Waylon's Crossing - 22. Chapter 22: Queen’s Hunter

Waylon's Crossing
Chapter 22: Queen’s Hunter

The smell of freshly spilled blood hit Karadur's nostrils with the shattering of glass from one of the human houses in the main square. From inside, someone screamed. Karadur sighed. That must be it. The city's lawmen told him that this was where he could find the justiciar assigned to Kynan's case. The damage and circumstances could mean no one else. A dozen demons dead, more injured; his protégé had done well. All that remained was to find out whether he yet lived.

Leaping to a balcony near the source of the commotion, Karadur walked through the glass doors as if they were not there. His only concession was to duck his head as he went through. Humans scattered; more screams, but the demon didn't care. What matter these humans when the Prince of Darkness was missing? Karadur had a tight timeline. Well he knew that the Queen needed her son.

He could have killed everyone, but he dared not risk losing possible information. Striding into the library, his nose wrinkled at the acrid tang of recent magic. He stepped over the debris, ignoring the servants completely, and seized the vampire by wrapping his hand in his braids. Karadur didn't care for the affairs of Lightworlders, whatever the conflict might be, but neither could he have the vampire killing off a potential lead. Ignoring the vampire's claws on his arm, Karadur tilted his head back and stared into eyes full of blood lust.

After almost four millennia of service, Karadur was old, even for a demon; for a Hunter, he was ancient. Demons did not show their age physically. Their bodies stayed young up until they quit, and there was seldom much in the way of warning. With training and maturity, a demon learned to decipher body language and scent to weigh another demon's aura in order to determine social status, rank, and age. Karadur could wield his aura like a club if he so chose and he did so now.

"Cease this at once."

There were few demons alive that could resist an aura command from Karadur, and only a few more that might dare to attempt a battle of wills. The vampire's blood reacted. He immediately went still and silent, eyes rolling back in his head as he fainted.

Too long a warrior, Karadur wore only his demon-style, goblin-leather short trousers and the borrowed sword upon its sheath at his back. Born with the power to call fire, he needed no weapons. Even amongst his own kind, he was tall, with broad, powerful shoulders, wings more than twice his height in length, and long, curving horns. Completely hairless like all demons, his black on black skin shone dully in the candlelight. His yellow eyes glittered with impatience.

About to toss the vampire aside, Karadur paused. "Arawn?" he murmured in disbelief. The Queen's pet vampire, Karadur had assumed him long dead. Real death, not this parody of life. He shrugged, dropping the vampire into a heap on the carpet. Grimacing with disgust, he wiped his hand off on his pants and waited.

Then he noticed the prickling against his skin and his scowl deepened. He wanted to step away from the unicorn, but the warlock was right there. Karadur grabbed the man first, and then stepped away.

"Where is he?" he thundered, holding him up at eye-level.

Duncan was a trained justiciar. Never had he ever expected to find himself eye-to-eye with a demon. His body shook and he only prayed that he wouldn't piss himself. He couldn't get out a coherent word, spectacles slipping down his nose. Magic trinkets, vampires, demons, what now?

Quickly checking to Bryce, and seeing that he wasn’t dead but paralyzed, Jacen hopped to his feet, advancing on the demon that held out Duncan like a shield.

"Let him go!" he demanded.

Duncan yelped as heat smoked the front of his night robe. He thrashed helplessly.

Jacen stopped moving, holding out his hands placatingly. "Calm down, just, everybody calm down." His only answer was a demonic snarl and glare.

He swallowed. Jacen had spent many years wandering the Borderlands, and he knew a few names. The blacker than midnight skin, yellow eyes, and ability to call fire could only mean one demon. This was one of the Demon Queen's Hunters. His name was Karadur. Karadur was well known in the Borderlands, practically a legend. No one wanted to risk the Hunter's ire and no one wanted to be the person he was looking for. Those people were almost never seen again, and never alive.

"W-we can't help you if we don't know what you want," he stammered.

The demon bared his fangs again, but his arm lowered a fraction. "Where is Kynan?" he asked, making Jacen's eyebrows raise. "I can smell him." He glared at Duncan who whimpered. "Where is he?"

Jacen went cold. "He, uh, he --"

"Not here," Bryce ground out. His fingers twitched, but his body remained stubbornly unresponsive. Shit he'd forgotten how big Karadur was! He blinked rapidly, fighting to stay conscious.

"I know that!" the demon shot back, adding a string of words that made Bryce respond in kind. Duncan and Jacen watched them spitting and growling at each other, and then the healer stepped backward hastily as both glared at him.

Karadur's hand opened, letting the warlock thump to the floor in a heap. The demon advanced on Jacen who continued to retreat, shaking. Close to eight feet tall, Karadur's wing tips brushed the ceiling. He filled the space with solid weight, blocking out the light from the hall and making his eyes seem to glow in the dark. Fire licked between his fingers and ran up and down his forearms.

Jacen could feel the heat from where he stood. His knees gave out and he cowered. "Please, please don't kill me!" he begged.

"You left him to die!"

The demon's roar rattled the windowpanes. Then he spun around, hand out toward where Duncan crouched, book in hand, sweating and white-faced.

"Don't make me kill you," he warned.

Slowly, Duncan lowered the book. He hadn't really been sure what he'd meant to do with it, anyway. For a moment, only the normal sounds of the city beyond their four walls could be heard. Then Karadur sighed, relaxing his fists and wings. He stepped away from the unicorn and his mate and leaned over to pick up Arawn, dusting him off and plunking him down on the top of the desk.

"Speak to me, Arawn," he said tiredly. "Where is my son?"

"Your son?" Bryce repeated. Beyond the demon, Jacen and Duncan exchanged looks.

Karadur rubbed his forehead. "My protégé."

"You ..." Bryce blinked. He remembered now hearing that Karadur had taken somebody on as an apprentice, but he'd shrugged it off as just rumors and gossip. The Queen's Dog. Why oh why hadn't he thought of that before? Of course! If he were so favored, of course the Queen would send her best Hunter to find him.

"Shit, Karadur," he muttered, hiding his face in his hands a second. "He's in bad shape. Kynan is. The Prince has him." He flinched back as the demon growled, clenching his hands into fists again.

"Hey! Don't kill the messenger!"

Kynan's scent was faint and fading fast with every passing minute. Karadur turned to the warlock and unicorn, standing closely together.

"You," he said. "Take me there."

Duncan's mouth fell open.

"Take me there and I won't kill you." His eyes dropped to the unicorn and he scowled in distaste. "Or you."

"But," the mage started.

This was not going to be a dead end. Karadur refused to let it end this way, and there was no time to start over by more mundane means.

"You will open the door for me," he commanded. He'd seen warlocks travel by magical means during the wars. If Arawn could be believed, then this warlock could open a rift between worlds and step from one place to another as easily as walking through a doorway.

"I can't!" yelped Duncan. "I don't know how!" What was he talking about? Duncan didn't have any special powers. There was no such thing as magic!

Karadur seized the closest object, an inkwell, and melted the silver container to slag with a thought. He advanced on the warlock.

"Wait!" called Bryce. He didn't move from his seated position, still unsure of his numb legs. "They'll be expecting something like that. Isn't there another way?" He wanted to kill the healer for what he'd done, for leaving Aure to die, but not by demon hands. Bryce was not that cruel.

Karadur. His pairling spoke through their connection in his mind. In his anger, Karadur had held back nothing. I know what you will need, Karadur. Bring them here. The other demon's fear made Karadur face his own.

A bloodbath in the city, Kynan captured, Xeran's gloating, it all added up. Karadur had just ignored the most probable conclusion. He wanted to kill something, or someone. He didn't want to feel so helpless.

Kynan; alone in enemy hands.

He'd been trained in techniques to withstand torture, as were all Hunters, but the changes taking place in his body would make him especially vulnerable. Demons called this time of change the Cyfnewid. Long time ago, Azil had been tortured during his Change, leaving him mutilated. He couldn’t let something like that happen to Kynan! Unprepared and unknowing, Kynan could die. He might already be dead.

The halfling was Karadur's first and only apprentice, and he'd lived at least part-time in Karadur's home for the last thirty-four years. Although he'd refused a formal adoption, Kynan was the closest Karadur had ever come to having a son. Before his Bonding, Karadur had been too concerned with keeping his position in court, too afraid to have any known connections that could be used against him. After being Pair-Bonded, Karadur could afford the risk even less. Azil had always wanted children, however, an ache that Kynan had been able to assuage. Karadur just hadn't realized how much he'd come to care as well.

He nodded wearily, letting Azil push aside the old horrors. He could feel the tiny demon shivering with his own memories, but as ever, he assisted Karadur in keeping up a strong, invincible, intimidating presence.

That kid, thought Bryce, thinking back on Alan as he watched Karadur. He really didn't know what he was getting into, did he?

"Excuse me?" said Bryce, when it looked like no one else was going to say anything. "You want us to go where?" If he'd heard correctly, they were supposed to go to some place in the Borderlands with someone who also appeared to be hunting the halfling Kynan. This was not an auspicious beginning.

"The minstrel Azil has a collection of spell books," Karadur replied at the prompting of his pairling.

Bryce crossed his arms over his chest, suspicions confirmed. "And why should we trust you?" He knew Karadur would understand the reference.

He wasn't wrong. He could almost see the steam rising from the demon's nose and ears.

Karadur growled and bared his fangs. "I don't care if you do!" he snapped. "You'll do what I say or I'll get the information another way."

Jacen and Duncan both looked to Bryce next, the conversation going back and forth like a particularly exuberant badminton match. Was the vampire brave or stupid for arguing with an assassin and thug three or four times his size?

"We've just spent the last several days avoiding people trying to kill us. Torture takes too long. You need our cooperation."

Karadur's nostril's flared. He could smell the funk, of course. Second to Kynan's blood-smell, the pervasive odor of sewers, goblins, werewolf, and filth was the first thing he'd noticed, categorized, and set aside. He simply did not care; those details were irrelevant. On the other hand, Bryce was correct. Karadur did not have the time to search the sewers himself, and torturing the warlock would be counter-productive.

He sniffed haughtily. "I don't need you, Arawn. Just him." He pointed to the unicorn.

"Me?" squeaked Jacen. He sidled closer to Duncan. Demons ate unicorns. They were considered a delicacy, when prepared properly. The slaughter of any sentient creature was now forbidden, but the law did not stretch so far as it once had, and there were stories.

But Bryce just laughed. "Look closer, Karadur. He has the protection of the city himself. Even you know better than to cross Waylon. Besides, what’s one unicorn healer to you?"

Duncan and Jacen glanced at each other and then back to the verbal combatants. Karadur glowered terribly, but Bryce held his ground.

"Why's he protecting me?" Jacen whispered to Duncan. "I thought he wanted to kill me." He rubbed at his still bleeding, still very sore neck with one hand and clutched the hem of the mage's robe with the other.

"I don't know," Duncan said quietly in response. "I don't understand any of this."

"They know each other, though."

"Yes, I'd figured that out." He spared a glance down and sideways, barely stopping himself from patting the boy's (young man's?) head. He wasn't a unicorn, or a fawn, more like half of a half of a centaur, maybe -- but whatever he was, was too cute for his own -- for Duncan's peace of mind.

Grief and anger made Bryce reckless. "You betrayed your king before, you and your mate."

Faster than a creature that size had any right to move, Karadur sprang across the room and slammed Bryce into a bookshelf.

"Hey!" cried Duncan, from where he and Jacen had ducked, clutching each other. "My books!"

Bryce knew he shouldn't have said that. No one had ever told him; Azil and Karadur's covert relationship was just one more piece of information that would have gotten him killed all those years ago.

Karadur! Azil's shouting in his mind stopped Karadur from incinerating the vampire, but Bryce's jerkin smoldered in the demon's grasp.

It's a fair question. Azil spoke calmly to his pairling. He was there, remember?

Karadur remembered. What had been done to Arawn was not, thank the Moon and Stars, on Karadur's conscience, but he knew that the vampire had no love for demons. If he'd picked up that tidbit of information and let it slip, there was no way that Karadur would not have heard, and dealt with it, by now.

He scowled. "Always a stubborn cuss."

Bryce matched him stare for stare, not struggling, but also making his weight as much as possible. With Aure gone, the mission fell to Bryce, as much as he understood of it, anyway. He did not want to rescue the halfling (or the brat, though that was tempting) only to hand him back to the enemy. Unfortunately, Bryce didn't know anything about magic. Karadur seemed to, and Azil certainly did, so, if his loyalty remained intact, then Bryce would suffer to work with them again.

"Very well," sighed Karadur. Much to Bryce's surprise, he dropped the vampire, turning away to pace in the small confines. When Karadur spun around, he almost knocked Duncan back over. Mage and healer ducked, and, laughing lightly with the release of tension, took seats on the floor.

Bryce faced the Hunter squarely. Karadur's temper was infamous, but pissing him off hadn't yet warranted death, and Bryce was confused.

Anyone of importance in the demon world limited or avoided those entanglements which created vulnerabilities. Mates and progeny were safeguarded and hidden until they were capable of defending themselves. Assassination attempts did not avoid the innocent; rather, those least able to protect themselves became the targets. A demon who could not protect his valuables became himself hostage to others.

Bryce had the information without the resources to back it up. He could sell the information to Karadur's enemies, and for that reason alone had just put himself at the top of or near the top of the demon's kill list. Why he wasn't dead yet he wasn't quite sure, and so he held his tongue, waiting for the demon to take the initiative.

"My loyalties remain with the Queen," said Karadur. "I am to find and retrieve Queen's Hunter Kynan. Alive. His trail is linked to the werewolf Alan Mammon and I followed him to that one.” He pointed at Jacen. “I can give you no assurances beyond my ..." He thought for a minute. "I would see no harm come to the boy," he decided. "He is my son in all but name."

Demons, as Bryce well knew, did not adopt members into their family clans on a whim. Demons were fiercely loyal amongst families, and a good thing, too, or they would have killed each other off some time ago. Still....

"You could be lying."

"He is," Jacen interrupted, drawing everyone's attention. "But he does not know it."