Steel and leather, fighting back—a wash of flickering energy and light and suddenly an old cavalry saber filled the sweep of Mac’s movement. For the moment, making a team of them.
Metal, tasting flesh. That sharp blade barely hesitated in its arc—but it left a scream in its wake.
“Son of a motherfu—” The voice grew muffled, the two men grappling as one tried to support the other. “—bitch!”
“Seriously,” Mac said—back on his feet now, wavering in a wide stance but still full of snarl. “How about you just call the night over?”
They staggered away, one supporting the other—clumsy enough to ram right into the side of the truck and slide along until they reached the passenger door. The white guy stuffed the Latino inside and threw himself into the driver’s side, spinning dirt and gravel until the tires grabbed pavement and squealed around in a tight U-turn back toward the interstate.
Mac thumped down to his knees in the darkness, letting the blade rest against dirt. The surging hate had faded, lapping around them in sticky waves of harsh pain. Fading hate that had fueled the initial assault; fading hate that had then driven it far past first blood. “What,” he asked bluntly, “the fuck was that?”
But the blade was silent.
Choosing the hotel went just like the rest of Gwen’s trip. Following her nose without realizing it, finding herself where she knew she needed to be. Salmon, swimming upstream.
Clueless salmon at that.
She slung her teardrop back-saver bag over her shoulder and pushed the Beetle’s door closed, double-checking the lock before she headed for the hotel entrance. They would, she hoped, have a vacancy. It was a weekday; it wasn’t any particular tourist season. Just early spring in Albuquerque.
She stopped short just beneath the lighted entry. Like so many other moments lately, without thinking much about it. Just doing it. To stare.
Like a complete idiot.
At a stranger.
At first glance, he was all distracted grey eyes, a faint frown between dark brows, tension along high cheekbones and lean jaw and with a mouth that looked as though it was crafted to carry a wry smile. Glossy dark hair was as scruffed as the rest of him, his one shoulder carried slightly higher than the other, with his movement not quite even and yet still full of its own strength.
On second glance, she saw his torn jeans and the scruffy ribbed crew-neck shirt, the dust-smeared jacket with sporadic dark splatters and stains that could only be blood. But by second glance, he’d seen her.
In point of fact, he was trying to get past her in this limited space—if only she hadn’t stopped to fill the space between the oversize potted shrubs flanking the entry walk.
But she had.
He glanced at her, and his polite distraction vanished; everything in those grey eyes focused in on her—targeted her. His shoulders straightened; his tired posture transformed into something more alert. Something more powerful.
Her mouth went dry.
His eyes narrowed. “Who are you?”
She’d lived her life with the uncanny ability to see through people, to anticipate them. To ignore the jerks and beware the bullies and step slowly back from the crazies.
From him, she felt nothing.
No, not true. She felt that which she couldn’t unravel—only a discordant and tangled duality, a slow humming throb that both called to her and terrified her.
“Who—” he said.
“I don’t know you,” she snapped, suddenly breaking free of that spell. “I want you to stay back, please.” Blunt words, straight to the point. She’d learned that, too, over the years. To listen to the voice that whispered within her—and to act on it.
She wouldn’t be here if she hadn’t, wandering the highways on her walkabout. Amazing how much trouble her young self had gotten into, reacting to the sudden awareness of another’s bad intention.
So yeah, she knew where and when to draw the line.
He only frowned at her. “It’s been a long day. Whatever you’re up to...don’t do it where I have to deal with it.”
“Are you crazy?” she blurted, losing her sense of balance with her astonishment. “What are you even talking about?”
Tempting to think he was on drugs. Or off his meds. Or some combination thereof. But those eyes—even in this uneven illumination—were perfectly clear. Perfectly focused. Shadowed not by lighting but by expression and mood, and so pinned to her—
I’m not breathing.
No wonder her lungs ached.
Or that her voice sounded not quite so assertive when she said, “Please get out of my way.”
She’d been right. That mouth...born for a wry smile. He said, “As soon as you stop blocking the only way out.”
Oh, hell. She took a sharp and hasty step aside—clearing the path, leaving as much room between them as possible.
He took a moment—she wasn’t sure if she’d ever felt so looked at—and then he strode away—not so much as a glance back, that wry smile lingering. Whatever stiff effort she thought she’d seen in his movement, nothing of it remained.
Gwen touched the fine platinum rope chain that was always, always at her neck. Her fingers ran to the flat disk hanging beneath her shirt—the familiar shape of it a comfort, the habit of touching it so instilled that she rarely did it consciously. Her father’s gift.
Now, she found her fingers on it—through her shirt, closed her hand around it. Looking for...
She had no idea. But she thought maybe something had already found her.
Mac reached the parking lot on overdrive—made himself stop, feeling the aches of a beating and the burn of the unnatural healing pushed by the blade. Made himself breathe deeply—once, twice.
Not mine. The feelings aren’t mine.
But they were.
At least, some of them were. The part of him that responded to an abundance of red-glinting hair and copper freckles and wide, pale blue eyes; the part of him that tightened into awareness at fit curves beneath travel-wrinkled clothing, undeterred by her stark reaction to his presence.
Those feelings...they came very much from within.
She’d stood him down without blinking.
To some extent, without breathing—he’d taken her by surprise, no doubt about it. But nerve...
Oh, yeah. She had it.
She also radiated trouble like a beacon. There’d been no denying the way her presence had slapped at him—warned him.
And simultaneously beguiled him.
The blade had absorbed her like a sponge. Her shock at the first sight of him, her frisson of stark, startled response—her feelings, filtered through living metal with more subtlety, more layering...
The blade, Mac would have said, had a crush.
If such a thing were possible. But a true crush...that meant giving.
And the blade only knew to take.
Mac rubbed his chest just to the left of center...just a little lower than his heart. There, where the tattoo had appeared overnight. The night he’d thought he’d died, only to find that he hadn’t quite.
The night he’d changed from casually footloose—catching up with family here, visiting friends there, working a vague path along the way—to grimly driven from one place to another, never quite comfortable where he was or who he was.
Beneath the thin ribbed shirt, the tattoo’s complex design ran raised beneath his touch. No ordinary tattoo at that. He ran his fingers over it, not sure what he was looking for. Never sure what he was looking for.