Disoriented, uncoordinated and staggering, she nonetheless found Rafe dead and toppled over Mac, hating the very touch of that heinous blade as she flung it away—then finding Mac and that dark wry grin...kissing him.
But he wasn’t so much kissing her back any longer. And while she’d forgotten to feel the soaking cold, Mac was the one who now shivered.
“Hey,” she said, running her hands over him. Dark blood stained his pants, his shirt, now his chin. “Hey.” She groped to find Keska—not quite retreated to its neutral pocketknife form, but lingering as the frontier trade blade, all glimmering Damascus-like metal. It lay on the ground behind her, exactly where she’d so recently shoved Rafe’s body.
Where Rafe no longer lay. Nothing. Nada.
No body. No body parts.
She sucked in a breath. He’d been dead—she’d been so sure he was dead! But she’d heard nothing, seen nothing...
And he wasn’t there.
“Mac,” she said—only a whisper because could he even hear her? She’d never felt quite so alone, kneeling on the asphalt beside one shivering, wounded and unconscious man.
On impulse, she shoved Keska into Mac’s cold hand, forcibly wrapping his fingers around it. She chafed his arms—quite suddenly feeling her own sodden clothes and her own very close call with death. “Keska,” she said, out loud and concentrating hard, “you better do something here. If he—”
Okay, maybe out loud hadn’t been the best idea, because she suddenly choked on the words. She swallowed against the big knot in her throat and tried again. “If he dies, things aren’t going to turn out well for you. You can’t take me, and I’ll make damned sure you don’t get a chance at anyone else.”
Maybe, just maybe, the blade glimmered slightly in response.
Squishing footsteps came up behind her; water splatted the asphalt, merging with the spreading puddle of water and blood. “Hell, that poor bastard.” The voice was unfamiliar, and a little rough with swallowed water.
Surreptitiously, Gwen reached for Keska—not knowing if the blade would allow her to use it at all.
But the man just laughed. “Who just pulled you away from an outflow pipe and boosted your ass out of that arroyo?”
“I have no idea,” Gwen said, closing her hand around Mac’s with Keska, finding it warm again. “But I’d really like it if you weren’t close enough to drip on me.”
He laughed again, short but amused, and moved to the other side of Mac, his hands low and away from his body in a gesture of peace. “Devin James,” he said. “I think you were expecting me.”
It fired her up all over again. “Damned right we were! ‘We can help,’ Natalie kept saying. Well, where the hell were you?”
“Caught in traffic,” he said easily and cocked his head slightly, looking at her with enough scrutiny that she finally made a face at him. He nodded slightly. “Natalie was right about you two. I’m sorry I didn’t see it sooner. Let’s say I was...distracted.” His dark expression left no doubt about his meaning. That man.
“Rafe!” Gwen moved closer to Mac—protective again, and realizing that the warmth had spread to his chest and shoulder...that he no longer shivered. That his face, an odd, pale cast in the parking lot light, no longer looked quite as ghostly pale. Go, Keska, go! “He was here. I swear he was dead. And his blade—”
Devin’s amiable expression fell away, and Gwen found herself suddenly looking at the same man who’d first accosted them in the street, dark and dangerous. “If I’d been a little faster...” He shook his head. “The blade is gone—one of Rafe’s people. He and another guy took the van. There’s a third one over there, looking pretty dead.”
“But Rafe—” She looked again to the spot where she’d shoved him, so close that she’d surely have seen if he’d...
Surely.
Devin grinned, a quick and generous thing, all the more startling for the contrast of his dark demeanor. “The blades clean up after themselves.” He nodded down at Mac, whose clothes seemed notably drier, whose bleeding had stopped. “It’s how they fuel themselves.”
She made a face. “How gruesomely convenient.”
“Nothing about the blades comes without a touch of darkness,” Devin said, absently enough so the words hit home even harder than they were probably meant to. What they’d done to Mac...what wielders like Devin and Natalie lived with every day...
What Mac would live with every day...
Unless he chose not to.
Her hand went to the pendant.
Devin’s eyes narrowed. “I’d really like to know what happened down there.” He flicked a gesture out, encompassing the rushing channel of water behind her. “You only had a few more moments of hanging on left—and you weren’t even trying to get out. People who take those arroyos lightly tend to die.”
She frowned at him. “Like I even know what a concrete arroyo is? In the dark?”
Mac made a deeply disgruntled and incoherent sound of protest. To Gwen, it was a sound of beauty. “Mac!” she said, pressing her hand against his shoulder. His eyes flickered, didn’t open. No, not quite yet.
Not that Devin was done with her. “And then there’s what happened up here—there’s no way your guy beat out that man with that blade—he’s been one foot from the wild road for days. And I know what it looks like to commune with one of these things. I know how damned dangerous it is, too—for everyone!”
Her temper flashed. “I did what I had to, and it worked, didn’t it? And even if Rafe’s little minion got away with the blade, he doesn’t know what he’s doing. We can find him. I know that blade now—I can find him.”
“Ah,” Devin said, brows raised. He appraised her for another long moment. “Demardel chose well.” And, looking down, he gave Mac a gentle nudge with his toe. “You, too, fella. Though I’m guessing it’ll be a while before you realize it.” He reached down, offering his hand to Gwen. “Come on. Let’s get you both somewhere warm.”
Epilogue
Mac stumbled at the threshold of the little casita and caught himself on the doorjamb.
“Hey,” Gwen said, catching up under his shoulder—fitting nicely there. “No hurry. Let’s not have any more fainting.”
“Passing out,” Mac said through gritted teeth. “And seriously, at the park? That was more of a trying-not-to-die thing.”
“Yes, dear,” Gwen said, slipping through the door to pat the back of the couch not far from it. Nothing was terribly far from anything in this small guesthouse on the former Sawyer estate—and it was theirs to use for as long as they needed.
Or wanted.
Mac growled at her cheerfully patent disbelief. “Bring it on,” he said, leaving the security of the doorway to swoop in and lift her up.
She clung to him in self-defense, legs wrapping around him and expression full of alarm. “Mac—Mac—I give, I give! There was no fainting! Just put me down before—”
Wisely, she didn’t say the words you fall down.
Wisely, Mac wasted no time getting to the kitchen, where he set her delectable bottom down on the counter. He didn’t mention that his vision had greyed or that he couldn’t quite hear clearly or that his thigh had seized up.
Keska had done its job these past few days. Week. Whatever. Having Gwen by his side hadn’t hurt—napping with him, forcing the estate cook’s good food on him at every opportunity, holding his hand when she thought he was asleep and murmuring truly naughty things in his ear when she thought he was awake.