Black Widow Demon (9 page)

When he was well out of sight and certain he had not been followed, he broke into a slow, sustainable jog.

The return journey took him longer than expected with the weight of his purchases. Rather than worry about what he might find when he reached Raven as he trekked, he occupied his thoughts with plans for what to do once he did.

They needed a water supply and somewhere to sleep. A place for them to hide for a few days. In the morning he would circle to the other side of the town where the mountain streams flowed into the valley. There would be plenty of shelter in those parts. The problem then became wolven, but Blade had dealt with worse.

The horizon glowed a deep, rich purple by the time he reached the copse of yucca where he had left her. He found no indication of trespassers or animal scavengers, and his chest relaxed. All was peaceful and quiet.

Too quiet. Blade tried to pinpoint just what was wrong.

The sudden sound of ear-piercing screams had him dropping his packs, and his slow jog turned into a run.

Raven panted through the tremors racking her frame, her throat raw and sore. This time, she knew she had been screaming.

Shadows shifted and the orange maggots disappeared. A black shape loomed over her, and she threw her head back, too exhausted to care that the demons had found her. But a part of her did not want to die, and she dug deep to summon another scream.

Hands untied her bonds and she was wrapped in warm, un-demon-like arms, surrounded by a calming strength of will. Immediately, the desire to scream disappeared.

Solid fingers grasped her chin. “Raven!” their owner commanded. The voice held neither warmth nor compassion, at odds with the emotions she sensed. “Open your eyes and look at me.”

That was something she did not wish to do. Not for any reason. What if this was some game being played by a demon?

The flat of a palm struck her, not hard, but enough to induce a reaction. Her eyes flew open, and she could have wept with relief when she saw a familiar mortal face.

Blade had returned for her.

He cradled her awkwardly in his arms. At once, her demon responded to his presence. She felt it prowling inside her, the strong pull of its desire for him, and she was too tired to contain it. Its attraction to Blade was the least of her worries.

“Where’s the boy?” she asked. She looked around, but the shadows were upon her again and she could not see very far.

“What boy?”

“I don’t know him.” Her anxiety grew. She twisted the front of Blade’s shirt, trying to draw herself upright. “We have to run.”

He smoothed a hand over her hair as he held her down. “It’s the snake venom,” he said to her. “Whatever you see isn’t real.”

“I see you,” she said.

His steady gaze never wavered from her face. He gently squeezed his fingers around the fist she had clenched in his shirtfront, pressing her hand to his beating heart. “I’m real enough. See? The rest is just the poison.”

She wanted to believe him. But then a current of cool, nocturnal air chased across her hot skin before rattling through the dry yucca above them. “So are the demons.” Her breath hitched. “And they’re coming.”

She had to get past this fear so they couldn’t find her. She relaxed her fist and spiked her fingers through his, absorbing his strength. Even as she clung to his hand, the brilliant night shadows reclaimed her and the mortal world slipped away.

The lava-filled lake from earlier was gone. This time jagged, barren cliffs and scattered craters surrounded her. Lightning streaked across the lavender sky, igniting the blue-green, rocky terrain of the boundary. A bolt of white flame struck a boulder, blasting it to pieces, and she flinched as chunks of debris flew past her face. The harsh smell of rotten eggs stung her nose and scratched her raw throat, making her gag.

Wiping her eyes with the back of her hand, she discovered she had not come here alone.

Blade stood beside her, exuding the air of a caged animal—watchful, alert, and ready to strike at the first sign of danger. She lowered her hand to see a thin line of red appear through a tear in his shirtsleeve. One of the sharp rock projectiles had cut him.

Her breath caught. Blood in the vicinity of demons was not good.

He flexed the fingers she had been holding as if they pained him. She had not realized how tightly she’d clung to him. Enough to create problems, it seemed. She had not known that she could bring someone with her.

“What is this place?” he asked, sounding both tense and grim.

“This,” she replied, apprehension a tightening knot around her aching throat, “is the boundary.” She tore a small strip off her ruined dress and dabbed at the blood on his arm. The cut was not deep and had already stopped bleeding, and relief softened her creased brow. She balled up the bloodied wad of fabric and threw it as far away as she could. “If you had any doubts before as to what I am, then this place should convince you.”

“I didn’t need any convincing of that.” His jaw worked. “But this can’t be the boundary.”

“It doesn’t belong to the goddesses,” she said. “This is the boundary that demons pass through. It’s as close as they can get to the mortal world, now that they’ve been banished.”

He looked around, his expression closed and forbidding. “Is it a nightmare? Or is it real?”

“It’s real. Very much so.” And she was no longer in control of what she might find in it, she remembered with a shudder.

She pushed emotion aside, mindful of where she was, and scanned the eerie, luminescent terrain. Demons would be coming for her.

For them both.

She shoved a hand through her tangled curls. Her father had not yet made an appearance, which could be either good or bad. Her fingers went to her throat. Even though he had said the amulet was of no use to her, it offered her comfort.

She did not know how the goldthief-induced hallucinations would affect her ability to survive, or if she could protect Blade. She did not know what thoughts the hallucinations had captured from her, or how they might manifest, only that when they did, it would be impossible for her to distinguish them from reality.

She did know that she could not show fear here.

To make matters worse, her demon was restless, hungering for Blade, leaving Raven both frustrated and uneasy. Ripples of desire she could not stanch turned her into a beacon for demons.

Blade’s hands lingered at his lean hips, his wide shoulders relaxed and elbows slightly bent as if he waited for something to happen. He managed to appear both calm and menacing.

She caught a movement from the corner of her eye. A multi-armed, low-bodied shape skittered around a large rock, then skirted the edge of a glowing crater before slipping into a crevice several feet from where they stood.

Blade’s hand moved in a blur. One minute it hovered above his hip. The next, a knife sang through the air and shot into the crevice. A high-pitched squeal rose from the narrow gap before dying abruptly away.

As Blade started toward the crevice, Raven reached out to stop him. When her fingers closed on his wrist, her demon reacted, urging her to touch him more intimately, to slide her hands inside his shirt, to feel the heat of his flesh against hers.

He brushed her hand off, although gently, as if he knew her thoughts and wished to save her the embarrassment, and she felt her face heat. She tucked her hands under her arms and fought back against her darker instincts.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“I’m retrieving my knife. And making certain that thing, whatever it is, is dead.”

He sounded so calm. Raven had sensed strength in Blade already, had even sought to use it as protection against the hallucinations, but she had not fully comprehended until now how dangerous he could be if provoked.

The combination of danger, restraint, and compassion in him intrigued her. She could see why her demon wanted him, but despite his strengths, he was a mortal man who would not last long if demons discovered them. The thought left her trembling, and she cast her eyes over the bluffs above them.

“We need to find a place to hide until this nightmare passes,” Raven said.

Blade reached a hand into the crevice and withdrew his knife. He wiped it clean on the blue-green, gritty soil. He looked up at her, the expression on his high-cheek-boned, angular face unreadable. “Now I know why you’re afraid of the dark.”

With effort, Raven stilled her shaky, rebellious limbs. “Listen carefully to me.” She whispered the words quickly. “Whatever happens, you can’t show fear. Don’t even talk about it. Not in this place.”

He slipped the knife into a hidden seam in the leg of his snug trousers and stood. A long rumble of thunder punctuated the movement.

Urgency sharpened her manner. “We need to hide.”

“Why?” he demanded. Another flash of lightning captured him in a haze of bluish-green light. “Are you afraid?”

Of course she was, but she would not admit it. She buried her fear as deep as she could and willed for him to do the same. She did not want to die. And she did not want him to die because of her.

“No.” The lie slid easily from her lips. “And neither are you,” she added, hoping he would pick up on her meaning. “But the hallucinations are creating a complication in both worlds for me now. Until they pass, hiding is the wisest option.”

Blade’s jaw muscles worked. “I won’t hide from demons. Not for any reason.”

Her heart sank. He might not show it on his face or in his manner, but he reeked of fear—and if she could smell it, he would never be able to hide it from them. If they caught him, they would delight in breaking him, and she doubted if he would be easily broken.

She stepped close to him, and putting all her strength in it, slapped his face so hard his head rocked back.

Surprise lit his eyes. The fear she had smelled in him retracted but was not replaced by anger as she had hoped. He did not retaliate for the blow either. He had an impressive control of himself and the majority of his emotions, from what she could tell. She wondered what had happened to him to make him fear demons so much, because he didn’t seem to fear much else.

The mark of her palm showed clearly on his reddened cheek.

“What was that for?” he asked.

She grasped the front of his shirt and pulled his head down near her mouth, disliking having to utter words that should never be voiced in this place.

“I smell your fear,” she breathed into his ear. “Contain it. Bury it. Then we’ll hide from them because we don’t want to give them a chance to provoke it. If you’re afraid of them, they’ll kill you, and it won’t be merciful. Do you understand?”

His fear of demons clearly did not extend to her, and for a few seconds, she thought he would disregard her warning. Then, reluctantly, he nodded, and she released the front of his shirt.

“Do you know a place we can hide?” he asked, equally quiet.

“I think so.”

She reached for his hand, intending to guide him through the gloomy light, but he shied away from her touch. While she understood why he did not want her to touch him again, hurt from the slight lanced her heart. She quickly suppressed it but not before he saw.

He tapped the hilt of one of his knives. He had a lot of them hidden in his clothing—more than she’d noted earlier, when he’d had her pinned to the ground on the ledge.

“I need my hands free,” he said.

She fought back a gasp. She should have known he was an assassin. That explained his ability to control his emotions and why he was so difficult to read.

She did not know how she felt about the discovery. Certainly not safer. Assassins belonged to the Godseekers. But even an assassin would have a difficult time against demons, particularly here, in a boundary they had claimed.

Raven picked up a small stone and tossed it a few paces away from them. The ground opened up as it landed. Green puffs of foul-smelling steam erupted skyward.

She watched Blade’s face closely as the stone disappeared, swallowed by the fissure. The crack vanished, leaving smoothly stable earth where it had gaped open just a moment ago. Other than a slight tightening of the skin around Blade’s dark eyes, he did not react.

Again, she was impressed with his control.

“These sinkholes can appear without warning,” she said. “Whatever you do, don’t step from the path I set.”

She did not tell him that she’d crafted the sinkholes as a way of protecting herself when she’d been a child—not from demons, but from Justice. She’d come here to hide from him. Back then, she had been too young to understand where she was.

Blade nodded. “I’ll follow you.”

They picked their way through the craters and crevices, instinct and memory guiding Raven. Her leg ached from the snakebite, and she could not fully bend her knee. Although the venom seemed to have less of a hallucinogenic effect on her here—presumably because of her demon heritage—she could not be sure that what she saw was real. Or that it was harmless. Any misstep or error in judgment could prove fatal.

A short while later, Blade dropped a hand to her shoulder.

“Something is following us,” he mouthed when she turned to see what he wanted.

Behind him she caught a glimpse of a shadow, then another. A few more appeared on the bluffs above them, and resignation settled into her soul.

They had been discovered.

…

“We’ll have to fight them,” Raven said.

It was not what Blade wanted to hear but more or less what he had expected.

This place made his skin crawl. The odd, watery lighting, the unrelenting storm of lightning and thunder…

The presence of demons.

And yet a part of Raven loved this. He could see it in the sparkle of her brilliant, diamond-fired eyes. Did she know that they glowed blue in the dim light of their surroundings?