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I felt the toes ofacross the asphalt for an instant and then I swept after it The creature turned to face ht I covered , and thethe sword down as the monster reached me and felt its reverberation all the way up to h one of the creature’s arms and it screeched a terrible noise My eyes were practically shut, squinting in the blazing light co from the creature’s chest

The creature lashed out with its other ar atto get aith just a slender cut

I tried to open my eyes a little more but it was ilasses I fleard in a shot and turned back to blast the creature with nightfire My spell bounced off the creature harhtfire and it was nearly iht the creature at close quarters without being dangerously blinded What now? It wasn’t as though I had a whole ton of spells in s and followed ave chase I flew as hard and fast as I could, trying to think Maybe I could knock the thing into Lake Michigan and drown it At the very least I needed to lead it away froe

Thecry, allanced behind ly close, and that its clawed fingers reached for litter of the creature’s teeth as it s a thousand lian swirled and crashed in its winter fury

I stopped abruptly and dropped several feet, leaving the creature confused for ame to dip underneath it and come up behind I slashed out with the sword and sliced one of its wings from its back

Bluish blood spurted from the wound and the monster howled in pain It dropped abruptly, unable to co It spun doard the beach in the darkness, the light fro like a beacon

I flen after it, headfirst, legs tucked in behind ht to folloas going to finish this thing off, then call Wade and tell hiht abruptly winked out

I slowedbehind round Had I killed it, or was this some sort of trick?

I flew cautiously down to the place where I thought the creature ht have landed My boots slid in the sand and the lake rolled and crashed against the shore In late fall, city workers had rolled in with earth movers and created a kind of breakwater out of the beach, e ht fron of the ain, just a few feet above the beach, andthe line of the shore I wondered if I dared risk a light If the ht to find ht, I wasn’t sure if I could find any evidence of it And it really would not do if so corpse of a hideous ht and try to focus it like a slender beah, I required an extra dose of concentration to get it going

That meant I was a little distracted when the creature ca out of the darkness of the dunes and crashed into me

The sas knocked from my hand and fleay A hand came arounds kicked underneath ht fell across the creature’s face, andstood white and proud in the ed shards of feather He smiled at ic surge up in anger, and a blast of heat burst out of round I rolled over, gasping for air, and stood up, facing him

"You?" I said in disbelief "You?"

His silver blue eyes glittered in the light, and I realized I had seen those eyes before They were the eyes of Wade’s most recent pack member, James

"You’re a shapeshifter," I said, astonished I had never heard of such a thing--an angel that could shift its shape And I had certainly never heard of a shapeshifter that had more than two shapes Baraqiel could become James the human, James the wolf and the hideous blue monster in the alley What other tricks did he have up his sleeve?

"Lucifer does enjoy seeing the results of his affairs," Baraqiel said "I a all of his children"

"Lucifer?" I said I was starting to sound like an idiot

But it y and found the body of the first wolf, I’d thought that it felt like Raht Baraqiel wasn’t a nephili notLucifer wouldn’t copulate with? What was he trying to do, manufacture the perfect monster?