Black Widow Demon (21 page)

He fastened his coat, rolling the collar high at the back of his neck to ward off the wind, and checked his weapons.

“If you have reason to believe that Creed might not welcome me, tell me now,” he said.

“He’ll do everything he can to help me.”

She sounded so confident that Blade was perhaps a little jealous of her faith in her friend, but he buried his reaction as unimportant compared to what needed to be achieved.

“Tell me what he looks like,” he said.

She rubbed her nose with one knitted glove, making its tip even redder. “Big. As tall as you, but broader. He has hair the color of mine, and he wears it short to hide the curl. There’s a thin, straight scar beside his left ear that runs to his jaw, but you have to look for it. It’s hardly noticeable.” She smiled at him, her eyes sparkling with fun. “He’s also very handsome.”

Her own short, black, shining ringlets poked out from under her hood to frame her face, glistening like newborn lamb’s wool in the blinding sun. Blade stroked a finger down her cheek, tucking back some of the wayward curls. If he allowed Creed to assume responsibility for her safety, this could very well be the last time he got to touch her.

He did not kiss her, although he wanted to. “Can you give me a message for him? Something that only the two of you could know?”

Raven looked thoughtful. “Tell him the knife he gave me served a good purpose.”

He did not need to question the message’s meaning. Her stepfather limped for a reason.

“It will be late morning or early afternoon tomorrow before I return,” he warned her. “Keep my crossbow handy at all times. If you hear any noise, anything at all before then, don’t waste time on finding out what it is. Shoot it.”

She nodded.

While he disliked encouraging her to kill, the thought of what might happen to her if she did not was far worse. He remembered the way the assassin had looked at her. At some point, Blade feared that her demon self-defenses would fail her when she needed them most. He did not like to think of her fate if they did.

He dipped his head so their eyes were at the same level. “I mean it, Raven. There’s nothing, and no one, up here that will be friendly. If you hesitate to shoot to kill again, you could be the one who ends up dead.”

“I won’t,” she promised. Then she reached toward her neck and removed her amulet, untangling it from her curls. Standing on her toes, she slipped it over Blade’s head and tucked it inside his clothing. She seized the front of his coat in both hands and lifted herself enough to press her mouth against his.

The amulet still retained heat from her skin, its warmth radiating through his chest as flashes of her thoughts flared into his mind. They were jumbled, intense and complex, but one was foremost.

She wanted him safe.

“Be careful,” she said. Her exhale of breath brushed soft against his cheek. “And if you come back before sunup, you’d better be singing.” She spoke lightly, as if in jest.

“You think I can’t sing?” he asked.

Her face lit with the brightness of her smile. “I think I’d need proof.”

“Singing it is, then.” Blade adjusted his collar against the cold. He did not want to leave her any more than she wanted to be left behind, but it could not be helped.

He felt her eyes track each of his steps as he trudged through the drifts and away from their camp.

Blade was careful to step where the wind had scrubbed the ground almost bare so as to leave fewer footprints behind. Some snow-packed passages, however, protected by surrounding cliffs, could not be avoided.

Shortly after dusk, he breached the white-capped rise above the temple’s valley. To the casual observer, the settlement below gave the impression of quiet serenity, like any number of other Godseeker temples of worship but on a larger scale. Blade, however, knew better.

The last time he’d stood here he had been a young man intent on making his own way in the world and under his own rules. He had been overconfident and very arrogant. His time in the desert—and a demon attack—had cured him of that. He suspected most novices, once they received a few months of intensive training, still developed that same attitude. He was counting on that to help him break into the facility undetected. Whoever was on patrol would not be expecting such a bold move.

Blade scoured the landscape until he saw what he needed—a set of footprints. He charted their path with his eyes and saw they approached a rocky outcrop that would conceal his own tracks from above.

He circled around and stashed his pack beneath the outcropping, then leaped lightly onto the trail. He dragged his feet to make it look as if the guard had altered his course to where Blade had stood, then he carefully backtracked, placing his feet in the footprints and following them around the circumference of the valley. He hoped it was dark enough now and the guards complacent because of the recent storm, for his ruse to pass undetected until morning.

He intended to be long gone before then.

Night had fallen by the time he reached the inner courtyard. Several people moved about and while he entertained a few curious looks, he walked with purpose and no one questioned him. It was not unusual for people to come and go at strange hours in the temple, and as quietly as possible.

Entering the recruits’ living quarters, however, posed a greater complication. Anyone who saw his face in the light would know at once that he did not belong there and challenge his presence. He reconsidered his plan. It was as important to be patient as it was to be bold.

Next to the living quarters was the dining hall, as he remembered. It would be empty until the dark hours before dawn when the servants began to prepare the morning meal. Blade slipped inside.

The room brightened at once. Eternal lighting flowed from the ceiling, as it did throughout the entire goddess-sanctified temple. Blade searched his memory for the ritual words to dim it, and seconds later, the room settled into semi-darkness. He watched from behind the partly closed door as people moved about in the corridor, preparing for the night. Blade settled in to wait them out.

Several hours later, a man with a small scar on his face approached the living quarters. He wore denim trousers and was naked from the waist up, with a drying cloth slung over a broad shoulder as if he’d just come from a bath. He had a shaven head, not the close-cropped curls Raven spoke of, and a tattoo of a flaming phoenix that rose from the waist of his trousers to spread across his broad shoulders. He had Blade’s height, but Raven had downplayed that he was more massive in frame.

Tattoos could be added, hair shaved, and muscle built. But there was something familiar about the way he moved that made Blade look closer. The man’s unusual blue eyes were so like Raven’s in both shape and color that it could not be coincidence. She had not mentioned that either and he wondered why not, because to him, those eyes explained a lot. He had speculated about the closeness of their relationship but not considered this possibility.

“Creed?” He spoke the name softly, keeping one hand on the hilt of a weapon in case he had chosen the wrong man. “Raven says the knife you gave her served a good purpose.”

The man stiffened but gave no other outward indication that he had heard Blade. He did not approach the dining hall. Instead he stopped where he was and checked over his shoulder in the direction he’d come from, giving anyone watching the impression he was waiting for someone to catch up with him.

When he finally answered Blade, he, too, kept his voice low. “Who are you?”

Blade pushed the door open a crack more, conscious of the faint lighting in the dining hall behind him where there should be none. It exposed him more than he wished. “I’m her friend. She needs your help.”

Creed cast another look over his shoulder. “Wait for me here.”

He vanished into the living quarters. Another hour passed before he reappeared. When he did he was fully dressed and, Blade suspected, armed.

As he came through the door of the dining hall, he slammed Blade up against the wall and pressed a forearm to his throat. Blade remained relaxed and unthreatening, with his hands open and held away from his weapons. Years of being dismissed as a cripple had long ago cured him of taking offense at another man’s aggression toward him. He had nothing to prove.

“How do you know Raven?” Creed demanded. He eased the pressure on Blade’s throat enough for him to answer.

“I saved her life,” Blade said. That was true enough.

“Tell me how. And where she is.”

“Her stepfather had planned to burn her at the stake as a demon, and I helped her escape. I left her at a camp, a half-day’s walk from here.”

The coldness in the other man’s eyes did not necessarily alarm Blade, but it did cause the pressure exerted on his neck to increase to a point well beyond discomfort. He cleared his throat against the abuse it was receiving.

“She would have come to me herself. She would never stay behind,” Creed said.

Raven’s talk of Creed had not fully prepared Blade for him. She had spoken as if he was of an age with her, but in fact he was several years older, which meant he had gone into training very late. And Blade, too, had already been an accomplished killer, with a survivor’s mentality, when he joined the temple.

Speaking past the forearm crushing his windpipe was almost impossible now. His response came out distorted. “She would if she trusted me enough to believe me that this isn’t a place she should be.”

Long seconds passed. Blade worried he might black out and wondered if he should do something about it. Then the forearm was withdrawn, and he dragged in a few deep breaths.

Creed stepped back but kept his hands close to his weapons. “What’s your name, and why would she trust you to speak for her rather than come straight to me?”

“Can you protect her?” Blade asked.

“Your name,” Creed demanded again.

“Blade. I was an assassin once, too.”

“I already guessed that much. No one else would dare intrude here. Other than Raven.” His lips jerked, although in exasperation or humor, Blade could not be certain. Creed’s gaze raked over him. “Why should she trust an assassin?”

“Are you speaking of me or you?” Blade asked. “I delivered her message. If you know her at all, you know she gave it to me willingly.”

“Is she safe?” Creed asked. “Unharmed?”

“She’s safe. For the moment. But her stepfather’s hunting her.”

Creed swiped a hand down his face. “I know. Justice is already here. I’m to begin searching for her in the morning.”

Blade considered killing him to prevent it. The thought of Raven, and how much Creed meant to her, stopped him.

“Relax, assassin,” Creed said. His voice held amusement. “I have no intention of telling Justice where she is. Far from it.”

A desire to trust him tugged at Blade, and immediately made him suspicious. That, and those familiar eyes, coalesced into significance. The assassin was half demon.

“You’re Raven’s brother,” Blade said.

Shock flickered across Creed’s face, followed by caution. “Half brother. How did you know that?”

Because Creed looked very much like their shared demon father—even more so than to Raven did—but Blade did not tell him that. He did not want to reveal Raven’s ability to travel in the demon boundary and contact her father. It had to be her choice to tell Creed of it. Besides, Blade suspected he might not take it well. “It was a guess on my part.”

Creed’s expression tightened. “I’m usually very good at deflecting people’s interest in me.”

“And at instilling trust. Which was your mistake with me,” Blade said. “I couldn’t imagine why I should trust you, even though Raven does. Completely.” He hoped it was well founded. “Your ability to do both, and that you come from the same area, tells me you share a father with her. But she doesn’t know who you are, does she?”

“No one does. Not anymore.” Creed had recovered from his surprise. “Her mother knew. She saw our father in me. Her opinion of him was far more favorable than my own mother’s was, and she was always kind to me because of it.”

It was obvious to Blade that Creed’s affection for both Raven and her mother was genuine. “Your demon talents are a variation of Raven’s,” he said. “She reads people’s intentions. You control them.”

Creed grinned. “People do tend to trust me. As long as I don’t do anything to raise their suspicions, that is. It seems I went too far with you.”

He gave off such an impression of good nature and great sincerity that it was difficult to reconcile him with the formidable assassin who had pinned Blade to the wall. Blade gave him full credit. He was, indeed, charismatic.

“Does Justice trust you?” Blade asked.

The easy grin faded. “Only to a point. It would be more accurate to say that he underestimates me. He knows my relationship with Raven is close. He chooses to think it’s because she can lure men, and therefore me, and I don’t want him to examine it any deeper. That’s why I can’t refuse to search for her.” Anger frosted his eyes again. “Justice attributes his own motives to others—because he wants her, he assumes all men do.”

“What were you planning to do with her once you found her?” Blade asked.

“I suppose I would have abandoned my own plans in order to care for her. Now I don’t have to worry. She has you.”

Creed was wrong. She was not safe with Blade. Not the way she should be. Creed knew what she was and would not let any harm come to her. Of that, Blade was convinced. “She wants you, not me.”

“Do you know anything of the spawn who have invaded the mountains? What they’ve done here? That there are more than Raven and me in the world, and not all of them are harmless?” Creed rubbed his eyes with a thumb and a forefinger. “The Godseekers will want to establish laws for all spawn. They’ll want to hunt them. Someone needs to protect the ones who are innocent. Who’s in a better position to do so than me—a man who’s trusted by almost everyone?”