by Anne Schlea
“Hi.” Riley looks unsettled with his hands stuffed in his pockets. He offers her a lopsided grin. “Am I still welcome for dinner?”
“Always.” Anna’s guilt wells up in the center of her stomach when she looks at him. He’s been open and honest with her, has left a part of himself bare, and she ran. “I freaked out when I saw Marissa up there on the observation deck. My reaction had more to do with her than with…well, you know. I’m sorry.”
“Our kids learn how to fight when they turn sixteen.” Riley’s expression is confused, like Marissa’s hands on a dirk is no big deal. “You shouldn’t be surprised.”
“Marissa isn’t sixteen yet.” Defense mechanisms start to kick in. Anna’s mind screams at her not to be an over-protective mom. She’s taken the boy thing in stride, a voice says in her head, she should be allowed to freak out over this.
“She will be in a week and a half.” How is it he remembers her birthday? He reaches up and brushes a stray strand of hair behind her ear. His hand hesitates before it drops to her shoulder and then follows the line down her arm. Anna realizes for the first time how familiar that motion has become. “Do you remember how young we were when we started sneaking around with my parent’s weapons?”
“I’m trying not to.” Anna lets Riley take her hand and lace their fingers together. She smiles and leans against the door while the shivers run through her body. “You can’t do this once we walk inside.”
“You don’t want to upset Marissa.” A flicker of hurt shifts through Riley’s eyes before he can hide it. “I get it. We don’t have to tell her anything today, but that won’t change where this is going.”
Anna gives him a smile, then turns to open the door. Just as she starts to push the door open he leans in to give her a quick kiss on the cheek. She glances at him over her shoulder, “Careful now.”
“What?” He holds his hands up innocently.
“Marissa, Riley’s here!” Anna can hear Marissa cleaning up after school in the bathroom, so she gives her a fair warning not to walk into the hallway in her underwear.
“Okay, Mia’s on her way over to help me with homework. She’s going to stay for dinner.” Marissa’s voice comes back through the door.
“Here,” Anna pulls a head of lettuce out of the refrigerator and tosses it to Riley. “Start a salad.”
“Sure thing.” He moves over to an open counter space and starts to pull off pieces of leafy green at the same time Anna takes out some tomatoes to make pasta sauce for chicken parmesan. He looks over at her while he works. “There’s a town not far from here that’s had a lot of pets go missing lately. I’m going to send out a two-person team to check it out tomorrow night. Would you like a shot at it?”
“Yeah, I think I’m ready for the field.” She nods and puts a sauce pan on the stove to dump tomatoes into. “Do you think I’m ready?”
“I do if you’ll do some work with that katana tomorrow morning. It’d probably be a good idea for you to carry one from now on.” He reaches over to grab some of her tomatoes to add to the salad. “I don’t think this dirk is the right weapon for you anymore. You can probably return it to the weapons room and check out a katana until we can have one made to fit you.”
“What dirk?” Spices and parmesan go into her sauce and then she turns to look and the weapon that drew Riley’s attention.
A shiny new dirk is leaning in the corner of the living room, one that wasn’t there when Anna left for work that morning. She sets her spoon down and crosses the room to pick it up. It’s light and by the balance she can tell it’s been made to be used by a woman. She moves it through the air lightly. “I have no idea where this came from.”
“So that’s not yours?” He raises an eyebrow and then glances down the hallway toward Marissa’s room. “I think I might be needed down in the Command Center…”
“No. Stay.” Anna points the blade at Riley. “Keep shredding lettuce. I’ll talk to Marissa about this.”
“You know you never would have been such a good archer if you hadn’t been sneaking archery equipment into your house when you were Marissa’s age.” Riley gives Anna an innocent shrug. When she doesn’t lower the dirk he moves his focus back to the lettuce. “They probably let her check this out of the armory because she’s supposed to be practicing.”
“You’re not helping.”
The door to the bathroom opens to let Marissa out. “Hi, Mom. Hi, Riley.”
“Hi, honey.” Anna walks over and gives her a kiss on the top of the head. “How was school?”
“It was great. We started to work with dirks today. It was really cool.” There’s a happy glow in Marissa’s cheeks that doesn’t sit well with Anna. She looks like Anna does when she’s had a good day on the archery range.
“Is that where this one came from?” Anna holds up the one in her hand.
“My teacher told me to take it home so I could practice.” Marissa crosses the room and takes from Anna’s hand to swing through the air. “She said I was good at it.”
Riley takes in a sharp breath and Anna immediately knows why. Marissa moves that blade through the air like she’s been holding one as long as she could walk. His eyes meet Anna’s. This isn’t the kind of talent the Anna loves as a mother. She hoped Marissa might have a gift for study or teaching or nursing.
“Nicely done.” Riley sits the salad down on the table to demonstrate a better leg stance. “But try sitting down more on your legs like this. It will help you to find better balance and lessen the possibility for someone to knock you over.”
Anna seriously considers knocking Riley over herself so she can toss him out on his ear. She goes back dinner and takes out her irritation on the chicken while doing her best to ignore him as he continues to correct Marissa’s stance and adjusts her grip on her blade. It’s a good thing there isn’t very much space in the living room or else Anna suspects he’d be sparing with her right there in the house.
She’s grateful when Mia shows up to help Marissa with her homework so the dirk can be put safely away on Anna’s wall.
“Really?” Anna keeps her voice low when Riley returns to the small kitchen. She casts him a sidelong glance.
He smirks and leans against the cabinets. “She’ll be really good with some help.”
“Maybe I don’t want her to be really good.” Frustration threatens as she looks at him. He’s too proud of Marissa right now.
“You don’t have a choice.” Riley drops his head close to her ear and keeps his voice low. “If you fight her on this it won’t turn out well. She’s going to do it whether you want her to or not. Its part of their school curriculum and it’s the reason we exist. You know this.”
“I know I have to accept it but I don’t have to like it.” Anna points out. The living room floor is covered in Marissa’s books and some kind of large assignment that she’s set out in pieces. Heads are bent over the written report and Mia points out something that needs to be fixed. It’s hard to imagine these two young women are only four years apart. Mia has a deep wound healing across one of her biceps and a black bruise is welled up under her chin. It’s a normal day at the office for her. “Why can’t she have a taste for scholarly studies? Maybe she could aspire to be a scribe.”
“Just because you want something doesn’t mean it’s going to work out that way.” A sad look passes over Riley’s face. Anna knows he’s thinking about his sister’s efforts to be a scribe that were cut short by necessity.
Chapter Eleven
Anna will never cease to be amazed at the ability of humans to ignore the world around them. She wants to hope that normal people would be suspicious if a woman almost six feet tall, dressed in leather pants and a black shirt, wearing big boots that scream “I’m here to kill someone,” walks through their town. But, no. Here in smallville, New York, people actually nod and smile when they pass her on the street while walking their dogs.
“Please tell me there’s some kind of spell on us to hide the fact we look like ki
llers.” She looks over at Riley but he just shrugs. He isn’t quite as obvious. He’d chosen to wear regular human-like jeans and his jacket covered up his weapons nicely.
“You could have dressed less conspicuous.” Riley seems less concerned about the poor townspeople around them than she is. In his mind they’ll be here and gone before any local police involvement can make matters sticky. “I did say we were checking out a local town.”
“You didn’t say we’d be walking down Main Street. You said we were hunting. These are my hunting clothes. If you would have said to wear my blend-in-with-normal-humans clothes I would have worn something different.” Movement catches Anna’s eyes and she looks to her left. A large rat disappears into a city park. Anna reaches over and touches Riley lightly. She nods the direction she’d seen the creature. “Rattus.”
“Let’s go.”
The city park is at the edge of town. They follow the oversized rat through the park to the edge of the cut grass where the wilderness of northern New York State opens up to a whole lot of uncharted land. The creature continues to move away from them through the underbrush and farther into the forest land.
Anna looks at Riley, unsure of their next move. “Well?”
“I guess we should follow it to see if we can find where it’s going.” He reaches into his jacket and pulls out Anna’s katana. “Take this.”
“Many thanks.” The scabbard attaches to her back perfectly. She smiles and swings the blade through the air. “Let’s go.”
The great thing about hunting Rattus is that they’re a stupid breed of creature. Not exactly a demon, it’s an everyday rat that has been fed demon blood. The demon blood will turn the rat into a larger, more aggressive rat that comes and goes at the master demon’s bidding. Chances are, Rattus are being used to lure pets away from homes into the forest where they’ll be eaten by whatever the master is.
Riley and Anna are only about a hundred yards into the forest when the hair on the back of Anna’s neck stands up. She turns around slowly to see a humanoid demon with no hair and glowing yellow eyes. It smiles when she notices it. Without warning it breaks into a run directly at her. “Riley, look out!”
Anna feels Riley come around to her back as she takes a swing at the demon. She expects it to continue its run at her so she can spear it with her blade, take its head off, and be done with it. Unfortunately, it turns directions at the last minute and swings out its own sword with enough accuracy to make Anna duck.
“That’s different.” Riley curses as a second demon comes out of the trees to attack. This type of demon shouldn’t be able to change tactics once a commitment is made. Once it starts its run, it should have plowed straight into her.
“Since when do these guys have higher reasoning skills?” She asks as a third demon joins the fray. The three demons circle them like they’re watching and waiting for a break in Anna and Riley’s concentration.
“I don’t know.” Riley circles with Anna at his back until they see a break in the pattern. He charges the one closest to him and pulls a shorter dagger from his boot; his sword will no good at this close a range.
If Riley had hoped to draw one of the two demons facing Anna away with the direct attack on their comrade, it doesn’t work. Anna finds herself facing two humanoid demons with the ability to follow her movements and anticipate her next action. They smile to show pointed, yellowed teeth and a long, forked tongue.
“I bet you guys don’t get many girls,” Anna mutters under her breath. She knows the longer she dances from foot to foot formulating her strategy, the more time they have to come up with a plan of their own. She takes Riley’s lead and rushes the demon to the left.
This time he does exactly what she expects and tries to sidestep her. At the last minute she pushes her body directly into him, setting him off balance and forcing him to topple back into his friend. Anna pulls her blade through the small space between their bodies, pushes into soft flesh, and feels her hands wet with blood. The demon’s claws sink into her shoulder and he tries to pull her down with him.
She allows him to pull her forward, but instead she rolls and comes up at his back.
She can see he’s injured him by the way he doubles over but an injury won’t be enough to stop him. Her blade comes up with the intent to remove his head, but a brutal force catches her right arm before she can follow through. Anna grunts in pain and the frustration that she can’t complete the killing blow.
She’s forced to drop the injured demon to avoid the large club being swung at her by his remaining brother.
He barely misses hitting her shoulder a second time as she dodges him. His steps mirror hers, circling around the demon on the ground. The third swing catches Anna’s blade straight on and jars her arms all the way to the bone. This time it’s her turn to curse. This demon isn’t only reacting and adjusting to her actions, he’s stronger than he should be. Humanoid demons are usually the result of a demon Lords impregnating a human woman in his harem. They’re usually only as strong as the human parent and are almost always incapable of advanced reasoning. They exist to feed and cause carnage; nothing more.
Pain explodes in Anna’s left arm when the demon with the club makes a direct hit. She’s going to have to eliminate the weapon or take down this demon first and hope the one bleeding on the forest floor doesn’t recover quickly enough to intervene. He’s favoring his right arm on each swing, an action that suggests he’s either right handed or sustained an injury. Since her blade seems to be holding up against the heavy club well enough, she advances on him as if he’s fighting with his own blade.
There’s no change in the demon’s expression. It continues to grin at her and takes each hit of her blade like it’s nothing to him at all. He doesn’t seem to tire and he doesn’t take a step back in defense. The only progress Anna can see she’s making is the slow chipping away of the club by her sharper katana blade. Her biggest problem is the strength of the demons blows.
Anna considers ways to save her tiring arms by taking a step back from the demon. He seems to interpret her small retreat as a sign of weakness and comes at her harder. This gives Anna an idea. She takes another step back and another until she’s led the demon onto a clear patch of ground. Once on firm ground, she stops backing up, but she also forces her own movements to slow. The demon takes the bait and closes in on her with the intention of knocking her to the ground.
Instead, he gets a gut full of the Tanto dagger she pulls from her boot. The matching blade to her katana slices through his skin and spills some of his insides to the ground. She jumps back so the mess might avoid her clothes and lets him sink to the ground. Once he’s on his knees she uses the longer katana blade to cut through the demon’s neck. It’s the only way to effectively kill him.
She turns in time to see Riley take the head off the first demon she sliced open and finish the kill. With all three dead, she reaches down to the melting carcass of the demon at her feet and uses his shirt to wipe both blades off before she returns them home to their scabbards. The corpses will melt into themselves, one of the perks of demon hunting. There’s very little clean up and no bodies for humans to find later.
Her shoulder and rotator cuff scream in pain but both seem to be working properly as she makes her way back across the clearing to where Riley is inspecting a rip in his jeans. He’s barely bleeding with nothing more than a single superficial wound; his jeans will need to be mended. She sees the third demon decomposing a few feet away. “I bet you wish you’d worn something different now.”
Riley’s eyes train on her left arm. “How’s that arm?”
“It’ll be fine in a day or so.” Heat wells up to the skin around the injury. It’s going to have an ugly bruise in an hour but there’s nothing to be done about that now. It’s still attached and nothing seems to be broken.
“Let me see.” Riley crosses the distance to Anna’s side quickly and begins rotating her arm. The muscles resist against the movement and a spear of pain shoots
down her arm. “Does this hurt?”
“Of course it does!” She pulls away from him and cradles the arm. “I’m not a china doll, Riley. You wanted me out here and this is the result. Sometimes I’m going to take an injury.”
As Riley runs his hand down Anna’s arm to look at her contusions, something in the air around them changes. His hands are gentle where they touch her skin. “I know.”
Anna suddenly needs space, she takes a step backward and runs into a tree. Riley’s hand shoots out to steady her when her foot catches on a tree root and she starts to teeter. The minute his hand touches her, Anna’s adrenaline rush tips the scale from fight to something else altogether.
She feels the bark of the tree against her back and stops moving.
Riley keeps enough distance between them to not crowd her, he still hovers near enough to catch her if she suddenly loses her footing and falls. The air between them thickens; energy dances. Marissa’s voice echoes through Anna’s head. He watches you like you’re the most precious thing in his world.
She tries to clear her head. When her mouth opens, a question she doesn’t know she was going to ask comes out. “Why didn’t you just find someone else after I was gone?”
They both know she isn’t asking about his military position.
He glances back over his shoulder at the clearing where the demon bodies are still slowly decomposing. When his gaze returns to hers, his eyes are darker, more focused. She can see he’s thinking about the arena. “We just killed three unusually smart demons with tactical skills they shouldn’t have, and you want to talk about that?”
“Tell me.” Anna knows her body is shaking – vibrating ever so slightly under Riley’s intense scrutiny. It isn’t from the fear of the battle. She outgrew that when she was a teenager. This time it’s because she’s honestly afraid of Riley’s answer.
