Claimed by the Demon

Chapter 16

Devin James paced before the expansive office windows, scowling out at the grounds of the estate. A warm plate from the kitchen sat untouched on the corner desk; Anheriel sat in his pocket. It purred, if a knife could be said to purr.

That was the thing, wasn’t it? Not truly just a knife at all. A demon blade, and fully aware of the rising turmoil in the city. Not only that, but fully anticipating the part it would play.

Anheriel would drink deeply this day, Devin had no doubt.

Natalie stood by the worktable, its broad surface covered with papers, copies, notes, and several of the most fragile books from the blade room. She also had a plate—fruit and yogurt parfait, a special treat from Jimena, the estate’s cook, who had been through hell with them not so long ago and who now split her time between the estate and Sawyer’s new Alley of Life Restaurant project.

Sawyer Compton had had ulterior motives for that one, using it as a front for his own nefarious deeds—but the idea itself had been too good to lose, and Natalie had kept it alive even as she researched their blades.

And now, Demardel.

“Okay,” Natalie muttered. “She’s obviously activated the thing, whether she’s gotten it to reach its full potential or not. I can find mention of the blood, and earthy stuff like sex never hurts.”

“Sex never hurts,” Devin agreed. “You’re sure they—” He fielded a look from her and subsided. “Okay, yeah. Sex never hurts.”

“I just can’t tell if it matters that she didn’t know its name. Names are such a big deal with these...” She hesitated, looking down at the blade on the worktable—it had turned itself into a delicate surgeon’s instrument once she started using it to slice up photocopies.

Devin had the suspicion it was amused.

Natalie had apparently made up her mind to avoid making up her mind. “Entities. Names are such a big deal with these entities.”

It was closer than Devin had ever gotten to defining the complex nature of the blades. Fallen beings, seeking redemption, incorporated into metal, forged into weapons from which they could both influence and act. “It may be enough,” he told her. “Look how long I handled Anheriel before even knowing it had a name. I didn’t get the impression our new friend knows his blade, either.”

“Michael MacKenzie.”

“Yeah, yeah. Mac.” Not that he hadn’t known it. He just hadn’t liked the fact that he had a reason to know. “Do you think it matters? I don’t see this guy ditching the blade. Didn’t seem like the type.”

She looked up from the notes she’d just made. “Do you even hear yourself? Two days ago you wanted to take him down. Now he’s a good guy?”

“Didn’t seem like the type doesn’t necessarily lead to good things.” Devin resumed his prowl along the window wall. “I’m completely secure in my consistency.”

“Uh-huh.” Natalie shot him amusement and let it stand, but she sobered quickly enough. “Why it matters is that we really don’t want them to sever that bond right now. Things are too unsettled—we still don’t understand what’s going on out there. We don’t need a loose blade in the middle of it, or a brand-new wielder dealing with it all.”

“We don’t need this guy attached to the blade if he’s about to hit the wild road, either.”

She didn’t respond right away. She’d been there when this guy had made it through the late morning battle with the blade; she better than anyone knew how close he was. Finally she said, “I hope he can do it. I think we need him.”

Devin sent another scowl out to the grounds, proxy for the entire city and its turmoil. “I wish I could disagree. Whoever’s out there...he’s got power.”

“As well he should, if we’re right about how old he is and how long he’s been with his blade.” Natalie set her pen aside as her cell phone rang, reaching for it with an alacrity that told Devin how much she’d hoped to hear it ring.

“Natalie,” she said, straightening—startled. “Oh. Mac. Nice to, um, meet you.” She drifted closer to Devin; he could hear the deep timbre of another man’s voice. “Well, we’ve figured out some of it. Not the medallion—no more than I gave Gwen earlier. But the thing we’re up against—” A nod, a glance at Devin. “Yes. Old. Creepy. Powerful. That about sums it up. Hold on a moment.” She moved the phone away from her face, but not so much that Mac wouldn’t still be able to hear her. “They’re in the city—Kirtland Park near the airport. They can use some backup.”

Devin took a breath. This added up to so many places he hadn’t wanted to go.

But so far Natalie had been one step ahead of him on this one...her research brains over his gut instinct to protect this turf. So he nodded. “I’m good with that. It’ll be about half an hour before I—”

Anheriel grabbed his inner ear, clutching at his thoughts, whispering of violence and blood and sated thirst, reflecting a gleeful dark and roiling power—one that reached into the very roots of this city. One that poured through its people in footprints of violence.

Devin shook himself out of it and found Natalie gone pale—feeling something of the same, if never yet quite as directly. She pulled the phone back to her ear. “Mac? Are you still—yes! We’re coming!”

By the time she flipped the phone closed and snatched up Baitlia, he knew well enough what had happened.

And that they’d be too late.

Mac dropped the phone into the Jeep’s front seat. Not panicked, not hasty...but deliberate. Stepping away from the car, putting himself between Gwen and the van just now pulling into the parking lot.

Its passengers disembarked with the air of those exiting a limousine. The driver didn’t wear a uniform and cap, but managed to give the impression of it in slacks and a snug polo shirt. The same height as Mac and his six-feet-plus-change...a good fifty pounds beefier.

Not that it mattered. Mac didn’t intend to get close enough to bring that muscle into play. And he suspected the man in the limo didn’t intend for things to go that way, either. Otherwise, the guns each of the several disembarking men carried would surely be in stark evidence instead of implied threat.

The driver opened the van’s sliding door and stepped aside, and a man stepped out.

That man.

Mac didn’t have a moment’s doubt. Not even though the man’s appearance surprised him—not a big man, not even a particularly imposing man. Moderately dressed in department store slacks and shirt, his hair a thinning, washed-out brown in a bland style, he stood beside the van and regarded them with a somewhat amused and proprietary air.

“Wow,” Gwen said. “I thought you’d be wearing one of those Phantom of the Opera masks. Or a brown paper bag. Or something, after that whole warehouse drama.”

He smiled. “That was an initial indulgence.” Unexpected, that cultured, controlled voice coming from his unprepossessing self. “I needed to feel out your friend. I’ve done that, don’t you think? That particular indulgence would be a little too conspicuous under these circumstances, in any event.”

Mac couldn’t help but snort. “As if anything you’ve come here to do is likely to be inconspicuous?”

The man inclined his head. “There is that. Of course, I think you’ll discover that most people will be too busy to care.” At Mac’s frown, he added, “You won’t be feeling that just yet. I sent it in other directions.”

No longer behind him, Gwen raised her hand like a schoolgirl. “Oh,” she said. “Me! Me, call on me!”

Mac wanted to snatch her up and throw her back into the Jeep. Did she not see the guns? Did she not truly understand what this man would do to her if he realized what she had? The value she could be to him?

For Mac himself had watched it happen—the deepening of the bond between Gwen and that pendant. She might not understand it fully yet, but soon enough, she would. And once she truly controlled the pendant, she could affect any wielder she encountered.

He didn’t even breathe a sigh of relief when the man chose to be amused. “Now that you’ve seen what I can offer you—or what I can do to you—now is the time to answer your questions.”

Gwen didn’t hesitate—and she didn’t stay behind Mac, either, even if she did stand closely enough to brush up against him. “Where did you come from?” she asked. “And how old are you? And what’s your name? Although that one’s not so important if you don’t mind being called that man. It’s worked for us so far.”

That man chuckled. “You are indeed charmingly forthright.” And while his hired muscle shot startled reactions to that chuckle, Mac watched the hired muscle.

He could take them. He’d take damage, too—but he’d heal. They wouldn’t. He just needed the right moment.

And the right moment was coming, presaged by an early summer sunset against a monsoon sky. Once that sun slipped under the horizon, there’d be no lengthy desert twilight. That man could see in it, he suspected, just as Mac could. And by then, Devin James would join them. If Mac and Gwen had been right to call him, he’d help. If not...

Well. One thing at a time.

“Where I started is irrelevant. I come from everywhere.” There was no particular pretension to the man’s words. “I’ve been around the world often enough to have lost count. I have a stake in every nation, and I know the roots of them all.”

Gwen frowned. Boastful words for any man; surprising words for the man before them. The unprepossessing form and presentation, the singular lack of drama now that he’d abandoned the conceit of the screen. Even then, he’d been matter-of-fact about it; simply not ready to reveal himself, and quite obviously aware of Mac’s ability to pierce the darkness.

The man from which the hatred came. Completely unconvincing. If it weren’t for the muscle...

But the muscle was there. And the muscle watched Mac as he watched back, ever monitoring the area—quiet park around them, the hum of cars beyond the cement arroyo, Gwen’s quick shiver as she moved up against him.

“You may,” the man said, and smiled, “call me Rafe.”

There, finally, at the edges of the smile—that was the man Mac had heard in the warehouse. That was the man behind the sweeping tarry hatred. Barely showing through—but showing through, he was.

Rafe said, “As for my age...old enough to have seen the rise and fall of cultures and leaders and countries.” Again, his smile was not nearly so benevolent. “Old enough to have had a hand in some of those events.”

“The blade,” she said, and her reaction trickled through to Mac as she absorbed Rafe’s words. As she believed them.

He hid his reaction to her; hid it fiercely. If Rafe even suspected what she had, what she could do, he would stop this jolly little pretense and he would come for her. He’d find a way to use her, and if he couldn’t, he’d simply kill her and take the pendant for himself. Never mind the man’s obvious penchant for control—Demardel could take him down outright, severing him from the blade he’d exploited so well.

If only they knew how to use it.

“Got it,” Mac said out loud. “You’re older than dirt. You travel. You like causing trouble. What I want to know is why here?”

Rafe’s amusement glimmered with the same hinted darkness as his smile. “Did you think it was for you?”

No. Until these past few days, he’d believed his blade to be one of a kind—but now there was not only Rafe, but also Devin and Natalie.

“I felt a call, just as I’m sure you did.” Rafe slipped a hand in his pocket and pulled out a palm-sized blade, a triangular thing gone stout at the diminutive guard and sheathed. Even as it cleared his pocket, it glimmered, flashing into the uncovered sweep of an Arabian dagger. “Before I leave, I’ll know what’s going on—and I’ll make sure there’s no threat left in it.”

Right. And where was Devin James? The man who called this city his turf? What had he known about the call?

Natalie, Mac thought, had not told nearly enough of their secrets.

“The truth is, had I known of you, I would have come anyway.” Rafe shrugged at Mac; beside and behind him, his men shifted—knowing him well enough to read something into that gesture. “You’re a prize, no doubt. That blade of yours...similar to mine, in many ways. It feels. It grows strong on those feelings. And,” he said, smiling, “it shares them.”

The men shifted again—and Mac got it then. Especially as Gwen pressed back against him, a shiver rising from within her that had nothing to do with their damp, chilly clothes or the rising gloom of the soaked park. She felt their intent; she fairly vibrated with it. Shh, he thought at her, pushing through the knife—hoping it would stay only between them.

For he, too, understood. Rafe was playing with them for his blade. Trying to wring out the stress and tension of it, even as he pushed at Mac’s self-control—and tried to push his buttons.

And did so with total success—if not in the way that he imagined.

You can’t have her. You can’t have me. And you can’t have this blade.

“You mean,” Gwen said, the strength of her resolve stiffening her entire body, “you’re a parasitic leech.”

“Ah.” Rafe’s eyes glimmered with quick anger, a peremptory expression that didn’t belong on that unprepossessing face and its nondescript features. “As I said, charmingly forthright. But in this case, so very far from correct. I give as well as take—or hadn’t you noticed?”

“You give in order to take,” Gwen corrected fiercely. “To destroy!”

The strength of her reaction coursed through Mac twofold—through the blade, reaching eagerly for such purity of emotion, and through the link they’d so recently explored. He drew back from it—drew himself up, jaw hard and nostrils flared and trying to keep it from swirling through his concentration. Trying to keep it from Rafe, lest he see the clarity of their connection and come to understand it as more than just the effect of the blade.

“Think bigger,” Rafe advised her. He caressed his own blade, fingers running lightly over glimmering metal. Behind him, the sun crusted the edges of the lowest clouds, offering a brief, final slash of light across the glowering Sandia thunderheads.

Lightning flickered, ever more apparent in the failing light; the local car headlights had become few and far between, here in this city where people had quickly learned to stay inside at night. “Fear is the most powerful human emotion we have. Fear drives everything we do. Fear controls us—and can be used to control others. Fear does not destroy...fear builds. It changes nations.” He looked at Mac, a direct challenge. “You can be part of that.”

Mac snapped back a response—and then didn’t. He clamped down on it, unwilling to risk Gwen’s reaction should it slap through their ever-clearing connection, and kept his voice even. “You mean like the Ku Klux Klan? Like Hitler’s Germany? Like the Crusades, and the people who picketed this very park today?”

Satisfaction gleamed in the man’s expression. “Not like those things.”

Gwen reached back for Mac—found his hand and held on. “You,” she said. “You had something to do...with all of it? Those horrible things?”

“People who fear are so very easy to exploit.” Rafe held his blade up to what remained of the light. “People who fear can so easily be guided to hatred, and shaped into weapons.”

Sociopath. Mac realized it with a slap, drew a sharp breath at it. The perfect marriage of blade and human; the creation of an ultimate evil.

No. You can’t have her. You can’t have me. And you can’t have this blade.

“Come, now,” Rafe said. “I’ve given you this time to think—to understand. I’ve protected you from the influence the rest of the city feels this night, these past moments.” He took a deep breath, his chest lifting and his eyes closing—right there before them, soaking in the emotional storm of the entire city.

Gwen made a noise, realizing it, too. Feeling as he did—the indecency of it. The lurid nature of it.

Rafe opened his eyes with a snap of motion, looking directly at Mac. “But my patience has come to an end, and frankly, you’re boring my men.”

The first trickle of it nudged in at him—the first nauseating wave of churning darkness.

No— The blade’s protest whispered in his mind, its remembrance of pain. And at the same time—yes oh yes deep rich agonies, fears and oh WANT but let me LET ME oh SHOCK give me PAIN WAIL—

Mac must have made a sound. He must have stiffened or sucked air or gritted out a curse, understanding it now—that the blade’s pain, his pain, came from more than just the overwhelming emotional swamp. It came from Mac’s rejection of it—of what the blade craved and what Mac denied.

Gwen whirled to him, alarm over her paled features, eyes gone dark with fear and straining to see him in the deep dusk. “Mac!”

No! You can’t have her! You can’t have me. And you can’t have this blade!

Where the hell was Devin James?