The Demon-Eater: Hunting Shadows (Book One, Part One (3 page)

A new voice was added to
the chanting army in his mind.
Demon-Eater! Demon-Eater!
they cried
like an angry choir.

Another voice, suppressed
somewhere deeper than the
others
were in his mind was nearly drowned out by the
fervent chants.
I am giving up on you,
Gabriel,
it said.

Demon-Eater!
Demon-Eater!

“
I will kill you,” he
whispered to the voices, setting his jaws as he climbed to his feet
and sheathed his sword.

I am giving up on
you,
the other, singular voice whispered
behind the cries of the
others
again.

“
I will kill you all.”
Gabriel turned away from the rotting corpse, toward the alley's
entrance, and started back the way he had come.

Part One:

Hunting Shadows

If anyone should find this journal, there
are a few things you must know about demons.

Firstly—and I believe this is the first
thing anybody should ever know of their kind—, being immortal
beings, not from this world but now a part of it, one cannot end a
demon's life by any means. No weapon or device can banish them from
existence. One may shred the “matter” making up the form of a demon
with a sword or otherwise, so much so that it would take quite a
while for it to regenerate its body. But it would not die.

For this very reason,
along with the obscurity of their origin, I have found the
existence of demons to be a tricky one to understand. After all, if
Father Truth had created them, why had he not
un
created them, after the demons had
begun killing humans? Why had he not given man a tool to defeat
them?

Although, the more I
consider this last question while progressing in my studies of
demon-kind, the more I think Father Truth
had
given man a tool.

C
hapter
O
ne

The cup of tea rattled atop the saucer, set
upon the pull-out tray in front of Gabriel, as the steam-engine
locomotive worked its way along the Great Railroad. The railroad
stretched all the way from the southern town of Kapo to the city of
Summerton, just inside the Northern Region. Gabriel was somewhere
between the two.

Briefly, he looked up from his book and to
his teacup. Any more rattling and there would be an empty cup atop
a flooded saucer, he noted idly. He hardly paid it any mind,
however, as some of the dark liquid sloshed over the saucer's
shallow brim and onto the tray, so consumed in his own
thoughts.

How many more of us can
you take, before you are the monster?
The
Skin Crawler had asked the question more than a week ago and,
still, he could not force it away.

Frowning in his thoughts, Gabriel took up
the cup and sipped a bit of the bitter tea—what remained of it,
that is. On any other day, he would have called for more sugar.
After all, when playing a lord, one had to act the part. Today,
however, he found himself less than motivated. There were more
important things on which to dwell than pretending to be frivolous
grouser. At least the drink was warm.

Replacing the teacup, Gabriel turned back to
his book. Or rather, he turned to the loose paper he had hidden
between two pages. It was a sketch—not a particularly talented
one—he had done of a woman. One with no face.

He had the outline of the
face, yes. The correct angles, strong contours that were yet
feminine, and an accurate enough portrayal of the short, wavy hair,
which flared slightly outward once it reached chin-length and
framed the face perfectly. That much was all clear in his memory.
But he could not, for the life of him, sketch the actual features
making up her face. He recalled beauty and strength, but little
more of the woman he sketched, and he felt those few details
beginning to elude him as time pressed onward. He did not even have
a name for the woman. She was...
her
. The reason he hunted the
demons.

“
Who are you?” he whispered to the faceless sketch. Gabriel
remembered loving her; that constant ache in his chest could not be
undone from his memories. And he remembered that she was now gone,
taken from him by a demon. She was
her
, and she had been his. That much,
he held on to with a fervency he hoped could not be taken from him
by the
others
.

Gabriel turned away from his sketch, staring
unseeingly into the tea-filled saucer on the tray. His thoughts
lingered back to the alley in the slums of Pitsville. Back to what
the demon had spoken.

Even as he sat there in his
silence, he could hear the soft chanting of the
others
in his mind. Never
ceasing.

How long will it
take?
he wondered.
This could never truly turn me into a monster, could it?
Consuming demons? I have control. They can do no more than try and
frighten me with nonexistent sounds. Brief visions. Although, in
the beginning, the
others
had not even been able to do that much, had
they?
He brought a hand up to the side of
his head, massaging his temple with two fingers. It did feel
cramped these days, his head.

After a moment, Gabriel
brought his hand back down and shook his head, shoving away his
unsettling thoughts.
The demons are just
trying to get under your skin,
he told
himself.
Remain vigilant, keep your wits
about you, and—by Father Truth, Himself—you will find a way to make
them bleed. You will make right the wrong they—

“
Ahem.”

Thrust from his thoughts, Gabriel snapped
his book closed and turned his attention in the direction of the
cleared throat. His grim mood lightened up almost immediately, as
he took in the two glittering sapphires that were a woman's eyes,
just outside his train cabin. The woman's skin was fair and soft,
and her fiery hair—straight, sleek and cut short, as was becoming
the fashion—fell just below her jawline, curling up at the ends, as
though to cradle her chin. Freckles lightly dusted her cute,
slightly turned-up nose and cheeks.

She stared at him,
expectant. Gabriel found the
sharpness
behind those eyes of her's
quite alluring. Yes, she would be a perfect distraction from
thoughts of the faceless woman and the demons.

A bright smile alighted across his face.
Gabriel had never known himself to be a charming man, until only
about a year ago, when he had realized it was the most essential
asset for one to possess when fooling others into believing he was
someone of actual import. And, oh, how he had grown proficient at
the most important part of charm. The smile.

“
What can I do for you, madam?” he asked, taking her in with
his grin. It was not enough to be a fake lord in his line of work.
Tracking demons required piecing together a lot of rumors overheard
from the higher-ups in society; rumors not even the media knew to
share, but that those with enough status passed along to one
another, as a kind of “ammunition” for their never-ending social
warfare. And charm was the most useful tool he had to use in order
to gain certain accesses he would have not been granted before,
even as a lord.

Of course, there were also
his
hunches
to
follow, when he was at a dead end.

Charm was more than just a necessity when it
came to gathering information. It was, also, a means by which to
pretend—in moments such as this—that he was a normal man, with a
normal life. Even if the charade lasted for a mere moment, that was
one moment of distraction from the doom-and-gloom of what was
quickly becoming his everyday life.

Absently, he patted the
cover of his book with his hand.
And from
her.

“
Oh, I do hate to be bothersome, sir,” the woman began in an
apologetic tone, smiling in kind, “but all the other train cabins
are taken and, well...” She nodded toward the empty booth across
from where he sat.

“
Of course, madam.” He gestured to the booth with his hand.
“Please, sit.”

The woman did so with a curt nod, smoothing
out her pristine white dress as she sat. She was exquisitely
beautiful. The kind of rare gem who could stand out in a crowd of
diamonds.

“
I
do apologize for having inconvenienced your peaceful reading,” she
said, removing her cloche, which had a ribbon matching her dress,
and setting it on the seat beside her. She huffed out a breath,
seeming flustered.

“
No inconvenience at all,” Gabriel said. “I was coming to the
end of my chapter anyway. Not to mention, I was only reading
because there was no one to keep me company.”

The woman gazed out from the train cart's
window, twirling a strand of her hair around her finger.

“
That's good then,” she smiled faintly, glancing his way with
those piercing eyes. “I do hope you mean it. I had reserved s
single-seated cabin just up the aisle a bit for myself, but someone
had already taken it—a lousy train-hopper, no doubt. I told the man
he had taken my seat, but he only just ignored me.”

I cannot see how that is
even possible,
Gabriel thought.

“
I
even told one of the attendants,” the woman continued, still
looking out the window, “and the attendant had the moxie to
ask
me
to move to
another seat. After I had paid
extra
to reserve that one.” She
sighed. “Anyway, I suppose it happens. Still, the train attendants
really need to manage the rules more strictly, I think.”

Gabriel raised an eyebrow at the end of her
little rant, rather amused by the woman. She certainly had a fire
in her.

“
Oh, but look at me,” she said, turning from the window
finally, and toward him. “A complete stranger going on about her
troubles. You must think me an unrestrained woman.”

Gabriel shrugged. “Should I
take it that
unrestrained
is a terrible thing to be, then? I, myself, find
that sort of thing refreshing... May I have your name, at least,
before deciding what to think of you?”

“
I'm Anna. Anna Thornrose.”

“
Ah, pleasure...Missus
Thornrose.
” Gabriel paused, briefly.
Where had he heard that name before? Thornrose. After a moment, he
shrugged inwardly. He had heard many names in his travels. “I'm
William Baryon,” he lied, extending a hand toward Anna.

Baryon was his alias for the Southern
Region. He needed no alias for the Northern Region. Where the South
lived somewhat strict to its traditions of a tiered society, with
the nobility at the top, the Northern Region—with its mayors and
less-than-spectacular politicians—was more negligent. His business
rarely took him to the North, anyway.

Although, in the South, it was much easier
getting into important places when one were the supposed
half-brother of a viscount—Gabriel, with the help of the viscount
himself, even had falsified documents stating he was Viscount
Tulius Baryon's younger half-brother, to make it official. Tulius
had owed him a favor, and probably still a couple more.

The woman, Anna, took his hand in her own
and shook it. Her grip was surprisingly firm.

“
Ah, a lord,” she said, sounding impressed. “It's a pleasure,
Mister Baryon. And, please, call me
Miss
.”

Gabriel drew his hand back, a clever smile
creeping across his face.

“
What is it, Mister Baryon?” Anna asked, brows
furrowed.

“
I
was only just thinking on what you said a moment earlier, about
being an unrestrained woman for expressing your opinion of the
train service and whatnot to a stranger...” he began. Anna nodded
expectantly when he paused. “Well, I have indeed resolved to make a
decision on my thoughts about you. Now that I know your name, of
course, I can make these judgments, see?”

“
Can you now?” she asked through a grin. Abruptly, her face
took on a serious expression—too serious not to be exaggerated.
“All right...” she said, the way one might say it when bracing
herself for a doctor's diagnosis. She took a deep breath, closing
her eyes. After a few seconds, she opened them again and nodded.
“I'm ready.”

Again, Gabriel found himself amused by the
woman. It was not often that he was able to have an actual fun
conversation with one who was so clearly part of the upper
class.

“
You see,” Gabriel began, “I have witnessed many tell fellow
acquaintances of their deepest, most troubling problems. If we,
then, had not been strangers at the time of
your...distress...telling me of your disdain of selfish seat
thieves and train attendants lacking in proper authoritative
standards would be a rather fitting conversation, actually. But,
being that we were complete strangers at the time and you are
a...er—”