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“Stop.” Eddie sprang to her feet, sure the hounds were about to do their soul harvesting thing.
“It cannot live,” Cronus said. “It has seen you.”
“Don’t end me,” the demon blubbered, eyes huge and terrified in its green face. “I didn’t know the imp took my food for you.”
“It was just lying there.” Yesterday peered out from behind Eddie.
“You stole the food?” Eddie couldn’t believe it was only occurring to her now to ask where Yesterday had gotten the sack.
Yesterday took a step away from her. “I didn’t think it belonged to anyone.”
“He took it right from me,” the demon said. “I only put it down for a minute to gather my offspring for their meal.”
And then Eddie saw them, two smaller versions of the large green, vaguely reptilian demon hiding in the bushes and staring at the hounds with terror. Looking closer, the demon did have a vaguely feminine quality to her.
“You’re their mother?” She motioned to the smaller demons.
The demon blinked at her. “Mother?”
“She birthed them,” Cronus clarified, and with that, sealed their fate. Eddie would not be responsible for killing a demon and her children, however odd they looked. “Let her go,” she said to the hounds. She put the pie back in the sack with the remainder of the cheese. “I’m sorry. I’ve already eaten one of the loaves of bread and some of the cheese. And the imp ate the sausage.”
“Mistress.” Xerxes kept the demon pinned to the tree. “She could tell others about seeing you and us.”
Eddie pushed past him and held the sack out to the demon. “I’m sorry but I don’t have any money to pay you.”
“Money?” The demon glanced at the sack and then back at Eddie. “What is money?”
“We have no currency in hell,” Cronus said. “We barter or provide a blood oath as repayment. And you cannot give her blood, or she might guess what you are.”
“I’m afraid I have nothing to trade for what I took,” Eddie said.
“You’re welcome to what we have.” The demon eyed the hounds nervously. She waved her hand at the sack. “Keep it.”
Eddie glanced at the children, and she couldn’t do it. They could be hungry, and this could be all the food they had. “No, it’s fine. Take your food.”
The demon snatched the sack from Eddie’s hands.
“Let her go.” Eddie’s tone was more forceful than she intended, but the hounds backed away far enough for the demon to slide away from the tree.
She edged backward toward the two little ones. “You look human.” She clutched the sack to her chest as she stared at Eddie. “But you smell…different.”
Xerxes snarled and stalked her.
The demon stumbled back and away from him. “Never mind. You travel with the master’s hounds.” She kept retreating until she drew level with the children. “I saw nothing. I know when to mind my business.”
“It is dangerous for you to let her go,” Cronus said. “We were hoping to avoid notice, and now, word will spread that we are here, and we travel with a being that is part human.”
She thought of her reply to him as the demon gathered her children and ran into the depths of the forest. “Not everything needs to end in violence.”
Cronus eyed her with compassion. “This is hell, mistress. Everything is violent, and nothing about that is unnecessary.”
Chapter
Twenty-One
The rest of the day passed uneventfully, and Eddie chose to focus on the scenery.
She wouldn’t say the hell hounds were angry with her, but they were definitely keeping the communication on a need-to-know basis. Even Cronus couldn’t be cajoled into one of his long-winded soliloquies.
