The Demon-Eater: Hunting Shadows (Book One, Part One (9 page)

“
Safe!” the duke choked out again, suddenly, as he came to.
“Find...” The rest became a gargle and his eyes slid
shut.

Gabriel growled, trying to
make his legs move faster.
Hold on, Hort.
I'm going to save you. Just hold on a little
—

The demon jerked his arm tighter in a sudden
motion, and the duke fell completely limp. His head dangled
forward, held in place by flesh alone. Another wrenching scream
came from behind Gabriel, and his heart lurched sickly in his
chest. Renette. Why had she not run?

Demon-Eater failed!
a sudden clamor of hissing, whispering, and
laughing arose from his head.
He's failed!
Demon-Eater, the failure!

“
No!” Gabriel screamed, sending a barrage of bullets toward the
demon. The possessed body moved with an unnatural deftness, leaping
away from the bullets and dragging the limp body of the duke with
him like a rag doll.

The Skin Crawler looked to
Gabriel, his dead eyes almost flickering with an emotion as its
lips peeled back into a grin. A challenge. Gabriel aimed his gun as
he feinted toward the demon, finger tightening around the
trigger.
I am not a failure! I will kill
you all. I will
—

Click
. Gabriel cursed, throwing his gun aside and continuing toward
the demon.

The Skin Crawler, eyes
never leaving Gabriel, drove its fingers into the sockets of Duke
Hort's eyes with a sickening
squish
ing sound.

“
No!” Gabriel screamed again, stumbling in his dash a bit at
the sight.

The flesh and the tendons beneath the duke's
neck stretched taught, as the demon pulled back from the sockets.
The skin around the neck started to rip, blood trickling—then
pouring—to the balcony floor. Gabriel steeled himself against the
sight.

Tendons connecting the neck to the chest and
shoulders snapped like rubber bands. Then, the body dropped to the
floor. The Skin Crawler leaped onto the balcony railing, still
holding the severed head by the eye sockets, an eerie look of
blissful disdain contorting the demon's face. This time, however,
there was little audience remaining for it to flaunt its deed
to.

Gabriel growled his
fury.
I was supposed to save
him!

You failed,
the voices of the
others
said
.
Another house left fatherless, because you lost.

Something inside of Gabriel felt horribly
wrong. Perhaps, it was the fact that he cared little that another
man had died—that another family was left without a father—, and
more that he had, again, lost to the demons. With each nobleman
they killed, it was as though they were planting yet another flag
of victory, despite his efforts. It was to say they were better
than him. And he needed to be better than the demons, if he was
going to kill them. He had to stop losing.

And that mindset, too him, felt horribly
off. Yet completely right.

You lost.

“
Shut up!” Gabriel roared savagely, reaching the railing upon
which the Skin Crawler crouched.

The demon turned toward him, his smile
twisting up further. “Well, Demon-Eater, it seems you've los—”

Gabriel grabbed hold of the demon with one
hand, lifting it up off the railing and slamming the wide-eyed
monster onto the floor. Vaguely, he realized he should not have
been able to do that to a demon-enhanced body.

“
Stop saying that.”

Before the demon could escape its vessel,
Gabriel pulled free the dagger he kept hidden in his boot and
slammed it through its gut and into the floor, where the the weapon
stuck.

He should not have been able to do that
either.

The demon's face contorted with rage and
fear and confusion all at once. Wailing, it reached to pull the
dagger free. Only, Gabriel pinned its arms down, putting his
weighed on the legs so the thing could not use the body to buck
free.

A chorus of voices rose
from inside him.
Demon-Eater,
they chanted, declaring the name they had given
him. The name of a monster.
Demon-Eater,
Demon-Eater!

I am Gabriel Hall,
he told himself, leaning in close to the demon's
face.
My name. I will remember it
always.

No, you are Demon-Eater! Our
Demon-Eater!

“
How can you... You're still only human,” the Skin Crawler
sputtered. From his periphery, Gabriel saw Renette rushing to kneel
beside the headless corpse of her father. The demon flicked its
eyes that direction, also, and struggled against Gabriel with
renewed fervor. “The girl. I need her!”

Gabriel managed to hold the demon fast.

“
You're still only human!”

“
Shut up and die,” Gabriel hissed, then opened his
mouth.

Demon-Eater, Demon-Eater, Demon-Eater...

Demon-Eater
breathed
.

* * *

Duke Hort's body lay in a crimson pool, his
blood staining the polished marble red and streaming over the sides
of the balcony onto the floor below. Renette knelt over her
father's body, weeping. Another body lay on the balcony as well,
over which the mysterious lord knelt. A dagger pierced through this
body's gut. At first the old man had tried to fight back, with the
blade still through his gut. Now, he lay still.

Anna Thornrose watched from
her crouched position near the top of the stairs. The guards had
tried to make her leave, but she had had
business
here. The guards' corpses
now lay hidden in some random closet she had found. She hated
killing.

Anna had taken cover when she heard the
gunshot, then had followed this mysterious lord to the balcony. By
the time she had reached the top, the duke was already dead and the
lord was slamming the dagger down into the old man.

She had not attacked the lord. She thought
the old man could handle himself; after all, he had a god inside of
him.

Currently, as Anna watched a mass of
blackness, glimmering with flashes silver and white just beneath it
like the constellations of the night sky, moving from the old man
and into the lord, Anna's stomach lurched nauseatingly.

What is this man?
she wondered, watching in horror. She had seen
many things no other human being could have ever possibly seen, yet
never had she witnessed a man—no, monster— able to consume a
god.

As the last trail of
blackness disappeared into the man's open mouth, he climbed to his
feet and turned to Lady Renette, looking to the girl with solemn
eyes. Anna's heart nearly tore from her chest once she saw the
man's face for the first time. She
recognized
him
.

This lord lacked the charming grin and
bright eyes of the man she had encountered on the train, but she
was sure it was the same man. William Baryon. The lord. The
monster.

She found herself truly shaken by the
revelation. And disappointed in herself for not being able to
realize the man was a fraud in the beginning. He had seemed like a
sincere man and, now—the way he looked down to Renette, visibly
torn as to what he should do—, he seemed a caring one.

And she would have to kill him.

Sincere or not—caring or not—, this William
man...this monster...was consuming, and possibly killing, gods.
Although, how did one go about killing something that could devour
the divine? Would a mundane weapon work, or would it require
something else?

Anna looked down at the bloody throwing
knives in her hands. It was not worth the risk, she decided. Still
crouching low, she crept to the bottom of the steps and dashed
soundlessly out of the abandoned ballroom, through the antechamber,
and into the night. The grounds were already as empty as the
ballroom.

She stood rooted in place, still reluctant
to leave. Her eyes swept about the shadowy, silent grounds, then
drifted up to the glittering blanket of the darkling sky.

The sky did not change as
the life below it did. If another, somewhere else in the world
where it was yet night were to look up at the sky, that person
would see nearly the exact same image as Anna. The sky was a realm
of constants. Each day, she could awake with the confidence that
there would be the sun in the sky. And every night, she could count
on the moon and stars to be hovering above, glowing silver—even if
they were obscured by clouds or the moon was darkened my its new
moon phase, she could
know
they were still there.

Below, however, on the ground, the world was
a place riddled with variables. People changed, rules changed, the
landscape changed. It was a world where every person aspired to
newness, difference, and eccentricity. Change. Every change was a
supposed advance; every change brought humanity closer to the
possibility of being their own gods. Yet, in every change, chaos
abounded. The human idea of change—or advancement—inspired envy,
and envy eventually caused hate, and hate bred war, and war brought
famine and death and everything destructive to the planet.

Mankind and their change was killing the
planet. And they were all so blissfully unaware of the fact.

What if the ground was
like the sky?
Anna wondered.
Surely the world would be a better place if
everything was constant. We would not be able to feed the chaos,
then.

But the ground, unfortunately, was not the
sky. And soon, mankind would push the planet to the brink. Dalin
Thornrose, Anna's father had spent his life combating the chaos,
and the gods had given him a chance to see it end.

Bringing only a small number of the gods
over, however, had required a heavy cost. Her father's legs...and
arms...and head. Paralysis, throughout his entire body. And so his
task had fallen to his only daughter.

Anna would help the gods bring the rest of
their kind over. She would help bring order to chaos. Save the
world. And the gods would heal her father.

Her eyes moved from the sky and looked about
until she found her awaiting coach in the darkened drive. The
horses blew snorts out through their nostrils and clomped their
hooves impatiently upon the cobblestones below.

A man stood rigid at the door—or a god in
the body of a man. The vessel would not survive long with the full
glory of a god dwelling inside of him and his flesh would
eventually begin to break down in rot, but in the short time the
man was blessed by the presence of a god, the vessel would
experience enhanced strength and boundless knowledge. And, though
it may not have been his choice, this man, inside of which a god
dwelt, would be contributing to the salvation of the world.

Anna made her way to the coach.

“
You do not bear the girl with you,” the god spoke through the
vessel.

“
There was a...disturbance,” she said, looking the god in the
eyes. “A man. He could...consume your kind...” She searched the
god's human face for any indication that her words meant something
to the god. His eyes, however, did not flicker with any emotion
that she could see.

Why did the gods have to be so unreadable?
No amount of profiling classes had prepared her for guessing the
emotions of a being which seemed incapable of emotion.

Eventually, she shook her head in
frustration and opened her coach door.

“
Anyway, she is safe,” Anna said, climbing into the coach and
seating herself. She went to shut her door, then hesitated, looking
toward the mansion. Light streamed out from the open door.
I hope.

“
Did the man know?” the god asked.

“
I
can't be sure,” Anna said honestly. “I believe his only concern was
the duke, however.”

Outside, the god grunted.
Anna felt the coach shift as he climbed up to the coachman's seat.
He was a god, but he played the part of coachman tonight.
Regardless, it felt unbelievable that a
god
was acting as her
coachman.

I left Renette with a
monster,
she thought to herself. She would
kill the man and get her back. Soon. But not tonight.

She looked to the mansion one last time,
before closing the door.

Before she did anything else, she needed to
consult her father. There were things the gods were not telling
her.

C
hapter
T
hree

She liked to
dance...
Gabriel stared down at the newly
written words within the blank space of
her
face on the crinkled paper. He
folded up the sketch and replaced it in his jacket
pocket.

“
You are certain this was all that was in your father's safe?”
Gabriel asked, skimming through the strewn mess of miscellaneous
papers, ledgers, legal documents, and banknotes—but strangely no
money—on the table, which was in the manor's extensive library, for
perhaps the half-dozenth time. It appeared Duke Hort had had quite
the interest in books. Gabriel might have gotten along with the man
quite well...had he not been dead.