Demon Hunt

Chapter 10 Part 1

Kado gave Auren a moment to pull herself together, but she seemed to be getting worse. He would have to intervene or she'd completely lose focus, and they still needed to catch that demon. He grabbed her arm and pulled her to her feet.

"We have to keep moving," he told her.

"You'll go faster without me. I'll just mess things up again."

"Enough," Kado said, a little harsher than he intended.

Auren shrank from him.

He lowered his voice. "I understand you're feeling responsible, and I will not try to convince you you're not. But sulking and wallowing in self-pity is not going to fix the problem. The longer you stand around feeling sorry for yourself, the longer the demon has to put more space between us. More people could end up dying if we don't hurry."

Kado stalked off, knowing Auren would follow him. So many people had been injured and likely wouldn't survive another day without healing, but he wasn't willing to repeat his earlier mistake. None of these people would have been killed or injured at all if he had followed his initial instinct and followed the demon right after his ward had set it loose. If his reason for healing her right away had to do with saving her life, he could have forgiven himself. She had a destiny beyond his knowledge, and he had been charged to protect her. But that wasn't the case. Her life was not in immediate danger. It was the fear in her eyes that held him back. Fear of being left alone while seriously injured.

If he stayed to heal people, hundreds more might die in their place. He would find the demon as quickly as possible and return to the village and help where he could. That was the best he could do at the moment.

"Excuse me," Kado said, stopping a man with medical supplies as he walked by. "Did you see where the monster went that did this? We are hunting it."

The man pointed toward the lake. "Last I saw, the beast had gone into the lake and swam to the opposite shore. Good luck with your hunt. I hope you kill it for what it's done to our people."

Kado nodded his thanks, though he couldn't promise to kill a beast that wasn't technically alive in a physical sense. He wasn't even sure how they took on a physical body in this world when they were not physical beings. Kado had always wondered about that and would have assumed they'd appear more like a ghost, like the other shadow people did if they could appear in the physical world. Generally only the most powerful of them could do even that much. Maybe it had to do with who initiated it. It was the shadow stalkers, who are physical beings, who brought the demons into their world.

He wasn't even aware the demons could swim. At least he never heard of it happening. His first scan of the lake revealed nothing, and he questioned whether it had actually gone this way. But then he saw its prints near the water's edge, where the ground was softer. Auren followed his gaze over the lake and pointed toward something in the distance.

"What's that?" she asked.

At first Kado thought it might be a rock jutting out of the water, but then it moved. "It's the demon."

"We can't swim fast enough to catch up with it."

"We won't have to. I'll take us through the shadow world. We'll get there before he does and get him when he reaches the shore."

He gripped Auren's hand before calling the veil and going into the shadow world. Within seconds they were on the other side of the lake. Unfortunately, the demon was gone.

"Where did it go?"

Kado carefully scanned the surface of the lake, but saw no sign of the demon. "It may know we're following it again and is hiding under the surface. I don't think it has come ashore, but let's check for it anyway."

Auren headed south while he headed north. He warned her not to engage it if she saw it, but he doubted it was necessary. He walked for about a kilometer down the beach, but there was nothing. His foster daughter was sitting on the sand waiting for him when he returned.

"Nothing?"

She shook her head.

"We'll camp here tonight."

"It can be anywhere now. What if it just went back the way it came or headed toward another village?"

He gripped her shoulders and waited for her to meet his gaze. "We will find it."

"Okay."

Kadodecided to risk a campfire that night, not because he wanted a hot meal, but hehad collected an herb that would calm Auren's nerves. He needed to make a teafrom it. It would allow her to sleep without making her groggy in case theyneeded to leave in a rush. She gave him a hard time about drinking it, but she finallygave in. Now he had to hope the demon would show itself. Ideally, he would haveliked to send it back to the shadow world before having to wake Auren.