The Demon Creed (A Demon Outlaws Novel) (Entangled Edge)

by Paula Altenburg

  She fumbled with the folds of her skirt, and he shifted a leg so that she could reach it. When she drew it out and pressed it into his waiting palm, he checked to see if it was loaded.

  He passed it back to her, closing her fingers around its grip when she tried to protest. He would be taking a gamble that his ability to go unnoticed would work in this instance since they were already aware of his presence. The thieves thought they had him trapped, however, and he hoped they would not notice his movements.

  But he was not gambling with Nieve’s life. He was confident that she could use the pistol to defend herself.

  He started to stand. She clutched at his arm. When he looked into her pale face, he read panic.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  He wished he dared use compulsion on her, to give her a sense of security, but it was too risky when she was already this agitated.

  He touched her cheek with his fingertips. “Not abandoning you. And not committing suicide either, if that’s what you think,” he said. “I don’t intend for either one of us to die. They won’t be able to see me, just like no one could back at Desert’s End. Not if I don’t want them to. You have to trust me.”

  It was tempting to lean forward, kiss her upturned mouth, and tell her not to worry, but she wasn’t really worried for him, only of what might happen if she were left on her own.

  Still, even understanding that, it was difficult for him to know she was afraid and unable to control it. He naturally suppressed his fear. That was part of his demon heritage. But Nieve’s filled him almost to the point of incapacitation, and he was driven to alleviate it, or thought he might go mad in her presence.

  A fork of lightning cracked open the sky, followed by a long roll of thunder and the first sheets of wind-driven rain. He had to act, and quickly.

  The thieves would be coming from three different directions. He might have time to take out one, possibly two. While he was used to killing with his bare hands, and had above average strength, he doubted if even he could move fast enough to finish off all three before one of them reached her. She would have to take care of the third one herself, or at least buy him more time.

  She refused to let go of him. “Don’t leave me.”

  “I’m not leaving you.” He picked up the pistol she had dropped. “Shoot anyone who comes near you. Not me,” he added, more in an effort to make light of the situation than any real concern that she would. “And this time, try not to miss.”

  She bit her lip, looking as if she didn’t believe that he would not abandon her, but in the end, she took the pistol from him and nodded.

  “Be careful,” she said.

  Her words warmed him more than the intention behind them warranted. He was not used to any concern for his safety. What gave him pause, however, was the realization that she was not used to concern for hers, either.

  He gave in to his demon’s urgings and bent forward, brushing her upturned lips with his in a quick gesture of reassurance. “Everything will be fine. Trust me, Nieve.”

  But a part of him did not believe she would be able to do so. Inside, Nieve was as damaged and fragile as her missing son was likely to be.

  As he emerged from behind the rock, he could not understand why his demon insisted that this delicate, tormented woman was his.

  …

  Nieve gripped the pistol with fear-frozen and clumsy fingers. She desperately wanted to believe that he would return for her, but she did not dare rely on the hope.

  For protection, all she had was one bullet in a pistol with poor aim. She tracked Creed’s progress across open land until he disappeared into a copse of cottonwood trees, worried because she could see him, and therefore so could their attackers.

  The gunfire she expected never came.

  The lightning in the sullen gray sky worsened. She counted the seconds between the flashes and accompanying bangs. Rifle fire was not the only threat to Creed. The bark on several of the trees he had vanished amongst bore long black scars from countless previous lightning strikes.

  Another bolt shot from the heavens to strike the ground not far from her hiding place. The aftershock of electricity snapped at Nieve’s hair, lifting it from her scalp, and the clap of thunder hurt her ears. The world sparked white then dampened to gray. A blast of rain swept over her, leaving her temporarily blind as well as deaf.

  Then the rain passed, and her vision returned. As she wiped water from her face, she thought she saw movement to her right. She clutched the pistol to her chest, unsure what to do. It might have been Creed she saw, or nothing.

  Or it might be whoever was shooting at them.

  She was terrified now. Her chest ached from holding her breath. She did not want to die, but her imagination conjured up far worse scenarios than death. She had been afraid of Bear and the demon who had ruined her, and she feared Creed still, but until now, she had not known what all-encompassing terror really was.

  Yet, deep inside her, she also found the solid core of determination that had set her on this path to find her son. All was not yet lost. If whoever approached was a threat, then she would be best served by letting him believe she was helpless. The pistol would only work at pointblank range. She had to let him get close to her. She hid the pistol in her lap, buried between the folds of her skirt.

  Another flash of lightning and roar of thunder blinded and deafened her. When she could see again, a dark shape loomed over her. She caught a glimpse of a thin face with blond stubble on the jaw, and the brown canvas sleeve of his coat as he reached for her.

  She knew at once it could not be Creed. This man was not large enough.

  And Nieve stopped thinking. The pistol came up. As he bent over her, she pressed it into his side, closed her eyes, and fired.

  The recoil knocked her hand back and up, and although she knew she had not missed, it seemed neither had she hit anything vital. Rough fingers grasped her wrist and yanked her to her feet. The man swore, his breath hot on her cheek, and then the flat of a palm slapped her face. She fell, dazed by the blow, and blinked against the blasts of rain as the blackened, angry heavens broke loose.

  The toe of a boot caught her hard in the ribs, flipping her over. Nieve curled in a ball and blocked the pain from her conscious thoughts so that it could not overwhelm her. This was not the first time she’d been given a beating. All she could do was try to protect her weakest areas and hope it would not last long or be too severe.

  She braced herself, but another blow never came.

  Screams now drowned out the sound of the rain and the thunder as the head of the storm swept onward.

  Terrible screams, accompanied by grinding, popping noises.

  Nieve covered her ears and squeezed her eyes shut tight, not wanting to know what was happening because she had nowhere to run or hide from it except inside herself.

  “Nieve!”

  Someone was uttering her name. The voice was familiar, but also not. It ground out rough, like tumbling gravel, when it should have flowed smooth, like heated honey. She did not look to see who—or what—owned that voice. Some things were best not to know.

  Then the voice changed, and the sound of her name became familiar and more welcome. She dared to sneak a look. Creed was beside her, touching her shoulder. Rain streamed from his face. His clothing hung off him in tatters, and he was covered in blood that sluiced down his chest and arms in pink rivulets.

  But it was Creed.

  “Did he hurt you?” he asked.

  “I’m fine.” She thought a rib might be cracked because it burned when she breathed, but when she probed at it with her fingers nothing shifted. She’d had cracked ribs before. They would heal.

  All things considered, physically, she really was fine.

  Creed took her by the elbows and helped her stand, blocking her view of whatever was behind him. “Don’t look.” He turned her around and nudged her in the opposite direction. “This way. We need to get to higher ground before the flooding start
s.”

  She did not argue or ask questions. Even if she’d wanted to, she could not breathe well enough to be able to walk and talk at the same time. Dizziness was also a problem, and she had to hold onto him to steady herself.

  After a few minutes, when it became obvious she could not move at the pace he wanted to set, he swept one arm beneath her knees and the other behind her shoulders and carried her. She crooked an elbow around his neck and held on.

  He dashed through the stand of drooping cottonwood, unbothered by her added weight. The lightning had moved off at the head of the storm, leaving them awash in a deluge of the cold spring rain driving it.

  On the other side of the trees, the ground rose to a small, flat plateau. A long shelter tilted sideways on broken pillar legs, one end in the air, the other on bended knees. The sign across its ancient and rusted roof read SAFEWAY. Beneath it sat two rows of decrepit, half-buried pumps, with cracked black hoses attached, unused for more than three hundred years. Beyond the pumps squatted a low building that had once been white but was now dreary with age. The glass in its front windows and doors was long gone. The holes had been boarded up, but the boards were rotted now and splintered by time.

  Creed set her on her feet and punched a fist through the sagging planks nailed across the broken front doors, then peeled them off, piece by rotting piece, and tossed them aside. Once an opening large enough for them to pass through was cleared, he placed a hand on her back and nudged her inside.

  Nieve had never entered one of these ruins before. Hundreds of years before, when the world was scoured by demon fire, any place like this that had stored flammables such as gas and diesel had gone up in balls of flame, leaving enormous craters in their stead. Very few remained standing. All of the ones that did were near, or in, the Godseeker Mountains, where they had been partially protected by the goddesses.

  The interior of the building was dusty and dark, and it smelled as if something wild had been living inside, although not for a very long time. Nieve could make out straight rows of empty shelves forming center aisles, and odd, cupboard-like machines propped against two of the four walls. Other than that, the place had been gutted. There was a market for antiques from ruins such as this.

  She shivered, not liking this ugly remnant of an era that was long gone from the world’s history. All that could be said for the ruin was that its interior was dry, except for the puddles of water forming around her shoes because of her sopping clothes. She was soaked to the skin, but while cold, not unbearably so. Rain drummed against the roof and the sides of the building. Otherwise, the place was silent.

  Creed’s larger silhouette blocked the light from the doorway. He stripped the remains of his shirt off his arms and threw them away, outside, into the downpour. His trousers had lost all the buttons at the waistband, and were held up by a pair of stretched and frayed suspenders. The cotton seams had split at the thighs. The blood, for the most part, had washed away.

  He had his back to her. The tattoo stretched from the small of his back, spread across his shoulders, then extended up his neck to cover the back of his skull. It glowed in the darkness, and appeared to undulate, as if restless and in possession of a life of its own. Its movement mesmerized her.

  As Nieve stared at it, she tried to gather her thoughts. She knew she could not continue this way, where she was completely reliant on Creed for protection, because that protection was as much an illusion as his shifting tattoo. At some point she would need to take responsibility for her own safety. When she found Ash, she would be responsible for his, too.

  She wanted Creed to understand that she was not a possession of his, and that she had at least made an attempt to defend herself.

  “I shot him,” she said to his back, breaking the silence.

  “I know you did. But that pistol wasn’t meant to kill a man so much as to discourage him. It’s a weapon of last resort.”

  He sounded patient and understanding, somewhat distracted perhaps, but not at all disgusted by her helplessness.

  “What happened to him?”

  He remained very quiet, and did not turn his head to look at her when he spoke, but stared out the door, at the rain. “I’m an assassin. What do you think happened to him? And to his companions?”

  Whatever he had done to them, it was bad enough to disturb him. She should not pursue this. And yet she could not stop herself. “I know you killed them. It’s the manner in which you did it that I’m curious about.”

  He turned to her. Her eyes had adjusted to the dim light by then and she caught her breath, struck again by how beautiful he was with his golden skin and penetrating eyes.

  And how much she should mistrust all of that beauty.

  “Are you certain?” he asked. “Do you really want to know?” He did not give her time to respond. “I’m going to take a quick look around outside to make sure we’re alone, then I’m going after my hross. Wait here for me.”

  Nieve watched him disappear into the pelting rain, both nervous and relieved at the same time. She did not care to be left alone, but neither was she anxious to remain in his company.

  She folded her arms across her chest and hugged herself in an attempt to get warm and to ease her aching ribs. She knew what he had done, and how he had done it.

  And she worried when he might turn demon on her, too.

  …

  If the thieves had more companions, they were gone. The area around the old ruin was empty.

  Creed found an empty campsite and meager belongings that spoke of poverty and desperation, now battered by the pounding rain. They’d had to be new to thievery because the territory they staked was not well traveled enough to be profitable.

  Unless they had been waiting for something—or someone—in particular, and he and Nieve had stumbled into their path through poor timing and misfortune.

  There were no signs of anyone other than the three men he had already disposed of, so that was good news. By the time he found his hross a few miles up the trail, the rain had stopped and the sun shone bright. The flash flood along the ancient roadway had slowed to a mere trickle.

  But Creed’s uneasiness continued to grow, reaching enormous proportions. He could not recall ever before losing control of his demon to the point that it could shift form on its own. Until today he would have sworn it impossible.

  Today proved him wrong.

  He would not be so careless again. His mortal would not be ruled by his demon.

  He had dispensed with the first two bandits and was tracking the third, already too late to keep him from reaching Nieve, but he’d known he would be. What Creed had not anticipated was the hot, visceral reaction of his demon when the thief put his hands on her.

  It had torn the man to pieces.

  And it put Creed in a difficult position. Spawn that were dangerous were to be turned over to the Godseekers, and he could not continue to pretend to himself that he was harmless. He would never have believed he was the type of man who reacted in anger, regardless of the situation, but when it came to Nieve, it seemed his demon took a different approach.

  It was becoming unmanageable, and now it posed a different type of threat to Nieve—one he did not know how to circumvent.

  After collecting his hross and changing out of the tattered remains of his damaged clothing, he returned to the spot where they had been waylaid so he could dispose of his victim’s mutilated remains. He hauled them, piece by piece, into the trees and buried them under a pile of rock and brush. He had no wish for anyone to see what he had done and wonder about it. There were enough rumors about spawn circulating already. Wolven would take care of the other two bodies.

  When that task was finished, he stood back and rubbed his neck. His tattoo itched and burned as he thought about what he should do, and what he had already done. The sun hung low in the sky now, and he did not want to make camp here.

  He and Nieve would have to ride on for several more miles. He knew she was not in any immediate danger. His
demon could sense it if she was. But it made him uneasy to think of how long he had left her alone, and he wondered if she would think he had indeed abandoned her, one more thing he had promised would not happen.

  She did not trust him. Nor should she. He had proved that he could protect her from mortals, and had no doubt he could protect her from wolven, too, if the need should arise.

  He did not know how to protect her from him.

  …

  Late in the afternoon, a spring rain began to fall, blowing in from the desert, gentle pitter patters of sound against the windows. Droplets merged, sliding in slow trickles down the glass.

  Asher knelt on a kitchen chair and leaned against the window ledge so that he could watch it through the parted curtains. Airie loved the rain, and he loved Airie, so he figured it couldn’t be all bad. She said the goddesses sent it as a gift to the world. It didn’t speak to him the way it did to her though, no matter how hard he listened. And it wasn’t that the rain didn’t like him, exactly. It was more as if the goddesses hadn’t decided yet whether or not he was okay. Therefore, he was content to watch their rain from indoors until they made up their minds.

  Airie sat in a large rocking chair near the stove, her feet on the open oven door and hands folded on her stomach, her eyes already drifting closed. The baby kept Airie awake at night with her kicking, no matter how often Ash tried to tell her to stop. Right now the baby was sleeping, and Hunter, who had gone to help one of his sisters’ husbands for the day, had told Ash to make sure Airie slept when she could.

  While Ash watched the rain and Airie, he thought of his mother. And he knew it was time for him to start traveling again.

  He hadn’t done much of it since Airie banished the demons. They watched for anyone who entered the boundary, and they waited, hoping to follow them back to the mortal world. He knew the demon who searched for his mother had already found someone to summon him, and it wouldn’t be long before the demon found his mother, too. When he did, he was going to be angry with her because she didn’t want him anymore, and he couldn’t make her.