Blade did not want to sympathize with them. A lot of people experienced tragedy in their lives and survived.
“How did she raise the demon?” he asked.
Laurel looked at him, uncomprehending. “What do you mean?”
“She has to control it somehow,” he said. “What did she do? Was there a ritual of some kind?”
“I can’t remember.” Laurel passed a hand over her eyes in an unconscious attempt to wipe away images only she could see.
Blade knew she might never remember the details of that day simply because she did not want to, and he did not blame her for it. Replaying the tragedy would not bring her family and friends back.
But it nagged at him that this woman spawn she spoke of had raised a demon. Raven’s father had wanted her to summon him, too, and he would not want such a thing unless he knew he’d be in control. It made no sense otherwise.
“Fire,” the man who had spoken before said. “She called the demon into a circle of blue fire that surrounded the temple.”
Such a circle would have been enormous. Now, Blade really did not believe she had done it on her own. He rubbed his temple with the heel of one palm, trying to think logically with a brain that was too tired to function.
“I’ve seen demons raised,” he said. It was not something that could ever be forgotten. “But by a priestess who invoked the protection of both the Demon Lord and the goddesses. Her circles were made of sanctified water that demons couldn’t cross. I’m not convinced demon fire alone could really contain one, at least not for long.”
“It must,” Raven said. “No demon would allow itself to be held if it had a choice.”
Demons did what suited their own interests. If this one had something to gain from the woman believing she controlled it, then it would allow the illusion to be maintained. Temporarily.
Blade kept his opinions and reservations quiet. These people were frightened enough, and he did not want to alarm Raven either, but he wished his friend Hunter were here so they could discuss the matter. Hunter’s new wife, Airie, had been the one to banish the demons.
But Blade was on his own, and the possibility of demons returning to the mortal world was enough to hammer thick, numbing shards of ice through his temples.
He rubbed his scarred leg as he focused on the trail of smoke rising from the small campfire and mentally counted to ten until the numbness passed.
Raven was watching him, concern obvious in her eyes. Rubbing his leg had been a telling reveal to her, and she must have felt the shift in his emotions. He blamed his carelessness on fatigue and was glad he had not been touching her at that moment or she would have been able to read his thoughts, too.
A fallen log in the fire cracked and split apart, revealing the red-hot embers inside. Sparks sprayed, then dulled to tiny flecks of falling ash. He rose. “Discussing this further is mere speculation. I’m ready to turn in for the night.” He nodded to the three men. “If you leave before I wake, then I wish you a safe journey.”
“We could all continue on tomorrow together,” Raven said to him, hope in her eyes.
Her suggestion was met with silence and a lack of enthusiasm on everyone’s part. What Raven did not seem to understand, or chose not to see, was that Blade was not one of them. These people did not trust him any more than he trusted them.
He had noticed something else he did not like. The youngest of the men had not been able to take his eyes off Raven since she’d joined them around the fire. It might be best if Blade kept her separated from him.
“We continue on alone,” he said to Raven, loud enough for the others to hear.
The other men nodded, although the youngest with less conviction.
Laurel’s hands fussed with the folds of her heavy cape. “I think that’s for the best,” she said.
Blade read disappointment and reproach on Raven’s face when she looked at him. She refused the hand he held out to her, rising to her feet unassisted as she uttered wishes to the others for peaceful dreams.
His dreams would not be. They would be tainted by worry because she was troubled, which in turn exposed her to the demon boundary, and he prepared himself for another sleepless night.
They slept with the flap of their shelter open because Raven liked to watch the emerging stars. Blade liked to be warned of anything that might come too close in the night.
“Why don’t you want us to travel together?” she asked him, her voice a soft whisper against his throat so it could not be overheard.
“I don’t want them to know where we’re going. What they don’t know can’t be repeated. If we’re successful in crossing from the Godseeker Mountains, I don’t want others to know that it’s possible. We don’t want to take the problems from our world to a people who might have no knowledge of spawn, or even of the immortals themselves.”
“Laurel and her companions aren’t dangerous,” Raven said. “I’d know if they were.”
Blade agreed with her about that much. Their danger was not in their intentions, but in what they themselves were. Laurel’d had a family. The news of spawn bearing children made Blade more aware than ever of the potential magnitude of their numbers. Laurel’s children would have been one quarter demon, and that was assuming that Laurel herself was half. Blade was no expert on breeding, but if her husband had also been half demon, any of their children could have been born with more demon characteristics than mortal ones. That made the world perhaps even less stable now than before the demons were banished. The realization was disturbing.
“I don’t believe they mean to be,” Blade said. “But it’s not just them we should worry about. What if spawn were to settle in a strange land that knows nothing of demons, then marry mortals and have children with them? Who can guarantee that those children won’t someday become problems? Do we have the right to take this into an unsuspecting world?”
The silence stretched to the point he wondered if she had fallen asleep. He began to drift off.
Then she spoke. “You’re right. There wouldn’t be any guarantee about children.” She sounded thoughtful and less angry with him than before, but she pulled a length of blanket from under his arm and rolled away so that they barely touched.
He stared at the black sky for a long time after that, unable to sleep, as he had predicted, but not for the reasons he’d anticipated.
He’d said something wrong and had no idea what it might have been.
…
The woman had summoned a demon.
She had brought it into the second circle of the linked figure eight however, indicating to Justice that she did not intend them immediate harm. She planned to play with them first, the way a cat played with a mouse.
Cold and fatigue were forgotten as Justice’s mind raced to cobble together a plan of action that might save their lives. Rapid-fire thoughts twisted through his head. He had never seen a summoning before but had heard they were conducted by priestesses whose containing circles were drawn using water consecrated by the goddesses.
Demons, however, had been banished from the world, so summoning one should no longer be possible. And as far as he could tell, this woman did not have water of any kind on her, consecrated or not.
But she had raised one nonetheless, and hers was surrounded only by demon fire.
Justice saw the sly way the demon regarded her, how the muscles of its face and shoulders tightened as if ready to spring every time her concentration wavered and the blue flames flickered. The demon was why her control over the fire was now so erratic, he thought. That was what she did not know or understand. It toyed with her and allowed her to believe she was in charge, when Justice suspected all that really kept it contained was an inability to cross completely into the mortal world because of the banishment.