Taming the Demon

by Doranna Durgin

  Nothing.

  No body.

  No blood.

  No man who had first laid his hands on her.

  Too late to run away. Time to throw up.

  But the man who’d come out of the parking lot to rescue her took it all in stride, and she didn’t think that was quite fair. The whole night wasn’t fair, come to that. Especially not if he was going to come over here and dissolve Tattoo Head away right next to her—she scooted away in anticipation, but he’d stopped. On his knees, hands propped on his thighs, he finally seemed to notice the big freakin’ knife sticking out of his arm—and with that same expression of resignation but no hesitation, he reached for it...yanked it out.

  It must have hurt like hell, to judge from that gritty little sound he made, the way his eyes squeezed closed and his jaw opened, as if he’d managed to take himself by surprise. And then she felt it, the warm drops of rain, heard the sudden steady pulse of fluid against the asphalt.

  “Oh,” she said. “Hey. Whoa. You, uh—”

  By then he’d opened his eyes. “Ah, hell.”

  Yeah. Arterial blood, spurting hard and fast with every beat of his heart. Blood rain. He’d bleed out fast, without help. Maybe he’d bleed out anyway.

  Natalie didn’t bother to glance around. No one here to help but her. That’s the way it was.

  Yeah, way too late to run away.

  Chapter 2

  Just about...

  Now.

  Natalie Chambers had been a good assistant. An unexpectedly good assistant. It would be a shame to lose her.

  Her proficiency...now, that had been an unexpected benefit, given that he’d hired her with no regard to her skills at all. Sawyer Compton’s interest had started not with Natalie Chambers, but with Ajay Dudek, her ex-fiancé. The one who had once run with Devin James’s brother, Leo—or perhaps it had been the other way around. It didn’t matter.

  Either way, the hunt had started with the deceased Leo James...and moved to Devin James, the man who now wielded the blade. But Compton was a patient man, satisfied to work through the dead brother’s friends, following that trail for sources he could exploit, people he could use. It didn’t matter that Natalie Chambers had, as it turned out, never actually known Devin James—she’d still known the men who’d befriended and then rejected him. She’d been part of that crowd, part of that life.

  Once.

  Now she thought she was cleaned up, a decent woman looking for a decent life. But she couldn’t outrun those connections. Natalie to Ajay to Leo James. And that meant she had precious insight into the James boys, and that had made her someone to use.

  Sawyer Compton knew how to use.

  He knew how to own, too. How to acquire.

  Everything served a purpose. His purpose. And right now, Natalie was serving him well. Theoretically, she’d survive. But if not...that would work, too; he’d already extracted what information he could from her. Breaking in a new personal assistant would be inconvenient, but of course he was prepared.

  The crude muscle he’d sent to deal with her—just the right place, just the right time—they served him well, also.

  If likely for the last time.

  Compton tapped his fingers on his quiescent phone. She should be calling by now. He began to think James had failed him. Not that he intended her death. But it was always possible he’d overestimated the younger James brother. Because—a glance at his watch—yes. His timing was right.

  Just about...

  Now.

  * * *

  The pavement loomed hard and dark and so very ready to smack Devin in the face.

  So much for any thought of ending this night with dawn pushing the horizon, an old movie as flickering backdrop to elusive sleep and a cold beer sitting once more unopened on an otherwise empty fridge shelf.

  Devin snorted a dark, short little laugh at his own skewed notion of the good life and realized instantly what a mistake that had been—his strength spurting out on the ground, the pain deep and his vision getting gray, his body going shocky—and mostly, the look on her face.

  Didn’t matter what she’d seen. No bodies, no witnesses...she wouldn’t go to the police. Not with this story. But it mattered if he wasted energy in wry self-awareness and passed out. Or if his sardonic amusement sent her over the edge—wavy curls tumbling around her face but not obscuring eyes blue and bright and aghast, hand groping in the pocket of her stylish peacoat. Phone. She was going for a phone.

  Suddenly he wasn’t the least bit amused at all. “No,” he bit out at her, slapping a hand over the blood-slick leather of his arm, trying to staunch the wound—to give the blade time to work. The wild road. Dammit, he hadn’t even finished cleaning up. “Don’t.”

  She shot him not fear, but a sudden resentful glare. So much for gratitude. And she came up with the cell phone, and he didn’t have a choice—didn’t give himself time to think. One last surge of speed and cruel strength, and he wrested the device from her hand with his bloody fingers, slamming it to the ground. It spun into two pieces and he slammed the butt end of the knife onto the biggest—never wondering where the knife came from, not anymore—and he knew damned well the wild road showed in his face as she recoiled from him in the darkness.

  He winced, checking himself—holding up a hand in apology—reaching as though she might actually take it, which didn’t seem too damned likely. Not with her expression frozen—fear and dismay and even a hint of anger—and not with the blood now beating a steady tattoo against the inside of the leather coat, warm and wet and gliding down his arm to spatter to the pavement.

  He had the fleeting thought that she was about to run.

  An even more fleeting thought, laced with surprise and a startling little slap of fear, jarred a startled “Oh, hell” from him: even a demon blade couldn’t heal what was already dead.

  And then the pavement came up and smacked him in the face.

  * * *

  Metal and death and looming strike—

  But that had been years ago. Another time, another place. Natalie inhaled sharply, bringing herself back to the now.

  “Oh, hell.” He’d said it again, annoyed and surprised and still fighting the inevitable, and then he’d gone down. Out before he hit the ground, no attempt to soften the landing.

  The knife lay glimmering on the pavement just outside loosely curled fingers. Lethal. Inexplicable.

  Natalie reached for it—but with her fingers trembling a mere hairsbreadth away, changed her mind. No. Not this knife.

  With a curse, she left it. She yanked her scarf away from her neck—fine alpaca wool, a rare luxury—and wrapped it around the man’s arm with sore fingers, jerking a tight half hitch at each turn until she ran out of scarf altogether. She wiped her hands on the gaily tasseled ends and turned to the dead man—finding the baton he’d used so effectively and collapsing it, stuffing it into her pocket even as she dug out his wallet.

  Only after she’d grabbed the cash and pulled the driver’s license did she realize how quickly, how stupidly, she’d slid right back into old ways. Ways that had been hers for only a brief time, but even then they’d become so ingrained....

  They’d taken her all over again.

  And so had the familiar heart-racing, stomach-sickening rush.

  She wanted to throw the wallet across the parking lot.

  She didn’t. She forced herself to return it. But not the money. If things went bad here, really bad, she might need it. And not the driver’s license. Because she wanted to know who this man had been. Not respect so much as caution. She’d hire someone....

  She shoved the wallet back into place, still shaking, and stumbled more than stepped away from her erstwhile attacker, half tripping over the man who’d saved her. The gleaming pocket knife skittered from his fingertips and up against the dead man.

  That’s not right. She’d barely brushed him.

  And if she’d glanced away at just the right time, she wouldn’t have seen the tattooed
man crumble away.

  “Oh,” she said out loud. “That is just. Not. Right.”

  And there she stood, in a dark parking lot with two dead men who had disappeared, their killer and her phone in pieces and her boss waiting for her report that she’d met his special architectural designer with her usual crisp efficiency and now had his equally special plans in hand.

  The sharp breeze gusted through her, a visceral slap of nature. She needed a phone, that’s what. She needed to call Compton. The what-to-do-next decision...that wasn’t really hers to make. Not when she was on his clock. A good job? Yes. A dream job? Yes. But there were rules to it, too.

  And still, when she looked at the dark figure sprawled on the ground, his fingers twitching ever so slightly toward a knife that was no longer there, she couldn’t help but think of the expression on his face just before he fell. More than just annoyance and more than just last-ditch defiance, but...

  Fear.

  And there wasn’t any calling Compton, was there? Not without walking dark blocks to find the nearest public phone. The nearest working public phone.

  It got easier, then—decision made, mere moments gone by in spite of the struggle of it all. She reached him in a few swift strides, crouching to put one quiet hand on his shoulder—and if her scarf seemed patchily sodden, the blood no longer dripped rivulets off his fingers, black in the mercury light that filtered in from the streetlamps. “Hey—” she started to say.

  He surged up, grabbing her no less cruelly than when wrenching away her phone. The ferocity of it warred with confusion and then sudden understanding, although by then he’d made it back up to his knees—but just barely, before he slumped over, propping himself on one shaking arm against pavement. Releasing her.

  The knife was in his hand.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I couldn’t let you— You’re okay?”

  He couldn’t let her call the cops. Of course not. He’d killed two men. He’d made them disappear. By what stretch of the imagination would he want cops here?

  “Okay?” she asked, and her alto had more husk in it than usual. “You must be kidding. Either I saw what I saw, or I think I saw it—and which of those things could be okay?”

  He tipped his head up. Light eyes, she thought, and hair short enough to stay out of his face even in disarray. Enough illumination to show her his briefest reaction to her words, but not quite to fully define it. “Physically,” he said. “You?”

  She’d hurt like hell tomorrow. Bruises, scrapes...bodily payback. But relatively speaking? “I’m okay,” she told him.

  “Car?”

  “I—” Without thinking, she slipped her hand into her pocket to touch the keys. “Yes. But you need to go to the hosp—”

  He turned that ferocious look on her again. “Help me my way,” he said. “Or leave me alone.”

  “You could die!” she snapped, exasperated beyond herself, feeling herself tipping askew—toward doing what was right for him at the expense of what was right for her.

  Rescue yourself. Because look what being here had already done to her—what it had brought out in her. She realized how tightly she’d clenched her hand closed around the keys, and took a deliberate and slow breath, feeling every notch and edge of the metal against her palm. Focusing on it and taking back control of herself. “Yeah,” she said. “I do things my way, now. For me. You can make your own choices. But thanks. You know. For the help.”

  He laughed faintly as she turned away. “Smart,” he said, a little breathless. “Smart woman.”

  She really expected him to stop her. She thought she’d hear his voice as she headed for the car, keys withdrawn from her pocket and ready for the lock. I changed my mind or even oh, hell! again.

  But no. Nothing other than his audible breathing—the pain in it, and the struggle. A strange kind of vigil, as if he was, somehow, still watching out for her.

  Right up until the moment she got into the car and drove away.

  * * *

  Devin laughed again.

  Yeah, probably not the thing to do with the single marginally friendly face of this dark night closing the little hybrid’s door behind her to pull smoothly out of the lot, barely a mutter of engine along the way.

  And still. Just for the grit of her, he laughed. She’d gotten the message, all right—and she’d sent her own back. He could make choices for himself, but not for her.

  Smart woman. Nervy. Completely overpowered by the men who’d come after her, and she’d still kept her head. Fought as hard as she could. Hadn’t even panicked when the blade drank down its first victim, sending a narrow spear of electric pain down Devin’s spine along with the lingering trickle of relief and pleasure that he’d come to dread.

  Because one day he might just look forward to it, and then the battle would be lost.

  She hadn’t panicked...but she’d come close. He’d seen it in eyes darkened by fear and deep night; he’d seen it in an unexpected face of high Slavic cheekbones and a narrow jaw. And then her mouth had gone firm and her fists had gone clenched and she’d just plain walked away.

  He laughed one last time, a mere huff of exhalation, and shook his head. Good for her. He’d follow in her footsteps, if he had an ounce of sense—before the vultures found him.

  Too bad his old pickup sat three blocks down. Too far, he thought. He got to his knees, pushed up to one foot, and knew it for sure.

  She’d stopped the bleeding—or she’d stopped it enough. He hadn’t died; he wouldn’t die. But if the blade offered up gifts, wrapped in gilt and chains, it didn’t offer up miracles. It would save his life; it would save his arm. It would shorten healing.

  It wouldn’t give him the means to saunter three blocks to the truck, drive himself home and lock the doors safely behind him while he slept himself to stability.

  The back corner of the nearby alley was looking better all the time. Out of the wind, out of sight...he might make it through what was to come. His flesh hadn’t yet quite figured out what had happened—but the blood loss had left his vision fading in and out, his body slipping into cold, clammy shock...strength elusive. The cold pressed in on him and only the bright heat of an innocuous pocket blade pushed him forward.

  Until the pale hybrid hatchback zipped silently up beside him, traversing the sidewalk and ignoring a median to get there, gliding to a stop only a foot away. The door opened; warmth wafted out. “Get in,” she said, full of conflicting urgency and doubt.

  Shock made him stupid. Something made him stupid, staring as she bent over the passenger seat to catch his eye, the fear back on her face and fully accompanied by annoyance.

  “Come on,” she said. “Get in.” She extended her hand, an impatient gesture. “God, you’re about to pass out again, aren’t you? Can you just get in the car first?”

  Cheekbones and angry-frantic eyes and such a line of jaw—

  Something hit his face. A tiny stuffed animal, bouncing to the pavement. “Right now!” she said, as she might speak to a reluctant dog. “Unless you want those guys to get here first, because they’re looking, do you get me? And do you think I’d be back here for anything less?”

  Looking. Of course. For their friends.

  Not to be found. But they’d find Devin.

  Her voice lashed at him. The blade burned in his pocket, a fiery prod. His arm gave the first whisper of the pain that would soon envelop it. But he heard her urgency, and he reached for her outstretched hand. A heave of effort, a hard yank...heavy footfalls in the background, a rough voice calling someone’s name—

  He wasn’t quite in the car when she floored it, an eerily silent and swift acceleration that closed the door on his ankle. He dragged his foot into the car and the door clicked loosely into place; they hit a curb and shot out into the street, and all the while his face mashed into her shoulder and then slipped downward to softer flesh.

  “I don’t think so,” she said sharply and shoved him back, deftly navigating out of the clustered shops until s
he hit the through street; the gas motor kicked in. “Dammit, you’re bleeding—” and she reached behind his seat and fumbled to pull out an old blanket. “Don’t get it on my car. Now where are we going?”

  He stared at the blanket. Definitely made of stupid.

  She made an exasperated noise, yanking the car over to the curb—bold driving in scant nighttime traffic. A belated punch at the hazard lights on the center console and she turned to him, reclaiming the worn blanket, curling it around his arm and tucking it in. “We’re not going to the hospital,” she said, “but if you die in the car, I’m heading straight there and pretending we were on the way all along. And we are not going to my place. God, my boss—” She stopped herself, took a breath and ignored his bemusement as she snapped his seat belt into place. “So it’s up to you. And I wouldn’t faint again. You’ll find yourself on a river bench, if you wake up again at all.”

  He felt that sloppy grin on his face—knew it was there by her startled reaction. “Be still my heart,” he said, and passed out again anyway.

  Chapter 3

  Devin came out of the darkness explosively, shredded awake by the searing claws of a demon’s healing touch—flame and agony. Consequences. He realized only vaguely that she was searching through his front pocket; he surged up, smacked his head and grappled for freedom—hitting the hard curving console, hitting soft flesh, finally scrabbling his way to the latch and exploding out onto the ground.

  Husky alto words slapped a distant corner of his mind, succinct and sharp; her car door slammed. He found just enough sanity to remember where he’d been—to recognize where he was.

  From the parking lot to his own postage stamp of a front yard, scratchy dry winter grass and bare patches. His own home. Sanctuary.