Elijah. Jacquelyn Frank
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which settled extraordinary cunning and intelligence. All the qualities of natural-born hunters, always seething just beneath the surface, waiting for someone to make themselves prey. Demons were capable of behaviors as untamed as the elements they claimed their great powers from, behaviors they had embraced and integrated into every skill they cultivated in their long lifetimes, making them formidable opponents to those who managed to get on their distant bad sides.
Thus, even the most juvenile of fledglings could have avoided his current predicament, the warrior thought crossly to himself. So to be caught like this, like a weakling mouse in a trap, was shameful and enraging. How had the act of doing his duty suddenly turned on him? He was the Warrior Captain, the stalker of all Nightwalkers with a price on their head, those who were not of the Demon race who had committed egregious acts and sins against the Demon people, a direct challenge and insult to the Demon King. He was the specialist in all those species, an anthropological strategist. If anyone wanted to know the true ways of how to destroy Vampires, Lycanthropes, and most every other Nightwalker species, Elijah would be the best source of information. War and peace were, unfortunately, transient things, and it was his duty to be prepared for all possibilities, in case friends became enemies or enemies threatened friends.
Elijah fought off a passing cloak of dimming consciousness and the spinning of his immediate surroundings. It was he alone who belonged at the head of his monarch’s armies when needed, and he who must train the spies and assassins who would slink through the cloaking shadows in the face of threatening intrigue. Therefore, he knew everything anyone could currently discover about the humans who dabbled in the perverse arts of black magic. The same kind who stood around him that very moment, circling him like vultures awaiting the end to a victim’s final death throes.
The use of this corrupt power turned these foolish human men and women into necromancers, staining their souls with the inky dye of evil and embedding a stench so foul into their flesh that no Nightwalker with a clean soul could bear to breathe the odor of it. They were powerful, capable of growing even more so the more they studied and practiced their vile arts, but they were not powerful enough to capture him, never mind kill him. No, only his stupidity could have provided that opportunity to them.
He must have looked like a holiday turkey, breaking through the tree line and stepping into their trap, necromancers all around, as well as the human hunters who spent time chasing down myths so they could torture and kill them. Mortals who took it upon themselves to not only uncover the existence and locations of the hidden Nightwalker races, but made it their personal quest to eradicate them from the planet armed with little more than myth, legend, and ignorance.
Demons were one of the least exposed Nightwalkers in human mythos, but species like the Vampires and the Lycanthropes were not so lucky. Stories of them abounded, whether accurate or not, titillating the avid hunter into stalking them, looking for proof and personal vindication, occasionally getting lucky in their bloodthirsty quests. For the hunter, it was a victory, a mental trophy. Mental only. The body of a dead Nightwalker would often look very little different from that of a murdered human being, so it was not exactly one of those treasures a hunter could mount on his wall and tell stories about. At least, not to anyone outside of his own secret society of deranged heroes.
It was becoming far too common an occurrence lately, finding the ashes of Vampires left staked in the sun, Lycanthropes shot and stabbed with the silver weapons that poisoned them, and even Demons impaled by weapons made of scorching, disfiguring iron. That was, of course, when the Demons were not instead being Summoned into the mutilating destruction of the necromancers’ tainted pentagram traps. Murder upon senseless murder, and between these two groups of humans, the list of victims would go on.
It was a painful betrayal. Demons had always held human mortals in such precious esteem, much in the way a parent protects its young, developing child. They and the other civilized Nightwalkers fiercely protected these humans, perhaps instinctively knowing that though they were not empowered themselves, left to grow and develop, they might someday become so. It would be a beautiful evolution to watch in the centuries to come. Though Demonkind knew it was only a comparative handful of mortals who sought to harm them, it still stung bitterly. And now, with hunters and necromancers joining forces, the danger had doubled for them all.
Tripled, the warrior thought dryly.
Elijah knew he was close to death in that moment, with that thought. The warrior within him would never indulge in reflection during a battle that required all of his attention. But this battle was all but over, so it left him a few precious seconds to reconcile the thoughts in his head. It seemed ironic that these badly informed humans, who sought to destroy the empowered races they so thoroughly feared, would not feel threatened by the black magic they now consorted with. What, Elijah wondered, in their minds, was the distinction? What made a Demon, born and gifted of the clean and beauteous elements of the Earth, so reprehensible to these humans? And yet, the embalming of evil magic that bled through necromancers was suddenly being lauded and accepted by the very same self-righteous groups?
Was it as simple as the fact that the average human mortal was too outbred, in evolutionary sixth sense particularly, to feel or smell that innate evil? Were they really such a child race that they did not have the instinct to determine good from evil, right from wrong, on a purely intuitive level? Certainly, the moment they stepped on the path, there would be no recognition of the error as they were pervaded and overrun, but was there no forewarning at all within them?
These were answers Elijah did not have and, it seemed, would not find in what was left of his lifetime. After over five centuries, thousands of battles, and thousands of victories, it seemed Elijah’s so-called immortality was about to come to a decided end. He had finally caught the wrong tiger by the tail.
Or should he say tigress?
Elijah lifted dark, forest green eyes, full of malice and contempt, to his attackers, who were all standing so proudly in their defeat of him. The hunters and necromancers surrounding him were all women, part of an all-female sect the Demons had recently become aware of. What burned his emotions with the intensity of a wildfire, however, was the presence of the two female Demons standing at the forefront of these murderous feminine forces.
Traitors.
The Demon on the right, the one known to him as Ruth, was a very powerful Mind Demon. In fact, she had been the firstborn female to that youthful element, which had existed in the Demon culture for only a little over five hundred years. She was an Elder, formerly a Great Council member, who had helped form the very roots of Demon society and law over many, many years. The magnitude of her defection was immeasurable. Elijah could barely wrap his mind around the concept.
Though she was the older of the two, her youthful appearance matched that of her daughter, the one called Mary, who stood close to her. Since Demons did not visually age beyond a certain point, the duo looked more like sisters. However, Ruth had an arm around her offspring’s waist and was stroking the young woman’s hair with a maternal fondness that belied the fact that Mary was nearly a century old herself. It was eerily unnatural and must, even to these human eyes all around them, seem more than a little creepy. Perhaps it would have, had those eyes not been blinded by hatred and fear.
It was the inconceivable idea that both women were of Elijah’s very own race, turncoats openly joining up with these malevolent magic-users and self-righteous human hunters, that burned him with such unholy rage. Of course, with even more irony, Elijah understood that none of the mortals realized that these two women were members of the very same race they were now declaring war on with this attack upon him. None of them knew Ruth’s motivations were driven by her personal need for warped and misdirected vengeance and that they were merely tools, a weapon she could wield against her former people.
To the mortals, she was nothing more than a beautiful, knowledgeable human woman. A gifted sorceress, perhaps, if she had shown them her masterful ability to command certain aspects of the element of the Mind. It was this Demon deceiver and her daughter who were goading the humans into battles against victims the mortals never would have found with such awful ease and so little effort. Every day Ruth stood on the opposite of that line drawn in the sand by these paranoid and misguided people, she would reveal more and more to them about the Demon race.