Page 11 of A Blade of Lies and Spirits

He caught my hand. “Will you try not to get injured again tonight if I heal you?”

“I’m fine,” I told him, even though the cuts stung.

“We’re going to need to be in fighting form to handle a demon.”

The urge to race through the desert naked, to let the owls in the home, filled me, but he was right. I nodded, standing straight, signaling that he could heal me. That I knew this should be done first.

He traced a sigil between my breasts, and the pain was gone. “Time to go handle the demon.”

Healed, I dressed, and we packed up our camp. I set a hard pace to the cliff dwelling of the heirs. Anger shortened my breath, and made my steps fast. Another dawn was too long to wait. For the babies. For her too, since she would have been almost a child when her first was born. From her own fucking dad.

Forcing someone who can’t resist is beneath contempt. Damaged by that, she would be weak and easily used for the rest. Simple for a demon to take when she finally fought back. I didn’t think her sister had killed their father alone. Mara may have been along for the ride and not fighting against her sister’s actions, and that would have been the crack the demon used to slip in.

Walker matched my pace easily, his legs longer than mine. He wrapped silence around him, bleak and cold, his face a mask with icy eyes. No doubt we were both feeling the same raw fury at Malcom Williams.

The first hints of false dawn spread in the sky as we climbed to the house.

A sleepy servant ran for the master and mistress when I told him to bring them. I didn’t wait to be led to the room where I first saw them. The shutters were closed.

They entered the room. The sister stopped as I walked forward, a flicker in her eyes. Her brother continued to the chairs, unnoticing until she spoke.

“Back off,” her voice said. Echoes scuttled like rats around the room. The shadows hissed and whispered, and the fear and rage boiling out of her burned beneath my skin.

I backpedaled and threw open the shutters. Wings beat the air around me. The inrush of the birds made me stagger, and I covered my head with my arms to protect myself from the talons.

The owls shredded the air around her with sharp cries, nicking her with delicate claws. The smaller owls finally settled on the woman, nuzzling her skin with their beaks. Their yellow eyes fixed on her face.

The woman screamed, her nails clawing at her face. “No ? no ? no ? no ? no!”

My fingers brushed her shoulder. A broken mind fluttered under the weight of an alien awareness, hot and hard and hungry. I gasped under the shock of it as the presence tunneled into me. Heat radiated through my blood, uncomfortably hot. The door within me rattled to my powers; the chains on it and the chains of the geas flared hot and wild. What lay on the other side of the door, my elven magic, slammed against it, roaring, and the invading demon paused.

The demon tried to run back to its old home. I bit it, tearing with immaterial teeth as I drew the silvered dagger. Walker’s hand closed around my wrist.

“Don’t,” he said. “There are other ways. Just keep it in place.”

Trust came hard, but I preferred not to kill myself to end the demon. So I held as it struggled, each moment another beat of exhaustion, my will focused inward. Walker chanted next to me, gathering power. It poured within me, strengthening the part that was me and not demon, my identity. Soul-magic.

The sister wept, tears tracking crookedly through the blood drawn by her nails. Her eyes lived again. I found strength in that.

She knelt by me, and took my hand. The demon surged toward her, and I chewed at it, refusing to let it wriggle free.

One of the baby owls nestled against my hand; the others clung to her garments.

The force of their emotions drove the demon back. Warm golden happiness radiated from the ghosts, a velvet caress on my mind and hers. They’d wanted their mother for years, protected by her sister from evil that desired to corrupt them.

A name beat against me in the noise of their wings. Yanaha—her mind echoed it, as empathy slid deep enough for me to hear her thoughts, intimate, merging with mine. She embraced that name, rather than the one given by her father: bravery rather than bitterness.

Her happiness was veined with darkness, but the relief their words gave dazzled my mind as well. She could feel the little owls’ love, though the veins of sorrow in her ran deeper than I could follow. Wide wet eyes met mine, a desperate plea within.

Tumbling emotions overwhelmed the parts of me that weren’t fighting the demon. The drum of pain, inside and out. Memories of years of rape. Of her children, stolen and murdered. A crippled heart trapped in memory.

This crystalline moment bore more happiness than she’d ever known. To banish them would break her beyond mending.

I didn’t move as she pulled a knife from my belt. She smiled.

Thank you. Sincerity resonated through her mental voice. Quick as a snake, she buried it in her throat, a strike that meant business. I didn’t shield my face from the blood. I followed her as far as I could, lending her company as she died.

She fell, another owl hovering above her. It struck, diving into my body. A form made of darkness struggled in her talons as she pulled back.

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