Demon's Daughter (Demon Outlaws) (12 page)

This one was both small and dying. It was a boy, and a very young one, although it was possible he was so malnourished he had simply failed to thrive.

Hunter tightened the barrier he had built around his heart. Death was a far better fate for the child than the alternative.

“Leave him,” Hunter ordered, deliberately harsh. “He’s too close to death.”

Airie stooped, scooping the frail child into her arms. The smell of him made Hunter lift his neckerchief over his nose and take a step backward, even though he’d thought he was long immune to the aroma of the unwashed. Desert travel did not lend itself to good personal hygiene practices. The child was undoubtedly ill. He reeked of it.

“I can save him,” she protested, smoothing thin, dull-blond hair that appeared gray in the darkness of the night.

Hunter understood how she felt. Once upon a time, a very long time ago, he too had believed that life was meant to be preserved at all cost. Experience, however, had taught him that sometimes there was little kindness in doing so.

The child’s head lolled against Airie’s breast. His cheeks were hollow, speaking of slow starvation. Hunter rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger because his own head had begun to ache.

“Think about what kind of life you’re saving him for,” he said, trying to sound compassionate even though he knew his words were not. “He’s already been starved to the point of death once. If you save him, it will happen again.” Or, if someone else did find him and take him in, he would end up sold into prostitution because he was too small for labor, Hunter could have added. Better the child meet death here and now, rather than damaged and disease-riddled later. Hunter took another cautious sniff of the air. If he wasn’t diseased already. What if he carried contagion?

“He won’t starve. I’ll take care of him,” Airie said.

She laid her palm against the child’s cheek, and even in the night Hunter saw a warm flush begin to blossom. A sense of inevitability assailed him, but he tried to reason with her anyway. “You have yourself to worry about. How can you look after him, too?”

Her eyes, dark and determined, met his over the child’s stirring form. “By doing whatever I have to,” she replied with quiet resolve.

She had no idea what she was saying, or what it was she might have to do. Hunter tried again to make her see reason. “It’s not up to you to decide who lives or dies.”

“It’s not for you to decide either,” came her quick retort. “But if someone possesses the means to save a life, then there’s really no decision to be made, is there?”

Being raised by a priestess had left her far too naive, and that naïveté now created all sorts of unwanted dilemmas for Hunter. If he allowed Airie to save this poor, unwanted child, what, then, would be his future after he turned Airie over to Mamna? How would the child’s ultimate fate weigh on Hunter’s already overburdened conscience?

His preference to walk away from an unpleasant situation rather than confront it introduced questions about himself, and what he had become, that he was reluctant to examine. Blade was right—deciding who was worth saving had done something to him.

The child coughed once, opened his eyes, and looked up at him with such innocent trust that Hunter knew he would now be saddled with two troublesome traveling companions, not one.

Airie waited in tense, pleading silence. If he said no he would have to force her to continue on without him, and that was another fight he wished to avoid.

Deep down, he did not believe he could walk away either.

It was easiest to blame her for that. “Keep him, then,” Hunter said sourly. “But he’s your responsibility, not mine. And the first chance you get, you’re giving him a bath. He makes me scratch just looking at him.”

The sand swift had been standing patiently nearby. Its tongue remained firmly in its mouth, probably because the child smelled too awful to taste.

“Thank you,” Airie said with a relieved whisper. Those two simple words shamed him, which in turn stoked an already ill temper.

He was not the demon here. He did not enjoy feeling like one.

She positioned herself cross-legged on the ground, the child in her lap, and stroked his cheek while crooning soft words under her breath. Listening to her, Hunter realized she was praying.

She looked up at him. “Can I have a little water and a piece of dried bread?”

Hunter got them for her. She broke the bread into small fragments and dipped one in the tin cup, then held it to the child’s lips. She was patient, repeating the steps several times until the child had swallowed enough to satisfy her. She gave him a sip of water, cradling the back of his head in her hand as she held the cup to his lips.

He was two, perhaps three, years of age, Hunter could now see, and his stomach twisted into a sickening knot. Even if he didn’t turn Airie over to Mamna, the child was a burden she could ill afford and decreased her own chances of survival. He was not doing a kindness by permitting this.

He could not bring himself to do otherwise. The child’s circumstances were no fault of his own.

“We need to go,” he said, taking the cup from her hand and putting it back in a saddlebag.

When he turned, she was beside him. Her lips curved in a tentative smile, the first he had received from her, bright in the clear light of the rising moon. Impulsively, she kissed him. It was a light touch of her lips to his cheek, and over in an instant, but it shot an unanticipated lick of heat straight to his groin and stole any more protests he might have made.

“Thank you,” she said again, her words infused with a breathless warmth that left a knot in his gut.

Before he could recover, her attention was once more on the child still in her arms, and he was forgotten.

He helped Airie remount, in front of him this time. He settled into the saddle and slipped a free arm around her waist to steady her and the child. Her skirt had slid up to bare her long legs, warm between his and impossible for him to ignore.

He jerked at the reins, even more unsettled by an unwelcome and surprising truth.

It was not thanks he wanted from her.

Chapter Seven

Blade limped around the end of the bar, wiping the counter and half listening to the conversations going on around him. The youngest of the whores took her turn waiting on tables. The gown she wore, a bold, shiny blue, was too tight at the hips and chest and exposed one long leg when she moved.

He would have to talk to Ruby about the way the girl dressed when in the saloon. He preferred to avoid trouble.

Noon was a busy time for business, more so these past few days because people were edgy about the fall of the mountain. Everyone wanted to drink. Some chose to eat. In fact, the spicy smell of Ruby’s stew reminded Blade to grab a bowl before it was gone. No one wanted to discuss what the collapse of the mountain meant. Conflict between the immortals was never good.

Blade tossed the cloth beneath the counter and watched Ruby disappear upstairs with a client.

They had been friends a long time. He really should marry her and give her security. He owed her that much.

While most people remained cautious of saying anything too loud that might draw unwanted attention, a few could always be relied on for indiscretion. Blade had discovered a long time ago that being a cripple made him invisible. At one time the limp had embarrassed and humiliated him. Now it worked to his advantage, and he was not above exaggerating it. People assumed he was simple because he was disabled, so they were often indiscreet.

“Mamna isn’t getting any younger,” he heard someone declare. “What if the next time she raises a demon it escapes her control? What will happen to us when she’s gone?”

He limped closer, careful not to appear unduly interested in the conversation.

“The Demon Slayer was seen meeting with Mamna,” a second man said. “I heard he can fight ten demons at once. Maybe he plans to take her place.”

Blade hoped Mamna had not heard that kind of speculation. She would not care for it, and neither would Hunter. But he, too, could not help but wonder what would happen to Freetown if Mamna were gone.

Perhaps it was time he planned for a different future than saloon keeping.

The first man spoke again. “I heard the Slayer is really a demon. That he hates them because he once challenged the Demon Lord and lost.”

“If he’d lost to the Demon Lord, he’d be dead, wouldn’t he?”

That was another rumor Hunter would not care for, Blade thought. Although neither of them was inclined to share any details of their past, of one thing he felt quite certain. Hunter was not a demon.

A different conversation by the fire caught Blade’s attention. Three travelers, one of them heavyset with bad skin and a loud mouth, had pulled their chairs close to the hearth as if they owned the place. Blade made a mental note to keep an even closer eye on his till. They had the look of tax collectors, technically illegal here in the city but sanctioned in the outer territories, and tax collectors were good at putting their fingers in places they did not belong. Particularly when no one would dare protest.

“I hope the mountain fell on her,” said the loudest of the three. He gave an exaggerated shudder. “Monsters like that shouldn’t be allowed to live.”

“What monsters are you talking about?” a stranger at another table, a northerner, judging by his clothing, interrupted him to ask.

Blade had noticed an increased number of men from the north in Freetown of late. He wondered what it meant.

“There’s a demon on the mountain,” the loud one replied. “At least there was. She’s buried under a ton of dirt and stone by now.” He said the last with an air of satisfaction.

“You’ve made a mistake, my friend.” The inquisitor turned back to the men at his own table, no longer interested in what had to be a fabrication. “Demons aren’t female.”

The loud one laughed, and the two men sitting with him looked uncomfortable at the turn the conversation was taking. No one liked to be called a liar, or worse, stupid. He did not think the loud one was either of those. Blade moved closer so as not to miss anything but stayed within a few steps of the shotgun he kept behind the bar.

“This demon was female,” Loudmouth said. “We saw her up close.” The two other men nodded, and a few more people around them shifted their chairs to pay more attention. One of the trio had a long, fading bruise down the side of his face. Another had a split lip and moved carefully, as if his back and shoulders hurt. Blade recognized damage caused by some sort of bludgeon. Demons did not use bludgeons. They had no need for them. So why would these men make up such a lie?

“How could you tell it was female?” someone asked.

“It started off in mortal form. Then its eyes glowed red and it turned into a demon. Big one. Hideous. We were lucky to make it out with our lives.”

Blade noted the two companions did not nod in agreement over the description of the so-called demon. They kept their eyes down. Their loudmouthed leader was lying about at least part of his story.

Blade made a living out of reading people, and he believed they had indeed been attacked by a woman. She would need to be a strong one to inflict the damage he saw. She’d also have to have considerable fighting skills.

But why was Loudmouth making up stories about her being a demon?

“You should tell Mamna,” a wide-eyed believer advised him.

Loudmouth looked smug. “Mamna already sent the Demon Slayer to finish it off. If the mountain didn’t kill it, the Slayer will.”

Blade did not like what he heard, or the conclusions that could be drawn from it. Hunter had gone up on that mountain well before its lid blew off. A Godseeker had tried to ambush him. And Mamna was about as trustworthy as a sunstroked goldthief snake.

The room went silent. Bringing Hunter into the conversation changed several opinions. “It must be a demon then, if the Slayer went after it. He wouldn’t do any other kind of work for the priestesses. I heard he once turned down an offer of twenty gold pieces to go after a wagonload of Mamna’s stained glass stolen by outlaws near the Borderlands. He said he wouldn’t risk his life for anything so useless.”

“Whatever he’s after on the goddesses’ mountain,” someone declared, “it can’t be a demon, male or female. No demon’d dare go near it.”

A few people agreed, but even more looked uncertain.

One older man, with a wrinkled face resembling sunbaked dirt, shot a wad of chewed tobacco into a nearby spittoon. He wiped his mouth on a dust-crusted sleeve. “Something had to blow the top off that mountain.”

One of the whores waiting tables swatted away a groping hand, gathered some empty plates off a table, and with a sway of her hips and swish of her skirts, carried them to the back of the saloon to the kitchen.

Blade watched her go, lost in thought.

Whatever had happened on that mountain, he did not like that Hunter had been sent into the middle of it.

…

The desert was far from the oceans of endless sand Airie had expected to see. There was sand—plenty of it—but also pillars of granite and basalt, and patches of shrubbery.

And in vast stretches, underneath the earth, odd ridges and patterns could be discerned that were too symmetrical to have happened by chance. They never rode too close to them, though, but skirted around.

“They’re remains of settlements from another time,” Hunter said when she asked what they were. “Before the demons came. Those are old rooftops you see.”

“Can we look closer?” she asked. They had passed ruins in the foothills too, but these appeared enormous by comparison.

“No. They aren’t safe. The ruins have caused sinkholes to form under the sand, sometimes thirty or more feet deep. If you fall in one you’ll never come out.”

Airie had to content herself with imagining how they once must have looked.

They had been traveling for more than a week now, and she was both excited and panic-stricken that they were nearing their destination.

She had chosen to walk so she could explore. Hunter rode, carrying the child on the saddle in front of him without complaint, a small blond head bobbing against his arm as the rolling motion of the sand swift lulled the little boy to sleep.

Hunter persisted in calling him Scratch because he claimed he made him itch. She did not bother arguing the point, even though he might equally have called him Shadow since he followed Hunter wherever he went.

He must have had a real name once, but so far, guessing at it had produced no results. She would choose a special one for him when they began their new life. To her, he was a gift from the goddesses as compensation for the loss of her home and her mother, and she loved him already. When she held him he brought a sense of peace to her heart. He should have a powerful name to reflect that.

For now, Scratch was as good a name as any. She would not think about where he might have come from, and what he might be, because she knew beyond doubt that he was not mortal. At least not entirely.

Airie found clusters of dull crystals scattered in places where the wind had worn the ground bare, and held one out for Hunter’s inspection. He was unimpressed with her find.

“It’s called desert rose,” he said.

She stroked the brittle edges of the stone petals with her fingertips. “It’s beautiful.”

He looked away. “It’s a clump of gypsum that has no value.”

“Other than that it’s beautiful.” Airie slipped it into a pocket of her skirt.

By midafternoon, Hunter had not shown any indication he planned to make camp. That meant there was no need for one, and that their journey was almost over.

Soon, they crested a rise.

“Is that Freetown?” she asked, lifting a hand to shade her eyes from the glaring sun.

Hunter grunted a
yes
.

From this distance, where she could look down on the city, she felt a certain degree of disappointment. It looked shabby, dirty, and crowded inside those fortified walls, and ridiculous when compared to the wide open, vast spaces surrounding it. Very little green touched the streets, an absence disconcerting after a lifetime living in the mountains. “What’s that in the center?”

Hunter looked to where she pointed at a tall spire rising well above the surrounding buildings. “A temple.”

Airie’s drooping spirits lifted. “They have a temple to the goddesses?”

“This temple is to the priestesses, not the goddesses.”

She did not understand. “How can priestesses have a temple?”

“Because they call it a market. But no matter what they choose to call it, it’s where people go to worship them.”

He was in a strange mood today, and Airie did not know what to make of it.

“I thought a city this size would have more people traveling to and from it,” she said. The road leading to Freetown did not look well-traveled to her.

“It’s a desert city surrounded by demons,” Hunter reminded her. “Supplies are brought in from the border regions on a regular schedule, and only after careful planning. Smart people travel as part of large wagon trains.”

Yet Hunter traveled alone. She wondered why, and if it were always so with him.

Instead of following the road to Freetown, Hunter turned his mount off the trail and into rougher terrain. He held a hand down to her. “You’d better ride with us the rest of the way. There are lots of little things living under rocks and bushes that don’t like to be disturbed, especially during the day.”

Airie stepped into the stirrup and swung onto the sand swift’s back behind Hunter. She slid her arms around his waist and tickled Scratch, who rode in front, making him wriggle away from her fingers. “Where are we going?”

“My cabin.”

She did not dare ask why. Instead, she rested her cheek against the back of his duster so that she shared the shade of his wide-brimmed hat. His shoulder muscles moved with a fluid rhythm as he guided the sand swift with the reins. She liked the way he smelled of desert and sun-warmed skin, and the feel of his flat stomach beneath her clasped hands.

It was easier to enjoy his company this way, when he was not watching her. She could pretend he did not resent her, or find her presence a trial.

They led the sand swift through a long crevice leading into a small, hidden canyon, where Hunter had blocked off one end to create a natural paddock. At the front of the paddock he had built a cabin beneath a rocky overhang. Fine lines of erosion ran like tears down the canyon wall’s rock surface, feeding into an underground cistern used to collect rainwater and minimize evaporation. Everything was neat and tidy.

And isolated.

“Why don’t you live inside the city?” she asked.

“I prefer my own company.”

Airie had never spent a lot of time around people, so she did not know which she’d prefer. At the same time, she had never been completely alone. Her mother had always been with her.

She wondered what she and Scratch were supposed to do now. Hunter had made no secret of the fact that he did not like having her around.

“Thank you for everything,” she said, feeling clumsy and inadequate, but eager to escape him. “We can walk to the city from here.”

Hunter set Scratch on his feet and the little boy went off to play in the fine sand accumulated at the base of the canyon’s rock wall.