Cincinnati Apocalypse Part 3

Willow had thrown up a hand, the words of a protective spell upon her lips, conjuring a force field, and Kennedy had drawn the sword from the scabbard that lay upon the cliff's edge among her cast-off clothing, ready to meet the behemoth's charge.

Neither need to have bothered, though. Fast and nimble as the gargantuan beast was for its size, it could not react quickly enough to the abrupt disappearance of the rain forest and the sudden cliff a mere half dozen yards between the last stands of trees and the starry night beyond the plummeting precipice, and it ran right over the edge of the abyss, tumbling into the void, a bleat of panic that sounded as if it were part elephant's trumpet and part banshee's wail piercing the darkness.

Kennedy turned widened eyes upon her companion. "I repeat: what the hell was that?" she asked.

"That," a masculine voice, familiar to Willow but strange to Kennedy, replied, "is a stego-demon."

Willow grinned, welcome radiating from her face. Arms wide, she ran, closing the short distance between the newcomer and herself, embraced him fiercely, and cried, "Riley!"

"That's quite a welcome," the blonde woman beside Riley Finn stated. "Although I'm his wife, I seldom greet Riley in the nude unless, maybe, it's our anniversary."

"Nude?" Willow looked down at herself. "Oh, my God! I'm naked!"

Riley laughed.

"How could anyone forget she's naked?" his wife wondered.

"She's Willow," Riley explained.

"Oh, well, then," his wife said, "that explains it."

Still laughing at the red-faced, mortified witch, Riley said, "It would, if you knew Willow."

Kennedy, who'd already pulled on her jeans and thrown on her blouse, looked at the naked witch. "Who's Riley?" she asked.

"A commando," Willow said, hastening to dress.

"A used-to-be-commando," Riley corrected her.