Page 8

Eight

A zreth did not want to ask the mortal for advice on where to go, so he just went in the opposite direction of the castle. He needed to keep moving. Fear always set in worst when you stopped moving. As long as you were running faster than everyone else, no one could hurt you.

Raiya had not eaten since they’d left the castle. She’d brought nothing with her in her little bag, and Azreth had nothing of his own to offer her.

“How often do you eat?” he asked her.

She jerked a little, startled by his voice, and she fingered the end of her braided hair. “Three times a day, usually.”

Azreth was dumbfounded. Mortal bodies were beyond his comprehension. She needed to eat thrice every single day? Was she already fading, then, after not having had a morning meal? How long would she last without feeding? Would she even make it to the end of the day?

He’d had no idea just how fragile humans were before he’d met her. It worried him. He didn’t know how to find things like food or shelter on this plane. But he was the one who’d taken her from the safety of her home, away from those things, so he was responsible for her health now.

He was relieved when he saw a single small dwelling perched atop a broad, low hill in the distance. The structure was simple, made of organic materials, nothing like the stone fortress Raiya had lived in. It was completely alone in the vast landscape, undefended.

“Where are you going?” Raiya asked as he turned toward the building.

“There is a house. We will find food there.”

Raiya’s steps faltered. He glanced down at her, sensing a dark emotion brewing in her. “Wait. I don’t think that’s wise.”

“Why not?”

“What if there’s someone inside?”

He lifted an eyebrow at her. It was unlikely that a mortal commoner or two would pose a threat to them. They wouldn’t try to hurt her while she was with him. But if they did— “I will kill them,” he assured her.

Her eyes widened. “No! Stay here and let me go alone. Please.” She ran in front of him, forcing him to stop.

He had thought she might be glad that he’d been thinking of her needs. Apparently not.

Quite the opposite, in fact. She wanted to leave him here while she ran inside to scheme with the other mortals. Maybe she thought they would help her escape him, or even kill him. He could think of no other reason for her sudden urgency. And he’d already witnessed her opportunistic nature firsthand, when she’d asked him to kill Nirlan.

Scowling, he stepped around her and kept walking. “You will stay with me.”

“But—”

“No.”

Raiya went silent. After a moment, he heard her following him.

There was a lone human working in the field outside the house. As they approached, the man looked up and stared. He was as small and thin as all the other mortals Azreth had seen, his scant muscles hidden by a layer of soft fat. The man made a strangled sound, then turned and ran inside, slamming the door behind him.

By the time Azreth got to the door, whoever was inside the house had gone quiet.

He hesitated, unexpectedly nervous.

It was just a house. There would only be mortals inside, and he could kill them just as easily as he had the guards at the castle. But the last time he’d underestimated mortals, he’d almost died in a cage. Fear had infiltrated his mind like a sickness.

He clenched his jaw. He was strong. This plane would not kill him. He could not let it.

He pushed on the door, but it didn’t move. Something was blocking it from the other side. In a controlled thrust, he drove his fist into the wood. It shattered easily.

Someone inside the house screamed in fear, which bolstered his confidence. He broke the door into pieces and pushed the remnants aside, then stepped over the threshold.

Immediately, there were more screams. He narrowed his eyes as he adjusted to the dim interior. The several humans inside scattered away from the door, pressing themselves against walls as far away from him as possible. None of them wore armor or carried weapons. Azreth watched their wide eyes trace up his body and over his horns, which were bumping against the ceiling. Bits of thatch tore loose whenever he turned his head.

They were terrified. He felt a peculiar combination of relief and unease. He wasn’t used to being stared at.

He looked around the room—for the entire house was just one single room. It was the warmest place he’d been since coming to this chilly plane. Along one wall was a space dedicated to cooking, with a fire and food storage. Something boiled noisily inside a pot.

He had heard that mortals had odd food preferences, and that they liked to boil many different carcasses and plants together into a sludge. It smelled of meat, but also of other unfamiliar and unpleasant herbal and vegetal ingredients. He wondered if they were toxic.

He heard Raiya’s feet padding carefully over the broken door behind him. Just as he started toward the cooking area, something hit him in the back, almost hard enough to hurt.

He spun to face her, but it wasn’t Raiya who had struck him. Beside her was a young man holding a shovel—the same small man they’d seen outside, who was now looking like he severely regretted what he’d just done.

How had Azreth forgotten about the man already? He should have counted the occupants of the house. He should have made certain he knew where all of his enemies were, including any lurking behind him. If it had been another demon instead of a mortal, such a foolish mistake would have cost him his life.

Annoyed, he jerked the shovel from the man’s hands and threw it across the room. The house was made of brittle wood, and the blade of the shovel stuck in the wall like a dart.

Instead of cowing them like he’d expected, this only seemed to spur the mortals into action. From his other side, there was a rush of footsteps as someone approached, and then something hit him.

He cried out as agony pulsed through him. It siphoned the strength from his body, making his legs shake and his vision blacken. He looked down, and dread filled him. A long, metal bar protruded from his side. Its rough surface had made a jagged rip in his skin, tearing instead of cutting.

Iron.

It was like acid, like teeth, like razors and ice inside him. Soon he’d be on his knees, perhaps unconscious, perhaps dead. His summoned arm flickered as he struggled to maintain concentration on the spell.

He grabbed the stick of iron. The surface of it touching his hand was like frostbite, and he fought the instinct to immediately let go. Sharp, liquid pain burst across his fingers and up his arm. His hand shook.

With a jerk and a cry, he wrenched it out and threw it far away. Blood poured from his side, his natural healing slowed by the poisonous metal.The mortals were screaming and shouting and darting around him in panic. Their emotions were so thick that they were almost suffocating. He shook his head, struggling to keep his senses straight.

They would attack with iron again. He had to stop them now.

He lashed out half blindly, knocking the younger man across the room, then he grabbed the man who’d stabbed him and raised him into the air. Dark emotions vibrated throughout the room, sinking into him in invigorating waves. The mortal stared into his eyes. There was utter hatred in the man’s face right alongside the fear.

Azreth had been a fool to lower his guard. Mortals were just as vicious as demons, just as filled with hate, just as devious and self-serving.

Something was weakly but insistently pulling at his arm. “Azreth,” said a voice that seemed oddly distant though the sound of blood pulsing in his ears. “Azreth!”

Dragging his attention away from the man, Azreth looked down. Raiya was at his side, her small hands wrapped around his arm and tugging at him as hard as they could. She flinched when he looked down at her, as if she thought he would strike her next.

Her expression was desperate and filled with worry. She wasn’t trying to fight him—she was begging.

“They’re just afraid!” she cried. “They’re only farmers. Please let them go!”

Let them go?

She made it sound as if he were holding them hostage. He had been perfectly willing to leave them alone before they attacked him.

A piercing wail cut through the air, and Azreth started. It was unlike anything he’d ever heard.The sound was coming from a bundle of cloth in the arms of the woman huddled against the wall. To his shock, he saw a tiny, scrunched-up face within the bundle, like a little fat grub with a human face. It was screaming.

It was a human baby. He stared at it, disconcerted. The sound it made was a perfect natural defense mechanism. It would have been defenseless otherwise, being so small and soft, but he would have done nearly anything to get away from that sound.

The mother was crying silently, and when Azreth looked her way, she clutched the baby tighter against her chest to shield it from his gaze. He’d seen the same behavior in animals in the hells. A nyra would defend her hatchlings even at the cost of her own life.

The idea of being so small and helpless, completely dependent upon others for survival, was so horrible he could hardly bear to think about it.

It was then that he noticed several of the other humans were too small to be fully grown, too. This was a mortal family. A wife and husband and their children. After Raiya’s interruption, they’d stopped attacking him and had gone back to cowering and screaming.

For a moment, he imagined what another demon might have done in his place. He thought of the man in his hands ripped in half lengthwise until his guts unraveled to the floor. He thought of the baby pulled from its bundle and smashed against the stone hearth. He thought of the mother screaming while her children were killed slowly. He imagined how their pain would taste. He tried, experimentally, to find the thoughts appealing.

It didn’t work. The sounds of their cries grated on him like claws on slate.

He did not enjoy being the cause of this suffering. It did not give him the same pleasure he’d felt when he’d torn through the castle. He did not like this.

He didn’t like that he didn’t like it.

Raiya stood in front of him, lifting her hands placatingly. She spoke to him the way one might speak to a large, frightening, and not-very-intelligent beast. “They were afraid you would hurt them. They can do you no harm. You don’t have to do this. Please. Please, don’t kill them.”

Before he had come to this plane, he had imagined that he would enjoy hearing mortals beg him for mercy. But he found that he disliked this, as well.

He glanced up at the man he was still holding aloft. The man looked back with a pained grimace.

Slowly, Azreth lowered him to the floor. As soon as his feet touched the floor, the man backed away, stopping near the wailing infant. Azreth wondered if he meant to protect the child, or if he just hoped the horrible sound would ward Azreth away from them both.

Shaken, Azreth looked at them all as they stared at him. Gritting his teeth, he pressed a hand to the wound at his side, which was still bleeding freely and hurt like all the hells. He could still feel the taint of the iron inside him.

The pot on the fire boiled over suddenly, hissing.

In all the confusion, he’d almost forgotten what they’d come here for. Giving the humans a warning glance, he went to the cooking space.

He scanned the bizarre assortment of items resting on the table and on shelves along the wall: bundles of absurdly tiny leaves, jars of some kind of rotten-smelling paste, other jars filled with yellow and red and black dirt, ugly bulbous roots, a large knife that had been set down in the middle of carving those roots into immaculate little squares…

He was annoyed and overwhelmed by it all. Everything in the mortal realm was inexplicable. What was all of this for? What possible need could they have for such excess? Why were mortals so ridiculous? Why had this endeavor—feeding a single small human—become so complicated?

He impatiently grabbed a large, skinned piece of meat still attached to the bone, because it smelled the least bad out of everything, before stalking to the door.

“Human,” he snapped at Raiya, motioning outside. After a moment, he heard her following.