Taming the Demon

by Doranna Durgin

  Without bothering to check the raw noise in his throat, he scrambled to his feet—or close enough—and threw himself at the front door. Because inside was the cold shower, the only faint relief the night offered. Flames scored his body, incinerating thoughts before they could complete themselves—incinerating sanity.

  The door didn’t open. Robust metal security door, pretending to be decorative; solid wood door beyond.

  “Try the keys,” said that voice, honey and whiskey, and it came with a jingle of metal. “Did you think I was groping you for kicks?”

  Meaningless words. He slid back against the aging stucco—slid down it, the brief surge of strength gone and all his focus on the heat—bent over his arm, clamping down on it—hunting for the honest pain now buried beneath the cost of being what he was.

  “There!” she cried, flinging the screen door back and pushing the inner door open. “The house, for what good it’ll do you!”

  He rolled to his feet and pushed past her, headed for the tiny home’s single bathroom and shower—yanking at leather along the way, unable to fathom why the jacket wouldn’t come off.

  There she was again, fumbling at the material around his arm and tugging the jacket off. “There!” she said again, tossing it aside, beyond any comprehension—patronizing the clearly crazy man.

  And wasn’t she just so very right...

  He stumbled, clinging to a wall—smearing blood along the length of it even as he went after his shirt. Mindless, instinctive—thinking of nothing more than cold water on flames and only dimly realizing that she’d helped with the jacket, gloves and then the shirt, pulling it over his head, freeing the sopping sleeve from his arm as he finally careened off the bathroom door and into the shower—cool tile against his feet, familiar faucets beneath his hands, cold water cranked all the way up.

  Only when she cried out in dismay did he realize she’d come that far, had probably kept him from bashing his head against the tile, and had now gotten caught under the icy spray.

  Brief sanity washed over him along with the water. Fires not quenched, but no longer white hot. He came back to himself enough to watch the fresh flow of blood stain the water, dilute red swirls heading down the drain in the bright light she’d somehow switched on along the way.

  She stepped back from him, flinging back ash-blond hair gone brown and curly with water, tossing his sodden shirt into the corner of the big square shower. She snatched a towel from the wall rack and blotted her jacket and her shirt and her face, and she said tightly, “I need to use your phone. See if you can be crazy on your own for a while.”

  His breath hissed through his teeth at a rising wave of incendiary payback. No problem.

  * * *

  Natalie fled the bathroom.

  This was some other person’s night. Maybe some other person’s life, and she’d accidentally stepped into it. This wasn’t her life. Even in the worst of her past, this hadn’t been her life.

  It sure as hell wasn’t about to become it.

  She stopped short in the living room, her eyes no longer accustomed to darkness, and finally located the light switch. A strong draft of cold winter air reminded her that they’d come in hard and fast, the doors open behind them. With calm purpose, she went out to close up her car, and then returned to close the doors behind her.

  Not that she intended to stay. But she damn sure intended to use the phone before she went anywhere.

  Wet clothes had her shivering. She wrapped the towel around her neck, breathing deeply of it...calming another step. What was he even thinking, to stand under that cold water, injured and shocky and still losing blood?

  Then again, what had she been thinking, to strip a stranger down to bare gleaming chest, stained with blood and the dark scattered hair arrowing straight down his belly and who even had abs like that? In real life?

  Another deep breath and she realized quite suddenly that the towel carried his scent—that she had absorbed it without thinking. And that wasn’t right either, far too intimate—as though he had somehow invaded her space instead of the other way around.

  She pulled the towel away and dropped it on the couch.

  No good. The scent clung to her wet wool coat.

  She took a deep breath, pretending not to notice, and deliberately—slowly—flexed her sore fingers. Fist and flex. Awareness. And then, controlled and deliberate, she pulled his wallet from her flapped coat pocket and tossed it on the low table in front of the couch. She dropped the keys on top of it. Maybe he’d figure out that she’d groped his back pockets to get the wallet—with his license, name and address—and his front pockets to get the keys, and maybe she’d figure out that she’d caught that scent of him long before she’d ever gotten mixed up with his towel.

  That and the scent of blood, raw and heavy.

  She glanced around the living room—tiny, with a well-used couch and pillows lumped at one end and fallen to the floor there, a no-nonsense floor lamp within reach at the end, a small television sitting on long, low shelves of neatly filed DVDs. No phone, so she glanced down the hall—the bathroom, and one other room that had to be his bedroom. In the other direction, a tiny kitchen—appliances simple but modern, cabinets scarce but all gleaming, refinished wood, and an open pass-through to the living room...on which sat a flat, wireless phone. A few steps and it was hers.

  And still the water ran.

  * * *

  Sawyer Compton’s voice came to Natalie’s ear over the cell phone just as surrealistically as the rest of the evening. “As long as you’re all right,” he said, surprisingly solicitous. For if not a cold man, he was indeed a man with exacting expectations. A man whose business priorities had created his successes, as well as a certain personal isolation.

  A man not given to sentiment.

  So although he added a few words acknowledging issues with the architect’s address, Natalie barely absorbed them, still stumbling with the import of her own news—her fumbling words: I was attacked. A man helped me. He was hurt and I saw him home, but I’ll return as soon as possible.

  For her own little home was a large casita on the generous grounds of her employer’s property.

  Compton said, “About your new friend—” and Natalie inadvertently interrupted him. Friend. Try crazy stranger. The sound she made might have been laughter, or maybe denial—she wasn’t sure, and she bit her lip on it. Interrupting wasn’t part of her job.

  Compton let it pass. “Please convey my gratitude. If he needs medical attention, of course I’ll pay for it. And I know you’re tired...but I’d feel better if you could stay long enough to make sure he gets what help he needs.”

  She almost took the phone away from her ear to stare at it, sitcom style. Had she even called the right number? “That could take a while.”

  “Understandably. But I assume you have tomorrow’s schedule on my desk, as well as your own necessary tasks. If there’s anything flagged for the day, I’ll see that it gets done. I’m concerned for you, Natalie. I feel quite responsible.”

  She probably should have said it was all part of the job, but that wouldn’t have been the truth. Nothing in her job description included nights like this one, even with her loosely defined girl Friday duties.

  He didn’t wait for it. Wise man. “If you can, see if he’ll come by tomorrow. Anytime. There are few enough heroes in the world today. I’d like to acknowledge this one.”

  She held her breath, ever so briefly—caught up in the notion of this hero descending on the Compton estate.

  For Devin James was all raw grit...and Compton’s home was all sophisticated, lavish Southwest finery—tiles and fountains and soaring pueblo architecture, flat sloped roofs draining to canals, stout viga beams carrying the ceiling and protruding through the exterior walls, latillas ceiling accents—a home with a hundred years of history surrounded by rich bosk land and supplemented with acequias. Alfalfa still grew in its fields; elms and cottonwoods sheltered the house and lined the canals, creating layer
s of impenetrable privacy.

  One might catch a glimpse of the property from the nearest of the curving, interlaced streets in the area—or if persistent, realize that the lone mailbox at the dead-end street sat at the end of a gated footpath—but the only vehicle approach came from the canal access road itself.

  A home from another time and place, tucked away and kept away, and housing a man of such means to keep it as it was.

  “Natalie?” he said, brusque tone more familiar. “You’ll do that?”

  “Yes,” she said, if a little faintly. “I’ll try.”

  “Good. Call me if you need anything. And, Natalie—”

  “Sir?” For that’s how it was between them. Yes, sir and no, sir and on the rare occasion, I’ll do my best, sir.

  The unexpected warmth had returned. “I’m glad you weren’t hurt.”

  “Thank you,” she said, but he’d already cut the connection.

  A breathy memory pushed the edges of her mind, images crystallizing there—Devin James stalking out of the darkness, his eyes just a little bit mad, his intent written in every line of his body, anger simmering hard just below the surface no matter how calm his words. The swift efficiency of his motion in attack...the inexplicable responses to two men dead and his own blood splattering the pavement. Echoes of a night not so many years ago...

  And the fear now surfacing in his expression, just long enough for her to be sure she’d seen it before he pushed it—and her—away.

  Natalie shuddered, breaking free of that preternatural clarity of memory—and realized that the shower had gone quiet.

  And here she still stood.

  She hadn’t meant to be in his house when he climbed out of that shower, never mind standing at the edge of his kitchen with errant familiarity.

  Then again, she wasn’t sure she could have walked away. Not twice. Not without knowing he was truly all right—and not after seeing that he was so truly not.

  He came down the hall, shirtless and dripping, exposed by the overhead light—diluted blood still sheeting his arm but no longer spurting; the stab wound deep and gaping but narrow. Water sparkled across his chest and darkened the small tattoo just to the right of center; he’d gotten his shoes off but his jeans, darkened and slopping heavily against his legs, dripped a path across the flecked Berber carpet.

  He didn’t respond to her presence; he used a hand to sluice water from his face, hair scruffed into an inadvertently trendy style, and his expression—

  She flexed her fingers, remembered to breathe. Driven and haunted and striking. Nose a little strong, mouth defined, eyes...arresting, gray-blue and deep beneath dark brows. They were her first impression of him, and still the strongest—and if he’d said little so far, she felt the world was hidden behind the expression there.

  A mad, mad world.

  He found the towel on the couch and stumbled for it, scrubbing it over his chest and face and stiffening then. Inhaling.

  Realizing he hadn’t been the last one to use it.

  Then, he found her.

  “You shouldn’t—” he said, and his eyes widened slightly. He gave his head a short, sharp shake. “I can’t,” he said, and tried again, eyes going wide with the effort of it. And finally, “I won’t hurt you,” as he wrenched himself back a few steps and looked as though he could barely stop himself from doing just that.

  “You won’t,” she said, grim at that, and found the pepper spray in her pocket after all. Finally.

  He dropped the towel on the floor—stained and blood-streaked now—his eyes gone dark and wide.

  “Oh, my God,” she said, just realizing it. “You’re high. That’s why none of this makes any sense! You’re on something! Meth? I hope to hell not PCP—” If so, he’d never even feel her puny pepper spray.

  He sucked in air, let his head drop back. A man hunting for control. “Not,” he said, through gritted teeth, “drugs.” And then he looked at her once more, speaking so clearly and directly that the words hit her ears with the same preternatural clarity of those recent memories. “I won’t,” he said, “hurt you.”

  And then he dropped to his knees and clamped his arms around his head and howled the anguish of a man possessed.

  Chapter 4

  Natalie startled back, a few stumbling steps—and she ran for it. Right up against the door set at the back corner of the kitchen, fumbling at the dead bolt lock there—and taking long enough at it to have second thoughts.

  Don’t even consider it. Just do the smart thing.

  But this wasn’t a case of weighing what someone else wanted against what was best for her. He hadn’t, in fact, asked her to do a thing. He’d only asked her not to call the police.

  Everything else, her choice.

  She recalled with fearful clarity the decisive sanity of him as he’d stalked out of the darkness to take on two armed men with a pocket knife. Sword. No, pocket knife.

  What he’d done was insane, maybe.

  But he hadn’t been drugged. Wasn’t drugged. So maybe there was no point trying to understand. Maybe she should simply respond to a man in pain.

  She eased out toward the living room.

  * * *

  The blade scratched along the outside edges of Devin’s mind, gusting flames through his thoughts and his body and setting his arm purely to fire. He lost himself to that, flinging himself down the short hall and back again, a mindless creature with only a faint, frightened awareness. It’s never been like this before.

  Devin no longer wondered if his transformation would happen—if it would be necessary.

  Because it was happening now. Tonight. A first breakthrough between what he was and what he would become.

  It was easy enough to remember when his brother, Leo, had started down this road. When his forays with the blade had become less about protecting those who needed it and more about the power rush.

  Neither of them had realized what they’d stumbled over, that first night—two brothers out walking, both still in school, both nothing but average smart-ass adolescent boys, lives so damned simple, goals so damned short-term. Avoiding schoolwork, fishing the Rio Grande, out-hiking the Sandia mountain bears and earning enough money for that old junker sports car. And oh, yeah. Girls. Leo with his first worshipful steady, Devin still a painful virgin but not planning on staying that way one moment longer than necessary.

  It turned out it wasn’t the Sandia wilderness bears they had to worry about, coming off the strenuous La Luz trail at the northeast edge of Albuquerque, two cocky teens out later than they should have been.

  The man who’d jumped them...

  Hadn’t been sane. Hadn’t been hard to defeat. And if Devin hadn’t understood it then, he understood it now—that the blade had taken that man down the wild road, and he had, finally, desperately, chosen his own way out.

  And when it was over, Leo stood with the blade in his hand, and then the world changed.

  Leo had fumbled through every step of it—learning that the blade would draw him into trouble—that it demanded it. That it was happy to slake on the blood of those who needed justice.

  The brothers, however, had made their own rules. About intervening, about which moments to choose. Leo had controlled the blade.

  Until suddenly he hadn’t. Until those he gathered around him had dark hearts, and Devin’s voice got lost in the manly posturing and chest-beating and hunting, Leo’s expression wild and haunted and never quite present.

  One day Leo had gone for innocent blood—God, the luck of it, for that damned punk to come bouncing off the two of them in that dark alley—and when Devin had tried to stop him, Leo had gone for him.

  But Devin had known the blade, too. And he had known Leo.

  Even if that hadn’t really been Leo any longer.

  Brother dead in the alley...brother gone to the hungry blade. The slap of metal against flesh as the blade came to him, claiming him...bonding with him.

  “Stop,” she said, a voice so distant to his
awareness that it barely echoed through to him—a hand on his arm. A curse. Damn, you’re hot. A hand withdrawn...in retreat.

  But more words, murmured, as she returned—and this time slapped wet, cold material over his shoulders. The towel, dripping heavily.

  Cooling. Barely breaking through, but—

  There. A moment of reality. Her hand on his arm, her hand at his face. Her voice, fully realized. “Better?”

  He nodded, if barely. Flames curled instantly around his thoughts, reclaiming him.

  “No!” she said, and tugged the towel tighter against the back of his neck, all pale blue eyes and curving mouth, chin set stubbornly. “I saw you in there! Don’t leave—”

  He grabbed her hands—fine bone and slender fingers, soft skin...a reality to counter his own. But fear flickered in her eyes and he drew a ragged breath and released her, this woman who knew nothing of him. “I won’t hurt you,” he said—said again?—voice rough in his throat.

  She looked at her liberated hands, and then reached again for his. “Okay,” she said. “Hang on to me, then.”

  Too late, though, with the fire licking around his thoughts, curling up to consume them. “Too late,” he said out loud, and gave himself up to it, a mindless thing flinging himself down the hall and back again, down the hall and back again, outrunning that which he carried inside.

  But he no longer walked alone.

  * * *

  Natalie woke with a crick in her neck and an ache in her ribs. When she dislodged the lumpy pillow beneath her, she found bruises and little shooting paybacks of pain laced throughout her body, her hands sore and scraped.

  Because...right. The night before. The strange, strange night before. Hard to believe it had happened at all.

  Hard to believe it was still happening.

  Because the pillow in her hand wasn’t hers. The couch on which she’d folded her body wasn’t hers. Her eyes snapped open, confirming it; the ceiling over her head wasn’t the least bit hers.

  The rest of the house settled in silence—an early morning kind of silence, when the rest of the world hadn’t quite woken yet, either, and the cold blanketed the ground—a January cold, forever promising desert snow and never quite delivering it. The furnace kicked on, but Natalie knew better than to hope for any true heat. She’d turned the thermostat down on an inspiration, and when it seemed to help, that’s where it had stayed.