Hunters (Spirit Blade Part 1) (3 page)

Je'Surana.

Nadia's heart sank, pushing aside thoughts of the dagger hidden in her room. Her only consolation of the girl's wound was that it had not been caused by the vile weapon but by an ordinary dagger.

Past others in corridors lined by columns carved from the cliffside and along walkways and staircases looking out over the valley, she rushed to reach Je'Surana's quarters.

Chapter 2

In an inner corridor, Nadia spied Lord Je'Kaoron ahead of her, Je'Surana in his arms. Given the strength of demonlords, she wasn't surprised he had reached the room so quickly. Carrying the girl must have been nothing to him, made lighter by his parental affection for her. Nadia used to believe demonlord males only seduced human girls to satisfy their sexual needs, but even before meeting Je'Surana, she had seen that wasn't true. They weren't uncaring, nor only attracted to the young and innocent. They were more similar to humans than most individuals of either race were willing to admit.

"Lord Je'Kaoron." She caught up and opened the door for him.

Je'Surana lifted her head, her face pale as she was carried into the room. The red stain at her side had spread to her hand through the cloth she pressed over it.

"I'm..." At a raised eyebrow on the calm visage of the demonlord, the words stuck in Nadia's throat.

"I know," Je'Surana said in a weak voice as Lord Je'Kaoron continued to the large bed. "I should have been quicker."

He laid her carefully on the bed as an elegant woman in white and black breezed past Nadia and hurried to the bedside.

Nadia's guilt strangled her voice as the two demonlords spoke in their Lexic too low for Nadia to understand. As an Adept of Te'Mea, she had been taught the forbidden language of the masters but was sworn to never reveal her knowledge.

Lord Je'Kaoron finished with a brief swipe of hair from Je'Surana's face and stepped away to let the tigress work. He joined Nadia and took her arm to lead her out. "Leave her. She will heal."

Nadia turned to the neutral expression on his face. "But the injury—"

His eyes hardened, halting her objections.

While following the light pull on her arm, Nadia looked back at the girl.

"I'll be all right," Je'Surana said.

"The tigresses will attend to her," Lord JeKaoron said.

But she was responsible for the wound. She had thought the girl would be swifter.

They reached the door, but as another woman in white and black robes hurried past, she looked back again. Two tigresses; that couldn't be good.

Je'Kaoron closed the door behind them, cutting off her view but not the guilt clutching her heart.

"She must learn to accept the pain. In the protection of Mount Serako, she was not faced with the challenges you have presented. It could be far worse, but she did well." A hint of pride touched his face. "Come, my lady."

He wasn't angry, or if he was, he didn't show it behind that demonlord beauty and cool demeanor. And, as usual, he addressed her as an equal, as a lady.

"She's—" Nadia caught herself and lowered her voice. "She's your daughter."

"Yes. She is."

He said that far too casually.

"She understands the burden of what she is." The flash of reproof in his gaze silenced further objections. Nadia had no place to tell him how to raise his child. She was the last person to have that right after what she had done in her hatred of Kaelen eight years ago. "You did as I requested, and I bear no ill in that. Any fault rests on me."

On him. Then he took the blame willingly for any harm to Je'Surana.

"It was not the
shevoru
that pierced her, and in that, I am grateful."

So was she. Whether she would have used the spell that drew out the soul or not, the blade diminished the power of half-bloods to heal.

In silence, they walked a ways through the corridors, passing tigers, humans, and other demonlords in human and natural forms of all colors. Particularly distinctive were the wolflike Cas'Lu in their natural forms with their enormous size and aura of power and the more delicate but colorful Siv'Lors resplendent in human form. Where Je'Rekun had banished other clans from the Je'Gri domain, Je'Dron's allies walked the corridors freely, once again welcome to share their domain.

Lord Je'Kaoron acknowledged others with a tip of his head but said nothing, which fed her trepidations. She recognized the route they took and where it led.

When they arrived at her room, he followed her inside and closed the door. Despite all the times he had visited her as a friend, this time was different. His presence cast a shadow of fear over her mood, not for her physical self but a fear of disappointing the one person whose companionship meant something to her.

Eager to part with the weapon that had pierced the sweet-natured Je'Surana, Nadia unstrapped the dagger sheath from her belt.

"You've met the hunter?"

She paused with the weapon in her hands and turned as realization hit her. He'd been waiting for a private moment to speak. "You knew?"

"His scent was distinctive."

Of course it was, to him. The senses of demonlords and half-bloods were far more acute than any mere human's.

"As was his presence. Adepts have a certain...aura." A hint of something glinted in those eyes. "Natters sense it, as do we."

"I thank you for the warning, my lord." She set the dagger sheath on the low dresser near the head of her bed with more force than she intended. "I wish I had known he was here."

"Is he important?"

Nadia hesitated and gazed out at the fading light shining through the glass doors of her balcony. Memories flitted into her mind of a younger version of herself determined to be the first woman to complete demon hunter training and of an older mentor who had used her and abandoned her to the cruelty of others and the expected fate of other women.

"No. Only a memory." She pulled at the lacings of one of her bracers harder than necessary. Damn the elders for sending Kaelen of all people. Had it been anyone but him, she wouldn't feel so insulted. Apparently, those in charge hadn't learned their lesson about her determination to continue. He wouldn't convince her to play nice. He was the last person to whom she would concede.

"Then I ask your forgiveness, my lady." That soft voice Lord Je'Kaoron used when he seemed uncertain stole her frustration, as did his title of equality rather than her position. "I was only told another demon hunter had arrived to speak with you."

He was far too perceptive.

And respectful, something Kaelen had never been. Lord Je'Kaoron stepped up next to her and took over unlacing her bracer. "Is his business complete?"

Embarrassed that he would feel the need to step in and help her, she kept her eyes on his dextrous fingers making swift work of loosening the strap to allow her to slip her hand free.

Lord Je'Kaoron had been the one to alert her to the purpose of the blade and he was the kindest demonlord she had ever met. He was more of a friend than anyone she had known, but never had she stayed anywhere long enough to form any relationships, not since her induction after satisfactorily completing her demon hunter training.

"No." With one bracer still secured, she retreated to the cold fireplace. There, she knelt and removed the grate to sweep away the ashes from the stones. Her fingers dug along the edges of a stone square to grasp it and pull it up, revealing the dagger she despised.

The soft ruffle of fabric accompanied his presence next to her. "I see." As if it was no more than an ordinary weapon, he reached for the leather-wrapped handle and lifted it.

Upon being pulled from the leather sheath, the blade shimmered in the evening light through the closed balcony doors. Not a scratch marred the perfect smoothness of the metal but for the etched symbols along its short length. Delicate and no more than the length of her forearm, the dagger resonated with power, power which she had harnessed by the incantation spoken each time she had used it. It had killed so efficiently because the spell had captured the spirits of the half-bloods the moment the blade drew blood, and it now possessed many of them.

After not bearing it for so long, the power resonating from the souls captured within it darkened her mind.

"
Shevoru
," Lord Je'Kaoron said. "The spirit blade." His pale blue eyes met hers. "A foul magic that defiles the soul of the bearer."

Nadia shuddered and stepped back to stare out at the cool fall afternoon and away from the cloud of malice around the dagger. The balcony of her sleeping chambers overlooked the magnificent stretch of valley below the cliffside city and palace of the Je'Gri clan rulers.

Away from the dagger, Nadia's mind was lighter. She breathed easier and gazed out at the plethora of colors beyond her balcony. The long, twisting branches of the
borshal
trees that decorated the cliffside structures had lost their blossoms, but changing leaves swayed in the breeze to highlight the ornate structures of the different levels of
Acropa Je'Gri
like the grass and leaves in the valley below, where orange tigers or guards of bronze and black armor of the warrior caste of Je'Gri wandered with clan allies.

"This one, however, is in constant struggle. The infant half-bloods were pure souls and counteract the darkness of those in the blood rage. You are strong, my lady, to bear such a weapon without falling to its dark influence, or losing your mind." The gentle voice sent a shiver up her spine to explode into doubts in her mind. "I have always seen that."

"You are too kind, my lord." Nadia brushed aside a loose thread of hair tickling her face, the rest of her brown locks hanging in a braid behind her. "This is why Kaelen is here. The elders seek its power."

"Of course, they do."

He stepped close behind her, bearing the hated tinge of evil borne in the dagger. The scent of the demonlord, unlike any human, was something fresh and appealing, not the stench of sweat and filth. It circled her in the sleeping chamber and she inhaled deeply, welcoming the contrast to the sickening aura of the blade.

A faint swallow cracked the quiet of the room behind her.

"I need to destroy it. I will not hand it to
him
," she said, more to give herself strength than for Lord Je'Kaoron to know. "The dagger is only the beginning of a way to defeat the demonlords."

He blew out a heavy sigh. "The other clans fear the power sought by the Adepts and are organizing to oppose them."

She had suspected that, but to hear him say it sent a chill down her spine.

"What of Je'Dron's allies?"

"
High Lord
Je'Dron," he gently admonished her lack of title. All demonlords expected to be addressed with appropriate titles, a show of respect from their subjects since they dominated the world of Derandria, although she'd heard them talking about one or another without titles.

"What about High Lord Je'Dron's allies?"

"They are hardly strong enough to oppose the majority of demonlords."

"Then the weapon must be destroyed before the others learn of it and decide to do something, like take it for themselves." It might not alleviate the problem, but it would rid the world of one vile abomination. In the wrong hands, it would be a terrible weapon.

"How would you do that?"

Nadia blinked and turned, surprised by the question. "I don't know. Can you not?"

"Our power may be strong, but such magic is beyond us." He studied the blade held between his hands. "Only those who created it might have the knowledge and the power to destroy it, but would they?"

There was the question, and the answer weighed upon her. "No." The sorcerers had done this for a reason. She was perhaps the only Adept to see the harm they were causing.

 After a pause, he said, "You could return to the Nik'Terek Gate."

The Nik'Terek Gate. Anything that passed through vanished. The blade would be gone from that world.

She stared at the weapon in his hands as realization coalesced. "I should have tossed it through that day."

"You weren't ready. All things happen in their own time. The time wasn't then, but you're ready now." He lowered the dagger and stared out the balcony doors in silence for several seconds before saying, "I must return there also. It will be dangerous—many of Je'Rekun's supporters survived. I've been delaying as long as I could, until I was certain Je'Surana was safe here. Thanks to you, I feel confident of that."

"But her wound—"

"Nothing for a half-blood, and she will have to rest for a day or two, long enough for me to leave without her begging to join me."

Nadia stared at him, studying the softening lines of his face when he spoke of the young girl. Never had she witnessed such love from a demonlord for a half-blood child. The last human girl whose newborn half-blood Nadia had taken with the dagger had said the demonlord father had visited to console her. They weren't monsters. When they were human, they were human in heart and form, or more human than human men.

She pushed aside the painful memories arising from the ashes since Kaelen's return to her life to focus on the man before her. "She is a blessed girl."

His smile warmed through her, radiating from her core to her limbs. "You honor me and my kin, my lady."

She tried to smile, but the tangle of feelings rising inside forced her to look away. "Why must you return?"

"I have...unfinished business. When I was recovering from injuries sustained in the battle, High Lord Je'Dron ordered the return to
Acropa Je'Gri
. I healed but could not abandon others. I should not wait longer."

Under the intensity of his gaze, Nadia could not escape. She was one of those "others". Because she had killed Je'Rol when she had finally realized it wasn't what she wanted, the grief had torn her apart. Without Lord Je'Kaoron, she would have killed herself to end the suffering. He had encouraged her to eat, made her feel valued, shown her that she could feel without feeling weak, and he had assured her that Je'Rol's death was the only way he would have found the peace he sought and that she hadn't taken his soul. Grief had replaced the anger that had hardened her all those years. And Je'Kaoron had respected her as a demon hunter and as a woman, drying her tears when they flowed while never judging her and never asking anything of her. He simply cared about others as if everyone mattered.