped it around his neck, then shifted. I saw Sam closing his eyes, murmuring quiet words.

Then he opened his eyes and gazed upon Griffin’s winged lion form.

“I’ve created a magical tether. If you get more than fifty feet from me, your very cells will stop where they are. Understand?”

Griffin’s eyes widened, but he nodded, his mane bouncing in the warm morning air.

“Get on,” Sam told me, unfurling his wings, which shone like glossy obsidian in the bright sunlight that filtered through the trees around us.

I walked to Griffin, unsure about all of this. After all, he was a person. I didn’t know if this was treating him like an animal, and—

Before I could hesitate more, I felt Sam’s strong hands reach around my waist and lift me easily onto Griffin, who was so tall I was still about six feet off the ground.

I wrapped my hands in the fur, which was so soft and silky I could have lain down and fallen asleep on it.

“Come on,” Sam said, lifting into the air, his giant wings making whooshing noises, sending pine needles and dust everywhere. “We still have a long way to go.”

11

Griffin stretched out his huge wings and beat the air a few times to test them. Then he leaped forward into the air, and his wings caught him, lifting us upward, toward the sky.

We rose and rose above the tree line and up over the mountains, so beautiful and pristine beneath us.

I took a moment to look back over my shoulder and saw cougars far below, watching us leaving.

I looked farther back and saw the rolling green hills and yellow wheat fields of several wolf havens.

Then I turned forward and saw only blue sky and then the veil, a huge wall of purple smoke blocking everything in front of it.

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