Claimed by the Demon (Harlequin Nocturne)

by Doranna Durgin

  No blood. No bruises. She looked as put together as always, and Baitlia, tucked away in its pocket, roused no more than a sneer of greeting from Anheriel.

  Natalie stopped short to take him in, dismay on her face. “One of us,” she said, “looks better than the other of us.” And she stepped forward to take his chin and tip his face aside for a better look, complete with a tsk noise.

  His manly pride stung. “Hey,” he said. “There were a lot of them. And they were bigger than me. And I was trying not to kill them.”

  “Uh-huh,” she said, smudging a thumb along his cheek. “Was it like last night?”

  “More of the same,” he agreed. “Lots of little spontaneous flares by people who aren’t really any good at it.”

  She gave him a pointed look, up and down; he returned it with a growl, reaching out to yank her closer. Very much closer, at which point he put his arms around her and—ow!—swore resoundingly.

  “Point made,” Natalie said. “I thought that arm looked wrong.”

  “You never mind,” he told her. “I have caramel popcorn inside, and True Grit in the player. And I unmade the bed. I say we race for it.”

  She rested a cheek against his shoulder, but she sighed. “There’s something scary going on in this city, Devin. I was listening to the radio news...”

  He sighed right along with her. Business first, even as he tucked her up close and breathed in the scent of her, letting it ease the humming burn of the blade. “The cops are riled—they’re traveling in groups. Watching their backs. They see it, too.”

  “It’s all about the hate,” she said. “People hating other people because of their skin or their religion or their preferences or their politics—”

  “Or their first language.” He’d stopped a beat-down on a young immigrant during the evening. It had taken only a glance to communicate with the young man across the language barrier, but the hate group couldn’t hear a word he’d said.

  “Hating,” Natalie said. “Little eruptions of it from people who have been nurturing it inside.”

  “Hating,” he agreed.

  “And you think the new wielder is doing it?”

  That took him by surprise. “I... What? That guy?” He thought back to what he’d seen, what he’d felt. Unsettled, unfocused...a guy who’d been into something and had let it get the best of him. One who’d been in the nexus of the evening’s incidents.

  One who’d needed to be warned.

  “He’s involved,” Devin told her.

  “Mmm.”

  Mmm was never good.

  “You disagree?”

  She didn’t answer right away. She held him; she breathed with him. Long enough so he started to consider the way they fit together, and that was never good—not if he had thinking to do.

  Finally, she said, “You didn’t say she loved him.”

  “What?” So much for the thinking.

  “The woman who was with him. She loves him.” She tipped her head back to look up at him. “She has some understanding of what’s happening, but not enough. She sees the blades—even when Baitlia was silent, she saw it for what it was. Having her with him...this could change things.”

  She ran her hand down his back, and her expression grew more thoughtful. “He needs help, there’s no doubt. But, dammit, Devin, they’ve labeled us enemies. They think we’re in league with whatever’s going on here—and something is. Someone messed with them today. I think someone was killed, too, but if there was a blade involved—”

  Right. Body and blood devoured. Just a missing persons report waiting to happen.

  Okay. So they had a trust problem when it would have been convenient to start on neutral ground with this intruder. He sighed, annoyed at the situation in general. Worried about it, too. He could walk this city all night, but he couldn’t be everywhere. “It seemed like the thing to do at the time. The guy’s a walking trouble magnet, and he’s about to go over.”

  She nodded. “I think he probably is. But we have to fix this. If what’s happening out there isn’t about him—if he’s just gotten caught up in the middle—then there’s something else going on. And I think it’s big.”

  “Yeah,” he murmured, kissing the top of her head. “It’s big.”

  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 na
rrowed 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 h
ighway 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.