Demon's Daughter (Demon Outlaws) (3 page)

Blade produced two sturdy mugs and set them on the bar. “I wouldn’t have you abandon anyone. But how do you determine who is worth saving and who is not? That kind of choice does something to your soul.” Blade took a cloth and wiped the varnished surface. “Sometimes I wonder if you’ve also forgotten what true justice really is.”

Hunter often wondered the same thing himself. He had grown hard over the years, to the point where he did not always recognize the man who looked back at him from the shaving mirror.

Speaking of shaving…

He scratched at the scruff on his jaw.

“People are asking questions about you,” Blade continued, interrupting Hunter’s thoughts.

“That’s nothing new.” He was the Demon Slayer. That inspired questions. There was always someone trying to take his place.

Some days, he’d gladly let them.

“These questions are new. They have to do with your family.”

Hunter went still. He tried to think if he had ever let anything slip, and could not come up with a single instance. He had never visited his sisters, nor spoken of them. Not in all the years since he had fled from the Borderlands. Not even to Blade.

He tried to dismiss his unease. “Forget about it. Everyone comes from somewhere. People wonder if I have anyone I might want to protect. If I have a weakness. They won’t find any.”

When he finished sweeping the saloon floor, he took a seat near his friend at the bar.

Blade passed him a steaming mug of fragrant tea brewed from desert lavender. Hunter blew on it, watching the ripples crease its mud-brown surface, then took a slow sip to savor the taste. Neither he nor Blade touched alcohol. In their businesses, men who drank did not live long.

“I have something for you,” Hunter said.

He reached in his pocket and withdrew a thick chunk of plastic, an artifact that predated the demons to a time when the world was filled with large cities and millions of people. While the wind had buried most of the ruins, it often turned up little things such as this, and these items were worth money to the right traders. Whenever Hunter found any in the desert, he brought them to Blade, who in turn sold the artifacts and split the profits among Hunter, himself, and the women.

Blade took the artifact from him, rolled it around in his long fingers, then dropped it into a box hidden behind the counter. He continued to stand, taking a sip from his own mug of tea, his dark eyes brooding as he returned to the original topic of conversation. “I’ll try and get to the bottom of whoever’s asking questions about you.”

Hunter felt himself relax. If there were anything for him to worry about, Blade would find out.

“Anything new since the last time I was in town?” he asked, wanting to change the subject.

“A few murders. Some changes in wealth. More migrants from the border regions, seeking their fortunes on this side of the mountains. Overall, no.”

Weariness crept over Hunter. Not much ever changed in Freetown in that respect. The rich got richer, and the poor served the rich. Migrants came to Freetown seeking quick fortunes and often found servitude instead, assuming they survived the trek across the desert. One would have thought the priestesses, who’d once served the goddesses, would have a greater sense of philanthropy, or even basic kindness. Yet any gold they parted with came at a rate of exchange even desperate people should shudder to pay.

The coins weighed heavily in his pocket and on his conscience. That Mamna could so easily turn any woman over to the demons bothered him. How awful would this thief have to be in order for Hunter to look the other way?

She would have to be spawn. In which case, let the demons take care of a problem they had created.

He finished his tea. “I should go.”

Blade cocked his head, listening to the howling wind. Driven sand rang like raindrops against the exterior walls and shutters.

“It’s going to be a rough night,” he said. “You’re welcome to stay.” He frowned, and Hunter knew he was still thinking of those questions about his past, and who might be behind them. “In fact, I recommend you do. The women won’t mind. You might even be able to talk them into letting you use their bath.”

“They would waste water on me?” Hunter’s amazement was only partly feigned. Even in Freetown, built on an oasis, water usage was tightly controlled. By Mamna.

Blade’s eyebrow shot up. “It has a lot to do with your smell. They prefer their men clean.”

Hunter spent most of his days in the desert alone so he was used to his own smell, but a bath would be welcome. It was hard to turn one down. But he was more uneasy about those questions regarding his past than he cared to admit, and while Blade could look out for himself, Hunter didn’t like the idea of bringing any danger to the women. He was already too fond of them.

That last thought alone was enough to make him refuse to stay. “Thanks, but I’d better go.”

Blade unbarred the door and Hunter slipped like a shadow into the dark and deserted street beyond.

Mamna and her priestesses founded Freetown not far from the ruins of a buried city rumored to have contained close to two million inhabitants in the time before demons. The ruins stretched across several miles of desert, and although they undoubtedly contained many treasures, no one entered them to find out—the shifting sands had left them unstable and riddled with deadly sinkholes.

But that was when demons numbered in the tens of thousands. Whoever the inhabitants of that lost city were, they had done their part against the invaders before falling.

Sand stung Hunter’s cheeks, and he pulled a heavy cotton kerchief over his mouth and nose. He settled his hat back on his head, tugging the wide brim low to shield his eyes.

Even in the dark of a storm, the streets of Freetown weren’t difficult for Hunter to navigate. He knew them well. A market served as the town center. Radiating from there, like the spokes of a wagon’s wheel, spread the other main areas—the wealthy, the not-so-wealthy, the poor, and the various trade shops that serviced them all. Blade’s saloon sat at the outer tip of one spoke, near the high wall surrounding the city. The wall was not meant to keep demons out. That was impossible. Rather, it allowed Mamna to be selective in the people who came and went.

Most people. Not Hunter. He had set up a shelter of sorts in a natural, rock-faced corral not too far out in the desert. He came and went as he pleased.

He headed for a hidden tunnel that burrowed beneath the outer city wall, more distracted than was probably wise, but the storm should have kept even the bravest of lowlifes indoors. He felt safe in letting his thoughts wander.

His mind kept going back to those questions Blade had spoken of. Hunter had not thought of his sisters in a long time. It was pointless to do so. When he’d left he had gotten as far away from them as he could, covering his tracks, and he’d never looked back. Only they knew why he had killed that first demon. No one else cared as long as he continued to kill them. Few men were brave enough to try. Fewer still survived a first attempt.

He caught a slight movement from the corner of his eye, an unnatural shift of shadow off to his left. Someone was following him.

He stopped, not bothering to pretend he wasn’t aware. He unholstered his six-shooter, wondering if his stalker was alone, then pressed himself against the false front of a nearby shanty in an attempt to keep the wind-whipped sand from blinding him completely. He disliked using a gun, but tonight, the storm would drown out any sounds of a gunfight.

The attack, although expected, nevertheless took him by surprise, more because of its professionalism and choice of weapon than its ferocity. He sucked in his stomach as the knife in his assailant’s hand slashed a six-inch gap in his shirt. He brought his gun up and fired, and was rewarded with the hiss of an indrawn breath. He drew his short sword from the sheath on his back with his left hand. He did not want to kill his assailant just yet. Dead men didn’t talk.

Lightning-quick, the man came at Hunter again, but Hunter was better prepared this time. He slid to the side to avoid the thrust of the knife, and from behind his back he shot his sword’s blade through the other man’s extended arm.

Rather than pull away, the assailant fell forward. A heavy knife handle protruded from between his shoulder blades.

Hunter holstered his gun, reached down to jerk the blade free, and wiped it clean on the assailant’s ruined shirt.

“Thank you,” he said. He handed the knife hilt-first to its owner.

“You’re welcome.” The knife disappeared into the sheath Blade always wore strapped to his mangled leg.

“Not that I wasn’t managing just fine on my own,” Hunter added.

“You were doing okay.” Blade rolled the dead man onto his back with the toe of his boot. Enough light remained for them to identify him as Scarface. “But increasing the odds in your favor never hurts.” Blade’s eyes met Hunter’s. “Why would anyone risk angering Mamna by killing someone she’s just hired?”

“That’s what I was hoping to ask him.”

Blade riffled through the man’s pockets and came up empty-handed. “Nothing. The man’s a professional.”

“Maybe he’s poor,” Hunter guessed, without any real hope.

“Even poor people keep things in their pockets.” Blade patted down the man’s arms and legs and came up with an assortment of weapons. He held them out. “See anything here you want?”

Hunter waved him off. “You killed him. It’s all yours.”

The weapons disappeared into Blade’s clothing.

“How did you know he’d follow me?” Hunter asked.

Blade shielded his face from the stinging sand with the crook of an elbow. “His hands were too clean.”

That made sense, and was something Blade would notice right away. An assassin’s hands were his greatest asset, and Blade took pride in his own despite the fact that he no longer worked for hire.

“Why didn’t you warn me?”

“Because I didn’t want to be wrong about what he was. And it was something you should have noticed yourself.” Demon howls carried on the wind now, still far off in the distance, and Blade checked nervously over his shoulder. “Fresh blood is going to draw them here. Sure you don’t want to come back to my place for the night?”

“I’m sure.” Hunter grinned at him. “Scared?”

“Stiff,” Blade admitted without shame. “While I don’t mind getting killed, the being eaten alive part continues to bother me. I’m heading for home. I’d search this guy for markings if I were you, but I doubt you’ll find anything. He’s your problem now.”

Blade left, and Hunter took a few extra minutes to search for any tattoos or markings that might give some indication of where the would-be assassin was from. He found nothing, but that could have been because of the poor light and blowing sand. Or it could have been because Blade was right. The man had no markings on him because he was a professional.

Then, because Hunter didn’t feel like confronting blood-frenzied demons either, he headed for shelter.

Chapter Two

Airie tipped her wide-brimmed hat to partially hide her face, hitched up her scratchy woolen trousers in what she hoped was a manly fashion, and stepped from the concealment of the forest into the world beyond. Her boots, three sizes too large, were the smallest pair she’d been able to acquire. If luck were with her, she would not trip over them and fall on her face.

This was her third visit in as many months to the mean little trading post at the foot of the goddesses’ mountain, because she was hesitant to spend too much money all at once. To do so would attract unwanted attention.

She did not like leaving her mother alone for very long, partly because she had forbidden her to come to this place, and partly because Desire had not been well of late. But what else was Airie supposed to do? The offerings to the goddesses and priestesses had stopped a long time ago, and she and Desire had run out of many of the necessities and small luxuries they could not grow or raise for themselves.

A tingle of excitement coursed up her spine. The trading post was no more than a one-room log cabin, crudely constructed, but to Airie it represented civilization. There were times when she craved the company of other people far more than the almost forgotten sweets she planned to buy today in the hopes they might help improve Desire’s appetite.

Airie stepped onto the sagging porch, her too-large boots thudding heavily. More than one pair of eyes turned in her direction. She dipped her head, resisting the urge to tug at her hat’s brim again, and pushed past the small group of men gathered in the open doorway. She hoped the dirt she had rubbed into her cheeks and chin would disguise the fact that she could not grow whiskers.

The men let her pass without a second glance, moving off to go about their own business.

Airie’s eyes had no difficulty adjusting to the darkness of the long, narrow room. Desire often marveled at her ability to see on even the blackest of nights, but to Airie it was as natural as breathing.

Three men stood near the squat wooden flour bin, deliberately blocking the room’s center aisle. She knew at once that they were trouble and turned to leave, but in this instance her normally good instincts had come too late.

A man with bad skin approached the narrow counter running the width of one end of the room. Smoked meats hung from the crude rafters, swaying in the slight current of air he created as he moved beneath them, almost grazing them with his greasy head. Airie crinkled her nose. She rarely ate meat, liking the taste even less than the smell.

Another man moved to bar the door, and Airie barely resisted covering her nose. The meats were not the only source of offensive odors in the room.

The man with bad skin held a gun in his hand.

“If you want to stay open for business,” he said to the boy behind the counter, “then you have to pay taxes.”

The boy was young and badly scared. Airie could smell the fear on him, and that scent was not pleasant either. It stirred her anger. That, in turn, frightened Airie. Her temper could be too much for her to control at times. She clenched her hands into tight fists and tamped the anger down.

“Pay taxes?” the boy echoed, bewilderment touching his pale eyes, and Airie realized he was not quite right—that he was one of the world’s special children, who needed to be cared for and protected.

All three men laughed and Airie wondered where the boy’s father was. What would possess him to leave this simple child alone, in charge of a store in a land where theft was a way of life?

“Taxes. The money you have to pay if you want to be in business. You’ll be paying it every month from now on,” the bad-skinned man said. His words, high-pitched and slow, mocked the boy’s diminished mental capacities.

Airie’s temper cranked up a notch. It was clear there would be no assistance from the people outside. If they knew what was happening, they chose to ignore it.

Airie should, too. So far the men had paid her little attention. Although tall for a woman, she was slight, and no doubt they thought her the boy she pretended to be. She settled her hat more firmly on her head, hoping it would stay in place, wishing her mother would let her cut off the long, dark curls.

The thought of her invalid mother made her reevaluate the situation. She should stay out of this. If anyone saw she was a woman it would make future excursions to the trading outpost difficult, if not impossible, and then where would she and her mother be?

She reached for the handle of a broom resting against a shelf of dry goods, easing around so that her back was to it and no one could see her actions. If they threatened to harm the boy, then she would interfere. His life was what mattered. The rest was only money.

The boy opened a drawer and lifted out a tray of gold and silver coins. The man tucked his gun into his waistband and emptied the tray into a canvas sack, grunting his disapproval at its lack of weight. “This is it?”

The boy nodded and the men, seeming to accept that this was all they could expect, tossed a few more items from the counter into the sack and then were gone.

Both relieved and disappointed, Airie let go of the broom. Other patrons drifted inside now that the thieves had left, and she quickly gathered what she had come for. She took the merchandise to the counter.

The boy’s fingers trembled as he collected the coins Airie passed him.

“Where is your father?” she asked, dropping her voice to little more than a whisper so it could not be easily identified as that of a woman.

The boy’s eyes darted to the sides. “He heard they were coming and said that if he were here, they would most likely kill him. He told me to give them whatever they wanted.”

Her lips thinned. So the man had left a child, a
special
child, to be murdered in his place.

“I could never have been as brave as you were,” she said.

“You deal with what life hands you,” the boy replied, shrugging off her praise, although she could tell by his smile that it pleased him.

Someone else wandered to the counter then, so Airie shoved her purchases into her backpack and returned to the sunshine outside.

Even though she knew she should, she did not head for home. Instead, she walked the perimeter of the outpost, looking for the three thieves.

They were shouldering their packs, preparing to leave. Airie followed, disliking that they were escaping unchallenged, although the small inner voice that sometimes spoke to her asked why this was so different from what she’d done so many times, herself.

The difference, she answered the voice, was that she took only from those who invaded her home. The goddesses’ mountain was forbidden to all but their appellants. Anyone venturing near the sacred temple should know enough to leave an offering, no matter how small.

And the mountain, Airie soon realized, was the place the thieves were headed. Thoroughly outraged now, she continued to follow.

They had built a crude camp for themselves a few miles up a faintly marked trail. She wrinkled her nose in disgust at the mess they had made. Broken tools, scraps of past meals, and other offal desecrated the goddesses’ ground.

The man with the bad skin set his pack against a ramshackle shelter woven from evergreen branches. The one with the gun had removed it from his clothing and set it near the sack of stolen goods while he counted the coins.

“That ought to keep the old hag happy for a few weeks,” he said with satisfaction. He swatted at a blowfly taking up residence on his pocked cheek.

The other two men appeared to be unarmed. Airie chose a stout branch for a weapon, and with a practiced hand, weighed it for sturdiness. Now that the goddesses were gone, people forgot too easily, or no longer cared, that the mountain remained a sacred place. Her mother was too old and ill to confront men such as these, and it fell to Airie to take on her priestess responsibilities when it became necessary.

Her mother couldn’t fault her for what she was about to do. She would drive the men from the mountain, nothing more.

She tugged at her hat, remembering at the last moment to keep her face partially hidden. She stepped out of the bushes.

“This is the goddesses’ mountain,” she said, her makeshift staff lying confidently across her palms in front of her. “You’re trespassing. Are you prepared to pay the price?”

Incredulity crossed the leader’s face. Airie paid him special attention. He was not as tall as her, but he was much heavier, and the extra weight on him could not be attributed entirely to fat.

The other two men split up and slowly circled behind her, flanking her on both sides, but she kept her eyes focused on the one in front of her. Her fingers curled around her staff, excitement pumping up her heart rate. She was not afraid, or even alarmed. Her reflexes were excellent. So was her strength.

“The goddesses are gone,” the first man said. “It’s time the mountain gives back to the people all that the goddesses once kept from them.”

She did not bother to contradict him. Airie knew the goddesses’ physical presences were gone, but all her life she had felt them in spirit. They remained close at hand, constantly watching and waiting, biding their time—but for what, she did not know for certain.

One man came in low, from the side, attempting to catch her off guard. With a whiplike flick of her wrist, she brought the staff over her head and down, rapping the man hard at the temple. His eyes rolled back, and he dropped like a stone. In a continuous motion, she brought the staff back and caught the other man in the ribs. He fell, clutching at his stomach, and retched into the dirt. Airie’s chin shot up and her hat slid off, releasing a thick, dark braid of waist-length hair.

“A priestess, then,” the leader said, sounding amused. He looked closer. “Too young to be a priestess. And far too pretty. Priestess spawn, perhaps?” He laughed, and it was an ugly sound. “What other services did the priestesses provide when they lived in the temple?”

Airie gasped at the crudity and irreverence of the remark. Desire was too good and kind to be the brunt of this heathen’s humor.

The man advanced. “What services do
you
provide mortal man?”

Kill them
, a dark, instinctive inner voice said.

Airie’s temper reacted to the command, so quickly she could not catch it back to her. She felt the heat as an all-too-familiar, and frightening, red haze slid over her vision. Sparks from her eyes sprayed the man’s face and greasy hair.

He drew back, terror twisting his features. “Demon spawn!” he spat out, tripping over his own feet in his haste to back away.

His companions, roused from senselessness by the sound of his shout, scrambled upright and stumbled after him. Long after they were gone from sight, Airie could hear them crashing through the brush in a headlong flight down the mountain.

Her normal vision returned, along with a rising dismay. She’d succeeded in ridding the mountain of parasites, but a little too well. Desire would not be pleased when she found out.

If
she found out. Airie would have to lie to her, something she did not like to do, but sometimes it was necessary. Airie did not want her upset.

She picked up her hat, dusted it off, and set it back on her head. Then she cleaned up all traces of the thieves’ desecration, tearing down their shelter and putting their trash in a pile before burning it all. She uncovered nothing of any value other than what they had taken from the trading post.

Airie doused the fire with dirt and slipped the canvas sack filled with money into her backpack before beginning the trek to return it.

While the boy was busy with another customer at the back of the store, she set the bag of money behind the counter.

By the time she began the long climb to the temple and her waiting mother, the sun had slid below the horizon, plunging the mountain forest into deep shadow.

Darkness did not bother Airie. She could see quite well in it and was unafraid of the mountain’s nightlife. In fact, there was very little in her life for her to fear.

Demon spawn
, the thief had called her.

While there was not much in her life to fear, the one thing that caused Airie more than a little concern was that the thief might be right, that she was spawn of some sort, and that sooner or later, the goddesses would shun her.

Because, as much as she wished to believe otherwise, it could not have been one of them who had counseled her to kill.

…

Desire waited patiently at the open door of the stone temple for Airie to return.

The doe flowers were in bloom. Their rich scent hung heavy on the damp, moonlit air, pink heads bobbing as the mountain breathed around them.

Her bones ached, and she longed for Airie to help ease her pain, but it was becoming more and more obvious to her that not even Airie’s healing touch would work much longer. Her time was coming.

When Desire was gone, what would become of Airie?

The goddesses watched over her, Desire knew, deeply troubled by that fact. Their mortal forms might be gone from the world, and their gifts now limited within it, but their spirits could yet be felt—if one knew how to call to them. Desire shivered. She had once served them faithfully, and continued to pray to them, but she would deny them in a heartbeat if it meant keeping her daughter safe from harm.