Claimed by the Demon

night vision that came with the blade. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “Anheriel is pretending to be above it all at the moment. If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was afraid. Baitlia?”

“Baitlia’s not a primary blade,” she reminded him. “I rarely get the same big picture sense of things that you do. It’s more like a two-year-old. I want this and I want that.”

Devin snorted. “Right, if two-year-olds drink blood and crave killing.”

“Still,” she said. “What’s your sense of it?”

He shook his head again. “Hard to pin down. I wouldn’t say the guy was looking for trouble. I wouldn’t say he was running away from it, either. He looked beat to hell. And the girl with him...shell-shocked. She has no idea.” He gave Natalie a quick glance. “Did you feel...?”

“Something,” she admitted. “Was that him?”

He had to shrug; it made him irritable. “It was something. Whether it happened to him or because of him or by him...I have no idea.”

“Well, you’ve rattled his cage,” Natalie said, rubbing a thumb over Devin’s knuckles. “You’ve let him know you’re here and what you want. It’s his move now. Then we’ll know.”

* * *

Mac slapped his hand over the blade; it came to him, flaring bright enough to make Gwen wince away—and by the time she looked back, he’d palmed it back into a pocketknife.

Gwen blinked at the spot where the knife had been, no doubt still half-blind from the preternatural flash of its change. “Where—” she asked, and then, as if absorbing the impact of the past few moments all in one fell swoop, dismay crossed features that until now had been determined. “My purse! That rat bastard! He came out of nowhere!”

That he had. Out of nowhere on a dark night that so far held nothing but people striking out beyond all reason.

Mainly, people striking out at him.

No, not quite right. For once, they’d simply failed to fall back in the face of the threat he presented.

The tarry wave of hatred splashing through the night—now, that felt more personal.

“My purse!” Gwen said, her voice rising, and then she cursed a heartfelt word he doubted she ever said all that often at all. “My keys, my wallet! I’m not even checked in yet—”

Mac came to the conclusion that this would take a while. Wearier than he would have imagined only an hour earlier, he crawled to the curb and sat there, hands over his face. Assessing.

He was vulnerable now. Burning up with the blade’s attempt to absorb the energies that had struck at them both, battered by the scuffles he should have skimmed through with ease. “I can’t be here,” he said out loud, no plan or thought behind it. Just knowing what he needed. Sleep. A safe place. Healing, before weakness overtook him altogether.

“No?” she said, fuming and with no particular insight to his unfathomable personal world. “Then go! I can deal with this. I just need to call the credit card people and I need to get the car towed to get new locks on it and—and—”

Her expression shifted to horror as she realized she was crying. She spun away from him, pressing her hands over her eyes. “No, no, no!”

“My room,” he said. “King bed. Huge. You stay on your side. I’ll stay on mine.”

It had made sense in his head. From the look on her face as she spun back around, he wasn’t sure it had made sense out loud.

“You must be kidding,” she said. “Do I know you? Do I know anything about you?” She threw her hands up in the air. “Oh, right, I do. I know you carry an effing big knife that suddenly isn’t anywhere to be seen! I know you dive into random street fights! I know you were bloody when I met you and you’re bloodier now!” She gave the hotel a determined look, her mouth pressed tight in thought. “I bet they’d let me use the phone. I bet the cops would take me to a YMCA. Or something.”

“Lice,” he said, sighing. “Don’t stay, then. But if you would help—”

“Right,” she said skeptically. “Now you need help? Or now you just want to lure me up— Hey...hey. Are you fainting?”

The second time she’d said that, dammit. “Not fainting,” he told her, watching the world go wavery and grey. “Passing out.”

“Gah!” she said, making it there in time to keep his head from clunking on pavement—a distant, pleasant and living pillow. With excellent form. “Stop that! Okay! What’s your room number?”

As impatient as her voice came to his ears, her hands stayed gentle at his shoulders, touching his face. “God, you really are hot. C’mon, then, big guy. Hotel, you, me. Let’s go be a cliche.”

Chapter 3

Think, Gwen Badura, she told herself. Think about what you’re doing.

Because here she was in front of the hotel room where the man named Michael MacKenzie, AKA Mac, slumped wearily against the wall. She routed through his pockets for the room key.

He didn’t look like trouble.

He barely looked conscious.

It didn’t mean he’d stay that way.

First a police report...then how many hours till I sleep? At a shelter. With lice.

Ugh.

“You’re doing the right thing,” she told herself. Out loud. Firmly. And then just shrugged when he gave her a bleary and questioning look, finally producing the card key. She took it from him, pushed it into the lock, and flicked the handle open.

Whew. The decorating theme du jour must have been garish.

But the bed was indeed huge. And there was a little fridge and an even smaller microwave, and the bathroom with its separate sink area didn’t greet her with any smells, drips, or puddles of untoward water.

Mac headed straight for the fridge. She closed the door behind them, far too aware of the absence of things—not throwing her purse on the bed, her overnighter beside the closet. At least she had the cheapo toothbrush the hotel had given her on the way in.

You’re doing the right thing.

And not just for her. She watched as he pulled a small plastic bottle from the fridge, broke the cap seal, and gulped it down. Some sort of protein drink, as best as she could read upside down.

Well, at least it wasn’t blood. The way things had gone this evening, wouldn’t it be just her luck to have hooked up with a vampire? And would it truly have been any less believable? “You don’t drink blood, do you?”

He startled, spilling the last of the drink down his chin, and looked at her. For an instant she thought she might have seen guilt as he wiped the back of his hand over his chin, but then he said, his voice gone hoarse with fatigue, “Do you just say whatever comes into your head, then?”

“Gets it out of the way,” Gwen said promptly. “Besides, the best defense is a good offense.”

Right. And she’d learned it early. If she was going to poke her nose into the gut feelings that so often drove her, it was easier to prod the situation right out into the open. That way she could see just what she had to deal with. “You didn’t say no, by the way. About drinking blood.”

He tossed the bottle into the minuscule wastebasket beside the fridge, practically filling it with that single item. “I don’t, no.”

While she was pondering that unexpected response, he peeled his jacket off and dropped it over the straight-backed chair beside the ubiquitous token desk. “Bed,” he said, gesturing at it. And then a nod at the closet. “Extra blanket, extra pillow. I’ll hang out on top of the sheets, if you’d like.”

Yeah, she’d like. She grabbed the items, then belatedly thought to say, “Hey, I should do that. I mean, I’ll sleep on top.”