Black Widow Demon

Tidy towns often concealed dirty secrets. And this small mining town was too tidy for Blade’s taste.

Nestled among the foothills of the Godseeker Mountains, it suffered from too-uniform construction and a general lack of aesthetic design. But after several months of crossing the desert alone, Blade’s standards were not all that high. He wanted a bath, a hot meal, and a soft bed.

A bed he could wake up in alone. The two-foot goldthief—one of the more dangerous variety of snakes in these parts—he had found in his bedroll that morning had been an unwelcome surprise. Fortunately, Blade was neither a restless sleeper nor easily startled, and he possessed a great deal of natural patience. Once the sun came up on the desert, the well-rested serpent had slithered off on its own without incident.

Blade continued to study the mining settlement deep in the valley below him from an outcropping of weathered sandstone. Layers of desert dirt coated the rooftops, painting the entire town a dull shade of gray. Beyond it, the hills rose to flat peaks of a vast rocky mountain range, sparsely forested with juniper and yellow pine. Narrow ribbons of silvery water streamed down to filter through sand dunes on the valley floor and irrigate the town’s gardens, ones that were now spent and shriveled by this time of year. Behind and above, past the top of the mesa, stretched the desert. Beneath where Blade stood, a lone open wagon hauled by a sway-backed, listless hross clattered along a dirt trail that broadened into a street where it met town limits.

This bold new settlement had sprung up arrogantly close to what had, until recently, been demon territory. It possessed no protective ramparts, something Blade thought a serious oversight on the part of its founders. He had owned a saloon in Freetown, a trading outpost in the very center of demon territory, and he knew something of human nature and desperation. For more than three hundred years immortal goddesses and demons had used the world for their pleasure. Demons might be gone now, banished by the Demon Lord’s own daughter, yet any number of mortal dangers remained.

When he considered his near-empty pack, however, and that this was the first sign of civilization he’d come across in several weeks, its underwhelming neatness and lack of protection were not enough to deter him. He patted his clothing to confirm that his knives were secure and at hand. He’d been away from the Godseeker Mountains for ten years. He doubted if he would be recognized here, or that it would mean much to anyone anymore if he were.

He was bone-deep weary of death and destruction and of the strong who preyed on the weak. The past was behind him. He was looking ahead. He was no longer a saloonkeeper, an assassin, or a cripple. He was a far cry from the helpless, abused boy he’d once been long ago. He would be none of those things again.

Deep within these mountains was a boundary that the goddesses had created to keep demons confined to the desert regions. He would test that boundary and see what, if anything, lay beyond—if any of the Old World remained or if it had been completely decimated during the Demon Occupation more than three hundred years earlier. He thought that just once in his life he would like to see the sea, something he’d only ever read of in books.

A slight breeze stirred the warm, late-afternoon air and he made a face—he stank, no doubt about it. Dust caked the thighs of his denim trousers and stiffened the broad brim of his hat. If he did not get that bath, he could forget about finding a hot meal and soft bed. Although waking up alone would be guaranteed.

As he turned, he detected movement at the far edge of the town, near the dunes. From this distance it was difficult to say for certain, but it looked as if they were building a very large bonfire. He wondered what they were celebrating.

Shrugging his pack higher on his shoulders, he picked his way off the outcropping. Once on the valley floor, he carefully circled the town to approach via the main street that cut through its heart.

A neatly lettered sign, not yet worn by wind and blowing sand, proclaimed it Goldrush.

…

Fair trial, be damned. Without the arrival of some sort of miracle, come nightfall the townspeople intended to burn Raven at the stake as a spawn.

She sat in a makeshift jail cell on the edge of a rough wooden bed, its wool blanket scratchy beneath her flattened palms and her feet dangling well off the whitewashed pine floor. The jailor’s chair and a desk with a crooked leg were the only other furnishings in the room and were out of her reach on the other side of the iron bars.

For the hundredth time she mentally raced through her options. All of them involved killing her stepfather. But her first attempt at that was what had gotten her into this trouble.

She toppled to her side and tucked her clasped hands beneath her cheek, staring at the bars. It was his own fault that she’d stabbed him. He had slipped his hand down the front of her dress, and when she defended herself, he’d had the nerve to blame her for his wrongdoing. He claimed she had tempted him.

Then, he’d told others her mother had slept with a demon and that Raven was nothing more than spawn. Fire was the test that would prove it. If she burned, she was innocent.

The injustice of her situation quivered through her slight frame. She was not a whore, and she would not become one for him. She’d rather be burned as a spawn. If her friend Creed knew how her stepfather had touched her, he would kill him on her behalf. But he wasn’t here to help her now. And unfortunately for her, her accuser was the Godseeker who represented the law in this town. It was his right to test her. No one would come to her aid.

Time crept by as the shadows deepened.

The front door of the jailhouse creaked open and she sat up with a start, her heart hammering in her chest. She blinked against the sudden stream of light from outdoors.

Justice appeared before her—Justice in the form of her stepfather, and not any sudden righting of wrongs. Hate unfurled in her stomach at the sight of him.

She rose from the bed and stood at the bars of her cell. His gait was stiff as he walked into the room to set a lantern on the desk. She had jabbed the knife into his thigh and the fact that the wound pained him filled her with joy. Although, he had been lucky—that was not where she’d aimed.

“There is still time to change your mind,” he said to her, speaking softly so as not to be overheard by anyone lurking outside the jailhouse door. “I can withdraw the charges. I can help you exorcise the demon in you.”

Raven met his eyes. It was a talent of hers that she could sometimes read people’s darkest thoughts, particularly when emotions ran high, and his mind was darker than most.

She no longer had any reason to disguise her contempt for him. “You would love to see me humiliated, stripped naked, and flogged to within an inch of my life. Then you would take me. Afterward, you would drink my blood because you believe what it contains can give you a demon’s strength.”

His face flushed with anger. He had been a handsome man once. Still was, in fact, despite the silver threads lacing his brown hair and the deep creases around his eyes and mouth. He had a presence about him that commanded a high level of respect. But Raven saw the ugliness simmering beneath the surface. Her mother had died a broken woman because of him.

Hatred and fear fed her strength. She gripped the cell bars so tight, she knew when she released them the imprints of her fingers would remain.

That inner demon voice terrified her far more than the man who faced her.

Her stepfather’s eyes followed hers to the bars that contained her. “That’s it, little demon,” he taunted, his words soft. “Show the world what you are. What the blood you say I’d love to drink contains. How far do you think you could run then? How safe from the Godseekers’ assassins would you be?”

That was what stopped her. She did not want people to think of her as demon spawn. She did not want to be hunted, nor for Justice to be proven right in anyone’s eyes. She had to find another way to escape.

And when she did, she would kill him.

“There are some who suspect you for what
you
are,” she said in return. “Are you so confident of what I am? If I do burn, more will begin to doubt you. They will watch you.” Her glance flickered to the amulet he wore around his throat. “And eventually, when the goddesses fail to return, no matter how many so-called spawn you torture and kill in their name, the people will turn from you.”

Justice hooked the wooden jailor’s chair with his foot and swung it around, favoring his injured leg, then sat with his arms folded across the chair’s spindled back as if he had all the time in the world. He planted his chin on the crook of one elbow and studied her.

She had never fully understood the way he watched her until a few short nights ago. Now, she read raw hunger in his expression and thoughts. Her dinner rebelled at the memory of his touch on her bare flesh.

“It seems people have already turned from you,” he observed.

He, too, spoke the truth. Raven had not believed that people she’d known her whole life would not speak out against his plan. She had hoped they would see the wrongness of it long before now. Sundown, however, had already passed.

Despair settled in with the night. No one had come to her rescue. Creed, her best hope, was in training at the Temple of Immortal Right and oblivious to her situation. She had only herself now. But that meant releasing a dark and dangerous presence inside her she had never before allowed to be free. There would be no turning back from it if she did.

The ugliness of her stepfather’s thoughts decided it for her, though. She would not burn, and she would not live in fear. She would not be broken by him as her mother was.

She would save herself.

She wore the same dress he’d deemed indecent two nights prior when the nightmare began. Tracing a finger along its prim neckline, she let her eyelids droop to examine him from beneath a dark fringe of thick, curling lashes. Her golden-toned skin gleamed in the lamplight as she pressed against the bars of the cell.

Justice swallowed, then with unsteady fingers, gripped the amulet he wore around his neck. Once, a long time ago, he had been a goddess’s favorite. The amulet she’d given him protected him from the seduction of another immortal and warned him when he was in the presence of a full-blooded demon.

But it did nothing to protect Raven from him.

“Whore,” he spat at her. With that single utterance, she knew she had lost.

“Enjoy your final moments of glory,” she said, dropping her hand to her side. “Women can’t all be whores and spawn, and Faith will not remain silent forever. Not after tonight.”

It had been a wild guess on her part, based on what she’d read of his ugliest desires, but her words struck home. His face reddened, then paled. Fear flamed in her chest—not for herself, but for the frail, timid woman she had named.

What had she done?

“Undertaker!” Justice shouted, half turning toward the door. It opened at once, and a tall, gaunt man stuck his head into the room. “It is time.”