Demon Touch

by Doranna Durgin

  He cast a startled look over his shoulder at the double entendre, quickly turned narrow-eyed and meaningful. "Don't tempt me."

  She joined him at the door, peering out into that tree-lined street—great overarching maples, straighter ash…shadows and dappled silent and silence, even the dog hushed for now. He nodded and they moved out quickly, heading for the Magna at a jog. She stepped off the curb to settle into place as though she and the bike were of long acquaintance, finding the foot pegs and wrapping her knees around his hips, so comfortably familiar after this past night.

  By then he had passed back the helmet, hit the ignition, thumbed the starter, and shifted the bike from the kickstand. He glanced over his shoulder; she answered him with a squeeze of her hands at his waist, settling in against the square padded back rest.

  She thought she'd remembered the bike's profound acceleration capabilities from the night before.

  She was wrong.

  She clamped her hands tight; she clamped her legs tight. Then she panicked and thought it was the wrong thing to do to a man controlling this beast, and she tried clutching the coat instead, and then she realized he'd done fine with her the night before and knew well how to handle the bike—

  And only then did she feel the sudden striking heat of the demon blade between them—feeling his reaction, his tension, realizing how his posture had changed—that he was looking—

  She almost didn't hear the shot.

  He jerked, a blow she felt through her own body. The bike wobbled. It straightened, barely…heading for the side of the road, hardly slowing. No curb there, just right onto the grass, bogging down just enough so when the tire slammed the edge of a massive maple, it didn't crumple or shatter or flip.

  Deb flipped right off the back, skidding across the grass…rolling to a stop. "Alex!"

  She thought she'd screamed it, but even as she regained her sense of up and down, finding the bike and finding him half-pinned beneath it, she could do nothing but stare stupidly at him, air whooping back into her lungs only after an agonizing delay. "Alex," she said, and it came out as a croak.

  How still he was, how crumpled…his arms flung out in rag-doll fashion, his body twisted around his trapped leg.

  So fast. It had happened so fast.

  She barely registered the crunch of tires at the edge of the lawn, or the slam of a car door. Only belatedly did she hear the footsteps coming up close.

  "Stupid bitch."

  She closed her eyes, acknowledging the defeat—her fingers digging into the sod as if it could anchor her there forever.

  "You are done screwing with my life."

  The irony of that forced a cough of a laugh from her.

  He toed her with his booted foot. "I bet you thought you were safe. But you made a helluva mistake." He grabbed her by fisting the coat between her shoulders and hauled her to her feet; the coat cut cruelly under her arms. She wasn't solid enough to stand; he let her hang there, jerking the motorcycle helmet from her head and throwing it aside. "It turns out that particular bastard already made himself some enemies." He nodded at the man beside him. "And you know the great thing about a one-bar town? You find all the right people there."

  The man scowling at her looked not much different from the one who'd trashed the store. White, beefy, light brown hair shorn tight, T-shirt stretching over beefy muscle. "You talk too much," he said shortly, his gaze flickering to Gary. "Get her out of here. I'll take care of him."

  Gary grabbed Deb's hair, threading his fingers through at the nape…twisting. She cried out as her head cranked back—a sharp and painful angle. But still she tried to see the tree, the motorcycle…Alex.

  "What's going on out there? I'm calling the police!" an elderly voice cried out; a door slammed.

  The local guy hesitated—frustrated, cursing.

  "Screw Donnally," said Gary. "Hell, he's probably dead already. And I have what he wants, so if he's alive…let him have nightmares about what I'm doing to her. You can pick him off whenever you want to."

  A glance in the direction of the voice and slammed door, and the local guy made up his mind. "Let's get the hell out of here."

  Alex—!

  Alex clawed his way out of darkness and pain, the knife hot at his back, the fiery burn of a hasty healing turned to a coal in his side, a warm flow of blood turning clammy cold on his shirt. The Magna bore down on his leg, pinning it with a certainty.

  Shot. He'd been shot. And if he'd been shot, that meant—

  He forced his eyes open, lifted his head…found what he most feared to find.

  Deb, tears streaming down her cheeks, bloody nose and cheek and fat lip. Not so far from him, but completely, undeniably out of reach.

  And in the hands of the man who had once thought to control her, and who'd come back to claim her. The wrenching angle of her head, the twisted nature of her arms…said it all. The anguished and silent word forming on her lips. Alex—

  Beside that, the presence of the only remaining local drug dealer was inconsequential—except that it told him everything.

  Not surprising that these two had found each other in this small town…or that they had acted on their coinciding needs.

  But if it hadn't been for the blade—for Alex and his blade-driven crusade—Deb would still be safe. Hidden away at her job at the car parts store, living her new life.

  Instead of turning into collateral damage.

  Hell, no!

  He reached for the blade.

  Didn't matter that it was a small thing; it threw well and deep. Didn't matter the awkward position; he'd thrown from worse. If he threw with heart, he'd hit the target, no matter the sneer on the man's face at the sight of the small Sgian Dubh.

  Gary's sneer turned to uncertainty as the dealer pulled a Glock from his waistband. "Don't tie me to this, man—not right out in the open."

  "Not leaving him alive," the dealer said. "Go, then."

  Gary didn't need to be told twice.

  Neither did Alex.

  The dealer stepped aside, raising his gun in a parodied gangsta grip. Gary jerked Deb around, giving the dealer one last annoyed look—and startling back as Deb came alive.

  "I won't!" she cried, struggling in his hold. "Alex! Alex, no, don't—Alex!"

  Gary backhanded her. He probably expected her to crumple, as she likely had so many times before.

  "No!" she shrieked, kicking out at him, flailing at his face with clawed hands. "I'm—done—running!"

  Gary twisted Deb's hair back, so cruelly—taking her down to her knees. Leaving himself fully exposed.

  Hell, yes!

  Alex took the moment.

  So did the dealer.

  The blade flew true.

  So did the bullet.

  Gary went down, astonishment etching into his final expression, the blade thrusting deep in a suddenly elongated spear still flashing stark white lightning with the change.

  Alex jerked with the impact of the bullet, a deep wrongness flaring in his chest. There was no burn of the blade…no healing. Only the sudden awareness that he could no longer catch his already labored breath, that the back of his throat filled with salt and copper. Through the struggle to focus, he found Deb fallen but free, flipping her disheveled hair back to find herself next to not Gary's body, but the melting remnants of it…and then only a small blade alone, lying naked in the clean grass.

  The dealer didn't even look back at her—hadn't yet realized that Gary no longer existed in any sense. He stepped close to Alex, his lip curled—the gun raising again, far too point-blank to do anything but finish a job well-started.

  Alex spat blood, sucked in the next harsh breath, and glared back.

  Deb made an atavistic noise, the snarl of a warrior. She snatched up the knife and skidded it across the lawn, slick metal on short grass—it found his hand, as it always did, a gleaming flash of changing metal—ultra light, ultra balanced, whippy and extended.

  Alex slashed the baton across the dealer's sh
ins; brought it back as the man fell, hands outstretched and a curse on his lips.

  When it came down again, it was sharp glimmering blade, preternaturally sharp metal that didn't so much as hesitate before cleaving flesh and striking ground.

  "Alex!" Tear-streaked and bloodied, Deb flung herself across the lawn, never quite making it to her feet before she reached him—clutching his shoulders, jerking the leather jacket back to find round holes and welling blood—touching his face, kissing his brow.

  Alex coughed, a deep and tearing sound, full of froth and copper. He fell back against her lap and the sky turned gray and then dark, and her tears fell on his face.

  But the blade rested in his hand, and it sang softly of sweet lingering kiss and summer night and touching hands, and he smiled as that darkness fell.

  Chapter 7

  "They can't stop talking about how well you healed." Deb set a lunch tray beside Alex's bed, balancing it on two stacked, packed boxes neatly labeled in her hand: Knick-knacks. Donation.

  She'd been clearing out what she'd made of her life here. "Would have been faster on my own from the start," Alex said, eyeing the sandwich. He was hungry. Always hungry, since he'd come home from the hospital and the blade had begun the healing in earnest, able to work unfettered without raising questions.

  There were plenty of those questions already left unanswered. A random drive-by shooting with two abandoned vehicles parked nearby, the owners of which weren't to be found…the cops weren't quite buying it. But with no evidence besides the disgruntled word of an elderly man who'd never done more than shout out the door at an unseen ruckus, they'd finally left it alone.

  "Grand Canyon for me," she said, spreading a napkin in his lap—so very familiar with his body, so very much at home as she sat on the bed beside him. "And then Albuquerque for you. But still no particular reason for heading that way?"

  "Second thoughts?" he asked, suddenly not hungry at all.

  Not that he'd blame her. It was the blade, nudging him toward the southwest…tugging him. More than just the usual. But she'd been ready to leave Ohio behind—ready to run toward something now that she no longer had anything to run from.

  Ready to start something new…in Albuquerque.

  "Mmm," she said, and shook her head. "Not in the least." Her own bruises were long healed, her hair clipped back at the sides and swinging free, her expression relaxed. "I seem to recall seeing one or two could be, should be's that we haven't actually experienced yet. That knife of yours might not make the future, but it's damned good at nudging it around."

  "Blade," he murmured, a glance at the bedside table where it lay, unprepossessing and silent. "Demon blade."

  She frowned, a slight gathering between her brows. "You should have thrown that blade at the dealer, not at Gary."

  He wasn't surprised at her words. He suspected it lay behind many of the small and thoughtful frowns he'd intercepted since the ambulance had deposited him in E.R. and the doctors had begun to speculate why he wasn't already dead. "Then Gary would still have had you, and I couldn't have stopped him."

  "But you could have died! Should have died!”

  Memories mixed with the lingering touch of the blade in his mind. On the motorcycle, Deb wrapped around him, the quiet rural street unfolding before him, the blade's sudden warning…

  Could have been. Deb, her neck broken, hanging limp from Gary's grip. Alex, simply broken. Would have been. Death clutching them, the dealer with a newly acquired blade in his hand…

  "There are worse things than could have died. Being in this world without you…that's one of them."

  "Couldn't…shouldn't…wouldn't," she said, and wrapped herself around him.

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  ISBN: 978-1-4268-3408-0

  Demon Touch

  Copyright © 2011 by Doranna Durgin

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  Índice

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Copyright