Claimed by the Demon

Chapter 17

Devin climbed out of his car with the Rio Bravo highway entrance ramp in sight and stood within the open door, scowling down the long double rows of motionless headlights. Horns blared all around; to his left, a fistfight had broken out. Without looking, he dipped into the center console of the battered old truck and pulled out his phone.

A glance gave him the number Natalie had programmed there before he’d left the estate; he dialed it. Up ahead came the screech of tires and the profound slam of metal into metal as someone rear-ended a car on the other side of the overpass, scattering shrapnel and parts; Devin winced. “Dammit,” he said into the phone. “Pick up the—”

It clicked over to voice mail and he heard the brief grumble of a masculine voice, the details of it lost in the background noise.

Devin swore more resoundingly, made as if to toss the phone—and at the last minute pulled it back. A moment later, he had Natalie.

“Devin?” she said—uncertain, as she might well be, with the horns and chaos that greeted her before his voice did.

Not to mention the strangely dangerous feel of the city around them.

“See if you can get through to those two,” he said, without wasting time on preamble. “I’m stuck at the Rio Bravo entrance. It’s out here happening again—”

“I can’t hear—what?” she said, raising her voice in sympathetic response to the chaos at the bridge. “Devin, be careful— Can you feel it?”

“I’m okay!” he shouted into the phone. “Stuck in traffic! Call them! Keep calling them! I’ll get there when I can.”

This time, he did toss the phone back into the truck, standing beside it to stare down the road...more thoughtfully this time. A fight or two on the other side of the overpass, cars jammed up at the entrance ramp as if everyone had made the turn at once and no one had given way.

Anheriel tugged at him—a blade eager for the action and far too aware of the currents flowing through the night. Excited by them—energized by them. With hours of practice behind him, he instantly shifted his attention to the smell of wet asphalt, the faint chill of the breeze against his face...the feel of his toes in enclosing shoes.

Anheriel subsided, leaving behind a righteous little grumble. It was, after all, trying to earn redemption. It was supposed to be drawing his attention to situations in which he might prove useful.

“Don’t worry about it,” Devin told it, letting his gaze linger on the fast-fading sunset glimmer of dark violet and bruised blue clouds. “There’s plenty of action where we’re going.”

If we ever get there.

He saw easily through the gloom, past the confusing shine of headlights off water—straight to the heart of the vehicular mob—a monochrome jumble of metal and violence through blade-given night vision. Gridlock and brainlock. These people weren’t going anywhere.

He pulled the truck keys, reacquired his phone, slammed the door with the extra oomph necessary to make it latch and left it locked in the middle of the bumper-to-bumper traffic. Two hundred yards of walking between abandoned vehicles and those harboring terrified, huddled occupants, and he reached the tightly jammed underpass. He barely hesitated in his stride, bounding to a trunk, a roof, a hood...boring through to the problem intersection itself.

And went beyond it to the first interlocked row, while the violence roiled behind him and Anheriel whined to join in. He backtracked two rows, chose a vehicle, and helped himself to the keys still in the ignition, cranking the wheels hard. The car jerked, hanging up on the bumper of the car ahead of it, and then broke free with a brief crunch of metal and glass, heading over the road shoulder to the raw desert.

No one noticed when he floored the accelerator, shooting up the entrance ramp. “On my way,” he muttered, as if Mac and Gwen could hear him.

Gwen turned on the unimposing man who called himself Rafe. “Stop it!” she cried as Mac slowly sank to his knees. “You’re a monster!”

Rafe tipped his head in acknowledgment. “But a successful one.” He eyed her up and down, his eyes lingering on the wet cling of material at her breasts and backside. “If he turns, will you go with him? If he dies, will you go with me? Because there is something about you...and, quite frankly, I can’t have you running around as a loose end.”

“Get real,” she snapped at him. “What am I going to do, call the police? And tell them what exactly?”

Rafe gave an eloquent shrug. “There’s someone else here—another blade. I haven’t had time to track it down, but I suspect it is the very blade that called us each here. It is a power come into its own—and it might well use you against me. I didn’t live this long—which, as I’ve mentioned, is very, very long indeed—by being careless with loose ends.”

“Maybe you’ve lived long enough.” Gwen’s fury left her mouth completely unfettered.

Rafe smiled, and the coldness of it in those bland features slapped her anger down hard. “Would that you were entitled to an opinion.”

Mac grabbed the Jeep’s bumper, then the fender—hauling himself back up to his feet, completely focused on Rafe. “You,” he said, grinding the words out in a voice Gwen didn’t recognize. “Son. Of. A. Bitch.”

Rafe regarded him with something akin to fondness. Sick, sick fondness. “I really wish you’d accept the situation,” he said. “You would be a great asset to me.”

Mac’s grin was as dark as they came. “There’s an ass in that word, in case you thought I wouldn’t notice. Not my thing.”

Rafe flipped a dismissive hand at them. “Die, then,” he said, making it a casual command. “In agony, while you’re at it.”

Gwen’s breath stuttered as Mac made a gargling noise, his eyes rolling back; he slid down the side of the Jeep. She wanted to dive after him, holding him, turning the pendant on him.

But that would only leave them both vulnerable.

She took an involuntary step toward Rafe, hands fisted, so full of anger—overflowing with it, unfamiliar and debilitating, clouding her thoughts, changing her intent—

And realized that it came to her through Mac.

That her connection with him flared strong again.

Recklessly, she reached for it, thinking of calm and cool as he pushed against the wet ground, on his knees. Thinking of her hand in his, thinking of her mouth on his. Forging past the chaotic agonies still beating against her thoughts...giving him something other than hate and fear and pain. She gave him a quiet current, imbuing it with what they were together and what they’d had together.

“Gwen—” he said—as if there should be more to it, but he couldn’t quite manage it.

It sounded like a warning.

“Is that it, then?” Rafe stepped closer, his features coming alive with interest. “Is that the key to you? Your one last chance, Mac. Your Gwen goes free—and you become mine. You give over to the wild road and join me, and no one ever touches her. Permanent asylum. She can stay with you, or she can go back to whatever life she had before she met you. Lady’s choice.”

The thick, scraping flow of imposed emotions faded—Gwen felt it through Mac, and felt the dim echo of it through herself. Mac lifted his head—his expression terrible and strained, his gaze latching on to Rafe’s.

“That’s it, isn’t it?” Rafe said so softly. He took a step closer, crouching with one hand resting over his knee, his own blade so casually held there. “You’ll do it. For her, you’ll do it.”

“Wait,” Gwen said. “Wait, wait, wait. What? He will not! Mac, no! You will not!”

But Mac wasn’t looking at her. Mac, his jaw set and his face still tense with the battle, looked only at Rafe. His voice held a grim desperation. “You’ll leave her alone.”

“I’ll leave her alone.” Rafe’s smile spoke of victory, tipping over to smug.

Maybe it was that smug look that did it, triggering Gwen’s temper. Maybe it was the look on Mac’s face—the despair, in this moment he so obviously intended to be a goodbye. She looked at him aghast and more than a little annoyed. “Are you kidding?”

It was hardly the grateful response of a rescued damsel in distress, and maybe it was all wrong, but so was this. “Mac, once you cross that line, you’ll be like him! You won’t care what happens to me!”

He shook his head. “If I die here, I can’t stop him at all. This way, there’s a chance. And then...maybe someone will stop me.” They both knew who he meant. Devin James, the man who was supposed to have been here. Supposed to have helped them both.

I am twenty-seven years old, and I’m about to lose the man I love.

“Screw this,” she said. “I know you. I know you. Do you hear me? I’ve seen you. I know you can do this. I know we—” She stopped talking. She reached deep inside where the pendant gave her access to him. And she reached through him—finding that taste of the blade.

Making it up as she went along, yes—but also following what she’d already learned, and her growing ability to touch the blade—prodding it, listening to it, even shutting it out.

But shutting it out wasn’t what she wanted.

She wanted its name. This blade had a name, too, whether Mac knew it or not.

Names mattered.

Names meant control.

I see you, she told it, finding the blazing alien heart of it within him. I want to know you.

It startled; it shied away. It struck out at Mac, daring her to hurt the one she loved. And while Mac jerked with surprise, a strangled noise replacing the words in his throat, Rafe drew back in pure astonishment. “What?” he said, not the least bit suave—and then the surprise turned to pure avarice. “What is this?”

And Mac said, “Don’t—he can hear—”

But Gwen had seen their only chance, and she dared to hurt the one she loved.

Keska.

The word blazed through Mac’s thoughts, branding them from the inside out—blinding him to all else, as the blade spasmed in reaction to its forced confession, spitting fury and fear and resentment. It struck, then—pushing and shoving, stealing time and breath—and yet somehow leaving enough of both to howl, a ragged voice expressing both the blade’s fury and the man’s agony.

Keska. Merely a whispered reminder at the edges of awareness, nudging him. You are not me. Your feelings are not mine. I am in control of me and mine.

I am in control of you.

But it wasn’t as easy as that, with days of a siege riding him, leaving him worn and battered.

Mac ignored his body, letting the white-hot slashes of pain streak across his mind’s eye without touching the core of him. He’d felt the blade’s retreat. He’d felt its need for recovery. It, too, needed an end to this. Gwen knew it; Gwen buoyed him.

But the blade Keska said no. The blade said I won’t. The blade said no and hurt and die.

And the blade had nothing to lose. Because while Mac needed to stay alive, the blade was what it was. Weary, it could hang on for one moment longer than he. It could afford to strike out; it knew how to wound.

There would be no waiting it out.

For the first time, Mac understood that determination might not be enough, no matter how much of it he had. Keska fought back, striking hard; Mac lost the sense of his body, his sense of Gwen.

Until she screamed. Loud and piercing and furious—never anything demure about Gwen.

It shocked the blade, too, enough so Mac found himself momentarily free on the asphalt, fingers bloodied from clawing at it, cheek throbbing from where he’d gone down, body aching—Gwen’s cry still echoing in his mind. He lifted a heavy head to find her in the grip of two of the muscle men—stretched out between them and still twisting to kick at them, not quite having the distance.

“See that she’s not hurt,” Rafe said sharply. His cheek bled from a trio of deep scratches; he didn’t seem to notice.

Gwen had made her play, all right.

Rafe turned his attention to Mac. “Ah,” he said. “There you are. Deal’s off, I’m afraid. She is, it has become obvious, one of a kind.” He smiled thinly, with a mean cast behind it. “I can make another one of you, once the blade finishes you off. I appreciate the show, by the way.”

“Bastard!” Gwen spat, still struggling in the parking lot light. It was full dark now, with the lightning more dramatic than ever behind her, a constant flutter and rumble. Unidentifiable sound muttered in Mac’s ear—he counted it a trick of the blade.

The blade floundered in what had turned to defeat. Mac had it now—he had its name and he had his focus. Thanks to Gwen—to that scream, to the anchor she’d given him.

Rafe turned his head to the man behind him. “Get the abduction kit. I want her tranquilized.”

“You what?” Gwen cast a desperate look at Mac—and it became even more desperate when she found him looking back, drawn by her need. “Mac—you were right, what you said earlier—when you wouldn’t let me—when you had to stay this way—” A frantic glance at Rafe, and Mac understood. When you wouldn’t let me separate you from the blade. When you refused to make things okay for us, okay for you, in order to take this man down.

“Yeah,” he said. “I know. I’m working on it.”

The mutter of sound in the background had escalated—not a trick of the blade at all, but now a rush and tumble roar. The storms. The concrete, urbanized arroyo.

Gwen didn’t seem to notice it. She gave a token jerk against the men who held her, doing no more than annoying them. “But if—if—” The irony of her struggle for words wasn’t lost on Mac, even if she’d gone so far into the moment that she didn’t realize it. “If things don’t—”

And then she stopped altogether so as not to say things that neither of them wanted to share with the enemy.

“Yeah,” he said, and caught her gaze—holding it, the best he could, in this light, not sure how much she could truly see. Not enough. “I know.”

She took matters into her own hands, doing that which she’d only just learned to do in the first place. She lifted her chin—even if it trembled—and she stared back at him with an unexpected defiance—and in that moment the blade Keska gave a startled little leap, welcoming the subtle warmth of emotion. I know you and I love you and I’m with you.

Mac’s throat tightened down completely. “Yeah,” he managed again, and sent her a poor excuse for a dark, wry smile. Me, too.

He didn’t know if she’d catch it; she was the one who knew how to reach out...he’d only ever received. But he thought from the way her chin firmed—from her faint hint of a smile—that she had. And then as Rafe’s personal muscle man approached, syringe in hand, her head tipped back in that shorthand gesture of defiance—and damned if he didn’t see it coming. Gwen, ready to go for it in spite of the odds.

Damned if he was going to let her do it alone.

The blade leaped in eager response—gratified to soak up the cruel flat intentions of the muscle man, happy to flood Mac with the quickness and strength that flowed so familiar between them. —hurt kill drink—!

“Yeah,” Mac muttered. “He’s all yours.”

A sparking nova of metal, heat here and gone again—a familiar pain, and one he finally embraced. The Civil War sword extended his reach as he lunged off the ground, driving up with purpose and exacting control.

They shouldn’t have counted him out of it.

Rafe’s man paid with his fingers. The syringe went flying; so did the fingers. And when the injured man cried out, aghast and recoiling, Gwen didn’t hesitate. The moment her two human restraints reacted, she jerked herself free from one and went after the other. No skill there, just a frenzy of determination—clawing at his eyes, slamming at his balls, teeth bared and active. Rafe’s man recovered enough to clench his hand into a protective fist and come for Mac, but Mac ignored him for the third man, the one now reaching to haul Gwen off his buddy.

—no—! The blade, as obscure and demanding as ever. —mine—!

In a minute, Mac thought at it, nothing more than a distracted push of intent—until his injured leg gave out from under him, a blast of heat and inexplicable failure, and he suddenly understood—the blade had been claiming him. Claiming its turf in the presence of the intruding blade that had just taken him down.

He clawed his way back up, dragging the leg and ignoring Keska’s territorial snarl. His form turned choppy—he slashed out with the saber, overreaching to close the distance. The blade sliced diagonally across the legs of the third man, flaying muscle and tendon as he grabbed for Gwen. The man went down; he could do nothing else. Not even yet realizing the extent of his injuries, his cry more angry than pained.

Mac sprawled full-length, stretched to make that attack—and when he would have rolled aside, springing up to face those who remained, the dead weight of his leg dragged him down. Rafe’s man slammed him with a kick.

He lost his grip on the blade—just out of reach, stretching for it—almost!—and it reached back, just brushing his fingers as another kick lifted him off the ground and sent him rolling away.

He knew well enough that the blade could be used against him. Remembered with vivid clarity the moment it had first found his hand, taking the life of its own erstwhile partner.

But that man had been lost to himself—lost to the wild road without understanding it or working it. And Mac wasn’t.

In that moment, Rafe stood over him—wrenching, with no delicacy at all, at his own blade—the one still sunk deeply into Mac’s thigh.

Mac cried out with it, lost in a moment of retching agony. Gwen echoed it with a cry of frustration and quite suddenly slammed to the ground beside him—winded and still fighting mad. She caught his eye, and it came through to him in a flash as Keska gloried in her intention to fight, her spirit running hot and high.

He pushed back. No, he thought at Gwen. You run, dammit. You protect yourself. You protect what you have from this evil.

It slapped at her, reflected in eyes wide with sudden doubt—and just as sudden realization. Understanding, for the first time, the true price of carrying something bigger than she was.

She’d hardly had time to get used to it at all.

Only then did she see Rafe, backing up a step and glaring at them with annoyance but no concern; only then did she see Mac’s leg, a dark and rapidly spreading stain. She may have even felt it; her fingers twitched toward her own leg.

I’ll buy you time. Dammit, surely she could understand the gist of it, if not his exact words. He pushed at the blade, pushed toward her. You run like hell!

“That,” Rafe said with profound disgust, “was a complete waste of time and of my staff.” The only uninjured man among the three knelt by his bleeding buddy.

“That,” Mac grunted, “would be a matter of opinion. I think it went pretty well.” Work on that leg, Keska. He sent it out not as a request but a command—to work it hard and fast, whatever patch job would do, whatever the price. And then he barely contained a startled gasp as the blade, fired up by action and blood, sprang to work—a lightning bolt stitching flesh from the inside out. His face flushed against the chilling night, sweat dotting out along his temples.

Rafe only smiled—understanding as no one else could. “It won’t be enough. You’re too young, and you know too little. But you’ve impressed me. I might give you a second chance—if you walk the road with me now.”

Mac didn’t relent—pushing the blade, pushing at Gwen, and pushing right back at Rafe. “You mean I just took out the two men you had chosen for my blade.”

A one-shouldered shrug. “That, too.” Rafe held up his own blade, watching as Mac’s blood soaked into the gleaming metal. “Our thirst is endless. You decide.”

Gwen hesitated at his back—he felt it more than saw it, knowing she’d finally understood him through the blade and pendant. Feeling from her the wild hope that he could do what needed to be done and somehow live through it...and then find her again.

Because she was going to run—she and the pendant.

Mac grinned, a dark, wry thing full of self-awareness—he knew his odds here, even if he’d obscured them from Gwen. Warmth filled his leg, spreading the length of the long muscle so badly damaged—and it filled his hand, forming to a grip not quite as familiar as most but nonetheless welcome.

The frontier tomahawk. Cruder than most of the blade’s forms, but just as thirsty, just as keen-edged...and as accurate in the throw. Even without the time or space to set his feet, line up the throw...straight back, straight forward, release.

The blade couldn’t turn a wild throw straight. But it could make a straight throw fly true against the odds.

Rafe frowned at this evidence of Mac’s intent, annoyed and just wary enough to be smart. Rafe’s muscle man hesitated.

A man had only so many fingers to lose.

Gwen turned tense and trembling, hovering on the moment, and Mac said, “Yeah. Decision made.” He rolled to his feet, favoring the injured leg and compensating with balance and determination. “I’ve decided not to die today.”

He eyed Rafe’s muscle man, ignoring the gun. “How about you?”

Rafe snapped, “Your continued existence is no longer your choice. It’s mine, and I’ve made it.”

Go, Gwen. Go!

He wouldn’t hold them both for long. And as soon as the uninjured man gave up on his buddy...

“Really?” he said to Rafe’s man, eyeing the gun, letting his skepticism show. “With your off hand? To protect a man I bet you’ve never seen take on someone who could fight back.”

From the flicker in the man’s eye, he knew he’d hit target. From the anger on Rafe’s face, he was certain of it.

“Lifetimes,” Rafe said, his speech no longer quite as clear. “I have lifetimes of survival. You haven’t even made it through one.”

Go, Gwen. Go NOW!

Gwen spurted away in a scrabbling run, hands as much as feet until she gained a stride or two—and then Rafe’s man was on her, eschewing the gun to throw himself bodily across her with an impact that squeaked all the air out of her body.

“Wrong,” Mac said, “decision.” Swift as his movement, the tomahawk glimmered into war club, slamming down across the man’s shoulders—breaking flesh and bone with an audible crunch that left the man in paralyzed shock and Gwen cursing beneath his weight, clawing to pull herself out from under him.

Mac hooked the man’s side with his club and flipped him over, halfway freeing Gwen—and that was all he could do, as blade shimmered back to tomahawk and he pivoted around, all one motion, to release the throw as Rafe finally came for him—finally goaded beyond endurance to physical action.

No surprise that Rafe blocked the blow—he’d had too much time, too much space to do it, his blade a stout scimitar that showered showy and improbable sparks through the night as it parried Keska away.

It didn’t matter. Because as Mac dove for Keska—knowing it would find his hand more readily than he ever truly thought possible—Gwen scrambled free from the weight of Rafe’s dying muscle man and sprinted away.

Rafe cried out in wordless outrage, standing with legs splayed and arms spread—completely open, if Mac had only been in a position to do something about it. Not that he had any compunction at all about whipping the tomahawk around into the shallow angle of Rafe’s back, but damn if that leg hadn’t given out on him, just enough to lose the moment.

Rafe didn’t even notice Mac, all his attention on Gwen. “No!” he cried, honest horror in his voice. “Watch out!”

Because Gwen ran straight for the concrete arroyo. Gwen, who’d only been in this city a matter of days and who’d never experienced the violence of a monsoon storm. Gwen, who probably hadn’t even realized what the arroyos were or that the noise behind them was six feet of water rushing along at a startling speed.

“Gwen!” Mac cried—but no, he’d told her to go, he’d pushed her with everything she had. She wouldn’t stop now.

Still, she jerked around—just for an instant. Just before her foot hit that first step on a steep wet concrete slope.

She went down with a startled cry; it turned terrified as she plunged out of sight, and then it cut short with a splash, barely audible over the rushing water.

Mac saved his breath on a curse, bolting forward—a lurching, awkward run that took him to the edge only just before Rafe made it there, both of them stricken. But if Mac was wild with it, Rafe quickly turned to cold fury—watching the dark rush of water, foam and rapids and debris churning along faster than the average man could run.

I’m not average. For the moment, Mac forgot he was on one-and-a-half legs and forgot he stood beside the man he was sworn to stop. “Gwen!” he shouted out over that roiling water, a deep notch of concrete draining straight to the Rio Grande. “Gwen!”

But he heard nothing in response...not so much as a distant cry. Deep within, a jerk of thought slapped up against him. Rafe. Right here beside me.

The man he had to stop. The one from whom he’d thought to save Gwen, at the cost of his own body.

He hadn’t done that—hadn’t kept her safe at all. But he damned sure wouldn’t let it be for nothing.

As if Rafe hadn’t figured that out.

Even as Mac turned on him, the man’s blade sliced air, aiming to cut him through. Mac stumbled back—fell as the leg went out yet again, but rolled more nimbly this time, barely off his feet and up again, Keska striking out in a cutting sheen of metal—coming back at Rafe fast enough so the older man swore and slapped at the blade, a clumsy move.

Oh, yeah, it’s been a while. For how many lifetimes had the man been living by proxy, sucking down the emotions of others—evoking what he wanted, manipulating the results, watching the agony and sorrow of his own making and then profiting from it? Never putting himself out there, never facing direct retribution.

But Rafe struck back, a flurry of blows—his form strengthening, his movements growing more fine and subtle, his blade slowly straightening to match the sweep of Mac’s saber.

Not long enough, apparently.

And Rafe wasn’t already winded...wasn’t already bleeding...wasn’t already exhausted from days of battling an unknown foe along with his blade.

He smiled with grim satisfaction as Mac missed a parry from low to high guard, his blade skipping along the outer edge of Keska to nick Mac’s arm, then flicking down to slash shallowly across his thigh while Keska chased its shadow, not quite there in time.

“Lifetimes,” Rafe reminded him as they stood apart, Mac panting and stung, his thigh burning deeply and his heart still shouting after Gwen, “which you cannot defeat.” He raised his blade-sword, a ceremonial gesture, and spoke to it, reveling in the moment. “You may take them now.”

Oh, no. No, no, no. That was the whole point. It was why Mac had refused to be parted from the shackles of his own blade, why Gwen had let him go—why she had fled to protect the pendant. Because you don’t get to win.

But the man’s dark blade was right there. And it knew how to spew hatred, up close and personal. It knew how to ooze through to Mac’s soul, flooding in through the blade to swamp them both, looking for the slightest echo from within Mac.

And Keska gave way.

Mac staggered back as the blade’s connection snapped shut, leaving him only what he was: a man sorely tried, sorely wounded, with dead dull metal in hand.

Keska!

In response, only the merest flicker through their bond. Not a blade separated, not a blade destroyed...but a blade overwhelmed. A blade in complete retreat.

Mac sucked in a deep, ragged breath, taking a two-handed grip on a sword not meant for it—braced and waiting even as he reeled. Rafe might have taken him down right then—that moment, with a long sweep of slashing metal that Mac could no longer evade.

But no. Rafe stopped. He took the deepest of breaths—satisfaction of the most profound nature, nostrils flared and standing with proud arrogance, the storm’s pounding flicker of light the perfect backdrop.

And through the thick, pounding nature of horror, Mac felt it. A feather-light touch, no more than a whisper. Keska. Be strong.

More than that, Rafe felt it. He stepped back, jerking around—looking for it. I see you...I taste you...Halgos...you are known.

“Halgos,” Mac said in the wonderment of it—the hope of it, glimmering through the overriding swamp of heavy, pounding despair and darkness. Demardel?

He didn’t have time to think about it. Rafe whirled, came crashing down on him with metal and fury and no small spark of blooming fear. “It,” he said each word distinct and growing in emphasis. “Won’t. Work.”

Mac staggered back away from him. Rafe’s final remaining man abandoned his sorely wounded comrades to snap foolishly around the edges of the fight and Mac pivoted to him with blade extended, driving him away and bringing the point back into guard just in time to keep Rafe from plunging at him. Metal clashed; Keska sparked back to life. —halgos— it murmured, intrigued. —keska. be strong. strong—!

Halgos, said the trickle from outside them all, growing stronger. I see you. I can deny you.

“No,” Rafe said, a harsh whisper from between clenched teeth. “No one can take what we have! And you’ll die trying!” He pressed a quick flurry of attacks and Keska surged to meet him, offering Mac a renewed strength and quickness for which he would later pay.

Halgos. You may NOT.

And all the hatred fell away. The deep inner attack, the imposed hatred wrapped around keen fear wrapped around gibbering insanities. It fell away and it left Mac clear and sharp, reflecting only Keska’s normal trickling mutter of satisfactions—and with those, he was well able to deal.

Suddenly it was Mac pressing the attack. Suddenly it was Mac pushing the older man back.

Suddenly it was Mac, having quietly closed the distance between them, moving just inside Rafe’s guard without notice, allowing small hits to embolden Rafe into taking the bigger strike. It would have impaled Mac through the heart had he let it, giving Keska no time to heal him at all.

But he didn’t; he lured the strike in and he parried it away. And suddenly it was Mac, the sword buried deeply in his side and grating on ribs—stuck there, for the merest instant—while Mac returned the favor. A clean strike, up beneath the breastbone, up through the heart...right on through as they both fell heavily to the ground.

And it was Gwen, soaked and dripping all over, who yanked Rafe aside without regard to his dead and glazing eyes, and who yanked out the blade Halgos—and who threw herself down on Mac. And then—in the nicest possible way—she said, “That was the worst plan ever,” before she planted her hands at the side of his face and kissed him senseless.

Violence lingered in Gwen’s thoughts. Clashing images of fear and peril, the bruising grip of water—the slam of her body up against the inexplicable lip of concrete to which she had clung. The water tugging viciously at her—tearing away her sandals, stretching her shirt.

But she’d latched on, pounded by sensation—the noise, the cold, the battering pain—and she’d nonetheless sent her focus elsewhere. Reaching out. Not to Mac, but to the blade in Rafe’s hands. Halgos.

She hadn’t been strong enough to sunder them apart; she hadn’t known enough. But she’d sure as hell distracted them. And she’d frightened Rafe...and it had been enough.

She just hadn’t known if it had been in time for Mac. And she hadn’t known if she’d survive to find out—not until an unfamiliar form slid down to join her, hauling her away from the outflow pipe against which she’d lodged and boosting her out of the concrete arroyo with impersonal hands placed by necessity in personal places.

Disoriented, uncoordinated and staggering, she nonetheless found Rafe dead and toppled over Mac, hating the very touch of that heinous blade as she flung it away—then finding Mac and that dark wry grin...kissing him.

But he wasn’t so much kissing her back any longer. And while she’d forgotten to feel the soaking cold, Mac was the one who now shivered.

“Hey,” she said, running her hands over him. Dark blood stained his pants, his shirt, now his chin. “Hey.” She groped to find Keska—not quite retreated to its neutral pocketknife form, but lingering as the frontier trade blade, all glimmering Damascus-like metal. It lay on the ground behind her, exactly where she’d so recently shoved Rafe’s body.

Where Rafe no longer lay. Nothing. Nada.

No body. No body parts.

She sucked in a breath. He’d been dead—she’d been so sure he was dead! But she’d heard nothing, seen nothing...

And he wasn’t there.

“Mac,” she said—only a whisper because could he even hear her? She’d never felt quite so alone, kneeling on the asphalt beside one shivering, wounded and unconscious man.

On impulse, she shoved Keska into Mac’s cold hand, forcibly wrapping his fingers around it. She chafed his arms—quite suddenly feeling her own sodden clothes and her own very close call with death. “Keska,” she said, out loud and concentrating hard, “you better do something here. If he—”

Okay, maybe out loud hadn’t been the best idea, because she suddenly choked on the words. She swallowed against the big knot in her throat and tried again. “If he dies, things aren’t going to turn out well for you. You can’t take me, and I’ll make damned sure you don’t get a chance at anyone else.”

Maybe, just maybe, the blade glimmered slightly in response.

Squishing footsteps came up behind her; water splatted the asphalt, merging with the spreading puddle of water and blood. “Hell, that poor bastard.” The voice was unfamiliar, and a little rough with swallowed water.

Surreptitiously, Gwen reached for Keska—not knowing if the blade would allow her to use it at all.

But the man just laughed. “Who just pulled you away from an outflow pipe and boosted your ass out of that arroyo?”

“I have no idea,” Gwen said, closing her hand around Mac’s with Keska, finding it warm again. “But I’d really like it if you weren’t close enough to drip on me.”

He laughed again, short but amused, and moved to the other side of Mac, his hands low and away from his body in a gesture of peace. “Devin James,” he said. “I think you were expecting me.”

It fired her up all over again. “Damned right we were! ‘We can help,’ Natalie kept saying. Well, where the hell were you?”

“Caught in traffic,” he said easily and cocked his head slightly, looking at her with enough scrutiny that she finally made a face at him. He nodded slightly. “Natalie was right about you two. I’m sorry I didn’t see it sooner. Let’s say I was...distracted.” His dark expression left no doubt about his meaning. That man.

“Rafe!” Gwen moved closer to Mac—protective again, and realizing that the warmth had spread to his chest and shoulder...that he no longer shivered. That his face, an odd, pale cast in the parking lot light, no longer looked quite as ghostly pale. Go, Keska, go! “He was here. I swear he was dead. And his blade—”

Devin’s amiable expression fell away, and Gwen found herself suddenly looking at the same man who’d first accosted them in the street, dark and dangerous. “If I’d been a little faster...” He shook his head. “The blade is gone—one of Rafe’s people. He and another guy took the van. There’s a third one over there, looking pretty dead.”

“But Rafe—” She looked again to the spot where she’d shoved him, so close that she’d surely have seen if he’d...

Surely.

Devin grinned, a quick and generous thing, all the more startling for the contrast of his dark demeanor. “The blades clean up after themselves.” He nodded down at Mac, whose clothes seemed notably drier, whose bleeding had stopped. “It’s how they fuel themselves.”

She made a face. “How gruesomely convenient.”

“Nothing about the blades comes without a touch of darkness,” Devin said, absently enough so the words hit home even harder than they were probably meant to. What they’d done to Mac...what wielders like Devin and Natalie lived with every day...

What Mac would live with every day...

Unless he chose not to.

Her hand went to the pendant.

Devin’s eyes narrowed. “I’d really like to know what happened down there.” He flicked a gesture out, encompassing the rushing channel of water behind her. “You only had a few more moments of hanging on left—and you weren’t even trying to get out. People who take those arroyos lightly tend to die.”

She frowned at him. “Like I even know what a concrete arroyo is? In the dark?”

Mac made a deeply disgruntled and incoherent sound of protest. To Gwen, it was a sound of beauty. “Mac!” she said, pressing her hand against his shoulder. His eyes flickered, didn’t open. No, not quite yet.

Not that Devin was done with her. “And then there’s what happened up here—there’s no way your guy beat out that man with that blade—he’s been one foot from the wild road for days. And I know what it looks like to commune with one of these things. I know how damned dangerous it is, too—for everyone!”

Her temper flashed. “I did what I had to, and it worked, didn’t it? And even if Rafe’s little minion got away with the blade, he doesn’t know what he’s doing. We can find him. I know that blade now—I can find him.”

“Ah,” Devin said, brows raised. He appraised her for another long moment. “Demardel chose well.” And, looking down, he gave Mac a gentle nudge with his toe. “You, too, fella. Though I’m guessing it’ll be a while before you realize it.” He reached down, offering his hand to Gwen. “Come on. Let’s get you both somewhere warm.”