Demon's Daughter (Demon Outlaws) (15 page)

“How…” he breathed, then self-preservation kicked in. He shifted, changed, and within seconds, assumed his demon form.

The handsome face disappeared, swallowed by a mashed snout, long, wolven-like jaw, and fiery eyes. Bony plates covered the thick red hide of its hunched torso, protecting vital organs. The sheer size of it should have inspired awe in her.

Airie’s anger, however, was far from spent. The demon had touched her. She would touch it, too.

It towered over her, but she faced it without flinching.
Fear is for mortals,
her instincts whispered.

It dipped its head toward hers. She had no ready weapon. As the ugly snout neared her face, she stooped, grabbed a handful of sand, and threw it at the demon’s eyes in an attempt to blind it, even as her other hand slashed out to seize it by the windpipe. The fire in her palm sheared through its thick hide, and it bellowed as it tried to shake itself free of her grip.

She did not let it go, instead redirecting her fire into its throat to cut off all air. A talon sliced her arm open as the demon struggled, but she barely noticed the sharp sliver of pain. Instinct again warned her of its intentions. By drawing fresh blood, it hoped to summon a battle rage in an effort to gain an advantage on her.

It would not get another opportunity to try.

The fire on her skin cauterized the cut on her arm, sealing it shut before it could bleed. Airie squeezed her fingers around the demon’s windpipe, completely enraged and beyond reasonable thought now, and watched with hungry triumph as life slowly seeped from its eyes.

“I will own your death and your strength,” she said. “You will do as I say.”

A green-blue haze shimmered in the air around it, then moved to envelop her, too.
I am yours to command
.

The submissive words shook her. They could not have been meant for her. She did not take life.
Any
life.

She might have demon blood in her but she was not a monster, and she would not become one. An echo of her mother’s voice overrode any urgings of her demon instincts.
You control your anger. It doesn’t control you.

Airie released her grip on the demon’s windpipe and it staggered backward, scratching at its throat and gasping for breath.

Cunning returned to its blood-red, glowing eyes. It looked to where a familiar presence watched from the black shadows, and for the first time since the demon approached her, Airie experienced real fear.

Hunter stood close by.

The demon sensed him, too.

…

Not one hundred feet from Hunter, Airie stood in the arms of a half-naked man, who had one hand on her breast and his mouth on her cheek, near her ear.

Stunned surprise, followed by a sharp stab of male jealousy, secured Hunter to the spot at the sight of a demon touching Airie so intimately. A desire to kill came over him, and blood pounded behind his eyes, but as he started forward, a small hand slid into his to hold him back.

Hunter’s vision cleared. Scratch, his little face solemn, looked up at him, his tiny fingers wrapped tight around one of Hunter’s.

Hunter’s thoughts settled, became less chaotic, and he tore his gaze back to Airie. As difficult as it was for him to stand by while she fought a battle of wills with a demon, he needed to know if she could stand strong against temptation when his sister had not.

Could she deny one of her own kind?

He tensed when the demon backed away from Airie to assume demon form, and he pushed Scratch behind him, out of the way of danger.

Hunter started toward Airie, then froze when she dashed sand in the demon’s eyes and grabbed it by the throat. He watched her fingers tighten, sending fire into its flesh, and saw the demon’s eyes cloud over. He recognized the telltale bluish-green haze that accompanied the death of a demon.

And then, she released it.

Hunter’s heart skipped several beats. What was she doing? Why had she stopped?

The demon lifted its head and looked in Hunter’s direction.

“Hunter!” Airie cried. “Look out!”

Instead he looked at her, afraid she’d somehow been harmed, a distraction that cost him.

The demon drove itself at him on widespread, leathery wings, striking him in the chest with splayed feet, knocking him thirty feet backward into the canyon wall to send the sword spinning from his hand. Air exploded from his lungs on a painful and protracted exhale. Hunter slumped to the ground, stunned by the impact, only alive thanks to the amulet.

The demon landed and paced toward him, an ominous shadow in the dim light, growing steadily larger as it approached.

Hunter wheezed into the dirt as he tried to reach his sword, feigning more serious injury to lull the demon into false confidence even as the amulet siphoned strength from it to him.

He caught a flurry of movement from the corner of one eye. Airie had grabbed a shovel standing against the side of the cabin and now brandished it like a cudgel, the rough wood rolling easily between her palms.

She had diverted the demon’s attention from him. Hunter, abandoning his search for the sword, brought his elbow up to ram into its groin. The demon backhanded him across the face in rebuttal, and Hunter’s head snapped back.

Airie delivered a sharp crack to the back of the demon’s head with the flat of the shovel.

It turned on her.

“Get back!” Hunter shouted at her. She had not been able to kill it before, and he did not want her to have to do it now. Not on his behalf. He hauled himself to his sword and grabbed its hilt.

Airie, however, like a golden, glowing, avenging goddess, rammed the handle of the shovel into the demon’s stomach. When it doubled over, she swung the flat end up and under its chin with enough strength to bring it to its knees. The metal blade of the shovel was bent.

Scrabbling in the loose dirt, it got its clawed feet beneath it and launched itself into the sky. Its dark shadow blocked out the splinter of moon before it disappeared from sight.

Hunter’s gaze never left Airie. She could not know how impossibly beautiful she appeared in this moment, with her golden skin on fire and yellow flames, not red, now dancing in her dark eyes. He wondered at the significance, if any.

The flames died. She dropped the shovel and hurried to Hunter’s side.

“Are you hurt?” she asked.

He had not protected her, and that left him furious, but he was not certain with whom. He spit a mouthful of coppery blood onto the sand. The demon had drawn blood, yet it had run away. It knew what Airie was, as well.

Nothing good would come of this night.

Frustration and worry fed into his anger, and that was the emotion more easily expressed. He directed it at Airie. “The next time I give you an order, you do as you’re told.”

She drew back the hand she had been about to place on his arm. It took her a moment to find her voice, and when she did, it was soft and full of hurt. “I was afraid for you.”

Hunter could have handled the demon on his own, but it did not change the fact that she had come to his rescue with no regard for her own safety. He should be grateful, not angry with her.

And yet it was his anger he continued to lash her with, flaying tiny pieces off her with well-honed words. “The demon escaped. Now it will bring others. I would have killed it if you hadn’t interfered.
You
should have killed it when you had the chance.”

She twisted the front pockets of the old pair of trousers she wore with her fingers. “I don’t kill.”

He could not stop now. He plowed forward, digging in deeper. “Not for any reason?” he demanded. “Not even if to kill is the only way to rid the world of something that doesn’t belong here?”

“As you would have killed me if my mother had not interfered?”

The quiet observation, filled with scorn, cut him down. He could think of nothing to say, no way to refute it, because he did not know if it was true or false.

Turning on her heel, she marched with stiff dignity back to the cabin. The door closed behind her, and he heard the wooden lock bar
snick
into place.

He kicked the shovel she’d left on the ground as hard as he could. Then he gathered up his bedding and moved it to the front of the cabin so he could guard the door in case the demon should decide to return.

He remembered Scratch. At some point in all the confusion, the child had vanished.

That was another problem Hunter needed to consider in more depth. The boy seemed to have an uncanny ability to disappear when he chose. How else had he managed to get out of the cabin without being seen? Hunter started to search the yard for him but soon gave up when common sense told him Airie would have come running by now if he wasn’t already safe inside the cabin with her.

Instead, as Hunter tossed and turned on the hard ground well into the early hours of the morning, he wondered about something else.

What had brought a demon this close to Freetown on a night the west winds did not blow?

…

“A demon was not a part of our deal.”

Mamna, seated in the lush garden beneath her living quarters, sheltered from the morning sun by heavy arbors of palm and thick drapes of multicolored, sweet-smelling desert blossoms, regarded the angry assassin with cool eyes.

Calling this man before her an assassin gave him far more credit than he deserved. He was a hired thug. True assassins were harder to come by, and not as easily intimidated into service.

“I don’t control what demons do beyond these city gates,” she replied without inflection.

Runner slouched in his chair across the delicate, round glass table from her, his dark expression brooding. An artesian well fed a fountain nearby, spilling water from a pitcher cradled in the arms of a winged cherub. The soft noise of the water effectively distorted any conversation that might otherwise be overheard.

As a rule, Mamna conducted most of her private business from within her compound because she was too easily recognizable to most of Freetown’s population. Being born with her physical disadvantages made it difficult to find that delicate balance between being seen and unseen. Even if people had never met her, they had heard her described. The irony was not lost on her. When she had served the goddesses, she had gone unnoticed for decades. Now, people could not help but stare. Mamna could never decide which she hated more.

The only exception she made regarding the location when conducting personal business was for the Slayer, who refused to do anything by anyone’s rules but his own.

In truth, she was more than a little disappointed in the Slayer. She’d thought he hated demons and their spawn beyond anything. She had assumed he’d be immune to a beautiful face, if that face belonged to one of them. She had also expected the amulet he wore to offer some protection against the irresistible appeal of an immortal.

But the Slayer, it seemed, was as susceptible as the next man to a pretty face, proving to her that physical beauty remained the most powerful asset a woman could possess. It made her hate this spawn even more.

This so-called assassin before her was also proving to be a disappointment. She had sent Runner to see if the Slayer had brought a woman off the mountain with him. She wanted to know if he’d captured the spawn, or if he had killed her outright. She had told Runner to approach him, to repeat the tale the Godseeker had given her, and to relieve the Slayer of his amulet if at all possible.

She wanted to be certain, however, that she would not be implicated in any attack on the Slayer. Shifting suspicion onto the Godseekers worked well for her.

“The woman was unafraid of the demon,” Runner said with undisguised admiration.

This was the part of the tale Mamna found most difficult to understand. Why would a spawn have come to the Demon Slayer’s defense?

How had he persuaded her to travel with him willingly?

“Tell me again,” she demanded, trying to make sense of his words. Perhaps the spawn had plans of her own. If so, Mamna would take care of those.

Runner tipped his wide-brimmed hat back with the blunt of his thumb. “She spent the day playing with a small boy in the yard. The Slayer called them inside to eat. She stayed in the cabin. He moved to the yard for the night. They did not seem all that friendly toward each other. Which surprised me, at least on his part,” Runner’s boot tapped the clay tiling, “because that is one gorgeous woman. The Slayer doesn’t seem to appreciate his good fortune.”

Mamna ignored that last comment, and the trace of envy that accompanied it. She had lived with the goddesses. She had a history with the Demon Lord. She knew all about mortal infatuation for the immortals. Given the spawn’s parentage, it stood to reason that she would have been born with at least some of their allure.

But that the Slayer did not seem to be interested in her as a woman was what puzzled Mamna. If not for that purpose, then why else would he keep her with him instead of turning her over immediately?

“Where did the child come from?” she wondered out loud. Could it possibly belong to the spawn? If so, who, or what, was its father?