When he was well out of sight and certain he had not been followed, he broke into a slow, sustainable jog.
The return journey took him longer than expected with the weight of his purchases. Rather than worry about what he might find when he reached Raven as he trekked, he occupied his thoughts with plans for what to do once he did.
They needed a water supply and somewhere to sleep. A place for them to hide for a few days. In the morning he would circle to the other side of the town where the mountain streams flowed into the valley. There would be plenty of shelter in those parts. The problem then became wolven, but Blade had dealt with worse.
The horizon glowed a deep, rich purple by the time he reached the copse of yucca where he had left her. He found no indication of trespassers or animal scavengers, and his chest relaxed. All was peaceful and quiet.
Too quiet. Blade tried to pinpoint just what was wrong.
The sudden sound of ear-piercing screams had him dropping his packs, and his slow jog turned into a run.
Chapter Five
Raven panted through the tremors racking her frame, her throat raw and sore. This time, she knew she had been screaming.
Shadows shifted and the orange maggots disappeared. A black shape loomed over her, and she threw her head back, too exhausted to care that the demons had found her. But a part of her did not want to die, and she dug deep to summon another scream.
Hands untied her bonds and she was wrapped in warm, un-demon-like arms, surrounded by a calming strength of will. Immediately, the desire to scream disappeared.
Solid fingers grasped her chin. “Raven!” their owner commanded. The voice held neither warmth nor compassion, at odds with the emotions she sensed. “Open your eyes and look at me.”
That was something she did not wish to do. Not for any reason. What if this was some game being played by a demon?
The flat of a palm struck her, not hard, but enough to induce a reaction. Her eyes flew open, and she could have wept with relief when she saw a familiar mortal face.
Blade had returned for her.
He cradled her awkwardly in his arms. At once, her demon responded to his presence. She felt it prowling inside her, the strong pull of its desire for him, and she was too tired to contain it. Its attraction to Blade was the least of her worries.
“Where’s the boy?” she asked. She looked around, but the shadows were upon her again and she could not see very far.
“What boy?”
“I don’t know him.” Her anxiety grew. She twisted the front of Blade’s shirt, trying to draw herself upright. “We have to run.”
He smoothed a hand over her hair as he held her down. “It’s the snake venom,” he said to her. “Whatever you see isn’t real.”
“I see you,” she said.
His steady gaze never wavered from her face. He gently squeezed his fingers around the fist she had clenched in his shirtfront, pressing her hand to his beating heart. “I’m real enough. See? The rest is just the poison.”
She wanted to believe him. But then a current of cool, nocturnal air chased across her hot skin before rattling through the dry yucca above them. “So are the demons.” Her breath hitched. “And they’re coming.”
She had to get past this fear so they couldn’t find her. She relaxed her fist and spiked her fingers through his, absorbing his strength. Even as she clung to his hand, the brilliant night shadows reclaimed her and the mortal world slipped away.
The lava-filled lake from earlier was gone. This time jagged, barren cliffs and scattered craters surrounded her. Lightning streaked across the lavender sky, igniting the blue-green, rocky terrain of the boundary. A bolt of white flame struck a boulder, blasting it to pieces, and she flinched as chunks of debris flew past her face. The harsh smell of rotten eggs stung her nose and scratched her raw throat, making her gag.
Wiping her eyes with the back of her hand, she discovered she had not come here alone.
Blade stood beside her, exuding the air of a caged animal—watchful, alert, and ready to strike at the first sign of danger. She lowered her hand to see a thin line of red appear through a tear in his shirtsleeve. One of the sharp rock projectiles had cut him.
Her breath caught. Blood in the vicinity of demons was not good.
He flexed the fingers she had been holding as if they pained him. She had not realized how tightly she’d clung to him. Enough to create problems, it seemed. She had not known that she could bring someone with her.
“What is this place?” he asked, sounding both tense and grim.
“This,” she replied, apprehension a tightening knot around her aching throat, “is the boundary.” She tore a small strip off her ruined dress and dabbed at the blood on his arm. The cut was not deep and had already stopped bleeding, and relief softened her creased brow. She balled up the bloodied wad of fabric and threw it as far away as she could. “If you had any doubts before as to what I am, then this place should convince you.”
“I didn’t need any convincing of that.” His jaw worked. “But this can’t be the boundary.”
“It doesn’t belong to the goddesses,” she said. “This is the boundary that demons pass through. It’s as close as they can get to the mortal world, now that they’ve been banished.”
He looked around, his expression closed and forbidding. “Is it a nightmare? Or is it real?”
“It’s real. Very much so.” And she was no longer in control of what she might find in it, she remembered with a shudder.
She pushed emotion aside, mindful of where she was, and scanned the eerie, luminescent terrain. Demons would be coming for her.
For them both.
She shoved a hand through her tangled curls. Her father had not yet made an appearance, which could be either good or bad. Her fingers went to her throat. Even though he had said the amulet was of no use to her, it offered her comfort.
She did not know how the goldthief-induced hallucinations would affect her ability to survive, or if she could protect Blade. She did not know what thoughts the hallucinations had captured from her, or how they might manifest, only that when they did, it would be impossible for her to distinguish them from reality.
She did know that she could not show fear here.
To make matters worse, her demon was restless, hungering for Blade, leaving Raven both frustrated and uneasy. Ripples of desire she could not stanch turned her into a beacon for demons.
Blade’s hands lingered at his lean hips, his wide shoulders relaxed and elbows slightly bent as if he waited for something to happen. He managed to appear both calm and menacing.
She caught a movement from the corner of her eye. A multi-armed, low-bodied shape skittered around a large rock, then skirted the edge of a glowing crater before slipping into a crevice several feet from where they stood.
Blade’s hand moved in a blur. One minute it hovered above his hip. The next, a knife sang through the air and shot into the crevice. A high-pitched squeal rose from the narrow gap before dying abruptly away.
As Blade started toward the crevice, Raven reached out to stop him. When her fingers closed on his wrist, her demon reacted, urging her to touch him more intimately, to slide her hands inside his shirt, to feel the heat of his flesh against hers.
He brushed her hand off, although gently, as if he knew her thoughts and wished to save her the embarrassment, and she felt her face heat. She tucked her hands under her arms and fought back against her darker instincts.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“I’m retrieving my knife. And making certain that thing, whatever it is, is dead.”
He sounded so calm. Raven had sensed strength in Blade already, had even sought to use it as protection against the hallucinations, but she had not fully comprehended until now how dangerous he could be if provoked.