Demon's Daughter (Demon Outlaws) (23 page)

He continued to watch her, his hostility not as open, but neither was it completely hidden. Airie pushed the food around her plate with her fork.

“You’re tired,” Ruby guessed, noticing her lack of interest in the meal. “Let me feed the boy, then I’ll show you where you’ll be sleeping.” She looked at Blade, daring him to argue. “They can use your room. You’ll stay with me.”

Scratch remained on Blade’s lap while Ruby fed him, and as he held the boy, the man’s mood seemed to shift. It softened. And saddened.

Airie’s heart ached for him. Blade wanted this. He wanted domestic, and normal, and he believed he could never have it. He was wrong. He could have this if he wanted. His leg was not what kept it from him. It was the excuse that kept him from having to try.

Even if she healed the physical wounds, he would have to deal with the deeper scars on his own.

The kitchen was warm, and a knot in the kindling snapped, sending sparks crackling around the inside of the stove. She yawned and started to rise, intending to take Scratch from Blade and use that as an excuse to get close, but Ruby was faster. She lifted Scratch from Blade’s arms.

Blade stood too, and without warning, his weak leg went out from beneath him. He tumbled to one knee, Ruby helpless beside him, her arms filled with little boy. Blade’s hand hit the stove’s hot surface palm down as he fell, and he swore.

Airie darted forward and grabbed his burned hand.

“Don’t touch me!” Blade growled. He tried to jerk his hand free from her grasp, but Airie was strong and refused to release it. Blisters, thick and watery, had begun to form. She poured healing into his hand. And then, she extended its reach. She did not ask his permission. He would not want the help of a demon, not even a half one. His revulsion for her was plain, and made her hesitate, but for no more than a second. She could not bear to see him suffer when there was no need for it.

The extent of the damage done to his leg filled her with a deep sense of dismay. She closed her eyes. Not much wonder he, too, hated her for what she was. It was a testimony to his inner strength and whoever had tended him that he had survived such a wound.

That he could walk at all defied belief.

A flicker of awareness for what she was doing dilated his eyes. “Stop,” he said, his voice harsh and tight. “I don’t want this.”

He did not want the help of a demon, was what he meant but did not say.

Despite his protests she continued to knit the nerves and tissue, and reconstructed what she could. His skin remained scarred. She would leave him that much because she knew he would want the reminder of an important event in his life. But he did not wish to be a cripple. That, she could take away.

Finally, Airie opened her eyes to meet his.

He was angry, she saw. Furious, although he hid it well. Ruby stood nearby, clutching Scratch to her breast, uncertain what to do or whom to help. Worry etched her brow. Blade’s gaze shifted from Airie to her, and when he saw the expression on Ruby’s face, some of his anger faded. But not all.

“Take them away,” he ordered Ruby, not rising from his one-kneed position on the floor. He held his burned hand to his chest. His breath came in small gasps, as if he were in great pain, but Airie knew any pain he experienced was no longer physical.

Ruby wanted to go to him, but Airie read her indecision. After a visible struggle, she seemed to decide that he was best left alone.

“I’ll be right back,” Ruby said to him. “Don’t you dare try to move.”

Ruby handed Scratch to Airie, lifted a lantern from one of the hooks on a ceiling joist, and ushered her up a staircase at the rear of the kitchen.

The saloon had three stories, unlike many of its meaner neighbors. Three women lived in rooms on the second floor. Blade kept the attic for himself.

The room Ruby led her to was large but spare. A double bed filled one corner. A sturdy wardrobe stood in another. A cushioned bench lined a deep window well beneath a skylight. Airie could see the night stars above her. A screen in the third corner indicated a chamber area.

“There are clean linens in the wardrobe,” Ruby said, distracted and obviously in a hurry to return to Blade. She lit a lantern on the nightstand. “A nightdress, too. If you need anything else, my room is directly below this one. It’s the first off this set of stairs.”

“I didn’t hurt him,” Airie said, wanting badly for this woman to think well of her before Blade told her the truth.

“I know you didn’t,” Ruby said. She smiled, although a little sadly, Airie thought. “I knew the minute you touched my hand.”

She left, closing the door behind her, and Airie no longer felt as if she had done something good.

…

Disregarding Ruby’s instructions not to move, Blade pushed himself to his feet and steadied his breathing.

In and out, in and out.

He looked at his palm in the flickering light of the lanterns hanging about the low-ceilinged room. It was unburned. A recent nick on one of his knuckles was also gone.

But it was the absence of pain for the first time in almost a decade that left him dizzy and made his knees unable to hold his weight. He staggered into his chair and probed his bad leg through the heavy fabric of his trousers with nerveless, shaking fingers.

He was afraid to look. Beyond a doubt, the leg was whole.

He could hear the soft voices of the women above him, drifting down the stairwell. Ruby would be back soon and Blade was not ready to face her.

Beneath the counter, he kept his array of knives. He rose, starting to limp to collect them, and realized he no longer needed to do so. A fresh wave of dizziness assailed him, and he grabbed for the table. He shifted his weight to his bad leg.

It held him.

He gathered the knives and slipped them into his clothing with practiced speed, listening hard for Ruby’s footsteps on the stairs. Then he walked to the door, gingerly, remembering those mind-crippling days after the demon attack when he had thought he might never walk again. Only Ruby had kept him from taking his own life. She had also forced him to take his first steps.

His brain disengaged, overwhelmed. He had to get away, to think, but he had nowhere to go. He strode into the small courtyard off the kitchen, then crossed to the gate with increasing confidence.

Once outside in the empty street and under the protective cover of night, he simply walked.

Instinct led him to the city wall and the hidden tunnel Hunter used for his comings and goings. Blade slipped into the tunnel, needing the privacy, not knowing what to do next and feeling as if his entire world had keeled on its side yet again. He’d made a new life, far different from the first. He rested his back against the dirt wall, then slid to the ground.

He sat in the darkness and wept.

…

When the first demons appeared on the horizon, blocking the moon with their numbers, Hunter was well within sight of the small canyon.

He quickened his pace, and as he ran across the shadowed desert, he thought about strategy. Demons did not play well with others. Of the estimated hundred or so in existence, probably no more than thirty would form any kind of alliance. Even that would be of short duration because they would turn on each other as easily as on men.

A force of thirty demons was still formidable. Three times the size of a mortal man in their demon form, with bone plating protecting their few vulnerable areas, they could tear an inexperienced fighter apart in seconds.

While Hunter’s amulet gave him his opponents’ strength, outsmarting them was up to him, and demons were not stupid.
Sluggish thinkers
, was how Blade once described them. Perhaps it was because their demon form was predatory, distracting them with the scent of blood and the heat of battle.

If the wagoners drew demon blood first, it might create enough of a distraction in the demon ranks to help them survive the night.

Hunter called out to alert the wagoners of his identity so he would not be shot, or run through with a blade or an arrow. He ducked into the mouth of the canyon.

“They’re coming,” he said, telling the men on watch what they would not have been able to see over the canyon walls. “I have a plan.”

They would begin with flaming arrows. Hunter needed the majority of demons kept at a distance while he lured one or two from the sky. Then, he would draw blood.

He waited at the mouth of the canyon, the archers behind him and the hot pitch nearby. The first demons appeared, and the first volley of arrows flew.

One of the demons broke free of the others, as Hunter had hoped. It landed on the desert floor, out of range of the arrows. “Slayer!”

Hunter, his sword in his hand, stepped out of the canyon. The desert night was cold. Stars sparkled in the sky. There was no sign of rain tonight, and the archers were keeping the rest of the demons mostly at bay. This one had gotten through because they had followed his instructions to allow it.

Adrenaline surged. He enjoyed fighting too much. Eventually, that would be his downfall.

The demon on the ground shifted. Became mortal.

“Slayer,” it called to him again.

Its voice was hypnotic, even to Hunter, who was a man and supposedly immune to it.

Not immune, he thought. Rather, not so deeply affected, and not in the same way. It had challenged him, and he had responded.

His sister had not stood a chance against this. Neither would Airie in the end, despite any demon traits she might have inherited.

The night was silent except for the steady hiss of released arrows and the whisper of wings.

Hunter, his sword in his hand, strode out to meet the one who challenged him. The moon and the stars lit up the desert landscape and he could see his opponent quite clearly. With long black hair and direct eyes, he was larger than Hunter, heavier, better muscled.

Of course he would be. He was an immortal.

Hunter’s amulet glowed fiercely, blistering his skin, a warning that even in mortal form, this demon was dangerous.

“Tell me, Slayer,” the demon said to him when Hunter stopped a few yards away. “What have you done with the spawn you were hired to bring to me?”

The question should not have surprised him. Mamna had hired Hunter on the Demon Lord’s behalf, although he had not anticipated facing the Demon Lord directly.

Now he knew what had instigated the attack on Freetown. The demon had even less patience than the priestess.

And Hunter had a far greater problem than returning a few gold coins. The thought of Airie in this demon’s hands turned his stomach to stone.

He spread his legs and moored his feet more firmly in the dirt, bracing himself for attack. The demon was unarmed, but that did not make him harmless. “She’s dead.”

“She was seen.” The demon remained unmoving, watchful. “I would imagine she’s very beautiful. Tell me about her.”

His attention shifted to the glowing amulet around Hunter’s neck. Hunter saw shocked recognition flash across his face, quickly gone. The demon had seen it somewhere before. Or, perhaps, he simply knew of its reputation, although only one demon Hunter had ever encountered had survived to carry any tales.

That was the one who had dared to touch Airie.

He would not admit to her existence. “When the old priestess died, the mountain would no longer tolerate a spawn’s presence and it collapsed, taking her with it. She is dead.”

“She is not dead.” The Demon Lord’s features hardened. “I want her. If you don’t give her to me, I will burn the city to the ground. I will show no mercy.”

“Why do you care about her?” Hunter asked. “Why is she so special to you?”

“Because she is female. The only one of her kind.”

It was the wrong answer to give him. Years of contained anger and pain over the loss of his sister resurfaced. Hunter would never pass Airie over to demons. He tightened his grip on his sword and advanced.

His amulet flared another warning, hotter this time. He tried to determine the source of the Demon Lord’s strength, and its level, but could not.

A second demon broke free from the legion soaring above, landing lightly behind him. He now had two demons to face. The amulet indicated that the Demon Lord remained the greater threat, so that was where he kept his attention.

And then a shadow, moving silently across the dark desert, came to his aid, running toward them in a crouch. The knives flying from its fingertips with unnerving precision were aimed at the second demon and the vulnerabilities between those bony plates. Several of the well-aimed blades hit their marks, and it grunted in surprise as blood poured from the wounds. It turned on itself, biting and clawing at the protruding knives, and retreated into the night sky where other demons would track it.

Hunter went after the Demon Lord, who dodged the first strike with ease.

“Enough dancing,” Hunter said. “Fight me.”

The Demon Lord smiled. Anyone else would have felt terror. Not Hunter. Airie had been threatened, and that was his only concern.

“I don’t think so, Slayer. Not tonight. This is your final warning. I want the spawn.” He flashed a feral grin. “Then, you can have your fight. When it’s over, I will give her your head as a gift.” He shifted, resuming his demon form, and shot into the night sky to rejoin the others.