Demon Beast (Path of the Thunderbird Book 3) Read online

  The air was thick with the stink of manure, and fur-covered cattle pressed against the high fences of the pens on either side of the aisle. The lowing and snorting were as constant as the slow rocking beneath their feet. Given Pernicious’s lack of interest in the herds they passed, Koida doubted any fillies or mares had been mixed in with the cows. At least she wouldn’t have to worry about the beast breaking free of his stall and impregnating everything on board.

  “We’ve had demon beasts aboard before,” Rila told them, raising her voice to a booming shout to be heard over the livestock. “Killed each other and nearly tore open the hull the first time we sailed with a pair onboard. Now we quarter them on opposite sides of the ship.”

  At the end of the passageway, Rila unlocked a barred cell and swung the door open with a screech of rusty hinges.

  Cold Sun’s war ram began to back away, huge cloven hooves thunking on the wooden floor, and Pernicious tossed his head and bit at the creature’s flank. One of its hooves lashed out, but thankfully missed, warning the destrier off without starting a fight.

  “In it goes,” Rila said, gesturing with her Ro whip at the demon ram.

  Cold Sun dug his fingers into his war ram’s shaggy coat. “Is this forged of star iron?”

  The hairless quartermaster nodded. “Captain Singh had it built special for demons. Cold-forged star iron keeps them as weak as natural beasts.”

  Koida swallowed and caught Cold Sun’s eye. Even with the barest hint of emotion in his stony Uktena face, she could tell her friend did not want to lock his war ram in that cage. Her own fingers twisted protectively in Pernicious’s thick mane. Was there not an old legend that said star iron burned demon beasts when it touched their flesh?

  “They go into the star-iron stall or over the side,” Rila said. “No demon beast stays on this ship without the proper precautions.”

  Cold Sun bent his head to the war ram’s ear and began to speak in a voice too low to hear over the noise of the livestock.

  “Will it hurt them?” Koida asked, remembering only at the last second to respectfully add, “Quartermaster Rila.”

  “We cinch them up tight with that sling there,” Rila said, pointing at something in the stall that Koida couldn’t see while Cold Sun and the ram were in front of her. “That way they don’t get tossed around in high seas.”

  That was not at all what Koida had been concerned about, but before she could speak up again, the war ram started forward. The hairless quartermaster plastered herself against the wall as the huge beast ducked into the stall. Cold Sun followed it in, grabbing the end of the sling hanging from the ceiling. The Uktena warrior busied himself tucking it beneath the war ram’s enormous belly and then slipped around to the opposite side, inspecting the hooks riveted to the sturdy fabric before attaching them to rings hanging from the ceiling.

  Rila gave an approving nod. “Head up on deck and join your friends loading cargo.”

  Koida flattened herself to Pernicious’s side to allow the hulking Uktena by.

  As Cold Sun passed, he dipped his head and whispered, “Cliff Breaker was unharmed, only weakened. Your half-demon should be as well.”

  Koida nodded gratefully.

  Rila finished locking the cage, then motioned for Koida to follow her around the corner. As they passed the star-iron demon beast cell, Pernicious let out a snort, nostrils flaring and eyes rolling. The war ram tossed its horns and trumpeted furiously, the sound shaking the wood beneath Koida’s feet. She crushed her hands to her ears, afraid she would be deafened. Ahead, Rila was doing the same, shouting something at Koida, but Koida couldn’t hear her. The livestock in the other pens were bellowing along with the ram.

  With a flick of one enormous back hoof, Pernicious kicked the war ram’s stall door. Sparks flew, filling the air with the scent of burning brimstone, and a dent appeared across several of the rectangular bars.

  Koida’s heart stopped, certain she would be trapped in this claustrophobic wooden passage as a battle broke out between her half-demon and the war ram. Her Stone Soul broke, and tingling heat rolled down her left shoulder to her fingertips. Her hand and forearm disappeared, flattening into her lavaglass moon broadsword. The living lavaglass was responding to her panic, preparing her to defend herself.

  Rather than kick his way into the cage, however, Pernicious took a limping step forward in the passageway, hobbling on his back foot.

  “Blade and death.” Koida couldn’t hear her own voice in all the noise. “You fool nag! If you’ve lamed yourself...”

  A careless movement sent a hooked spur of the lavaglass moon broadsword stabbing into her hip. Cursing herself, Koida held her arm away from her side. She should have followed Lysander’s advice and left the glass moon serpent attached to her wrist.

  “...that beast under control!” Rila’s shout cut through the natural cattle’s terrified lowing.

  Koida caught the quartermaster’s eye. The woman was backing away, her glowing red Demon Fox of Nine Tails held in front of her and ready to strike. Thankfully, she was too occupied with the half-demon limping toward her in the narrow passageway to have noticed the transformation of Koida’s lavaglass blade arm.

  Turning her right side toward the woman, Koida sidled up to Pernicious’s head and threw her arm of flesh and bone around his nose, pulling his enormous head down to her.

  Pernicious tossed his head a bit, but for the most part seemed uninterested in fighting her. All the same, Koida hoped that it would look to Rila as if she were in firm control of the fool beast. If the quartermaster lashed out with her Ro whip, Koida doubted Pernicious would allow an injured hoof to stop him from retaliating.

  After several moments, the natural beasts in the livestock pens calmed from terrified to confused, then finally went back to their regular shuffling, snorting, and low rumbling. Rila gathered herself and straightened her roughspun clothing as if it had been mussed by the disturbance, but did not recoil her Demon Fox.

  “Keep that trash under control,” she snapped, her eyes narrow and brows pinched, “or you go into the stall with it for the duration of the journey.”

  Koida resisted the urge to say that she would prefer the company of her demon to that of a savage with too much power and a whip. She nodded stiffly to Rila, still hiding her lavaglass blade at her side.

  The shaken quartermaster led them around the corner, turning back frequently as if to assure herself that Pernicious wasn’t following too closely. The passageway made a horseshoe around the central cattle stall and turned back toward the opposite end of the ship.

  When the woman wasn’t looking, Koida dug the puzzle box containing the glass moon serpent out of her torn and battered black silk riding clothes. Operating the catch one-handed was complicated, but eventually she was able to spring all the corners at once. The little two-headed demon serpent slithered out into Koida’s hand and curled around her wrist, glowing a soft white in the dim confines of the livestock deck. After getting comfortable, both heads struck, latching onto her flesh.

  Glass moon venom rolled through Koida’s veins, numbing all feeling, both physical and emotional. She inhaled deeply, focusing on rebuilding her Stone Soul. Once she had firmly hidden herself within, she recalled the lavaglass to its place surrounding the bones of her left arm. Little by little, it shifted back into flesh and bone.

  She tucked the puzzle box away and pulled her sleeve down to cover the tiny demon serpent. She would remove it again when she was certain none of the sailors would see her blade arm, perhaps when the work was finished for the evening and she had time to practice with Cold Sun.

  “What does your master plan to use these demons for?” Rila asked.

  “He is a powerful warlord in the north, and his wish was to present them to his daughters as war beasts, mighty quartermaster,” Koida said, pleasantly surprised at how easily the lie came to her while under the influence of the glass moon venom. “When they are not occupied riding down enemies, I believe he hopes to establish
a new breeding line with demonic blood to make his armies more formidable.”

  “A mounted warlord in the north?” Rila asked, raising one hairless brow, her leathery skin creasing. “I’ve never heard of a tribe in the north who uses beasts as anything other than food and fur.”

  “The foreigner you saw has traveled widely, and he told our master of the practices in the Shyong San Empire. It seemed wise to our master to adopt such a technique before his rivals did the same.”

  Rila didn’t look convinced. “You know an awful lot about your master’s intentions for a mere serving girl.”

  Koida’s mind leapt back to Lysander’s hissed warning about embracing her weakness as a strength.

  “I was my master’s favored concubine,” she told the quartermaster. “He often spoke to me of matters above my station.”

  Whether Rila believed her or not, the hairless woman did not comment further.

  At the opposite end of the ship, they reached another star-iron cage. Taking her prompt from Cold Sun, Koida leaned into Pernicious’s ear, promising him a world of candied fruits and all the mares and freedom she could find him once they reached their destination on the northern shores of the continent if he would only allow her to cage him for a short time. The huge half-demon rumbled skeptically, but finally clopped into the stall and let her cinch the sling beneath his belly.

  He did not try to kick her once, which made her wonder if his hoof was injured worse than he was letting on, but a closer inspection showed no damage to the brimstone, horseshoe, or ankle.

  Patting him lovingly, Koida pulled out the remaining berries from her breakfast that morning and fed them to the half-demon. He snorted derisively, but nibbled them up, only digging his iron teeth into her palm once with any of his characteristic spite. She smacked him off and shook out the quickly bruising hand while glaring at him, though she was glad to see he wasn’t in any pain.

  “Best get above decks,” Rila said, jangling the thick stall key on its ring. “The ship’s boy has got plenty more to do today before we launch.”

  “I’ll return later,” Koida promised Pernicious, giving him one last shove with her shoulder. Then she stepped out of the specially forged stall, cringing as the quartermaster locked it behind her.

  Chapter Seven

  LAND OF IMMORTALS

  After a time, Raijin realized he was shivering. The rain splattering him from above and the rock beneath had sapped his body heat and numbed the worst of the pain to a dull ache. Shaking, he crawled until he made it out of the downpour and onto dry ground, then collapsed once more, dirt sticking to his wet skin.

  He wasn’t in an open pit, then. Wherever he was, it had a roof that sheltered at least some of the stone. Perhaps a sinkhole or an underground cavern.

  Raijin sat up, pulling his knees to his chest and rubbing his arms vigorously, but he couldn’t seem to get warm. His teeth rattled. He couldn’t recall ever feeling so cold before, even in the dead of winter crossing the continent with Hush and Lysander. He needed to get up and move, keep his blood flowing while he searched for a way out of this hole.

  The flesh in his empty eye sockets felt cold and raw, and his splintered ribs throbbed in time with his heart. The urge to sit there and do nothing but shiver and feel sorry for himself hung on his shoulders like a wet cloak, but he fought it back. Master Chugi had lived without his sight for years with no change in his cheerful attitude or hearty training. The only ability the elderly master had lost was reading, and he had found a way to circumvent that by having Raijin read to him.

  There had to be a way to escape the cavern. Raijin just needed to find a way to do it without his sight. To circumvent that loss as Master Chugi had.

  Taking a deep breath, Raijin turned his focus inward. As the heartcenter was not an object one saw with the eyes, he could still inspect his. His heartcenter was healthy, whole and undamaged, but completely empty. Apparently one did not require Ro to stay alive in the Land of Immortals.

  When Misuru took his first eye, Raijin was certain he’d seen red blood and pale flesh instead of just the blues and grays. If he was remembering correctly, then he must have climbed to Tier 1 without his Ro as well. He didn’t know how much of what she had said could be believed, but if she’d been telling the truth about the lower tiers, then many of them were climbed simply by strengthening the physical body.

  A faint breeze passed over the rain-soaked flesh on the back of his neck, sending a shiver down his back. The motion aggravated his broken ribs once again, but Raijin hardly paid attention to them. The breeze was not blowing down from above, as he might have expected, but sighing past him from behind.

  There must be a tunnel somewhere down here that led to the surface.

  Raijin struggled to his feet, arm clamped instinctively to his ribs to keep them from moving too much, then turned in the direction of the breeze. His body still moved in those strange skips and jerks, a strange sensation without the benefit of sight.

  To his left, he could hear water splattering on the rock. It sounded as if the storm outside had picked up enough to send a stream of rain pouring through the hole. Thunder boomed overhead, though it seemed to be coming from farther away than before. The storm must be moving fairly quickly.

  Raijin reached out a hand and started forward, sliding his bare feet across the rock carefully to keep from tripping. His halting, shuffling steps seemed to echo, mingling with the rainwater rushing down from above to form a confusing jumble of noises.

  Finally, his fingers grazed cold dirt. His heart leapt like a starving man stumbling upon a feast. He was so grateful for anything solid to cling to in his new sightless world that a lump swelled in his throat. He swallowed and pressed both hands to the wall, taking in all the sensory information his hands would afford him.

  Unlike the caverns in the Dead Waters Kingdom, which were silky smooth from years of phosphorescent mineral-carrying water flowing over them, the walls in this cavern were earthen, rough and dry. As his hands slid upward, grit rained down on him, and the wall began a slow curve backward like the inside of an overturned bowl.

  Perhaps it was a sinkhole, then. One he had no hope of climbing out of, if all the walls were dished like this one.

  Raijin crept forward, keeping one hand on the wall as a guide while the other swept the air in front of him. The wall curved slightly. Belatedly, he realized he should have found a way to mark where he’d started so he would know if he came around to it again. He stopped where he was and, with his fingers, dug a line into the dirt about a hand’s width deep, from as high over his head as he could reach to the stone floor. As long as he didn’t take his hand off the wall, he wouldn’t be able to miss that.

  Finished with his marker, Raijin started forward again. His hands ran across a thick root and knocked loose a few small stones as he explored. He hadn’t tripped over anything yet, but he slid his feet over the ground to be safe.

  The downpour had tapered off somewhat outside. It wasn’t gushing in through the hole with the same force as before. As the splattering of the rain lessened, however, the echoing scratch of his shuffling footsteps grew louder.

  It almost sounded as if he were being followed. Was some other creature in the pit with him, or was it only paranoia brought on by the blindness?

  Raijin froze in place.

  The footsteps stopped a moment later.

  Then started again.

  Without thinking, he reached out using his guai-ray senses. To his surprise, they responded, testing the sinkhole around him for the electrical impulses that accompanied all living things.

  Pack hunters.

  At least a dozen unknown creatures were creeping his way, closing in from all sides like a living snare. The guai-ray senses picked up hunger and the thirst for violence. The scent of blood from his eyes must have drawn them.

  Raijin put his back to the wall and raised his hands in the ready stance of Lysander’s Ro-less fighting. It was tempting to cock his head and listen for the
creatures, but his ears had betrayed him too many times in his fight with Misuru. Instead, he focused on the guai-ray senses. They didn’t reach far beyond him, perhaps fifteen feet in each direction, but they roved over the beasts, studying, measuring his abilities against theirs. Like all pack hunters, they were weak alone, but brave in a group. Small but vicious.

  Cowards, the demon ray in him hissed. After what Misuru had done to it, after being so easily tricked and violated, the beast wanted to shed blood, to prove that it was the strongest creature in this sinkhole. Let them come.

  The swiftly closing line faltered as if the pack hunters could feel the sudden surge of predatory contempt.

  Raijin fought the demon beast’s violent instincts back. He couldn’t afford to leap into a fight that would end up killing him just to soothe his bruised ego.

  One of the pack hunters took a tentative step forward.

  Raijin turned toward it. The ray’s impulse to attack roared inside Raijin’s skull, but he held it back. He hadn’t trained his whole life to give in to his nature—or the nature of the demon ray inside of him.

  Behind Raijin, another pack hunter broke from the group, this one sprinting at him. He spun and threw his momentum into a punch.

  In the split second before impact, the guai-ray senses caught half a dozen electrical signatures tearing across the cave floor toward him. The rest loped around the perimeter, cutting off any means of escape.

  His fist slammed into the first pack hunter, the knuckles shredding themselves in the creature’s needle-studded maw. The little creature yipped and ripped into his arm with claws and teeth.

  Pain screamed through the back of his leg as another mouthful of needles sank into his hamstring. His leg buckled, and he dropped to one knee, battering the creature latched onto the back of his thigh with his free hand.