Claimed by the Demon

He couldn’t help his irritation. “Their choice.”

But she’d stopped him, there in the brightest light of the next streetlight, and turned him directly into it— grasping his arm with a familiarity that seemed to surprise her as much as it did him. She stepped back to narrow her eyes, the light flashing off pale blue as she raked her gaze over him. “It is blood. And it’s not yours, is it? But you don’t have a weapon—”

She said it with such certainty that it took him aback, even as she cut herself short. She stepped back, releasing his arm. “I’m sorry. I’m tired. And I still need to check in.”

He thought about telling her how they’d had to search to find him a room, decided against it. Either they’d have something for her or they wouldn’t.

He thought about asking her name. Her number.

The knife spiked at him, a brief flare of warmth in his pocket. More of a weapon than she could ever imagine, both for and against him. —alert!—

No, he told it. Too tired, too hurting, too done for the day.

—alert!—

“Let’s get you back to the hotel, then,” he told her. And damned fast.

—alert! fear!—

But she was the one who stiffened, looking off across the street to the closed zapateria and beyond. “We’d better—”

The knife struck out at him—hungry, insistent. Mac faltered; he shook it off. He shook off her hand, too, as she tugged at him, alarmed and surprisingly assertive, telling him, “We have to go!”

In the darkness, a woman shrieked.

—yes yes yes!—

“You’re half a block from the hotel,” he told her. “Go.”

She bristled at the command in his voice—but he didn’t hang around for it. Across the empty traffic lanes, the knife prodding him on—lending strength, where he didn’t quite have any left of his own. Into the darkness beside the zapateria, his blade-borne sight leaving a stark outline of the barred windows and door, the alley clearly revealed before him.

The toughs from the diner. Of course. And the reluctant young man who’d been there first—and his girl, come to interfere with whatever trouble he’d gotten into and only turning the pack of them back on the couple. Harassing, a push, a shove, a hand twisting in the girl’s hair.

—stop them!—

And the blade would get what it always wanted—the experience of it, the emotion...the spilled blood, in a most literal way.

“They’re punks,” he told it—told himself. “No edges.”

The knife came out of his pocket and flashed in his grip, a sulky change to a sweeping wooden handle, a ball carved at the end, the glint of a blunt metal spike. Iroquois war club. Deadly if it had to be...persuasive in all ways.

And for the second time that night, he put himself into the middle of it. Dispensing with the small talk, forgetting the rational...just blowing through them so the kid in trouble could grab his girl and run.

Until the blade suddenly spasmed and wailed and sung of hate—the same putrid swamp of it that had nearly claimed them at the edge of the desert. The gang descended upon him. Mac swung out wildly, blindly—connecting with flesh, driving them back, sending gun and blade and chain clattering away.

Until the black pit of hatred rose up for the second time that night and took down man and blade both.

On his knees, but not for long. Mac could run, too.

But he ran just as blindly, slamming into one wall, then two, then the corner of a building, grabbing for purchase as he swung around to find himself—

Wherever the hell he was.

Whatever the hell had just happened.

The hatred lifted, leaving him with leaden limbs and heaving lungs that couldn’t catch enough air. His ribs shot through with pain, molten bones both liquid and brittle.

The knife returned in a smear of movement, tucking itself away in the palm of his hand, a shaken retreat. Still hungry—still without the victory it craved.

They weren’t coming after him. He’d dealt too many of his own blows; he’d left them too confused—at least for the moment.

They’d carry a grudge, all right.

He straightened, one steadying hand against the building—but swore and instantly bent over again. This time, he moved more slowly—pushing away from the whitewashed cinder block, moving carefully...keeping the knife to hand.

Twice. Twice in one night. The swamping hatred, the confrontations so quickly escalating out of control.

He knew, now, why he’d been drawn to Albuquerque. He just didn’t have the faintest idea what to do about it.

* * *

Run. I should be running.

Right back to the hotel. Everything in her screamed it.

But Gwen found herself still there when he emerged from the darkness on the other side of the street, six lanes of empty pavement between them.

She saw right away the difference in him. Not so much in what he did as what he didn’t project—the confidence, the strength...a certain grim intensity. All missing. And although she was so certain, now, that he was armed—and that he’d had a willingness to act that felt natural in his world and terrifying in hers—she nonetheless caught no sense of it. Not now, not before.

Just the same instantly compelling response that had riveted her outside the hotel.

Yeah, I should’ve run.

I should have gone to Vegas.

And then he faltered in midcrossing, and she forgot all that and sprinted from the curb to meet him, slipping beneath one shoulder to take the burden of unfamiliar bone and muscle.

The heat of him shocked her. “You’re burning up!”

In response, his eyes rolled back; his knees buckled.

“Oh, no no no,” she said, knowing she couldn’t keep them both upright. “Middle of the street, mister! Move on!”

He muttered a breathless curse, put one foot in front of the other and, as far as she could tell, made it to the curb on determination alone.

She tried to make his landing a soft one.

He rubbed his hands over his face—fresh blood on those hands, dark under the streetlight. “It shouldn’t have...” he said. “It wasn’t...” He blinked, a deliberate thing, and looked at his hands. “This isn’t...”

“Yeah, yeah, I get the idea.” Gwen huffed out an impatient breath. Stupid, stupid, to have gotten in the middle of this.

Then again, what else was she here for? To get in the middle of something, it seemed. And she wouldn’t know what until she’d done it.

“You’re screwed,” she told him. “You have a temperature up in the something-fierce range, plus whatever else happened out there. You want to go to a clinic?”

“God, no,” he said, as emphatic as anything he’d said yet—maybe even said with a little bit of outright panic.

She laughed. “How to tame the beast,” she said and sat down on the curb beside him, his warmth radiating against her. Maybe if he had a moment, he could walk to the hotel. Or intelligibly tell her what he did need. And then she could go check in, and—

“What is it about you?” he asked, surprising her. She jerked her gaze around, finding the dark grey of his eyes. Not guarded, as they’d been in the diner. Not wary, as they’d been outside the hotel. Looking right at her as