The Demon Creed (A Demon Outlaws Novel) (Entangled Edge) Read Free Page A

missing children?”
    “It’s not the children who interest me as much as the circumstances in which they’re rumored to have disappeared.”
    Fledge hooked a chair near the desk with the toe of his boot and flipped it around, then gestured for Creed to take a seat. Creed dragged the chair to the far corner of the desk so that his back faced a wall, not the door. A slight grin crossed the sheriff’s thin face as he noted the action.
    “I don’t have much hard information,” Fledge said. “Besides, there are all kinds of rumors flying these days.”
    “Such as?”
    The good-natured smile faded. “The kind that says those children are spawn. That there’s a whore hiding in the Godseeker Mountains who’s one of them, too. That maybe the Demon Slayer is to blame for them by taking up with a demon when he should have been protecting people from her kind instead. He’s abandoned us, leaving his work half done.”
    The sheriff had strong opinions.
    Creed could ignore his use of the term whore . It was not meant with any disrespect, only as a distinction. Women, owned by men and used as they pleased, were one of three things—wives, daughters, or whores.
    But Creed disliked the term spawn when used by a mortal. It was a slur against all half demons—and an intentional one.
    He especially did not like hearing it associated with Raven, who was the “whore” on the mountain Fledge mentioned. She and Blade had begun a new settlement in one of the many abandoned mining towns, where they welcomed any half demons who wished to live in peace.
    Once he stripped off the prejudice, he sifted through everything Fledge had said for what was important. The sheriff had heard rumors that those missing children were spawn. The last time Creed had seen Willow, she’d had a misshapen and feral demon child in her company. The memory of that pitiful creature, and how she had used it, haunted him.
    Perhaps Raven was not the whore Fledge referred to after all. Creed had assumed that feral child was Willow’s. It was possible he’d been mistaken about that. The thought of her raising children made his blood run cold.
    “So you’ve heard of a woman hiding in the mountains who might be spawn, and blame the Demon Slayer, who’s reported to be in the Borderlands, for her existence,” Creed said. “It doesn’t sound to me as if either of them could be held responsible for children who’ve gone missing in the area around Desert’s End.”
    The sheriff’s gray face reflected his agreement before another coughing spasm overtook him. By the time he recovered, his whole body was trembling.
    “If you’re wanting someone to hold responsible for their disappearance, maybe you should disregard the rumors and consider slave traders instead. The man to discuss that with lives about three miles out of town on a kyson ranch.” The sheriff paused again to catch his breath. The rattling sound in his chest filled the silence of the empty jail. “He sold his whore’s son to them about a year ago, and he would have driven a hard bargain. Maybe this season the slavers decided to bypass him and save money.”
    That was a reasonable assumption, and one worth checking. Creed got directions to the ranch.
    As he rose to go, the sheriff stopped him.
    “If it turns out slavers aren’t responsible, have you asked yourself what else might have happened to them?” The sheriff leaned forward, steadying himself against his desk. “What if they were abandoned, and for good reason?”
    So the sheriff, too, thought the children were spawn.
    Creed understood people’s fear. But half demons were not entirely to blame for the changes taking place. No longer under the rule of the immortals—goddess or demon—the world had no true law anymore. As far as Creed was concerned, people could choose to make a better place of it or a worse one. What was guaranteed was that it would not be the same. And if mortals were to coexist with half demons, a new path needed to