Claimed by the Demon (Harlequin Nocturne)

by Doranna Durgin

  —wail fury desperation kill you kill her no no no—

  The stucco wall of the gas station grated against his skin, lifted the back of his shirt as he slid, legs no longer holding him—but Gwen was right there keeping him from falling outright.

  Gone.

  It was gone.

  The tarry darkness, the blade’s fear, its fury. Light flickered within and became soothing dapples, and Mac gulped air—a gasp profound enough to be his very first breath. He found himself sitting on his heels, his back still to the stucco, an unexpected crouch.

  And still he held Gwen’s arm. She knelt before him, and her eyes sparked determination, a bold light blue in a freckled surround. One hand pressed up against his chest, there where the unbuttoned henley gapped to show skin; one hand clutched the pendant that fell just below the notch of her collarbones. “Mac,” she said, and only then did he hear the fear lurking behind the determination.

  What did you do? He meant to say it out loud, but his breath hitched on new realization.

  The blade was gone.

  Oh, still in his pocket. Still warm with fury.

  But not in his mind.

  Not feeding him trickles of feelings, of emotions that weren’t his. Not ramping up what he might otherwise feel himself with what it wanted him to seek out and enhance.

  Just him. Michael MacKenzie, free and clear.

  And realizing, just as suddenly, how much he still wanted this woman. All on his own, without trickles of stolen feelings or ramped-up reactions. How he was still entranced by the spark of her, the life of her. Still beguiled by the heart-shaped face, the barely there cleft in her chin, the way her eyebrows lifted as she looked at him now.

  Relief flooded in to replace the startled emptiness. The blade had screwed with his head, but it hadn’t replaced what he was.

  Not yet.

  And for whatever reason, he had this moment. Freed, he found himself with no restraint at all. He pulled her between his knees with hands both gentled and intractable, watching her eyes widen as he guided her right up to meet his mouth, his hands sliding up her arms to cup her head, losing himself in the inexplicable luxury of just being himself.

  Of being them.

  Oh, hell yes, he kissed her.

  Her hand crept to the back of his neck, fingers against damp skin, and oh, hell yes, she kissed him back.

  Until her breathing quickened and she made the smallest of sounds deep in her throat, and he realized where he was and who he was and that he no longer trusted himself to know what was truly real and what wasn’t—or that he’d know when he crossed the line.

  And so he ran his thumbs along her jaw, there where the skin was so soft, and he managed to pull away from her. And then he would have said I’m sorry, but those words never made it to the surface, either.

  Instead, he looked at eyes gone big and cheeks gone flushed and lips gone from striking to stunning, and he realized out loud, voice tinged with surprise, “You knew I was going to do that.”

  She laughed, as small and shaky as it was. “The look on your face?” She smiled, just a little one, self-aware and amused at them both. “I for sure knew you were going to do that.” Then she tossed her head, a token motion. “Do you think,” she said, “we could get back to the hotel without more of—” and she removed her hand from the back of his neck to wave it expansively around them “—this?”

  He couldn’t help the faint self-deprecating smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “I don’t know,” he told her. “I’m used to looking for it, not running from it.”

  “It hardly seems necessary to look.” She eased back from him, her hand lingering at the open neck of his shirt, and glanced around—checking to see if they’d made a spectacle of themselves, he thought, though he’d sought this place for its relative privacy when the darkness had struck him. “Is it always like this for you?”

  He shook his head and took the liberty of tucking a stray curl back behind her ear, the red of it glinting through. One knee lowered to the ground, stabilizing them both. “No. Not like this.” He shook his head, closing his eyes to breathe deeply. Even the air felt clearer. “What did you do?”

  She looked at the spot where her hand rested against his skin; her other hand crept back to the pendant. He’d seen that, he remembered...vaguely. But then she looked away. “You’re just going to laugh.”

  “It doesn’t seem the time.” His hand slid under her elbow; he stood, lifting her along with him—and realized then how deliberately she did it. Kept her hand on his chest. “You—”

  She nodded. “I don’t understand. I don’t think I want to. But I think...” She lifted the pendant, the faintest of gestures, and shrugged.

  He looked at the pendant, there in her hand—a small hand, with freckles dusting the knuckles and pale pink, chipping polish on her nails—and his eyes narrowed. “We need to talk.”

  “So you said.” Some of her normal asperity returned. “But we haven’t, have we? And I don’t think I’m going to make it very far walking like this.” She glanced at their connection again.

  “Sooner or later,” he said, and before either of them could think about it, he stepped aside from her, cleanly breaking the contact.

  —fury indignation retribution strikestrikestrike!—

  The blade lashed out at him, striking hard—burning an incandescent punishment through the soul of him. He choked on it and stiffened, and his eyes rolled back and his jaw spasmed shut, teeth catching skin; his head jerked back. He clung to the strength of clarity and freedom, so long denied, and he forced his head back down and he forced his eyes open and he gritted out, “Fuck you,” through those clenched teeth.

  And Gwen, watching him with worried eyes, expressive brows drawn, seemed to understand perfectly that he wasn’t talking to her.

  The blade sent a final spear of flame roiling along his bones and faded into a sulk.

  Okay then.

  Mac took a deep breath, settled himself into balance, and leaned away from Gwen to spit blood. “Dammit,” he said, probing the cut with his tongue. “That really hurts.”

  Gwen laughed—just a little too freely, driven by evident relief. “Baby,” she told him. “Men just can’t deal with pain.” And while he got stuck on that, bemused and trying to reconcile it with his life and especially with his life in the past twenty-four hours, she cast him a devilish look and caught him completely by surprise, whirling to sprint a few playful steps away—and disappointed when he just grinned instead of taking her up on it. “Poke,” she said, in case he hadn’t gotten it. “Now you try to poke me back. Maybe tickle me. At least try to put your hands on me.”

  He bent to scoop up her cup of crushed ice from where she’d placed it against the side of the building and waggled it at her. “Maybe I thought I could lure you back into range.”

  Her expression fell. “Oh, damn. Strategic error.” She hesitated, hovering between options. “I really, really want that. I deserve it. I stopped that...that...whatever was happening.”

  He grinned and held the cup outstretched, a peace offering. “Yeah,” he said. “You really, really deserve it. Let’s see if we can make it back to the hotel before it’s gone. I hear there’s a good diner just up the block, and on a day like today...well, let’s just say I need to get my hands on some food.”

  “I’ve heard about that diner, too,” she said, deadpan, and came back to get the cup. She was taken by surprise when he made a lightning-swift grab once it was in her hand, pulling her in close, holding her—just for a moment, just to do it and to feel her against him. To see the delighted surprise in her eyes.

  To pretend, somehow, that the blade’s little spill of emotions no longer trickled through his mind and body, but that he was still free.

  * * *

  Gwen took a long pull on the straw, letting cold cherry flavor slide down her throat and striding along the sidewalk with a guy she suddenly seemed to know. Someone with whom in the past twenty-four hours she’d shar
ed a rumble, a mugging, a protest-turned-to-hate crime, and a hate crime turned to failure. Not to mention whatever strange and painful event had preceded quite a wonderful kiss.

  “You’re blushing,” he said, not breaking stride.

  “I am not!”

  But of course she was. And smiling to herself, too.

  Complete absurdity. Twenty-four hours, a little action, a little weirdly mystical woo-woo...that’s what it took to make a girl happy? With wallet gone, car broken into, life askew?

  Maybe so.

  They took the long way around on the way back, looping around the park in a route that avoided the pagans, protestors, and police. They cut away from the stark white concrete of the artificial arroyo, and through the luxury of the grassy park, and past the midday heat of the basketball courts. And then, in a cluster of trees, he stopped her, catching her with the straw in her mouth.

  She let it slip away from between her lips as he turned her to face him, stepping up close and running his fingers gently over the sides of her head. Petting her. Watching her.

  Damned sweet.

  Couldn’t have that.

  “What makes you think you can just touch me as you please?” she demanded, one hand on her hip and her head cocked back.

  “Mmm,” he said, not considering his response for very long. “Because I want to.”

  She gave him a squinty look that should have made him think twice.

  Instead, he said, quite seriously, “Because now I know what’s real.” And then he turned away from her, hands jammed into his back pockets.

  Somewhere on that tightly muscled body, he’d hidden a Bowie knife.

  Right.

  He said, “Talk to me, Gwen. What is that thing? Where did you get it?”

  The sudden chill down her back had nothing to do with the final slurp of crushed ice she’d just taken.

  He looked back over his shoulder, an oblique and mostly hidden gaze. “Because I think that’s how we’ve ended up in this together. You and me and whatever’s going on here.”

  She didn’t answer; couldn’t. Not just like that. She walked the stretch of open grass to the nearest trash container, tossed the cup away...and then just stood there.

  I am nine years old, and my daddy just tried to kill me.

  He didn’t mean it. It wasn’t really him at all. Not with that wild look in his eye, the pure insanity etched across his face.

  He wants the pendant. The one he gave me and told me to care for, always. But even as he wants it, he doesn’t.

  Or else, something in him doesn’t.

  I am locked in the bathroom, bleeding. I have never seen so much blood. I have never seen the tender skin of my stomach cut so deeply. I have never seen anything cut so deeply.

  Even through the worst of it, I never thought my daddy would hurt me.

  He slams against the door. “I’m sorry, baby!” he cries and sounds like he means it. “I’m so sorry! I thought I could do this!” And slams against the door again. “Run, baby, run! Please run!”

  And I am small enough to slip through the window, blood and all. But I am old enough to tell the neighbors that my daddy isn’t home, that I fell on glass.

  And I am young enough to cry the whole time.

  I never see my daddy again.

  “Gwen.” Mac’s voice, but he hadn’t come any closer. He waited in the shade, giving her the option to return.

  Still cold from the inside out, she did. Slowly. And returned to him—coming around front to face him square but lifting her chin to warn him off when he would have lightly touched her arm.

  She didn’t want to be touched just now.

  “I probably can’t even tell you what you want to know,” she said. “But then, I’m not sure, am I? Just how what fits together with what? Because what have you told me?” One more defiant attempt to pretend it all didn’t matter, that her past had nothing to do with this present. “Anyway, it could be coincidence, couldn’t it? We both got restless feet, we both ended up here. Travelers stay at a hotel—that’s what it’s for. Is it such a mystery that we ran into each other?”

  He only regarded her with a steady gaze. Not an unkind gaze...far from it. And I wish I wasn’t doing this, but I am. And I will.

  She heard it loud enough, unspoken or not, and blew out an impatient breath. “You know, I can tell when people are trouble. But it didn’t work with you. I don’t get that. If anyone has the potential to cause trouble—”

  “But not to you,” he said. “Never to you. Not like you mean.”

  She blinked. Damn, he was right. With anyone else, everyone else, she never knew. Could be chance, could be intent, could be collateral damage. But whatever he was up to, he’d made sure she was safe. Whatever his intent elsewhere, his intent toward her had been not only benign, but protective.

  “Oh,” she said, her voice coming out smaller than usual. “Well.” She took a deep breath. “I don’t know what the pendant is.” She took it out from beneath her shirt, pulled the chain over her head, and held it out to him. Ancient metal, crude stamped design, indecipherable runelike markings.

  He drew himself up, nearly stepped back—but visibly stopped himself. And then gave a rueful shake of his head. “Not right now.”

  “Like my father,” she said, just a touch of bitterness. “You want it, but you can’t stand it.”

  He looked as if he might say something but didn’t quite. It left her room to continue. “My father gave me the pendant. He was strange about it, but at that point...he was strange about everything. He told me to protect it, to always keep it. He didn’t tell me why. And then later he tried to kill me to get it back.” She found her hand on her stomach, tracing the thin white line of the scar that slanted from just inside her hip bone up and over her neat little innie. On second thought, she pulled the new T-shirt up and the elastic waist of the sport shorts down—just enough to reveal the scar. She didn’t miss the grim look on Mac’s face. “Yeah,” she said. “He tried to warn me, even as he did it. I didn’t believe him. Lucky for me I was a slippery little thing, or that would have been the end of it.”

  After a moment, Mac cleared his throat. “That’s all? He didn’t tell you anything about it?”

  She shook her head. “Keep it always. Protect it. I think...” And she did, pausing to consider those confusing days, the times her father tried to talk to her and seemed to get tangled in his thoughts—to struggle with himself, as if it was a fight to say the words at all. “I think he tried to. He was just too far gone.” She shrugged. “I don’t know why.”

  He wanted to reach for her—she saw it all too clearly. He wanted to hold her. But that wouldn’t make it better or different, and now...

  Now she needed to pretend she was past all that. “Anyway,” she said, shrugging again, “after that night...after I got away and healed up and they found his car and no one ever saw him again—not completely in that order—things were different with me. I had this...” She looked at her hands, at the pendant; brought them in against her chest to close her eyes and think of the feel of it. The deep unease, the sharp stutter of warning that told her when someone was out for trouble. The schoolyard bully, the soccer team mean girls, the high school toughs. At first just when the trouble was aimed for her...but later, so fine-tuned that she could see it coming regardless.

  She looked straight at him. “I’d had the pendant for...what, two years before that night? But it was after that night that I turned into a human trouble detector. And boy, did I get into trouble until I figured out how to deal with it.” She wrinkled her nose at him, commentary on days gone by. “It is just so not a good idea to go pointing fingers at people before they’ve even done anything. Suddenly you’re the one who’s causing trouble, so the good guys blame you for that—and then the bad guys blame you for spoiling their fun.”

  He grinned, that mouth that was made for it, a sudden thing that surprised her with its genuine nature. “No wonder you’ve got that fast-talking mouth,” h
e said, but there was understanding behind it. Understanding and...affection.

  She gave him a narrow-eyed stare. “That’s not fair. Do you know how long it took me to figure out where that came from?”

  The smile turned somewhat rueful. “Let’s just say I’ve had reason to think about it.”

  “Yeah,” she said, not letting up on the glare. “Let’s just.”

  But it didn’t inspire him to any grand revelations, so she gave up and dropped it, throwing her hands up in a loose gesture of finality. “So that’s it. I’m a freak of nature trouble-detector, and I don’t have any answers about the pendant. What happened back there...” She struggled with saying it and pushed through in a rush. “What happened is that I’ve worn that thing so long and my dad gave it to me and I was so frightened for you that I just grabbed it like a little kid and wished on it.” A little girl wishing for her father, more like it. The one she had once known, and not what he’d become. “So there. All is confessed. In a pretty one-sided way, I might add.”

  He winced a little at that, but didn’t look away. “Yeah,” he said. “I know. I just...” He blew out air, jammed his hands into his back pockets again. “I have to think.” Then he gave her a sidelong glance, a deliberate thing from beneath a half-turned brow. “And eat. I have to eat. Man cannot live on crushed ice alone.”

  She snorted. “The only crushed ice you had,” she said, with as much asperity as she could muster, “was the cool taste of it on my lips.”

  That did it. He looked at her as though briefly stunned, stuck there—his eyes so clearly on her mouth. And then he said, with some visible effort, “You did that on purpose.”

  She tossed her head ever so slightly. Just enough to shorthand that she’d done it. “You looked like you could use a reminder.” She headed for the sidewalk, and she knew what her legs looked like in the shorts and what her ass looked like in retreat. She glanced over her shoulder at him. “Not just fast-talking. Smart.”

  “I...” He took a deep and audible breath, if only to finish his response in a mutter. “I consider myself reminded.”

  Chapter 7