Taming the Demon (15 page)

Chapter 15

D
evin hadn’t truly expected any other reaction. Not from a woman so clear about her boundaries. Not when he would give her truth and trust but not
all
of it.

Didn’t mean he hadn’t let himself hope. Deep down, where he didn’t truly have any control. And he’d learned a lot about control these past weeks.

He’d see Natalie again. He didn’t have any doubt. Fate had brought them together not once but twice, and now they were too entwined to avoid another encounter.

He just wasn’t sure if he wanted it. Because
damn,
he couldn’t help but put his heart right out there when he saw her—when he wanted to draw her close and breathe in the scent of her hair and feel her hands dig gently into the muscle along his spine.

Watching her reject that...wasn’t going to be so good for that heart. Twice he’d walked away from her; lacking courage; now she’d drawn the line a final time.

He pulled the truck up alongside the curb outside Enrique’s. If he went into the gym like this—closed now, but Enrique would be in the back cursing over bills and paperwork and laundry—Enrique would take one look at him and kick him out on his ass, tell him to get right back over to Natalie and straighten this out.

Enrique had a matter-of-fact philosophy when it came to affairs of the heart.
Don’t screw around, hijo. Don’t waste it.

Devin trailed his fingers over the battered envelope sitting on the passenger side of the bench seat.
The alleys, the deaths...the territorial response of the blade.
The gardens, the new restaurant...Sawyer Compton. Way too many pieces, far too little understanding of what tied them altogether. Just the bone-deep awareness that something
did.

Maybe Enrique had found a thing or two.

He flipped the truck’s door handle, gave the door itself the extra kick it needed on a cold night like this, and slid out to pavement, high-top martial arts sneaks silent by both habit and nature, the hoodie and vest no longer nearly enough to keep out the night.

The blade snarled a warning.

Not the eager thrill of anticipated blood, but the same edgy feel from the evening at Natalie’s. The same lingering territorial anger as the alleys. Faint but distinct.

Devin knew it this time. Not just pending violence, not just the chance to bite flesh. But a threat perceived.

He ran for the door, hit the entry bar in frustration—locked, as it should be. Fumbling for the keys merely filled his hand with the knife; he flipped it to his other hand and went back to his watch pocket, digging out the key he always kept tucked away there.

He wasn’t surprised at the hot burn flooding his arm; he knew the knife had flung itself into the tactical blade, sweet in his grip and ready to bite. He found the key; the key found the lock.

He left it there as he ran into the dark gym, orienting...listening. Heeding the deep inner burn of his own personal directionals, bypassing the still-lit office and slamming through the swinging double doors to the back hallway—permanent odor of bleach, cleansers, sweat and wet shower tile.

A grunt echoed hollowly down the dim hallway. An old man’s pain.
The showers—

He knew better than to run for it—to give up the advantage of those habitually silent feet in their dance-light shoes. But he moved fast enough, threading through a row of lockers and up against the wall outside the showers—hesitating just long enough to hear the sound of someone spitting defiance.

Ah, Enrique. Don’t you know you’re an old man?

Still snapping back in the face of defeat, as he had in the ring. Never giving up. Just that thing he instilled in his students now.

This time, it might just get him killed. The blade knew as much, burning hot up Devin’s arm.

“Who did you tell, old man?” The growl echoed in that shower room, coming with a loud rustle of movement. Devin had no trouble interpreting the actions that made them—a second man had Enrique, had jerked him to his feet—

Threat,
the blade murmured.

Devin stepped into the communal shower. Hard tile floor, dripping shower head in the corner, someone’s forgotten shampoo tipped over on its side and filling the room with a manly fragrance.

That, and the raw smell of blood.

There were two of them, all right—both of them macho tough in black leather jackets that would have fit better with a little more shoulder and slightly less gut; both with snug black gloves; both with faces exposed.

If they thought they’d scare Enrique past identifying them—

No. Of course they didn’t. This was about gathering information and leaving a body behind.

Or it
had
been. Now, they would discover, it was about staying alive.

“Gently,” Devin said, his voice cold and tight; he gave Enrique a quick once-over. Nothing too serious, not yet. Maybe a broken cheekbone; stitches for sure. And the way the older man hunched over, could be a rib or two gone. “You’ll put him down gently. And then, if you can get past me, you might get out of here tonight.”

Want.
The blade pulsed with it, thirsting for their blood, thirsting for their fear. Enticing Devin to play with them, to kill them slowly...one cut, one blow at a time.

Didn’t matter that there were two of them, or that the man not holding Enrique up would go for a gun at the very first opportunity. These men wouldn’t get past him. Not tonight, not ever.

Enrique lifted his head, squinted at Devin with the one eye that wasn’t already swollen closed. “Keep it in here,” he said, his expression hard and bright. “Easy to clean up the blood that way.” He spat again, hitting the shoes of the man in front of him. “Even fool’s blood washes off tile.”

Not that the blade would leave a trace.

“Don’t kill him yet,” the senior of the two ordered of the man who held Enrique. Curly hair cropped close to his head, big beefy hands beneath the gloves, coarse features. “We don’t yet have what we were sent to get.”

Enrique looked at Devin. “They want to know about the alleys. They want to know who cares that people have died there. They want to know who cares about a big man named Sawyer Compton.” He lifted his lip in a snarl of blood-smeared teeth. “I want to know who cares that someone cares.”

Abruptly, the man who held Enrique tossed him aside—from defiance to a heap of brittle bones in the corner, just like that.

They’d thought Devin would snarl fury; they’d thought he would hesitate, or make some aborted attempt to reach the old man.

Part of him did. Some inner part, the part not blade-honed and street-trained and battle-scarred.

The rest of him knew better.

He stepped in—a duck, a whirl, blade slicing air and whispering through leather and skin; his foot landed in the gut of the leader, trapping his hand as it reached for his gun. Breaking a bone, maybe two.

When he came to rest, one man had only just begun to realize how deeply he’d been cut and the other had dropped his gun—and Devin was no longer within reach of either.

From the corner, Enrique grunted something that could have been a laugh.

And the rush of the blade swept through Devin, gripping his soul. He shuddered, fighting it—losing to it.
Kill them. Kill them now. Drink of them.
He set his jaw, staring at the innocuous floor, tile smeared with more than just Enrique’s blood now. Staring hard. “
I
want to know,” he said, right through clenched teeth, “who
cares.
”
Kill them. Drink of them.
He lifted his head; he let the blade’s darkness show. “And does
Compton
care if you come back alive?”

“Shit,” breathed the man who had already tasted the blade’s edge, taking a step back. “Oh, shit. Ajay, let’s go. Let’s just—”

Ajay—
Ajay?
—turned suddenly sly and crafty; he dove for the gun.

The blade surged up within him, and Devin knew, he
knew,
if he rode the full strength of it, it would win this time. He wouldn’t be able to stay his hand. Never mind that he needed answers from these men, never mind that they could tell him what he needed to know.
Natalie. Leo. Death alleys, masquerading as life.

Ajay saw Devin coming and fumbled the gun, his short, harsh cry of fear echoing off the tile. The beta guy’s eyes widened—

Threat!
Fiery resentment flared down Devin’s arm, throwing him off balance; metal sparked and flowed, strobing light reflected off dull yellow ceramic. The feel of it shifted dramatically in his hand and he knew better than to question. He pivoted, the blade a sturdy, shaped quarterstaff of metal, perfectly placed, perfectly balanced—deflecting the blow that had been aimed for his head from behind.

Just a blur, that’s all he saw. Another black leather jacket, darker skin this time, rough-stubbled jaw and a meanly triumphant sneer turning to surprise. Metal crowbar clanged against mutable steel, a blow that reverberated down his arm.

But he wasn’t done moving by far. His other hand swept up, took the staff at the end; he whirled into the motion, soaking up the lightning glee of the blade set free, the metal reforming, the saber flowing into its graceful curve—

An extra whip of motion as he completed the pivot and the blade took what it had been looking for.

Life.

Control.

Sanity.

The crowbar clattered to the floor, chipping tile.

The body followed, eyes already dead, form already crumbling to the blade’s hunger. Devin stood braced against it, his body still fighting what his mind had already lost, the darkness swirling in around him—vaguely aware of Enrique’s shout, a harsh and liquid sound, and of a second body falling—the beta, succumbing to blood loss.

An explosion rocked the shower—gunfire, contained and echoed and magnified. Devin jerked; he hardly felt it. His leg went numb. A second shot; his entire torso rocked with it.

Ajay.

But when he turned, the blade a knife and ready to throw—no matter that his legs slowly gave way beneath him—Ajay scrambled to his feet, cast one last look at the blade—at Devin’s expression—and shook his head. “As crazy as your fucking brother,” he said, and fled.

Chapter 16

F
or a long time, Natalie sat in her car. Shivering inside and out...but no cameras.

Her home, under surveillance. Her life, unraveling, so many pieces proving to be only layers of truth.

And as she’d stood frozen in shock beneath the camera in her home, her very first thought had been of Devin. Not a logical thought, not strategic or practical.

Just that she wanted him.

Secrets and all.

For in the aftermath of this stark, undeniable betrayal by Compton, it was still his emotionally honest grin flashing through her mind.

She’d drawn her lines and she’d made her decisions and she’d been
wrong.

What if there was more to it than just cameras?

Of course there’s more to it.
Once she started questioning her place here, none of it could be taken for granted. Especially not lately.

Starting with that architect and his incorrect address. She hadn’t pulled that address from thin air; she’d gone where told. And it had put her in the position to be attacked.

To meet Devin.

And then Compton had insisted...

She closed her eyes. Compton’s insistence on hiring Devin...his insistence that Devin stay here. Devin’s continuing struggles in spite of the focus work he was doing, the quick progress Natalie had seen.

Had there been a battle fought outside her door, a man killed and then removed? And what about the intent look on that distinctly mature gentleman’s face as he approached them? And that night, at dinner...two people sick on Devin’s meal. Peyote? She’d seen how sensitive he was...how he eschewed even caffeine. It wouldn’t have taken much.

Too many pieces, none of them quite coming together.

The practical ring tone of her phone startled her; she jerked, huffing steamy breath into the darkness, car windows already fogging.

The caller ID gave her an unfamiliar number; she answered the phone with caution, relaxing only when she heard the voice of the skip tracer looking into the details and identity of the tattooed dead man from the parking lot.

But not relaxing for long, as she realized who had provided her with this phone—as she heard the tension in this man’s voice.

“Wait,” she said, as he would have started the conversation. “I’m not sure...that is...this phone—”

There was a long silence. And then he said, so carefully, “Then you probably already know what I have to tell you. I’m tearing up your check, Miss Chambers. Please don’t call me again.”

The click of his disconnect startled her just as much as the ring tone. The abrupt nature of it, the finality of his voice. The fear of it.

She’d asked him to find out who the man was working for, among other things.

And she understood his message, loud and clear.

The man in the parking lot, the man in the dark, the man with the gun and the brutality, had been hired by Sawyer Compton.

Natalie rolled down her window and threw the phone out of the car.

She stared at it for a long moment, as cold air rushed in through the open window and the fogged air cleared out, and then she decided, yes. Leave it there. It looked as though she’d dropped it on the way to the car, and if it left her without a phone...it also left her without a device that was GPS-enabled.

She’d pick up a prepaid phone. Unless...

She worked here. She lived here. He’d been watching her. Did he have access to her credit accounts? Her bank accounts? Every little private piece of her life? Had he watched, the other night, as she and Devin very nearly made love directly in view of that camera? Or the times she’d so casually walked naked through the house, blinds closed and privacy ensured as she pulled on clothes while heading for coffee?

She had only one place to go. One place she
wanted
to go.

She stopped at a pay phone and called Devin, but he didn’t answer. Not on his cell, which he so freely ignored, and not on his home phone.

A glance at her watch showed the hour growing late...she’d try Enrique’s anyway. If Devin wasn’t there—if she couldn’t find either of them—she’d just go camp in his driveway.

But she wasn’t expecting Enrique’s gym door to be ajar. She pushed through, listening.... Her hand went to her pocket, pulling out the pepper spray...thumbing the safety to the side.

Inside was all darkness...she heard nothing but her pulse pounding in her ears. She peered into the office, found it empty...found the dim light smeared beneath the swinging door at the back corner. Men’s territory.

She pushed it open, just enough to poke her head through. “Hello?”

A faint grunt, a cry of sorts—wordless, but pleading.

And then she glanced down—and gasped, and froze, staring stupidly.

A blood trail out the door, and she stood right on top of it.

She stepped over the blood, moving more swiftly now. Whatever had happened, her answers lay within—through a door left ajar, through a few modest rows of bent-up lockers.

It wasn’t hard to follow the trail.

Or, once she reached the showers, to find Enrique.

She stiffened, wasting a moment to clap her hand over her mouth.

A dirty alley, flickering light, battered features, blood everywhere—

But this wasn’t that night. This was an old man, beaten half to death in his own gym. She ran to him, skipping over the pools of evidence—and already thinking like her old petty crime self.
Leave no fingerprints. No trace. Got to get out of here.

“Enrique,” she breathed, crouching by him—daring to touch him. When they’d met, he’d been boundless bright energy in an aging body. Now he lay crumpled and brittle and broken. “What—”

“Damned phone,” he said, his words muffled—lower lip grotesquely swollen right down to his chin, one side of his face puffed out shiny and tight. “How to use such a thing?”

She followed his twitch of movement, and found a cell phone cradled loosely in his hand.

Devin’s phone.

“Devin was here,” she said, quite suddenly unable to breathe. Of course Devin had been here.

Except...the only blood Devin appeared incapable of cleaning up was...

His own.

“Help me,” Enrique said. “Take me to the front door. Show me to call help. And then you
go.
Go to him.”

“Take you to the—” Natalie frowned, involuntarily glancing in the direction of the front door. “Enrique, I shouldn’t move you.”

He grunted. “Then I move myself.” And made as if to prove that point.

“No!” She panicked with it, imagining him dying right here before her.

If she helped him, he might die, too. But at least she would be
helping.

“Tell me,” she said. “Tell me first.”

This made sense enough to him—it showed on that distorted face. Tell her, in case he passed out. In case his aging heart gave out or internal injuries worsened with the movement. “We ask about the alleys. We ask about Sawyer Compton. Three of them...I couldn’t warn my boy...took him from behind.” He gestured at the blood. “Two of them, dead and gone. The third, hurt and running. Devin—”

“This is his blood,” she whispered.

He nodded, and his eyes, black in the shadows, nonetheless briefly turned sharp. “Take me to front door. Over his blood. Obscure it. Make it mine. If I live, they maybe won’t test. An old man beaten in a bad neighborhood. Nothing to investigate. Take my cash box, too.”

“My God,” she said. “That’s what you’ve been doing, lying here alone. Figuring out how to cover for him.”

He didn’t bother to respond to that. “Then you go to him,” he said. “
You go to him.
He is alone, and the wild road will take him—”

She didn’t understand the words. But she understood the meaning. She understood all this blood. And she remembered with piercing clarity what had happened the last time Devin had been hurt.

She helped Enrique to the door. She showed him the easy sequence for dialing nine-one-one on the cell phone, she took the cash box, and she rifled the first-aid supplies.

And then she ran back out into the night.

* * *

It took forever to reach Devin’s home. Forever, with her hands clenching and releasing the steering wheel, her mind slipping back into every little trick she’d taught herself. Focusing on the details of where she was.

It was the only way to keep that tentative, slippery grasp on control until she pulled into his driveway.

There she found the truck parked askew, the driver’s door still open. She slammed it closed on the way by and ran to the front door—also open, with heat and faint light spilling out into the darkness.

She closed that, too. She flipped on the light, dumped her bag and the first-aid supplies on the couch, and shrugged off her coat, letting it lie on the floor where it fell. “Devin?”

The shower was silent. The house, silent.

She flipped lights as she moved more deeply into the house. Peeking into the kitchen, heading down the short hall, double-checking the bathroom...knowing, then, he’d simply gone for the bedroom.

The blood trail confirmed it. New hand prints on the walls. Splotches and smears across the carpet.

She hesitated inside the door, and for an instant, couldn’t quite bring herself to turn on the light.

Until she heard his breathing—ragged and uneven and full of pain. Then suddenly she stopped thinking so hard at all, and the light was on and she’d found him, crumpled on his way to the patio doors.

“Hey,” she said, coming up behind him—not daring to touch, simply because she didn’t know where she could. Blood soaked everything; she couldn’t see the wounds. Not through his vest and hoodie and flannel shirt and jeans.

He watched her—dazed, unthinking—not raging as she’d seen that first night. Beyond it. Blood trailed from his mouth, bright and frothy, staining the carpet by his face. She looked for the knife, didn’t see it....

It was here somewhere. The inexplicable, the mutable, the gleaming wail of anger and steel—

She had no doubt.

Well, she didn’t need it. She could cut his clothes away with Enrique’s bandage scissors. And she didn’t let herself think about the possibility that his amazing healing prowess wasn’t up to fixing...
this
.

Compton.
Compton had done this. Going after Enrique. Of
course
Devin had tried to stop his men—whatever the cost.

He choked, and blood pooled beneath his mouth.

“Devin,” she said, still afraid to touch. “Tell me what I can do.” No assumptions, about this man who had raged through the night, healing after what should have been a fatal stab wound—and now lay clenched in pain, his fingers working against the carpet, his faint movements purposeless and vague.
“Tell me.”

His body curled against a new pain—there, she saw it in him, the building heat. The same as that night, but weaker.
Not enough.

“Tell me,” she demanded.

His jaw clenched until she thought she heard it crack; a tear leaked from the corner of a closed eye.

She understood, then. Or thought she did. It wouldn’t let him die...but it couldn’t heal him. Not as it had the other night.

And she only knew one thing to do.

She touched him.

Kneeling beside him, her hand so gentle, still uncertain of his wounds, she hovered splayed fingers over his side, let them slide down across his ribs and over to his stomach.

He gasped like a drowning man finding air, arching into her touch. His chest labored beneath her hand; he cried something agonized—his hand found hers. She, too, gasped as his fingers tightened down—but she didn’t draw back.

His eyes opened, dark shadows of a man who believed himself lost. His voice was little more than a wheeze carried on stolen air. “What—”

“I came to see you,” she said, much more firmly than she’d expected. She added, just as matter-of-factly, “Because I was wrong.”

“But—”

“Hey.” Her voice sharpened slightly, self-aware asperity. “It was a choice, okay?”

She didn’t expect him to laugh—and it didn’t last long, as he rolled over on a groan, his hand clamping down on hers again.

“Can’t—” he said.

“No kidding,” Natalie muttered. “Devin, I have no idea what’s going on here. I have no idea what’s going on with
you.
Let me help. Can’t you tell me—?”

“Get them
out,
” he managed. “Can’t—the knife—” He opened his other hand, curled in so close to his body, and the knife spilled out. No more than an ordinary little pen knife.

Right. She didn’t believe that for a moment.

“Take it,” he said. Or she thought that’s what he said, anyway, for just as soon as he spoke, the heat flared again—she felt it, this time, an amazing wash of dark impotent fury as it took him in its grip and shook him out and left him trembling. “It can’t... It won’t stop trying...it’s going to...”

He couldn’t finish, gasping for that shallow breath. But he didn’t have to. She could see it. It was going to kill him. Whatever this thing was, trying to heal him as it had done so brutally the night they’d met, it was hitting a wall. But it wouldn’t stop trying.

“Get them
out,
” he said, eyes no longer opening, but words as distinct as he could make them.

Get
what?

He glanced—toward his back. Down to his leg.

And then, suddenly, the blood made sense.

He’d been shot. Not once, but twice.

“Devin—” she said, aghast, at a complete loss for words. She
couldn’t.
Never mind her nerve, which might or might not be good enough. She had no skill. She’d kill him, as surely as the bullets themselves.

“The blade will,” he said, barely audible. Another seizure of that brutal healing—
not-
healing—took him, and left him limp. “Just...try.”

Because if she didn’t, she was going to lose him. Right here and right now. The forces battling within him would tear him apart. She didn’t have to understand them to see it—this man, so full of life, so startling honest with that grin and that sudden light in his eyes, faded before her.