Rafe flipped a dismissive hand at them. “Die, then,” he said, making it a casual command. “In agony, while you’re at it.”
Gwen’s breath stuttered as Mac made a gargling noise, his eyes rolling back; he slid down the side of the Jeep. She wanted to dive after him, holding him, turning the pendant on him.
But that would only leave them both vulnerable.
She took an involuntary step toward Rafe, hands fisted, so full of anger—overflowing with it, unfamiliar and debilitating, clouding her thoughts, changing her intent—
And realized that it came to her through Mac.
That her connection with him flared strong again.
Recklessly, she reached for it, thinking of calm and cool as he pushed against the wet ground, on his knees. Thinking of her hand in his, thinking of her mouth on his. Forging past the chaotic agonies still beating against her thoughts...giving him something other than hate and fear and pain. She gave him a quiet current, imbuing it with what they were together and what they’d had together.
“Gwen—” he said—as if there should be more to it, but he couldn’t quite manage it.
It sounded like a warning.
“Is that it, then?” Rafe stepped closer, his features coming alive with interest. “Is that the key to you? Your one last chance, Mac. Your Gwen goes free—and you become mine. You give over to the wild road and join me, and no one ever touches her. Permanent asylum. She can stay with you, or she can go back to whatever life she had before she met you. Lady’s choice.”
The thick, scraping flow of imposed emotions faded—Gwen felt it through Mac, and felt the dim echo of it through herself. Mac lifted his head—his expression terrible and strained, his gaze latching on to Rafe’s.
“That’s it, isn’t it?” Rafe said so softly. He took a step closer, crouching with one hand resting over his knee, his own blade so casually held there. “You’ll do it. For her, you’ll do it.”
“Wait,” Gwen said. “Wait, wait, wait. What? He will not! Mac, no! You will not!”
But Mac wasn’t looking at her. Mac, his jaw set and his face still tense with the battle, looked only at Rafe. His voice held a grim desperation. “You’ll leave her alone.”
“I’ll leave her alone.” Rafe’s smile spoke of victory, tipping over to smug.
Maybe it was that smug look that did it, triggering Gwen’s temper. Maybe it was the look on Mac’s face—the despair, in this moment he so obviously intended to be a goodbye. She looked at him aghast and more than a little annoyed. “Are you kidding?”
It was hardly the grateful response of a rescued damsel in distress, and maybe it was all wrong, but so was this. “Mac, once you cross that line, you’ll be like him! You won’t care what happens to me!”
He shook his head. “If I die here, I can’t stop him at all. This way, there’s a chance. And then...maybe someone will stop me.” They both knew who he meant. Devin James, the man who was supposed to have been here. Supposed to have helped them both.
I am twenty-seven years old, and I’m about to lose the man I love.
“Screw this,” she said. “I know you. I know you. Do you hear me? I’ve seen you. I know you can do this. I know we—” She stopped talking. She reached deep inside where the pendant gave her access to him. And she reached through him—finding that taste of the blade.
Making it up as she went along, yes—but also following what she’d already learned, and her growing ability to touch the blade—prodding it, listening to it, even shutting it out.
But shutting it out wasn’t what she wanted.
She wanted its name. This blade had a name, too, whether Mac knew it or not.
Names mattered.
Names meant control.
I see you, she told it, finding the blazing alien heart of it within him. I want to know you.
It startled; it shied away. It struck out at Mac, daring her to hurt the one she loved. And while Mac jerked with surprise, a strangled noise replacing the words in his throat, Rafe drew back in pure astonishment. “What?” he said, not the least bit suave—and then the surprise turned to pure avarice. “What is this?”
And Mac said, “Don’t—he can hear—”
But Gwen had seen their only chance, and she dared to hurt the one she loved.
* * *
Keska.
The word blazed through Mac’s thoughts, branding them from the inside out—blinding him to all else, as the blade spasmed in reaction to its forced confession, spitting fury and fear and resentment. It struck, then—pushing and shoving, stealing time and breath—and yet somehow leaving enough of both to howl, a ragged voice expressing both the blade’s fury and the man’s agony.
Keska. Merely a whispered reminder at the edges of awareness, nudging him. You are not me. Your feelings are not mine. I am in control of me and mine.
I am in control of you.
But it wasn’t as easy as that, with days of a siege riding him, leaving him worn and battered.
Mac ignored his body, letting the white-hot slashes of pain streak across his mind’s eye without touching the core of him. He’d felt the blade’s retreat. He’d felt its need for recovery. It, too, needed an end to this. Gwen knew it; Gwen buoyed him.
But the blade Keska said no. The blade said I won’t. The blade said no and hurt and die.
And the blade had nothing to lose. Because while Mac needed to stay alive, the blade was what it was. Weary, it could hang on for one moment longer than he. It could afford to strike out; it knew how to wound.
There would be no waiting it out.
For the first time, Mac understood that determination might not be enough, no matter how much of it he had. Keska fought back, striking hard; Mac lost the sense of his body, his sense of Gwen.
Until she screamed. Loud and piercing and furious—never anything demure about Gwen.
It shocked the blade, too, enough so Mac found himself momentarily free on the asphalt, fingers bloodied from clawing at it, cheek throbbing from where he’d gone down, body aching—Gwen’s cry still echoing in his mind. He lifted a heavy head to find her in the grip of two of the muscle men—stretched out between them and still twisting to kick at them, not quite having the distance.
“See that she’s not hurt,” Rafe said sharply. His cheek bled from a trio of deep scratches; he didn’t seem to notice.
Gwen had made her play, all right.
Rafe turned his attention to Mac. “Ah,” he said. “There you are. Deal’s off, I’m afraid. She is, it has become obvious, one of a kind.” He smiled thinly, with a mean cast behind it. “I can make another one of you, once the blade finishes you off. I appreciate the show, by the way.”
“Bastard!” Gwen spat, still struggling in the parking lot light. It was full dark now, with the lightning more dramatic than ever behind her, a constant flutter and rumble. Unidentifiable sound muttered in Mac’s ear—he counted it a trick of the blade.
The blade floundered in what had turned to defeat. Mac had it now—he had its name and he had his focus. Thanks to Gwen—to that scream, to the anchor she’d given him.
Rafe turned his head to the man behind him. “Get the abduction kit. I want her tranquilized.”
“You what?” Gwen cast a desperate look at Mac—and it became even more desperate when she found him looking back, drawn by her need. “Mac—you were right, what you said earlier—when you wouldn’t let me—when you had to stay this way—” A frantic glance at Rafe, and Mac understood. When you wouldn’t let me separate you from the blade. When you refused to make things okay for us, okay for you, in order to take this man down.
“Yeah,” he said. “I know. I’m working on it.”
The mutter of sound in the background had escalated—not a trick of the blade at all, but now a rush and tumble roar. The storms. The concrete, urbanized arroyo.
Gwen didn’t seem to notice it. She gave a token jerk against the men who held her, doing no more than annoying them. “But if—if—” The irony
of her struggle for words wasn’t lost on Mac, even if she’d gone so far into the moment that she didn’t realize it. “If things don’t—”
And then she stopped altogether so as not to say things that neither of them wanted to share with the enemy.
“Yeah,” he said, and caught her gaze—holding it, the best he could, in this light, not sure how much she could truly see. Not enough. “I know.”
She took matters into her own hands, doing that which she’d only just learned to do in the first place. She lifted her chin—even if it trembled—and she stared back at him with an unexpected defiance—and in that moment the blade Keska gave a startled little leap, welcoming the subtle warmth of emotion. I know you and I love you and I’m with you.
Mac’s throat tightened down completely. “Yeah,” he managed again, and sent her a poor excuse for a dark, wry smile. Me, too.
He didn’t know if she’d catch it; she was the one who knew how to reach out...he’d only ever received. But he thought from the way her chin firmed—from her faint hint of a smile—that she had. And then as Rafe’s personal muscle man approached, syringe in hand, her head tipped back in that shorthand gesture of defiance—and damned if he didn’t see it coming. Gwen, ready to go for it in spite of the odds.
Damned if he was going to let her do it alone.
The blade leaped in eager response—gratified to soak up the cruel flat intentions of the muscle man, happy to flood Mac with the quickness and strength that flowed so familiar between them. —hurt kill drink—!
“Yeah,” Mac muttered. “He’s all yours.”
A sparking nova of metal, heat here and gone again—a familiar pain, and one he finally embraced. The Civil War sword extended his reach as he lunged off the ground, driving up with purpose and exacting control.
They shouldn’t have counted him out of it.
Rafe’s man paid with his fingers. The syringe went flying; so did the fingers. And when the injured man cried out, aghast and recoiling, Gwen didn’t hesitate. The moment her two human restraints reacted, she jerked herself free from one and went after the other. No skill there, just a frenzy of determination—clawing at his eyes, slamming at his balls, teeth bared and active. Rafe’s man recovered enough to clench his hand into a protective fist and come for Mac, but Mac ignored him for the third man, the one now reaching to haul Gwen off his buddy.
—no—! The blade, as obscure and demanding as ever. —mine—!
In a minute, Mac thought at it, nothing more than a distracted push of intent—until his injured leg gave out from under him, a blast of heat and inexplicable failure, and he suddenly understood—the blade had been claiming him. Claiming its turf in the presence of the intruding blade that had just taken him down.
He clawed his way back up, dragging the leg and ignoring Keska’s territorial snarl. His form turned choppy—he slashed out with the saber, overreaching to close the distance. The blade sliced diagonally across the legs of the third man, flaying muscle and tendon as he grabbed for Gwen. The man went down; he could do nothing else. Not even yet realizing the extent of his injuries, his cry more angry than pained.
Mac sprawled full-length, stretched to make that attack—and when he would have rolled aside, springing up to face those who remained, the dead weight of his leg dragged him down. Rafe’s man slammed him with a kick.
He lost his grip on the blade—just out of reach, stretching for it—almost!—and it reached back, just brushing his fingers as another kick lifted him off the ground and sent him rolling away.
He knew well enough that the blade could be used against him. Remembered with vivid clarity the moment it had first found his hand, taking the life of its own erstwhile partner.
But that man had been lost to himself—lost to the wild road without understanding it or working it. And Mac wasn’t.
In that moment, Rafe stood over him—wrenching, with no delicacy at all, at his own blade—the one still sunk deeply into Mac’s thigh.
Mac cried out with it, lost in a moment of retching agony. Gwen echoed it with a cry of frustration and quite suddenly slammed to the ground beside him—winded and still fighting mad. She caught his eye, and it came through to him in a flash as Keska gloried in her intention to fight, her spirit running hot and high.
He pushed back. No, he thought at Gwen. You run, dammit. You protect yourself. You protect what you have from this evil.
It slapped at her, reflected in eyes wide with sudden doubt—and just as sudden realization. Understanding, for the first time, the true price of carrying something bigger than she was.
She’d hardly had time to get used to it at all.
Only then did she see Rafe, backing up a step and glaring at them with annoyance but no concern; only then did she see Mac’s leg, a dark and rapidly spreading stain. She may have even felt it; her fingers twitched toward her own leg.
I’ll buy you time. Dammit, surely she could understand the gist of it, if not his exact words. He pushed at the blade, pushed toward her. You run like hell!
“That,” Rafe said with profound disgust, “was a complete waste of time and of my staff.” The only uninjured man among the three knelt by his bleeding buddy.
“That,” Mac grunted, “would be a matter of opinion. I think it went pretty well.” Work on that leg, Keska. He sent it out not as a request but a command—to work it hard and fast, whatever patch job would do, whatever the price. And then he barely contained a startled gasp as the blade, fired up by action and blood, sprang to work—a lightning bolt stitching flesh from the inside out. His face flushed against the chilling night, sweat dotting out along his temples.
Rafe only smiled—understanding as no one else could. “It won’t be enough. You’re too young, and you know too little. But you’ve impressed me. I might give you a second chance—if you walk the road with me now.”
Mac didn’t relent—pushing the blade, pushing at Gwen, and pushing right back at Rafe. “You mean I just took out the two men you had chosen for my blade.”
A one-shouldered shrug. “That, too.” Rafe held up his own blade, watching as Mac’s blood soaked into the gleaming metal. “Our thirst is endless. You decide.”
Gwen hesitated at his back—he felt it more than saw it, knowing she’d finally understood him through the blade and pendant. Feeling from her the wild hope that he could do what needed to be done and somehow live through it...and then find her again.
Because she was going to run—she and the pendant.
Mac grinned, a dark, wry thing full of self-awareness—he knew his odds here, even if he’d obscured them from Gwen. Warmth filled his leg, spreading the length of the long muscle so badly damaged—and it filled his hand, forming to a grip not quite as familiar as most but nonetheless welcome.
The frontier tomahawk. Cruder than most of the blade’s forms, but just as thirsty, just as keen-edged...and as accurate in the throw. Even without the time or space to set his feet, line up the throw...straight back, straight forward, release.
The blade couldn’t turn a wild throw straight. But it could make a straight throw fly true against the odds.
Rafe frowned at this evidence of Mac’s intent, annoyed and just wary enough to be smart. Rafe’s muscle man hesitated.
A man had only so many fingers to lose.
Gwen turned tense and trembling, hovering on the moment, and Mac said, “Yeah. Decision made.” He rolled to his feet, favoring the injured leg and compensating with balance and determination. “I’ve decided not to die today.”
He eyed Rafe’s muscle man, ignoring the gun. “How about you?”
Rafe snapped, “Your continued existence is no longer your choice. It’s mine, and I’ve made it.”
Go, Gwen. Go!
He wouldn’t hold them both for long. And as soon as the uninjured man gave up on his buddy...
“Really?” he said to Rafe’s man, eyeing the gun, letting his skepticism show. “With your off hand? To protect a man I bet you’ve never seen take on someo
ne who could fight back.”
From the flicker in the man’s eye, he knew he’d hit target. From the anger on Rafe’s face, he was certain of it.
“Lifetimes,” Rafe said, his speech no longer quite as clear. “I have lifetimes of survival. You haven’t even made it through one.”
Go, Gwen. Go NOW!
Gwen spurted away in a scrabbling run, hands as much as feet until she gained a stride or two—and then Rafe’s man was on her, eschewing the gun to throw himself bodily across her with an impact that squeaked all the air out of her body.
“Wrong,” Mac said, “decision.” Swift as his movement, the tomahawk glimmered into war club, slamming down across the man’s shoulders—breaking flesh and bone with an audible crunch that left the man in paralyzed shock and Gwen cursing beneath his weight, clawing to pull herself out from under him.
Mac hooked the man’s side with his club and flipped him over, halfway freeing Gwen—and that was all he could do, as blade shimmered back to tomahawk and he pivoted around, all one motion, to release the throw as Rafe finally came for him—finally goaded beyond endurance to physical action.
No surprise that Rafe blocked the blow—he’d had too much time, too much space to do it, his blade a stout scimitar that showered showy and improbable sparks through the night as it parried Keska away.
It didn’t matter. Because as Mac dove for Keska—knowing it would find his hand more readily than he ever truly thought possible—Gwen scrambled free from the weight of Rafe’s dying muscle man and sprinted away.
Rafe cried out in wordless outrage, standing with legs splayed and arms spread—completely open, if Mac had only been in a position to do something about it. Not that he had any compunction at all about whipping the tomahawk around into the shallow angle of Rafe’s back, but damn if that leg hadn’t given out on him, just enough to lose the moment.
Rafe didn’t even notice Mac, all his attention on Gwen. “No!” he cried, honest horror in his voice. “Watch out!”
Because Gwen ran straight for the concrete arroyo. Gwen, who’d only been in this city a matter of days and who’d never experienced the violence of a monsoon storm. Gwen, who probably hadn’t even realized what the arroyos were or that the noise behind them was six feet of water rushing along at a startling speed.
Claimed by the Demon (Harlequin Nocturne) Page 21