Claimed by the Demon

shadow, not quite there in time.

“Lifetimes,” Rafe reminded him as they stood apart, Mac panting and stung, his thigh burning deeply and his heart still shouting after Gwen, “which you cannot defeat.” He raised his blade-sword, a ceremonial gesture, and spoke to it, reveling in the moment. “You may take them now.”

Oh, no. No, no, no. That was the whole point. It was why Mac had refused to be parted from the shackles of his own blade, why Gwen had let him go—why she had fled to protect the pendant. Because you don’t get to win.

But the man’s dark blade was right there. And it knew how to spew hatred, up close and personal. It knew how to ooze through to Mac’s soul, flooding in through the blade to swamp them both, looking for the slightest echo from within Mac.

And Keska gave way.

Mac staggered back as the blade’s connection snapped shut, leaving him only what he was: a man sorely tried, sorely wounded, with dead dull metal in hand.

Keska!

In response, only the merest flicker through their bond. Not a blade separated, not a blade destroyed...but a blade overwhelmed. A blade in complete retreat.

Mac sucked in a deep, ragged breath, taking a two-handed grip on a sword not meant for it—braced and waiting even as he reeled. Rafe might have taken him down right then—that moment, with a long sweep of slashing metal that Mac could no longer evade.

But no. Rafe stopped. He took the deepest of breaths—satisfaction of the most profound nature, nostrils flared and standing with proud arrogance, the storm’s pounding flicker of light the perfect backdrop.

And through the thick, pounding nature of horror, Mac felt it. A feather-light touch, no more than a whisper. Keska. Be strong.

More than that, Rafe felt it. He stepped back, jerking around—looking for it. I see you...I taste you...Halgos...you are known.

“Halgos,” Mac said in the wonderment of it—the hope of it, glimmering through the overriding swamp of heavy, pounding despair and darkness. Demardel?

He didn’t have time to think about it. Rafe whirled, came crashing down on him with metal and fury and no small spark of blooming fear. “It,” he said each word distinct and growing in emphasis. “Won’t. Work.”

Mac staggered back away from him. Rafe’s final remaining man abandoned his sorely wounded comrades to snap foolishly around the edges of the fight and Mac pivoted to him with blade extended, driving him away and bringing the point back into guard just in time to keep Rafe from plunging at him. Metal clashed; Keska sparked back to life. —halgos— it murmured, intrigued. —keska. be strong. strong —!

Halgos, said the trickle from outside them all, growing stronger. I see you. I can deny you.

“No,” Rafe said, a harsh whisper from between clenched teeth. “No one can take what we have! And you’ll die trying!” He pressed a quick flurry of attacks and Keska surged to meet him, offering Mac a renewed strength and quickness for which he would later pay.

Halgos. You may NOT.

And all the hatred fell away. The deep inner attack, the imposed hatred wrapped around keen fear wrapped around gibbering insanities. It fell away and it left Mac clear and sharp, reflecting only Keska’s normal trickling mutter of satisfactions—and with those, he was well able to deal.

Suddenly it was Mac pressing the attack. Suddenly it was Mac pushing the older man back.

Suddenly it was Mac, having quietly closed the distance between them, moving just inside Rafe’s guard without notice, allowing small hits to embolden Rafe into taking the bigger strike. It would have impaled Mac through the heart had he let it, giving Keska no time to heal him at all.

But he didn’t; he lured the strike in and he parried it away. And suddenly it was Mac, the sword buried deeply in his side and grating on ribs—stuck there, for the merest instant—while Mac returned the favor. A clean strike, up beneath the breastbone, up through the heart...right on through as they both fell heavily to the ground.

And it was Gwen, soaked and dripping all over, who yanked Rafe aside without regard to his dead and glazing eyes, and who yanked out the blade Halgos—and who threw herself down on Mac. And then—in the nicest possible way—she said, “That was the worst plan ever,” before she planted her hands at the side of his face and kissed him senseless.

* * *

Violence lingered in Gwen’s thoughts. Clashing images of fear and peril, the bruising grip of water—the slam of her body up against the inexplicable lip of concrete to which she had clung. The water tugging viciously at her— tearing away her sandals, stretching her shirt.

But she’d latched on, pounded by sensation—the noise, the cold, the battering pain—and she’d nonetheless sent her focus elsewhere. Reaching out. Not to Mac, but to the blade in Rafe’s hands. Halgos.

She hadn’t been strong enough to sunder them apart; she hadn’t known enough. But she’d sure as hell distracted them. And she’d frightened Rafe...and it had been enough.

She just hadn’t known if it had been in time for Mac. And she hadn’t known if she’d survive to find out—not until an unfamiliar form slid down to join her, hauling her away from the outflow pipe against which she’d lodged and boosting her out of the concrete arroyo with impersonal hands placed by necessity in personal places.

Disoriented, uncoordinated and staggering, she nonetheless found Rafe dead and toppled over Mac, hating the very touch of that heinous blade as she flung it away—then finding Mac and that dark wry grin...kissing him.

But he wasn’t so much kissing her back any longer. And while she’d forgotten to feel the soaking cold, Mac was the one who now shivered.

“Hey,” she said, running her hands over him. Dark blood stained his pants, his shirt, now his chin. “Hey.” She groped to find Keska—not quite retreated to its neutral pocketknife form, but lingering as the frontier trade blade, all glimmering Damascus-like metal. It lay on the ground behind her, exactly where she’d so recently shoved Rafe’s body.

Where Rafe no longer lay. Nothing. Nada.

No body. No body parts.

She sucked in a breath. He’d been dead—she’d been so sure he was dead! But she’d heard nothing, seen nothing...

And he wasn’t there.

“Mac,” she said—only a whisper because could he even hear her? She’d never felt quite so alone, kneeling on the asphalt beside one shivering, wounded and unconscious man.

On impulse, she shoved Keska into Mac’s cold hand, forcibly wrapping his fingers around it. She chafed his arms—quite suddenly feeling her own sodden clothes and her own very close call with death. “Keska,” she said, out loud and concentrating hard, “you better do something here. If he—”

Okay, maybe out loud hadn’t been the best idea, because she suddenly choked on the words. She swallowed against the big knot in her throat and tried again. “If he dies, things aren’t going to turn out well for you. You can’t take me, and I’ll make damned sure you don’t get a chance at anyone else.”

Maybe, just maybe, the blade glimmered slightly in response.

Squishing footsteps came up behind her; water splatted the asphalt, merging with the spreading puddle of water and blood. “Hell, that poor bastard.” The voice was unfamiliar, and a little rough with swallowed water.

Surreptitiously, Gwen reached for Keska—not knowing if the blade would allow her to use it at all.

But the man just laughed. “Who just pulled you away from an outflow pipe and boosted your ass out of that arroyo?”

“I have no idea,” Gwen said, closing her hand around Mac’s with Keska, finding it warm again. “But I’d really like it if you weren’t close enough to drip on me.”

He laughed again, short but amused, and moved to the other side of Mac, his hands low and away from his