Al’s teeth showed, and he bore down harder. Someone jostled me forward, and Trent pulled me back before I fell.

“I did!” Ku’Sox got out. “I have a right for a trial by demon!”

“He dies!” Trent shouted, his desire flowing through me by way of the slavers. “Now!”

I looked to the east, frightened when the angry mob of demons at my back began to subside into frustrated mutterings. “We don’t have time for a trial!”

But Al was moving his foot.

“Al! You want them to put him in jail?” I shouted, and his eyes met mine, shocking me with their hatred. It would have been better if Trent’s spell would have killed Ku’Sox directly, but elves apparently liked their prisoners alive.

“No.” Al backed up a step, Ku’Sox lying between him and Newt and Dali. “I want to fucking kill him. Slow had been my intent, but fast would have been acceptable.”

Ku’Sox was smiling wickedly as he sat up, scooting backward into the surrounding demons when Al made motions to kick him. “I’m a demon,” he said, his voice smoothing out as found his aplomb. “I have a right to a trial.”

“Let go of me!” Newt cried, wiggling in Dali’s grip. “Let go! I will kill him myself if you are all too afraid, and then you can put me on trial!” she shouted.

“Be still, Newt!” Dali exclaimed, but the haze in her eyes scared me, even as I wanted to see an end to Ku’Sox.

“Ah, I have an idea,” Trent said softly, his voice both musical and hard. “That is, if you are willing to listen to an elf. The one whose magic caught him.”

I turned to Trent, wanting to protest that it had taken all three of us to catch him, but I held my tongue when I saw the harsh light in his eyes, the chilling bone-hard expression of dealing out a harsh death. I’d seen it once aimed at me, and I’d almost died.

Newt jerked from Dali, breathless as she faced us, Ku’Sox slowly getting up between us. “I’ll hear the elf,” she said bitterly.

“An elf?” a demon from the back called. “We should kill him, too.”

There was a muttering agreement, and I stiffened. Trent’s chin lifted. The wind shifted his stringy hair in the moonlight, and Trent said, “If he was a thief in my house, his actions stealing the space I claim, the air I breathe, I would do a trial by Hunt.”

A chill lifted through me. Trent wouldn’t meet my eyes as he stared at Dali. Al was shifting foot to foot, and a murmur of discontent was rising around us like a hot wind. “You would hunt him down?” a demon at the front of the circle said. “As an animal? As your ilk did before we beat you off?”