The Demon-Eater: Hunting Shadows (Book One, Part One (4 page)

“
Woman?” Anna guessed, a slightly dangerous tone behind her
voice. Gabriel cringed inwardly. The seat below him began to fell
nearly like eggshells.

“
Right,” he said, beginning to rethink having said anything at
all. “Things being how they are, I have concluded, my dear, that
you
are
quite the
unrestrained woman.
Although
,” he added quickly, as Anna
raised a deadly brow, “I do tend to fancy the unrestrained soul
above the rest.”

Both sat in uncomfortable
silence—at least, it was uncomfortable for Gabriel—for several
seconds. Brow still poised high, Anna leaned back in her seat,
pursing her lips in quiet scrutiny of him. With a dangerous stare—a
woman's stare—, she looked him up and down. For a reason he could
not understand, his mind kept being pulled back to
her
, the faceless woman
of his ever-fading memory.

I should have thought this
conversation though a little better,
Gabriel thought, suddenly questioning the charm he thought he
possessed only minutes before. That was the problem when it was a
learned attribute and not a natural one; when something was
false—charm, lordship, normality—he never felt as though he was
doing it right. His guise felt unstable, as though he had cast a
sheet over his head in the middle of a crowded room and expected
nobody to see him standing there. That was the price when playing
the role of someone who was not himself.

Fortunately, as Anna finally lowered her
arched eyebrow, her lips turning up in a devious smile, it appeared
her growing criticism of him had been only an act. A cruel act. It
seemed she had cleverly played on his discomfort. He spent his time
hunting demons, and one arched eyebrow from a lady had him
questioning his ability to act in a role he had been playing for
more than a year?

That's a woman for
you,
he told himself.

“
We should get along just fine then, Mister Baryon,” Anna said,
finally, her grin broadening. “And all that might be changing in
the coming years—the expectations impressed upon us gentlewomen by
you
men
, who seem
to basically be able to say whatever you please. Common women are
not held to nearly as lofty a standard, you know. And the women in
the North...well, you can hardly tell them apart from the men, I
hear. I, also, heard rumor of a group of gentlewomen banding
together in Harlun, asking people to sign their petitions against
this treatment.” She laughed out loud, as though she had said
something funny.

“
Unrestrained, indeed,” Gabriel said.

“
In truth, Mister Baryon,” Anna said, her smile fading, “I
believe there are more important things for the people of this
world to worry about. Wouldn't you agree?”

Gabriel frowned slightly.

“
Yes,” he said, after a pause, “I think there are.”

There was a span of thoughtful silence
between the two, as though they were both thinking of a specific
thing. Gabriel's mind went to the demons. It seemed to him, the
demons were planning something. Placent had been the second lord to
be killed within the month and demons almost never targeted people
so high up in the hierarchy. They were drawing attention to
themselves. Which could be a very bad thing.

Gabriel shoved the concerns
away. He was not supposed to care about that. At his side, hidden
beneath his duster jacket, Gabriel became aware of the weight of
his revolver, Retribution, in its holster there. A gift, from the
faceless woman's murderer. The demon who had taken
her
...that was his only
care.

He studied Anna's unseeing eyes. As to where
her thoughts had taken her, Gabriel could not even guess.

“
If you don't mind my saying,” she began again, breaking the
silence, and blinking away whatever ever her mind's eyes had been
seeing, “I didn't exactly peg you as the type who would care much
for literature.”

“
I'm sorry?” Gabriel asked, before realizing she had gestured
toward the book in his lap.
Changing the
subject,
he noted.

“Right,” he said, looking
down at the book. The worn cover was unadorned and a rather bland
shade of brown. He did enjoy the occasional book, but, at the
moment, he was more interested in the sketch hidden between its
pages. “You find all the
good
stories in books. But, now I'm interested:
What
type
did you
peg me for, exactly?”

Anna's cheeks went red.

“
Well,” she began slowly, “drawing from my very first
impression of you, I'd have guessed your interests would extend
more toward...women.”

“
Well, yes, I suppose there are good stories to find with
women, also.”

“
Mister Baryon!” Anna said, gaping. Then, she laughed and shook
her head incredulously. “
But
, Mister Baryon, as we've been
speaking, you have become sort of a mystery to me, in
honesty.”

“
How so?” he asked, genuinely curious.

“
There seems to be so many different personalities hidden
behind that charming smile of yours, it is simply impossible to
know for certain what you care for. I know we've only just met, but
I am usually pretty good at
pegging
types
. If I could be more certain, I would
say you aren't exactly who you display yourself as
being.”

Gabriel frowned.

“
Really?” he said, carefully.

Anna nodded.

“
For one,” she said, “true charmers are not inclined to let
themselves get too close to any woman for too long a time. Woman do
tend to be mere passing...experiences...in the charmer's life; and
very rarely are they made important to that life. You, however,
were once married.”

Gabriel felt a chill run the length of his
spine.

“
How did you...?”

“
Your hand keeps moving to the ring finger of your left hand,
as if to twirl a ring that's no longer there,” she answered,
smiling knowingly.

Gabriel glanced down at his hands and
separated them. He had not even noticed he was doing it.

“
And,” Anna continued, “she must have been one of the
most
important things to
your life, considering you have been doing that for the better part
of our conversation.”

“
That's...” Gabriel shook his head, in true awe of the woman,
“...very keen of you. How did you learn to do that?”

“
I
took a profiling class in school,” she said, glancing out the
train's window. “Wanted to become an investigator.”

“
What happened, if I might ask?”

Anna seemed to hesitate.

“
Family issues
,
” she answered, after a few moments. “They are taken care of
now,” she added, then rather abruptly leaned in toward Gabriel,
looking over the pull-out tray with the teacup and at the book in
his lap. “
Keen Eyes and a Crimson
Pool
, by Wayne Philgrim,” she read aloud,
tilting her head to see the book's spine. The title and author's
name, in their silver lettering, were all the decoration the book
bore. “Mystery?”

“
Horror,” Gabriel answered distantly. This woman was, perhaps,
a larger mystery than Gabriel. “Or, at least, that's what it's
supposed to be, I think.”

Anna cringed, leaning back in her seat.

“
I
never cared much for scary stories,” she said. “Too gruesome for my
liking.”

“
I
find they make the real world seem a little bit of a better place
to be,” Gabriel said. “Do you enjoy reading?”

“
I
try to keep myself at a distance from books,” Anna replied, then
sighed. “My father already has me nearly drowning myself in a very
particular topic of nonfiction—which could be easily confused with
horror, if you ask me. Yes, indeed,
horribly
boring.”

Gabriel chuckled.

“
I
do like your spirit, Miss Thornrose.”

“
I
like your acceptance of it,” she said. “It's not often a woman
meets a man with whom she can freely express herself.”

The two of them sat smiling at one another
for quite a few seconds. Then, the train released a cringe-worthy
shrill and jolted Gabriel forward, as the breaks were thrown and it
began slowing to a stop. Amazingly, his teacup, and the saucer atop
which it sat, seemed to maintain a better grounding than he
did.

Gabriel glanced out the
window, finding a weathered sign, reading:
Pleasant Station.
His eyes turned
back to Anna.

“
It seems I've reached my stop,” he announced, pushing the tray
aside and standing.

“
What a coincidence, Mister Baryon,” Anna said, standing also
and placing her cloche back on her head. “This is my stop as
well.”

Gabriel grinned, then gestured toward the
corridor outside his cabin.

“
In that case, after you, madam,” he said.

She moved past him, into the corridor. He
placed his bowler hat atop his head and slid his small book into
one of the pockets on the inside of his duster, before—clutching
his small suitcase in one hand and a polished mahogany cane in the
other—following a step behind.

“
I'll have you know,” Gabriel began, as they made their way
toward the exit, “I will be attending Duke Bawdlin's ball tonight.
If you should find yourself confined by the restraints of society,
perhaps you would like to join me there.”
Confined by the restraints of society? Flames, I'm getting
good at this lord talk.

In front of him Anna laughed.

“
And so you would have me cram myself in an entire
building
full of
the
gods of restraint
?” she asked.

“
Well,” Gabriel said, as they both stepped out of the train and
onto the wooden platform which made up much of Pleasant Station,
then faced her, “I did say
I
would be attending said ball. Perhaps, we shall
show the other lords what's what, eh?”

“
I
might have taken you up on that offer, if I were not here on
business already,” she said. “Perchance, I will see you another
time, Mister Baryon. It was lovely speaking with you.”

“
Was it the charm that made it lovely?” Gabriel raised a brow
and smirked.

“
No.” Anna shook her head. “It was the fact that I could never
tell whether you were lying or not, even with the simple
things—such as the genre of your book; I still can't be sure
whether it's a mystery or horror. You are the first true mystery I
have encountered in a number of years, Mister Baryon. A lord in a
duster coat.”

Anna Thornrose turned and started away,
toward a coachman who was waving her down, while another was
loading the coach with a large trunk which he presumed was her
luggage. Gabriel frowned as he watched her leave, uncertain how he
should feel about her words.

Rejected,
he thought.
And she
basically said my words couldn't be trusted. Hmm.

He turned his attention
back to the actual station—a small building set near the center of
the large, wooded platform—, then his eyes swept across the
platform. It was busier than he remembered it being, when he
and...
her,
the
faceless woman...had come here many years before for... What had
they come here for?

She had loved the quiet of the place. The
way it seemed separated from the rest of the world. He remembered
that much, at least.

And she had loved the
trees... Gabriel's frown deepened. Where were the trees? The
station was built on the edge of a small wooded area, which
separated it from the town of Pleasant. Or, rather, it
had
been. It appeared the
trees had nearly all been cleared and a wide, dirt path cut through
where they had once stood.

A couple, thick, grey billows of smoke
plumed into the sky about half a mile's distance away. Factory
smoke.

More and more, the quiet
towns of the Southern Region were becoming like the cities in the
North. More and more,
her
memory was fading from the South and from his
mind. It appeared that expansion had finally found its way to
Pleasant.

Gabriel's boots pounded against the
platform, as he made his way down to the dirt road. Fixing his eyes
on the billows of smoke in the distance, and sighing to himself, he
started forward.

The air was thick and humid, making him
rethink his decision to wear his duster.

If there were trees to
shade the path
, he grumbled
inwardly,
I might find some solace.
Truthfully, Gabriel liked the heat. It kept his
mind from the constant, dull roar of the
others—
the demons—in his mind. What
he disliked, however, was change. It was change that slowly tore
her memory from him.