Black Widow Demon (24 page)

But this unrelenting desire for Raven made him despise himself for a weakness he had thought overcome long ago. That she had found two allies among the Godseeker assassins enraged him further.

Cage suddenly stopped and looked down. He pointed at the faint imprint of a man’s boots, partially erased by windswept snow.

“There,” he said. Disbelief drenched his tone. “The tracks begin out of nowhere.”

They had been following the assassin for more than an hour by now. Justice grunted, but he said nothing to correct him.

As the day wore on, however, and the tracks slowly vanished thanks to the blustering wind, Cage’s tracking abilities became invaluable. He found signs that Justice would never have seen, in part because he anticipated where to look for them.

“The assassin knows how to cover his tracks,” Cage muttered at one point as he swept his hands through a drift, searching for deeper prints that would reveal the direction they needed to pursue.

Near nightfall, they came upon the remains of a camp at the base of a bluff. The ground was well trampled, indicating a prolonged stay, but when they searched, two fresh sets of tracks could be seen heading away. One set was very small and obviously belonged to a woman. Impatience roared in Justice that they were now so close, but as the sun disappeared over the horizon, pursuit was done for the day.

“We’ll have to spend the night here,” he said, “then continue on at first light.” He had not forgotten the burned-out village or that the mountains held dangers other than Blade. It was unwise to go on in the dark. “Can you determine which way they’ve headed?”

Cage scouted the area. He was gone long enough that Justice began to wonder if perhaps the assassin had not abandoned the camp after all but lay in wait for him somewhere close by.

He should have thought of the possibility before.

He shrugged his shoulders deeper into his coat, the flesh between his shoulders crawling, and took a quick glance around. A chunk of frozen snow broke free of the bluff above to glide down the bumpy rock face, startling him, and he dropped one hand to his holster before it hit the ground. A footstep sounded behind him, and he pivoted toward it, pistol in hand.

It was Cage. He held his empty hands up and palms outward.

Justice tucked the weapon back into its holster, feeling foolish and annoyed at being caught acting so edgy, and he opened his mouth to chastise the other man.

Cage moved his finger to his lips, requesting silence.

“We’re being followed,” he said to Justice, his voice quiet.

Justice flexed his hands. He should have been more alert, but his thoughts had been clouded all day. He blamed Creed for this uncharacteristic inattention to danger. It would please the young assassin if Justice failed to find Raven—or return to the temple. Suspicion raised icy hackles.

What if the two assassins had joined forces against him?

“How many?” he asked Cage, keeping his voice equally soft.

Cage’s thin, ferret-like face creased into a frown. “I don’t know for certain.”

That was not encouraging news. They had a drop-off on one side and were trapped by the sheer mountain bluff on the other. Their only escape route lay back the way they had come. If they chose to leave, they might be walking into an ambush. Here, they at least had a strong defensive position.

“We wait,” Justice decided. “Whoever is out there, let them come to us.”

They did not wait long. From around the bluff a lone woman strode toward them, blue flame pirouetting on her palms.

The flame arced, and a ring of blue fire erupted, trapping the two men inside.

…

Raven heard Blade’s warning shout. When she saw him running, she didn’t hesitate. She snatched up her bow and broke from the water’s edge to sprint in a half crouch toward him.

A ripple disturbed the air as a bullet tore over her head, followed by the percussive
crack
of Blade’s rifle. Then something slammed into her back and knocked her face down to the ground.

A sharp rock jabbed into her breastbone, and although her heavy layer of clothing provided some cushioning, the pressure shot pain through her chest. Another shot rang out. Dirt sprayed her face as the bullet dragged a furrow through the ground next to her head. She did not doubt Blade was an excellent shot and wasted no time worrying that he might strike her by accident. She was far more afraid of being pinned to the ground by an unknown opponent.

She threw her hands up and grabbed her assailant by the back of the neck, hauling his head down beside hers. He tried to punch her in the kidneys, which had little effect since he could not put any strength behind the blows from his current head-locked position. Her clothing offered added protection. Raven struggled to get to her knees, hoping to roll her assailant over her shoulder and away from her to give Blade a better, unimpeded shot at him.

The ground was slick with dead, sodden leaves, making it hard to keep her balance as she tried to shift position. An arm snaked around her waist, flipping her with unexpected strength, so that she became, in effect, a shield. Another arm went about her neck, pressing into her throat.

At once, Raven changed tactics. She went limp, dragging her opponent back to the ground so that Raven was facedown against it, and tried to draw on her demon allure. The shadows moved closer, drawn to the allure she emitted, but they did not solidify completely as a true demon would. Her heart raced.

Where was Blade?

Another rifle report answered her question, and explained why the shadows had not completely taken their mortal forms. As long as they did not, Blade’s bullets would pass through them and they could not be harmed.

The forearm tightened against her throat. “Stand back!” a voice near her ear said sharply to the shadows.

Surprise shuddered through Raven. Her assailant was a woman, not a man.

The woman was also afraid, her hold trembling slightly—but of what, Raven remained uncertain. The thoughts bombarding her were chaotic, scattered and ill formed, as if their owner had been under a great deal of intense and prolonged stress. One thing Raven understood quite well, however. The woman intended to kill her. All that saved her life right now was Blade’s rifle fire.

She tried to calm her own thoughts and come up with a plan. She could not see Blade because her face remained pressed against the half-frozen ground, but the shots told her he was very close. If the shadow people went for him, he would have no defense against them. That meant she had to keep them near her…and distracted. Allure might not work on the woman holding her, but it would keep the males away from Blade.

“Release your hold on them or I’ll break your neck,” the woman snapped in her ear.

Raven flung her arms above and behind her, taking her own two-handed grip on her attacker’s nape. The assailant had strength in her favor, nothing more. She did not know how to fight, and her hold on Raven’s throat was insufficient for the leverage required to carry out such an action.

The other woman’s fear remained palpable, however. Her thoughts twisted and turned as she, too, tried to come up with some sort of resolution that assured her survival and that of her companions.

The assailant should be afraid. She had attacked Raven without provocation, and Blade would not hesitate to shoot her simply because she was a woman. But something was not right about this situation. Her attacker’s fear had deep roots and was not the result of Blade firing several warning shots. As Raven absorbed the woman’s emotions, pity stirred. Terrible things had happened to her.

Raven dug deeper, picking through unguarded thoughts and images to recreate the story. The woman had been in the burned-out village. Her demon ability to shift to shadow was how she had escaped the massacre unnoticed, but she had not been able to protect her children. She had met up with her shadow companions after the bloodshed.

All they sought now was safety. Raven could easily empathize with that.

She relinquished her hold on the woman, then spread her arms and legs wide on the ground so that she was stretched out on her stomach in a prone, submissive position.

“I had no part in what happened,” Raven said. “We came across your village several days after the fire. Please. Let me up so we can talk.”

The woman hesitated. She wanted to believe. To trust. She began to rise when Raven remembered that Blade did not know what was happening. She grabbed the woman and rolled with her, dragging her to the side and out of danger as a bullet whined past where the woman’s head would have been.

With Raven now intent on securing the woman’s safety, she could no longer hold the shadows. Two of them broke away to move at a run toward Blade.

“Blade, don’t shoot!” Raven shouted out to him. She turned to the woman. “Don’t let them hurt him. He believes I’m in danger. Stop them!”

Conflict contorted the woman’s face, her fear warring with what Raven knew to be decency. Raven tried to breathe, terrified for Blade, but she forced herself to remain where she was to save the woman’s life. If Blade killed her, she did not know what the woman’s companions might do to him.

The woman stared hard at Raven, who examined her in return. She had wavy, golden-brown hair and shining eyes the color of bluegrass. Raven dug through the woman’s thoughts.

Her name was Laurel, and as she called the others back to her she shifted to shadow, melting away with the last light of the day.

…

Someone had been following Creed for the better part of the day.

The wind had warmed, and the snow melted beneath the added onslaught of the sun. The man dogging him kept well back, but it was not difficult to know he was there. Whenever Creed paused for a break a casual glance around would reveal a dark spot behind him where only the white of snow should be or birds taking flight and circling en masse in the sky as if they had been inconvenienced.

Once his route was established and his destination obvious, Creed had planned to double back and follow Blade to Raven. He was not yet convinced that she was safe with the other man. Creed did not trust anyone he could not read, and all he had sensed from the implacable assassin was cold determination. But now Creed was being followed with such diligence he could not continue with his plan. That left him irritable and impatient.

After sundown, when it became too dark to keep watch behind him, he stopped at a large hollow in one of the cliff faces, dropped his packs, and prepared to set up camp for the night. He cleared a space of snow, hauled out a few items, then slipped into a small copse of trees as if he were searching for firewood. From there, he trudged back through the brush and pockets of snow, untouched by the wind or the sun throughout the day, to where he had last seen signs of his uninvited travel companion.

By the time he found him, it was fully dark.

Might was the one who followed him, which puzzled Creed at first, because Cage was the better tracker. Then Creed realized that Justice had another, more important, trail he needed Cage to pursue, and it led to Raven.

Creed had not foreseen this, and called himself stupid. The best course of action would be for him to kill Might as quickly and silently as possible. He reached for one of his knives. Like most assassins, he did not use a gun or rifle unless he had to—sound traveled too easily.

He hesitated, then slid the knife back in its sheath. It might be better to lead Might as far off course as possible, lose him in one of the many mountain passes, and trust that Raven was in good hands.

…

Justice noticed two things about the woman in quick succession, aside from the demon fire she manipulated in her hands. First, she had startling, blue-black hair that flowed like spilled oil to her waist. Second, she was not dressed for the cold. Her low-cut white blouse and calico skirt were better meant for inside a saloon than on a snowy mountain.

As she advanced toward the ring of blue fire, cruelty sharpened a face that might otherwise have been beautiful. The flames surrounding the two men stretched and thinned at her approach, reaching for the cliff tops, then fattened and squatted, as if compelled by an unseen force to kneel before her.

A boiling mass of red-hot anger surged inside Justice at being imprisoned by a woman. The anger was tempered by a small degree of caution as he recalled in vivid detail the remnants of the small mountain village, destroyed by fire.

Cage remained watchful beside him. Justice knew by the wary speculation in his companion’s eyes that he, too, understood the meaning of the blue flames and remembered the settlement. The fact they were still alive told Justice there was hope for them yet.

His brain spun furiously. Whether she was goddess, spawn, or mere mortal, he would not be bested by any woman. Everyone had a price. He wondered what he had that might buy their lives and their freedom, but whatever he gave her, it would be on his terms. Information, perhaps. But about what?

“You dare attack the goddesses’ faithful in the Godseeker Mountains?” he asked the woman, careful to sound curious rather than confrontational. He made an oblique reference to the ill-fated village and its burned-down temple and wondered if she would address it.

Her mouth twisted in an unpleasant smile. “You’d be surprised who has been living peacefully amongst the faithful for years, only to be attacked by them first, and without provocation, when they revealed themselves.”

Justice pondered her words. He knew demons hated spawn even more than mortal men, and spawn who valued their lives would have hidden their existence from mortal and immortal alike. But with the departure of the immortals they grew bolder.

And this one was seeking revenge. Justice could almost smell it on her.

Sweat dripped down his back as the ring of fire tightened around them. If it was revenge against the faithful she sought, then his being a Godseeker would not save their lives.