Black Widow Demon (7 page)

Creed needed to think.

“Who are you? And how did you get here?” he asked the boy.

“My name is Roam. I traveled here through the boundary.”

This was another revelation that caught Creed off guard. Hidden within the Godseeker Mountains, and protected by the temple, lay a boundary that the goddesses had put in place a long time ago in an attempt to confine demons to the desert regions of the mortal world. That boundary had remained impenetrable, even after the goddesses were forced from the world by the Demon Lord. What the boy said was impossible.

And yet, here he was.

“No demon could cross that boundary,” Creed said. “Not even a half demon. The goddesses saw to that.”

“The boundary is immortal,” the boy insisted. “If the goddesses can use it, why would it be impossible for demons, who are also immortal, to use it too?”

Creed ran a hand up the nape of his shaven head. Heat thrummed through the phoenix tattooed on his back and along his shoulders. He did not know what the tattoo represented, if anything—only that it had appeared with the departure of the demons and was not something noticed by others. He was changing. So were others like him.

So was the world.

“Why do you care what happens to her?” Creed asked. “Why involve yourself in someone else’s problems?”

“There’s safety in numbers, and half demons are already banding together.”

Creed did not like the sound of that. “What do you mean?”

“Our talents are no longer as easy to hide. We’re no longer welcome. We make people nervous.” The boy shrugged. “We’ve got nowhere to go. Together, we can at least protect ourselves.”

He studied the boy. A plan began to formulate.

“If you help me, I will help you,” Creed said. “I need you to deliver a message for me.”

Without food and adequate clothing, Raven could not get far.

Justice slid from the back of his hross and tossed the reins to one of the young stable hands. His leg throbbed fiercely where she had stabbed him, although he would never admit it out loud. Weakness was not to be tolerated.

Raven had made him look weak enough.

“Hold its head steady,” he instructed the boy, then bent to lift the hross’s front leg. He brushed aside long black feathers to explore the fetlock with his fingers. As he’d suspected, the joint was hot and inflamed.

He straightened, dusting his hands on his leather chaps as he did so. The long-legged, barrel-chested hross, suited for both drayage and riding, was a favorite. It would have carried him until it dropped of exhaustion rather than pull up lame.

“Wrap its leg and see that it rests,” he said. The boy nodded, then led the enormous animal off to the stable.

The other men in his search party had dismounted to join those who had already returned. All were awaiting his orders.

Justice considered his options. They had been up the entire night, which meant there was little point in sending them into the mines today. They were too tired to work. On the other hand, keeping them together would no doubt be wise. He could not risk taking a chance that Raven might convince one of the men to help her if he allowed them to go their separate ways. But neither could he risk rebellion by not letting them rest. Even though he was a Godseeker, his leadership in Goldrush was still precarious. The town was too new, and its inhabitants numbered less than two hundred—the majority of them men, all of whom would be susceptible to Raven’s demon charms.

“Until she’s captured, no man is safe from her,” Justice said to the gathered men. “Go home for now. If you see her, send word to me. Don’t approach her alone. Don’t let her touch you. If she does, she’ll claim your soul.” He relaxed his face into an expression of profound sorrow. “I’m sorry for bringing this trouble to your lives. This is my problem, and I’ll be the one to resolve it.”

Murmurs of sympathy swept through the crowd. It went without saying that women remained the responsibility of their men—even if they were spawn.

The men dispersed. Those who had already seen to their hross headed for home, fatigue and worry etched on their faces. Despite the fact that the immortals were gone from the world, demons had plagued mortal men for too many years for them to be comfortable with the thought of spawn taking root in their midst.

Justice walked the short distance to his own home, ignoring the pain in his thigh and tilting his hat to better shield his wind-burned face from the searing rays of the late-morning sun. Soon enough, the days would grow cold. Regardless, the mines would be fully productive long before winter. The men who had followed him to this new settlement were the best miners he could find, and the mines themselves well constructed and relatively safe. Security, both financial and physical, bred loyalty in people.

His hand tightened into a fist. Loyalty had never been a quality his dead wife or her daughter possessed. Despite everything he had done for them, Columbine had remained a demon’s whore at heart until the day she died.

And Raven…

He intended to break her. She reminded him far too much of the goddess who had once exercised such enormous power over him. Those days were now gone. Immortals were not meant to rule men. And men were not meant to be whores.

He climbed the front steps, spurs jingling as his riding boots struck the blackened, creosote-soaked wood. As soon as he entered the cool, dim interior of his house, he could tell that she had been here. The air reeked of rose oil. He inhaled deeply, closing his eyes in appreciation for a brief second before hanging his hat on a hook by the door.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” he called softly, although he also knew she was gone. Food and clothing were her priorities—she would not have lingered.

The front rooms, shuttered to keep out the worst of the heat, were untouched except for the food she had stolen from the kitchen. As he moved through the stillness to the bedrooms at the back of the house, he wished he could have seen her face when she discovered what he had done to her belongings.

He started past his bedroom, his attention focused on hers, when, out of the corner of his eye, he noticed his own door was partially open. It had not been left that way. He paused, listened, then pushed on it, the door swinging silently on its hinges.

He stared into the room for a long moment, a mixture of emotions rampaging through him. She had hidden something in the ceiling, something that she’d reclaimed. The open box on the floor indicated she’d also dared to steal money from him.

She’d also taken the amulet her mother had once worn, an ugly piece of desert varnish that had been given to Columbine by her demon lover. She had claimed it protected her from other demons. That when she wore it, they could not touch her. He’d proven to her that it was, in fact, worthless, and demons would never rule him either. He would prove the same to her half-demon daughter. If Raven thought the amulet could help her, she was mistaken as well. All he had to do was send word to the assassins and have them track her down.

He closed the box and slid it back under his bed. His jaw tightened when he saw the long scratch in the floor. He replaced the boards in the ceiling, his thoughts busy.

Raven might have money and a small supply of food, but he had destroyed every stitch of her clothing and she had no way to acquire any more. She could not spend money in town without it being reported to him, and there were no other settlements for many miles. That meant she would need help. No woman in Goldrush would dare risk giving it to her, so her only help would come from the men she managed to possess. The townsmen, too, were now cautious. Strangers, although rare, might prove more susceptible to her true nature. Justice would have to mend any possible holes in that particular fence.

The immortals were gone from the world—he did not want them back. But it gave him great pleasure to think of spawn serving man in their stead.

Servitude would start with his arrogant and willful stepdaughter.

…

It was late afternoon by the time Blade arrived back in Goldrush.

As soon as he reached the town limits, he headed straight for the general store. The main street was unusually quiet for the time of day. The men, he assumed, were either resting after the long hunt for Raven throughout the night or were at work, but he had to wonder what kept the women and children indoors. Everyday errands and chores would still need to be done.

The town had no saloon, something that did not surprise him. After the goddesses had been driven from the world by the demons, the Godseekers had taken to immortal worship in the hopes of bringing them back. After a demon cut short his career as an assassin, it had amused Blade to take ownership of a saloon in Freetown, the most lawless town he could find. His dead Godseeker uncle would have rolled in his grave. Some sects were more pious than others, even denying themselves pleasures that the goddesses had once enjoyed because the goddesses could no longer experience them.

That was what was missing here, Blade suddenly realized. He had seen no temple, and yet he would have expected a man like Justice, who had once been the favorite of a goddess if the amulet he wore was genuine, to erect one in his patroness’s honor. Perhaps he’d had no time since the settlement was so obviously new, but Blade did not think that was the reason. Considerable effort had been expended on the Godseeker’s own house that could as easily have been spent elsewhere. Intuition told Blade something was wrong with this town, and he had learned never to disregard his instincts.

As he walked down the street he exaggerated the limp that once had come naturally to him. A big man was more noticeable but less threatening if he had an obvious handicap, and likely to be dismissed. He entered the general store, a narrow frame building with a false front, low-slung veranda, and a backyard enclosed with picket fencing. Someone had taken the time to transplant two young blue spruce trees to either corner of the veranda. Inside, a single small window near the ceiling joists lit the murky room.

A thin, colorless woman with gray skin and hair was the store’s only occupant. She eyed him over her bony shoulder from behind the wooden countertop, suspicion darkening her expression at the sight of a stranger. She had been in the midst of wiping the interminable desert dust off some of the store’s merchandise and she paused when he entered, the cloth in her hand hovering above several boxes of tobacco on a high shelf.

Blade nodded a greeting as he limped past the counter toward a long rack of preserves lining the back wall. Some of the suspicion in her expression lessened as she followed his awkward progress.

“You were at the town gathering last night,” she called out to him after several moments of silent observation.

Blade glanced up from inspecting the preserves. So, the residents were calling it a town gathering, as if that somehow absolved them of any responsibility for its outcome. The euphemism irritated him. His first impression of the town had been accurate, that it was dirty beneath the cleanly exterior, and he could not wait to put it behind him. He wondered how Raven, who did not appear to lack either courage or vitality, had fit into the fiber of this place.

“Yes,” he said.

He made his response neither friendly nor hostile, yet managed to convey in the single-syllabled word his indifference for small talk because she looked as if she had more to say but kept silent. He wondered how many people had seen him the night before and if any of them would notice that he didn’t normally walk with a limp. Most had been too preoccupied with the Godseeker’s performance to pay attention to such details.

Blade grabbed several jars of preserves without reading their labels, three boxes of matches, and moved on to the packaged goods. The woman said no more to him and went back to wiping down the counter and shelves, her movements methodical and weary. Once he had all he needed, Blade carried everything to the cash register.

She took her time ringing him up. Every few minutes she would glance at him, then look away as if afraid. Finally, she gathered her courage. “You come from away. Have you heard the rumors? Do you know if it’s true what people are saying?”

“Saying about what?” he asked. His mind was on Raven and the passing of time as he packed the purchases in a sack after she rang each item through.

Her fingers trembled on a bag of dried beans, and her eyes went to the door. She lowered her voice and spoke faster, as if to get the words out before anyone else might overhear them. “That spawn are here in the mountains, burning down villages and killing people. That they’ve got demon abilities now that the demons are gone. And that we’re less safe now, without the demons, than we ever were before.”

Blade continued to fill the bag. “I don’t pay much attention to rumors,” he said. “And I don’t borrow trouble. You shouldn’t, either. If it’s true, let the Godseekers take care of it.”

Purchases in hand, he left the store far more troubled than he’d been when he entered.

The three-storied rooming house where he had been staying was the tallest building in town and not far from the store. Attached to it, as part of a small, gated complex, were the local bathhouse and laundry. A painted white sign announcing vacancies hung from hooks over the steps and creaked in the dry wind. It would not take him long to reclaim his belongings and settle his bill.

He shuffled along as if time was unimportant to him, when in reality, worry for Raven gnawed it him. He had assumed responsibility for her and had not done so lightly. He’d left her alone long enough already.

He had almost reached the rooming house when a lone man came out the front door and descended its steps.

…

When Raven finally pried open one throbbing eye, it was to the fading light of the day. Her head ached like crazy, and agony ripped through her arms and legs. Thousands of fire ants stripped her flesh from her bones, and she was helpless to stop them. She tried to move, but the heavy weight of a blanket or some similar cover pinned her in place.