Better for her to receive death by his hand than face these monsters alone. He did not want her to witness what they would do to him either.
First, however, a challenge had been issued and accepted, and Hunter would take the Demon Lord and as many more of the hated immortals with him as he could.
The touch of the bright golden halo of light surrounding her calmed Hunter. With one arm he groped behind him to catch her around the waist and draw her to his side, careful to keep one of his hands free and not to turn his back on the demons, and took one last look at her face, hoping she would recognize in his own some of what he was thinking.
There was so much he wished he had said to her—words of the profound love he held for her but had refused to recognize until too late. He wished he had been kinder and gentler with her. It was hard to know that the last thing he might ever bring her was death.
She met his eyes.
“I have one more thing I wish you to wear,” Airie said to him.
As she lifted the rainbow amulet from her own neck to place it around his, it struck him that something was not right about her. He stared harder into her face.
Her eyes were blue now, not brown, although familiar gold fire flickered in their depths. In his rage he had, indeed, missed important information.
If he wishes, he can fight for Airie and me.
Whoever this was, it was not Airie.
She smiled at him, an apology in the soft arc of her lips, and with a politeness of manner, she extricated herself from his embrace.
“Be quick,” this Airie-Who-Was-Not advised him. “I can’t hold her back for much longer. She’s very angry.” Her voice grew wistful. “I hope someday you can convince her to forgive me.”
Immortality can be hers if she wants it.
Understanding edged past his confusion, like the sun sliding from behind clouds. Airie was the child of two immortals, not one. A goddess did, indeed, walk with her. She did not have to die by his hand. As long as he won this fight, she would have immortality to save her.
His relief was followed by another, more painful, awareness. When this was over, whether he lived or died, he would lose her.
Regret stung at the backs of his eyes. He had wasted their valuable time together by worrying over things that did not matter. It was Airie, the woman, he loved. Would always love.
While Airie the immortal could never be his.
“Whether she forgives you or not,” he said, his throat thick, “know that I thank you for this. She could never have killed him, not even to save herself.”
“She would have, for you.” The goddess’s smile filled with sadness. “But she does not yet understand the consequences of it. And she would never have forgiven herself. He would not forgive himself either, if he harmed her. I would rather they both be unable to forgive me.”
She took both amulets in her hands and in a sweet, rich voice, so much like Airie’s it made his chest ache, she offered him her blessings. Then, with glowing fingers that trembled slightly, she fitted the amulets together, just as he had once done with them.
“Goddesses offer a different type of strength,” she said to Hunter. She leaned closer to whisper in his ear. “When the Demon Lord fights, he does not fight only you. He battles the demons whose deaths he owns, because they fight him for their freedom, too.”
She drew away before Hunter could ask her what she meant.
“Slayer!” the Demon Lord shouted. “I grow impatient.”
Hunter lifted Airie—and the goddess—onto the low platform and out of harm’s way.
Then, as he turned to face his opponent, he put them firmly from his thoughts. He had a fight to win.
The demons had begun to assemble into a tight half-circle around the front of the platform, forcing the Demon Lord and Hunter into its center. Many wore their demon forms. Hunter chose not to dwell on what would happen when first blood was spilled, only hoped it was not to be his.
He held his hands low and ready, prepared to defend himself against attack, and breathed deeply as he blocked out everything except for his opponent. This was the Demon Lord he faced, and not to be taken lightly.
He had chosen to fight Hunter in mortal form, stripping down to expose a broad, bare chest, wearing nothing but a pair of faded trousers. Thick black hair, shot through with threads of gray that glinted red in the fire from the sconces, swept his shoulders.
While impressive enough, this was not the form Hunter would have preferred to confront. He meant to goad the Demon Lord into using his greatest strengths first, so that the amulet could absorb and transmit them to Hunter.
“You seem to excel at fighting women,” he said. “A goddess, a crippled old priestess, and now your own daughter. I hope a mortal man won’t prove too much of a challenge for you.” As he spoke, he watched carefully for any opportunity to strike.
The demon’s face darkened. “Her goddess mother was a pleasure-seeking, faithless liar. Did my daughter tell you she loves you, as her mother once swore she loved me? Can you imagine how great a liar she must be, too?”
“You should be more concerned with why I’m known as the Demon Slayer,” Hunter said. “When I kill them, they die screaming.”
“We’ll see if my daughter screams, too, when she dies,” the Demon Lord said. “Although you’ll already be dead, so you’ll never know for certain.” He smiled. “You’ll have to imagine it until then.”
Hunter did not like the image, and could not shake it off as easily as he should. He realized he had chosen his weapon poorly, and that Airie was his weakness, not her father’s. The Demon Lord cared nothing for her, but only for himself.
And, perhaps, for the goddess. Certainty made Hunter smile, too. The demon spoke of her with too much anger and contempt for it to be otherwise.
“I wonder if her mother also died screaming,” Hunter said, and saw at once the barb had gone true. He had little time to prepare himself against the furious response.
A shimmering ball of searing flame the size of his head caught him high in the chest, igniting his shirt and hurling him into a living wall of demons.
Blinding pain scorched through Hunter so that it was all he could do to keep from screaming, himself. His amulet compensated, caught the power behind the demon fire, and sent it through him. The flames died. The pain, too, ebbed away as fast as it had risen.
Rough hands and grasping demon claws thrust him back to his feet. Hunter’s shirt now hung in smoldering tatters from his body, but other than that, he was unharmed. He wondered why he should feel such surprise that a goddess’s stone did so much more than enhance the power of its demon counterpart when Airie, too, could heal with a touch.
The Demon Lord walked the edges of the semicircle, pumping a fist in the air while the crowd roared, but his complete attention was not on the fight, Hunter saw. His eyes drifted to the platform.
Hunter, seizing an opportunity to use the distraction against him, rushed at his swaggering opponent.
The Demon Lord whirled, dropping into a crouch. In a blur of speed, one fist shot out.
Hunter blocked it and ducked, following through with a foot to the back of the Demon Lord’s knee that spilled him to the ground. Another roar rose from the spectators.
The Demon Lord, however, surprised him again, and Hunter found himself on his back, looking up at a ring of faces—too many of them demonic now, not mortal, as they shifted in reaction to the fight.
The Demon Lord’s knuckles slammed against Hunter’s cheek, narrowly missing his nose, and for a second, Hunter thought his cheekbone had shattered. Agony blossomed in his eye socket and through his temple before his body absorbed it to turn it to strength.
But the Demon Lord had not gotten as much force behind the blow as he’d intended. The flash of awareness in his eyes as his glance flickered to the dual amulet on Hunter’s chest said he understood why, and that he had not expected something he had crafted to work against him.
Now that he knew it would, onc
e he got over his shock, he would find a way to circumvent it.
Hunter had to draw blood while he still had a chance.
He hooked his feet into the Demon Lord’s hips to lock him in place, then grabbed the amulet in his fist and used its edge to gouge at the Demon Lord’s face.
A thin line of red streaked from the demon’s left eye, down his cheek, to the corner of his mouth.
He bellowed in outrage and pain. He tried to shift, but the amulet had drawn too much from him so that he could not do so completely. Claws sprouted from the tips of his fingers.
Those were enough to be deadly.
He slashed at Hunter’s throat, and thick spurts of warm, copper-scented blood sprayed out to stain the Demon Lord’s face and bared chest in reward. Still straddling Hunter’s body, both his fists flew high and his shouts of victory rang off the cavern walls.
A woman’s screams pierced through the howls of the demons as Hunter’s hands went to his torn throat in an effort to stop the heavy flow of blood. He fought to stay conscious, fear for Airie the only thought in his head.
The Demon Lord had drawn his hand back, prepared to deliver a second blow to Hunter’s chest to tear out his heart with his claws, but the attempt to shift had cost the Demon Lord more strength than he seemed to realize.
Hunter’s amulet shot out great streams of blinding golden light that flung the Demon Lord several feet backward. He struck the edge of the stone platform and slumped to the ground in a daze. A chunk of rock the size of a demon’s fist split away and toppled past his bent head.
As Hunter struggled to right his blurring vision, the bleeding at his throat stopped and the sting of the cuts disappeared. A sense of urgency, and of time slipping away, roused him to action. The amulet, too, was growing weaker, every time it had to heal him.
A larger threat lifted its head.
Hunter froze in the act of rising, one hand on the ground and legs bent at the knee, and looked up. The demons closest to him had caught the scent of his blood. Hunger glittered in their red eyes.
Hunter dared to steal another glance at Airie, who had fallen to her hands and knees when the Demon Lord struck the platform’s edge, and saw she was no longer alone. Beside her, outlined in gold light, stood the faint silhouette of a second woman. Her lips moved as she spoke soothing words to Airie he could not hear, and she placed one hand on her arm in an attempt to stop her trembling.
His heart went still. If not even Airie’s goddess mother could contain her when she was this agitated, it would not be long before she threw herself into the fray. Airie possessed no natural fear for herself, and would let nothing stop her from coming to his aid.
He did not trust goddess light to protect her from blood-frenzied demons. Not when the goddesses had been unable to defend themselves against the fury of the Demon Lord as he burned their mountain.
The Demon Lord was on his feet again, although staggering as if drunk. A bluish green haze enveloped him.
Hunter blinked, thinking at first that his vision had been damaged by one of the blows he’d received, but then the haze wavered and separated into a number of shadows.
The goddess’s words returned to him.
He battles the demons whose deaths he owns, because they fight him for their freedom, too.
Hunter had often wondered why demons who enjoyed hunting mortals had not killed each other off a long time ago. The answer was that they paid too heavy a price for it.
It meant the Demon Lord was weak, and the change in the tone of the crowd’s rumbling told Hunter the others knew it, too. The cheers for their leader died away.
Their thirst for blood did not. Both the Demon Lord and Hunter were coated in it, and Hunter watched warily as their attention shifted between them, trying to decide which of them was the weaker.
He could not claim to be in the best of shape. Much of the strength he had gained was lost in his healing, and while one demon he thought he could manage, a hundred would be ninety-nine too many.
Low chanting began, gradually gaining strength and momentum. Blood. Blood. BLOOD.
Pushing and shoving from the spectators at the back triggered a brawl as they tried to move to the front. One sledgehammer-sized fist missed its target and pummeled a hole into a cavern wall. Another demon slammed headfirst into a stone pillar. Fine cracks splintered upward and fanned across the ceiling in intricate, spidery webs. Without their leader to keep them in check, whatever discipline remained to them was about to be lost.
The fire guttering along the cavern walls gave Hunter an idea. Airie needed something to do that would be of benefit to them both, yet also keep her from harm.
“Airie!” he shouted to her. “Surround us with fire!”
…
It had taken all the strength Airie possessed to disentangle her thoughts from the goddess’s, and she’d had to draw on her demon birthright to do so.
She could not stand back and do nothing. If the Demon Lord fell, the others would tear Hunter apart. Bloodlust already consumed them.
Please, she begged the golden figure, now still as a stone statue beside her. Release me from our agreement. I have to help him.
The goddess turned tragic, sorrow-filled eyes on her. Her lashes lowered, and it was clear her attention was not on Airie. I am your servant. Yours to command. I cannot hold you if you don’t wish for it.
Anger at this admission of another lie and betrayal, offered so casually, pounded inside Airie like a heavy fist on an already fragile door. She had been raised to respect the goddesses, and helped her mother serve them her whole life. She had stood back while Hunter accepted a challenge on her behalf because she had trusted a goddess to deal fairly with her, but had not been told she did not need to agree to it.
Her faith and very existence were founded on lies.
Airie tried to think past her boiling anger and growing desperation. Hunter could not fight them all. She searched around her for a weapon, but came up with nothing.
The Demon Lord was back on his feet now, a writhing, blue-green haze churning, snakelike, beneath his glowing skin, and while that slowed the tide of demons, it did not stop them.
Hunter was shouting something to her, his words barely understandable over the rising chants for his blood.
“Airie! Surround us with fire!”
Chapter Twenty
Hunter was pointing at the sconces on the walls.
Of course.
Airie’s hopes lifted. Fire was her weapon.
The last time she called it the Demon Lord had wrested it away from her, but this time, as she held out her hands, she was better prepared and more confident in her abilities. Her demon instincts, straining against the confines of a goddess upbringing and the will of her Demon Lord father, told her all she needed to know. What she held was hers, not his, the same as rain. She had been born with it, and it came to her from the world around her.
She was the Demon Lord’s daughter. If she wished, she could call his fire to her, too.
She did.
It danced up the walls in great ropes of yellow flame, twisting and swirling along the rifts in the cavern’s ceiling before dropping to form a thick sheet of fire between the two combatants and the mass of demons.
As it fell, Hunter shot from his crouched position like a bullet from a gun, ramming his shoulder into the Demon Lord’s chest and bearing him to the ground.
Both were on their feet again in an instant. The Demon Lord grabbed Hunter by the arms, then grimaced and could not seem to retain his grip as blue-green shadows undulated and writhed beneath his flesh. Hunter took immediate advantage, and brought his head forward to smash it into the demon’s face before driving a knee into his groin.
Bloodied and weakened, doubled over in pain, the Demon Lord’s eyes went to the golden figure of light on the platform beside Airie. Loss and sorrow crossed his face, followed by resignation.
Airie knew he was beaten, and moved to shield her goddess mother from the sight of what was to
come.
The Demon Lord wiped at the blood streaming from his nose and mouth with the back of his hand as he squared off against Hunter to deliver one last taunt. “My demons won’t be held back. Will you battle them all, Slayer? Is she worth that much to you?”
“Yes,” Hunter said.
He shot his fist into the Demon Lord’s broken face, knocking him down one final time.
Then, he crushed his throat beneath his boot.
A thick, blue-green haze slid from the fallen Demon Lord to Airie, through the pores of her skin, its weight and a sick comprehension driving her to her knees on the platform. She owned her father’s death now, as he would have owned hers if he had won the challenge instead of Hunter, and her demon instincts whispered that it would not be as easy a one to bear as her mother’s.
The sound of the goddess’s sobs echoed in the otherwise silent cavern as the demons watched their leader fall.
As Airie dealt with the death she’d absorbed, and the weight of its strength shifting to her, the wall of fire she had summoned at Hunter’s request faltered and slipped from her grasp.
She lifted her head.
The mood in the cavern had shifted from ugly anticipation to even uglier threat. Hunter stood to her right. Blood stained his tattered clothing and smeared his skin, but for all that, he appeared unharmed. He swung sweat-dampened blond hair from his eyes and glared around, chest heaving, primed for the next demon to step forward and challenge him.
Despite the freedom the Demon Lord’s death brought them, the demons were not departing, Airie also saw. Instead, they divided their attention between her and Hunter, as if deciding which of them to pursue first.
Raw anger exploded inside her. She would not own the Demon Lord’s death for nothing. She possessed fire. And rain. If demons would not leave peaceably, she would kill them all, one by one if she had to.
She dragged herself to her feet, then the edge of the platform, as the goddess’s sobs turned to screams.
No, Airie. This is not the way!
Demon's Daughter (Demon Outlaws) Page 28