Black Widow Demon (12 page)

As they approached the town, its emptiness soon became apparent. Abandoned buildings were all that greeted them. They rode through the narrow, cobbled streets, the hross becoming increasingly nervous in the eerie silence. The smoke they had observed from the mountain pass drifted from a smoldering pyre that had once been a temple to the goddesses. The smell wafting through the air was worse than anything Justice had ever experienced, and he pulled his neckerchief over his mouth and nose.

“Only demon fire could burn hot enough to do such a thing as this,” Cage said, his eyes flat and cold.

All three men glanced around, uneasy, but if it had been the work of demons, they were long gone. Something about this scene felt wrong to Justice. His amulet remained cold and dark, giving no warning of the presence of immortals, however residual. His attention fixed on the smoking remains of the temple, and he wondered if Raven were somehow responsible for this devastation.

He did not believe so. As much as he hated her for her arrogance and wanted her brought to her knees, he could not see her doing this. She had not been able to kill him when she’d had the chance but buried the knife in his leg rather than his heart.

Still, he could use this to his advantage. People believed her to be a demon. While no ability to use demon fire had ever been established, who was he to say whether or not Raven could raise it with absolute certainty?

“Demons are gone from the world,” he said. “Even if they weren’t, they couldn’t have traveled this far into lands the goddesses had claimed. Spawn are another matter. We have no idea what harm they can do. If this is any indication”—he swept his hand in a broad arc—“then it’s imperative the Godseekers take action against them.”

Might’s deep, gravelly voice rolled like a slow-moving rockslide from his throat as he, too, stared at the smoldering pyre. “Raven couldn’t have done such a thing. She’s little more than a girl.”

Justice narrowed his eyes in displeasure at his companion’s defensive comment. “On her own, most likely she couldn’t,” he said. “But she’s half demon. Who knows what her connection to them is? What she’s asked them to do, or what strength she draws from them?” He pushed a bit harder, planting more seeds of doubt regarding her innocence. “Why do you suppose these people were burned not three days after Raven was sentenced to the same fate?” He looked around them at the deserted streets. “How many more like her might there be amongst us, going undetected? Her mother was far from the only mortal woman to lie with a demon.”

Cage’s hross shied sideways beneath him, spooked by wind-driven debris tumbling past on the cobblestones. “Demons hate spawn,” he said, once he had his mount under control.

“They hate men, too,” Might replied.

“Demons or spawn, or a combination of the two, this isn’t a place I care to linger,” Justice said. What was important right now was to put as much distance between them and this travesty as possible, in case those responsible should happen to return. “We can’t help these people.”

He turned his mount around with a nudge of his knee and a tightening of the reins. A week on a hross would get them to the temple. Once there, he would enlist the aid of the assassins.

But no matter what, he would make certain Raven was brought back alive. Her mother had learned it was best not to defy him, and that was a lesson her daughter needed to be taught as well.

…

Raven awoke to a dry mouth, an aching head, and unfamiliar surroundings, but also with the certainty that this world was her own.

Daylight seeped through interwoven branches of fresh-cut, sharp-scented pinion. Someone—
Blade
—had constructed a crude shelter above her. From the front of the lean-to she could see jutting rock, spindly shrubs, and a sparkle of running water in a streambed. They were in the foothills, or very near them. A thin, scratchy blanket covered her, and everything hurt when she moved.

A rush of images flashed through her head.
Her hands on his naked shoulders. His jaw clenched, head back and eyes closed, as he moved inside her.

Mortification seared her. Her demon had pursued and seduced him. She hoped he had not placed too much importance on that. In the boundary, to a demon, it meant little. Here, in the mortal world, it granted him legal rights over her if he chose to pursue them. It also meant Justice, a Godseeker, could charge him with theft if he did.

But they had not been intimate in this world. And in the boundary, it was her father whose claim on her she feared more than any other. It was best not to think about that.

She wondered how she could face Blade, how she should react. Maybe they would simply pretend that nothing had happened.

That was her preference. If he did not mention it, neither would she.

She must have made a noise. A long shadow fell across the opening of the shelter, and Blade’s head and shoulders appeared to block out the light.

“How are you feeling?” he asked, his tone neutral.

She waited for everything to stop spinning, terrified the hallucinations would strike again, but the world slowly settled. She pried her dry tongue from the roof of her mouth. “How long was I out?”

“Three days.”

“Three
days
.” She could scarcely believe it.

Or that he had stayed with her, as he had promised.

He disappeared briefly from the lean-to. When he returned, he held a tin cup in his hand. He lifted her head and tipped the cup against her lips. Cool water slid down her parched throat, taking away much of the fiery agony.

He withdrew the cup before it was empty and set it aside. “Are you hungry?”

“Starving.”

He brought her a plain piece of dried bread, which he broke in pieces and dipped in the remaining water before feeding to her.

She dozed off and on for the rest of the day.

By late afternoon she was awake again, and restless, and more observant. She wore a man’s shirt. Blade’s, she assumed. It reached her knees, baring her calves to the cold. When she checked, the swelling from the snakebite had dissipated, leaving only a slight discoloration and two tiny scabs.

Except for her hair, she felt remarkably clean. Something else it was best not to mention or contemplate too deeply.

“Ready to try and get up?” Blade asked, startling her. She had not heard him approach.

She nodded, and he helped her from the shelter.

They were, indeed, somewhere in the foothills, near one of the many mountain streams and surrounded by thin forest. Broken, rock-strewn terrain rose abruptly above them. Blade had built a small, smokeless fire on dry, well-swept ground near the stream, and he guided her to sit beside it as if she were elderly and fragile. A kettle of something wonderful-smelling hung on a tripod over the low flames. He scooped a little of the food into a tin plate and passed it to her.

“After you’ve eaten,” he said, “you can bathe if you’d like. You’ll sleep better for it. I can help if you still need it.”

She froze with the spoon halfway between the plate and her mouth. He revealed more to her by what he did not say than what he did. They were both well aware they had been intimate, and that he had seen to her personal needs for the past three days. In his practicality, he saw no further need for modesty. Raven, however, did not like feeling helpless. She had always been healthy.

“I can manage on my own,” she said.

They did not speak again until after she had finished the last of her meal and he had taken the plate from her and rinsed it in the stream.

She watched him as he worked. Physically, she felt better for having eaten. Emotionally, her thoughts remained chaotic. Proximity to him filled her with a deep longing, like the dull, gnawing pangs of an insatiable hunger. She wondered if he felt it, too.

If so, he hid it well.

He had his back to her as he stored the cleaned plate in one of his packs. “Who is Creed?” he asked.

The question was blunt and not at all casual. Caution kept her silent at first, wondering how best to answer and why he wanted to know. “Where did you hear that name?”

“You called for him.”

She knew she had not. During the long hours of hallucination after their lovemaking, Blade’s was the only presence she had clung to or sought. The terrors remained too fresh in her memory for her to forget such an important detail.

“Who else did I call for?” she asked.

He did not answer.

It was as she thought. She had called only for Blade, and it disturbed him. It disturbed her, too.

“Creed is an old friend,” she said. Her heart ached with a sudden longing, because whatever Blade might be at this moment,
friend
was not how she would classify him. “After I killed Justice, I planned to go to him for help.”

Blade set the pack aside. The sun had dropped behind the stooped treetops, coloring the world in deepening shades of purple and gray. His expression when he glanced at her was unreadable. “Where is Creed right now?”

“Somewhere in the mountains.”

“You were planning to go to him, but you don’t know where he is?”

She bit her lip, forced to admit that her plan was flawed and somewhat desperate. “Not for certain.”

“Is he by any chance a Godseeker assassin?”

While Raven could not read Blade as accurately as other people, she had no doubt that if she lied to him now, he would know. And that it would matter.

“He was called into training.” That was the truth. She had no idea if he’d progressed to assassin, although could not imagine that he hadn’t. Creed was like Blade in some respects—competent and larger than life.

Except Creed drew people to him. Blade pushed them away.

Blade reached for another tin plate. This one had been sitting on the ground, filled with crushed and moistened soap-root bulbs. He passed it to her. “Go bathe. Call me if you need help.”

He walked away from the fire, his tall, broad-shouldered figure sliding silently into the brush. She knew he would not go far in the same way she sensed he continued to want her. Blade was not a man to be ruled by emotion, but that did not mean he had none. The ones that involved her were easy enough to isolate, although not necessarily so simple to interpret.

The shallow stream trickled through wide fissures in the craggy mountain granite, its waters cold but not unbearably so. Raven peeled off Blade’s shirt before wading into a quiet, sheltered pool. She then sat on a rock, still warm from the day’s sun, while she lathered her hair and skin with the crushed soap root. She rinsed herself with handfuls of the clear water.

Feeling completely clean for the first time in days was beyond glorious. The threat of the lengthening shadows, however, filled her with dread. The terrors of the hallucinations had not faded, and likely would not for quite some time.

She shook out her short mass of ringlets, tidying them with her fingers before dropping Blade’s shirt over her head. It smelled of him, very masculine, and felt slightly oily from storage in the weatherproof canvas pack.

She had nothing of her own to wear. She had nothing at all that belonged to her anymore, other than the demon amulet around her neck and her bow and arrows. She felt a sharp pang of loss and a sense of uncertainty as to her future.

Blade reappeared as she approached the campfire, three fat quail swinging by their legs from his hand. Her heart quickened with relief at the sight of him. Despite the uneasiness between them he had become an anchor to her, someone she trusted, even more so than Creed.

Because Creed, no matter how much she loved him, had been more like a brother and did not stir the demon inside her the way this man did.

Blade held the quail upside down, plucking them quickly. Once they’d been gutted and cleaned, he threaded them onto long wooden skewers that he propped over the flames.

Raven sat on the other side of the fire, wrapped in her blanket. She held her bare feet out to the heated rocks lining the fire pit.

“We can either talk about your demon boundary now,” he finally said to her as he crouched on his heels by the fire, “or wait until you’re stronger.”

Dread fluttered through her. She hoped this was not going to be the discussion she wished to avoid. She studied her toes. “What about it?”

“When did you first discover it?”

His question relaxed her. He was interested in the boundary itself, not all that had happened in it. “When I was a little girl—around the same time Justice came into my mother’s life.” The darkness of those early days touched her, and she braced herself against the rush of memories. “It was a refuge for me at night. Then, about three months ago, demons began to appear in it. They’d call to me in my sleep, trying to summon me to them. Now it’s a nightmare.”

Raven watched Blade’s face as he sifted through what she had told him.

His dark-eyed expression gave nothing away, although his jumbled emotions, including the thread of a fast-suppressed fear, were what she would expect given such a conclusion.

“So demons can summon you,” he said.

“No. I said they tried,” she corrected him, though she did not know if that remained true now that her father knew of her existence. She had given him something. Some hold over her. She did not know what it might be.

“Then they must believe it’s a possibility.” He spoke to himself, as if puzzling out the logic. “Why wouldn’t it be possible? Back in Freetown I saw a priestess summon demons. Why couldn’t demons summon spawn?”

Grease from the roasting birds dripped into the hungry flames. The severe lines of his face softened and blurred in a blaze of light, like the smudgings made by a charcoal pencil on vellum when rubbed by an artist’s thumb.

Raven drew up her knees beneath the blanket and rested her chin on her kneecaps. She hugged her shins as she stared into the fire. “I didn’t escape from one form of servitude to have it replaced by another. I won’t be summoned.”