The demon spoke to Raven, his eyes flaring red with satisfaction and anticipation. “I’ll grant you one favor for bringing me this,” he said to her. “Anything you wish.”
If Raven accepted the favor, she would find herself more beholden to her father than ever. Blade had made her a promise. He seized Justice’s arm and positioned himself between him and the demon. In his current form, Raven’s father stood head and shoulders above him. Blade possessed no illusions that the demon had any more liking for him than it did for the Godseeker Blade now held in his grasp.
A chilling memory flashed through his thoughts of a long-ago day in the desert when he had been attacked by a demon, left with his leg torn apart and facing certain death. He buried the recollection quickly but not fast enough. The demon’s attention had been diverted from Justice to him. Cruelty shone from its blazing red eyes.
“Give me the mortal,” the demon said.
“If I do, you owe the favor you offered Raven to me, not her,” Blade said. “I want your word that if I give him to you, she owes you nothing. You won’t summon her ever again.”
Justice swung a fist at him. “Bastard traitor to the goddesses.”
Blade ducked the blow and twisted the Godseeker’s arm behind his back, then pressed a knife to his throat. The temptation to kill him for all he had done to Raven was great.
“Try to hit me again,” Blade said to him, “and I’ll draw blood. Then I’ll walk away from you. Do you understand me?”
“I understand that you serve a demon whore now, not the goddesses. You’ll be hanged for this. Or I’ll have you tested as a spawn so you can burn alive.”
Blade did not care about Justice’s opinion of who he served or any punishment he might threaten. He wanted Raven to be free of this man and of the demon, too.
The demon rolled its head back and forth, shrugging meaty shoulders beneath heavy bone plating and thick red skin. Its gaze narrowed on Blade. “For that price, I want more from you. I want the amulet you wear.”
Every instinct in Blade warned that he should not agree. If he gave up the amulet, he gave up his ability to hold this boundary in place. His safety inside it would no longer be guaranteed.
“Ask what he wants with the amulet,” Justice said to Blade. “He gave it to his whore. Why would he want it back now that she’s dead? Sentimentality?” The last word dripped with scorn.
No, Blade did not believe the demon was sentimental about the amulet. With regard to Raven’s mother, however, he did not doubt there was an attachment—Blade felt the same for Raven. And sentimentality was the real reason he did not wish to give the amulet up now, and without question why Raven’s mother had kept it until Justice had taken it from her.
There was more to the demon’s motives than that. Blade could practically taste it. But he would buy Raven’s safety and guarantee that she, at least, would be free. Not even fear of what the demon might do to him in this half-world boundary could deter him.
For Raven, he would risk everything.
“You would trust it?” Justice asked. Incredulity slackened his face. “A demon?”
“As much as I would anyone,” Blade replied. He released his hold on Justice and met the demon’s eyes. He snapped the amulet from the chain around his neck and held it out in his hand.
The demon’s clawed fist curled around the amulet. “She’s far more demon than you wish to believe, mortal. Blood will tell.”
And he crushed it into dust.
The boundary vanished, returning them to the dusk of the mortal world where there was no roar of the sea, only the groan of the wind through the mountains and trees.
Blade had not expected this move. Neither, however, had the demon anticipated the next one from him.
Blade had learned a few things from the Demon Slayer. Hunter had once saved his life, and they had fought demons together in an attack against Freetown. As a result, Blade knew that a demon’s greatest areas of vulnerability were between the bone plating of its natural armor. Blade withdrew a knife from the sleeve of his coat and drove it up and under the gap in the plating beneath the demon’s outstretched arm. Without hesitating, he pulled another knife from a second hidden sheath and drove it into the base of the demon’s throat, slashing sideways until he hit its protective plating, and the knife’s shaft snapped from the metal. Blood spewed, droplets spattering his face, hot and wet.
He turned away, needing no confirmation that he had made a kill and not wanting Justice to have time to escape.
But the Godseeker had not made an attempt at one. He’d grabbed the rifle Blade had left propped against the side of the house.
Blade assessed the situation in a glance.
Raven was on her knees beside Laurel, her hand on the knife buried in her stomach. And Justice had the rifle pointed at Raven’s head.
“I need you to pull the knife out of me. I don’t have the strength,” Laurel gasped.
Raven shook her head. “If I do it might kill you.”
“I’ll die for certain if you don’t.” Laurel’s skin was icy and pale. She had lost a great deal of blood. It seeped through her heavy layer of clothing and spilled around her in a black puddle. “It prevents me from slipping to shadow because it’s inside of me.”
“Will becoming a shadow heal you?” Raven asked. The smell of blood stirred her demon and made her ill. She could tell that Laurel was not sure but hoped it was true, and believed the possibility existed.
That was enough for Raven. She did not want Laurel to die, which was the only alternative. She gripped the knife’s hilt, slick with congealing blood, and drew it from Laurel with a wet, popping sound that made her stomach clench in sympathetic rebellion. Laurel moaned, then quickly shifted to shadow.
Raven heard Blade shouting. “Get down!”
She did not look around to see who he was warning. The unfamiliar edge of alarm in his voice was enough to make her react. She dropped to the ground and buried her face in her arms. She felt a hum in the air above her head, followed almost instantly by the crack of a rifle.
She lifted her head to see what danger remained. Night colored the world in grays and blacks. Walker maintained his hold on the freckled assassin, but had developed a frantic look to him that warned her he was close to breaking. Blade was already in motion and headed for Justice.
Justice held the rifle, but instead of attempting another shot at Raven, he seized the barrel in both hands. He swung the stock like a club in a blow that Blade could not avoid. It connected with Blade’s temple, and he went to his hands and knees, dazed but not unconscious.
Walker made an involuntary move to go to Blade’s aid, thus losing his hold on the assassin. The assassin slipped free and would have turned on him, except for the arrival of Creed and several more people from out of the darkness.
“Stand down,” one of the newcomers said to the assassin. He was balding and stout and spoke with such an air of authority that the assassin obeyed him at once.
Raven’s demon, however, already agitated, went wild when it saw Blade fall and not get up again.
From head to toe, Raven burst into flame.
Blade shook his head. It was rare for someone to catch him off guard like that.
As he returned to full consciousness, his one clear thought was of Raven. He was aware of the others around him, heard Creed shouting his name from somewhere nearby and with increasing urgency. And he saw the brilliant blue sheet of flame that emanated from where Raven had been sprawled on the ground.
Fear for her drove him to his feet. The heat grew more intense and the siding on the house beside her began to bubble and smolder, curling and shriveling. Blade did not care about the loss of the building, although if it caught fire, the flames could easily spread to the others. He did not want Raven to immolate herself, as she almost had once before.