It began to affect him several miles before they arrived above it, filling him with a dull, familiar anticipation that he could not forget, a feeling he deeply resented for that reason. He had offered his service to the goddesses as an ignorant boy. He had not fully understood then that the allegiance could not be withdrawn or that he would feel their presence until the day he died. The depth of his hatred for them sometimes surprised even him.
The other two men, Seeker and the assassin Gauntlet, did not seem to notice the oppressive atmosphere of the boundary, but Willow did. Justice identified her uneasiness in the way she shifted in the saddle behind him, her hands and legs in constant motion as if she could not get comfortable. He ignored her restlessness, and the presence of the boundary, to scan the sharp slope for tracks. Loosened rocks, a skid of a boot heel in freshly turned earth, and the odd broken branch were all signs that others had passed this way not too long ago.
He wished Cage were here to interpret the tracks. Annoyance had Justice tightening his grip on the hross’s reins. He had tried to warn his friend of the dangers of running. Cage should have listened.
By afternoon, they reached a summit above the boundary. The gray blanket of mist extended well past the dull, watery horizon. Justice had never heard tell of anyone who entered making it beyond the marked path used by the young Godseekers. It ended in a small clearing where a goddess would greet him if he were to be her chosen.
The goddess who had chosen Justice was a black-haired, golden-skinned beauty. Over time he had grown to hate her for the way she’d made him yearn for her, how she’d stripped away any will he had to resist her demands. Raven’s smooth golden flesh might not have the same goddess-bright gleam to it, but the similarities were enough to remind him of his former mistress. The way she lured men was identical.
He wondered if his goddess ever wandered the boundary, attempting to find her way back to the mountains now that the demons were gone. If so, she would no longer desire him. He was not a young man anymore.
He had no intention of entering the mist if he did not need to. He wondered if Willow could enter. If so, then he would reconsider. If not, then it stood to reason that Raven could not either, and they were wasting valuable time here.
Seeker and Gauntlet stared at the layer of mist as if at the goddesses themselves, leaving Justice burning with impatience and contempt. They knew nothing of the true nature of the immortals.
The path became too steep to navigate safely while riding. Justice slid from the hross’s back, then held up his hands to help Willow dismount. Her gaze, too, was transfixed on the mist, but showed doubt and a trace of what could be mistaken for fear on anyone else. Justice did not think her truly capable of the emotion—she enjoyed instilling it in others too greatly.
“Willow!” he snapped.
She tore her eyes from the swirling gray mass to look down at him. The natural brown of her irises had changed to a fiery red. The color gradually faded, and she allowed him to help her from the saddle. A fold of her skirt caught on it, and she reached back with gloved fingers to tug it free. As he set her on the ground, his hands did not linger. It made his flesh shrivel to share a saddle with her, but she had proven useful and had not yet disappointed him.
“I want you to enter the mist,” he said to her.
“I can’t move forward.” She demonstrated for him. It was as if an invisible barrier had been erected in front of her. Each step was brought to an abrupt halt.
Justice frowned. “If you can’t go beyond this point, how is it possible there are two sets of tracks leading down?”
The footprints were clearly evident, as if the owners had suddenly seen no need to hide them. Of course they had not, because they’d had no intention of returning.
But surely the boundary would not have welcomed Raven, a demon’s spawn. The assassin who accompanied her should not have been able to cross either. He had not been one of the chosen favorites.
The other two men had not yet noticed any problem. Justice kept one eye on them as he searched the ground for signs that the two who had entered the mist also returned from it.
There. Footprints, heading up and away from the boundary. He expelled the breath he had been holding. They had not made it, although it offended him that a demon and an assassin who had refused allegiance to the Godseekers had both been permitted to try.
Seeker and Gauntlet had almost reached the path leading into the beginning of the mist. They dug into the ground with their boot heels, balancing their weight on their haunches so they wouldn’t pitch headlong down the mountainside into the trees. Seeker paused when he realized Justice and Willow were not following and looked up at them with a question on his round face.
“Are you coming, Justice?” Seeker asked.
“No,” Justice replied. “I’ve found their tracks. They didn’t cross. They’ve gone back into the mountains in the direction of the old silver mines.” Once more, he wished Cage had not been so rash as to try and run from a demon. Justice could have used his skills.
Seeker’s reluctance to leave without entering the mist was obvious. A tiny frown crafted two deep furrows above the bridge of his broad nose, extending up his forehead. Gauntlet stopped his descent too, and looked to Seeker for direction.
“We’ve come this far. Since we’re here, we may as well take a closer look,” Seeker said. “It will give us something to report to the others as to the boundary’s current state.”
Justice silenced his impatience. He watched as Seeker and Gauntlet reached the tree line. When he was certain they were well out of hearing, he turned to Willow.
“When we find Raven,” he said, “I want you to trap her inside a circle of demon fire like you did me. She won’t want to expose herself as a spawn by crossing it. Not at first. Then, when I give you the signal, I want you to raise the demon. But when you do, release the circle.”
Her cruel mouth hardened. “If I do that, the demon will be free.”
“Not for long.” Raven was a beautiful woman who possessed all the allure of a full immortal. Justice did not believe a demon would be any more able to resist her than a mortal man. A demon had weaknesses in its armor, and all assassins were taught how to exploit them. While she distracted it, the assassin Gauntlet could kill it. “I want it to look as if Raven is the one controlling it. I’m confident she can contain it.”
If things went according to plan, the demon would be dead, and Raven would be either dead too, or held responsible for raising it. If Justice could retrieve the amulet she’d stolen from him, so much the better. He might find a use for it.
What bothered him now, superseding thoughts of Raven and retribution, was that he had not been able to descend to the boundary either. The barrier that held Willow back had held him back as well.
That was something he did not wish for Seeker, or anyone else, to discover and report.
…
It had taken longer for Creed to lose Might in the mountains than he’d liked. It would be even longer, however, before Might discovered that the trail he followed was not real, but one that Creed had planted as a thought in his head. In the meantime, Creed headed back to the temple to search in the direction Blade had departed in, to see if he could pick up some signs. Much of the snow was melted, and Blade’s tracks would probably have disappeared with it, but Creed was a strong tracker. Justice and Cage would have left a wider, easier path to follow. They’d not be expecting to have anyone following them.
And Creed had to find Raven.
From above the valley of the Temple of Immortal Right, Creed paused, took a deep breath of morning air, then began to work his way around to the place where he had said good-bye to Blade. His attention was focused on the ground, but a commotion at the temple gates caught his eye.
A force of ten men passed through. He scanned their faces, but Justice was not among them. They turned off in a direction rarely used because it led to nowhere but the far side of the mountains.
Creed watche
d until they disappeared from sight, examining the possibilities in his head as to why ten men would be heading toward the goddess boundary.
Then he followed them.
Chapter Nineteen
Of the three men, Walker was the one Blade believed he could work with. The younger man did not trust anyone, a trait with which Blade could easily identify. He did not talk too much either—or complain—and was quick to see things that needed to be done.
So on this afternoon, several days after they had all taken up residence in the village, it was Walker Blade chose to accompany him into the mining shaft he was currently exploring. A second man remained on guard duty while the third was foraging for necessities in a village a half-day’s walk away. Laurel and Raven were reviving a smokehouse they’d found.
Blade carried the lantern as they traveled deeper into the mine. The air grew heavy and dank, and the tunnel, narrower. They had no protective hats to wear and Blade was suspicious of the ceiling’s stability.
“Watch out for snakes,” Walker warned him. “Don’t put your hands in any holes.”
Blade was also familiar with mines and remembered the other dangers. At this time of year, snakes came inside and made nests in crevices for the winter. Most were harmless. Some, like the goldthief, were not.
It turned out that Walker had experience as a blaster—an explosives engineer responsible for breaking rock. His ability to move in shadow had made him invaluable in the mines of the lower regions because he could slip into places most men could not, then offer a proper assessment of the ore seams he found. After the demons were banished, his coworkers had no longer been as willing to overlook his unusual talents. He had been out of work, adrift, and on his way back to the village where he’d been raised when he met up with the other three spawn and learned his home was gone.
Blade swung the lantern high so he could see farther ahead down the tracks. It was possible that with access to skills such as Walker’s the mines here could indeed be reworked. If there was money to be made the neighbors might be more forgiving of their eccentricities, especially if the new residents proved to be non-threatening. These people, Walker and Laurel in particular, were harmless, although right now they felt cornered and that would make anyone unpredictable.
As far as Blade could tell, the mine was safe. All seemed fine. He had no idea why it had been abandoned.
“What’s your opinion?” he asked Walker.
“It’s stable enough, but I want to check behind that blockage,” Walker replied.
The boy had been shifting to shadow, slipping back and forth through walls to explore side tunnels for the past half hour. He took the lantern with him when he did, something Blade found equally as interesting as it was disconcerting. If Walker and his other companions could all carry things with them when they were in shadow—people, perhaps—miners would not need to worry so much about becoming trapped underground. But giving up the lantern left Blade blind while he waited for Walker to return.
Although he had spent the first fourteen years of his life in these depths, he had never cared for mining. Blade had been big for his age and the labor had done him no real harm, but he’d hated when the light disappeared and miners were forced to wait in darkness. Being down below was not the same as the natural gloom of a moonless night. This was complete black—oppressive and suffocating, as if a man had been swallowed by the stomach of the earth. He could not tell if he was sitting or standing. If he tried to move his arms or legs, he became disoriented and fell over.
Blade forced himself to breathe normally, closing his mind to all extraneous thoughts, and concentrated on Raven instead.
He thought it likely the goddess who spoke to him was right when she said that he would fail Raven when it came to protecting her. If her father was telling the truth—in this instance Blade couldn’t afford to assume he was not—then the others were in as much danger as she was, and they would all have to stand and fight. None of them, however, could resort to using their demon abilities. If they did, it would bring stronger and more determined forces against them. Somehow he had to impress that upon them.
But good as he was, by himself he did not truly believe he was capable of fighting off more than one trained assassin at a time. He’d paid for such arrogance before. In the end, he was an ordinary man. If they could not use their demon talents, then the possibility of Laurel and her companions offering any real assistance to him was slight, and while Raven was good with her bow, she was the one he wanted most to protect. He did not, under any circumstances, wish to place her in danger and therefore within her demon father’s reach.
A shout from the direction of the mine’s entrance, far off in the distance, stabbed through the thick sea of black. It echoed off the far reaches of the tunnel shaft before ending abruptly. Blade started, reaching for his knives, reacting on instinct to the cry, then staggered and cracked his head against the chiseled stone of the tunnel wall. As one hand snagged the edge of a sharp cleft to keep from falling over, a faint movement of air and a slight hiss warned him of danger. Something heavy crawled over his right boot. Nasty images of what had happened to Raven after the goldthief bite jigged to the foreground of his thoughts. He was not certain he could survive the nightmares as well as she had. He forced himself to remain still.
Then, Walker was back. The bright yellow beam from the lantern puddled the tunnel floor as Walker shone it in Blade’s direction. The tail end of a long snake disappeared into the shadows behind a detritus of crumbled rock.
“Did you hear someone shout?” Walker asked.
“Yes,” Blade replied grimly. “I did.”
They moved with caution, as fast as they dared, up the gentle slope of the mine shaft. The air they breathed cleared and grew colder. When the blackness became less dense and the lantern’s beam farther reaching, Blade extinguished its light. After that, he followed the sound of Walker’s footsteps.
Within a few moments, daylight from outside began to turn the black to gray.
Not far from the entrance to the mine, one of Walker’s companions sat with his back against a wall. He had his head slumped forward between his knees, and Blade did not need to touch him to know he was dead. The smell made that apparent enough, as did the wide pool of congealing blood.
Blade crouched to take a better look. The man had deep claw marks down one side of his face and across his shoulder. One cheek had peeled off in a large flap of skin. His coat and the shirt underneath were shredded to expose jagged wounds.
And his throat had been torn out.
…
Creed pushed through the patches of dreary, leafless forest and the barren mountain passes, trailing behind Justice and the assassins. After following the men through rough terrain for several days and eavesdropping at night, Creed’s worst fears were confirmed. Siege was dead. And whereas Siege, who was also a Godseeker, could have stood firm, Armor had been forced to acquiesce to Justice’s demands.
The ten assassins had caught up with Justice not far from the goddess boundary, but he had been heading away from it, following tracks he believed to be Blade and Raven’s. He swore that they had more spawn with them and were amassing an army.
The conclusion had puzzled Creed at first until he scouted ahead and realized Blade and Raven were being followed by more than Justice. There were too many footprints. His worry shifted to alarm. The situation was escalating beyond one he believed he could contain. Raven was in real trouble, and Blade would not be enough to protect her.
Another confusing piece in the puzzle was the woman accompanying Justice. As he’d listened at the edge of their encampment during the past few nights, he had heard disturbing rumors about her. Some of the men were inclined to believe she was a goddess. Creed confessed he found it difficult to believe that Justice would align himself with anything else, but it seemed he had. Creed did not need to get close to her to know she was half demon, and Justice kept too tight a rein on her, as if she were more his prisoner than someone
he worshipped, to be ignorant of the fact.
The thought of a half demon under Justice’s control did nothing to lessen Creed’s deepening concerns. Whatever had been going on in the world for the past few months, it was about to explode.
Trouble was not coming. It had arrived.
…
Justice called a halt in a rock-strewn clearing above a small valley. Burrowed inside the valley were the remains of a tiny mining village. Most of the buildings showed signs of years of neglect. Several roofs had collapsed. From two of the houses, wisps of smoke spiraled upward into the crisp, late-afternoon air.
Anticipation put Justice in a good mood.
Once he had Raven and proved to the Godseekers the true threat spawn posed to the world, then she would be dealt with in a manner even more spectacular than he’d intended. She would serve as a warning to all women, mortal and spawn alike, who dared believe they could challenge a Godseeker and live.
After Raven, he would expose Willow for what she was, too. With so many assassins around, Willow had not dared turn on him or behave in any way demon-like, but she still had Cage’s death to answer for. The memory of his friend’s screams sometimes woke him, reminding him that women could never be trusted. She would serve as an example of that.
From there, it would be a matter of having the assassins tasked with destroying all the spawn they could find in the world. Abominations could not be allowed to survive. But he would start with the one hiding in the remote little valley.
“Surround the village,” he said to the men. “We need to be cautious. We have no idea how many of them are down there. Once we’ve determined the risk, we’ll begin to move in.”
And he would go first, taking Willow and one assassin with him, leaving Seeker in charge of the others. He did not want any witnesses questioning who had raised the demon.
Once the demon was free, and the witness’s story established, then Justice would call for Seeker to send in the remaining assassins.
Black Widow Demon (Demon Outlaws) Page 25