Claimed by the Demon

business district looming off to the west. Colors, sun bright even through new sunglasses, a constant stream of traffic and people.

How long could a single day be?

Amazing to discover it was still barely noon as she dragged herself back to the hotel. Laden with the reusable cloth grocery bags she’d picked up along with the groceries—and basic toiletries, and underwear, and a few basic Ts and sport shorts—she hesitated in the lobby.

She could get her own room. On his card, sure, but it wasn’t like she wouldn’t pay him back, and—

The wallet felt heavy in the grocery bag where she’d dropped it.

His whole wallet. His whole identity. Entrusted to her, just like that.

And if anyone knew what it was like to lose that little bundle of selfhood...

No. She’d ask before charging her own room.

She adjusted her grip on her various burdens and headed for the elevator, bumping the call button with her knuckles. Getting the hotel key from her front pocket was an exercise in persistence and dexterity; getting the door unlocked, more of the same.

She took no more than a step into the room before dropping the whole kit and kaboodle, exhaling a huge sigh of relief as she shook out her hands. She rescued the key card, pushed the door closed, and leaned back against it with a dramatic groan.

And that’s when she noticed he hadn’t so much as moved. Still in bed, still just as she’d left him, moments after he’d flopped down in the first place. One arm flung out over the center of the bed, the other over his eyes, angled so one leg bent over the side of the mattress, that foot still on the floor.

“Um,” she said. “Mac?” And didn’t expect the spurt of concern, nudging purchases out of the way to hurry over, putting a hand on his leg. “You okay?”

Unbelievable. She was watching his chest, battered and tattooed—waiting for the rise of it—and it seemed to take forever, dammit.

But there it was, slow and long and even. A man deeply asleep. Just as she’d left him.

She bet his arm was asleep, too, dead weight on his face.

Without much thinking about it, she perched on the small slice of mattress beside him. This muscle-strapped body had become familiar to her last night—but in the light of day, those hours now seemed a marginal reality. And she no longer had the right or the reason to touch him. Nothing more than what she did now, laying the back of her hand across the side of his face and then on his neck.

No longer so very hot. Now just warm, another human being going about the business of being alive—and not so very bruised anymore at that. He didn’t stir at the transgression, but a brief spate of goose bumps rippled over his arms and shoulders.

She let her hands rest in her lap, considering him. Considering this. The situation...the moments that had led her here, and the stark understanding that she had no idea where to go. Not in the next moment, not in the next hour, not in the next day.

He’d wanted to know about her father.

He was going to ask her again. She’d seen that much in him. If she stayed. She looked at the tattoo. Here, in the daylight, hardly obscured by the faint pattern of hair across his chest. She looked, and her breath caught and—

No wonder.

No wonder she’d thought of her father. Just no freaking wonder.

I am nine years old, and my father is dead.

No one will talk about him.

I live with my aunt. She won’t talk about him, either. I learn through overheard whispers—car abandoned, body not found. Witnesses who say they saw a horrible fight, but neither the victor nor the victim are identified or located.

They wonder if he’s coming back. But I don’t.

I know.

I am nine years old, and my father is dead.

She found her hand wrapped around the pendant, her eyes closed and her head tipped back. Curse and boon, that pendant. A reminder of the past—but not just the good of it. The awful of it, too. The way it clung to her...the way it sometimes seemed to call to her, something far away and just beneath the threshold of what she was able to hear.

Other times, other places, she had dismissed that sensation—wasn’t her life strange enough, in the wake of what her father had done to her?

Here and now, it seemed all too real. As if the metal breathed with her, breathing into her.

As if she wasn’t alone.

I know you.

She jerked, hand clenching, sucking in a surprised breath.

That trickle of thought hadn’t been hers.

Not hers at all.

I KNOW YOU.

More than a trickle. She jerked from it, eyes flying open in time to see Mac jerk awake in sync with her, his body trembling, his blue-grey eyes dark and confused and downright feral—his voice, when he spoke, distant and hoarse. “I...know...”

And then he seemed to wrench himself out of whatever gripped him and he saw her, truly saw her. And as she opened her mouth to say she had no idea what, just that fast, he was up and pivoting over her on one knee, pushing her back flat.

And now she was the one to tremble. But there he stopped, hands on either side of her shoulders, his eyes closing briefly and his face twisting in something that seemed like pain. It left him breathing hard, but when he opened his eyes, they were clear and bright and looking directly at her. Seeing her, in truth.

Why she hadn’t fought him off, she didn’t know. Why she hadn’t kicked and screamed and shoved and scratched—

She didn’t know.

“Mac,” she said, barely more than a whisper. No more than that, and whether it was question or request, she didn’t know that, either.

He lifted one hand to clear the hair from her face, to touch her cheek and brow. “I’m sorry,” he said, and brought his mouth down on hers. Not the ferocity she’d expected, but a gentle, cherishing kiss. And in that, more —so much more—than any crushing demand.

When he straightened, she could only look at him, feeling the surprise still etched on her own face, her mouth still open—still feeling his touch.

He ran a thumb across the line of her lower lip, hesitated—muscles working in his jaw, nostrils flaring briefly—and then pushed himself away. “I’m sorry,” he said again.

She didn’t move. “Why?”

It seemed to surprise him. “Why?”

She propped herself up on her elbows. “Why are you sorry? Why did you do it? Why did you stop?”

“You’re crying.” It wasn’t an answer to any of that. It didn’t even seem like part of the apology. Just the next step in a disjointed conversation.

“I’m not,” she said, and ran fingers across the corner of her eye, discovered it wet—discovered tears trickled down into her hair. “Am I?”

That wry grin of his, on the mouth that was made for it.

Among other things.

He said, “I think we need to talk.”

* * *

Devin dropped the scant pages of the Albuquerque paper onto Natalie’s desk.

She never took her eyes from the computer monitor before her. “I wondered what you’d think of that.”

Devin snorted. “He didn’t take my warning very seriously.”