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

be blazed.
    Creed believed he had an obligation to help make that happen. He had a sworn duty to the Godseekers, but an inherent responsibility to others like himself. No matter what the world wished to think, he and his kind were mortals too.
    “Whether it was slavers who took them or they were abandoned,” Creed said, “what I do know is that those missing children deserve justice, the same as anybody else.”
    …
    Nieve pressed both palms to her tired back as she stretched out the cramps she’d acquired from bending over all day, planting seeds in the kitchen’s vegetable garden. Every bone in her body called her by name.
    The ranch had been her home for the past four years. It stretched for miles beneath a seamless roof of royal-blue sky. An impressive herd of long-haired, mammoth beef kyson roamed wild in the blowing grasses and scrub brush littering these farthest edges of the demon desert, where the animals would forage and fatten until roundup in the fall.
    The unpredictability of the kyson made it unsafe for Nieve to wander too far from the protective fencing of the compound surrounding the house. The beasts were as ill-tempered as their owner, Bear, and she feared them both equally.
    Wolven, another threat, had been heard howling the past three nights. A cross between an old world mountain lion and a wolf, they were the result of an unsuccessful attempt by mortals long ago to protect the desert region against the invasion of demons. Instead, wolven became the scourge of farmers and travelers. And slaves.
    Bear had ridden out early that morning to check on his herd. While adult kyson had little to fear from them, calves and yearlings were a different matter. The horns and thick frontal skull bones that kyson used for defense did not fully develop until their second season, leaving their young vulnerable to wolven fangs and claws.
    Despite a dull ache of loneliness she could never quite escape, Nieve preferred these hours of solitude. In another lifetime, before her world had been turned to blackened ruins by a demon who had professed to love her, her days had been filled with light and laughter.
    Demons might be gone from the world now, but it would be a long time—if ever—before she lost her fear of them. And while she had given up on hating Bear a long time ago, she would never lose her fear of him.
    She stared across the desert foothills to the jagged moun-tains with emptiness gnawing at the raw edges of her heart. She could not shake the belief that she had lost something of inexplicable and infinite value. Yet no matter how hard she tried, she could not recall what it was. At night she dreamed of it, but in the morning the dreams were gone, leaving seeds of discontent and sorrow sown in their wake.
    Nieve shook herself. The sun was beginning to set and Bear would return soon. When he did he would want his dinner on the table, and the bruises from the last beating she’d received were not yet faded.
    She turned to the low, sprawling log house and saw a stranger, larger even than Bear, striding toward her. Alarm rippled up her sore spine. At first, with the last of the day’s light at his back, she could not see much about him other than his outline, but it was the stealth of his approach that truly frightened her.
    It made her think of demons.
    He stopped a discreet and reassuring distance away. She had a better view of him now, and the small trowel poking from the hand-harrowed dirt at her feet seemed an inadequate weapon when she compared her slight size to his.
    With wide shoulders and long, lean legs, he wore typical desert clothing—a homespun cotton shirt and neckerchief, thick denim trousers tucked into knee-high leather boots, and an oiled canvas duster. He wore no hat, and his shaved head was as bronzed as his face. The golden hue of his skin made the mesmerizing blue of his eyes even more vibrant and compelling. Kindness and good humor radiated from him. She could not look away.
    She blinked