The Demon Creed (A Demon Outlaws Novel) (Entangled Edge) (9 page)

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 magnificence 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.

Outside, she ran across the street and scurried into the shadowed alley between the hotel and the stable. Breathing hard, her heart still pounding, she pressed her back to the hotel’s plain exterior wall and listened to the chaos she had caused.

She closed her eyes. Creed was a demon as well as an assassin. He could take care of himself. She could not bring herself to worry for the safety of the cruel-eyed stranger. If given a choice between the two, she would throw in her lot with the demon.

A tear slid down her cheek, and she scrubbed it away with the heel of her hand. Waiting in town for the slavers to appear, especially after the events in the saloon, was now out of the question. If she stayed at the ranch she might miss them entirely.

One thing was certain—skulking in an alley off one of the busiest streets in town would not help her. She had to find a better place to hide.

As she pushed away from the wall, a large, shadowy figure blocked her path. Someone grabbed her, but before she could scream, a hand covered her mouth.

Chapter Six

Creed could not help but enjoy a good fight, and his opponent posed enough of a challenge to keep this one interesting. His demon needed an outlet for pent-up aggression as well.

Nieve had managed to escape the saloon unobserved, however, and as much as Creed wanted to stay until the end of this, he had no choice but to pursue her.

He divested his opponent’s attention onto another man standing nearby. Then he walked out of the saloon as if he were an innocent spectator and not the instigator of the brawl.

While Creed was disappointed to abandon the fight so soon, it restored much of his natural good humor. It was also just as well that he decided to leave when he did. His demon had wanted to kill the man for touching Nieve and causing her physical pain, and it hadn’t liked exhibiting restraint. Since Nieve should not have been in the saloon in the first place, by law Creed could not justify beating any man to death for accosting her.

The brawl in the saloon had not yet attracted outside attention. Soon people in the hotel, and attendants in the nearby stable, would catch wind of the ruckus, and come out to investigate. As long as Creed was with Nieve when they did, he could make her as inconspicuous as himself and no one would take any notice of her.

He looked up and down the dark, silent street, but saw no signs of her. He asked himself where he would go if he were a frightened woman needing to hide and gain breathing space to consider her next move.

Acting on a hunch, he loped across the street, skirting a pile of dried and crumbling hross droppings.

He found Nieve in the same alley where he had discovered the boys fighting a few days ago. She was leaning against the hotel’s shingled exterior wall, likely unaware until after she’d entered that it held no rear pathway to escape. Because her eyes were closed, she did not see him.

Some of the resentment he carried for her sloughed away. While he was angry that she had tried to kill him, he found he was growing more sympathetic. He had stood not far from her at the bar, unnoticed by anyone while she asked the owner her questions.

Now that he understood she was searching for her son, Creed could only pity her. For her sake, he hoped the child was long dead. But he wondered why it had taken her a year to reach a point of such desperation.

Something about this situation was odd.

He watched her wipe a tear from her cheek, then from beside him, he saw the first of the onlookers dribbling from the hotel and onto the boardwalk.

It spurred him to react. As Nieve pushed away from the wall, he blocked her path and placed a hand over her mouth to stifle any screams.

She bit him. Hard.

He jerked his hand away in surprise, then fumbled to replace it, worried she would make noise and draw unwanted attention. He doubted if he could deflect the sight of a large man wrestling in the dirt with a small woman such as Nieve. He could only hide so much with his skills.

To her credit, she did not scream. Instead, she kicked at his legs and threw a punch at his face. The aggressiveness of her resistance startled him. Then he remembered the gun he had given her, and that she would not hesitate to use it on him, and grabbed for her wrists. He yanked them behind her back and jerked her toward him so that her chest was splayed against his upper abdomen.

“If I have to knock you unconscious to get you to safety, I’ll do it,” he said into her ear. Frustration made him sound harsh. He could not use compulsion to calm her because she did not respond well to it. “I’m trying to help you, but you aren’t making it easy.”

“Why would you want to help me?” she asked. Her head tipped back and her chin pressed into his chest, her voice a whisper that warmed the skin of his throat.

“I really don’t know.” He had no other answer for her.

It seemed to be enough. Either that or she realized the futility of fighting him. Her struggling ceased, but she remained wary and tense, as if poised for flight at the first opportunity.

He would not give her one.

The brawl in the saloon had finally spilled into the street. The hotel’s occupants milled about at the entrance to the alley, curious but as yet uninvolved. Past history warned Creed they would not remain so. The situation was a lit fuse on a full keg of dynamite. Most men, the same as demons, enjoyed fighting, and there was no longer a sheriff to stop them.

“Come with me,” Creed said.

He draped an arm around Nieve’s shoulders and guided her through the small throng of people. They entered the hotel foyer and climbed the stairs to the third floor without any opposition. Creed nodded to two men at the top of the stairs. They nodded back but paid no attention to Nieve.

He could not say the same for his demon. Its satisfaction at having her with him stalked hungrily at the back of his thoughts.

At the door to his hotel room, as he fumbled in his pocket for the key, Nieve finally balked.

“I don’t want to be alone with you,” she said, showing the first signs of panic.

His patience snapped at last. He fitted the key in the lock, turned the knob, and thrust her into the room ahead of him. He closed the door behind them and leaned against it, his arms folded across his chest.

The room was dark, but his night vision was exceptionally good. The thin moonlight streaking between the drawn curtains was more than enough for him to see her face clearly.

His jaw worked as he contained his temper. He did not unleash it often. When he did, it tended to be spectacular.

“You’ve lived with a man who abused you and was planning to kill you,” he said. “You gave birth to his child. You came to the stable the other night prepared to seduce me to get information. You walked alone into a saloon filled with men, most of whom would treat you with far less consideration and courtesy than I have shown so far. You tried to kill me. And still, I offer to help you. Tell me what I’ve done to make you so afraid of me when I would say I have more reason to fear you.”

Muffled noise from the crowd in the street two levels below filtered between the floorboards and through the walls.

“You’re a demon.”

“I am not.”

Nor was he. Demons did not belong to this world, and he did. He was as mortal as any other man alive, and he hated demons every bit as much as they did. He was not to blame for the other half of his nature. He kept it well under control. Besides, it had no wish to harm her.

Quite the opposite.

Her slight frame shook so that she had to reach for the footrest on the narrow bed to steady herself. “You use compulsion.”

“Assassins learn how to manipulate others into doing what we want, or seeing what we want them to see,” he said.

“Only a demon can force a woman to want him against her will.”

He heard one thing. She wanted him.

His heart leaped, the anger in it slipping away entirely. She was right about compulsion, but also wrong. He had not used it in order to make her want him, only in an effort to gain her trust. If she did want him, it was because of her own natural desire—although there was another, far stronger, connection between them that she chose to fight.

A sense of impending disaster preceded his under-standing of the root cause of her fear. He should have known from their encounter in the stable that night at the ranch, and supposed on some level he had, but hadn’t wanted to acknowledge it. Even now, possessiveness made the words painful to utter.

“You were once lured by a demon,” he said.

She did not answer but dropped to the bed as if her legs could no longer support her weight, insignificant as it was. She then stared at her hands, which were clasped so tightly in her lap he could see the whiteness of the knuckles despite the darkness.

His throat went so dry that it hurt to swallow. With those disconcerting, deep green eyes underlined by thumbprint bruises of fatigue, and the halo of white-blond hair, she looked very beautiful to him, and yet also tragic and fragile. He longed to take her in his arms and protect her, but no one could shield her from her thoughts and memories.

He concentrated on the positive. The demon had let her live, so it had not been cruel or abusive. If it had sought nothing but pleasure it would have killed her as soon as it grew tired of her. If anything, Bear would have given her more cause for fear than the demon had.

Creed had given her no cause to fear him. He could not imagine harming any woman, let alone this one, who despite everything, he could not seem to walk away from. Since he had met her, it was as if the universe repeatedly led him back to her. He was tired of fighting it, and could not form any plan as to what he should do with her while in her presence.

His thoughts lay in shambles. He had missed something important—another piece of information about her son that he should have seized on in all this. Yet try as he might he could not recollect what it was because one thought continued to edge out all others. Demons did not share, and his was no different in that regard. It had claimed her as his.

He wondered if the demon who had lured her had tried to do the same thing. If so, it was plain that Nieve wanted neither of them. And that was what mattered.

Silent and uncommunicative, she watched him from the edge of the bed. He had no idea what she was thinking. He did know that he could no longer leave her behind, alone and defenseless. The sheriff, his one hope for someone to help her, was dead.

He picked up one of the packs from the pile in a corner of the room. It contained weapons and a few personal items.

“I’ll stay in the stable,” he said, slinging the heavy pack over one shoulder. “Try to sleep for a few hours if you can, but it’s best if we’re gone from Desert’s End before morning. I’ll be back when things settle down outside. When they do, it’ll be time to go.”

He locked the door behind him, pocketed the key, and headed for the stairwell at the center of the long corridor. At least no one could get into the room to trouble her. And she could not get out.

His steps slowed as he reached the top of the stairs. He paused, wondering if he should be so certain. Then he returned to the door of his room and listened for a moment before setting his pack on the floor.

He sat down beside it, leaned his head against the wall, drew up his knees, and closed his eyes. His demon refused to settle.

It would be a very long few hours.

…

Nieve curled in a ball on the bed. He had locked the door behind him, and the coward in her was grateful for it. With no easy means of escape, she did not have to attempt one. That meant she might possibly be able to sleep, knowing there was nothing more she could do to find her son until morning.

She was well aware that she’d had a very narrow escape already that evening, and it was thanks only to Creed’s intervention. He should no longer terrify her, but he did. Not in the same way as the man in the saloon. Creed was not cruel. Not to her. Even she could see that.

But he thought Ash was Bear’s son. He had not yet figured out that Ash was half demon, although he would soon enough, and demons despised half demon offspring.

Despite his claims, Creed was more demon than not. She knew it because of the way he attracted her to him even when she fought to resist him.

She did not know if someone who hunted other spawn and turned them over to the Godseekers could ever have sympathy for a child such as Ash. In Creed’s persistent refusal to admit what he himself was, would he dismiss Ash as having no worth?

She had no idea what Creed was planning to do with the missing children he sought—if or when he found them—if they should turn out to be like Asher.

Nieve’s veins had turned into conduits of ice. She tugged the bed’s top blanket over her in an attempt to grow warm. She was so tired. She could not remember the last time she had truly slept.

Whenever she began to drift off, her dreams, interspersed with loud male voices from either the street below or a neighboring room, would begin, and then the pounding of her heart reawakened her.

When she finally did fall asleep, the dream that stayed with her was of Creed. The warmth of his smile drew her to him. He held out a hand, his fingers beckoning to her, and for the first time in years, she felt no fear at all.

She had forgotten what that was like, to be unafraid, and went to him willingly. He enfolded her in his arms and cradled her, whispering for her to trust him, and that he would help her find Asher.

Then she looked in his eyes, ready to do anything he asked of her, and saw they were not Creed’s eyes at all.

They were the eyes of Asher’s father, red and hot and filled with desire. In her sleep, Nieve shuddered from her head to her toes. She did not want to do the things with a demon that he compelled her to do, but she could no more deny him than she could refuse to draw breath. His hands on her flesh set her on fire. She wanted more, and yet it was not him that she wanted it from. Her father had called her a demon’s whore, and he had been right. It was terrible, this mix of longing and self-loathing.

She flung out a hand to push the demon away, to prove that she could, and that her mind was her own.

Her palm struck solid warmth and she awoke with a gasp. A shadow loomed beside the bed. A hand touched her shoulder.

“Wake up.” The voice sounded familiar, and soothing, but she was too struck with terror to place its owner.

“I can’t see,” she choked out. Neither could she breathe. Her chest ached from ribs stretched to bursting as air flowed into her lungs but could not be expelled.

The curtains were thrust back to flood the small, serviceable hotel room with starlight. Strong hands lifted her to a sitting position and nudged her legs over the side of the bed.

Creed. Relief left her shaking.

Crouched in front of her, he took one of her hands in his while rubbing her back in circles between her shoulders with the heel of his other palm.

“Put your head between your knees,” he said. “Try to breathe slowly.”

Nieve groped at his shirtfront with her free hand to further steady herself. After several long, agonizing moments, her world ceased to spin. She lifted her head and blurted out the first nonsensical, stupid words that came to her. “I’m sorry I tried to shoot you.”