But that man didn’t know where they were. He’d no doubt broadcast his hatred widely, causing fights all along the way. She doubted he cared about collateral damage. Or if he did, it wasn’t in the same way she did.
And they needed the time. The space.
The woman must have seen it on her face. “Now flip that Closed sign and help me get a start on this.”
Gwen said, “Yes, ma’am.”
Chapter 14
Devin James stood balanced in the estate workout room, barefoot on the mat with isochronic meditation tones sounding in the background, thinking of nothing.
Most deliberately thinking of nothing. Just being. There, where the blade couldn’t reach him. A technique he hadn’t known a year ago, barely a season ago—but one of the many that now offered him peace from Anheriel, and a way to control its effects on him.
Even on a day like today.
The door burst open. He didn’t need to open his eyes to know it was Natalie, or that she was flustered.
“Oh,” she said, dismay coming through. “I’m sorry—I thought you were running on the treadmill.”
“Was,” he said, bouncing on his toes a few times before opening his eyes and reaching over to turn off the stereo. “Not a good day for it.”
“Anheriel,” she said. “As if I had to guess. I’ve been shut away in research and I can still feel it—the whole mess of it out there—through Baitlia.” She lowered the sheaf of papers she’d brought in with her—their disorder alone testified to her flustered nature—and came to him, both confident in her welcome and careful of her approach. Nothing too sudden, nothing other than serene.
Because Anheriel was in that dangerous, riled place, and even though she trusted Devin utterly with her safety, she forbore to put him in the position where he’d have to fight for it. And once up close, she gave him what she’d always given him...the focus of her intimate touch. The sensations that overrode even Anheriel.
And when he lifted his head from that deeply involving kiss, he grinned big. “Just what the doctor ordered.” Then he nodded down at her hand and her papers. “What’s up?”
“Oh!” she said, the dismay completely replaced by excitement. “What I found— There are only partial translations, although we might begin to have enough to set an expert on it, if we could find someone we trust. I think Compton was gleaning most of his information through his blade, frankly, but that’s one advantage to the wild road we can do without.” She turned to the weight bench, spreading the papers out as best she could. “Okay, so here’s Demardel.”
“That dog doing okay at the vet’s?” It was a sudden question, one he’d been careful about asking. Because earlier that day she’d gone to the warehouse not only without him, but without telling him.
Granted, he’d been quelling a little neighborhood set-to at the time, a fence-line argument gone bad between normally amiable people. But she’d obscured her contacts with the intruding blade wielder from the start.
No. Be fair. With the woman who now loved the intruding blade wielder. Or so Natalie had seen. Devin would pass his own judgments.
Exactly why she left you out of it.
And so his question about the dog was an apology of sorts.
She knew it, too. A hint of a smile tugged at her mouth. “He’ll be there a day or two, just to make sure there’s no infection—those wounds were dirty. He might limp when all is said and done. But he’s got a good chance.”
Devin cleared his throat, rocking on the balls of his feet. “Good thing you were there, then.”
“You do realize that if I kiss you again, we won’t get to this stuff at all?”
He eyed her mouth; he eyed the padded floor of the workout room and the lockable door. Ah, well. “Okay,” he said. “Demardel. The mystery medallion.”
She turned away from him, her movement resolute, and she, too, cleared her throat. “Right,” she said. “It’s not just a simple tool. Like the blades, it needs a wielder to act. So your average Joe Bladewielder can’t just stumble over it and put it to use. It takes the participation of that second person—and that person has to be awake to it. Because unlike the blades, it has no agenda of its own. It’ll sleep for centuries, if no one calls on it.”
“So for however long your friend Gwen has had the thing, wherever she got it...she may not have any idea.”
“She certainly knows now. She knows more than she’s saying, too. I practically watched her put the pieces together right in front of me, even when she wasn’t talking. And she’s bonded to it, too—she was fresh off it when I talked to her yesterday evening at the hotel. Bonded with blood and probably—well...call it emotion.” Right. Devin could read between those lines. She and her Joe Bladewielder had done the deed. Natalie eyed him, reading his expression and not giving him any space to comment. “She may have no idea how to use it, but she knows what she’s got, and she knows it on a deep level.”
Devin reached out to the sketch of it, propped haphazardly at the top of the bench’s weight stack. “And we don’t know how to use it, either.”
“Not yet.” She looked at the drawing, pensive around the eyes and mouth. “Our blades are about redemption, Devin. Demonic essence trapped in metal, searching for redemption. This...” She took a deep breath. “This medallion is about sacrifice. Whoever made it gave their life to it. Whoever uses it...” She flicked her gaze to his. “There’s a price.”
He got it. Right away, he got it. “She has no idea. Even if she figures out how to use it, she doesn’t know there are consequences.”
“And we don’t know what they are. Perhaps to one trained, they’re nominal—just like we’re figuring out how to balance the blades. But to someone who has no idea—”
Frustration settled over him. “You were right all along. I should have handled him differently. We’d be together on this if I had. Dammit, now we’re ten kinds of screwed up here.”
She didn’t offer him platitudes. “Maybe twenty.” At his sharp glance, she teased another of the papers free from the spread. A glance told him little—a copy of notes in several languages, old pen-and-ink sketches of a blade in several phases. Scimitar, khanjar, jambiya...everything a flavor of the Middle East. “This is a blade with enough of a reputation to gain its own documentation.”
When he looked surprised, she added, “I’m beginning to think they’re all documented, somewhere—I just haven’t found it yet. But there are enough allusions...” She shook her head. “Anyway, this one’s apparently made a name for itself, going through wielders one after the other—even supposedly destroying one of the other blades. And then it fell off the scene, to the tune of a lot of speculation.”
“And you think it’s back.”
“What I think,” she said, straightening to stare down at the sketches, “is that it never left. So do some other people, but I suppose that’s beside the point. What I wonder—” She looked at him with some hesitation, the words not quite forming.
“Just say it,” he advised her.
She made a face, closing and then flexing her hands. Natalie, bringing herself to bear. “I’m reading between the lines of these notes, but...I think it found a wielder that matched its nature. I think they’re in on it together, creating the circumstances that feed them. And I think they’ve been doing it for a very long time.”
He looked at the sketches; he looked at her. “Define,” he said, “very long time.”