call?
Natalie, Mac thought, had not told nearly enough of their secrets.
“The truth is, had I known of you, I would have come anyway.” Rafe shrugged at Mac; beside and behind him, his men shifted—knowing him well enough to read something into that gesture. “You’re a prize, no doubt. That blade of yours...similar to mine, in many ways. It feels. It grows strong on those feelings. And,” he said, smiling, “it shares them.”
The men shifted again—and Mac got it then. Especially as Gwen pressed back against him, a shiver rising from within her that had nothing to do with their damp, chilly clothes or the rising gloom of the soaked park. She felt their intent; she fairly vibrated with it.
For he, too, understood. Rafe was playing with them for his blade. Trying to wring out the stress and tension of it, even as he pushed at Mac’s self-control—and tried to push his buttons.
And did so with total success—if not in the way that he imagined.
“You mean,” Gwen said, the strength of her resolve stiffening her entire body, “you’re a parasitic leech.”
“Ah.” Rafe’s eyes glimmered with quick anger, a peremptory expression that didn’t belong on that unprepossessing face and its nondescript features. “As I said, charmingly forthright. But in this case, so very far from correct. I give as well as take—or hadn’t you noticed?”
“You give in order to take,” Gwen corrected fiercely. “To destroy!”
The strength of her reaction coursed through Mac twofold—through the blade, reaching eagerly for such purity of emotion, and through the link they’d so recently explored. He drew back from it—drew himself up, jaw hard and nostrils flared and trying to keep it from swirling through his concentration. Trying to keep it from Rafe, lest he see the clarity of their connection and come to understand it as more than just the effect of the blade.
“Think bigger,” Rafe advised her. He caressed his own blade, fingers running lightly over glimmering metal. Behind him, the sun crusted the edges of the lowest clouds, offering a brief, final slash of light across the glowering Sandia thunderheads.
Lightning flickered, ever more apparent in the failing light; the local car headlights had become few and far between, here in this city where people had quickly learned to stay inside at night. “Fear is the most powerful human emotion we have. Fear drives everything we do. Fear controls us—and can be used to control others. Fear does not destroy...fear builds. It changes nations.” He looked at Mac, a direct challenge. “You can be part of that.”
Mac snapped back a response—and then didn’t. He clamped down on it, unwilling to risk Gwen’s reaction should it slap through their ever-clearing connection, and kept his voice even. “You mean like the Ku Klux Klan? Like Hitler’s Germany? Like the Crusades, and the people who picketed this very park today?”
Satisfaction gleamed in the man’s expression. “Not like those things.”
Gwen reached back for Mac—found his hand and held on. “You,” she said. “You had something to do...with all of it? Those horrible things?”
“People who fear are so very easy to exploit.” Rafe held his blade up to what remained of the light. “People who fear can so easily be guided to hatred, and shaped into weapons.”
“Come, now,” Rafe said. “I’ve given you this time to think—to understand. I’ve protected you from the influence the rest of the city feels this night, these past moments.” He took a deep breath, his chest lifting and his eyes closing—right there before them, soaking in the emotional storm of the entire city.
Gwen made a noise, realizing it, too. Feeling as he did—the indecency of it. The lurid nature of it.
Rafe opened his eyes with a snap of motion, looking directly at Mac. “But my patience has come to an end, and frankly, you’re boring my men.”
The first trickle of it nudged in at him—the first nauseating wave of churning darkness.
Mac must have made a sound. He must have stiffened or sucked air or gritted out a curse, understanding it now—that the blade’s pain, his pain, came from more than just the overwhelming emotional swamp. It came from Mac’s rejection of it—of what the blade craved and what Mac denied.
Gwen whirled to him, alarm over her paled features, eyes gone dark with fear and straining to see him in the deep dusk. “Mac!”
Where the
Devin climbed out of his car with the Rio Bravo highway entrance ramp in sight and stood within the open door, scowling down the long double rows of motionless headlights. Horns blared all around; to his left, a fistfight had broken out. Without looking, he dipped into the center console of the battered old truck and pulled out his phone.
A glance gave him the number Natalie had programmed there before he’d left the estate; he dialed it. Up ahead came the screech of tires and the profound slam of metal into metal as someone rear-ended a car on the other side of the overpass, scattering shrapnel and parts; Devin winced. “Dammit,” he said into the phone. “Pick up the—”
It clicked over to voice mail and he heard the brief grumble of a masculine voice, the details of it lost in the background noise.
Devin swore more resoundingly, made as if to toss the phone—and at the last minute pulled it back. A moment later, he had Natalie.
“Devin?” she said—uncertain, as she might well be, with the horns and chaos that greeted her before his voice did.
Not to mention the strangely dangerous feel of the city around them.
“See if you can get through to those two,” he said, without wasting time on preamble. “I’m stuck at the Rio Bravo entrance. It’s out here happening again—”
“I can’t hear—what?” she said, raising her voice in sympathetic response to the chaos at the bridge. “Devin, be careful— Can you feel it?”
“I’m okay!” he shouted into the phone. “Stuck in traffic! Call them! Keep calling them! I’ll get there when I can.”
This time, he did toss the phone back into the truck, standing beside it to stare down the road...more thoughtfully this time. A fight or two on the other side of the overpass, cars jammed up at the entrance ramp as if everyone had made the turn at once and no one had given way.
Anheriel tugged at him—a blade eager for the action and far too aware of the currents flowing through the night. Excited by them—energized by them. With hours of practice behind him, he instantly shifted his attention to the smell of wet asphalt, the faint chill of the breeze against his face...the feel of his toes in enclosing shoes.
Anheriel subsided, leaving behind a righteous little grumble. It was, after all, trying to earn redemption. It was
“Don’t worry about it,” Devin told it, letting his gaze linger on the fast-fading sunset glimmer of dark violet and bruised blue clouds. “There’s plenty of action where we’re going.”
He saw easily through the gloom, past the confusing shine of headlights off water—straight to the heart of
