The Demon-Eater: Hunting Shadows (Book One, Part One (2 page)

They were a necessary burden, which
sort of came with his line of work.

The hunter stopped suddenly, a
soundless shadow scurrying across the way before him, into the
deeper shadows. The overwhelming reek of rotting flesh hit him like
a punch to the gut in that moment, nearly causing him to gag. He
would have thought that smell would have no affect at all on him by
now. But, then again, something so foul could never become
pleasant, no matter how accustomed he grew.

The hunter frowned.
Had I really been so much in thought that I
missed it?
Well, it was too late to be
inconspicuous now.

The hunter stood rooted for several
moments, watching for any movement from the pool of shadows, into
which the thing had scurried. He thought he saw something within
the deep darkness, but it could have just been his eyes playing
tricks on him.

“
Skin Crawler,” the hunter
said as one might call to a pet, taking a slow step forward. “Here,
boy. Or...girl.” A shadow, just a little darker than the shadows
behind which it hid, seemed to stir.

“
There is no use hiding,
little demon,” the hunter continued. “You know I'm here, as I know
you are here, as well. You seriously caused a mess back at that
ball. Why reveal yourself like that, to people who don't want to be
reminded that demons still exist in their world? You've allowed
them the right of denial for decades now. Why raise questions of
your kind again to them?”

To himself, the hunter
thought,
Is it sloppiness? Or is there a
purpose behind it?

The shadow of the demon
stirred again. This time the demon crawled closer to the edge of
darkness, its pallid, rotting,
human
face peeling out of the
shadows. A Skin Crawler. A demon with the ability to possess any
living creature, by infiltrating the body and killing it from the
inside.

It stared at the hunter with eyes
devoid of emotion. Dead eyes. Its face, however—with its dangling
bits of sinewy flesh, revealing glimpses of the stark white bone of
the skull beneath—, did contort into an expression that was clearly
anger.

It did not move to attack, but
remained hunkered like some feral creature, half shrouded in
shadow. Wary. Who was this man to chase a demon?

“
And murdering a perfectly
respectable nobleman only to waste his body...?” the hunter began
again. Slowly, the hunter grasped the hilt of his dueling sword
once more. The demon extended a talon-like hand, its flesh barely
knit together, and crawled forward a step, humming a growl. “Why?
I
can
smell you,
after all. You must be needing a new body by now.”

Aside from a terrifying
smile tearing across the demon's rotted face, its growl was his
only answer.
I hate you,
the hunter thought almost reflexively.
Every last one of you.

“
No answer?” The hunter
shrugged and forced a smile for himself. “Truly, I don't care why
you did what you did.” Blade scraped against scabbard, as he
unsheathed his sword.

“
You...will...die.” the
Skin Crawler said in a distorted growl through a barely functioning
mouth.

The hunter nodded, simply. His smile
faded, replaced by a grim expression, which he willed into another
smile. Hunting demons was his mind's only solace; it was his
happiness. And, so, he had to smile.

“
You are quite right,
little demon,” the hunter replied. The creature leaped for him in
that moment. He waited as its flight brought it closer, then
feinted right, when the demon was mere inches from slamming into
him, slashing upward with his sword. The blade severed through an
arm, already barely attached, but the blow did send the thing off
balance in its bounding leap and it crumbled to the ground, leaving
behind a trail of rotting flesh upon the cobblestones as it skid to
a stop.

“
We will all die, one day.
But I will not die now, in
this
place,” the hunter cringed at the sight of flesh
smeared into the cobblestones, “by your hand. I won't die until
your kind is wiped from existence here, in my world.”

I hate you,
he thought again. He brought his free hand up to
the side of his tailcoat, feeling at the revolver holstered beneath
it. The gift.
I hate you.

As the demon struggled to its feet,
the hunter found himself almost disappointed. He had expected more
of a fight. This demon was already finished.

It tried to take a step forward, but
instead its leg collapsed beneath it. A flimsy banknote might have
given more support than that leg. The demon stood upright and
tried, again, to take a step, but this time the thing's leg hardly
moved more than a couple inches.

“
Oh dear,” the hunter said
blankly, “you seem to be paralyzed.”

The demon bemoaned a shrill and deep
wail all at once, two separate voices echoing out into the night.
The hunter doubted it would matter if anyone heard. In the slums,
people did not seek out sounds of distress, and the constabulary
were sluggish to respond.

“
What is this?” it cried.
“What have you done?”

The hunter held up his blade, wiping
the meat and flesh and what little blood was there from it with a
cloth he pulled out from his suit pocket, before sheathing it. He
tossed the cloth aside. He was silent for a time, but eventually he
spoke.

“
Poison, Skin Crawler,” he
said. “It targets the nervous system. Blocks whatever part of the
brain it is that controls your movement from sending your muscles
messages—so I was told. You know, a doctor used something like this
on me once? Or, rather, I
thought
it was a doctor, at first.”

The demon only growled in response,
its limbs twitching as it struggled against the poison.

“
Anyway, you may not be of
the body you're in, little demon, but you still have to use it in
the same way the human owning it before you had to. With the same
muscles...the same nerves.”

Its disjointed mouth twitched into
what the hunter thought to be a smile, but might have been a
grimace. Then, the body fell limp onto the damp street abruptly,
all signs of even the slightest struggle gone. The hunter looked at
the body's eyes, visible enough in the thread of moonlight, and
found them completely without perception, rolled back to show the
whites.

Trying to escape on me,
are you?

Quickly, the hunter strode
closer to the body, until he loomed over top of it. He did not move
for several seconds, in thought. Most humans—or most of the few who
even acknowledged the existence of demons anymore—assumed a demon
could disappear and reappear in some place halfway across the world
in the blink of an eye, and so, in most situations such as
this—there were almost none who would end up in this situation;
though, in the case they
did—
, a human would leave, in search
of the demon elsewhere. Dim as most demons seemed to be, they would
understand this human tendency, also.

The hunter, however, knew
better. Demons were
not
omniscient, despite the common belief—they had to
travel, just as every other living thing did, by mundane means.
Something about being without a body for a long period, however,
pushed demons into a state of near-insentience. Being so, they
could not travel far without taking a new human host.

This demon could not just disappear
and it would likely expect the hunter to be like most humans and
simply wander away, believing it had. The hunter lingered, betting
the demon still had yet to leave.

He glanced up at the moon, a thin,
silvery beam shining enough into the alley to illuminate the
one-armed corpse. Although, the narrow beam was quickly fading as
the moon inched across the night sky.

Quick at work, he
positioned himself between the silver glow and the limp body, so
that his shadow was cast over the body. Blade sang against scabbard
as he, once more, drew his sword, peering down on the
two
shadows cast over
the corpse.

Now, which shadow was his and which
one was not?

The moonlight was fading already, as
the silvery disk passed over the gap between the buildings of the
alleyway. With it, the two shadows were steadily fading. The hunter
lifted an arm above his head, suddenly. Both shadows moved, but one
was slightly off key. Demons, in their natural form were not
shadows, but they were semi-amorphous and so they could imitate the
shadows. But they could not read minds, and their movements showed
this.

The light ebbed further, the shadows
hardly distinguishable from the general darkness now. The hunter
slammed his sword toward one of the shadows. The shadow moved to
flee, the light faded completely just as he heard the tip of his
blade break against the stone, and the demon disappeared somewhere
beneath the hunter.

The hunter stood unmoving, heart
thumping wildly in his chest, pressing his sword down against the
stone with both hands. The silence seemed to last an
eternity.

“
Demon-Eater,” a hiss like
the whisper of the wind finally sounded from the darkness at the
end of his blade. There was a slight tremble of fear and
realization to the voice.
Demon-Eater.
It was the name by
which the demons knew him. They had given him the name. He found
himself forgetting his true name at times, these days.

Your name is
Demon-Eater,
the
others
whispered in his
mind.

I am the hunter...
he reminded himself.
I
am Gabriel Hall.

“
You cannot kill me,” the
demon went on. It was almost a question.

The hunter, Gabriel, remained silent,
but knelt down, still gripping the hilt of his sword, with one hand
now. Demon-kind were immortal, as far as the hunter knew, but he
wished he could kill them. They deserved death, every one of
them.

He leaned in toward the ground, until
he could see the dark mass of the demon's form, just slightly
darker than the night. He had never fully understood how they could
be so formless, yet still be impaled by a sword. He leaned still
lower until his face was nearly touching the monster beneath
him.

They could not physically harm anybody
in their natural forms—unless one considered possession physical
harm, of course. He did not know why, except to guess that it was
because they did not belong to his world, but to another. After
years of hunting demons, Gabriel still felt like he knew nothing
about them.

And that was well with him.

“
I will find a way,” he
said to the demon after a few moments. He kept telling himself
that.

The demon laughed. A slow, deliberate
cackle, lacking all humor. Gabriel frowned.

“
You know, laughing is an
odd thing for a demon to do when facing me,” he said.

“
Yes,” the demon said,
sounded oddly amused. “The
great
Demon-Eater. He who has yet to actually
rid
any
of us
from this place. We are still a part of your world, still among the
people. Through
you.
”

Gabriel's frown deepened.

“
How many of us
are
inside you?” the
demon asked. “A hundred. More. Why, I would bet you are more demon
than you even are human anymore. What is it in that head of yours
still keeping you from being just another monster—because, that is
what we demon-kind are right, monsters,
Demon-Eater
?”

“
Don't call me that!” An
image flashed in his mind. Of a long, pallid corridor, and a demon
wearing a ring. A memory. A reminder of why he did what he
did.

I am Gabriel Hall,
he told himself.
The
hunter. The human.

No,
the
others
whispered in his head, the way a mother might correct a
mistaken child.
You are Demon-Eater now.
You are no longer who you were. You are new.
You...are...Demon-Eater.
The
others
began to chant
the name over and over again in his mind.

He did his best to
suppress their chanting as he opened his mouth as though to yawn.
Only, instead of exhaling, he
breathed
in. Not of the air, but of
the demon below him. He did not know how he did it; it was as if a
completely different part of him was
breathing
. As though the sinister
darkness that made up the demons was this
different
part's oxygen. Its life
force.

“
How many more of us can
you take, before
you
are
the
monster?” the demon whispered in a strained, breathless
wheeze, barely audible above the
others'
cries inside of Gabriel's
head. He continued
breathing,
until the demon disappeared below him.