Quiet intensity spilled from him. “You would do that? Move on with me?”
“How could I not?” she asked, bewildered again. It hurt her to breathe. “I thought the tentative arrangement you and Creed reached with the Godseekers and assassins meant you could be happy here, or at least content. Are you telling me you don’t wish to stay with me? That you don’t want me with you any longer?”
“I’m trying to say I have nothing to offer you.”
“I have nothing to offer you, either. Other than my love,” she added, very quietly.
He did not speak. She could not tell what he thought or how he felt about her disclosure. She had put it out there, and now he could not ignore it or pretend it did not exist. Creed was wrong—Blade knew his feelings very well, except he chose which ones to acknowledge. If he was going to walk away from her, she would at least make him be honest with regard to his feelings for her.
“Did you know the amulet was meant for a demon’s mate when you gave it to me?” he finally asked.
The question unbalanced her further. She could not absorb the meaning behind it or what he wanted to learn. Did he think she had tried to trap him with the amulet? To bind him to her?
“I know my father meant it for my mother because he thought she was his,” she said. “But she had to accept him in return to truly be his mate, and she never did. Not completely, in the way she would have had to.” She tried to smile. It did not feel convincing, even to her. “She wasn’t an especially brave woman.”
“She refused to be parted from you, which made her braver than many other women,” Blade said.
That was true, Raven thought, surprised by his insight. Her mother’s life had been a difficult one. She had once walked amongst demons. If she’d not had a skill that made her valuable to her community, she might not have survived as long as she had or been welcome at all.
“The moment I accepted the amulet from you, I knew I belonged to you,” Blade continued. “That connection to me is why you think you love me.”
He thought she was the one who had been trapped. Either way, it did not matter. “It’s a connection I don’t wish to break. I don’t think I love you. I know I do.” She closed her gloved fingers around an object in her pocket. It was a gift she had been working on for the past few days but she was no longer certain it was appropriate to give it to him. “That amulet you wore was meant for my mother and no one else. It had nothing to do with my feelings for you, other than that it was something precious to me that I wanted you to have. It has nothing to do with how you feel about me either. You believe you belong to me only because you love me, too.” She drew a deep breath. “Until you can understand and accept that you’re using that amulet as an excuse to avoid your feelings for me, then no, you really don’t have anything to offer me. All I want from you is your love.”
The faint hope she felt rising in him, and the way he refused to allow it to fully surface, made her want to weep for him.
“What about children?” he asked. “Do you want those, too?”
“If they’re yours,” she said.
The hope in him swelled a little more, the barrier against it ready to break, yet still, he resisted. “You don’t want children of mine.”
“Why not?” she demanded. “Demon blood has already been mixed with mortal. That can’t be undone. Do you think any children we might have between us will be somehow better or worse than the ones that already exist?”
“I haven’t led the kind of life most fathers do. I wouldn’t make a very good one.”
Relief left her faint. She gave a small laugh, even though tears blurred her vision. “My father was a demon,” she said. “You hardly compare to that.”
He did not seem convinced, but she knew that he wanted to be. She stripped off her gloves and stuck her hand in her coat pocket, withdrawing the gift she had crafted for him. It glinted in the light, a heavy silver chain attached to a thick chunk of smoky quartz that she had carved into a dagger-shaped pendant. Walker had searched the mines for a lot of hours to find her exactly what she wanted.
She reached up to place the chain over Blade’s head.
“This is a dream stone,” she said, “from the mortal world. It has no special properties. You can’t walk in the demon boundary or create one of your own when you wear it. It won’t protect you from demons. It’s a symbol of my love for you and that I dream of you, nothing more than that.” She tangled her fingers in the silver chain and drew his mouth to hers. “You’ve faced demons for me. I don’t think it’s possible for anyone to prove his love more than that—although I’m not asking you for proof I don’t need. I’m asking you to allow yourself to love me back.”
He cradled her head in the palms of his hands, resting his forehead to hers. “I do love you. I can’t promise I’ll be good at it because I’ve never loved anyone before, and the thought of failing you frightens me far more than demons ever could.”
“Fail me?” She fought back tears. “You saved me. When I set Justice on fire—when I watched him burn in the boundary—in the back of my head was your voice, telling me you aren’t afraid of the demon in me. That I’m not a demon. You can only fail me now by not allowing yourself to love me.” She slid her arms around his waist. “Can you be happy here?” she asked, suddenly anxious. “With me?”
“I can’t imagine being happy anywhere without you.” He crooked a finger beneath the dream stone amulet and raised it between them. He blinked several times as he struggled for words. “You say this has no special properties, but you’re wrong. It speaks to me, reminds me we belong together, and that the future brings hope. I don’t allow myself to love you—I do so because I can’t stop myself. Nor do I want to.”
He kissed her then, as the stars began to emerge in the deepening sky. Her demon, never far from the surface whenever Blade touched her, almost purred with deep and intense satisfaction that this man was hers. Now and forever.
Blade rested his forehead against hers, holding her close in his arms. “I can’t keep you from the demon boundary, as much as I wish I could. All I ask is that you don’t go there without me.”
“Never again,” Raven said. “When you’re with me, I don’t fear the dark. We’ll fight our demons. Together.”
Acknowledgments
I’d like to thank Danielle Poiesz and Kerri-Leigh Grady for being such thorough editors and asking hard, detailed questions. The entire team at Entangled Publishing is so amazing to work with.
About the Author
Paula Altenburg lives in rural Nova Scotia, Canada, with her husband and two sons. Once a manager in the aerospace industry, she now enjoys the luxury of working from home and writing full time. Paula also co-authors paranormal romance under the pseudonym Taylor Keating. Visit her at www.paulaaltenburg.com.
Turn the page for a sneak peek
at the third and final book
in the exciting Demon Outlaws series
The Demon Creed
by
Paula Altenburg
Chapter One
Three against one were not good odds for the thin young boy with the dark hair and angry eyes.
At first glance it seemed like any other adolescent dispute, with at least one bloody nose or black eye inevitable, so Creed paid it no mind. He had not come to the very edge of what was once demon territory to intervene in children’s squabbles. Rumors of their quiet disappearance from several villages in and around the Godseeker Mountains was of far greater interest to him, and what had led him here to a town called Desert’s End when he was supposed to be hunting demon spawn on behalf of the Godseekers.
He sought one spawn in particular—a woman named Willow. She had slain an entire village of innocent mortals and raised a demon, and Creed intended to see that she was brought to justice. Not only was it his duty as a Godseeker assassin, but Willow’s actions had nearly killed his half-sister Raven.
The land around Desert’s End was a farming region, and the noisy town market squa
re stank of old kyson droppings and sodden scafhoof wool. While recent spring rains had not done the streets any favors with regard to their stench, the wooden buildings surrounding the square had been cleansed and left gleaming in the noonday sun as if freshly painted.
The town had other features to redeem it in Creed’s eyes, as well. Sinkholes were rare so close to the mountains, and Desert’s End had been built with confidence on the eviscerated ruins of an Old World city. Ancient and hardy gardens remained determined to flourish despite the various indignities the years had brought. Rose bushes from a time before demons had razed the earth with fire bloomed pink and red in unexpected places—to either side of a creosote-blackened boardwalk and from beneath one cornerstone of the town hall.
Creed was pushing his way through the throng of people swarming the boardwalk, seeking the local jail and its sheriff, when it struck him that something about the altercation he had just witnessed was not all it seemed. He had passed over it too quickly, almost as if his attention had been turned from it.
He retraced his steps.
A narrow dirt alley separated the stable from the postal station and hotel next door to it. Inside that alley, out of the sun and away from prying adult eyes, two boys, approximately fourteen years of age, lay gasping for breath on the ground. One held his stomach. The other, his ribs. Neither appeared inclined, or able, to move.
A third boy, heavier set and taller than his companions, possibly a year older, daubed at the blood trickling from his nose with the blunt of his wrist as he faced the smallest and youngest boy—the one with the angry eyes Creed had first noticed.
The fight was not playing out the way Creed would have expected, piquing his interest even further. So far the combatants had not noted his presence, and he pressed himself against a wall to watch and listen. There was nothing wrong with the boy defending himself. It was how he chose to do so that could lead to problems.
“I warned you. I can take care of myself,” the skinny boy said. He might have been thirteen, at the most. His hands had doubled into fists, and he held them clenched at his sides, ready to use.
The older boy, cruelty in his expression, was not about to concede defeat to a punier victim. “And I told you that you aren’t wanted here, you little freak.”
A blur of fist lashed out in response to the insult. The bully’s head rocked backward. The flesh over one cheekbone splotched a deepening red that would purple by morning. Instead of backing off—thus illustrating more determination than intelligence on his part—he dropped his chin and charged at the younger boy like an incensed bull kyson.
As the younger boy skipped to one side Creed felt the subtle yet familiar use of demon compulsion, a fact confirmed when the older boy did not veer from his original course but plowed on, ramming headfirst into the side of the hotel. He staggered a few steps, reeling, before his eyes rolled back to expose the whites. With a soft, almost surprised-sounding sigh hissing from his throat, his knees buckled, and he dropped to the ground, unconscious.
The other two boys rediscovered their mobility. They scurried, scorpion-like, from the alley on their hands and knees, ignorant of Creed’s presence even as they passed him. Out on the street, they got to their feet and ran as if the Demon Lord himself were chasing them.
In the alley, the dark-haired, angry-eyed boy kicked the one he had felled, now comatose and drooling in the dirt. The blow was halfhearted and had no real malice behind it.
“Stupid,” the boy muttered, his voice low, as if speaking to himself.
“Him or you?”
Creed peeled himself away from the wall of the hotel and stepped to block the boy’s only avenue of escape. The alley ended in a huge manure pile behind the stable. It would be too soft from the rain and the heat for anyone to safely climb, and there were few worse deaths imaginable than by drowning in dung.
The boy looked up at Creed, his expressive eyes widening with caution at the discovery he was not alone. Then he bolted.
Creed easily caught the collar of the boy’s homespun shirt, swinging him off his feet and holding him up so that their noses were inches apart.
“What’s the matter, boy?” he asked, keeping his tone conversational, testing him to see how he’d react to discovery. “You think you’re the only one in the world who can make others see and do what you want? Or that you’re the strongest and fastest spawn who ever lived?”
The boy didn’t deny the accusation, but instead began to struggle in earnest. He kicked a boot at Creed’s knee, but Creed, now that he knew what he was dealing with, was prepared for a struggle and easily evaded it.
He continued to dangle the boy at eye level. “What were you thinking, using your talents like that?” he asked. “No one will believe you bested three boys—and all of them bigger than you. Questions will be asked.”
The boy’s face turned sullen, rebellion displacing the anger in his gray eyes. “I don’t care what anyone believes or what they ask. I don’t have to hide what I am from mortals anymore. I don’t answer to them.”
Although still less than a year since demons had been banished from the earth, in that brief time it had become increasingly apparent to Creed, and others, that the number of half demons left behind in their wake had been underestimated. Even more troubling, any powers inherited by demon offspring seemed to be strengthening and developing.
The mortal world was ill prepared to deal with such spawn. Hatred for them ran deep and was almost universal. Already, mortals were taking steps to eradicate them, and the boy would be foolish not to understand the danger he faced. No demon talents he had inherited would save him in the end.
Creed set the boy on his feet but kept hold of his arm. “Even so,” he said, “if you can avoid such confrontations with mortals, why not do so? What if your actions today draw the attention of someone who’s more dangerous to you than those three bullies could ever be?”
The boy’s lip curled. “I’m not afraid of anyone.”
His arrogance did not surprise Creed. He possessed a fair amount of his own. Half demons, like their full demon fathers, did not experience fear in the same way mortals did. They instinctively suppressed and controlled it, and used it to their advantage. Sometimes that confidence made them stupid and overbold, however, as it had today.
But half demons were not always evil and dangerous.
Creed wavered, torn between doing his duty and what he believed to be right. He was not without sympathy for a child who would have experienced a lifetime of injustices, and he sensed there was little harm in this one—at least not yet. The lessons he’d learn over the next few years would prove crucial in shaping the type of man he became. He needed guidance, not persecution.
It made this decision a difficult one.
“You don’t need to be afraid,” Creed said. “You should, however, exercise more common sense. Do you know who I am?”
“Why should I care?”
“Because I’m a Godseeker assassin, tasked to hunt spawn and bring them to justice. Dead or alive,” Creed added after a significant pause. “What if I were to turn you in?”
The boy flipped a hank of dark hair from his eyes with a toss of his head. “I know what else you are. I would turn you in, too.”
The threat amused Creed. “Of the two of us, who do you think people would believe is a spawn? A skinny child who somehow bested three larger and older boys in a mismatched fight, or a trained assassin who serves the Godseekers?”
The boy scraped a toe in the dirt. “I can make anyone believe what I want.”
“And you want me to believe—a Godseeker assassin who dispenses justice and holds your fate in his hands—that you did your best to walk away from that fight,” Creed said. “But I don’t. So now what?”
Guilt flared in the boy’s eyes. “They started it.”
“I have no doubt. But you could have convinced them to leave you alone instead, if you’d wanted.”
A hross kicked a heavy hoof against the wall of the s
table next door. Out on the street, traffic rumbled past.
Again, Creed hesitated. While it was his duty to ensure that any spawn he discovered were brought before the Godseekers for judgment, he did not want to condemn a child. Not without first determining if there might be enough support in his life to bring out the potential Creed sensed in him, because Creed drew a distinction between spawn and half demons.
Spawn had only demon instincts in them. Half demons, on the other hand, tended to be far more complex. More mortal.
At least if they wished to be.
“Where is your mother?” Creed asked. The boy said nothing, his lips pressed in a thin line of rebellion, and Creed lost patience. “I can return you to her, or I can give you to the sheriff to be passed on to the Godseekers, who will then determine your fate. Which is your preference?”
“She’s selling corn cakes at a stall near the goddess temple.” The words dragged unwillingly from the boy’s mouth.
Creed tightened his grip. The mother’s reaction to having her son presented to her by a Godseeker assassin would decide the matter for him. “Come on.”
Larger than any other structure in Desert’s End, built on higher ground, and constructed entirely of colorful stones, the temple was simple enough for Creed to locate. It was not meant to be inconspicuous. He drew his young prisoner through the crowds.
In front of the temple, a number of tarpaulin-capped wooden stalls had been erected with a variety of goods displayed on long counters. An older woman with delicate features, golden brown hair and vivid green eyes, and wearing an expression of trepidation mixed with concern, watched their progress toward her, her attention divided between them and her customer.
Creed stopped beside her stall, keeping a solid hand on the boy’s shoulder, and waited for her to finish with the transaction. As he did, he quietly observed her.
Soft-spoken and exuding gentle weariness, she reminded him more than a little of his half-sister’s mother. Raven had always considered her mother to be weak. Creed, however, was several years older than Raven and more aware of the harshness of the world, and he had adored Columbine. She’d always been kind to him, even though he was not hers.
Black Widow Demon (Demon Outlaws) Page 29