Claimed by the Demon

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