Claimed by the Demon (Harlequin Nocturne)

by Doranna Durgin

  I have to think.

  That’s what he’d told her. Cowardly in its way, but true enough.

  There was too much new, too much different.

  And though Mac thought he’d learned to deal with this blade, to compensate for it...

  He was no longer so sure.

  Either the balance had changed, or it simply wasn’t working any longer.

  Understanding how Gwen’s pendant—how her father, how she—fit together with the blade, or how any of them fit with what was happening here in Albuquerque...

  He definitely needed to think.

  Even if he pretty much already knew what had driven Gwen’s father. And even if he wished it didn’t give him some clues about what was happening with him.

  The hell with that.

  “Fierce,” Gwen said. They sat at a table in the diner, and the waitress served them with a knowing smile. When he glanced at her with question on his face, she said, “Your expression. Fierce.”

  “Good,” he said as she forked a piece of his burger right off his plate. He feigned offense. “You sure make yourself right at home.”

  “You betcha,” she said. “Your hotel room, your food. Can’t imagine what’s next.” And then bit her lip, clearly hearing how the words sounded outside her own head, eyes wide...until she went for the head toss. Perfection, that toss—so understated, so perfectly paired with the gleam in her eye.

  “No,” he said, deadpan. “It boggles the mind.”

  Deliberately, she took a baby carrot out of his salad, crunching hard to bite it in half, and then pointed the remainder at him. “Your turn.”

  Yeah. It was.

  But he thought it would be nice to have just a few more moments of this. Normal meal, normal diner, even though he ate around a gash inside his mouth and she mooched entirely off his vastly overloaded plate.

  “That’s better,” she said—softly now, and he realized he’d smiled. “For being the inscrutable hero type, you’re awfully easy to read.”

  He snorted. “The what?”

  “You heard me.” She sat back, cocked her head. “Of course you wouldn’t know it. That’s just all the more perfect.”

  He only stared at her, just a little narrow-eyed, just a little thoughtful.

  She asked, abruptly, “Do you have family?”

  It startled him. “Do I—”

  She acknowledged the suddenness of the question with a lift of one shoulder. “For some reason, I’m thinking of my father. It’s where my mind went. I wonder what my father would have thought of me—of how I turned out, thanks to what he did. Of what’s happening here today. And I wonder what makes a man like you.”

  He smiled, shook his head. “Nothing exciting there. Two parents, an older brother and younger sister, all in the family printing business. All back in Washington state, still wondering why I ever left it to work my way around the country.” At the question in her eyes, he added, “For the sake of seeing it.”

  She briefly pursed her lips. “I don’t actually get the impression that’s what you’re doing now. Seems to me the emphasis isn’t quite right.”

  “Seems to me,” he said, brow raised, “that you see too much.” But he was still looking at her mouth as she said it, drawn by the curve of the lower lip and the full, wide nature of the upper.

  “And know far too little.” She said it with her own pointed look and went for one of his steak fries.

  “Actually,” he told her, “I think you know a lot.” But of course that only made her frown. He tipped his head at the door...a question. Because this wasn’t something he intended to talk about here.

  “Oh, look,” she said brightly. “Here comes someone with a big take-out box. I can’t imagine how she anticipated you would need it.”

  He looked at the pile of food before him, more than half of it ordered with the intent of takeout and an evening snack—for he was still fueling up in the wake of the healing, and in the more recent wake of the day’s events.

  “I intend to be hungry this evening,” he told her—leaving her pondering, narrow-eyed, if she’d just been handed a warning or a promise, or if he was talking about food after all.

  But when they walked back out into the late afternoon heat, she with the food and one hand wrapped lightly around the inside of his arm, he with the sense of equilibrium restored, everything changed. As if a shadow had dropped out of the sky to encompass them, with the blade crying warning, Gwen stiffening in alarm, every nerve and muscle shouting for him to act while every instinct called out for him to wait until he knew—

  There.

  Behind them. The corner of the diner.

  It’s a video game. A never-ending round of hate and violence. And he and Gwen had become so tangled in it—

  Her grip on his arm tightened. The knife sliced through his thoughts—a snarl of displeasure and warning, letting him know that these men weren’t angry, weren’t despairing, weren’t any of the things it loved to drink.

  These men were doing a job.

  “He said you’d find us.” A faint cockney accent behind those words, the voice itself without concern. “And that you’d know we’re ready for you.”

  Gwen’s grip squeezed even more tightly, if only for an instant. Confirming it. They had weapons, and no doubt the weapons were discreetly already trained on them.

  “No guns, he said,” the man continued. “But mate, I’m telling you—these Tazers pack a hell of a punch.”

  Mac didn’t have to turn around to know it. They were out of range. He could throw—deadly accuracy, that throw—but he wouldn’t get the blade back in time for number two.

  And number two might yet be silent, but he was there.

  “Look, now, he only wants a chat.” So reasonable.

  The blade spat its sour resentment at their calm—at the way they gave it nothing to work with. No fear, no hatred, no resentment, no frenzied high. It floundered, unable to muster its deadly song.

  He could still use it—would, if he got the chance—but not at peak. Not with the avaricious hunger that made it so very deadly.

  “Mac,” Gwen whispered, close enough to read every line of his body—including his hesitation.

  “Come on, then,” the second man said, joining the conversation with a deep and lazy voice. Even less invested than his partner, and well chosen for this chore.

  By someone who knew what the blade needed? How the hell—

  Only one way to find out.

  “She’s not part of this,” Mac said with little hope, but determined all the same. “She stays.”

  They laughed.

  * * *

  Big empty plots of land and dirty industry followed the Rio Grande, isolated from the bosque by the levee, open community land, and their own back lots. Alfalfa fields interspersed with industry right through the southern half of the city. Warehouses clustered by the railroad track spur off the north-south Rail Runner line.

  Mac got only a glimpse of it all as the men opened the back doors of the closed van in which they’d crammed him after they’d cuffed him. The warehouse beside them was smaller than most and had an abandoned air; it gave him no clues. The men pulled Gwen out ahead of him—a clear hostage for his good behavior—released his cuffs, and hauled him out for a rude escort to the warehouse.

  But they didn’t try to take the blade. And they didn’t touch Gwen so much as they herded her, leaving the threat an implied one. Giving him no reason. Giving the blade no reason, no excitement. Nor did they say anything else—simply put them through a door into the dimly cavernous space of that building, with only dim light from a dirty window set high.

  The first thing he did was find Gwen. He put his arms around her and drew her close. To outside eyes he might have been murmuring words of comfort, but what he really said was, “I can see in the dark. Trust me if it comes to that.”

  “You can what?” She didn’t keep her voice down at all. But she didn’t give anything away, either, and he thought that both
were deliberate. A show of mettle, tempered by discretion.

  “See,” he said, “In. The. Dark.” And then went sardonic. “Secrets. Told you we’d get around to them.”

  She wasn’t impressed, apparently. “Nice timing.” But she took a deep breath and added, her voice just as low, “There’s something lurking here. But I don’t get the sense that we’re in direct danger.”

  He wasn’t betting on it. He just wasn’t sure if the danger would come from an obvious direction.

  A voice came from the catwalk on the far side of the space, high against the wall opposite them. Even Mac’s eyes couldn’t penetrate that corner of darkness. “I’d say I’m glad you could come, but of course you didn’t have any choice.”

  Their bad guy. Their own personal kidnapper. The man who had ordered them dragged off in broad daylight in a city under siege.

  Under his siege? And if so, to what purpose?

  Gwen lifted her head. “Do you have delusions of supervillainy or what—He Who Must Not Be Named, lurking in the shadows?”

  Mac winced, but the man’s voice stayed mild. Nothing of the sort to put chills down anyone’s back. “Close enough, for now.”

  Gwen drew breath—Mac felt the suddenness of it, and closed a hand around her arm to stop her words. They were supposed to ask questions, make demands...that was their role here.

  He was not inclined to fill it.

  She subsided, and he turned the hold into one of reassurance.

  After a few moments, he heard a disgruntled noise.

  For damned sure an object came hurtling out of the darkness. Mac jerked Gwen aside, and her leap of fear funneled in through the blade, slicing along nerves that felt too much of its pleasure.

  Far too much.

  It didn’t used to be that way.

  The object slammed to the pocked concrete beside them, and even as Mac recognized it as a suitcase, the man—disdainful, somewhat amused—said, “You should dress your girlfriend.”

  He felt Gwen’s frown as surely as he’d felt her fear, but this time she kept her voice low. “What—”

  “A suitcase. Your suitcase.”

  “Wow,” she said, and this time she didn’t mutter it. “That is impressive. Supervillain-wise, I mean. Stealing suitcases.”

  Mac couldn’t help a smile at that. So damned bold.

  “I didn’t,” the man said. “But I did take it from the one who did. His fear was delicious.”

  His fear was delicious.

  Mac stepped away from Gwen, unconscious of it—took another step, all the while staring up at that dark corner. This man knew...

  “I thought that might get your attention,” the man said.

  “Who are you?”

  Now he was playing by the man’s rules. Now the voice held satisfaction. “The proper question is, who are you? I had my reasons for coming here...you were not among them. Yet here you are.” A considering pause. “Perhaps drawn, much as I. Perhaps chance. Or perhaps it simply doesn’t matter. However, I have found you now.”

  “And you think that’s a good thing?” Mac asked. “For you, I mean?”

  “I expect it to be.” The dry voice could have been a warning.

  Probably was. The blade spoke to him then—whispering a sudden song of terror and despair and confusion, infusing it with glee.

  “Mac,” Gwen whispered, and he recognized it for the warning it was—her own instincts, crying out. He found his hand in his pocket, the knife settling instantly into his palm.

  Never a good sign.

  It flared blue-white light through the darkness, startling Gwen into a cry. A blade mutable, reshaping from stout pocketknife to arcing saber, the guard a graceful sweep enclosing his hand. A deadly beauty, gleaming in the darkness. Ready. Eager.

  Overhead lights flickered on—one by one. Not quite slowly enough to keep Mac from wincing, but with more consideration than he would have expected. Until he realized it wasn’t for him.

  It was because the other man, too, needed to take such care. This man knew...

  A glance at that corner showed exactly why Mac hadn’t been able to penetrate those shadows—a thin fabric screen separated them. Thin enough so the man could see out but offering Mac little more than a hazy shadow as he spoke. “Pardon the dramatics,” he said. “I’m not ready to be seen, but blindfolding you wouldn’t serve my purpose.”

  Mac asked what he was supposed to ask, even if he did it with a growl. “And that would be?”

  “Getting your attention.” The voice held no menace—simply a confidence. An expectation that he would get from Mac what he wanted from Mac.

  It set a growl in Mac’s throat, not quite voiced.

  The two men from earlier marched into the vast room, paying no attention at all to its occupants. One removed the suitcase; the other simply was. When the first returned, they approached. Gwen made no protest at all when Mac put himself between them and moved to stay that way.

  “’Ere now, she comes with us,” the cockney said, and the blade picked up on Gwen’s fear, too—a more familiar and poignant connection than the unknown surges in which it had already been basking. Not my feelings.

  One of the men reached for Gwen.

  “No,” Mac said, flatly standing ground—pushing back at the blade, even as he churned with the strength of what it threw at him, so much more intense than only a few days earlier. “She doesn’t.”

  “Wasn’t a question,” the other man said. It was the first Mac had seen of his face, with skin so dark it seemed to hint of blue, features broad. His deep and lazy voice had grown impatient.

  Grown stupid.

  The man reached for Gwen, as if the mere presence of his boss in the shadows guaranteed his safety.

  It didn’t.

  The blade flashed.

  It wanted him all. It fought to take him all, gulping in his first startled flash of reaction and grasping for the rest. Wanting the life-and-death struggle, wanting to feed on shock and terror and then flesh and blood itself. Mac fought it back—not wanting that needless death and not willing to leave Gwen vulnerable.

  A stark frozen instant of time, that’s all it took. Then the man stumbled back, staring agape at his forearm—at the sight of bone peeking through the gash laid from the inside of his elbow to his wrist, the blood spurting.

  The second man didn’t hesitate, leaving his comrade to flounder while he leaped back, hand darting for the gun in the cross-draw holster at his belt.

  “Hold!” The command came in an inexorable shout, and as the man froze, as Mac regained his ready stance before Gwen, the puppet master from above took an audible breath, slow and deep. “Did I not tell you to treat them with care? See to Maitho. It will be to our new friend’s regret that the woman stays, but he has made his decision.”

  Mac barely heard him; he took his cue from the other two men. Their change of body language, the emotions rippling through the blade—resentment shock pain frustration fear acceptance. And still the blade resisted, wanting to lay in—to bathe in—the destruction it could wrought. It took a grunt of effort, a step back...

  Right into Gwen, who was probably pretty damned sorry she’d been crowding him at all.

  “Further gone than I thought,” the man above said; the other two had found their exit, leaving the room bare again. “I don’t imagine the past twenty-four hours have been easy on you. Let me get right to the point, then.”

  “Please,” Gwen said, but her bravado had a tremor in it.

  “You have something I can use. You are something I can use. And you are unexpectedly ripe—pushed, perhaps, to a maturation that might have taken several months more. The wild road.”

  Mac couldn’t help it. He jerked back into sudden focus, aiming glare and demand up at that screened corner. The wild road. His hand clenched so tightly around the saber hilt that his forearm shook with the tension of it. “What do you know of it?”

  “Everything.” The man’s voice deepened further. “I have struck a
bargain the likes of which would astonish you and the likes of which you will never quite see—there can only be one of us. But I can nonetheless guide you to fruition. I would find you useful, thus.”

  “I find myself perfectly useful as I am,” Mac snapped back, as Gwen made a little vibrating noise in her throat. Warning, perhaps. Just plain creeped out, definitely.

  But the improved lighting had finally given Mac what he needed—the way out. Just a glimpse of it, a plain old push door in the corner, half-hidden behind a sheltering entry wall. He nudged Gwen in that direction, waited for the glimmer of bright hope that would tell him she’d seen it.

  Their host seemed undisturbed. “I’m fully prepared to demonstrate what I can offer you.” He took a deep breath; when he spoke again there was a smile behind his words. “And how deeply impossible it will be to resist.”

  “Now you’re just getting cocky,” Mac muttered, more to see Gwen rise to it than through any impulse to mouth off. And still the unidentified terror, bundled in with the bizarre nature of this man...his minions...the emotions battering at him...

  Time to go.

  He looked straight up at the screen. “I’d say I appreciate the effort, but I don’t. I’d say no offense, but I don’t give a damn. We’re leaving. You know that I could have taken your guys out anytime I wanted between here and there, right?”

  “In fact, I do.” That rich voice sounded—inexplicably—amused.

  “They won’t be as lucky another time. You know that, too, right?”

  That voice gave nothing away. “Circumstances vary.”

  “Is that a door?” Gwen squinted at it, finally understanding. “Hell, yes. Let’s get outta here!”

  “That’s your option,” the man said. “But I believe your companion will choose to stay.”

  Mac snorted. “The hell I—”

  —fresh terror, pure spurting pain—

  A scream, short and harsh.

  Mac stiffened, assaulted from within, the blade going sharp and hard and past all his defenses. Wanting.

  “Mac,” Gwen said, desperation in her tone as she tugged at him to no effect, “he’s playing you. You know he’s playing you.”

  “It’s real,” he said, his voice gone raspy, the want of the blade so deep and fierce he could barely think. “Whatever they’re doing is real.”