Demon's Daughter (Demon Outlaws) (11 page)

The boughs, when he collapsed on them, proved so comfortable that he immediately closed his eyes and decided to take his chances on Airie disappearing before he awoke. If he found her gone, he could simply track her down again.

Right now he wanted sleep more than anything.

…

Airie watched him sleep, her hand curled under her cheek and her arm resting on top of the prickly matting. The day had vanished far too soon, and night now rapidly approached.

He looked much younger when he was asleep. In fact, he was probably no more than five years older than she, ten at the very most.

He had darkly tanned skin, and bleached, shoulder-length hair spoke of many hours spent in the sun. His eyes, when they looked at her, were a shade of blue that could chill like winter’s ice or heat with the intensity of a clear summer sky, depending on his mood. Several days’ stubble, a few shades darker than his hair, covered his cheeks and chin, but did little to hide the sharp angles and planes. She knew from the hours she had spent in the saddle with her arms wrapped around his waist that solid muscle underlay an otherwise long and lean body.

Compared to the men who frequented the trading post, she supposed Hunter was a fine and rare specimen of mortal man.

But he had called her spawn and a monster, and Airie had yet to forgive him for that. She’d wept again over the loss of her mother and her home while he slept, but now she was ready to move forward.

Grief had kept her from taking note of the route they traveled. She had not asked him where they were headed because she did not care. She had made up her mind as to what she would do, and Hunter’s opinion on that wouldn’t matter because she did not trust him any more than he trusted her. He had not explained what had brought him to the mountain, and she knew he had not happened there by chance.

He opened his eyes and blinked, slowly adjusting to the dim light and foreign surroundings.

Then, his eyes settled on her. She wore only her thin chemise and cotton knickers, and the length of his scrutiny told her he noticed them.

“We should grab something to eat and be on our way,” he said, but he did not move.

Airie’s mother had warned her constantly of the dangers of two women living alone, even under the protection of the goddesses’ temple, so most of her small extended world knew her as a boy. No man had ever looked at her in a way that made her so self-conscious.

She rolled from her bedding and stretched her stiff limbs. She had no need to worry about protection from Hunter. He saw her as an abomination. Any other impression he might give was a product of her imagination, brought on by the frightening knowledge she was now all alone.

“We also need to talk about what will become of you,” Hunter added, continuing to watch her with unreadable eyes, but following her line of thought.

“We don’t need to talk,” Airie said. “I know what I’m going to do.”

“Oh?”

“I’m going to Freetown.”

She had thought it through and weighed the advantages and risks. She was young and strong, and reasonably well-schooled. At least, she believed so. The priestesses had once been educators, although only to the finest and most promising girls, and while Airie had no idea if she would have been selected as a student under normal circumstances, her mother had been pleased with her efforts. She could cook, she could clean, and she could sew. She might even be able to teach. Surely she could find work to support herself. Her needs were few.

She could control her demon temper and blend in.

He raised himself to one elbow, propping his head on his hand.

“Why Freetown?” he asked.

Because it was the only town Airie knew of in spite of all that Desire had taught her. She had heard it spoken of at the trading post. It sounded big, and anonymous. She could make a place for herself there. More than anything, it allowed her to remain close to her mother.

“I have to go somewhere,” she said.

There was a long stretch of silence.

“What kind of work do you think is available to you in Freetown?” he asked.

The way he posed the question made her feel ignorant, which in turn left her defensive. “I can do anything any other woman in Freetown can do.”

“I don’t doubt that.”

Airie turned her back on him and the subtle hint of sarcasm he conveyed. His opinion of her and what she was—or wasn’t—might not matter, but it stung nonetheless. The makeshift bedding rustled, and his discarded blanket landed beside her.

“Since I’m going to Freetown too, we may as well continue to travel together,” he said.

The level of relief she felt at that statement surprised her. They did not like each other. They did not trust each other. She had not forgiven him for the things he had said, and neither of them felt any need to impress the other. The trip would be awkward at best.

But she would not be alone.

“Thank you,” she said.

Hunter tugged on his boots. “If you want to thank me, you can try to remember two things the women in Freetown don’t do. They don’t light themselves on fire, and they don’t get into
slight altercations
with men.”

Airie reached for the overskirt she had removed before going to bed. He was so arrogant she could not resist a gibe. “Then those are two things I can teach them to do.”

“Goddesses help them,” Hunter muttered to the toes of his boots.

…

The early morning sun soon dispelled the chill of the night.

The Demon Lord wore his mortal form. Morning meant it was time for him to move underground, yet he continued to sit on his heels in the warm, sandy shade of a spiny soaptree yucca, his attention on the smoking remains of the mountain on the horizon.

As part of the exchange for his protection, Mamna had agreed to keep him informed of any unusual activity on the mountain. He considered its peak disintegrating into dust and rubble to be unusual, and had waited several days for her to send word to him of what had happened. So far, he had heard nothing.

Perhaps he was too impatient, but he did not believe so. He expected a certain degree of loyalty from his followers, and he disliked being at the mercy of a woman who had once betrayed her mistresses. He had never fully trusted Mamna because of that, and now she was becoming an even greater cause for concern.

He would send someone else to the mountain to see what had happened. He would deal with the priestess later.

The white, bell-shaped yucca flowers around the cliff’s entrance bobbed on their long stems, nodding their approval.

“Agares!”

The demon was one of several who had remained behind after the fight with Be’el. He was indolent and easily bribed, and remarkably nonconfrontational for a demon.

Agares appeared at the front of the cavern, naked, also in his mortal form. Although it was easier for demons to bear the touch of the sun this way, the Demon Lord sometimes suspected wearing mortal form accelerated the ravages of time.

Agares, however, showed few of time’s ill effects. His thick dark hair was untouched by gray, and his eyes were unlined.

“I’d like you to find out what has happened on the mountain,” the Demon Lord said.

Shielding his eyes with his hand, Agares looked to the smoking horizon. “The top has blown off.”

The Demon Lord tossed the stick aside and rose to his feet. “I meant that I want you to go there and see why.”

“I know what you meant.” Agares’ eyes shifted to his, his expression calculating. “It’s daylight. I would have to travel in mortal form. And the goddesses’ protection of the mountain may as yet be unbroken. What if I can’t get close enough to see?”

Asking Agares to travel in mortal form during the day meant the Demon Lord would have to grant him permission to hunt, and Freetown lay directly in his path. The agreement with Mamna would be broken, at least in part, and if Agares could not get close enough to the mountain to discover for certain what had happened, it would be broken for nothing.

Perhaps not for nothing. It was past time to renegotiate that agreement.

“Do what you must,” he said to Agares. He would deal with Mamna when or if the need arose. “The Demon Slayer may be near the mountain. If he is, he may also have a woman with him. If he does, follow them. I want to know where he takes her.”

“Who is this woman?” Agares asked, anticipation as well as curiosity now lighting his eyes.

The Demon Lord did not intend to reveal who she was, or what she might be. “She is from the mountain. Someone Mamna is interested in. Therefore, she is of interest to me. She may already be dead,” he added. “The Slayer may be as well, if they were caught in that blast.”

Agares grew more animated, no doubt at the possibilities for pleasure such freedom would give him. “If they are alive, I could kill the Slayer and bring the woman to you.”

A part of him rebelled at the thought of this particular woman at the mercy of Agares, because he did not expect Agares to bring her to him untouched. Why that should matter to him was something he did not care to explore. If she were spawn, she was as good as dead. If she were not, then she was nothing to him.

The Demon Lord shrugged. “The Slayer has to lose a fight sometime. The odds say so.”

The odds, however, were not in Agares’ favor, and they both knew it.

Agares scowled up at the sun. “I hate traveling the desert in daylight.”

“I will send someone else.”

“No.” Agares did not intend to pass up on this opportunity to hunt. “I will set out immediately, before the sun gets too hot.”

Even in mortal form, a demon could cover considerably more ground than an ordinary man. Agares would be beyond Freetown well before noon.

…

Airie’s decision to go to Freetown made things easier for Hunter. He did not have to force her but could travel with her as a companion.

Over the next few days, as they crossed from goddess territory into the desert, there were no signs that any of the fleeing refugees had begun to return. Hunter had not expected it. Not yet. But they would, soon enough.

He preferred to travel at night so that no one they did happen upon could get a good look at Airie. Beautiful women were a valuable commodity, and while she could, indeed, do the work any other woman did in Freetown, he doubted she knew what that work would entail. She would not be paid directly for it either. Even Blade’s ladies were not. Blade gave them back the money they earned, not because any law required it of him, but because it was his choice to do so. Women had no rights. Not in Freetown, nor anywhere else.

Despite what she was, Hunter could not avoid feeling a certain amount of pity for her. She knew little of the world beyond the mountain. It was not the same one her priestess mother, sheltered in the temple for many years, had once known and taught her of. That made Airie, despite her unfortunate heritage, very much an innocent.

His grandmother had once told him that good and evil were mortal measurements that could not be solely assigned to either goddesses or demons, because the immortals were as flawed as anyone. He could picture her still, puffing on a pipe and rocking in her twig chair on the front verandah of the old log farmhouse his grandfather had built for her in their youth.

Goddess or demon, call them what you want, this world wasn’t made for the immortals
, she had said.
Neither belongs here. But they have yet to find a place of their own in the universe, and until they do this world will have to suffer their presence
.

Hunter was done suffering. The world was not made for immortals, and it was not made for their spawn either.

But Airie cried for her mother in her sleep, a fact that continued to disturb him. She had also healed Sally. So far, other than her eyes and an ability to boil water with them, she had not done anything that could be considered threatening or dangerous.

What if the priestess was right? What would Hunter do then?

They made their way out of the foothills in near pitch blackness with Airie sitting on Sally behind him. The press of her thighs against his and the occasional warmth of her hands low on his abdomen when she needed to stabilize herself in the saddle did not permit him to maintain a distance from her, either physically or mentally. He was aware of every movement she made and breath she took.

The moon had not yet risen, but the sand swift was sure-footed. It was used to traveling the many arroyos and canyons of the desert.

“Stop!” Airie cried. She slid from the saddle before he or the sand swift had time to react. She ran as soon as her feet hit the ground, dashing toward what looked to Hunter in the negligible light to be a pile of discarded rags on the side of the road.

They were not rags, Hunter saw when he dismounted and followed her. A tiny hand emerged from the pile to clutch at Airie’s sleeve, and his heart sank. This was not an unusual sight for him, although in the past he had always made the discovery after they were dead and there was nothing left for him to do but bury them—unwanted children, too small or sickly to sell into slavery, often abandoned to die.