Until now.
He took a step closer, and her head lifted from the water in alarm.
“Who’s there?” she demanded.
The Demon Lord brushed through a small stand of cottonwood and without a word, entered the clearing.
Her eyes grew wide. “You’re a demon.”
“And you’re a goddess.” He let his desire smolder for her to see. The west wind had called to him for a reason this particular night. Here, at last, was the one he’d been promised. “Come to me. I won’t harm you.”
She, too, felt the pull between them, and she hesitated like a gazelle deciding whether or not it should bolt. He moved closer, carefully, so as not to alarm her further, and reached out with one finger to caress the soft, damp curve of her cheek.
The spell shattered with that small touch.
But not, he thought bitterly, before she had captured him.
Her name was Allia, or so she had told him. To this day he did not know for certain what had drawn her into the desert on a night when the west wind blew. He did not want to believe that it was as Mamna had told him, that she had been sent by her sisters to seduce and enslave him.
He had no reason to believe Mamna spoke the truth other than that, somehow, Allia had shackled him to her in a way that he could not now escape. He dreamed of her often, and if his own kind knew how he longed for her, they would turn on him in disgust for the weakness it displayed.
Mortal life could bring great pleasure, yes. But it also brought indescribable pain. He needed his immortality back. He needed to be free again. If he could not have those things, then he wished only for the passage of time to ease this terrible sense of loss he had not been able to recover from.
The dead demons he possessed thrashed inside him, demanding he face the truth. Allia might not have been his, but he was hers. Regaining immortality meant he would feel this agony throughout eternity if he could not find her and reclaim her.
Across the giant dunes of the desert, past the playa and the mesas, the scorched mountain of the goddesses kept silent watch over the mortal world.
A faint rumbling began in the desert earth beneath his feet, and the Demon Lord stumbled back in surprise. To his utter amazement, the tip of the far-off, shadowed mountain folded inward.
Then it disappeared from the black, star-littered horizon as if it had not existed.
…
Airie could smell the fear of the animal beneath her.
The cracking of the earth and the crash of tumbling rocks and trees still had not abated, so she bent over the sand swift’s scaly neck and held on as best she could. Unfamiliar with riding, she slid sideways. Hunter, seated behind her, wrapped his arm around her waist and tightened his grip to keep her from falling. He held the reins in his other hand, although he’d given the sand swift its head.
“The path is gone!” Hunter shouted in her ear.
Airie lifted her head to see what he meant. Fallen pine and rock choked the common path, the one used by the goddesses’ faithful. It was impassible.
She pointed to her left. “This way. There’s a deer path through here that I sometimes use.”
Hunter jerked hard on the reins. The sand swift swung its ugly head, shifting direction too quickly, and smashed off the common path into the bushes. He fought to bring the panicked animal to a halt.
A branch slapped Airie across the face, knocking her from her seat. She landed on her back in a scratchy thicket, her skirt tangled around her knees. She looked up from her thorny bed to where the moon should have bathed the top of the mountain in its pale light. Shock numbed her. The mountain peak had imploded. There was no other way to describe it.
Hunter steadied the sand swift, brought it around to where Airie lay, and offered her his hand. His face tensed when he looked toward the mountain.
“Don’t look back!” he commanded her.
Airie took his hand and allowed him to pull her into the saddle, behind him this time, and once again they hurtled down the mountain at a speed that took her breath away.
Without warning, a chasm gaped open in front of them, cutting off their escape.
The sand swift reared on its hind legs. It twisted to the side, flipping itself over. Hunter rolled from the saddle in the opposite direction, pulling Airie with him, dragging them both clear before they could be crushed beneath the animal’s considerable weight.
Airie scrambled to her feet. Panic clawed her throat raw at the terrible sound of the animal’s screams.
The sand swift lay on its side, chest heaving, kicking its feet in terror and pain. A splintered pine, broken off by a falling boulder now resting a few paces from the chasm’s edge, had impaled the poor animal.
Airie forgot her own fear in the face of its suffering. Ignoring the flailing, razor-sharp claws of the sand swift and the heaving earth beneath her feet, she stretched out her fingertips in an instinctive attempt to ease its pain.
Hunter lunged from his prone position to snag her skirt and stop her from getting too close to the dangerous animal, but Airie sidestepped him.
Making soothing noises deep in her throat, she placed her hand on the sand swift’s belly. Immediately, its legs stopped churning and the clear lids of its eyes drooped closed.
Hunter moved to her side.
“Help me lift her free,” Airie said.
He had not yet uttered a single sound. Airie paid no attention. He already thought she was a monster. What did it matter if she confirmed his opinion? She could not leave the animal to die in agony.
Between the two of them, they lifted the animal clear of the splintered and bloodied pine.
Once the sand swift was free, Airie probed the entry wound with her fingers. Nothing vital had been too damaged for her to mend, she noted with relief.
She sent warm, healing thoughts into the worst of the animal’s injuries, along with her prayers. Severed muscles, torn tendons and mangled flesh knitted in response. When the worst damage was repaired, she concentrated on calming its mind.
Its trembling ceased.
Moments later, the sand swift was back on its feet, and in a rapture of affection, tried to lick at her face with its rough-edged tongue.
“Here!” Hunter said sharply, catching it in his fist before it could touch Airie’s cheek.
The mountain’s rumbling stopped, and a terrible stillness settled over the woods that Airie found equally frightening. She rubbed her hands over her arms, although the cold she felt did not come from the mountain air.
Something more was missing from the mountain than the usual sounds of animal life. Desolation tore at her, leaving her raw and bleeding on the inside. The presence of the goddesses was gone from her.
The passing of her mother had taken them from her too, and only an empty place in her soul remained. She was alone in a world she had been told would not want her, with a man who disliked and distrusted her. She wanted her mother, and she wanted to cry, but she would not do so again in front of a man who hated her for nothing more than being born.
Everything she owned had been abandoned in the rush of their departure. She had nothing—no clothes, no money—except for the amulet her mother had given her. She looked around. As for Hunter’s possessions, only the saddle remained of the things the sand swift had carried. What wasn’t smashed and useless had fallen into the newly formed crack in the earth.
“Is Sally okay for us to ride?” Hunter demanded of Airie.
Airie nodded, and they remounted.
Blackness and silence settled on the mountain. Fortunately the sand swift’s night vision was as good as Airie’s, and Airie knew the mountain well, although their descent was slow and frequently blocked by fallen debris. More than once they had to dismount to clear the way.
Other than to give direction to each other as they moved what they could and skirted around what they could not, she and Hunter did not speak.
…
Hunter had expected the scent of the sand swift’s blood to drive Airie
into a demon’s frenzy. Instead, she had saved the creature’s life.
Something about this was not right.
He wondered how a priestess, selected for service to the goddesses because of her plainness, had incited the lust of a demon. Her advanced age, ill health, and scarred face might have concealed the fact that she was beautiful in her youth, but she would already have been middle-aged by the time Airie was conceived.
Certainty had him gripping the reins tighter. He ducked his head to avoid a low branch, edging it aside so it would not strike Airie behind him. The priestess had lied to him, but about what, and for what purpose?
That Airie believed the priestess to be her mother, he did not dispute. That meant the priestess had lied to her as well.
Mamna, too, had undoubtedly lied to him.
He had no idea what to do next.
The heat from her clasped hands spread through his abdomen. When he turned his head, the fresh, feminine scent of her skin and hair engulfed him and made him ache in a way he could scarcely believe. One cheek rested on his shoulder, her weight against him suggesting she was close to sleep and implying a level of trust, however slight.
Guilt gnawed at him. He pushed it away. He was the Demon Slayer and she was part demon. If she trusted him it was because she had no one else to turn to, not because he had given her reason. He had no cause to trust her either.
Except that she saved Sally’s life, his conscience rebuked him. And she loved her mother. As much as he wanted to, he could not deny that.
He could not wait to be rid of her.
They continued down the mountain in silence.
When the first fingers of dawn streaked the sky red, they came to a better-traveled path at the foot of the mountain. There, the land leveled off and the forest thinned. Hunter had avoided this path on his way to the temple, uninterested in passing through civilization.
He was interested now. What he had lost on the mountain had been necessities for travel, and he had to replace them.
“Where does this path lead?” he asked Airie, tossing the words over his shoulder.
“To a trading post.” She straightened behind him. “I don’t want to go there.”
“Why not?” Hunter asked. Fatigue and frustration, as well as hours of awkward awareness of her pressed against him, sparked an already short temper. “Tried to sell them something you stole and got caught at it?”
“Yes.”
That single syllabic response stopped him and made him wonder. What was the real reason she wanted to avoid the place? Even if it involved danger, her reason didn’t matter. He had no choice. It was not safe to travel to Freetown without adequate supplies either. Settlements were few and far between, and the few there were, were heavily fortified. Walls did not keep demons out, but they did manage to keep out other mortals. Mortals on the outside meant demons did not need to bother with those inside.
“Would anyone at this trading post recognize you?” he asked, although they would have to be blind and stupid if they could not. She was unusually tall and very beautiful, and she carried herself like a goddess.
Or a demon.
She considered the question a few seconds before replying. “I don’t know,” she said. “I always went dressed as a boy.”
“Then this time, you’ll go as a woman. We won’t be there long. But while we are, you’re to do exactly as I tell you.”
“I’d rather wait here for you.” She made a move as if to slip from the saddle, but he reached back and grabbed her hip to stop her.
“I don’t think so.” She did not seem to understand that she was his prisoner and he could not let her out of his sight. The world had enough problems without another demon on the loose, especially one who was not at all what she seemed.
“I’m not used to riding,” she insisted. “I’m tired.”
The weary crack in her voice almost swayed him. Then he thought of her flaming eyes and how she had intended to rob him. While he could hardly blame her for doing what was necessary in order to survive, it made him wary of her motives.
He realized his hand was still cupping her hip, and that he had hesitated too long in responding. His next words surprised him because, although churlish and grudging, they were not what he’d intended to say. “Very well. We’ll rest for a bit. But we stay together.”
She dismounted stiffly, and again, he experienced a twinge of guilt. Throughout the long night she had not complained and had done her fair share in clearing their escape route.
He swung out of the saddle and turned Sally loose to forage for food in the brush at the side of the path. Airie paced, stretching her legs and saying nothing, but her gaze continually returned to the remains of the smoldering mountain.
Hunter could think of no distractions to offer. He reached into a pocket of his duster and found some hardtack, then thrust it at her. “Here,” he said. “Eat something.”
She stopped pacing. Her eyes, a soft, deep, feminine brown now, with no trace of flame, fixed on him. “Do I look like one?”
“Like what?” he asked, confused.
“Like a demon. I’ve never seen one.”
“No.” He slid the hardtack she ignored back into his pocket. Then, because he did not want either of them to forget what she was, he added, “At least, not right now.”
Her gaze returned to the crumbled mountain. “This is the way I always look.”
He found that difficult to believe. Rumors to the contrary had spread all the way to Mamna, and he had seen the fire she contained for himself. It would be foolish to become distracted by her because eventually, her true form would emerge.
He could not claim she was trying to use the mortal one she wore to seduce him, however. Truth be told, she did not seem to like him at all. His jaw tightened. The thought of being judged by a demon and found wanting was far from an amusing one.
He did not like inconsistencies, and she was full of them. His aching ribs reminded him of her demonic strength, yet what sort of spawn cried over its mother, then healed a dying animal when common sense and self-preservation dictated it would be better to abandon it?
And what sort of man abandons a woman to demons?
He grabbed Sally’s reins, unsettled.
“Break’s over,” he snarled. “Get back in the saddle.”
Chapter Six
The Godseeker had refused to spend the night under Mamna’s roof, and she had not encouraged him. He had told her, however, that more Godseekers were coming.
Some, she suspected, might already be here.
She had gotten what little information she could from him and he was of no further use to her. She had dropped a few casual remarks about the amulet the old man wore and its abilities, knowing full well that her words would spread. The value of the stone would ensure that the old man’s days in Freetown were numbered. The amulet might alert him to the approach of demons, but offered little protection from mortal thieves.
She had not resolved a problem, merely delayed it, and her broken sleep that night reflected it.
She often dreamed of her time in the goddesses’ temple—a collage of memories of thousands of thoughtless little kindnesses and cruelties—but there was always one particular dream that stood out above all the rest.
The goddesses, unlike their demon counterparts, were few in number, no more than a dozen, and they had grown tired of being relentlessly pursued by them. They had found peace and happiness in the mortal world, and possessed no desire to abandon it or its pleasures.
A question was raised. If mortal women touched by the goddesses became their servants, and mortal men became their slaves, what would happen if a goddess touched a demon?
A goddess might well find a demon as irresistible as he found her. Therefore, Mamna was tasked with watching over the goddess chosen to tempt the Demon Lord. It never occurred to any of them that poor, deformed, homely Mamna might not be able to resist a demon any easier than other, more beautiful mortal women.
It certainly had not occurred to Mamna. But she had fallen in love with the Demon Lord on sight, and his blindness to anyone but the chosen goddess had cut her far worse than any other slight experienced in a lifetime of humiliations. She had wanted to be treated with some of the same gentle kindness he had shown to one of her mistresses. She wanted her own chance to serve him.
Telling him of the goddess’s deception had seemed the perfect opportunity.
He had been waiting for his lover in their usual place on the night Mamna finally gathered her courage to approach him. She kept her head down, her eyes on the cool, dew-dampened grass beneath her bare, misshapen feet.
“You have been betrayed,” she had said.
At first, the Demon Lord had not believed her.
“Watch and see,” Mamna declared. “She will offer you a pendant, a small mountain stone of no obvious beauty or value, with all of the colors of the rainbow. She’ll tell you it’s a symbol of her love for you. She’ll tell you it offers immunity against the goddesses, just as the amulet you gave her protects her from demons. But it is the same stone the goddesses give to their favored mortal men. It is meant to enslave you. It will bind you to her as surely as it binds them.” Mamna held out her hand, raising her eyes to his. She had a handful of the same colored stones, some set in pendants, others as yet unpolished. “Have you seen these before?”
She could tell by the look on his face that he had.
Mamna withdrew to a nearby hiding place to watch what happened next. When the goddess had shown up with her offering, the Demon Lord rejected it with such violence that the protection of the amulet he had already given her was all that saved her.
The depth of his anger, however, had set the mountain on fire. Mamna had carried that demon fire onto the sacred ground for him, and the goddesses had fled before it.
All but one.
Any kindness he had shown his lover had not extended beyond that. What he had allowed his army to do to mortal men in the days that followed the departure of the goddesses still made Mamna shudder, even in her dreams.
Betraying immortals, she had discovered, was not for the timid.
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