Claimed by the Demon

Chapter 9

Worst hangover in the world.

Mac tried to think past the pounding in his head. The blade didn’t help, lurking in sullen retreat. The awkward stretch of his arms to the side, the hard floor beneath him...those things didn’t help, either. The metal biting into his wrists—

“What?” he said. What the fu—

“Dammit.” Gwen’s voice bit off in frustration—not far, but muffled all the same. “Ow!”

Frustration. Not fear. Pained, but not hurt.

The blade told him nothing. Sulking. Sulking, why, again?

He opened his eyes and found the hotel carpet an inch away. Wow. That sure as hell was dirtier than he’d thought it would be.

—hunger—

He had no doubt. As much as the blade had indulged its sickening obsession, slopping tortured emotions through Mac with abandon, it hadn’t truly engaged anyone for days. Nearly a week. No blood, no flesh, no sustenance. That its hunger plucked at him now...

No, no great surprise.

The handcuffs. Now, those were a surprise.

Gwen muttered another expletive.

“Maybe I can help,” he suggested, wincing at the very sound in his head but his voice no less dry for it.

“Mac!” Her footsteps vibrated lightly on the floor; her bare feet came into view. “You’re back!”

Had her voice always been that loud? He winced again, making no manly effort to hide it. “I’m—”

—resentment anger feastfeastfeast BLAME—

He found a growl in his throat, his wrists battering against metal cuffs looped around the leg of the bed, his body burning with the blade and the sudden exhaustion of the effort he’d apparently made to free himself.

“And that,” Gwen said, plunking down in a chair she’d pulled up where he could see her, “is why you’re cuffed in the first place.”

For the first time, he saw her shirt—stained with blood both smeared and soaked in. “I don’t—” He couldn’t quite finish past the dread in his throat. “God, Gwen, tell me I didn’t—”

—hurt her hurt hunger wantwantWANT—

He burst through the other side of it with wrists throbbing and head shattering and stomach this close to retching, breathing fast through jaws grinding hard enough to ache.

The blade had him. After all this time—

“Tell me,” he said, barely more than a whisper, and his eyes closed against the painful light of the room, “I didn’t do that.”

“I— What?” She must have realized, looking at herself. “It’s not all mine. And what’s mine is thanks to that...that...knife-sword-thing of yours.” She said it defiantly, as though he might laugh at her for thinking she’d seen what she’d seen.

But he had no doubt. Whatever had happened during those missing moments in the warehouse—a woman, the high emotion boiling straight through the blade to his soul, the man above so very certain of Mac’s nature—so very close to being right—the blade had obviously revealed itself to her.

“Please,” he said, forcing himself to audible speech. “Tell me I didn’t kill that woman.”

“Not you,” she said, fast enough. “But she’s dead. And we’re only here because that man thinks he can turn you. I’d ask what that means but I kinda maybe know. Even if I don’t actually have any idea.” She came down off the chair, creeping just close enough to touch his leg. Hesitant, but not for herself—more afraid she’d somehow hurt him. Her hand was wrapped in duct tape.

—resentment hunger—

“Back off!” he snarled, and then was so very sorry, groaning as his head split into shards of thought and being. Slowly eased, as he remembered to breathe again. Not yet. It didn’t have him yet.

Dimly, he heard her say, “I think it’s mad at me. I dared to touch it, you know. And I took you away from there. I...I think I stopped it, when it would have taken you. For good, I mean. Don’t ask me how.”

He forced his eyes open. He had a good view of her now, on her knees on the dirty carpet, one hand on his leg, her hair carelessly twisted back and her light blue eyes gone dark with concern.

Her T-shirt, smeared and blotted with blood, except for the clean wrinkled circle just beneath the notch of her collarbones. The pendant. The thing that stood as no coincidence between them. Her father. The way nothing seemed to work quite as expected for either of them when they were together—and at the same time exceeded all expectations.

Don’t ask me how, she’d said, kneeling beside him with concern on her face and a clean, clear, bloodless spot where she had a habit of touching that pendant. He looked at her, then, full of darkness and light both—dread and hope—and he said, “I think I know.”

But she still wouldn’t unlock the cuffs.

She sat cross-legged beside him, she rested her hand on his thigh, she ached for his struggle and she found her heart pounding in overdrive every single time she thought of what they’d just been through, but she wouldn’t unlock the cuffs.

And he didn’t ask her to. That alone told her too much.

So did the tension beneath her hand, the flex and play of muscle that sometimes trembled with an internal effort she couldn’t even begin to measure.

“I’d stopped for gas,” Mac said. Finally telling her. He couldn’t be comfortable, his arms twisted to the side like that. The pillow she’d just tucked under his head seemed like a small thing. He didn’t even seem to notice it, eyes focused on some point on the wall. “Indiana, I think. I’m not sure. Things got confusing—” Under her hand, muscle went rock-hard; his eyes went dark and his jaw tight and his whole body arched ever so slightly.

He forced his next words, fighting through it—fighting whatever had tried and come so close to possessing him. “It was late...one of those pitch-black nights. And there was this little bar next door, had food.” He shook his head. “I didn’t even see it coming. Two guys in a scuffle, one of them had a knife and this...meanness...”

He looked directly at her then and shrugged, as best he could. “I thought the other guy needed some help.”

“Uh-huh,” she said. “Because that’s what you do, right?”

The words didn’t quite seem to strike home for him; he frowned but let it go. “The guy with the knife knew how to use it. But he was...sick. Or high. Or something.”

She wondered if he was thinking the same thing that crossed her mind. Or possessed. She only said, “Or something.”

“He cut me before I even knew how far gone he was. And I—” Mac frowned, lost in that memory...searching it. “I must have gotten the knife away from him. I’m not sure. Just...suddenly it was three days later, and I wasn’t even in the same state. I didn’t have any of those cuts, and there was this...blade.” He took a deep breath. “I know more about it now. It’s...in my head. I didn’t know it thinks of itself as a demon blade, but now I do. I think...maybe it has a name, but it won’t tell me. I learned pretty damned fast that it would patch me up when things went bad. There’s a price for that, of course. And I learned what it wants.”

She spoke softly, as if she might somehow avoid disturbing that blade. “That’s how you find the trouble spots. It tells you.”

He nodded, finding her gaze again. “It feeds. It wants the glory the bullies feel and the horror from the victims. For a while, I thought it was me—wanting those things, feeding on those things. I thought I’d gone mad. For a while, I...” Maybe, he wanted to look away from her. His gaze flickered, then solidified. “I didn’t try very hard to survive the encounters it drew me to.”

“Which,” she said, forcing her voice to remain steady in her throat and her hand to remain steady on his leg, “is how you know all about the price it exacts for patching you up.” She shook her head. “That explains what I found last night when I cleaned you up.” She said it so casually—and then suddenly realized the implications of that moment, the liberties she’d taken to touch and care. A flash of memory, gleaming flesh and small tattoo, the exact pattern of hair across chest and down defined muscle, denim waistband resting loosely over hip and—

She flushed and made herself continue. “How some of the bruises were both new and old.”

He was watching her. Closely. Really closely.

“Oh, my God,” she said. “Did that blade just tattle on me?” And then she couldn’t believe it when her heart beat a little faster because there in the middle of this story of his, he gave her that little half-lift grin at the corner of that mouth made for it.

It didn’t last. Maybe that damned evil-possessed impossibility of a knife felt his distraction. Maybe it knew more than she ever expected. But it got him, all the same. He gave a sharp, sudden grunt, twisting against it—jerking his wrists mercilessly in the handcuffs, his expression turning dark and wild—and this time the blade didn’t let him go.

Gwen instantly pushed herself away to safety, out of reach but not untouched. Not to see his wrists stream blood, not to see his mind and body so ill-used.

Her hand throbbed; she looked down to realize she’d again taken hold of the pendant. And looked back again at Mac, still raging against captivity, still less than sane.

I think I know, he’d said to her. How she’d brought him back at the warehouse. And he’d been looking at her chest, which she’d taken to mean he was looking at her chest, but now she glanced down and saw for the first time what he’d seen.

The clean spot.

And she remembered gripping the thing outside the warehouse, and she remembered her father’s reaction to it—how he’d coveted it, how he’d feared it...how he’d given it to her. Not as a gift, but because he didn’t have the strength to hold it—and he didn’t have the strength to use it.

Amazing thing, adult hindsight. And hurtful. The thing she’d found comfort in all these years, and he had only just been using her, after all. Right before he’d tried to kill her.

Her father, with a knife. Her father, a changed man. Her father, dead in mysterious circumstances.

Demon blade.

She wondered when Mac had figured it out.

She pulled the pendant over her head, staring at the heavy, blunt metal features, trying to understand—

He made an animal noise, one that spoke of rage and revenge and death and no respect at all for the human body breaking under the strain—chest heaving, sweat glimmering at his temples, face gone pale...blood soaking into the carpet.

Gwen muttered self-imprecation. Who needed understanding? Just do it.

She hesitated a moment, on the edge of it.

And then, when what drove Mac allowed a lull in the fury, a chance for the body to breathe and recover, she threw herself at him. On him. The pendant in one hand, the other yanking open the unbuttoned placket of his shirt—thrusting the pendant upon him and hoping so very damned hard that it was the right thing to do and then not able to think much about anything at all as his face blazed fury and his body bucked wildly beneath her.

He collapsed, trapping one foot under his thigh and throwing her completely off balance over him. Chest heaving, eyes closed, face turned from hers. She wasn’t even sure he was still conscious—not until she saw the moisture at the corner of his eye. Not sweat, but the involuntary tears of a body driven beyond what it could endure.

She still had one hand free. She thumbed the dampness away. “There,” she said. “Shh. We’ll figure this out.” But sudden fear gripped her when he didn’t respond. Had she been too slow, too late? “Hey,” she said, and the uncertainty trickled in. “We will. We have to. I’m part of this now, I can see that—”

His eyes flickered open, lashes dark and wet. Fully sane. Fully clear. “Gwen,” he said, his voice abused and ragged. “It’s not... It just...” He shook his head. “It’s clear. My head is clear. It’s just me. Whatever you’re doing...”

“The pendant,” she murmured, certain of it.

“I’m free, do you get that? My feelings are just...” That was wonder in his eyes, she was sure of it. “They’re just mine.” He lifted one hand, a foreshortened motion—one that had, she was also suddenly certain, been intended for a caress.

She felt the heat of him beneath her then—damp with sweat, soaking his own shirt, radiating through his jeans. And realized, too, the intimacy of how they twined together, her leg still trapped and her hands on his body. The awareness of it flushed through her, and then she winced, realizing he’d know that—

Except he didn’t seem to. Still caught up in the wonder of freedom, still catching his breath. She said, “You didn’t feel that, did you?”

Puzzlement crossed his features, as much of a question as anything.

“Me,” she said.

“Oh,” he said. “I feel you, all right.”

She made an impatient gesture with her free hand, indicating the tangle of their bodies; the other still pressed the pendant to his skin. “Not this. That voice inside. Tattling.”

He shook his head. “No tattling. Unless you want to tattle on yourself.”

She looked down at them, at their intersecting bodies, and then back to him. “I’ll just let you guess.”

He laughed, a mere sharp huff of air. “Guessing. Now there’s a concept.” But his movement had jostled the cuffs, and a wince flickered over his face.

Gwen could have slapped herself. She pried her foot free—no matter that it had been very pleasantly cradled just where his thigh met his butt—and pushed herself up, pressing the pendant down in emphasis before she gingerly lifted her hand. “Okay? That do you?”

She hadn’t expected his reaction to be moderately cross. “Hell. Now everything sounds like an innuendo.”

“Take it how you like,” she said, realizing suddenly that she meant it. So much emotional intimacy in this past day, beyond what any two strangers could expect of one another and twining with the fleeting moments of mutual want and response and no little amount of aching.

No coincidence that they were here together, this place, this time. No doubt what they’d so suddenly come to mean to one another—or the trust they’d each earned. The only question was how long it would all last.

Gwen found herself not caring.

What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.

And she shoulda been in Vegas.

“Stay there,” she said. “I’ll get a washcloth for us, and we’ll see what we can figure out about those cuffs. I happen to have the key.”