Demon's Daughter (Demon Outlaws) (31 page)

The cavern was high-ceiled and relatively narrow, tapering to a single entrance through which faint light could be seen, so it must be day, although he could not begin to guess at the time. Torches provided the room with smoky light, illuminating striated walls of red sandstone.

He peered through the bars of the cage, making no sudden movements, careful not to draw unwanted attention. No matter what else might happen, he would find a way to kill any demon to touch her.

He watched her walk, golden and beautiful, through the crowd of demons and straight to the Demon Lord’s throne. All eyes remained on her, including Hunter’s.

Not once did she glance at him.

He wanted to rip apart the bars of the cage and rush to protect her. Blood pulsed at his temples. He had never in his life wanted to kill demons more.

He promised himself he would have the opportunity soon enough.

But for now, he forced his mind to separate rational thought from emotion. He would be of no help to her if he could not pay attention and form a plan. She was alive and unafraid, and although that calmed him somewhat, he knew that she was far from safe even if she did not.

A small sound beside his cage, a slight shuffling, caught Hunter’s attention. He dared not turn his head, but from between the slats of his prison floor, he saw the top of a child’s head.

Scratch
.

The boy had crossed miles of desert and walked through a den of demons, avoiding all observation. Even now, no one seemed to pay the boy the slightest attention.

The child was not mortal.

Acceptance slid through Hunter with an ease that he did not question. He found he could no longer summon the hatred he had once felt for all demon offspring. Whatever Scratch was, he loved Airie as much as she loved him. There was no threat in the boy, only the same innocent kindness Airie possessed, and that was all that mattered to Hunter. He had come to love them both.

Scratch stood on his toes and slid an object into the cage, pushing it under Hunter’s hip and out of sight. Familiar warmth spread through him. His amulet.

A spark of relief ignited. If he put up enough of a fight, he could force them to kill him rather than have them tear him apart and eat him alive. He did not want either Airie or Scratch to witness that.

Hide
, Hunter mouthed to the child.

Scratch disappeared from his line of vision and Hunter again tried to hear what was happening with Airie.

Immortality can be hers if she wants it.

He had missed important information. What did that mean? What else had been said?

If she wants immortality, she will fight me for it.

No
.

Hunter surged to his feet, hurling his whole weight at the bars of the cage, again and again, the rage pounding against the inside of his skull matching his frantic efforts to free himself.

Chapter Nineteen

Airie had drawn on a lifetime of faith by granting the goddess permission to speak through her, but as fire sputtered in the sconces anchored high on the soot-streaked cavern walls, doubt squeezed her heart.

The sight of Hunter in a suspended cage in the demon-filled hall, and the whispers of those demons and their plans for him, meant that Hunter’s life was also at stake now, and suddenly, Airie was no longer willing to rely solely on the faith she’d been raised with.

She resolved that he would not suffer because of her. A goddess had claimed her as her daughter. Airie had demon blood in her, too. Surely she possessed some of their strengths.

Release me
, she urged the goddess,
so
I can accept the challenge.

Her request, however, went unanswered.

The Demon Lord came around to the front of the platform and stood not five feet from her, staring at her face as if searching for something familiar in it.

Again, the goddess addressed him through Airie. “I demand the right to fight for my daughter’s freedom.”

His eyes shuttered. “You cannot.”

“I can if someone will fight on our behalf.” She looked to Hunter, wild now inside the swinging cage, his chest heaving with an enormous anger that threatened to burst loose at any second. “The Demon Slayer wears protection that was once mine. He is my chosen. If he wishes, he can fight for Airie and me.”

Inside, Airie screamed for him to refuse. This was not his battle.

She, however, was trapped as effectively as he was, and every bit as angry—because she had agreed to this, although naively. She had trusted the goddess with her life, but hers was not the one most precious to her. She had not thought to safeguard Hunter’s and would never forgive the goddess for this betrayal.

Hunter’s knuckles gleamed stark white against the bars of his cage as he tried to bend them with his bare hands. “I do wish it. I want to fight.”

“Very well,” the Demon Lord said to the goddess. Cunning entered his expression. “But remember, Allia, this is your proposal. If he wins, he will not be the one to own my death.”

He turned to his throne as if in search of something.

At the same time, Hunter stooped to retrieve an object from the floor of the cage. It dangled from a gold chain snarled around his fingers, and flushed a dull red in the firelight when he straightened.

“Looking for this?” he asked, holding the amulet up for the Demon Lord to see before fastening it around his neck.

“How…” the Demon Lord recovered from his surprise. “So be it, then. Slayer!” he roared, his demon voice shaking the cavern. The cage swayed on its chains as the gathered demons roared in anticipation. “Fight me!”

And Airie, helpless through her own ill-conceived actions, could do nothing but watch.

…

The cage dropped to the stone platform, and Hunter exploded from inside, ready to fight anyone who approached too near to Airie.

As he leaped to the ground to stand between her and the press of demons, thrusting her behind him, the rumble in the cavern rose to a level that shook the earth beneath his feet.

He did not fully understand what had just transpired between Airie and the Demon Lord. The conversation he’d overheard had been confusing at best. All he knew beyond any doubt was that Airie had been threatened, that she was in danger, and that he was going to kill the demon responsible for it.

Yet he despaired of Airie getting to safety when it was finished. He calculated at least a hundred demons present, which meant most, if not all, of their numbers, so the odds were hardly in his favor. His weapons had been confiscated.

A memory of the poor young woman he had buried from the ill-fated wagon train filtered into his thoughts. Grimly, he acknowledged the reality of their situation and its inevitable outcome, and that a dark decision had to be made. Even if he won this challenge as planned, he could not protect Airie from the remaining demons.

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, once 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.