Demon's Daughter (Demon Outlaws) (32 page)

The Demon Lord had drawn his hand back, prepared to deliver a second blow to Hunter’s chest to tear out his heart with his claws, but the attempt to shift had cost the Demon Lord more strength than he seemed to realize.

Hunter’s amulet shot out great streams of blinding golden light that flung the Demon Lord several feet backward. He struck the edge of the stone platform and slumped to the ground in a daze. A chunk of rock the size of a demon’s fist split away and toppled past his bent head.

As Hunter struggled to right his blurring vision, the bleeding at his throat stopped and the sting of the cuts disappeared. A sense of urgency, and of time slipping away, roused him to action. The amulet, too, was growing weaker, every time it had to heal him.

A larger threat lifted its head.

Hunter froze in the act of rising, one hand on the ground and legs bent at the knee, and looked up. The demons closest to him had caught the scent of his blood. Hunger glittered in their red eyes.

Hunter dared to steal another glance at Airie, who had fallen to her hands and knees when the Demon Lord struck the platform’s edge, and saw she was no longer alone. Beside her, outlined in gold light, stood the faint silhouette of a second woman. Her lips moved as she spoke soothing words to Airie he could not hear, and she placed one hand on her arm in an attempt to stop her trembling.

His heart went still. If not even Airie’s goddess mother could contain her when she was this agitated, it would not be long before she threw herself into the fray. Airie possessed no natural fear for herself, and would let nothing stop her from coming to his aid.

He did not trust goddess light to protect her from blood-frenzied demons. Not when the goddesses had been unable to defend themselves against the fury of the Demon Lord as he burned their mountain.

The Demon Lord was on his feet again, although staggering as if drunk. A bluish green haze enveloped him.

Hunter blinked, thinking at first that his vision had been damaged by one of the blows he’d received, but then the haze wavered and separated into a number of shadows.

The goddess’s words returned to him.

He battles the demons whose deaths he owns, because they fight him for their freedom, too.

Hunter had often wondered why demons who enjoyed hunting mortals had not killed each other off a long time ago. The answer was that they paid too heavy a price for it.

It meant the Demon Lord was weak, and the change in the tone of the crowd’s rumbling told Hunter the others knew it, too. The cheers for their leader died away.

Their thirst for blood did not. Both the Demon Lord and Hunter were coated in it, and Hunter watched warily as their attention shifted between them, trying to decide which of them was the weaker.

He could not claim to be in the best of shape. Much of the strength he had gained was lost in his healing, and while one demon he thought he could manage, a hundred would be ninety-nine too many.

Low chanting began, gradually gaining strength and momentum.
Blood. Blood. BLOOD
.

Pushing and shoving from the spectators at the back triggered a brawl as they tried to move to the front. One sledgehammer-sized fist missed its target and pummeled a hole into a cavern wall. Another demon slammed headfirst into a stone pillar. Fine cracks splintered upward and fanned across the ceiling in intricate, spidery webs. Without their leader to keep them in check, whatever discipline remained to them was about to be lost.

The fire guttering along the cavern walls gave Hunter an idea. Airie needed something to do that would be of benefit to them both, yet also keep her from harm.

“Airie!” he shouted to her. “Surround us with fire!”

…

It had taken all the strength Airie possessed to disentangle her thoughts from the goddess’s, and she’d had to draw on her demon birthright to do so.

She could not stand back and do nothing. If the Demon Lord fell, the others would tear Hunter apart. Bloodlust already consumed them.

Please,
she begged the golden figure, now still as a stone statue beside her.
Release me from our agreement. I have to help him.

The goddess turned tragic, sorrow-filled eyes on her. Her lashes lowered, and it was clear her attention was not on Airie.
I am your servant. Yours to command. I cannot hold you if you don’t wish for it.

Anger at this admission of another lie and betrayal, offered so casually, pounded inside Airie like a heavy fist on an already fragile door. She had been raised to respect the goddesses, and helped her mother serve them her whole life. She had stood back while Hunter accepted a challenge on her behalf because she had trusted a goddess to deal fairly with her, but had not been told she did not need to agree to it.

Her faith and very existence were founded on lies.

Airie tried to think past her boiling anger and growing desperation. Hunter could not fight them all. She searched around her for a weapon, but came up with nothing.

The Demon Lord was back on his feet now, a writhing, blue-green haze churning, snakelike, beneath his glowing skin, and while that slowed the tide of demons, it did not stop them.

Hunter was shouting something to her, his words barely understandable over the rising chants for his blood.

“Airie! Surround us with fire!”

Chapter Twenty

Hunter was pointing at the sconces on the walls.

Of course
.

Airie’s hopes lifted. Fire was her weapon.

The last time she called it the Demon Lord had wrested it away from her, but this time, as she held out her hands, she was better prepared and more confident in her abilities. Her demon instincts, straining against the confines of a goddess upbringing and the will of her Demon Lord father, told her all she needed to know. What she held was hers, not his, the same as rain. She had been born with it, and it came to her from the world around her.

She was the Demon Lord’s daughter. If she wished, she could call his fire to her, too.

She did.

It danced up the walls in great ropes of yellow flame, twisting and swirling along the rifts in the cavern’s ceiling before dropping to form a thick sheet of fire between the two combatants and the mass of demons.

As it fell, Hunter shot from his crouched position like a bullet from a gun, ramming his shoulder into the Demon Lord’s chest and bearing him to the ground.

Both were on their feet again in an instant. The Demon Lord grabbed Hunter by the arms, then grimaced and could not seem to retain his grip as blue-green shadows undulated and writhed beneath his flesh. Hunter took immediate advantage, and brought his head forward to smash it into the demon’s face before driving a knee into his groin.

Bloodied and weakened, doubled over in pain, the Demon Lord’s eyes went to the golden figure of light on the platform beside Airie. Loss and sorrow crossed his face, followed by resignation.

Airie knew he was beaten, and moved to shield her goddess mother from the sight of what was to come.

The Demon Lord wiped at the blood streaming from his nose and mouth with the back of his hand as he squared off against Hunter to deliver one last taunt. “My demons won’t be held back. Will you battle them all, Slayer? Is she worth that much to you?”

“Yes,” Hunter said.

He shot his fist into the Demon Lord’s broken face, knocking him down one final time.

Then, he crushed his throat beneath his boot.

A thick, blue-green haze slid from the fallen Demon Lord to Airie, through the pores of her skin, its weight and a sick comprehension driving her to her knees on the platform. She owned her father’s death now, as he would have owned hers if he had won the challenge instead of Hunter, and her demon instincts whispered that it would not be as easy a one to bear as her mother’s.

The sound of the goddess’s sobs echoed in the otherwise silent cavern as the demons watched their leader fall.

As Airie dealt with the death she’d absorbed, and the weight of its strength shifting to her, the wall of fire she had summoned at Hunter’s request faltered and slipped from her grasp.

She lifted her head.

The mood in the cavern had shifted from ugly anticipation to even uglier threat. Hunter stood to her right. Blood stained his tattered clothing and smeared his skin, but for all that, he appeared unharmed. He swung sweat-dampened blond hair from his eyes and glared around, chest heaving, primed for the next demon to step forward and challenge him.

Despite the freedom the Demon Lord’s death brought them, the demons were not departing, Airie also saw. Instead, they divided their attention between her and Hunter, as if deciding which of them to pursue first.

Raw anger exploded inside her. She would not own the Demon Lord’s death for nothing. She possessed fire. And rain. If demons would not leave peaceably, she would kill them all, one by one if she had to.

She dragged herself to her feet, then the edge of the platform, as the goddess’s sobs turned to screams.

No, Airie. This is not the way!

Ignoring the warning, Airie leaped to the ground to meet the first of those demons brave enough to approach her.

Hunter started forward to protect her, his expression murderous, but she would not have him facing more danger on her behalf. Stronger now, and becoming acquainted with the additional weight of the death she bore, she reconstructed the wall of fire around them.

Four demons, however, had gotten too close to her and were now trapped inside it. She slapped her palm to the bone-plated arm of the first one to reach her, and mixing her fire and rain together, drove them deep. Steam billowed beneath her touch. The demon shrieked in agony as it boiled from the inside out. She had to turn her face from the stink of cooking meat.

The demon fell to the ground, clouded eyes staring upward. The haze of death rose from its body to settle around Airie, coating her skin in a sickly light. In her head, she knew horror. This, she realized, sick at heart, was her first step toward immortality, although she had taken it in a direction she had never intended.

She did not want to be a demon. Neither did she want for Hunter to die.

She brought the flat of her hand against a second demon, sending another burst of fire and water into its flesh. More screams, and a second blue-green haze joined the first.

This death was stronger, and the weight of it sent Airie to her hands and knees again so that the wall of flame faltered, but she could not stop now.

She groped blindly for a leg and caught it above the ankle. The thick, clinging haze of this one’s death drove the others a little deeper into Airie.

Hunter fought the fourth demon.

Panic scalded her. She did not know if she could carry the weight of too many more, yet she had to find a way to drive them from the world so Hunter would have a chance to escape, and she could think of nothing other than to kill them.

Then her mother was at her side, draping Airie in golden goddess light, but even that could not displace the eerie glow of the ones already dead and clinging to her.

“Listen to me,” the goddess said, her voice cracking with unspent grief and a rising urgency. “You were meant to have a choice, and you hurt only yourself this way. You own your father’s death, and therefore his strength. That will be enough to protect you from demons if you choose them. Or you may send for the goddesses through me and take my place with my sisters. They will welcome you.” Her cheeks sparkled beneath golden tears. “But choose quickly, while you still can. They won’t wait for you. Now that the demons are freed from the boundaries of time, the goddesses will go back into hiding.”

Airie’s attention was divided. The demon Hunter fought was weakening. The desire to help him was strong, but he did not need it and would not thank her. She would be nothing but a distraction to him.

She turned her face away so she could not be tempted. They both needed the help of her mother if they were to survive this.

“And if I don’t make a choice?” Airie asked her. “What happens then?”

The goddess wiped the tears from her cheeks. “The number of deaths you own will decide the matter for you.”

Cold prickled her skin. That was why her mother had tried to stop her from fighting them.

Already, Airie felt the enormous surge of power that full demon immortality would bring her. It was heady, and difficult to resist, and she knew it would not be long before she could not. She tried to organize her thoughts, and examine her options so that she made a decision that was of benefit to others, and not herself. It had to be something her mother—her priestess mother—would have approved of. She had been loyal to her goddess, but also to her own mortality. And she had loved Airie more than either of them. She had not feared the demon in her, but always encouraged her to do what she believed was right.

If she chose to take her goddess mother’s place, the goddesses would flee the demons and she would go into hiding with the others. That was of harm to no one. If she chose to be demon, however, she could stay here with Hunter. He did not fear them either, and would never fear her.

But if she did that, it meant demons would retain a link to this world through her. Where there was one immortal there would be others.

That was true, too, of the goddesses, and neither goddess nor demon had ever been of true benefit to mortality. The world did not need them.

She could not decide.

“You say you are my servant,” she said to her mother, leaning close. “Yet you used me to get Hunter to agree to fight in my place when it wasn’t necessary for him to do so. It was not his challenge to accept.”

Fresh tears sparkled in her mother’s eyes. A shaking hand went to her lips. “Forgive me. I could not bear for the two people I love to harm each other.”

She had also said she was Airie’s to command—and something else. About a bond between them…

The words fit into their proper context with startling and painful clarity. “I own your death, too,” Airie said. “That’s the bond between us, and my other claim to immortality.”

The goddess did not deny it. “Because of that, he won’t fight you for his freedom if being a demon is the immortality you want. He won’t do anything more that might harm me or cause me pain.”

Airie reconsidered the choices she had been given. Choosing either immortality meant her parents would never be free again. She would own their deaths forever.

Pity stirred in her. If that was her price for immortality, she did not want it.

She found she could not remain angry over events that might someday bring peace to two tormented souls, not while Hunter still lived. In her heart, where her immortality spoke to her, she knew with absolute truth that he held the other half of her soul. She could search for all of eternity, from one end of the universe to the other, and never again find his equal.

The immortals alone did not determine her future, any more than they did their own.

“I have a third choice,” Airie said. “You once told me if I wanted a place in this world I would have to be welcomed to it. But even if someone does welcome me, I don’t want my place here to be as an immortal.”

“Even though you’ll live inside of time and be subject to its laws, you can never be truly mortal,” the goddess warned her. “Because of that, you cannot give up the deaths you now own. They will be with you throughout your lifetime. And you will not get to make another choice if this one is rejected—it will be made for you.” Her eyes were anxious. “Think carefully. The goddesses will accept you. So will the demons. Are you as certain of your welcome here in the mortal world?”

Airie thought she was, at least by one person. If not, the demon deaths she owned would guarantee the immortality thrust on her. She could feel it tugging at her already.

She hesitated. She did not want to be demon, but if that was to be her fate, she would never forget the teachings of her priestess mother. She controlled her own actions and owned responsibility for them.

But it was Hunter she truly wanted.

“Yes,” she said. “I will risk it. But no matter what happens to me, immortals will never be welcome here again.”

Their fingers touched, a brief clasp, her mother’s little more than a soft stirring of air against Airie’s skin.

Golden light laced with streaks of vivid blue-green shot through the cavern as her mother’s image was joined by the shadowy haze of another, larger one. While Airie might command her demon father’s death, and have his protection, it was the goddess he would forever follow. Perhaps his defeat was more of a kindness to them both than she’d understood. They did not have immortality. But this was not an end for them either.

Her throat tightened, and she looked away from them to find Hunter.

More blood had been spilled, she saw. He had won this fight, too, but he would not win many more. Agitated beyond reason now, on the other side of the wall, several dozen demons hurled themselves into the fire in an attempt to get at him. More had scaled the cavern’s walls to the cracked ceiling, thinking to break through at the top.

Yet Hunter, with one knee on the ground and breathing in deep, heaving gasps, his body battered and bloodied, his face dripping in sweat from the heat of the blaze around them, had eyes for no one but her. He pressed his hands to his thighs and pushed to a standing position.

Airie ran into his arms.

He cupped her face in his hands and scanned her anxiously from head to toe, then finally, satisfied she was unharmed, kissed her. He paid no attention to the shadowy forms of her father and mother standing close by, or the demons roaring for the Slayer’s blood.

“Surround yourself with fire,” Hunter said to her. “While I fight them off, I want you to run. When you get outside, call on goddess rain. That will protect you.” As long as she had water, she could survive in the desert for days. His mouth settled in grim resolve.

“If they want the Demon Slayer, they can die fighting him.”

…

Hunter did not know how she had killed the demons. It was enough for him that she could defend herself against them. But it tore at his heart to think she had been forced to do something she did not believe in because he had not been strong enough to protect her from it.

That did not mean he was sorry they were dead. If he could, he would kill them all. Since he could not, he would rid the world of as many as possible and die content knowing Airie, at least, was safe from them.