Demon's Daughter (Demon Outlaws) (4 page)

Desire heard Airie before she saw her, singing as she climbed the night-shrouded path. The priestess smiled in the darkness. Airie was a true child of the earth.

But she was a child no longer and had not been for quite some time. She was a grown woman, and Desire did not know what was to become of her. When Desire died, no one—not even Airie—would know of her birthright.

Airie reached the top of the path. Tall, slim-waisted, and long-legged, with sable eyes and coal-black hair, she was the counter image of her golden mother, dark where the goddess had been fair. Yet they had the same features, and the same presence. From the way she carried herself to the healing power of her touch, Airie had the bearing of an immortal. It was impossible not to love her, although Desire knew from long experience how difficult goddesses could be to love at times.

Airie’s wet hair, long and loose to her hips and slightly curling at the tips, told Desire she had stopped to bathe in one of the hot mountain springs. She wore a fresh change of clothes, the sleeves of her crisp white blouse rolled back to her elbows, her long brown skirt wrapping around her legs with her strides. From her fingers dangled the pack carrying the offerings she had gone to collect. Desire was not misled by the easy way she carried the pack. It would be full, and very heavy.

Despite the singing, Desire knew at once that something was wrong. The soft glow of happiness normally surrounding Airie was missing tonight.

Airie set the pack at Desire’s feet, then bent down and kissed her cheek.

“You’re in pain.” Concern filled her voice.

“It’s nothing,” Desire replied. Just that one brief kiss had been enough to make her feel better, and to ease her aches. “Sit. Tell me about your day. You’re late.”

Very late, in fact. Far too late to have been collecting offerings, but then again, Airie often lost track of time.

She sat in the long cool mountain grass at Desire’s feet, her head on her mother’s knees. “I walked to the far side of the mountain, beyond the lake.”

Desire’s already erratic heart skipped a beat, then picked up a few extra to compensate. Airie had not gone to the far side of the mountain. If she had, she would have brought back sweetberries and some of the white cedar bark Desire often sprinkled on the fire at night to freshen the temple air.

The knowledge disquieted her. She loved Airie, and Airie loved her in return. Her nature was kind and gentle, but she was also fiercely protective, and there was nothing she would not do for Desire, or anything she loved, if she believed it necessary. Desire hoped it would not get her in trouble someday.

She chose not to challenge Airie on the lie. Instead, they both sat in silence, soaking up the sounds and smells of the evening. Desire stroked Airie’s damp hair.

“When did you first notice my eyes?” Airie asked suddenly.

This time when it stopped, Desire feared that her heart might not start on its own again. She carefully considered her answer before speaking. “You were a baby.”

And it had not been Airie’s eyes she had noticed first. Desire had been outdoors when she smelled smoke and hurried inside to find the chamber on fire and Airie shrieking at the top of her young lungs. The crib was in ruins because she had torn it apart. The angry welts on her neck had told Desire she’d most likely gotten her head caught between its spindles. The flaming eyes were nothing compared to the destruction Airie had caused in her struggle to free herself.

Yet Airie had never turned her temper on another living being, not even the time she’d been stung by a bee as a small child, and Desire never regretted throwing away the protective amulet.

Airie lifted her head. “Were you afraid of me?”

“Not for an instant,” Desire was able to declare in complete honesty. She had never been afraid for herself, or for anyone else. Any fear was all for Airie.

Airie was quiet for quite some time then, gazing out toward the west. Miles beyond the moonlit mountain, visible from the temple in daylight, the flatland settlements served as reminders that there were other people in the world. On calm nights settlement lights could be seen, but on this night a west wind blew, and a sandstorm swallowed the world. Windows would be shuttered tight against it, and against demons.

Here on the mountain, though, demons were not a concern. Despite the fire that had forced the goddesses to flee, the mountain remained forbidden to them.

Airie pointed into the darkness. “What’s beyond the flatlands?”

This was a game they had played for years, with both of them making up the most ridiculous stories about the world around them, but Desire sensed that tonight it was not a game Airie played.

“You’ve studied your maps. The biggest settlement is Freetown. To the west of it lie the Borderlands, near the end of the world. To the north are the gold mines and mountains of the Godseekers. To the south lies the sea. We live in the east.”

“And the boundaries surround them all.” Airie’s lovely face, normally all smiles, was unusually pensive. “The world is a very small place.”

“Only what we know of it today. Before the immortals it was much larger, and given time, it will be again.” Desire did not doubt that, but it was difficult to explain to Airie when she had never traveled beyond the mountain, nor studied the buried ruins of a very different civilization from the one she lived in.

“What brought them here?” Airie shifted to look at Desire as she asked the question. “If they’re immortal, they have no need for a physical world to live in.”

Desire did not like discussing this subject with Airie. She did not want her choosing sides between her two birth parents. She had tried hard over the years not to influence her with natural mortal prejudice. But Airie deserved at least some of the truth, and she would not deny it to her. Not as long as it did her no harm.

“Time,” Desire said simply. “To the immortals it has no meaning, and the knowledge it can run out makes everything they experience within it that much more exciting.” She paused, weighing her next words with even more care. “For the goddesses,” she continued, “this world also provided a chance to escape. They came first, a dozen of them, a long time ago. They traveled the old world in its entirety, bringing life and prosperity with them, and it brought them great pleasure in return. Then the demons arrived, numbering in the thousands, to scour the world with demon fire in their hunt for the goddesses. Mortals tried to protect the goddesses from them, and fought back with fire of their own. Before they fell, they decreased demon numbers to the hundred or so that we know of today.”

Airie did not look satisfied. “Demons make no secret of the fact that they hate mortal men, so why would they choose to remain?”

“They have no choice,” Desire replied. “They follow the goddesses, and the goddesses, stronger against a hundred than a thousand, built the boundaries beyond which no demon can cross, confining them to the desert. No one knows what exists beyond those boundaries anymore, or if anything of the old world’s past life remains. All we have of it in the new world are ruins.”

Desire believed people were stronger and more resilient than the immortals gave them credit for. Someday, curiosity was going to win out over fear of the unknown, and those boundaries would fall.

Pensiveness touched Airie’s tone. “If the goddesses protected mortals from demons, why did they abandon the world to them?”

This part was too close to Airie’s story for Desire to be truly comfortable. “The immortals have always been at war,” she said. “The goddesses did the best they could, but were too few in number. They came here to escape demons, and they left to escape them again.”

Airie tipped her head to the side, still deep in thought. “I often dream of the desert, even though I have never seen it. It’s a vast place filled with heat and sand, and holds the most beautiful sculptures carved from the earth.” Desire caught her breath at the unexpected and unwelcome revelation that Airie had not outgrown her childhood dreams. Then she shifted their conversation yet again. “Do the goddesses mind me being here? In their temple?”

“You are my daughter,” Desire said simply, evading the true question. “They watch over us both. Your talent for healing comes from them.”

Airie plucked a slender blade of dew-slickened grass, twisting it around her fingers. “Tell me about my father.”

This was the one topic Desire had never openly discussed with her. Always, when asked, she had told Airie that she’d been created out of love, which was all that mattered. That answer had satisfied her in the past.

But not tonight.

“I have a right to know,” Airie said.

“But why do you want to know now?” Desire asked. Suddenly, she had a lot of questions she knew she should have asked Airie sooner. “What has happened to make you so interested?”

“Nothing,” Airie replied, and Desire let it drop, but only because they both had secrets they did not want to share.

Sooner or later, however, they both would need answers. Desire intended to have hers. Ill health aside, the next time Airie went to collect the offerings, she would follow.

…

The Demon Lord came to rest on desert sand still scorching hot though the sun had set many hours before. He balanced his weight on thickset demon legs, furled his wings between powerfully muscled shoulders, and with a grinding of bones and joints, shifted into his mortal form. Plain cotton breeches were all he wore. Most times, he wore nothing. For this meeting, he preferred the priestess’s eyes on his face. He was not blind to the way she watched him.

The winds were high, which did not surprise him. On nights like this one—when the stars and the moon shone their light on the world and the west winds blew—demons called to mortal women, beckoning them into the desert for games of pleasure. Few women who had been chosen to play could resist the call.

He no longer prowled for either women or pleasure. The game had been ruined for him. He came here now only because the priestess had summoned him.

He sniffed the air and caught a faint whiff of blood, the coppery tang unmistakable. Excitement curled in the pit of his belly. He followed the scent, striding easily across the sands and past plush cacti, the desert wind tangling his hair. Nightlife, both predator and prey, scurried away at his approach.

The woman was not quite dead by the time he reached her. Her skin was yet warm to the touch, and her lips gaped in a soundless scream. Long, sand-clumped fair hair, damp with sweat, pooled beneath her head.

She’d been pretty once, which did not surprise him. Demons hunted only the best. Now, however, swelling distorted her face and limbs, her distended belly ripped open wide.

The smell of fresh blood ignited a reaction in the Demon Lord that at one time, he might not have been able to resist. Time, however, had affected him in many ways that immortality had not. He had learned to control the strongest of his urges.

He formed a talon from one fingernail and slit her throat to end her suffering. The talon retracted.

The true cause of her death lay next to her, panting heavily and blinking owlish eyes. Its bulbous head, too large for a long, ungainly neck, lolled to one side. Wet wings glistened in the pale moonlight, curling and uncurling with each labored breath, its clawed fingers and toes moving in unison. It lapped greedily at its mother’s blood. He did not bother to resume his demon form. It was not necessary, not with a newborn, although he did not underestimate it. Even now, mere minutes old, it held the potential to cause serious harm—and spawn were as likely to turn on their demon fathers as they were their unfortunate mothers.

He planted a slim, bare foot on the squirming body and, reaching down, ripped the head from the spawn’s scrawny neck before it could bite or scratch him. The blue-green light of demon death rising from its body was fainter than that of a true demon, but evident nonetheless.

Immortals did not die the same way mortals did, not even a monstrosity such as this.

“Nasty business,” a voice laden with distaste said from behind him.

The Demon Lord tossed the head aside and wiped his hands on the hem of the dead mother’s tattered dress. “Nastier if it had lived. Demons seek their promised mates. Reproduction is sometimes an unfortunate result of an unsuccessful hunt.” He faced her. “You summoned me. Have you learned anything?”

The priestess, Mamna, stayed well back, her hand covering her nose to filter the stench. Spawn smelled worse dead than alive.

“Nothing new. I’ve hired someone to bring her in.”

The Demon Lord stilled, instantly wary. “Who?”

She hesitated too long before responding. “The Demon Slayer.”

Anger built deep inside him, and he knew his eyes had flared with demon fire. The glow glittered off wind-polished particles of sand and shot red shards of light into the night. “You hired the Demon Slayer to do demon work?”

Mamna stood her ground beneath the heat of his gaze as it scorched her homely face. The goddesses had not chosen their handmaids for their beauty. If anything, the handmaids had been chosen to highlight the beauty of the goddesses. But the handicap made the priestesses safe to wander on such nights, when no other mortal woman should dare.

Mamna was safer than most, although not because of her looks. His fingers curled at his sides. If anything should happen to the protective amulet she wore, she had cause for concern. Their uneasy alliance would be finished.