“What’s on for dinner this evening?” he asked once he’d registered and been handed a key by the reedy young man who waited on him. Whatever it was, it smelled good.
“Chicken and biscuits.”
He had been assigned a room on the third floor. Single men took the top rooms so that women traveling with men did not have to climb the extra flight of stairs. Women, single or otherwise, did not stay in hotels alone. Not if the hotel was respectable.
He had a quick wash in the men’s bath house attached to the hotel, then went to the dining area to eat. He chose a linen-draped table near one of the windows that overlooked the main street and sat facing the door, making himself inconspicuous to the other diners in the room.
The flame of the candle on the table bounced off the dark glass of the window, but despite the settling night Creed had a clear view of the street outside. Warm light from the saloon across the way spilled onto the boardwalk. Even though he was not a drinker, he thought he might spend his evening in the saloon. Regardless of his profession, he liked people as a whole and enjoyed their companionship when he could get it.
He flirted with the pretty waitress when she came to take his order, making her smile. But his heart was not in it.
As much as he wanted to put the whole incident at the ranch behind him, he could not seem to contain these continued and unwanted thoughts about Nieve and her welfare. The people in that wagon train would have been better prepared to defend themselves than she, and they had not survived the disturbing attack. He had no idea where their attacker, or attackers, had been headed. He had not forgotten the ill-tempered sand swift roaming free around the ranch either. There had been no sign of it when he left.
Was she safe?
He was well into his serving of chicken and hot biscuits when a conversation at another table distracted him.
He guessed by the look of the table’s two occupants that they were involved in the mining industry, possibly investors in the claim they were discussing, which would explain their presence in a place like Desert’s End. They did not look like miners. Ranchers either. By its cut, their clothing was expensive and not locally made.
“The boy murdered a miner twice his size and got arrested for claim jumping. It took three men to bring him in. He cut the throat of his jailor before burning the jail down,” a man said. “Then he vanished. It’s fair to speculate that he’s spawn.”
There were a lot of mines in the mountains. Some were owned independently, some of them brought in investors, while others were run by the communities that had built up around them. No matter what, it was dangerous business and Godseekers served as the law.
Creed had already been handed his task and was stretching its boundaries to the limit. This one would have been given to somebody else to investigate. Nevertheless, if half demons were implicated, he was curious as to why. Especially after what he had seen with the wagon train that day, because this incident, too, had involved fire.
“It seems like every time something bad happens, the person’s labeled spawn,” the second man insisted. “Demons or not, if there were so many of them they would have revealed themselves long before this.”
The first speaker made a sound of disgust. “Keep talking like that and people might start to wonder why you’re defending the boy. You got something to hide, Treble?”
The man named Treble already had his dinner knife in one hand when Creed decided the rising hostility between them required his intervention. To suggest that someone was spawn was the worst insult imaginable. People had been murdered for far less.
He pushed back his chair and leaned the short distance between the two tables, ramping up his compulsion and sending out an air of good will.
Immediately, the hostility abated and both men relaxed.
“I couldn’t help overhearing,” Creed said. “I’ve been away on other business. Something happened at a mine in the mountains?”
The men appeared startled to discover a Godseeker assassin sitting at the table next to them, but Creed made himself amiable enough that they were not alarmed by it.
The tale they told was a dark one. When they finished, Creed had to agree that the first man was no doubt correct. It sounded to him as if the boy accused of murder was spawn as well. The fire involved in his escape, however, appeared to have been ordinary, and caused by a lamp.
He returned to his meal, his thoughts even more troubled now, when an unusual movement across the shadowed street gave him pause. A slight, feminine figure mounted the steps to the saloon across the way, hesitated at the door, then with a stiffening of the shoulders, pushed inside.
His fork clattered to the plate. He would recognize her anywhere. And he could not quite believe that the timid creature he had met, one who did not seem to want to draw male attention, would ever enter a saloon unaccompanied.
Then he remembered that she had tried to kill him, and he had not expected that from her either.
He dropped a few coins on the table and abandoned the rest of his meal. A minute later, he was outside and striding across the street.
…
Hunter and Airie thought he was sleeping. Ash knew they would never be having this conversation otherwise.
Ash loved the house where he lived with Hunter and Airie. It was big, and old, and had lots of cupboards and corners in which he could hide. When Hunter had arrived home with a ready-made family, his parents had moved into a smaller house on the far side of the property and left the original farm house to their only son. They were nice to Ash. They were nice to Airie, too.
But not everyone else was. The town had gotten a lot bigger since Hunter had left it, and many people here were strangers to him. A lot of them weren’t happy that the Demon Slayer had returned, and about whom he’d brought with him.
Yet Airie and Ash were only the beginning of who—what—was coming. They needed the big man to help them.
He lay on his stomach in the shadows at the head of the stairs, where their voices carried up to him from the warmth and bright light of the kitchen. Airie liked to putter around it in the evenings. Hunter said he helped her so that he could make sure she did not overexert herself, but Ash knew he simply enjoyed being with her because she was so pretty and happy.
She wasn’t happy this evening. She sounded worried.
“They’re rumors, Airie. Nothing more,” Hunter was say-ing, but Ash knew he was worried too.
“It’s the way people whisper,” Airie said. A pot clattered. She was putting dishes away. “They don’t know I can hear them talking. There has to be a bit of truth to what they’re saying.”
“Why now, all of a sudden, would there be spawn in the world?” There was a brief pause, then Hunter’s voice, sounding chastened and grumpy, drifted upward again. “Sorry. Half demons.”
“That’s the trouble,” Airie replied. “They aren’t all half demons. Some are their grandchildren and great-grandchildren. We have no idea how many generations back they go. But they all have demon blood, and now that the demons are gone, they seem to have acquired at least part of their ancestors’ traits. Or the traits they already had are gaining in strength, and less easy for them to hide.” Another pot clanged as either Hunter or Airie put it into a cupboard. “My own talents are stronger than before.”
“But you possess demons,” Hunter said, “where before, you didn’t. That might explain why you’re stronger.”
Ash knew that Airie wasn’t like him. Not exactly. Her mother had been a goddess, which meant Airie could have been an immortal if she’d wanted. Airie, however, had chosen to remain with Hunter. But because she was born an immortal, she had to own the deaths of any of her kind that she caused—either directly or indirectly—and she owned at least five. Two of those were her parents. Her goddess mother and demon father did not struggle against her, but protected Airie’s unborn baby from the other three. That was something Hunter did not understand and she didn’t want him to know, because she believed he already worried abo
ut her pregnancy more than he should.
“That doesn’t explain the rumors,” Airie replied. “We know Scratch is at least part demon. There could be a lot more like him in the world.”
“He doesn’t seem any different now than he was when we found him.” Hunter’s voice came from the side of the kitchen nearest to Ash, where the table was.
“He’s different,” Airie said. She sounded quite definite, which surprised Ash. He thought he’d been careful, but then Airie was special. It was harder to hide things from her. “He’s learning to control it better as he gets older. That’s why you haven’t noticed. But other people have, and they’re talking. Add to it the stories about half demons coming out of the Godseeker Mountains, and sooner or later, there’s going to be trouble. And they’re going to say that we brought it here.”
When Ash craned his neck, he could see Hunter and Airie were both at the table now. Airie was sitting on Hunter’s lap, and he had his hands on her stomach so he could feel the baby if it moved.
“Let them say it. That won’t make it true,” Hunter said.
But it would be true, Ash knew, because his mother was coming for him. When she did, the mean woman wouldn’t be too far behind.
Ash also knew what made people do the things they did, and he wasn’t afraid of the mean woman. It was what she believed that was going to be the real problem for everyone. She thought life had cheated her. That it was unfair. She also thought half demons were better than mortals. She was teaching children who didn’t know any better not to let life cheat them too, and that they should take what they wanted.
Ash knew it didn’t matter if a person was mortal, immortal, or half demon. Life was about giving, not taking, or taking what one was given and making it better. That was what Hunter and Airie, and the big man with his mother, all believed.
But Airie was the only one who could convince the mean woman she had things all wrong, and Ash didn’t think that would happen because the mean woman also believed Airie had betrayed her somehow. She planned to hurt Airie, and a lot of other people besides. In order to stop her, they needed the big man to help.
But getting the big man here meant having to put Ash’s mother in danger, and make her remember things that were better for her to forget, and Ash didn’t like that.
The floor was hard and he wiggled around on his belly to find a more comfortable position. He nestled his cheek against his folded arms. He loved his mother and he missed her, and he reminded himself he had no reason to worry.
The big man would protect her.
…
Heads turned, one by one, as Nieve came through the door. Within seconds, every eye in the room had fastened on her.
Under those unwelcoming, semi-incredulous stares, she almost lost her nerve. This was not a place intended for women unless they were working whores, and she had not yet reached that point in her life.
But she had finally made it through Bear’s papers and there was nothing in them to indicate what had happened to Ash. Nieve had not been willing to wait another day for substantive information. She hoped the saloon’s owner, who heard everything according to Bear, would know something about the traders who had bought her son.
All that had made the fruitless hours of searching bearable was the knowledge that the demon assassin would be long gone by the time she got to Desert’s End, and she would never have to face him again.
She had not meant to pull the trigger. Fear had made her do so, but Nieve was honest with herself. She had been more afraid of what he made her feel, because until she found Ash, her emotions had to be set firmly aside or she would not be able to function. She was not strong enough to manage them.
The saloon was quite nice, and not at all what she had expected, undoubtedly due in part to the high quality of the hotel across from it. The floors were clean, and the patrons well dressed. Gas lighting spread deep into the corners.
Business resumed. Glasses clattered on brass trays carried by women wearing scandalous dresses, a song tinkled from the music machine at the back, and men, deep in private conversation, spoke to each other in hushed voices. Overall, it had the air of a private club. One in which Nieve was not a member, and in fact, an unwelcome interloper.
The owner, a stout, middle-aged man she knew only by sight, leaned with both hands on the polished mahogany bar at the far end of the low-ceilinged saloon. As she walked the entire length of the room to speak with him he eyed her with such disapproval that she wanted to run, but did not. The gun the demon assassin had given her caused a reassuring weight in one pocket of her full skirt. As instructed, she kept it well hidden.
“Bear knows better than this,” the man said to her when she reached the bar. His thick, handlebar mustache quivered against his upper lip as he spoke. “If he wishes to speak with me, he’s to come here himself.”
With a start, Nieve realized that his disapproval was not aimed at her but at Bear. She could use this to her advantage. Her courage returned in a rush, along with giddy elation.
“Please, sir,” she said, her voice soft and deferential, but also steady. She dropped her eyes and stared at his hands splayed against the polished wood of the counter. “He wants to know if there’s been any word on the traders who came here last year, and when they’re returning. He’s been expecting them.”
The man drummed his fingertips on the bar. He opened his mouth, then closed it, as if uncertain whether or not he should speak. Finally he said, “Any day now. They sent word a few weeks ago. They’re late. If he wants to know anything more than that, he can ask me.”
Their return had been a wild guess on her part, based on timing. She knew slavers regularly traveled into the mining regions, where women were in constant and high demand. Bear had intimated more than once that he would send her to one when she was of no more use to him. All she had to do now was be patient and await their arrival.
She risked asking one more question because she could not help but worry that she might somehow have missed them already, or they might have had a change of plans. “Where did they send the last message from?”
“Freetown.” The owner leaned forward. His serious expression and darting eyes revealed impatience with her and a rising concern. “I understand that Bear isn’t the easiest man to live with, and you’re afraid to go back without the information he wants, but you need to get out of here. This is no place for a woman like you, and I don’t want any trouble.”
Nieve thanked him and turned away, already armed with more information than she had dared hope for. She did not look to the right or left, but kept her gaze fixed on the exit, so was surprised when a hand seized her arm.
Attached to the hand was a youngish man of about thirty years. He was not unattractive, or even unkempt, but there was a cruelty to his eyes that Nieve recognized all too well.
“If you’re looking for light work, then I can keep you occupied for a few hours,” he said.
She tried not to show it, but inside, she was shaking. “I work for Bear.”
The man did not let go of her arm. “This Bear should be more careful with his valuables if he wishes to hang on to them. His loss is my gain. Not to worry. I’ll be providing greater protection than this.”
Desert’s End was not a large town. Nieve had thought Bear’s reputation alone would be enough to prevent such advances. She had not considered that there would be strangers in the saloon who did not know of him, or might not care if they did.
She faced a quandary. She did not wish to cause an even greater disturbance than she already had through her mere presence here, but did not know how to extricate herself. Even if she could reach the gun in her skirt, which she could not, she knew better than to shoot a man in a saloon.
Any further response on her part was not necessary, however. Another man, this time familiar, came out of nowhere. Preoccupied as she was with her problematic new benefactor, she had not seen Creed enter the saloon.
Her heart almost stopped at the sheer magnific
ence of him. Of his perfect-formed features and exquisite male beauty. He turned his head from side to side, scanning the room with eyes like shards of blue diamond. The tattoo running up the base of his skull, black against the gold-hued backdrop of his skin, undulated with each movement he made as if it had a life all its own.
Calmness assailed her with his appearance. He was using compulsion again, but what he exuded felt fractured to her this time, and erratic in its pulsing intensity, as if he had difficulty controlling it. It had a peaceful effect on the nearby tables because the men seated around them settled into their chairs and returned to their own business.
Yet, a bit farther away and closer to the door, people continued to stare.
Hostility crept beneath Creed’s air of calm, and her assailant seemed to sense it. Nieve, standing between them and wishing to be far away from them both, watched the two men assess each other. Her heart slipped to her boots. Her assailant did not recognize Creed as either an assassin or a demon. There was about to be trouble, just as the owner had feared, and she was its cause.
“She has no need of additional protection,” Creed said. He did not look at the hand on Nieve’s arm, but watched the man’s face. “But thank you for your concern.”
Rather than release her, the man’s fingers tightened to the point of pain. He twisted her arm, making her cry out.
Creed’s compelling calmness vanished completely. One large fist flew past Nieve’s cheek to land in the other man’s face, emitting a wet, pulpy sound, and a drop of blood splashed on the floor at her feet. The blow knocked the stranger from his chair. He caught the edge of the table as he went down, toppling it onto its side.
The stranger bounced back to his feet. Anticipation brought a smile to his split and swelling lips. He dove at Creed, who shook off a well-aimed blow to one kidney as if he had not so much as noticed it.
The mood of the formerly genteel-seeming saloon degenerated to mayhem.
Nieve, now disregarded, seized her chance and darted for the door, weaving between the emptied tables and around men more interested in watching the fight than in hindering her escape.
The Demon Creed (A Demon Outlaws Novel) (Entangled Edge) Page 8