Paula Altenburg - Black Widow Demon

He made up his mind. “I found some sealed bottles of whiskey stashed behind one wall of an old cellar,” Walker said. “I think she could use some of that.”

Whiskey was hard to find in the mountains and worth more than gold. Unless it was homemade, it could only be brought in through the desert. And until recently, the presence of demons had determined the trade routes.

“That would be perfect,” Raven said.

While he went to get the whiskey, the women hurried between the abandoned houses to collect the basket they had left behind at the smokehouse earlier. The simple, everyday task gave Laurel distraction and purpose.

With Raven carrying the basket, they turned to go. Movement caught her eye. She grabbed Laurel’s arm, setting the basket on the ground behind her as she did.

At the corner of the empty dwelling where they had been scavenging stood a woman with long black hair.

“That’s her,” Laurel said softly in Raven’s ear.

Raven’s heart raced when she saw Justice standing behind the woman. He had lost weight in the weeks since Raven had last seen him and had a bit more gray in his hair. The hardness inside him was more transparent. Raven read victory in him.

The situation was not good. With him was another man, younger, taller, and heavily freckled, who gave off the air of an assassin as he dispassionately assessed the two women facing him. But Raven had not run these past weeks only to give up so easily now.

“Shift,” she whispered to Laurel. At least then one of them could escape and go for help.

“No.” Laurel’s own initial panic seemed to have fled, replaced by a serene calm and determination of manner that added to Raven’s worries. Laurel believed she had nothing left to lose, and she wanted revenge more than survival.

Raven, too, had thought she wanted vengeance, and the sight of Justice so close tempted her. But more than that, she wanted to live. She was not afraid to die, she discovered. Not by mortal means. She simply was not ready to say good-bye to life, and to Blade. If anything happened to her, he would blame himself. She could not bear the thought of him living with so much guilt on his already overburdened conscience.

She tried to think. She did not want the strange woman to be aware of her own chaotic emotions—although she could tell by the cruel smile curling her lips that it was already too late.

“Hello, Raven,” Justice said, before he glanced at Laurel. He tugged up his collar against the bite of the piercing wind that swirled throughout the dreary remains of the mountain settlement. “Is your companion a spawn, too? What might her demon abilities be?”

Raven made no comment. Laurel’s sole ability was to shift to shadow, and she did not want the newcomers to know of it. It could yet save her life.

“We haven’t done any harm to anyone,” Raven said. “We want to be left alone, nothing more.”

Justice thumbed the brim of his hat from his forehead. “No harm? You raised a demon and destroyed an entire village.”

“That’s not true!” Laurel cried out, drawing his attention from Raven. She stared hard at the woman with Justice and pointed a finger. “She’s the one who raised the demon that killed my family.”

Laurel lunged for the demon woman, and Raven grabbed for her friend, her fingers missing purchase on the sleeve of Laurel’s coat by scant inches. The taller, freckled man drew back his arm and threw a knife he had palmed. It caught Laurel in the abdomen, and with a sharp cry of pain, she stumbled and went to her knees. Raven hurled herself forward, throwing her arms around her friend to protect her from any further attacks. Fear for her friend washed through Raven before she could suppress it. The demon woman’s smile widened. She fed on fear too, Raven realized, sickened—that made her more demon than mortal. She enjoyed killing.

A wall of flame sprang up around Raven and Laurel, pinning them into a circle. Raven saw the assassin hesitate. Then he drew back, as if uncertain now of what was happening and unwilling to take further action until he understood. Raven was grateful for that reprieve, small as it was.

“I should have run the knife through your heart when I had the chance, instead of your leg,” Raven said to Justice. “But it was too small a target.”

Justice chuckled softly at her insult. “We already know a little fire won’t harm you.” His gaze slithered from her face to Laurel’s. “But what will it do to your friend?”

He sounded curious, as if conducting some minor experiment. At a gesture from him, the demon woman tightened the circle of fire. Inside it, a few feet from Laurel, a demon slowly began to take shape, towering head and shoulders above the flames. The sight and smell of Laurel’s blood transfixed it, and it turned on her with hot, hungry eyes.

The woman who raised it did not seem to understand what she did. She had not drawn any of the boundary with it to keep it from entering the mortal world. Fire alone would not be enough to contain it for very long.

Raven had to do something. She shot to her feet, moving as far from Laurel as she could, and allowed her own inner demon to surface, hoping its allure would be enough to draw the attention of both the demon and the assassin. The demon’s massive head swung in her direction, its eyes curious now, Laurel all but forgotten. It shifted to mortal form in an instinctive response.

Raven lured it to her—one step, then a few more.

And then she had her hands on it, and it was hers. But she had none of Blade’s knives on her this time to dispatch it with, and she could not pull the one from between Laurel’s ribs for fear the action might kill her.

“Stop her!” she heard Justice commanding the demon woman, his voice harsh.

The flames shot higher, the dancing circle tightening even more around them, forcing Raven to step closer to Laurel, and in turn bringing the demon closer to her, too. Raven was not afraid of the flames. She called the fire to her, drew it in, and allowed it to fill her until the circle vanished and a smoking black ring was all that remained.

With the circle gone, and no weapon at hand, only her grip on the demon kept it from escaping into the mortal world. But the fire she’d absorbed was too much. It threatened to explode through the pores of her skin. It burned inside her, but she did not dare release it.

…

Only years of training kept Blade from a mindless rush to Raven’s defense as her screams of pain, mixed with the thick allure of her protective defenses gone wild, filled the air.

He could not leave the house unobserved through the front door as Creed, who deflected unwanted attention, just had. Instead, Blade went out a back window and into the cover of shadow, where he ran behind the houses to the place her screams led him.

He emerged to a scene of chaos.

Raven had one hand on a demon. Laurel lay on the ground behind her, gravely injured, possibly dead.

Two men stood outside a scorched and smoking circle of earth that surrounded the two women and the demon. One of the men was Justice. Blade assumed that the other was an assassin. Neither seemed to possess an ability to move, which Blade could well understand given the allure Raven did not seem to have under control. A third woman stood a few feet away from them, unaffected by Raven, her feet positioned as if ready to bolt at the first opportunity.

Flames shot from Raven’s eyes and rippled beneath her golden skin. She turned her head slightly in his direction, as if sensing his presence, and at once, the full brunt of her allure transferred to him. He had not been prepared for the extent of it, and it took him a few seconds to recover, but he shook it off as fast as he could because it indicated to him how very distressed she was.