The combination of danger, restraint, and compassion in him intrigued her. She could see why her demon wanted him, but despite his strengths, he was a mortal man who would not last long if demons discovered them. The thought left her trembling, and she cast her eyes over the bluffs above them.
“We need to find a place to hide until this nightmare passes,” Raven said.
Blade reached a hand into the crevice and withdrew his knife. He wiped it clean on the blue-green, gritty soil. He looked up at her, the expression on his high-cheek-boned, angular face unreadable. “Now I know why you’re afraid of the dark.”
With effort, Raven stilled her shaky, rebellious limbs. “Listen carefully to me.” She whispered the words quickly. “Whatever happens, you can’t show fear. Don’t even talk about it. Not in this place.”
He slipped the knife into a hidden seam in the leg of his snug trousers and stood. A long rumble of thunder punctuated the movement.
Urgency sharpened her manner. “We need to hide.”
“Why?” he demanded. Another flash of lightning captured him in a haze of bluish-green light. “Are you afraid?”
Of course she was, but she would not admit it. She buried her fear as deep as she could and willed for him to do the same. She did not want to die. And she did not want him to die because of her.
“No.” The lie slid easily from her lips. “And neither are you,” she added, hoping he would pick up on her meaning. “But the hallucinations are creating a complication in both worlds for me now. Until they pass, hiding is the wisest option.”
Blade’s jaw muscles worked. “I won’t hide from demons. Not for any reason.”
Her heart sank. He might not show it on his face or in his manner, but he reeked of fear—and if she could smell it, he would never be able to hide it from them. If they caught him, they would delight in breaking him, and she doubted if he would be easily broken.
She stepped close to him, and putting all her strength in it, slapped his face so hard his head rocked back.
Surprise lit his eyes. The fear she had smelled in him retracted but was not replaced by anger as she had hoped. He did not retaliate for the blow either. He had an impressive control of himself and the majority of his emotions, from what she could tell. She wondered what had happened to him to make him fear demons so much, because he didn’t seem to fear much else.
The mark of her palm showed clearly on his reddened cheek.
“What was that for?” he asked.
She grasped the front of his shirt and pulled his head down near her mouth, disliking having to utter words that should never be voiced in this place.
“I smell your fear,” she breathed into his ear. “Contain it. Bury it. Then we’ll hide from them because we don’t want to give them a chance to provoke it. If you’re afraid of them, they’ll kill you, and it won’t be merciful. Do you understand?”
His fear of demons clearly did not extend to her, and for a few seconds, she thought he would disregard her warning. Then, reluctantly, he nodded, and she released the front of his shirt.
“Do you know a place we can hide?” he asked, equally quiet.
“I think so.”
She reached for his hand, intending to guide him through the gloomy light, but he shied away from her touch. While she understood why he did not want her to touch him again, hurt from the slight lanced her heart. She quickly suppressed it but not before he saw.
He tapped the hilt of one of his knives. He had a lot of them hidden in his clothing—more than she’d noted earlier, when he’d had her pinned to the ground on the ledge.
“I need my hands free,” he said.
She fought back a gasp. She should have known he was an assassin. That explained his ability to control his emotions and why he was so difficult to read.
She did not know how she felt about the discovery. Certainly not safer. Assassins belonged to the Godseekers. But even an assassin would have a difficult time against demons, particularly here, in a boundary they had claimed.
Raven picked up a small stone and tossed it a few paces away from them. The ground opened up as it landed. Green puffs of foul-smelling steam erupted skyward.
She watched Blade’s face closely as the stone disappeared, swallowed by the fissure. The crack vanished, leaving smoothly stable earth where it had gaped open just a moment ago. Other than a slight tightening of the skin around Blade’s dark eyes, he did not react.
Again, she was impressed with his control.
“These sinkholes can appear without warning,” she said. “Whatever you do, don’t step from the path I set.”
She did not tell him that she’d crafted the sinkholes as a way of protecting herself when she’d been a child—not from demons, but from Justice. She’d come here to hide from him. Back then, she had been too young to understand where she was.
Blade nodded. “I’ll follow you.”
They picked their way through the craters and crevices, instinct and memory guiding Raven. Her leg ached from the snakebite, and she could not fully bend her knee. Although the venom seemed to have less of a hallucinogenic effect on her here—presumably because of her demon heritage—she could not be sure that what she saw was real. Or that it was harmless. Any misstep or error in judgment could prove fatal.
A short while later, Blade dropped a hand to her shoulder.
“Something is following us,” he mouthed when she turned to see what he wanted.
Behind him she caught a glimpse of a shadow, then another. A few more appeared on the bluffs above them, and resignation settled into her soul.
They had been discovered.
…
“We’ll have to fight them,” Raven said.
It was not what Blade wanted to hear but more or less what he had expected.
This place made his skin crawl. The odd, watery lighting, the unrelenting storm of lightning and thunder…
The presence of demons.
And yet a part of Raven loved this. He could see it in the sparkle of her brilliant, diamond-fired eyes. Did she know that they glowed blue in the dim light of their surroundings?
The effect was startling. Mesmerizing. Erotic.
Blade shook off the thought, taking her warning about exhibiting weakness and fear here to heart. Desire was a definite weakness, more so because it was unlikely this feeling was natural. He forced himself to focus on the danger, the more immediate concern. Raven might be half demon, but she’d be no match for a full-blooded one. Her size alone worked against her. So did the fact she was female and still suffering from the goldthief bite, although the hallucinations seemed to have abated.
Perhaps this boundary worked in her favor in that regard.
“I’ll handle the fighting,” Blade said. “You’re going to hide.”
He silently drafted a plan. In his head he ran through the location of each of his knives in his new clothing, wishing he’d had time to become more familiar with them. A demon’s vulnerability when in demon form was between the chinks in their bone plating.
He would have to allow them to come within throwing range, a thought that did not appeal to him. The horror of being eaten alive by a demon was a difficult memory to submerge. At the time, shock had numbed any pain. Wet, tearing sounds were what he recalled most.
“You’ll never defeat them without me,” she said.
Already, he could see the bright anticipation of battle in her eyes. She had no idea what she faced. He wasn’t going to be able to convince her to leave the fighting to him.
He would have to keep as close an eye on her as possible. If she died, it would not be because he had not done his best to protect her. But he would kill her himself rather than abandon her to demons.