Demon's Daughter (Demon Outlaws) (16 page)

Runner had no interest in the child and dismissed him. “The Slayer doesn’t believe she’s a goddess,” he was saying. “He was clear on that. Maybe your Godseeker gave you false information.”

Mamna ran her finger around the lip of her dainty porcelain teacup. “The Godseeker told me what he believed to be true. That doesn’t make it the truth. She is no goddess. The woman is the daughter of an old priestess, and nothing more than a thief who needs to be brought to justice.”

While she had no patience for the ramblings of aging men who’d once been favored by the goddesses and who wished to recapture a place in time that could no longer be revisited, she could not deny that both the story and the spawn had become serious problems for her.

Part of Mamna’s bargain with the Demon Lord was that
she would watch for, and tell him, of any goddess activity on the mountain. She did not want him to discover that the thief on the mountain was indeed his, for while he had once loved the goddess as much as he was capable of loving anyone, he believed she had willingly abandoned him. If he discovered she had refused to leave him, and instead had died in childbirth, what would he do to the one who had fed him those lies to the contrary?

Mamna had no way of knowing what the old priestess had told the spawn of her actual parentage. She did not know what the spawn, in turn, might have told the Slayer. That the spawn appeared to possess a predominantly mortal form was yet another complication, because it would make it easier for the Slayer to overlook or disregard what she really was.

Runner continued reciting his story. “I approached the Slayer and gave him your story. The demon arrived. I pretended to run away, then went back to watch. She helped the Slayer drive off the demon.”

The sun had shifted, and Mamna’s legs were no longer in the shade. She straightened the folds of her light linen trousers, unable to adjust the position of her chair without help and refusing to ask for it.

If the demon had not been hunting for pleasure, what purpose did it have for being so close to Freetown?

Because that had been another part of her bargain with the Demon Lord—the demons could hunt on the west winds, but other than that, they were to leave Freetown and its surrounding areas alone.

Her amulet was weakening, and the Demon Lord no longer respected their bargain. She had to regain control over the Demon Lord. To do that, she had to get the spawn away from the Slayer.

The sun burned too hot for her. She would get a message to the Slayer asking for a meeting. If he brought her the spawn, she would forgive him. If he came alone, she would have him killed, and deservedly so for taking payment and not delivering the promised results. Once he was dead, she would concentrate on recapturing the spawn.

She picked up the teapot and filled both cups, preoccupied with another, more pleasant, thought. If he came alone and she had him killed, she would have his amulet. It did not offer the same type of protection as the one she owned, but hers was damaged and his was better than nothing.

And she worried that soon, nothing was all she would have.

Chapter Nine

Something was wrong.

Hunter jerked on the sand swift’s harness, pulling it to a halt a short distance from a bend in the arroyo he’d been following.

The overhanging rock and occasional scrub offered only slight protection from the desert heat, and Sally was out of sorts. To make matters worse, the animal had developed an attachment to Airie that made it reluctant to travel too far from her side.

Hunter, on the other hand, wanted to get as far away from Airie as possible and for as long as he dared. He had not expected or planned to find the demon that had attacked him.

That had been his excuse to escape the accusations in her eyes.

But now he had found something out here in the desert, and the circling of vultures in the barren sky overhead and the sand swift’s sudden increase of surliness did not bode well. Neither did the smell.

He tugged his neckerchief over his nose and mouth and slid to the ground, wrapping the reins around the saddle horn and holding Sally by the bridle to leave his hands unencumbered. He could hear nothing, which was another bad sign.

The amulet around his neck flickered dully, then darkened again, confirming what he’d already suspected. Demons, one or more, had been at work here but were now gone, and the arrival of vultures meant other natural scavengers would soon follow.

The weight of his sword against his leg offered a measure of comfort. So did the repeating rifle he carried in his saddle scabbard. The amulet gave him no protection from any coyotes and wolven emboldened by the safety of numbers and the prospect of an easy meal.

He should turn around and walk away while he could. Whatever was ahead was beyond saving.

Sally didn’t protest as they neared the bend in the arroyo, however, so Hunter felt confident he faced no immediate danger. Morbid curiosity won out over common sense, along with an urge to reinforce his hatred of anything demon. Including their spawn.

He rounded the bend.

Although he had been prepared for it, still, what he found was no easier to accept. He inhaled sharply.

A small wagon train, no more than five units all told, had made an attempt to cross the desert through demon territory. They had chosen the flat-bottomed arroyo as an easier path to travel than the drifting desert sands, as well as for the moderate protection it offered from anything flying the skies above.

Hunter wrapped the sand swift’s reins around a thorny bush and approached the wagon train cautiously, even though he knew there would be no survivors. Pity and anger filled him at the sight of the blackened remains of a campfire that would have acted as a beacon to anything hunting at night. Its scattered ashes indicated that, when the attack began, they had tried to circle their wagons, an action which would have been of little help against an enemy that struck from the air.

He had seen similar scenes before. These had been small-time, inexperienced traders trying to make fast money. He’d occasionally hired out his services to escort such wagoners through demon territory in the past. Their wagons would have been filled with whiskey, worth its weight in gold in a place like Freetown, isolated as it was from the rest of the world. The wagons would be empty now. Demons, pleasure-seeking bastards that they were, liked alcohol almost as much as they liked women.

The hross that had hauled the wagons, long-legged, sturdy draft animals with enormous, thick-hoofed feet suited for the hot sands of the desert, had been cut loose. Their tracks showed where they’d scrambled in panic up the embankments of the arroyo.

The dismembered and partially eaten remains of the wagoners, however, littered the campsite. Hunter’s stomach lurched. He knew from Blade’s experience that demons cared little if the men were alive when they started to feed. It was not about hunger. They hated men, believing them to be poor copies of the immortals, and held them in little regard. This was their way of showing contempt.

He would have liked to bury what was left of these people, but the ground was too hard, and he did not have that much time. The sky had begun to darken on the horizon, and an arroyo was not the place to be when the rains came. It would not take long for it to revert to a river.

The river would have to take care of the wagoners’ remains.

A vulture, its droopy eyes gleaming, dropped to the ground and hopped toward a trail of drying flesh. Hunter turned away, fixing his gaze on the abandoned wagons instead. He would see what the demon had left behind with regard to staples.

Two of the wagons were empty, much as he had expected. The third, however, came as a surprise. It contained common household goods.

Hunter’s stomach plunged lower, bile burning his throat. This wagon had belonged to settlers, probably too poor to join a proper wagon train, and with hopes of earning back the cost of their passage through trade. He flipped open the lid of one of the trunks. It was filled with women’s clothing.

Thoughtful now, and already suspecting what he might find, he leapt from the running board on the wagon box and looked beneath it. A young woman, more of a girl, lay curled on her side, her arms tucked under her head as if in sleep, a crusted pool of dried black blood staining her dress and the ground around her. A narrow gold wedding band circled one slender finger. A stray blond curl escaped her bonnet to lie against her waxen cheek.

Hunter knew what had happened to her. When the demons had struck, her husband had shot her. He did not blame him for it. She would have had to watch the slaughter, and since as a married woman she was not untouched, the best she could have hoped for was to be raped and abandoned in the desert. Worst case meant she, too, would have been torn apart, like the others.

If her husband was at fault for anything, it was for bringing her into demon territory in the first place.

Hunter looked at the sky, still clear above him, and decided taking the time to bury her would be worth the risk to him. He could not leave her for the vultures and the coyotes.

He carried her body out of the arroyo, and using the sand swift to haul stones from the dry creek bed, spent the next several hours erecting a crude cairn over her remains. Sand from the rising wind stung his eyes, and he wiped his face with his sweat-soaked neckerchief. Despite the scorching rays of the sun, he had discarded his hat and his shirt while he worked.

The makeshift burial complete, he turned back to the wagons. The woman’s clothing, he would take with him for either Airie or Blade’s women to use. They did not need to know where he’d gotten it. Any nonperishable food he would take with him as well.

As he returned to the wagons one last time, he spotted something lying on the ground near one wagon wheel. He stooped, brushing the dirt away with his fingertips.

It was an amulet. Hunter picked it up. It had been carved from desert sandstone to look much like the one he wore, although it was a very poor copy and had no real power. His lips thinned. He had seen many fake amulets over the years, but this was the first that was meant to match his own.

His fingers squeezed the fake amulet, crumbling it into pieces. Whoever had worn it had led these people to their deaths, letting them believe they had protection from demons. Whoever it was, he had gotten what he deserved.

The young couple had not.

Hunter crammed the food and clothing into his empty packs, removing his duster from one and putting it on as he did.

Raindrops began to fall. He needed to get out of the arroyo and find shelter. Part of him worried about Airie, who was unfamiliar with desert weather and its dangers. What if she had decided to explore the canyon?

What if she had decided to head into Freetown without him and got caught in the storm?

He should not worry about her, but he did. He settled his hat on his head to shield his face from the rain as he and the sand swift passed the newly erected cairn.

He knew what Airie was but at some point had finally accepted that it made no real difference to him. He’d had seven sisters he had loved beyond reason. One of them was dead. He could not willfully put any woman’s life in danger. He had to find her a place where she could be safe.

But it was one thing for him to protect Airie from danger. How would he keep her from becoming a danger to others?

…

As Airie unpinned their bedding from the clothesline where she had hung it out to air, she kept an eye on the darkening sky. Heavy black storm clouds gathered on the horizon, shifting the colorful sandstone carvings peppering the desert landscape from shades of fire to a dull, lifeless gray.

Hunter had been gone for hours now, and in spite of everything, and his terrible moodiness, Airie was worried about him.

He was hunting the demon she had allowed to escape. She knew he had not liked that she’d interfered in their fight, but she had not been able to stand back and allow him to battle the demon alone.

Neither had she been able to talk to Hunter about how the demon had approached her first. She could not bear to see disgust for her in his eyes.

She folded a blanket, bending to lay it in a colorful woven basket, brushing strands of long dark hair that had worked free of its braid away from her face. She had no problem with fighting. She’d done it often after the offerings had stopped and her mother grew sick, and Airie needed to feed and clothe them both.

But she had been raised to believe that life was sacred and not to be taken without reason. Hatred such as Hunter possessed for demons and their spawn was foreign to her. It was a terrible emotion that led to unforgivable acts.

Airie had only ever been cherished. She had only known love and given her love in return. Until now, she had never been hated.

And it was for something she could not change.

The sting of sand on the rising wind prickled her skin. She sniffed back the sudden threat of tears. She missed her mother.

Scratch had been playing a game with two sticks, shuffling a stone back and forth in the dirt. He set the sticks aside and came to stand beside her, his worried little face turned up to the sky and his tiny fingers clutching at her skirt.

“Hunter will be back soon,” Airie assured him, stroking his head. “It’s just a little rain coming. Nothing to worry about.”

She hoped she was telling him the truth. Rain in the desert was unlike rain in the mountains. She did not know what might happen once it started to fall.

She lifted Scratch in her arms and kissed his cheek. He patted her face, his eyes looking deep into hers for reassurance. Here was one person who did not see a demon when he looked at her, and she loved him all the more for it. The two of them had much in common.

She did not see a demon when she looked at him either.

“Do you know what raindrops are?” she asked him. “They are the goddesses’ tears. When it rains it means the goddesses are thinking of us. They cry because they take all of our sorrow for themselves and leave us nothing but happiness. Their tears make things grow for us, so we can have life.”

The rain was well timed. It reminded her that tears for her mother helped wash away the pain of loss, but eventually, the memories would strengthen and grow bright.

She carried Scratch to the cabin and set him on the step under the shelter of the verandah roof, then went back to gather her bedding and the basket. As she picked up the basket the sky opened up and the rain fell in thick, dirty sheets, the fine, wind-driven sand mixing with the drops of moisture.

Airie raced for the cabin. It was only a distance of a few feet, but she was wet to the skin by the time she reached it. She carried the basket on one hip, and seizing Scratch’s hand, hurried him inside and shut the door against the storm. She dropped the basket on the table.

The rain pounding on the roof and the walls was loud, and Scratch covered his ears against it. Airie cuddled him in her arms. She loved the rain and did not want him to develop a fear of it. The poor little soul had been damaged enough.

She had an idea. She was wet already, and Scratch always seemed to be dirty. The rain was not cold.

“Lift up your arms,” she said to him, and then peeled his shirt over his head. She stripped down to her shift. “Come on.”

They dashed back out into the rainstorm. At first Scratch didn’t like it, turning his face into her shoulder, but then Airie began to dance with him still cradled in her arms. Before long he was down on the ground, ankle deep in the slippery mud and squishing it between his toes.

Airie showed him how to slide in it by taking a running start and letting her feet shoot out from under her. They were drenched and soon very dirty, and the smile on Scratch’s face was worth every minute of it.

As they played, it was impossible to see more than a few feet in front of them through the heavy rain. Airie understood why Hunter had built the cabin at the mouth of the canyon rather than deeper in, and she was glad he had taken Sally with him, because much of the canyon floor was a river now and the sand swift would have been trapped.

She tried not to worry about Hunter. He had survived on his own for years. He could look after himself.

Unease ate at her. She had no illusions that she and Scratch were anything more than a burden to Hunter despite the fact that so far, he had refused to take them to Freetown. He would do so eventually.