Hair of Gold: Just Right (Urban Fairytales Book 6) by Erik Schubach

pushover even in human form. He barely staggered back as he took the brunt of the hit, holding the beasts deadly, curved claws at arm's length.
    The beast snapped at him just out of reach with fangs dripping with a greenish-black ichor. It smelled of sulfur and bile, it would not take a genius to know that it must be some sort of poison. It roared at my brother as Gretel, Hansel, and I pulled our weapons in an instant, as Little Bear stood on his hind legs, baring his fangs.
    Andrei smiled cruelly at the beast as it slowly started overpowering him, pulling slowly out of his iron grip. Then Andrei roared right back in the demon's face as he transformed, muscles bulking, clothing shredding, and face elongating as his roar turned into something that shook the valley between the peaks.
    I saw something on the demon's face I never would have thought possible until that very moment, doubt and... fear? Then Andrei tore the arms off of the demon as it shrieked. Then swiped his great paw through the air, swatting the demon down as it tried to fly away, streaming black ichor from the gaping tears where its arms had been.
    The blow was devastating, snapping a wing and tearing the membrane the entire length. The demon hit the ground and laid there stunned until I saw that fear again as it realized it had landed in front of another bear. Pavel came down on it with devastating force. Then he stepped back from the unmoving corpse and harrumphed at it.
    I realized I had my arm across Gretel's chest in a subconscious protective gesture, keeping her behind me. I swallowed and smiled sheepishly at her then looked over to see that Vladimir had finished his own transformation. He had the sense enough to shrug out of his cloak and shirt first, though his pants were in tatters.
    As my bears instinctively formed a ring around us, Gretel and I moved back to back, blades and her green magics at the ready. Hansel moved aside, keeping us out of striking range of his whip that was now slashing smoothly through the air above his head from side to side, poised to strike.
    That's when all hell broke loose.
    Ten men broke from the shadows of the trees downwind from us, tricky, they must have known who we were and... what, my brothers were. I caught the shadows on the ground this time as a flood of those flying demon things descended upon us.
    We left the demons to the bears as we concentrated on the mortal combatants and my brothers moved to intercept the demons. That was still shocking and horrifying to me. Actual demons. They were not cursed like the poor souls with the Lycan Contagion. They were physical manifestations of true evil... and these men were willingly working with them.
    The ground shook as my bears, and I bellowed our roaring challenges. I heard a whistling mixed into the commotion and instinctively grasped at the air in front of me and caught a black arrow, dripping with that demonic poison, just inches from my chest with my free hand. I stepped into the first of Narcisa's men and through his guard as they clashed with us and jammed the arrow deep into his gut.
    I could smell his flesh burning as he screamed and bellowed as he fell to the ground. It took just a moment for him to die with a huge hole burned into his chest. I parried two blades coming down at me. Just as I deflected the second blade, Hansel's whip came down, cutting deep into the man's sword hand, causing him to drop his blade to grasp his hand which was stripped of flesh almost to the bone.
    I twisted to the left to slashed across the belly of the second man as Gretel twisted around my right to slash her dagger across the others throat, finishing her brother's job. We were moving seamlessly together, the pressure of each other at our backs giving an indication of our moves so that we could anticipate and move together.
    The swarming demons were driven back by the sheer ferocity my brothers could bring to the fight. They were slashing and snapping at anything that moved,