Claimed by the Demon

Chapter 11

Mac woke to tangled sheets and tangled limbs and tangled thoughts.

Tangled, but all his own.

His arms still throbbed beneath their pink wrappings; the pendant pressed into his skin beneath a stiff layer of duct tape. Pink cyborg warrior. No burn, no blade-given healing.

The tangle of limbs was mostly Gwen, delightful soft skin pressed against his in every possible way.

“Healthy,” he murmured into her ear, “but not safe.” And loved her awake to prove it, watching sleepy confusion warm to a languid sensuality, her hands reaching and then clutching—that particular surprised and husky noise he’d learned to wring from her. Once, and then he buried himself in her and did it all over again, greedy with the scent of her, the sound of her, the gift of her.

While it lasted.

He left her catching her breath and made the shower quick and careful. Even then the water in the wake of the night’s activities shifted the duct tape—shifted the pendant—enough so a warning slice of retribution doubled him over beneath the pounding water.

Oh, yeah. He straightened, slow to pull himself back together. Much better to choose his own time and place.

He opened the bathroom door wearing nothing more than a pair of briefs, and ran right into Gwen. She burst into laughter as she pushed past him to close the door on his heels, trailing the sheet she wore.

“Laughter,” he told the door, “is not the appropriate response to seeing me naked.”

“Not naked enough,” she told him, muffled by the door. “Go away. I’m busy.”

Fair enough. He pulled a protein drink from the fridge, a fresh pair of jeans from his giant duffel, and downed one while climbing into the other. The knife found its way into his front pocket, and he pulled a plain heather T-shirt over his head, careful of his arms. He left his wrists to the open air—bruised, swollen and weeping—and his duct-tape arm torque peeking out from beneath his sleeve.

As he sat on the end of the bed to pull on a pair of socks, he eyed the discarded handcuffs—lying there, right next to the key—and inevitably, he scooped them up.

He didn’t know who he’d be when the blade came back. That was the hard truth of it.

Gwen popped out of the bathroom long enough to grab her newly acquired toiletries and disappear again. By the time she came out for good, still draped in the sheet and heading for her suitcase, Mac had a pretty good idea what they’d be doing next.

Not what they wanted to be doing, he was sure.

“We need to go back to that warehouse,” he told her.

That stopped her short, clothes gathered in her hand, sheet slipping and blue eyes narrowing. “I think some words just mistakenly came out of your mouth.”

He grinned. “Nice try. You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.”

Spark showed in those eyes, faint freckles on pale gleaming skin and the red in her hair glinting with its dampness. “Damned right I don’t want to. But I don’t want you to, either. We need to figure out what’s going on, but surely there are other options.”

He lifted a shoulder. “Wander the city and follow the hate? We already know it’s out there and where it’s coming from. I need to know more about the warehouse guy. I need to know if he’s working with other blades.” Such as the man who’d accosted them near the hotel, his words blunt: This is my turf.

“That’s it?” she asked. “Not interested in who that woman was, or why he took her, or why he killed her?”

“She was no one,” Mac said harshly. “She was everyone. It doesn’t matter to him. He took her for the same reason he offered her to me—for his blade to feed on. And if I’m going to stop him, I’ve got to know more about him.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “And you think he’ll have left some honkin’ big clue for us to find? As opposed to, say...a guard of some sort?”

“I think he underestimates us.” Mac looked right at her. “I think he underestimates you. We wouldn’t be here now if he hadn’t.”

“Bullshit,” she said, but her flush looked pleased. “If I hadn’t been there, you wouldn’t have hung around talking to him. You who can see in the dark, you with your ill-mannered blade. You’d have taken out those guys and gone for him. Or you wouldn’t have left the diner parking lot in the first place.”

There was something to that.

“Doesn’t change anything,” Mac said. “You got us out of what it was.” He touched the duct tape on his arm, pushing cold, lumpy metal beneath it against his skin. “I don’t think he knows about this, either. Maybe he gets some sense of it—I did—or maybe not. But if he’d truly known, then he wouldn’t have let us go.”

“He might not let us go a second time.” She’d scrambled into her clothes, a pale green summer top of some filmy material with cap sleeves and a neckline of which he approved, and white capri pants that turned out to be perfectly snug across her bottom and loose below the knee. “Are you listening to me, or are you looking at my ass?”

“Looking at your ass,” he said promptly. “And I don’t think he’ll be hanging around at the warehouse. It’s too exposed.”

She plunked her hands on her hips, pointedly turning her bottom in another direction as she picked up her sport sandals. “And what if he is?”

He shrugged. “We’ll knock.” And then, at her impatience, he added, “I need to know. I don’t think he’ll have left any easy clues, but maybe the blade can pick up on something.”

Alarm replaced her impatience. “But that means—”

“That’s the other thing,” he said gently. “It’s a big place. You’ll be safe.”

“When you let the blade back in.” Her voice was flat with disbelief. “You can’t—”

“I have to!” he snapped, up on his feet and stalking in close, ignoring her widened eyes. “You don’t get it, Gwen. This pendant isn’t a magic pill. I’m free, but the blade is there—it’s trying to get in. Always. And if it does that, in a place and time not of my own choosing? If it does that while we’re in public? What if it happens while I’m around someone’s kid? Someone’s mother? While I’m with you?” One more step, taking her upper arms with a ferocity he hadn’t expected to pour out so unfettered. “Because that’s what I want, Gwen. You. I don’t know you, but dammit, I do. Call it one of the blade’s few gifts.”

She reached across his chest with one encumbered arm, touching the duct tape. “And this,” she whispered, more sadly than not. “So fast...”

“Sometimes,” he said, easing his grip on her to rub his hands more gently up and down soft bare skin, “it’s like that. Even without such things.”

“It’s why I came to Albuquerque,” she said simply, meeting his gaze without qualm. Big, pale blue, full of life—and then suddenly narrowing. “Not that you should think I’m a pushover. I still have a brain, you know. I can do what’s best for me.”

A smile tugged the corner of his mouth. “Noted.” But then he had to do it—to take a deep breath and push. “But this warehouse thing...it has to be done.”

She turned away from him with a grumble; he let her go. “Check it out,” she said, so obviously changing the subject as she pointed to her suitcase. “My purse was in there, too. Along with the credit cards I’ve already replaced—those should get here today.” She picked it up, pawed briefly through the contents, plucked out a small ID wallet and slipped it into her back pocket. It hardly made a ripple against her magnificent—

She cast him a look, brow raised, and he rearranged his visual focus. “Grab something quick to eat,” he suggested. “I think the sooner we do this, the better.”

“I’m not convinced of that,” she told him, not missing a beat. But she found a yogurt drink in the little fridge and sat down at the edge of the bed, where she picked up a business card, turning it over in her hand. She glanced at him, tucking the card away with the ID wallet. “But I have to admit...you’re the only one who really knows. The only one inside your head.”

“Not exactly,” he said. “That’s the damned problem.” But he held out his hand, and she took it as she rose from the bed, casting a glance out the window behind her. For all they’d loved hard during the night—for all he’d fought through—they’d slept hard, too, and beyond the quiescent window air conditioner, the shadows were still strung out long with the early hour.

“Come,” he said gently, and she raised her chin, swiped the room key off the table, and tugged him on toward the door, out toward the stairs. At his Jeep, he handed her the keys, fending off her sharp look. “I’m good,” he said—and he had been, since that moment in the shower. “But I’m not taking any chances.”

She made a little face. “No guarantees on the driving. This shift—”

“Has personality.” He bent to clear the passenger seat, gathering up the garbage from the trip into the city.

She glanced at her VW Bug and its dead battery and made another little face—this one of acquiescence—and opened the Jeep door.

He looked out over the hotel access road. “You know, I don’t have any idea how we got back here.”

“The warehouse is off I-25,” she told him, settling into the driver’s seat. “It’s not actually that far.” She gave him a glance as she inserted the keys and added, “Oh, you mean how. I stole their van. Where do you think I got the handcuffs? I figured they’d know where to find it, and I guess they did. Of course, I did leave the keys in it, so maybe someone else found it first. That would be their bad luck, I’m thinking.”

“We should relocate,” he said, sliding into the Jeep and buckling in—and would have kicked himself for not thinking of it sooner, except when exactly had he had time to think at all?

“He could have had us at the warehouse if he’d really wanted us.” She backed out of their spot with the care of someone who didn’t quite know the vehicle. “He quite specifically didn’t want us. He wants you on his side, and he’s pretty sure he’s going to get you. No need to come after us when he thinks you’re going to come to him.”

“He’s right about that,” Mac said under his breath. It just wouldn’t be how he expected.

“Besides, you broke some of his people.”

Mac snorted. “I’m sure he has more.” He found himself scowling out the window. “I just wish I knew what he really wants.”

She gave him a startled glance, missing a chance to pull out into traffic. “Don’t you know?” she asked. “Didn’t you see it?” She bit her lip, marshaling her thoughts as she found an opportunity and got them moving, no mean hand on the cranky shift after all. “Maybe you don’t remember, given...the way things were. He’s just like your blade—what you told me of it. When he brought that woman out yesterday...I think it was all he could do to offer her to you.”

“Not to me,” Mac said, and his words came so hard and sudden that they startled him nearly as much as they’d startled her. He took a deep breath. “Sorry. I mean... Yeah. Sorry. Touchy. Just—”

“I get it.” But her voice was quiet, and she pondered her next words with obvious care. “I think he’s doing more than glorying in whatever’s going on in this city.” She didn’t have to explain that; they’d both been in the middle of it. “I think he’s making it happen. And I think he’s really, really good at it.”

The words hit home with the starkness of truth. Truth...but they still knew nothing. Not really. “All the more reason to do this.” Mac closed a hand over his pocket...resolute.

And yet some part of him already regretted the decision to bring Gwen into this at all. I should have turned around when I saw her at that diner. If this turned out to be bigger than he was...

“Did you say something?”

He shook his head, watching the highway exits, watching their route. “Just...be careful. Don’t...” He took a breath. “Don’t fight me. If this thing goes... If they find us there—” He turned to look at her then. “I need to know, going in, that you’ll run like hell. This is a last chance for me—it’s something I have to do. You don’t. I need to know—”

“Stop it,” she said, sharply at that. “Trying to drive, here. That’s hard to do when I can’t decide between smacking you silly or climbing into your lap.”

He ducked his head, hiding the bittersweet grin.

They were silent until they reached the exit, Gwen gearing down for the city streets and then quickly turning north on a less traveled road. Over a spur of tracks, a quick left, and—

“Yeah,” he said. “This looks familiar.” A bright wash of morning light, a perfectly ordinary building, a smattering of activity all around it and truck backup beepers piercing the air.

Gwen pulled up near the door—where the van had been the day before—and then, with an obvious second thought, reoriented the Jeep to point in a getaway direction, leaving the keys in the ignition. There she sat for a moment, looking at him—frank and open and worried. “You doing okay?”

“Still,” he said. “I’ll let you know.”

“I doubt that,” she said smartly. She got out of the car, leaving him there to laugh, however briefly.

He walked into the warehouse as if he owned it. Quietly, eyes not nearly as sensitive to the dim light as if the blade hadn’t been blocked out...controlled by the baffling pendant that Gwen had long treasured as the last vestige of a father who had tried to kill her with his own blade.

There was, he thought suddenly, so very much more to this demon blade than he’d ever guessed. He should have. But he’d been too complacent, too willing to trust his ability to keep the walls between them. Too willing to let it ride.

Gwen breathed lightly at his shoulder—spooked and wary, and he knew it without any intervention from the blade at all. He took her hand, and they stood in silence. Assessing. Listening.

Finally, Gwen murmured, “If they were gonna come for us, I think it would have happened by now.”

“Or they’re playing with us.” Maybe he shouldn’t have said it, the way her hand tightened around his. But if the man was here, and if he did indeed have a demon blade that acted as Mac’s did, then Gwen’s trepidation would be a fine and savory appetizer to what awaited them.

She needed to know. To think that way.

Together, they walked the interior of this main room, full of the usual warehouse detritus—pallets stacked over here, a few empty plastic barrels over there, the catwalk lining three walls and an oddball projection of structures for various smaller rooms or offices. The door through which they’d dragged the woman led to a warren of stumpy halls.

Mac backed out again, peering up at the catwalk.

“That’s what you really want,” Gwen murmured, pretty much reading his mind. “To see where that man was. Right where he stood.”

“Right where he stood,” Mac agreed. He loosened his grip on her hand—giving her an obvious choice—but she stayed with him as he followed his nose through those back halls. When he found the narrow wooden stairs, her hand slipped away—but she still rested her fingers at the small of his back. Just a small connection.

The stairway spilled out onto the catwalk. Plenty sturdy, good railings...the perfect vantage point from which to oversee the contents of a warehouse.

Or a killing field.

But the man had left nothing of himself here.

The blade slipped into his mind, into his body—lightning-fast, shredding nerves. The vast warehouse space wheeled around him.

“Mac?”

Because there he was, grappling with the handrail as if it was the only thing that kept him anchored to this world at all. “Still here,” he said hoarsely. “Probably not for much longer.”

And this time she said nothing. As if she’d seen enough to believe he was right. She lingered back by the door, watching him.

Back to the task at hand. His thumb slipped over rough wood. He glanced down—and then looked twice. The deep mark exposed pale new wood at the edges...a fresh wound. A single, plunging strike, gone deeper and cleaner than any ordinary blade.

“Yeah,” he said out loud.

“What?” She pushed close to see and squinted down at the mark. “How— No, never mind. We know how, don’t we? But why? Showing off?”

“Something like that.” Mac looked out over the empty space, tried to imagine himself in the man’s shoes—watching himself and Gwen...watching as he struggled with the blade, both winning and losing.

Satisfaction. Power. This view had given him everything—as well as the perfect vantage point from which to wield the blade he’d eventually thrown.

“Showing off,” he repeated. “And leaving me a message.”

“Leaving us a message,” Gwen told him. “He just doesn’t know it yet.” She rubbed her arms, looking around the space. “This place gives me the creeps.”

“Something would be wrong if it didn’t.” Just a little too abruptly, he turned away from the railing, heading back down the stairs. No obvious clues here, but then...that would have been too easy.

A man with hate in his heart and the ability to wield it as he wielded his blade. Where had he come from? What did he truly want?

And how far would he go to get it?

Gwen was the one to nail the important question as she descended the stairs on his heels. “How are we gonna find out more about this guy? It’s not like we can search for him on LinkedIn.”

“Should’ve gotten the van’s license plate,” Mac said.

Gwen laughed, dark humor in the face of it all. “And done what with it?”

“Okay,” he said, acknowledging the flaw in that with his own dark humor. “Good point.” He stopped suddenly, turning around on the stairs; one step behind, she was now nearly of a height with him. “What we do,” he said, “is follow the hate. I let the blade back in, and I follow the hate. Right to the source.”

She scowled. Opened her mouth. Closed it. Looked away, a flush settling on her cheeks and her eyes bright in the dim light. So clearly wanting to argue it all—the part about letting the blade back in, the part about getting any closer at all to that hate. But without the blade, he couldn’t trace the hate—or feel it coming. And without the hate, he couldn’t figure out what was happening here...or how to protect them from it.

Finally, her voice no more than a strained whisper, she said, “One thing at a time.”

“Okay.” He passed a gentle thumb over her cheek, and when she leaned into it, ever so slightly, he let his hand travel around and under her bound hair, sweeping past her ear and behind her nape. “One thing at a time.”

He would have hesitated, a chance for her to say not here, not now—but she didn’t hesitate at all. She kissed him hard, full of unspoken words.

But only until an anguished, animal cry rang through the back warren of halls and rooms. They jerked apart and turned to it as one. “Stay here!” he told her, with little to no hope that she actually would.

She didn’t. She was right on his heels as he followed the sound, a series of hopeless wails that led him past closed doors and pretty much straight to the source, plunging into enemy territory without care or preparation.

That one door was open. Maybe it had been a lunch room. An unfinished counter and sink arrangement ran the length of one wall, complete with an empty cutout of refrigerator-width. Cheap, filthy industrial tiles covered the floor, and a stench filled the air.

“Ugh!” Gwen said as it hit her, coming up behind him and still unable to see the room. He blocked her way—wanting to warn her, wanting to make it less horrible.

Because he’d already seen the dog. Chained to the wall, both front feet crushed in leg-hold traps, and both of those nailed straight into the floor to keep it stretched out. The stench came from its own filth...its blood, its fear. It stopped wailing when it saw them, whining under its breath instead.

But Mac couldn’t fill the whole doorway. She ducked under his arm, her hand resting on his stomach—and then froze there. When she caught her breath, she swore resoundingly. “What is this supposed to prove?”

“It’s a message,” Mac said, barely able to say it around the cold sick feeling in his throat. “A gift. A last straw. He knew I’d be back.”

“But he doesn’t know you have the pendant,” Gwen realized. “He thought this would tip you over... Oh!” This last as the dog looked at her and wagged the very tip of its tail, hopeful beyond hope. Big, brawny black Labrador-type, no collar, no tags. In the wrong place at the wrong time. “Oh,” Gwen said again. “We have to—” And she looked at Mac, beyond determined.

Mac couldn’t muster the same determination...only grim reality. “It would be kinder to put him down. Right here.”

Gwen recoiled. “No!”

She didn’t see it. Not all of it. Not yet. What he would be, if he lost this fight. What he would do. “Gwen, I’ve got to get rid of this pendant. And once I do—”

She looked from him to the dog and back again. “Oh, my God,” she said. “You think you’ll do it.”

“I think,” he said, gritting the words out, “that I’m not going to be myself for a while. I think it’ll be hours before we can get him to help—or you, if it comes to that. I think circumstances could keep either of us from helping him at all.”

She shoved past him. “I think I’m going to be true to myself right up until something prevents it,” she said, walking right up to the dog. “How about you?”

He looked away from her for what seemed like a very long time. When he could talk again, he said, “I think you’re right.”