Claimed by the Demon

key to get back in.

He’d just come.

For her.

Chapter 4

Mac grabbed another protein drink. It wasn’t nearly enough to fuel a body being force-healed from layers of assaults, but it would assuage the immediate gnawing in his belly. And then, while Gwen pressed a washcloth to her face as if she could hide the bright shine of lingering tears and the strong pink of high emotion, he grabbed a quick shower, brushing his teeth in the spray.

He came out to discover her doing the same at the sink and set himself to pacing the room—driven by the blade’s restlessness, driven by the picture he was forming of the previous night and knowing that this surge of energy would be all too brief. The burning in his blood told him as much—told him the damage had gone deep, that the blade still worked on him.

That the toll had yet to be completely paid.

He had to get a handle on the situation before he lost these moments.

He found himself drawn to the window—pulling back the privacy drapes, letting the light wash over his face...letting his eyes adjust.

Plenty of chaos below. Broken glass in the parking lot. A police car—no, two of them—parked skewed across the lines, and people milling around. Gesturing. Upset.

Gwen was right. More right than she knew.

No coincidence at all.

But what it meant, he didn’t yet understand. Only that he now had a very good idea why the blade had brought him here. The blade that thrived on high feeling and righteous death and other people’s pain. The blade that used him to gain these things even as he used it to stop them.

But he didn’t know why Gwen was here. And he didn’t know why she was here. With him.

He did know what the blade thought of it. What the blade wanted.

They aren’t my feelings. Aren’t who I am.

Was it?

She came out of the bathroom and stood uncertainly in the middle of the room.

Uncertainly. Not like her.

As if I’d know.

But he did. The hesitation in her movement, the way she’d so briefly held her breath, her hands jammed into the pockets of that snug thin stretch thing passing for a jacket. She’d done what she could with her hair, coiling it in a knot and wrapping her hair band around it, but it was clearly out of control, gleaming subtly red in the morning light.

He said, “Your father.”

Her lower lip—round and full—firmed. “No.”

He stepped away from the window, taking advantage of the uncertainty while he had it—fighting the impulse to restore her confidence instead. “It’s no coincidence. You know it. I know it. I need to know why.”

“I need a lot of things,” she told him. “I’m guessing I won’t get them.”

“It’s not about me,” he said, his temper taking an edge. The blade warmed happily in his pocket, sipping up both conflict and promise. “It’s bigger than that.”

Her eyes narrowed; he thrilled to the spirit behind it and just as quickly doubted himself as the knife hummed in response. My feelings?

She knew none of it; she said, “Think much of yourself?”

He crossed the room in three long strides; she held her ground, lifting her gaze to his even as he crowded close—rude, deliberate. He jabbed a finger toward the window. “I think nothing of myself,” he told her, feeling the truth of that; feeling the burn as it rose in him. “But I can see. Can you?”

“Maybe more than you think,” she muttered, and it was then that she looked away. “Look,” she said. “I’m here. I’m following my nose. That’s all. Okay?”

He gave her the darkest of looks. “It would be okay if I believed that was all there is to it.”

She regained some asperity. “What there is to it,” she said, “is that I’ve been robbed every which way but loose, and I have to go take care of that. If you don’t mind.”

Right. Yes. Of course.

Time to remember how people lived in the world when there wasn’t a demon blade involved.

He rubbed a hand across the back of his neck, rolling his head. Releasing tension. “Listen,” he said. “I need to finish sleeping this off.” He didn’t define this; he suspected that after the previous night, he didn’t have to. “There’s no telling how long it’ll take to get your finances sorted out, and I could use a favor.”

She crossed her arms, not hiding her suspicion, and waited.

“Food,” he said. “More of those workout drinks. Something microwaveable.” As her face cleared with understanding, he added, “Necessities for you in exchange.”

“I—” she said, protest in that single syllable...until she closed her mouth and looked away, then back again. “I can pay my own way.”

He suddenly felt unutterably weary. Burning. “Please. Just...please.”

Her surprise showed. “Oh,” she said, disarmed. “Oh. Okay then. I mean...you’re all right?”

“I’m fine.” But at her skeptical expression, he smiled wryly. “I will be fine.” A day of rest—full, deep rest—and he could start tracking down what he’d felt in this place so far—the origins, the areas of deeper feeling, lingering traces. He’d sort out the undercurrents of this place; he’d figure out what was going on.

And he’d figure out how she was part of it.

* * *

Gwen found something disconcerting about filing reports—the car break-in, the mugging—with someone else’s wallet tucked away in her jacket.

The good thing—could there possibly be a good thing?—about the situation was that on this day, she was just one of many. Resulting in perhaps the oddest thing of all: no one saw anything strange about the siege of incredibly bad and possibly not coincidental luck she’d apparently had painted on her back the evening before.

Get out of Albuquerque. Just get out.

She could have done it. A bus ticket home, just like that. She’d pay more for rekeying the damned car than it was probably worth anyway.

But she didn’t go to the bus station, and she couldn’t quite have said why she hadn’t.

Maybe it was the way he’d said please. Maybe it had been the look on his face as he’d burst into the stairwell first thing that morning, ready to do battle when he could barely stand. Ready to lend a shoulder when battle hadn’t been necessary.

Anyway. He’d asked her to bring back some food. She could do that much. She flexed her lightly skinned palms and went to work.

She stopped in an internet cafe and quickly searched up the contact information for her credit cards and her bank. The first thing she bought with Michael MacKenzie’s money—Mac...you’ve got your fingers in his wallet, so call him Mac—was a disposable cell. From that she called the credit card companies, already heading for the bus stop.

The closest store wasn’t far from the hotel; she walked back from there, soaking up the Albuquerque valley heat on a crispy dry spring day in a marginal neighborhood of real-life people, the city’s tall buildings and fancy