Demon Years

Savior

Max wanted to lash out so badly she could taste it. I won't die like this. Not beaten in a gutter by some low lives.I won't.

Yet here she lay.

Helpless. Weak.

Defeated.

Not only were her taste buds drenched with blood, she felt like she was suffocating on it.

Her mind ached to fight until they were begging her for mercy-it wanted her to get up and make them eat their teeth, but her body refused to cooperate. Nothing was listening to her. Heck, she couldn't even keep them from hitting her.

Unable to do anything at all, she glared her hatred at the man and hoped that the look alone would haunt the fucker for the rest of eternity.

The man laughed as he squeezed the trigger. Holding her breath, Max waited for the sound that would end her life.

Out of the darkness, a blur rushed in at the same instant the man fired the gun. One moment, the three hoodlims were laughing at her pain while they insulted her. In the next, they were flying through the air and hitting the ground near her hard enough to break bones.

Max froze as she tried to figure out where she'd been shot, but her body hurt so much that she couldn't tell. Maybe it

missed me. . . .

Lying on the street, she caught a flash of blond hair and black clothes as someone attacked her attack.

One of them cried out and the gun landed on the ground beside her.

The blond man tsked. "Shame you're too young to kill. But in two years, I catch you doing this crap again, you won't live long enough to rethink it." With one hand, he threw another one into the street like a rag doll.

In a swirl of black and a flash of silver, the man turned to face Max. She didn't know why, but the guy reminded her more of a rich stockbroker than someone able to take down street-hardened gangbangers. And he wasn't all that old either. Maybe his late twenties.

Maybe.

Max could barely draw her breath as the man came forward with the walk of a vicious predator. He was dressed all in black. An expensive leather coat draped around a body that was lethal.

The man knelt down, his brow furrowed into a deep frown. "They made a mess of you, kid. Can you stand?"

Max slapped at his hand as the man reached out to touch her. She didn't need help from anyone. Especially not a stranger.

She tried to push herself to her feet, then everything went black.

Lucas Lamia barely caught the skinny kid dressed in a foully black hoodie before she hit the street. That hideous thing had saved her life,since it stuck out like a sore thumb.

From what he'd seen, the kid was a tough little scrapper. He'd give her that. And the girl could take a vicious beating without begging for mercy. There weren't many adults who could have gone through what she had without crying.

That alone made him respect the kid.

He glared at the other punks, who were running down the street as fast as they could. The ancient warrior and predator inside him wanted to hunt them down and kill them for what they'd done.

But the man in him knew this one, the one who'd put her life on the line to save the elderly couple, wouldn't live if she did. The cowards could unfortunately wait for another butt-whipping.

He tilted the kid's face so that he could see her features. The short brown hair was saturated with blood, and a huge cut would most likely leave a scar on the left side of her lips. Her nose was broken and by the looks of it, her jaw might be too. If not broken, they'd pounded it real good. Blood poured from her shoulder where she'd been shot.