So that was what he was doing, but really, Hunter shouldn’t be worrying about watching over Airie and instead, needed to pay more attention to what people were saying.
Because Ash heard a lot of whispered talk about spawn. All he had to do was make himself inconspicuous and wander a little away from Airie’s side.
They entered the general mercantile. Ash liked the smell of this store. It was a combination of sun-dried goods, wooden barrels, and spices and herbs.
Five barrels had been unloaded into one corner, near the front of the store. Ash liked to observe the things happening around him in private, so while Airie headed for the flour bin at the back, he wormed his way in between those barrels.
One contained sauerkraut. Its sharp, tangy scent bit the inside of his nose and made his eyes water. A cat prowled along an overhead rafter, its muscles bunched as it hunted mikken—tiny rodents with long tails, sharp teeth and flexible bodies that could squeeze into surprisingly small spaces. One crawled over Ash’s foot, paused to look at him as if startled by his presence, then scurried away to disappear into a crack in the wall.
As Ash waited for Airie to finish her shopping, it wasn’t rumors of spawn that he heard. Instead, clear as a bell, he heard a half demon girl ask his mother for her son’s name.
And his mother, who didn’t know any better, gave it to her. Asher hunkered a little deeper into the small fortress of barrels.
That meant the mean woman now had it, too.
…
They were in their hotel room.
Creed had wanted to move on and get as far away from town as they could, but even though she knew it was foolish, Nieve had refused. Walls could hardly protect them, yet she felt safer inside.
She had taken matters into her own hands. Once they’d gotten to their room she’d ordered cleaning cloths, as well as the pitchers of warm water that now sat on the floor next to a small fire spitting in the hearth.
Creed lounged in a chair by the window, one leg stretched out, an occasional table beside him. She dipped a cloth in a basin of tepid water, wrung it out, and dabbed at the cuts on his face. He remained motionless beneath her ministrations, his characteristic good humor dampened as he pondered recent events aloud. Nieve listened, but her own head was tired and filled with too many questions. Most had to do with all of the things that could have gone wrong. Or worse than they had.
“She’s burned entire villages. She destroyed a wagon train. She could have summoned a demon, yet she didn’t. Why not?” Creed asked.
Nieve did not want to think of demons. It was too painful for her to connect the winged creature that had shot from the ground to this man. “She said she had what she wanted.”
Creed slid an arm around her hips and she leaned into him. “What she wanted was you,” he said. “I’m curious to know why she would obey a demon in the first place. Or why she would risk angering him by accepting defeat so easily and walking away when she’d had you, then lost you.”
Nieve bit her lip. She had no idea either, but was glad all the same.
“I know I promised you that we’d search for your son,” Creed continued, “but I also told you there’d be times when we had to set the search aside for other matters. I think right now we need to get to the Borderlands as quickly as possible. The sooner I enlist the Demon Slayer, the better. I can’t continue hunting half demons on my own. There are far too many, and with unknown abilities.”
Willow’s words returned to taunt Nieve. Did you know he was turning half demons, including children, over to the Godseekers for judgment?
She did not want to think about the terrible things Willow had said, and the accusations that had been leveled against Creed. He had never lied to her.
But she had to prepare herself to hear the truth he had not told her either, especially if it was not going to be to her liking. She had known all along that hunting half demons was what Creed did. She also knew he’d been investigating the disappearance of children. She simply hadn’t considered what it might mean if those missing children were also half demon, and that his duty to the Godseekers would then extend to passing judgment on them for something in which they could not be held accountable.
“I didn’t realize the half demons you hunt include chil-dren,” Nieve said, testing the waters.
He took too long to answer her. When he did, he did not deny it. A part of her heart shriveled and turned to dust.
“Their age doesn’t matter,” Creed said. “Whether or not they are damaged, or too demon in nature, is what’s most important.”
“You think Asher won’t pass Godseeker judgment. That if he’s survived the slave trade it’s because he’s too demon.” Her lips had gone numb, the words falling from them like the tiny droplets of blood still seeping from the cut above Creed’s blackened eye. She wasn’t certain which hurt her worse—the thought of her child suffering abuse, or that even if rescued, he would be deemed dangerous and condemned for it. Unshed tears blurred her vision. None of this was his fault.
He was a child.
Creed caught Nieve’s hand. She clutched the bloodied cloth in her clenched fist and realized she’d been wiping his cuts and bruises with too much force.
“If he’s survived it means he’s resourceful. There’s nothing wrong with that,” Creed said. “What do you re-member of him?”
“He’s adorable,” Nieve replied. She could not bear to speak of him in the past tense. “Affectionate. He always knows when I’m troubled and brings me little things, pretty rocks and flowers, or unusual objects, to distract me. He can make himself go unnoticed for hours at a time, which is no doubt the reason Bear let him stay with me as long as he did.”
“The young girl who lured you to Willow,” Creed per-sisted. His one open eye was steady on her face. “Was she also adorable? Persuasive? Could she make herself go unnoticed?” Nieve jerked her arm, trying to free her hand from his, but he refused to release it. His fingers tightened and his voice hardened, demanding that she listen to him and acknowledge what he was saying. “I’m half demon, too, Nieve. I know what drives us. There’s a good chance your son is everything you say he is, and that his mortality outweighs the demon instincts in him. But no one can know for certain if that’s true, or what slavery has done to him. I can’t even say that my own mortality outweighs my demon anymore. So how do you think that makes me feel about my duties? How careful do you think I’m going to be when I employ them? Do you believe this is somehow easy for me?”
She’d never stopped to think that perhaps he was conflicted over his duties. Willow had accused him of betraying both half demons and Godseekers by lying to them. Nieve, who had come to know him, knew this was untrue. He was doing his best, and what he believed was best for everyone, in a world that was changing in unexpected and often fearsome ways.
But she would not stand back and allow his best to bring harm to her son. An alternative presented itself, one she was not quite ready to contemplate. If she had to give up her search for Ash right now in order to keep him safe from both Creed and his demon father, then she would. But if she gave it up, she could not stay with Creed. It would be too much as if she had chosen him over her own child, and she could not live with herself if she did that. Sooner or later she would hate him for it, too.
Their search for Ash together had ended. As soon as she could, she would take the money she had hidden in her clothing and leave Creed. Then she would need to find a place where she could hide from Willow. Once the danger to Ash had passed, she would pick up her search again.
The thought of parting from Creed caused a sharp, shooting pain to erupt beneath her ribs, but she, too, wanted Willow stopped. She did not want her bringing Asher’s father back into this world. It was best if Creed continued with the task he’d originally been given and forgot he’d ever heard of her or her son.
“No,” Nieve said. “I don’t think what’s happening will be easy for anyone.”
“First thing in the morning, at the break of
day, we’ll set off for the Borderlands,” Creed said.
He let go of her hand and she rinsed out the cloth in fresh water, then with more gentleness, continued to dab at his injured face.
Chapter Thirteen
Ash heard his name and sat up in bed.
It echoed in his head like the ringing of a loud mental bell. He held his breath, expecting any second to end up in the boundary, hiding from demons, but that didn’t happen.
Everything was shrouded in dark. Through the plain cotton curtains, the moon rode low in the black night sky and did not give off much light. Hunter and Airie were asleep. Ash listened to their breathing—Hunter’s deep and relaxed, Airie’s lighter and more restless. The baby was awake but quiet, giving Airie a few moments’ peace.
Ash would like to go back to sleep, too, but Imp was hiding in the barn and she was scared.
He slid out from beneath his blankets and crept down the stairs, the treads smooth and cool beneath his bare feet. He let himself out through the kitchen door, lifting the heavy bar that locked it with a bit of a struggle because he was small, and had to stretch on his toes to get it free. That took him a few minutes. His natural instinct was to take a shortcut through the boundary, but that path was too dangerous now that the woman who summoned demons knew his name.
The yard looked much different at night. A hross snorted in the paddock, bumping against the wooden railing. Shadows and moonlight made things seem bigger and more threatening than they were during the day, but Ash had walked through the demon boundary too many times to be afraid of a few noises in a mortal night.
He scampered across the yard and cracked the barn door open just wide enough for him to squeeze through. He didn’t want to startle the girl hiding in the hay loft. She was already frightened enough.
“Hello?” he called out, not very loud, only enough so that she’d know it was him in case she couldn’t see in the dark as well as he could. He didn’t expect her to answer. It didn’t matter. He already knew where she was, and he knew this barn as well as he knew his own bedroom, even at night.
The floor was wooden, and scattered with loose bits of hay that caught between his toes as he crossed the wide open space to the ladder that led to the hay loft above. In a stall in the corner a mare due to foal any day kicked at the side of the barn, not liking being disturbed.
He climbed the ladder and found her hiding in a narrow tunnel he’d made between the musty mounds of last summer’s hay. She had the same tangled hair he remembered, although the scraped knees were new. She’d drawn them up to her chin.
“You shouldn’t have answered,” she whispered when he crawled through the tunnel to join her. “I only wanted to find a good place to hide. I figured if you were safe here, I would be, too.”
That was why she’d spoken his name. She’d wanted to find him, not try to summon him.
“You know my name,” Ash said.
“So does Willow, so you have to stay out of the boundary. She plans to give your name to a demon.”
Ash wasn’t too worried. Not for himself. “If a demon summons me to the boundary, all you have to do is summon me back.”
She looked uncertain. “How am I supposed to know if a demon summons you?”
“That’s why you’ve got to go back,” he said. He took her hand. It was skinny and rough, and he felt bad because his was not and he had people who loved and looked after him. He gave her fingers a squeeze. “But you won’t have to stay with the mean woman forever.”
His mother would take care of Imp. So would Airie. Then she’d know what it was really like to be loved.
…
The night was cool and the hotel quiet. Two large sliding windows that led onto a narrow balcony had been left open to let in fresh air. Long, gossamer, wraithlike curtains fluttered to either side of them.
Creed lay in the moon-fed darkness with Nieve in his arms, spooned against him. Her hair was damp from the bath she’d had earlier, silky soft and smelling of flowery soap. Feminine and delicate. He listened to her quiet breathing and thanked the goddesses that she was safe. But Willow had gotten something from her, something she believed more important even than Nieve, and it worried him that he did not know what it was, or might be.
Although the injuries he’d received were already healing, they also kept him awake. The demon fire burn on his chest was taking more time, and that troubled him, too, but not because of the pain.
Creed had seen the look of fear in Nieve’s eyes when he’d approached her in demon form, dropping from the sky, intending to carry her off to safety, and the way she had turned from him.
Not only had she turned away, she had tried to protect a half demon, who wished her nothing but harm, from him. And his demon, focused entirely on Nieve and with no concept of time, had responded to her immediate fear and not the impending danger, as it should. It had begun to shift in midair, which was when the fire had struck him. That fire also saved his life, because it had startled his demon enough to interrupt the spontaneous shift.
Creed did not delude himself. A part of Nieve would always fear him for what he was. Even after the danger had passed, and she’d called him a terrible assassin because he hadn’t used his greatest weapon against Stone, she had not been able to articulate what that weapon was.
To her, he was a demon.
He could not even deny it with honesty. Not anymore. He did not have it under control, as he’d always believed. It had given her fire as a means of protecting herself, but she could only use it through him, which robbed her of freedom. That was no true gift.
More was at stake here than Creed’s feelings for Nieve, or his demon’s possessiveness of her. If he could not regain command of it, and have his mortal side once again in complete control, all of his well-placed plans would disintegrate. What he valued most would be lost to him. He did not want to choose one side, demon or mortal, over the other.
He wanted justice for all.
When they got to the Borderlands and the Demon Slayer, he would see to Nieve’s future. He would again promise to search for her son. Then he would leave her, and he would pursue that justice.
The bed was thick and comfortable, and quite large, but Creed was a big man who took up his fair share of the space and he must have made some movement or noise to disturb her. Perhaps she simply sensed his somber mood, which was so out of character for him.
She stirred, turning toward him, her wide, beautiful eyes drifting open to focus on him. They held no fear now, only languid desire, and Creed’s somber mood diminished.
“What are you thinking about?” she asked.
The question began as something light and teasing, as if she already anticipated the answer he would give. Or perhaps it was simply the one she wanted to elicit from him so that she would not need to delve deeper into who—what—he was.
Creed found that second possibility unbearable.
“Other than your son, if you could have anything you wanted, what would it be?” he asked in return.
Often when he asked Nieve such questions, she gave him responses that were cautious and incomplete, as if she did not dare speak them aloud for fear they might somehow evaporate. This time, her answer was swift and undoubtedly heartfelt. It was completely honest in that it reflected dreams that had already gone astray for her.
“A home,” she said, her tone wistful. “A dozen more children to love. A world where they can all be happy and safe and know that I’ll do whatever it takes to protect them.”
She did not say she wanted him, too, but he could feel that she did. He also knew she believed it impossible. He did not fit into her dreams.
Which was fair enough. Her dreams did not fit into his life.
“What about you?” she asked. “What do you want?”
“I want you to have everything you dream of,” he said.
She frowned as if his answer was trite and insulting. “Let’s say I have those things. What would you want then?”
“I meant
what I said.” He did. It was what he’d been thinking of before she awakened. “I want a world where you and your children are safe, but where everyone else is, too.”
“But what about for yourself?” Nieve tucked her hand beneath her cheek and inserted one knee between his thighs, then answered her own question. “You’ve always put duty first. You’ve never given any thought to what you might want.”
“Not true,” he said. “I think about what I want constantly. I’m thinking about it right now.”
He bent to kiss her forehead, then her lips. She arched against him, her breasts pressing tight to his naked chest, and returned his kiss on a sharp inhale of desire that made him instantly hard with need. Her fingers toyed with the edges of his tattoo, making it burn, but in an intoxicating way that only increased his hunger for her.
“That’s not what I meant,” she said when he lifted his head, although a smile curved her mouth upward.
“Nevertheless, when you first woke up, you asked me what I was thinking about.” He ran a finger from the underside of her chin to the tip of one breast. “This is it.” It simply wasn’t the only thing. But right now, in this moment, it was all that mattered to him.
She slid cool fingers around the curve of his neck, pressing against him, and ran the tip of her tongue along the crease of his clavicle. The jolt of that delicate touch seared his chest to his groin. While he did not want to rush her, but to allow her to set the pace that gave her the most pleasure, he could not think past how ready he was to be deep inside her.
Nieve pushed at his hips, edging him onto his back, and straddled his thighs. The sheet that had covered them fell away to tangle around his legs. He cupped her breasts in his hands and she sighed, a sound of unrestrained enjoyment that brought his tattoo alive. It was not that Nieve was not passionate. She very much was. But always, she held a part of herself back and Creed grew more determined to break past that reserve. He kissed first one breast, then the other, as his erection nudged at her folds.
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