Claimed by the Demon

Chapter 4

Mac grabbed another protein drink. It wasn’t nearly enough to fuel a body being force-healed from layers of assaults, but it would assuage the immediate gnawing in his belly. And then, while Gwen pressed a washcloth to her face as if she could hide the bright shine of lingering tears and the strong pink of high emotion, he grabbed a quick shower, brushing his teeth in the spray.

He came out to discover her doing the same at the sink and set himself to pacing the room—driven by the blade’s restlessness, driven by the picture he was forming of the previous night and knowing that this surge of energy would be all too brief. The burning in his blood told him as much—told him the damage had gone deep, that the blade still worked on him.

That the toll had yet to be completely paid.

He had to get a handle on the situation before he lost these moments.

He found himself drawn to the window—pulling back the privacy drapes, letting the light wash over his face...letting his eyes adjust.

Plenty of chaos below. Broken glass in the parking lot. A police car—no, two of them—parked skewed across the lines, and people milling around. Gesturing. Upset.

Gwen was right. More right than she knew.

No coincidence at all.

But what it meant, he didn’t yet understand. Only that he now had a very good idea why the blade had brought him here. The blade that thrived on high feeling and righteous death and other people’s pain. The blade that used him to gain these things even as he used it to stop them.

But he didn’t know why Gwen was here. And he didn’t know why she was here. With him.

He did know what the blade thought of it. What the blade wanted.

They aren’t my feelings. Aren’t who I am.

Was it?

She came out of the bathroom and stood uncertainly in the middle of the room.

Uncertainly. Not like her.

As if I’d know.

But he did. The hesitation in her movement, the way she’d so briefly held her breath, her hands jammed into the pockets of that snug thin stretch thing passing for a jacket. She’d done what she could with her hair, coiling it in a knot and wrapping her hair band around it, but it was clearly out of control, gleaming subtly red in the morning light.

He said, “Your father.”

Her lower lip—round and full—firmed. “No.”

He stepped away from the window, taking advantage of the uncertainty while he had it—fighting the impulse to restore her confidence instead. “It’s no coincidence. You know it. I know it. I need to know why.”

“I need a lot of things,” she told him. “I’m guessing I won’t get them.”

“It’s not about me,” he said, his temper taking an edge. The blade warmed happily in his pocket, sipping up both conflict and promise. “It’s bigger than that.”

Her eyes narrowed; he thrilled to the spirit behind it and just as quickly doubted himself as the knife hummed in response. My feelings?

She knew none of it; she said, “Think much of yourself?”

He crossed the room in three long strides; she held her ground, lifting her gaze to his even as he crowded close—rude, deliberate. He jabbed a finger toward the window. “I think nothing of myself,” he told her, feeling the truth of that; feeling the burn as it rose in him. “But I can see. Can you?”

“Maybe more than you think,” she muttered, and it was then that she looked away. “Look,” she said. “I’m here. I’m following my nose. That’s all. Okay?”

He gave her the darkest of looks. “It would be okay if I believed that was all there is to it.”

She regained some asperity. “What there is to it,” she said, “is that I’ve been robbed every which way but loose, and I have to go take care of that. If you don’t mind.”

Right. Yes. Of course.

Time to remember how people lived in the world when there wasn’t a demon blade involved.

He rubbed a hand across the back of his neck, rolling his head. Releasing tension. “Listen,” he said. “I need to finish sleeping this off.” He didn’t define this; he suspected that after the previous night, he didn’t have to. “There’s no telling how long it’ll take to get your finances sorted out, and I could use a favor.”

She crossed her arms, not hiding her suspicion, and waited.

“Food,” he said. “More of those workout drinks. Something microwaveable.” As her face cleared with understanding, he added, “Necessities for you in exchange.”

“I—” she said, protest in that single syllable...until she closed her mouth and looked away, then back again. “I can pay my own way.”

He suddenly felt unutterably weary. Burning. “Please. Just...please.”

Her surprise showed. “Oh,” she said, disarmed. “Oh. Okay then. I mean...you’re all right?”

“I’m fine.” But at her skeptical expression, he smiled wryly. “I will be fine.” A day of rest—full, deep rest—and he could start tracking down what he’d felt in this place so far—the origins, the areas of deeper feeling, lingering traces. He’d sort out the undercurrents of this place; he’d figure out what was going on.

And he’d figure out how she was part of it.

Gwen found something disconcerting about filing reports—the car break-in, the mugging—with someone else’s wallet tucked away in her jacket.

The good thing—could there possibly be a good thing?—about the situation was that on this day, she was just one of many. Resulting in perhaps the oddest thing of all: no one saw anything strange about the siege of incredibly bad and possibly not coincidental luck she’d apparently had painted on her back the evening before.

Get out of Albuquerque. Just get out.

She could have done it. A bus ticket home, just like that. She’d pay more for rekeying the damned car than it was probably worth anyway.

But she didn’t go to the bus station, and she couldn’t quite have said why she hadn’t.

Maybe it was the way he’d said please. Maybe it had been the look on his face as he’d burst into the stairwell first thing that morning, ready to do battle when he could barely stand. Ready to lend a shoulder when battle hadn’t been necessary.

Anyway. He’d asked her to bring back some food. She could do that much. She flexed her lightly skinned palms and went to work.

She stopped in an internet café and quickly searched up the contact information for her credit cards and her bank. The first thing she bought with Michael MacKenzie’s money—Mac...you’ve got your fingers in his wallet, so call him Mac—was a disposable cell. From that she called the credit card companies, already heading for the bus stop.

The closest store wasn’t far from the hotel; she walked back from there, soaking up the Albuquerque valley heat on a crispy dry spring day in a marginal neighborhood of real-life people, the city’s tall buildings and fancy business district looming off to the west. Colors, sun bright even through new sunglasses, a constant stream of traffic and people.

How long could a single day be?

Amazing to discover it was still barely noon as she dragged herself back to the hotel. Laden with the reusable cloth grocery bags she’d picked up along with the groceries—and basic toiletries, and underwear, and a few basic Ts and sport shorts—she hesitated in the lobby.

She could get her own room. On his card, sure, but it wasn’t like she wouldn’t pay him back, and—

The wallet felt heavy in the grocery bag where she’d dropped it.

His whole wallet. His whole identity. Entrusted to her, just like that.

And if anyone knew what it was like to lose that little bundle of selfhood...

No. She’d ask before charging her own room.

She adjusted her grip on her various burdens and headed for the elevator, bumping the call button with her knuckles. Getting the hotel key from her front pocket was an exercise in persistence and dexterity; getting the door unlocked, more of the same.

She took no more than a step into the room before dropping the whole kit and kaboodle, exhaling a huge sigh of relief as she shook out her hands. She rescued the key card, pushed the door closed, and leaned back against it with a dramatic groan.

And that’s when she noticed he hadn’t so much as moved. Still in bed, still just as she’d left him, moments after he’d flopped down in the first place. One arm flung out over the center of the bed, the other over his eyes, angled so one leg bent over the side of the mattress, that foot still on the floor.

“Um,” she said. “Mac?” And didn’t expect the spurt of concern, nudging purchases out of the way to hurry over, putting a hand on his leg. “You okay?”

Unbelievable. She was watching his chest, battered and tattooed—waiting for the rise of it—and it seemed to take forever, dammit.

But there it was, slow and long and even. A man deeply asleep. Just as she’d left him.

She bet his arm was asleep, too, dead weight on his face.

Without much thinking about it, she perched on the small slice of mattress beside him. This muscle-strapped body had become familiar to her last night—but in the light of day, those hours now seemed a marginal reality. And she no longer had the right or the reason to touch him. Nothing more than what she did now, laying the back of her hand across the side of his face and then on his neck.

No longer so very hot. Now just warm, another human being going about the business of being alive—and not so very bruised anymore at that. He didn’t stir at the transgression, but a brief spate of goose bumps rippled over his arms and shoulders.

She let her hands rest in her lap, considering him. Considering this. The situation...the moments that had led her here, and the stark understanding that she had no idea where to go. Not in the next moment, not in the next hour, not in the next day.

He’d wanted to know about her father.

He was going to ask her again. She’d seen that much in him. If she stayed. She looked at the tattoo. Here, in the daylight, hardly obscured by the faint pattern of hair across his chest. She looked, and her breath caught and—

No wonder.

No wonder she’d thought of her father. Just no freaking wonder.

I am nine years old, and my father is dead.

No one will talk about him.

I live with my aunt. She won’t talk about him, either. I learn through overheard whispers—car abandoned, body not found. Witnesses who say they saw a horrible fight, but neither the victor nor the victim are identified or located.

They wonder if he’s coming back. But I don’t.

I know.

I am nine years old, and my father is dead.

She found her hand wrapped around the pendant, her eyes closed and her head tipped back. Curse and boon, that pendant. A reminder of the past—but not just the good of it. The awful of it, too. The way it clung to her...the way it sometimes seemed to call to her, something far away and just beneath the threshold of what she was able to hear.

Other times, other places, she had dismissed that sensation—wasn’t her life strange enough, in the wake of what her father had done to her?

Here and now, it seemed all too real. As if the metal breathed with her, breathing into her.

As if she wasn’t alone.

I know you.

She jerked, hand clenching, sucking in a surprised breath.

That trickle of thought hadn’t been hers.

Not hers at all.

I KNOW YOU.

More than a trickle. She jerked from it, eyes flying open in time to see Mac jerk awake in sync with her, his body trembling, his blue-grey eyes dark and confused and downright feral—his voice, when he spoke, distant and hoarse. “I...know...”

And then he seemed to wrench himself out of whatever gripped him and he saw her, truly saw her. And as she opened her mouth to say she had no idea what, just that fast, he was up and pivoting over her on one knee, pushing her back flat.

And now she was the one to tremble. But there he stopped, hands on either side of her shoulders, his eyes closing briefly and his face twisting in something that seemed like pain. It left him breathing hard, but when he opened his eyes, they were clear and bright and looking directly at her. Seeing her, in truth.

Why she hadn’t fought him off, she didn’t know. Why she hadn’t kicked and screamed and shoved and scratched—

She didn’t know.

“Mac,” she said, barely more than a whisper. No more than that, and whether it was question or request, she didn’t know that, either.

He lifted one hand to clear the hair from her face, to touch her cheek and brow. “I’m sorry,” he said, and brought his mouth down on hers. Not the ferocity she’d expected, but a gentle, cherishing kiss. And in that, more—so much more—than any crushing demand.

When he straightened, she could only look at him, feeling the surprise still etched on her own face, her mouth still open—still feeling his touch.

He ran a thumb across the line of her lower lip, hesitated—muscles working in his jaw, nostrils flaring briefly—and then pushed himself away. “I’m sorry,” he said again.

She didn’t move. “Why?”

It seemed to surprise him. “Why?”

She propped herself up on her elbows. “Why are you sorry? Why did you do it? Why did you stop?”

“You’re crying.” It wasn’t an answer to any of that. It didn’t even seem like part of the apology. Just the next step in a disjointed conversation.

“I’m not,” she said, and ran fingers across the corner of her eye, discovered it wet—discovered tears trickled down into her hair. “Am I?”

That wry grin of his, on the mouth that was made for it.

Among other things.

He said, “I think we need to talk.”

Devin dropped the scant pages of the Albuquerque paper onto Natalie’s desk.

She never took her eyes from the computer monitor before her. “I wondered what you’d think of that.”

Devin snorted. “He didn’t take my warning very seriously.”

Rash of thefts indeed. The least of it. There had been fights, assaults, break-ins...a swath of violence across that lower right quarter of the city, with enough trickling into their southwest turf to keep them busy on the way home. Enough to shove aside the little hate fest demonstration by the local better-than-thou group currently targeting a diversity support group.

She laughed, looking at him over the precisely organized workspace. From there she followed her own passion for research into things that might help blade wielders cope, handling the unsavory interactions with the lawyer they seemed to have inherited along with this estate—a man who knew too much, while not truly knowing anything at all. “Devin,” she said, “last night you said he looked beat to hell. And you know he wasn’t in all these places last night.”

“Maybe not.” He headed for the huge, bright bank of windows across the outside wall.

The grounds outside the window showed him nothing. A huge expanse of aquecia-watered lawn, here in the elm and cottonwood-littered bosque of the Rio Grande; the guesthouse that had been Natalie’s home when she worked for Sawyer Compton. But it wasn’t the grounds that drew him.

It was the city beyond and the overreaching awareness of it. No, the newcomer couldn’t have been in all those places the evening before. But— “Maybe he wasn’t. But he’s involved. He’s the one Anheriel followed.”

“That wasn’t all we felt last night.”

There, in the truck...the cold sensation that gripped both of them, leaving Devin aching for something to strike at and Natalie pushing focusing exercises on them both.

He shook his head, his gaze out the window, his feet restless. “He’s involved,” Devin repeated. “Damned if I know just how. I’ve half a mind to chase him down and—”

“Maybe he needs help,” Natalie said.

“Maybe he’s already heading for the wild road,” Devin said darkly, knowing the truth of that even as he said it—feeling the tug from his blade, the suggestion that they should go take care of this interloper.

Or maybe just join him in madness.

Devin pushed it away—and saw understanding in Natalie’s eyes. New to her blade, she’d never felt that beguiling touch of madness—and if her new techniques were as useful as she hoped they’d be, maybe she never would.

But the understanding wasn’t just for him. “If that’s true,” she said, “then he does need us. But not as his enemy. He needs help. And if it doesn’t come from us, then who?”

Natalie. Thoughtful, organized...and stubborn.

“We’ll see,” Devin said. “I want a better idea of what’s going on out there.” At Natalie’s expression, he shook his head. “It’s one thing to take him on. It’s another to leave ourselves vulnerable to him.” You, he meant. I won’t take chances with you.

Maybe she heard that. She settled, returning her attention to the ancient text she was examining via Project Gutenberg. “I think we’ll want to try to find a copy of this one,” she said. “You have to read between the lines, but I’m pretty sure this author has gathered anecdotal incidents about wielders.” She made a few notes, then pushed back from the desk. “I’ll head to the library and see if I can find anything about what we felt last night.” She added a rueful expression. “In English.”

“I’m headed to the gym,” said Devin. His best option for building boundaries against the blade. “I have the feeling I’m going to need it.”

She nodded. “Good idea.” And then her attention drifted to the window, too. “I only hope he’s got his own gym. Or that he knows what he’s doing.”

Devin snorted. “From what I saw last night?” There in the man’s eyes, in his face...in the very energy accompanying him. “I’m not counting on it.”