The Demon-Eater: Hunting Shadows (Book One, Part One (8 page)

A slight smile touched Gabriel's lips.

“
If it weren't important,” Gabriel began, “would I have risked
my image of propriety and bypassed your stewards?”

The lady pursed her lips at him, looking him
over. Then her eyes passed to the crowd of noblemen behind him.

“
Sit,” she said, finally.

“
Thank you,” Gabriel said, taking a seat.

Lady Renette cracked a sly
smile. “No, thank
you
.”

Gabriel furrowed his brows. When, after a
few snide remarks, the lords began to disperse from the table, he
realized he had been used to ward off the other hopeful nobles. To
them, Lady Renette had made her choice and it had not been
them.

Father Truth,
Gabriel thought,
she's
known me for less than a minute and she has already used me for her
gain. A true noblewoman, indeed.
He found
himself more amused than upset.

She stared at him for a few moments, but did
not immediately move to send him away, and so Gabriel relaxed a
bit.

“
I
am William Baryon of House Baryon,” he said, glancing back at the
still dispersing assemblage of noblemen, some of them turning their
noses up indignantly toward him. Very tall children, indeed. He
turned his focus back to the lady, Renette.

“
I
am Renette Bawdlin of this very house,” she said bleakly, as though
the words had been rehearsed again and again, until they no longer
held any meaning. “I suspect you will want to speak of my father's
estate, Mister...
William
did you say?”

Renette seemed to be trying—poorly—to hide a
particular emotion beneath her forced expression. Annoyance.
Gabriel's smile broadened.

She doesn't believe what I
said,
he realized.
That I actually have urgent news.

“
Perhaps,” one of the stewards began, sidling closer to the
table, “my lady would like to call a guard to escort the lord
away...?”

Gabriel flicked his eyes toward the steward,
then narrowed them on the man.

Demon.
His blood ran cold as the steward—who was no more than a suit
of flesh for the Skin Crawler possessing it—, stared at him with
dead eyes. To be certain, Gabriel searched the steward's neck. He
knew not the reason behind it, but Skin Crawlers always possessed
through a slit they had made on one's neck, into which they could
slither in. Sure enough, he found the scar after a moment, thin and
partially masked by makeup.

“
No, I can suffer a short conversation,” Renette said,
completely oblivious as to what she was speaking to. “After all, he
did help scare the others away for me.”

There was a demon among
Lady Renette's servants. Did that mean there were
two
planned victims this
night?

Gabriel leaned across the table, closer to
Renette.

“
Actually, I was honest in that I needed to speak with you, my
lady,” Gabriel said in a soft voice. “But, perhaps, we should speak
away from...prying ears.” Discreetly, Gabriel eyed the
demon.

I dare you to move against
me,
he thought.

Renette laughed out loud.

“
You can't be serious, Lord William,” she scoffed. “We are
separated from absolutely every potentially prying ear, right
here.”

“
Not every prying ear, my lady,” Gabriel said, turning his eyes
on her. Pointedly, he glanced to the demon disguised as a steward
once more. She seemed to understand his meaning this
time.

Her amused grin gave way to a frown. She
looked worried.

Good.
Gabriel stood suddenly and held a hand out to her.

“
Shall we dance, my lady?” Gabriel was already bringing up the
Memory of Hámon Givonni, a once-professional dance instructor, who
had been possessed during Gabriel's earlier days of demon hunting.
Shortly after discovering his ability to
breathe
in Skin Crawlers, he
discovered, also, his ability to take Memories of those the Skin
Crawlers had possessed.

Consume a demon who had possessed a lawman,
and he could acquire snatches of Memory pertaining to the skill of
gun fighting—and learn the skill for himself. Consume a demon
having possessed a dance instructor, and he became rather competent
on the dance floor.

Lady Renette, however, did not move to take
his hand. Her frown deepened.

“
Lord William,” she said, after several seconds, “if you hope
to procure a meeting with my father by charming me in a
dance...there is no need. I have no such power over my father.
However, I will discuss the nature of his business to you,
freely—as I have done for nearly every other lord of some
impuissant house, seeking to better their position with a union.
Rather, those I have not pointedly tried to ignore. There is no
need in pretending to bear with you news of grave importance, and
looking to my servants as though they were—”

“
Lady Renette,” Gabriel interrupted, cursing inwardly. He
flicked his eyes in the direction of the false-steward and his
heart sank, when he saw the man raise a curious eyebrow. Was he
piecing together who this William Baryon actually was? The
false-steward smiled so faintly anyone else might have missed
it.

Flames!

In his head, the
others
cackled
gleefully.

Unexpectedly, Gabriel felt
a thrilling anticipation buzzing through his veins. His fingers
twitched, itching to reach for his revolver pistol, hidden in his
suit jacket. He was supposed to consume
every
demon and one of the creatures
stood a mere few feet away.

But...he was, also, supposed to save the
nobles the demons were targeting. Gabriel assumed there would be
another demon somewhere near Duke Hort, being that he was the host
of the ball and those were always the presumed targets. Starting a
fight with this demon might do little more than quicken the duke's
murder. Not to mention, if he did it in the open for all to see, he
would have a flaming difficult time getting into anymore balls.

Gabriel took his seat again, running a hand
through his lengthy, sandy brown hair. He sat where he was a
moment, contemplating. Then, he reached a hand into his suit
jacket, pulled out his revolver, cocked back the hammer and shot
the false-steward in the face.

The bullet dug a hole where, a millisecond
before, there had been a nose and exploded from the back of the
demon's head. Blood and brain and meat splattered onto the nearest
stewards. There was a pause of complete silence throughout the
entire ballroom, save for the ear-ringing echo of his gunshot.

I'm not here for the
flaming nobles,
Gabriel growled.
I'm here for vengeance.

The body of the possessed steward went rigid
as the paralyzing poison, which laced the bullet, began working its
way throughout the body. Before Gabriel could take his first step
toward the thing, however, the body went suddenly limp, collapsing
to the ground at odd angles. Then, the screams started.

Gabriel cursed, as a roiling mass of
blackness darted away from the body, taking on the shape of the
nobles' shadows, escaping along with them. None of the nobles
seemed to even notice it. Every horrified eye was on Gabriel, even
as the nobles ran toward the exit. Some did not even run, merely
hunkering low beneath their tables.

Lady Renette, her already fair skin having
gone even more pallid shade, had not moved from her chair. Her wide
eyes were fixed on the bloody corpse lying just next to her table,
unmoving.

“
Where's Hort?” Gabriel snapped, too harshly. He would not
leave until he had gotten at least one demon.

“
What...” she breathed, with eyes still planted on the body,
“...something came...
out
...of it.”

“
Yes,” Gabriel said more softly, walking to Lady Renette's
side. “And another one of those
things
will have already killed your
father if you don't keep your wits about you and tell me what I
need to know. Now,
where is
he?
”

Lady Renette blinked, then shook her head as
if breaking from a trance. She pointed a trembling finger to a
balcony on the other side of the room. Atop it, Gabriel spotted two
figures leaning over the balcony railing, regarding the spectacle
below. One was smiling.

“
Stay here,” Gabriel said to Renette, then sprinted toward the
balcony.

A group of guardsmen with brandished swords
stepped up to block his path. They did not carry firearms into
balls, being that it made the nobles uncomfortable. Not a very
competent choice in moments of actual distress.

“
Halt!” one guard at the front called, pointing his sword
straight at Gabriel.

“
Get out of the way!” Gabriel shouted, still running. “He was
an assassin! They're after the duke, for Father Truth's
sake!”

The guardsmen hesitated and the guard at the
front lowered his sword a fraction.

None of them did anything
to stop Gabriel when he ran right past them. It was not like
any
nobleman to act so
out of character; nor was it like a nobleman to assassinate his
rivals himself. In Gabriel's case—being presumed Lord William—, the
guards were likely to believe him. He heard the sound of following
footsteps shortly behind him.

“
To the duke!” one of the guards bellowed.

You truly can get away with a lot when
you're a lord.

Just ahead, stairs jutted out from the wall,
leading up to the balcony. Gabriel rounded the stair railing and
dashed into a upward climb. He reached the top well before the
guards did, to see a rather portly man—whom Gabriel guessed to be
Duke Hort—, with long mustaches drooping down either side of his
lips, held before a withering old man like a human shield.

The old man had his arm hooked around the
duke's neck, tightly enough that Duke Hort's face had taken on a
ruddy color and his eyes bulged from their sockets.

“
Lord Charles?” a voice that was little more than a whisper
came from behind Gabriel. Gabriel spun to see Renette, along with
the guardsmen, climbing the last few steps onto the balcony. She
looked too shocked to even scream—or do anything else, for that
matter. She just stood there, wide-eyed and pale-faced.

Father Truth, this
girl,
Gabriel thought with an inward
sigh.

“
Sorry, child,” the old man said, a smile tearing across his
face as the duke struggled vainly to break free of the man's iron
grip, “but this was a long time coming.”

“
Safe,” the duke gargled as the old man's, Charles's, grip
around his neck constricted. “
Safe...
”

Oh dear,
Demon-Eater,
the
others
hissed.
Are you going to let her watch this?

“
You,” Gabriel spun on Lady Renette again, “
run
! The rest of you, stay out of my
way.”

“
No offense, my lord,” the same guard that had held his sword
up at Gabriel said, striding past him, “but best let trained men
take care of this.” In a lower voice, to himself, the guard
muttered, “All right, Duke Hort, you know what to do.”

The guard charged toward the old man, sword
at the ready. The duke threw his elbow up and slammed it into
Charles's face. When the duke brought his elbow back down, blood
streamed down the old man's face and his nose was smashed flat, but
Charles was unfazed. Only because Charles was no longer Charles.
Not anymore. And Skin Crawlers felt no pain when in their vessels
of flesh.

The guard faltered in his charge. He had
obviously expected the man he thought was just a man to loose the
duke. Before the guard could think to break off his charge, the
demon simply backhanded him. The force of the blow hurled him
several feet back. The guard slumped to the ground and did not get
back up. The rising and falling of his chest meant he was alive, at
least.

Renette found her scream, finally. Inside,
Gabriel groaned.

“
I
told you to run,” he snapped at her, before turning to the frozen
guards. “Evacuate those who remain in the manor,” he ordered and
they snapped into action.

Gabriel whirled back around to face Hort and
the demon strangling the life from him—he seemed to be waiting for
a fight—, and sprang into action.

Sprinting toward both of
them, he leveled his sights on the demon as best he could while
moving and pulled the trigger. An echoing
bang
exploded from the end of his
barrel, and a few more cries of panic rose from the floor
below.

The bullet ripped through the air too
quickly to see, but the Skin Crawler leaped to the side, managing
to evade the shot. Demon and duke crashed to the ground and
thrashed about, as Duke Hort tried to wiggle his way out of the
demon's hold. The struggle did not last long as Duke Hort seemed to
fall out of consciousness.