Demon Touch Page 3

  Okay. After bolting from the store as she saw her former boyfriend's car slide into the parking lot—a predator, just like Gary Hines himself: gleaming, sporty, a growl in the engine and street car attitude in the details. The same car, nearly a year later. No doubt with the same handgun in the glove box.

  She'd so hoped he'd moved on to someone new—that he'd dismissed her from his life—found someone new to woo, so charming, before he slowly tightened around her with control and temper. But in that first flush of fear upon seeing him, she realized how futile a hope it had been.

  There was no way he'd simply let go of her defiance. If nothing else, he'd need to teach her one last lesson, leaving her bloodied and broken—putting himself back in control.

  Maybe even leaving her dead. In her heart, she believed it of him.

  Especially since he'd brought a friend.

  So she'd run. It was a small town, and she'd planned for this; she'd known where to duck aside, and which sharp turns gave her the most cover on the way through the complex little warren of alleys. He'd followed her for a while—giving her just a glimpse or two of his black gimme cap and linebacker's shoulders. Right up until she'd hurried through the little grocery store on the corner, ditching out through the employee-only exit and doubling around to the bakery.

  There, she'd lost him. But her panic still hit a high note, her plan to return to her car completely thwarted.

  The bakery had put in a privacy fence since she'd mapped out this route.

  A hurried scramble over a stack of pallets had given her the view…and the bad news. She'd have no better luck risking a dash to the Madame Psychic store lot to her right, or the tiny leather goods shop to the left. They'd all added fences, separating themselves from the residential yards backed up against their lots.

  And so she'd waited to be discovered. Not daring to call for help as dusk turned to full dark, and not daring to leave on her own. Not daring to believe that Gary wouldn't, having come this close to her, somehow already be at her little rented trailer, waiting for her.

  It had taken her hours before she realized she had Alex's business card tucked her back jeans pocket; it had taken another hour to get up the nerve to use it, reading it by the light of the cell phone display. She'd called twice with no answer, and finally, finally, left a message.

  Okay, he asked? She was nowhere close to being okay.

  But she said, "The sooner, the better."

  "My bike is nearby," he told her as he headed out into the pitch darkness, sure-footed at that.

  She immediately balked, unable to see anything more than the indistinct shape of his face—and then, after he turned away, not even that.

  He came back to her with more patience than she'd expected. "Hey," he said. "Don't worry about it. I can see fine." He pulled her hand around his back to rest on his opposite hip, gently draping an arm over her shoulder. "Trust me."

  She didn't voice that bitter little laugh—trust—and she didn't voice the relief of sliding up against him, feeling from his confident movement that he did, indeed, know just where he was going; feeling the warmth and strength of him.

  Feeling his shirt wet beneath her hand. "What—?" she said, and started to pull away.

  He held her close. "I cut myself shaving. It's nothing."

  "I can't trust you," she said, finding that she had grown stronger in this past year after all, "if you lie to me."

  He laughed under his breath, guiding her confidently into the alley and nudging a bottle out of her path with his foot along the way. "Damn, I like you. How about this—it'll wait until we get somewhere else. By which time it's likely to be nothing."

  She scowled into the darkness. "It is just not right that I think you mean it. Not when you make no more sense than that."

  "I know." His voice held both humor and apology. "Here, there's a pothole. We're almost—"

  Halogen headlights snapped on from the facing alley across the street, blue-white and blinding. Alex cursed.

  And then the engine gunned, and she realized what he'd understood immediately—that the headlights were no coincidence. Nor was the familiar engine with its growl of power and anger.

  When the tires squealed, she froze—understanding the threat. Gary. He must have known she was back in one of these alleys—he must have seen the fences. And rather than risk losing her as he searched the wrong back lot, he'd simply waited for her to emerge.

  The patience of a predator.

  I should have known.

  It was her last coherent thought, as the car surged forward, headlights bouncing. Alex grabbed the hand from his hip, yanking her behind and to his right—a quick and startling surge of strength against which she had no resistance even as his left hand, limned a stark shadow against the light, dipped into his pocket and out again. She had the impression of movement, a whipping blow…he shoved her hard against the side of the leather shop and threw himself on top of her, grinding her into brick. The air left her lungs; her ribs creaked. Glass shattered, scattering around their feet—air blew past in a rush of hot engine and burning rubber, and she never even heard the brakes before the car slammed into the privacy fence.

  Alex's weight disappeared from her back; he flipped her around to face him, and even in the darkness she could perceive the intensity of his expression. "Deb," he said. "Are you—"

  "Okay," she said, even if it was on a gasp of breath.

  He transferred that gaze to the end of the alley, where the glow from the car taillights revealed everything she feared she'd see.

  The violence. The willingness.

  Even now, he turned to go for them, and somehow—somehow—

  No. That was not a sword in his hand.

  It was not.

  She found her tongue. She didn't try to talk him out of it—didn't try to tell him what to do. She simply blurted the truth. "There were two of them!"

  And if she'd been thinking about the odds of two against one when she knew Gary would have that handgun, she understood instantly from the look he gave her that he cared more about the fact that one of them might reach her while he was busy with the other.

  He slipped his hand around her waist and pulled her to his side—and suddenly she was running through darkness, clinging to him…trusting him.

  Behind them, Gary's car spun its wheels, fighting the wreckage that enclosed the hood—pulling what remained of the fence down behind him.

  They're coming! she wanted to say, and couldn't find the breath. Alex barely slowed to lift her to the bike, his left hand free once more—and she'd barely settled into the cruiser's shaped passenger seat when he mounted the bike in front of her, turned to jam a helmet into her hands, and fired up the engine.

  She'd barely plonked the helmet on—too large at that, and half covering her eyes—when he accelerated away from the curb. With completely unabashed terror, she flung her arms around him, waiting for his headlamp to come on…and realizing that in spite of the moonless night, he wasn't going to use it.

  By the time Gary backed his car out of the alley, they'd spun out into the darkness, finding an alley of their own. A dodge, a weave, a wild clutch around his waist, and his route spat them out on an abandoned street, where Alex accelerated into the night.

  And, as an afterthought, finally flipped on the headlamp.

  Chapter 4

  Alex took a circuitous route to the duplex—an older home right on the outer edges of town, bridging the gap between open rows of newly planted corn and the town proper. He let the bike coast to a stop and halted it with a final whispering touch of the brakes, propping his leg out to stabilize it as the other foot reached to toe down the kickstand. The light bypass sat firmly in the default on position, making the bike perfectly legal again.

  She didn't release her death grip around his ribs.

  Not that he minded. Her cheek between his shoulders, her body pressed up against his back, her thighs clamped around his hips—

  sweaty, gasping, crying out
>
  She jerked against him, and instantly pushed herself away.

  "Sorry," he murmured.

  She sounded infinitely weary. "What did I say about lying?"

  "Ah," he said. "Right. Got me. Not totally sorry." But he added, in the silence that followed, "Not sorry for me. I'm sorry you don't feel the same."

  "Bad boys," she muttered, somewhat nonsensically. The bike shifted slightly as her foot sought the ground. "Maybe it's me I don't trust, then."

  "Maybe you should start," he suggested. He stood, and managed to disengage from the bike even as she did, catching her elbow while she found her feet.

  "Where are we?" she said, looking at the wide, well-lit front porch somewhat askance. "Besides not a hotel."

  "You said you wanted to feel safe," he told her. "This is where I can make that happen."

  "This is your place?" she asked, and that disbelieving tone returned to her voice. The wary one. "I don't really think—"

  screams and splashing blood and breaking bone

  She sucked in a gasp and held it there. He let her get her balance, supporting her elbow, until she said, "What—?"

  He didn't answer right away, absorbing the blade's message. When he spoke, he couldn't hide the new tension in his voice. "It's from the blade," he said. "It's what is. It's what will be—what could be." In her silence, he added, "It was meant to be a warning. A kindness, I would say. It's hard to tell."

  "The blade," she said flatly.

  "My knife. You've seen it. You have some idea of what it is. What it does."

  "Your truths," she said, with no little asperity, "are missing pieces."

  No doubt about that.

  "Safety," he said, and nodded at the porch—one double door plain, the other decorated with a child-made welcome sign and sporting a pink girl's bike with streamers and training wheels. Flower boxes overflowed with blooms—snapdragons and sweet peas and daisies. "A hot shower. Rest. And then I'll take you wherever you want to go."

  "I've never seen the Grand Canyon," she muttered.

  "Then we'll go," he said.

  Maybe it was the utter simplicity of it. Maybe she simply gone as far as she could this night. Maybe she understood the blade's warning.

  Maybe it was, in some neonatal fashion, trust.

  Except there, on the porch, with the squeaky screen door propped open and his key on the lock, she hesitated again.

  He couldn't entirely blame her. He knew who he was—what he was. What he'd become, these past few years. And it was those past few years that gave him some true sense of what she'd likely been through.

  The beatings he'd stopped. The killings he'd thwarted. The men—and occasional women—who had died at his hand, determined to turn their violence upon him when he protected their victims.

  That's when the blade was the happiest.

  a shattered windshield, a gun grabbed from the glove box, a confusing juxtaposition of faces old and new, all sneering…all full of disdain and victory.

  The boyfriend was looking for her. For him.

  He was looking hard.

  He wasn't here. He wasn't anywhere near. But all the same, best not to be out on the porch.

  Alex slid a hand to the small of his back, moving slowly as she stiffened—even more slowly as he brought out the compact Sgian Dubh—and held it out to her.

  She returned him a look of utter disbelief.

  "It's a Sgian Dubh," he told her. "It's at rest."

  "Skain Du," she repeated, still in utter disbelief. "And what makes you think I want to touch it?"

  He laughed, short as it was. "Good point," he said. "But you're safe from it. And it changes which one of us is armed."

  She narrowed her eyes, there in the light where she could see him perfectly well. "What did you do in the alley?"

  "Baton," he said simply. "Broke the windshield. I doubt he even saw that fence."

  "Baton." She looked at the blade. "Show me."

  He shook his head. "It's dozing," he said. "Better not to wake it, don't you think?"

  She made a little huff of noise. "Tell me, then."

  "Inside," he suggested, and presented the blade to her again, even as he couldn't believe he was doing it at all. It had tried to kill him once, on the day it had become his. Now it had entwined itself around his soul, becoming pushier as the days and weeks and finally years passed by.

  It would not be pleased to be in her hands. He had no doubt it would make him pay.

  But then, he paid for its presence on a daily basis.

  She slapped her hand on his, picking up the blade—pushing past him to enter the house. He locked the door behind them. "I know he's looking, but he won't find you here."

  "But tomorrow…how can I be safe if you're at work?"

  He latched the door chain. "This is my work," he told her. It didn't trouble him to relieve loan sharks, drug dealers, and thieves of their money. "The blade and I."

  But when he turned back to her, he found her a lot closer than he'd expected.

  He found her drowning in his leather jacket, swamped by fear…and the spear of a blade pointed right at his belly. Touching it.

  He sucked back that vulnerable flesh. "Hey, now—"

  "Turn around," she commanded him, and her eyes had gone hard. For a moment, he thought the blade had gone to her after all. For a moment, he thought he'd done utterly the wrong thing. And if so, best not to resist at all.

  But when he turned, feeling the prick of the blade up against his spine, it was her other hand that went to work—fumbling at his shirt, yanking it up. He knew what she was staring at. He knew, too, that it was mostly healed by now. The unnatural burn of it had faded; the blood was dry. So was his voice. "I was sleeping it off when you called."

  "Sleeping it off," she repeated flatly.

  He turned again, this time ignoring the press of steel against his belly. If the blade wanted to cut him, it would have done so by now. That edge sliced skin without so much as a whisper of effort. "Deb Marchand," he said. "This is the life I lead. It's what the blade wants."

  "How can a blade want?" she asked, her voice hardly more than a whisper. "And how can you know when it does?"

  "How can a blade reach into the now and the future and show us what should be?" he countered, reaching to touch her lip with his thumb. In spite of knowing who he was and what he was, and how much collateral damage he'd already left strewn in his wake.

  "What could be," she said sharply, not missing a beat.

  "Deb," he said simply, and slid his hand around behind her head to bring her in for a kiss. And while again he waited for the resistance, the denial…all he found was a hint of hesitation.

  When she leaned in, he stopped thinking at all. He damned sure stopped waiting. He cupped her head in his hands and angled his mouth over hers, and all his careful intent turned instantly to need. Too deep for lust, too complete for infatuation. Months of watching and waiting, stoked by circumstances and the hot presence of the blade she held between them.

  But far too soon, a phone buzzed—the sound of a no-ring vibration.

  The significance of it filtered slowly into his mind, and his mind slowly overcame his body, and he ruefully stepped away while Deb struggled to reach her messenger bag and finally shrugged away the jacket to disentangle herself; Alex caught it before it fell past her shoulders, dropping it over the coat tree beside the door.

  Deb pulled the phone out after it had stopped its fuss, and hesitated over it. "It's the middle of the night."

  "Closer to morning," Alex agreed. He wrapped his hand around hers over the phone, holding it there when she might have put it away. "It's either a lot of nothing, or it's a lot of something."

  "I don't…" she said, and shook her head. "I don't really want to know." But she thumbed the number to her voice mail, and tapped in a quick code number before putting the phone back to her ear.

  And then she went utterly pale; for an instant, he thought she would throw the phone.

 
With his hand still wrapped around hers, he hit the speaker toggle and the button that allowed him to replay the message.

  "Did you think I wouldn't find you, babe? That boss of yours was really accommodating. I think he might have warned you if I hadn't given him other things to take care of, but don't worry. He'll heal. You, now—you're a different story. Because you know what? You really shouldn't have hooked up with a guy who's already pissed off some important people."

  She gave him a sharp glance; he kept his attention on the phone as ex-boyfriend Gary offered his parting shot. "You're not invisible any longer, and neither is he. See you soon."

  She grabbed the phone back, stabbing at the buttons. "Delete your ass," she muttered, and jammed the phone back in her bag. Then she said, "I need to borrow some money. I need to get out of here."

  "Hey," he said, startled—stepping back to spread his arms as he might meet a potential adversary on the street. Peace.

  "You heard him." Her voice rose into the sharp range. "I've got to get out of here."

  "Safe," he reminded her.

  "Nowhere's safe! He's hurt my boss, he's got my number—you can be damned sure he knows where I live! He knows you. Somehow he knows you."

  "It's a one-bar town," he said. "It doesn't matter. I'm off the grid." He gestured at the house around them. "I pay for this place with cash, the utilities go through the landlord…even if they had my name, which they don't, they couldn't find me."

  "I'm not taking any chances. You said you'd make sure I was safe. Did you mean it?"

  Oof. Direct hit. "I meant it," he told her. "If you want to go, I'll take you. Right now. But there's safe, and there's safe. This guy's already just blown through an order of protection, right?"

  She watched him with widened eyes, startled out of her rising panic. "How did you—"

  "Know the type," he said. "The law's not going to stop him. He's already gone for your boss. So now he's got to keep looking. It's more than a matter of pride—you deserve it, for causing him so much trouble. You've earned it."

  She sucked in a breath. "How dare—" and then she stopped, briefly covering her face with her hands. "No, no, I get it. That's him. That's what he's saying. And you're right. He is."