Gwen let her breath out, resting her hand on his back, soaked pink bandage and all. Feeling the tension still living there under soaked cotton—and realizing anew how wet she was, too. She glanced down at herself; it might have been a mistake.
Wet, and more than a little see-through.
She thought she’d just stay here behind him. And maybe he read her mind, or maybe she just distracted him, for he did what she thought he would never have done without her interference...he turned his back on the men, blocking her from their view...protecting her.
She knew instantly from their faces—it had been a mistake. “No!” cried one of them. “You do not turn your back—” his movement created a strange punctuation in emphasis “—on...us.”
Mac shoved her—shoved her hard. He ducked and threw himself to the side as she went down with a cry, skinning palms and shooting pain through her injured hand; the baseball bat slammed down on the table with the resounding clang of weighted metal against wood. Gwen twisted wildly, scrabbling away even as she tried to orient—untangling the visuals of three men in the eerie post-storm glitter of water and oblique new sunlight.
Two men with bats.
No. Mac with the Iroquois war club, meeting the man’s next blow with swift power—sending the bat flying, slipping away from the slashing knife, whirling around to slam the man in the ribs with a blow that had to be pulled, its potential metered into just enough so the man ended up on the ground not far from Gwen.
Not far at all.
He pressed against the ground, lifting his head...finding her. She didn’t need the warning cry of old instincts—and she didn’t need Mac’s help. She popped him one, right in the nose, and when he fell back on his shoulder, she lashed out with her sandaled toes pointed and fierce.
By the time she scrambled to her feet, he had one hand over his nose and one over his crotch, and the flare of warning had faded to nothing but adrenaline aftermath.
She found his knife not far away; she acquired it.
When she stood, brushing herself off—a futile gesture for one who was now covered in sandy clay mud and wetness—she realized she’d closed Mac out entirely. And when she looked at him, she realized what a mistake that had been.
Or maybe not. She probably wouldn’t have been able to function at all had she not kept to herself.
Because now the club was a saber, sweeping and sharp with the faintly unearthly sheen of light running along its edge. And now the single man still upright stood frozen, his irrational anger—a mob mentality gone so badly wrong with only two mob members—now utterly dissipated in the face of Mac’s own lost sanity.
Not to mention the sword.
If the man ran, he’d die. If he blinked, he’d die. If he didn’t run...
Maybe he’d die then, too.
Gwen didn’t dare even say Mac’s name. Not so much as a soothing sound. Not the way he trembled on the edge of explosive violence.
In desperation, she returned to the calm.
Oh, it wasn’t easy—not with her own adrenaline reaction zinging along her nerves. But she’d found it before—a subtle, budding confidence in not just the pendant, but also in the way her life was coming together. The way some things suddenly had meaning. What she’d experienced as a child, what she’d grown to in the aftermath. How the wound from her father’s blade had left its indelible impression, the gift of warning she had taken half a lifetime to master.
So from the inside out, she touched him. Just a whisper. But a confident whisper, growing with the understanding of what she could do.
His awareness came in the merest shift of his shoulder; the blade’s awareness came in a slap of annoyance. Gwen stiffened—found herself offended as much as hurt by it. Screw you. You can’t have him.
She went back for more. Just enough to let him regain his own grasp of himself—buffering, calming. The blade snapped at her again, a sharp sting of retribution; she pushed past it, lifting her gaze to that of the man who stood frozen in wise fear before them. “You know,” she said, “we really were happy to share.” She hadn’t expected to see the flicker of acknowledgment on his face—or the regret.
She dared to rest her hand on Mac’s back. “I think it’s safe. Go while you can.”
The man didn’t hesitate. First things first—he squirted out of range, squelching audibly; only then did he circle around for his friend. By then Gwen could feel Mac breathing more deeply under her hand; she dared to do more than touch him, rubbing a gentle circle over his back.
The man scooped up their baseball gloves—the bat was a lost cause, deeply dented even at a glance—and pulled his friend up, that latter still trying to choose between stanching his nosebleed and comforting his privates. The man caught Gwen’s eye, and he was, suddenly, what she’d seen upon their arrival—a well-presented guy out for a session of fielding balls in the park with his friend. “Resentment builds,” he said, “but you didn’t deserve... I don’t know—”
Gwen shook her head. “It was on the wind,” she said, the only one of the two of them who knew the near-literal truth of it. “It’s in the city. We fought it together, in a way.” And then she made a face, a wince, and said, “I hope I didn’t break his nose.”
“Better that,” the man said, “than the other.”
Gwen couldn’t argue with that.
Or with the deep release of a breath that Mac let go as they left, easing back his ready stance. He looked down at his hand; the blade settled into the Barstow—still flipped open, keen and wicked and gleaming. “That was too close.”
“In all ways,” Gwen told him, seeing the self-retribution dark in his eyes. “They made their choice, too. What if you hadn’t had the blade? How do you think things would have gone for us, your basic average couple sheltering from the rain?”
He cast a startled look at her, still easing down from his alert—she knew that, too, from the faint echo of the blade’s turmoil. “Chivalry compels me to mention that you could never be basic average.”
How silly was it to feel a little leap of pleasure at those words, here in the middle of what must now be the world’s most hostile park, hair and clothes still dripping and the driving culprit of a storm still lumbering along the shoulders of the Sandias?
“Ooh,” she said. “I have to stop everything and preen for a moment.” But not too much of a moment. She glanced across the landscaping to the parking lot, a narrow strip edged by a curving cemented arroyo on the far side. The Jeep sat gleaming next to her little Bug. “I really think I’d like to call—”
He made a strange sound, a kick-in-the-gut noise. She didn’t have to ask why; she felt it. Even as she grabbed at him, slowing his descent to the concrete, she understood exactly where that slashing pain came from and why.
The blade, having its temper tantrum. It had wanted blood and fear; they’d stopped it. And now Mac was pale and stricken, his mouth tight—yet shaking his head. “It’ll pass,” he said, barely managing the words. “It’ll— Damn—”
“Stupid blade!” Gwen found herself in a fury. “Worse than a two-year-old!” She glared down at it. “I’d kick you if I could!”
And couldn’t she?
Until now, when she’d reached out, it had been to Mac. Her desire to protect him and the unconscious results, then her deliberate attempts to soothe him, to offer him just enough space that he could catch his own emotional and physical breath.
This time, she didn’t go for Mac. She looked for something other. Blindly groping, no idea what she was looking for other than what it wasn’t. She slipped into that head space quickly enough to be frightening, successfully enough so she didn’t have time to think about it. She found herself in Mac’s muffled pain, slicing claws of temper and retribution...human pain and human struggle and the deep, rich presence underlying the very essence of the man beside her.
But there. Oh, there. The stench of super-heated metal and acrid charcoal and singed flesh. That wasn’t Mac. Or human.
I see yo
u, she told it. And, on impulse, Who are you? What’s your name?
Learning Demardel’s name had changed things for her. If this blade had a name...maybe it would change things for Mac.
But the blade lashed out at her, filled with fury and...fear. The strike raked through Mac on its way to her, twisting the rich essence she’d only just found and wrenching a cry from him.
Me. I did that. I’m doing that to him!
She fled from it. Found herself clutching him, found him clutching her back, both of them panting and astonished.
And the blade fled, too. Shocked and quiet. Not as before, when the pendant had shut it down, but simply hiding.
For the moment.
Mac, his eyes still wide and wary, said, “What the hell did you do?”
She shook her head, suddenly overwhelmed by it all.
I am nine years old, and my life will never be the same...
My father had a demon blade. He found this pendant. He gave it to me for safekeeping so he could finish his hunting—for those who killed my mother, for those like her. But he waited too long, and he was about to lose his fight with the blade, so he came after it...and me.
He wounded me. He left me with the pendant and a healed-in sixth sense about those who would hurt me. Or hurt others. And now the pendant has brought me to this place, this time, this man...
I am twenty-seven years old, and my life will never be the same.
Mac rolled to his knees, to his feet. “What?” he demanded.
“I want to call them,” Gwen blurted, climbing to her feet beside him. “I don’t want to make the same mistakes my father made. I want to know what’s going on!”
She didn’t have to define who she meant. Mac bit back his snap of a response, a visible effort. He closed his eyes and took a breath and she couldn’t help but be amazed even at that, that he could think at all.
But in the end, he shook his head.
“Don’t you understand?” She barely stopped herself from shouting it at him. “I felt it! I scared it! If Natalie’s found any more information, maybe it’s enough. Maybe I can free you from this thing!”
Free us from this thing.
But she didn’t say it out loud, because it felt presumptuous. Three days of absurd intensity, of an astonishing physical connection and sexual release—maybe that was all it would ever be. She could free herself simply by walking away.
Except she’d felt that deep essence, and she’d tasted that rich, solid, amazing presence that made the core of him.
She knew what stood before her, and what it meant to her.
Mac, however, was not in mind-reading mode. Mac only shook his head. “This blade is the only chance we have to stop that man.”
That man. It had started as something of a joke, to refer to him that way. Now it was second nature, and suddenly so startingly unreal. “No,” she said. “No, it’s not. We don’t have to do this by ourselves. My father tried to do it by himself, and look where it got him! Look where it got me!”
He astonished her with the instant fierce tenderness of his response—stepping in to hold her close and tight, to sweep her up, two damp, hurting people under storm-racked skies. She was just as surprised at how tightly she returned the embrace.
“Where it got you,” he murmured into her ear, “is right here. And I’d have been lost days ago without you.”
She rebelled against that, stiffening in his arms. “Don’t say that. It’s not true. You’re stronger than that. I’ve felt it.”
“Stronger,” he agreed. “But tired. And I had no idea it would react like that.” He pulled back, touched his forehead to hers, and closed his eyes, taking a deep breath. “Now I do. And you’re right. I can’t do it alone. So make your call.”
Chapter 16
Devin James paced before the expansive office windows, scowling out at the grounds of the estate. A warm plate from the kitchen sat untouched on the corner desk; Anheriel sat in his pocket. It purred, if a knife could be said to purr.
That was the thing, wasn’t it? Not truly just a knife at all. A demon blade, and fully aware of the rising turmoil in the city. Not only that, but fully anticipating the part it would play.
Anheriel would drink deeply this day, Devin had no doubt.
Natalie stood by the worktable, its broad surface covered with papers, copies, notes, and several of the most fragile books from the blade room. She also had a plate—fruit and yogurt parfait, a special treat from Jimena, the estate’s cook, who had been through hell with them not so long ago and who now split her time between the estate and Sawyer’s new Alley of Life Restaurant project.
Sawyer Compton had had ulterior motives for that one, using it as a front for his own nefarious deeds—but the idea itself had been too good to lose, and Natalie had kept it alive even as she researched their blades.
And now, Demardel.
“Okay,” Natalie muttered. “She’s obviously activated the thing, whether she’s gotten it to reach its full potential or not. I can find mention of the blood, and earthy stuff like sex never hurts.”
“Sex never hurts,” Devin agreed. “You’re sure they—” He fielded a look from her and subsided. “Okay, yeah. Sex never hurts.”
“I just can’t tell if it matters that she didn’t know its name. Names are such a big deal with these...” She hesitated, looking down at the blade on the worktable—it had turned itself into a delicate surgeon’s instrument once she started using it to slice up photocopies.
Devin had the suspicion it was amused.
Natalie had apparently made up her mind to avoid making up her mind. “Entities. Names are such a big deal with these entities.”
It was closer than Devin had ever gotten to defining the complex nature of the blades. Fallen beings, seeking redemption, incorporated into metal, forged into weapons from which they could both influence and act. “It may be enough,” he told her. “Look how long I handled Anheriel before even knowing it had a name. I didn’t get the impression our new friend knows his blade, either.”
“Michael MacKenzie.”
“Yeah, yeah. Mac.” Not that he hadn’t known it. He just hadn’t liked the fact that he had a reason to know. “Do you think it matters? I don’t see this guy ditching the blade. Didn’t seem like the type.”
She looked up from the notes she’d just made. “Do you even hear yourself? Two days ago you wanted to take him down. Now he’s a good guy?”
“Didn’t seem like the type doesn’t necessarily lead to good things.” Devin resumed his prowl along the window wall. “I’m completely secure in my consistency.”
“Uh-huh.” Natalie shot him amusement and let it stand, but she sobered quickly enough. “Why it matters is that we really don’t want them to sever that bond right now. Things are too unsettled—we still don’t understand what’s going on out there. We don’t need a loose blade in the middle of it, or a brand-new wielder dealing with it all.”
“We don’t need this guy attached to the blade if he’s about to hit the wild road, either.”
She didn’t respond right away. She’d been there when this guy had made it through the late morning battle with the blade; she better than anyone knew how close he was. Finally she said, “I hope he can do it. I think we need him.”
Devin sent another scowl out to the grounds, proxy for the entire city and its turmoil. “I wish I could disagree. Whoever’s out there...he’s got power.”
“As well he should, if we’re right about how old he is and how long he’s been with his blade.” Natalie set her pen aside as her cell phone rang, reaching for it with an alacrity that told Devin how much she’d hoped to hear it ring.
“Natalie,” she said, straightening—startled. “Oh. Mac. Nice to, um, meet you.” She drifted closer to Devin; he could hear the deep timbre of another man’s voice. “Well, we’ve figured out some of it. Not the medallion—no more than I gave Gwen earlier. But the thing we’re up against—” A nod, a glance at Devin. “Yes. Old. Creepy.
Powerful. That about sums it up. Hold on a moment.” She moved the phone away from her face, but not so much that Mac wouldn’t still be able to hear her. “They’re in the city—Kirtland Park near the airport. They can use some backup.”
Devin took a breath. This added up to so many places he hadn’t wanted to go.
But so far Natalie had been one step ahead of him on this one...her research brains over his gut instinct to protect this turf. So he nodded. “I’m good with that. It’ll be about half an hour before I—”
Anheriel grabbed his inner ear, clutching at his thoughts, whispering of violence and blood and sated thirst, reflecting a gleeful dark and roiling power—one that reached into the very roots of this city. One that poured through its people in footprints of violence.
Devin shook himself out of it and found Natalie gone pale—feeling something of the same, if never yet quite as directly. She pulled the phone back to her ear. “Mac? Are you still—yes! We’re coming!”
By the time she flipped the phone closed and snatched up Baitlia, he knew well enough what had happened.
And that they’d be too late.
* * *
Mac dropped the phone into the Jeep’s front seat. Not panicked, not hasty...but deliberate. Stepping away from the car, putting himself between Gwen and the van just now pulling into the parking lot.
Its passengers disembarked with the air of those exiting a limousine. The driver didn’t wear a uniform and cap, but managed to give the impression of it in slacks and a snug polo shirt. The same height as Mac and his six-feet-plus-change...a good fifty pounds beefier.
Not that it mattered. Mac didn’t intend to get close enough to bring that muscle into play. And he suspected the man in the limo didn’t intend for things to go that way, either. Otherwise, the guns each of the several disembarking men carried would surely be in stark evidence instead of implied threat.
The driver opened the van’s sliding door and stepped aside, and a man stepped out.
That man.
Mac didn’t have a moment’s doubt. Not even though the man’s appearance surprised him—not a big man, not even a particularly imposing man. Moderately dressed in department store slacks and shirt, his hair a thinning, washed-out brown in a bland style, he stood beside the van and regarded them with a somewhat amused and proprietary air.
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