The Demon Creed (A Demon Outlaws Novel) (Entangled Edge) (19 page)

Chapter Fourteen

Nieve huddled in the tiny, fenced-in kitchen garden, waiting for the tea shop to open, her meager belongings in a pack in her arms. She had stolen a gun and ammunition from Creed. That was all she dared take for fear she might wake him.

She planned to cut off her hair and pass herself off as a young boy. She was thin enough. Once Creed left town she would buy the right clothing and a pair of scissors, and when she was a few miles from town, too, she would take on an identity that would give her greater freedom of movement. She should have thought of it from the very beginning, thus avoiding his company altogether.

Right now she needed a place to hide. Yesterday, the friendly waitress had been the only person in the shop. The town was small, and out of the way, and Nieve thought it unlikely the shop had any other staff. She hoped the waitress would provide her with sanctuary until she was certain Creed was long gone.

She had not wanted to hear his words of love when she could not return them, and covered her ears as if that might somehow stop them from replaying, over and over, in her head. A deep sense of bereavement, equal to the loss she continued to feel over her son, filled her.

Under different circumstances she thought she could have loved Creed. Now, she did not know if she could ever love him the way she wanted to, and he deserved. Asher had been gone from her for more than a year, but the loss remained as raw as it had been the day she regained her memory of him. Grief had frozen her fragile heart, and she truly feared that if she opened it up to Creed, and then lost him, too, it might shatter completely. One person could not contain so much sorrow, and she was not very big to begin with.

Creed would not change his mind when it came to duty and justice. He didn’t need her and Asher did. Her son was important to no one but her. Even if she never found him, she could never set aside her search for him. Not even this soul-twisting pain that tore her in two different directions and warned her she was making an irrevocable mistake. How could she live with herself if she did not do all that she could for her child?

It was still dark out, but she knew from years of cooking for Bear that the kitchen stove would need to be lit early. The biscuits she had eaten yesterday were fresh made.

A light came on in an upstairs window of the tiny shop. A few minutes later, the light went out. Shortly after that, the kitchen interior filled with a warm glow. Through the window that overlooked the garden, Nieve could see a stout shadow puttering around the room.

She crept to the window for a better look, wanting to make certain the person inside was the woman she was waiting for.

The woman was bent over the open oven, her back to Nieve, tossing in sticks of honey mesquite from the pile stacked neatly in a nearby rack. She reached for the cast iron match holder on the wall, sparking one of the long wooden matches by dragging it down the holder’s striker plate. It was the waitress, as Nieve had hoped. She set the burning match to the kindling in the stove, and the kindling caught on fire.

Nieve could not look away from those dancing flames. She remembered the way the fire had grown in Willow’s hands. She thought of how it had felt in her own hands, how empowering it was, when Creed had forced it through her.

Except he had not forced it through her. She had drawn it from him. Fire was her weapon, not his, and now he would be without it. He would need to exercise extra vigilance against Willow if their paths should cross again, which they would eventually, because Creed’s duty involved bringing her to justice.

Nieve rapped lightly on the dusty window with her knuckles, leaving several long smears in the thin layer of dirt.

The woman inside lifted her head, startled by the noise. She did not go to the door. Instead, she crossed the room and eased the window open a crack so she could see who was outside in the predawn hours of the morning.

She recognized Nieve at once.

“Oh, my dear,” she said, concern edging into the imme-diate and welcoming friendliness of her manner. “Did your young man not find you? He didn’t come back here, so I assumed you met up elsewhere and were together.”

At first, Nieve didn’t fully comprehend her meaning. Then she remembered that she had left the tea shop yesterday in Thistle’s company, and that she’d given the woman a message for Creed on her way out. That message had gone undelivered, because neither she nor Creed had gone back.

“No,” Nieve said. The lie slipped far too easily from her. “I have no idea what’s happened to him. He must have gone on without me.”

The woman made a small sound of pity. “He seemed so concerned for you,” she said. “I’m sure it’s a misunderstanding of some kind and he’ll be back.”

“I don’t think so,” Nieve said. “His money ran out. So did his interest in me. I was one more expense he no longer needed.” Guilt plucked at her. She was not painting a flattering image of Creed. She tried to improve it, for the sake of her conscience. “He knows my father is searching for me, and it won’t be long before he comes for me. I need a place to wait until he does. I promise I won’t be any trouble to you. I’m a good cook,” she added. “I’m good with pastries.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t have any work for you,” the woman said. “I wish I did.” She sounded genuinely sympathetic, but resolute in her refusal. “I have barely enough to feed myself.”

“I’m not looking for paid work,” Nieve assured her. “I need somewhere to wait. That’s all. And I’m happy to help out in return for it.”

The woman continued to hesitate. “There was odd goings on last night, out by the ruins. Your young man wouldn’t have gotten involved with anything like that, would he?”

She was afraid of demons, Nieve realized. They had not been gone long enough for people to overcome the fear that they might someday return. Since a demon hunted her, Nieve could not claim that such fears were groundless.

“I wouldn’t know anything about that,” she said, adding more lies to those she’d already uttered. “I spent the night looking after the girl who came into your shop, and her sick little sister, until their brother returned.”

Nieve was ashamed of herself for preying on this woman’s good heart. But she was desperate.

The woman came to a decision. She withdrew from the window. A few seconds later, she opened the back door and beckoned for Nieve to come inside.

…

Her name was Pistil and she ran the tea shop while her husband worked kyson for one of the many ranches around the Godseeker Mountains.

She put Nieve to work rolling pastry and supervised until she was satisfied Nieve knew what she was doing.

Several hours later, as Nieve was taking the last pie from the oven in the now sweltering kitchen, she heard heavy footsteps enter the dining area of the shop, then a low, friendly, familiar voice.

She almost dropped the hot, fragrant pie she held in her hands. A curl of steam spewed from the vent cut into the pastry’s light crust. She had been so careful. She could not understand how he had found her.

Perhaps he was hungry, and did not know she was here. Her heart vacillated between terror at discovery and a profound relief if she were. She set the pie carefully on a long counter, listening to the quiet voices out front, and wondered which it might be.

She had told so many lies.

She eased her pack off a chair and headed for the back door. She had one hand on the latch when a presence behind her warned that she was too late.

“Where are you headed this time?” Creed asked.

Behind him, Pistil hovered as if she had no idea what had just happened. Nieve’s eyes went to Creed’s tense expression. He was furious beneath all of that warm friendliness he projected.

And he had used compulsion on the woman to get what he wanted, because Pistil did not seem to take any notice of his blackened eye or the cuts on his face. If she had, she would never have helped him, Nieve was certain, because without the compulsion, he looked very dangerous.

She said nothing in response to his question. There was little that could be said.

“Pistil tells me you’re waiting for your father,” Creed said. “I told her if that’s what you truly want, then I’ll return you to him myself.”

“If you want my advice,” Pistil added, her anxious eyes on Nieve, “you’ll give your young man another chance. He doesn’t have to take you back. It’s generous of him to offer to do so.”

“Very generous,” Nieve said.

Creed took her bag from her hands. He then thanked Pistil with a graciousness that left the woman red-faced and smiling, and no doubt convinced that she’d done a great thing. Nieve, too, smiled at Pistil. This was hardly her fault. She could not fight the will of a demon.

No one knew that better than Nieve.

Creed took Nieve by the elbow and guided her through the front room. Only two tables had occupants. He took some coins from a pocket of his trousers and set them on the counter near the till as they passed.

Outside, without a word, he lifted her onto his hross’s back. Nieve looked down at him as he placed one hand on the saddle horn and his foot in the stirrup and prepared to mount.

“How did you find me?” she asked. “How did you know where to look?”

He swung up behind her so that he could sit with his arms around her, as if afraid she might leap from the back of the hross, even though it was impossible for her unless she was willing to risk breaking a limb, or even her neck.

“It was easy enough,” he said. “I went to the one place in town where I knew you’d already felt safe.”

Nieve had no rebuttal for that. He’d been correct in his prediction. So instead, she fell silent.

It was still early in the day. She hadn’t slept, instead lying awake for most of the night in order to make her plans for escape, and now, exhaustion settled bone-deep into her extremities. In the past, Creed would have taken pity on her and allowed her a short rest.

Instead, they rode on for a few hours. He finally stopped at the bank of a shallow spring bubbling up through a bed of rocks so that the hross could have water.

He then set up a shelter from the heat of the sun where they could sit out the remainder of the day. Now that they were entering the worst part of the desert, they would be forced to travel in the evenings and early morning hours.

As he worked, not once did he speak to her. Nieve found this silence from him unnerving. He was not normally a quiet man.

“I’m sorry,” Creed finally said to her, once they were both settled in the shade. He’d unfastened his shirt so that it exposed a broad spread of smooth, golden chest. She kept her gaze fixed on it. It was easier than meeting the accusation in his eyes. “I should have understood that you wouldn’t be able to wait in order to search for your son. I made you a promise and I intend to keep it. But you have to understand that my work is also too important to set aside, and I’ve done that already for too long.”

The understanding in the apology surprised her and made her feel guilty. That soon turned to a slow-burning anger. She was not sorry for putting her son first. She would do it again.

“I’m a mother,” Nieve said, as if that explained every-thing, because to her it did.

“Yes, you are.” Creed regarded her thoughtfully, but without the smile he usually reserved for her. “I understand how important finding your son is to you. But there are other children out there who have no one to search for them. No one who cares. And there are a lot of innocent people in danger because of what’s coming, and they can’t defend themselves. As long as you’re with me, at least you have some freedom of movement.”

“No, I don’t,” Nieve said. “You don’t understand anything about me. When I’m with you I have no freedom at all. You’re all I can think of. You consume all my thoughts. You make me forget how important my son is to me.” Her throat ached. “You make me a bad mother. I forgot my son once. I’ll never forget him again.”

His mouth tightened. The fractured chips of blue in his eyes reflected the color of the endless sky.

Nieve could not look away.

“I’ve never asked you to forget him,” he said. “I don’t expect you to. I’m asking you to understand that I have my own priorities, and I can’t forget them either.” He stretched out on the ground so that his head and shoulders remained beneath the shelter, but his legs and boots extended into the sun. “I’ll make you a new promise, and this one, I swear to you I’ll keep. I’m going to the Borderlands. I came looking for you today only because I was certain I knew where you were. If you hadn’t been there I’d have left you behind, and if you run off again, I won’t look for you again. You’re on your own.”

He folded his hands across his chest and closed his eyes. There was nothing considerate or lover-like in his manner. He had said his piece. As far as he was concerned, the con-versation was finished.

Despite the blistering heat, Nieve felt very cold.

And more alone than she could ever remember.

…

Imp had gone missing.

By late afternoon the next day, when she was still not back, Willow decided she would wait a few more hours, but if the girl had not returned by then, they’d be forced to move on without her.

Stone had not yet made an appearance either. Willow could only assume he had not survived, and she would need to change her plans.

The assassin’s shift to a full demon form had disconcerted her. She’d not known it was so…complete. His use of fire had been equally unexpected. When she tried to draw fire from the boundary in retaliation, the demon had attempted to follow its path. She had been forced to craft fireballs, using short bursts of flame, instead of forming a steady circle in which to trap the assassin.

She’d had no choice but to abandon the woman.

That, in turn, had infuriated the demon. Willow had ignored his summonses, which had gotten progressively angrier throughout the night. He had not fallen silent until morning dawned, and then, that silence became heavy and ominous.

Willow needed to reclaim the woman.

Thistle said the Godseeker assassin had spent the night in the nearby town. This morning, he’d headed into the desert. She’d asked a few questions that confirmed the mortal whore had been seen leaving with him.