The wind brought the sound of hounds baying. Next to him Aisling shivered and rubbed her arms. He ushered her into the building and indicated a corner for her to settle into just as the sound of a helicopter reached him.

It was a risk, but this time he deemed it necessary. He crossed to her and knelt in front of her, noting how fragile she was, sitting on the floor with her knees to her chest and her arms wrapped around her legs. The desire to protect her filled him with the primitive, explosive heat of molten rock.

“I won’t be far,” he said, unable to stop himself from stroking her cheek, from brushing his thumb over her lips and losing himself in angelite eyes.

Pride spiked through him when she pulled a long kitchen knife from the burlap sack holding what remained of their food. She laid it on the ground next to her. “I’ll be okay.”

Zurael shed his physical form and moved away from her, motes of dust and dirt, lightly tossed leaves and insect carcasses the only things marking his exit.

The drone of engines assailed him, vibrated through him. Wild-life scattered and darted into hiding places ahead of the rumble announcing the approach of man.

A small swarm of the finger-length fey who feasted on blood raced after a fleeing deer, hoping for a meal before deep nightfall forced them to their nest.

Their wings glittered with the colors of sunset. Their upper bodies and faces were vaguely human though their minds were those of a savage hive insect.

Zurael moved away from Aisling’s shelter cautiously, gauging the distance to ensure he could get back to her if danger threatened. The baying of the hounds grew closer, coming from the same direction as the sound of the helicopter’s rotors. He couldn’t see the helicopter until he reached the end of his self-defined tether to Aisling. Then uneasiness filled him at the spotlight illuminating the ground beneath it.

He’d witnessed the guardsmen carousing in The Barrens, casually slaughtering anything that crossed their path, but tonight was different. They were hunting something specific, and coming toward where Aisling hid.

He shifted his attention to the closest buildings. Reevaluated them. The storage shed was a defensible position against wild animals, humans and supernatural beings, but it wasn’t safe against armed men.

Zurael returned to Aisling. “Let’s find another place.”

She rose to her feet without argument. At the doorway he lifted her in his arms.

With a thought, the wings unfurled, unhindered by the Djinn-created fabric of his shirt and jacket. In two steps he was airborne, her weight negligible, her soft, joyous laugh sending heat cascading into his heart as he flew the short distance necessary to reach a hole in the third floor of a building that looked relatively stable.

“That was wonderful!” she said, eyes sparkling, voice breathless and cheeks flushed, for an instant unafraid of anything.

He wished he could keep her that way. But all too soon the bloodhounds arrived, baying, noses to the ground. They went directly to the place Aisling had been, then circled in confusion at the lost track as guardsmen arrived in jeeps.

Fury filled Zurael. The witches would pay for their part in sending Aisling into a trap. “Stay here,” he said before once again becoming a swirl of air.

In the desert a single Djinn could become a sandstorm deadly enough to bury large caravans of men and machines in a matter of moments. He had less to work with in The Barrens, but Zurael was determined to disrupt the hunt for Aisling.

Leaves and sticks, rocks and small scraps of metal-all gathered in the violent energy of his unformed mass. Men cursed and dogs yelped when he bore down on them, blinding them temporarily, making them bleed when debris struck them. Some ducked into the shelter he and Aisling had abandoned, while others raced toward the building where she was now hidden.

Rage gave the winds more force, but the vines reclaiming the land covered the loose material that would make him deadlier. As the first of the guardsmen neared the building Aisling was in, Zurael shot upward, using all the gathered energy to reach the helicopter.

It rocked, tilted, might have escaped his assault, but the open door where a man with a machine gun sat allowed the gathered debris to distract the pilot in a critical instant. The humans screamed as the helicopter spun out of control before striking the ground.

Zurael returned to Aisling. Beneath them, men rushed to the downed helicopter. Radios squealed. Panicked, angry voices reported the crash and were told additional guardsmen were being dispatched. Already there were too many of them, spread too far apart and too heavily armed, too nervous, for Zurael to attack with Aisling close by-and even if he could buy her time to escape, there were other predators to worry about.

Machine-gun fire exploded, vented in fury or fear at some movement in the shadows. Next to him, Zurael could feel Aisling shiver, could hear the shortness of her breath as she remained completely motionless, not giving in to the primitive instinct to run.

Guardsmen pulled the bodies of the pilot and his passenger from the twisted metal. “There’s nothing we can do for them,” an authoritative voice said. “Newman, get the heat sensor out. Alvarez, get the dogs. Refresh their memories with the scent article. Let’s finish this. These men died because of magic. Anything that moves and isn’t one of us, shoot to kill.”

Two men peeled away from the crash site. One headed toward a jeep, the other to where the bloodhounds milled around the concrete-block storage building.

Zurael turned to Aisling. What he intended was dangerous, but there was no other way.

He gathered her in his arms and lifted her. “Put your legs around my waist,” he whispered.

Returning to Aisling’s home wasn’t an option. Not tonight and not with her.

In his mind’s eye he saw The Barrens as he’d seen it as an owl, considered the abandoned buildings where he’d perched and watched the activity beneath him. He chose one to shelter in, but fixed the roof of another in his mind to transport to-a place he hoped to launch from before the first of the angels arrived, summoned by the sound of him breaching the metaphysical plane.

With a thought, the batlike wings appeared again; only this time he allowed the full demon form to manifest. His fingernails elongated into sharp talons; a deadly barbed tail completed the look. Zurael smiled at the irony of appearing in the image once forced onto The Prince by the alien god-of possibly using it to defeat an angel.

A burst of machine-gun fire, and the seemingly instantaneous impact of bullets against the building, served as a trigger for their departure. He curled an arm around Aisling in a protective gesture, then willed himself to the rooftop fixed in his thoughts.

As he’d feared, no sooner did his feet touch the flat surface of the roof than the night sky opened in a blaze of light. White wings stretched in what the humans saw as a glorious display.

Zurael set Aisling aside then moved to stand between her and the angel, but not before he heard her gasp of awe and saw it in her eyes. A deadly blade formed in the angel’s hand. It glowed like the sun, but despite what the humans believed, it wasn’t a weapon of fiery glory. It was a creation forged in the coldest, deepest realms of space, because only such a thing could prevail against the fire of the Djinn.

Satisfaction moved through Zurael when the angel made small slicing motions with the blade, indicating his intention to fight. An older angel, one from a higher order, would use his voice as a weapon. But by his actions, the angel in front of Zurael had revealed his status, his inexperience when it came to the Djinn.

Zurael moved forward and to the side, wanting to draw the angel away from Aisling before the fight began.