The Demon-Eater: Hunting Shadows (Book One, Part One (5 page)

His eyes strayed from the road occasionally,
to the empty, half-finished husks of wood and concrete that would
become one type of building or another once they were finished. He
had not yet reached the town, but he was already feeling as if
nothing about this place was the same.

I'm not even thirty. Should everything be
changing so quickly?

A few coaches passed him by along the way,
the coachmen and their passengers sparing him no more than brief
glances—sometimes, not even that. They most likely did not even
suspect Gabriel was supposed to be a lord. He should probably work
on his presence a bit more. A lord in a duster, as Anna had called
him, was not exactly the sort of attention he wanted to draw to
himself.

Briefly, he considered taking off his
duster, but quickly decided against it. The coat was a tool—a more
personal tool—, he used to separate himself from the nobleman he
pretended to be. When one spent his time acting as a certain type
of person—during the moments he was not actively hunting a demon,
of course—it could be difficult not to incorporate the ideals of
that person—fake or not—as his own. And so, sweat beading along his
forehead, he continued along the road.

Eventually, the shouting of street vendors
cut through the silence, and the heavy smell of industrialism,
perfume, and musk settled down around Gabriel. It was actually a
welcome smell, considering he spent much of his time chasing the
stench of rotting flesh.

To his right, a large sign
read in curving white letters,
Welcome to
Pleasant.

You should not enter this
place,
a single voice, somewhere beneath
the constant hum of the other demons, whispered, so faint Gabriel
questioned whether or not it had truly been there.
You should not enter this place,
it repeated.

Gabriel paused. His
instincts, his
hunch
—he used to call it his
Demon
Radar
, before deciding it was a ridiculous
name—told him he would find a demon here. And those he worked with
in the underground—those not afraid to admit the existence of
demon-kind—had confirmed there was evidence of demon activity in
Pleasant.

He was not exactly sure how they were able
to pinpoint the activity of demons—he thought, perhaps, they
somehow followed trails of unexplained disappearances, and even
that, finding anything using those sorts of leads, seemed
far-fetched. Nevertheless, they in the underground were almost
always accurate and Gabriel was smart enough not to ask questions.
The people making up the underground of any city were not the type
to take well to questions about the way they operated.

Leave,
the voice continued.

Gabriel shoved the voice to
the background, deciding it was probably only one of the
others
trying to mislead
him.
Follow the demons, find her murderer.
Eventually.
It was not much to go on, he
knew. But, with demons constantly having to change bodies and no
way to track one using any form of identification, it was
all
he had to go
on.

He continued onward, passing the sign. Below
him, his boots clomped softly as the dirt path gave way to a
cobbled street.

I'm giving up on
you,
the voice whispered. Gabriel shivered,
but ignored the words.

His mood lifted slightly as he took in the
large town, not quite a city. Although they were not the mighty
pines the once-wooded area had consisted of, there were a few trees
here, lining a cobbled streets here or there. Dainty trees, bearing
pretty blossoms of pink and white, but still trees.

Gabriel looked about him as he walked.
Though many of the citizens of Pleasant were busy haggling with
street vendors or listening to an a cappella group singing on a
nearby street corner, a few stared at him as he passed them by.
Despite its expansion, the people here knew a stranger when they
saw one.

Gabriel ignored the few stares, his eyes
searching the signs of the many businesses, blossoming in this
progressing era like flowers in the springtime, as he strode along
the street. It was not long until he caught sight of a sign
composed of flashing amber lights in front of a large, two-storey
building. Evening was only just arriving, yet the dimly glowing
lights were still enough to catch any passerby's attention.
Electric bulbs were one of the newer advents of the era. Pleasant
was certainly advancing, indeed.

The flashing bulbs—probably
set on timers—making up the letters of the sign ran vertically,
reading,
Grand Theatre.
Gabriel had seen grander. He started toward the
lights.

The moment he entered in through the
bronze-edged double doors, a man standing behind a podium with a
ready smile on his face called, “Welcome to the Grand Theatre, good
sir! May I see your ticket, please?”

Gabriel tilted his hat politely to the
man.

“
I'm not here for the show,” Gabriel said. “I'm here to see the
man who owns this fine theater. A Mister Barnes. Do you know where
I might find him?”

The custodian shook his head, his smile not
fading a bit. “I apologize, sir, but I am not permitted to let
anyone pass without a ticket in hand. However, you may purchase a
ticket from me here, if you wish.”

“
Not even a lord can pass?” Gabriel asked.

The custodian seemed to hesitate at this and
Gabriel started forward. He paused as the employee stepped out from
behind his podium, hesitantly. Gabriel raised an eyebrow. Although,
he realized, he looked nothing like a lord in his current wear.
Gabriel, himself, would certainly be unconvinced.

“
I-I'm sorry, sir,” the man stammered, “but I
really
can't let you pass
without a ticket. The last guy who let someone pass without a
ticket—as a favor to a friend—got dusted. Please, sir, I can't get
fired too.”

Gabriel screwed his mouth up tightly, then
sighed, giving the man a thin smile. “Very well,” he said in a
lofty tone. He might as well act like a lord. “Will you, at least,
go fetch Mister Barnes for me? Tell him Lord Baryon is here to see
him.”

The man wavered briefly,
before turning to another employee, who was sweeping the floor
nearby. “Parkens, you take over my position for a minute. I'm going
to get Master Barnes for...
Lord
Baryon.” The man eyed Gabriel, still obviously
unconvinced. Gabriel lifted his chin haughtily.

The younger lad complied with a smile—were
the smiles permanent for the employees here?—, while the other man
went away. Gabriel watched him go until he rounded a corner, then
moved aside to sit at one of the benches in the reception area.
Setting his suitcase on the bench beside him, he pulled his book
from its place in his duster and opened it.

He actually tried to read the words this
time, as he waited. With the constant rumble of the voices in his
head and his own thoughts constantly digressing to the faceless
woman, however, his focus was quick to stray. He soon found himself
leafing through the pages, until he reached his sketch.

The woman whose face he could not remember
enough to draw. He could not even guess the color of her eyes. Yet
she was important. He always felt as if he remembered her better
the previous day, than he did the current one. Each day he awoke,
there seemed to be something about her that was missing from his
memory.

What is your name?
he wondered.

It was her memory—or lack thereof—that drove
him to consume the demons, breathing them into that part of himself
he could not begin to understand. It was her who kept him human, at
the core of it all. Yet, what more was she now, than a dead wife he
could not remember?

Only snatches of
recollection remained of the time before the last two years—his
hunting years. There was a bank and...blood. Aside from that, he
knew almost nothing of who he had been, of who he was. Gabriel
hardly even remembered his own parents.
She
was the last remnant of his life
before, and she was little more than an outline of a face, and the
flashing image of a corridor, at the end of which stood the demon
who had taken her life.

In truth, and what scared
him the most, was that he did not want to remember more. Those
memories held too much pain for him. That memory had broken him
once before. But, he did not want to remember
less
, either.

Yet, day by day, she slipped closer and
closer to the blackness.

Gabriel reached inside his duster and
brought out a pencil. She had no face and she had no name, but she
was more than those things. He placed the tip of his pencil to the
paper, within the blank space of her face.

She liked the
trees,
he wrote.
She was my wife...
He leaned back on
the bench, pressing his brain for more information.

“
Ah, Lord Baryon,” came a deep, aging voice.

Gabriel shut his book with a start, tucking
it back in its place within his duster as he glanced up to see two
approaching figures. The custodian, along with Lannister Barnes,
who was a tall, slender and slightly greying man.

“
I've been expecting you,” Barnes said. His voice was much
older than his face.

Gabriel extended a hand to Barnes as both
men approached him. Barnes took his hand in a firm grip. Gabriel
did not allow the handshake to extend past a couple seconds, before
withdrawing his hand. Noblemen were hesitant to touch commoners for
any length of time—apparently, they thought them unclean. However,
a brief handshake was in order for any lord meeting a renowned
businessman, such as Lannister Barnes.

“
So I told your little employee, here,” Gabriel said, shooting
the custodian a sharp glance. The poor man seemed to be
sweating.
Sorry, I have to act the
part.
Gabriel turned his eyes back on
Barnes. “It is a pleasure.”

“
Likewise, my lord,” Barnes said, excitedly. “Please, follow
me. If you wish it, my employee here will take your...” Barnes
glanced down at his one suitcase and cocked a brow,
“
thing
...from
you.”

Gabriel shook his head. “Many thanks but I
shall carry it myself.”

Barnes frowned as if to
say,
You are not a very convincing
lord
. Was it really necessary to be
convincing at
all
times, especially when speaking to one of the underground's
leaders? Gabriel did look forward to those brief, increasingly rare
moments where he could just be as close to normal as was
possible...before taking up the role of the demon-slaying nobleman
again.

With half a mind, Gabriel
wondered if the underground bosses paying him to kill demons would
start paying him less if they found out he could not actually kill
them.
Or try to kill me...

“
Very well, sir,” Barnes said, after a moment. “Right this
way.”

The older man strode away,
down the main corridor, then turned right—along a dimly lit, much
narrower corridor—mid-way through. Gabriel followed behind, warily.
He could never bring himself to fully trust any member of the
underground, being that their business consisted of a lot more than
just getting rid of demons; and those things were mostly of
an
illegal
nature.

And to think, I wanted to
be a lawman.
Gabriel paused.
I wanted to be a lawman?

He shook his head and continued behind the
man. Whatever business the underground was involved in, Barnes was
an invaluable informant, having business connections with much of
the aristocracy across the Southern Region.

Barnes came to a stop at a large, windowless
door and took a second to pull out a set of keys. Finding the right
key, he unlocked the door and opened it to a narrow expanse of
stairs ascending beyond it. The man started up these, Gabriel
following behind.

These stairs ended at yet another door,
which Barnes unlocked with a key he had hidden in the inside pocket
of his suit. He opened the door and gestured Gabriel through before
him. The floorboards creaked beneath Gabriel's boots as he stepped
inside, eyeing the man as he passed.

“
This is to be your room, Lord Baryon,” Barnes said, still
keeping up the charade.

Gabriel nodded, looking over the cramped
space. A small bed, taking up an entire third of the room, was set
against the far wall, under the only window—which was little more
than a foot in width, as well as height. His was not a glamorous
line of work.

“
It'll do,” Gabriel said. “Thank you for your kindness,
Barnes.”

Barnes grunted. “If you really want to look
like a lord, you should have given the custodian your suitcase.
Lords rarely carry their own things. And you could invest in a
little more in the way of possessions, also.”

Gabriel sighed, turning to face Barnes.

“
I
have all the faith that you employ some of the finest individuals
here,” Gabriel said. “But, honestly, I don't have the luxury of
trust, especially when it comes to the handling of my personal
affects.”