Taming the Demon (20 page)

Chapter 21

N
atalie didn’t push. Not at the raw emotion on Devin’s face—facing his worst nightmare, facing his brother’s fate. Not a slow decline if he couldn’t handle it, but a cataclysmic failure.

“Not yet,” she muttered fiercely. “Here we are, with all these books...all these notes...” She swung away from him, back to the shelves that had struck her as so out of place on her first pass around the room.

The travel books.

She touched the spines.
Brazil. Africa. The Balkans.

The alley where Leo had died, turned into the seed of a humanitarian project that had grown and spread...

Wells. Latrines. Clinics.

The blade and death, turned by Compton’s dark humor, by some twisted impulse, into life and affirmation. Here, and...

There? And
there?

“Oh, my God,” she said. “What if there are
more?
” She spun away from the books, her back against the shelves—pressed up against them as if that could hold back the very thought of it.

“Do you hear it?” Devin asked, head bent, weight shifted to favor his leg and favor his back, a visible tremor running through all. His voice came distant and strained—only the chair held him up. “Do you hear them?”

“Did you hear
me?
” She pushed right back at him, aggressive in fear—more from what she saw in him than what she’d found here.

After all, Compton had already done his worst—already manipulated her, already controlled her. She was
so
over him—over working here, over his neat little faux life—

A faint whisper rasped against her ear, sandpaper and grit; she glanced around, suddenly wary. “Devin,” she said, and crossed to him, hand closing around his arm—muscle beneath tense unto trembling. “
Listen.
You have to hear this! If there’s more than one blade...it explains everything!”

He lifted his head just enough to look at her, but his eyes held no comprehension—the blue of them lost in darkened gray, bleary with struggle.

“Everything,”
she repeated. “Why you felt the threat at my place that night—why you killed a man who disappeared. Why your brother reacted as he did that night—why you reacted as you did the night Compton drugged you. Why the blade would turn territorial and take you with it.” She took a deep breath. “How he even knows about them in the first place. Why he wants you. Why he used
me—
he probably thought I knew you, because
Ajay
always believed it—that I was seeing someone. That night he intended to show me what a mistake it was. I always thought his big plan had been interrupted by what happened there, but now...I think his big plan
was
what happened there. Except I think he was supposed to come away with that knife.”

Devin snorted, swaying slightly. “The blade chooses,” he said, tipping his head against some irritation of sound—
whispers gone loud, buzzing into a sharp burr.
The skin between Natalie’s shoulder blades tightened—she felt the change in him as he straightened to look at her more fully. “Don’t hesitate,” he said, clearly enough—if with a voice gone strangely thick. “Run if you get the chance. Don’t stop running. Hit the canal path. Find that rottie yard. Turn ’em loose if you have to. And then
don’t stop running.
”

She shook her head, abandoned by words. “You don’t mean to leave you—”

“I
do,
” he said fiercely, and coughed. Coughed again, surprised by it, turning his face to his arm. Inexplicable wind brushed her face, the sharp sting of barely audible sound plucked her ears—all forgotten in the horror of it when he looked at her, faintly puzzled...bright blood staining his mouth and smudging his chin.

She couldn’t hold back the gasp of it. On horrified impulse, she stepped back, tugging at his jacket—pushing it off his shoulders and dragging it down his back.

Disbelief warred with the horror.
“No,”
she said, stepping back to look at him. To see it.

Fresh blood blooming through his shirt over once-healed skin. She couldn’t help herself—she touched it. Warm and wet, smearing thinly over her fingers. Another step back and she could see his leg, the dark stain over worn blue denim. And now she could hear it—his breathing, the sickening liquid sound of it in his throat.

She thought he said something; she couldn’t be sure over the sudden roaring in her ears. She spoke over it—urgent words, in a voice that sounded like it came from somewhere other than her own throat. “Ask it!”

If he’d spoken before, he was beyond words now—but his expression was eloquent enough. Incredulous. And there, in his eyes, a hint of dark fear.

“Ask it,”
she urged him, moving back to his side. “I
know
what it means—what it
could
mean. To both of us. But, Devin—it’s taking back what it gave you. It knows something we don’t! If we don’t get a clue right
now,
we’re going to die! Both of us—and then Compton will have the blade!”

The fear didn’t fade. But it made room for resignation...for acquiescence. “You,” he said, barely audible now, “got my back?”

Impatience sparked. “I stayed with you that first night, and I never knew you,” she said with no little asperity. “Now that I love you, I’m damned staying with you through this!”

He grinned, bloodstained and wan, and yet still struck her with his honesty—the direct connection to all that was Devin. “I heard that,” he said, wiping futilely at the fresh blood on chin, smearing it everywhere—holding himself still when she reached out with the cuff of her borrowed shirt folded over her palm to do it for him. “You love me. I heard that.”

“You heard it,” she muttered, all too aware that fresh blood welled at the corner of his mouth; she rested her hand against his face. “Silly boy. Now ask that thing what’s going on!”

“Yes,” he said, still grinning, no little amount of that heartfelt response still lingering,
“ma’am.”

And then his eyes rolled back in his head and he folded to the floor, all his strings cut...all his questions unasked after all.

* * *

Sawyer Compton resisted the urge to clap. Resisting rhetoric commentary, however, was beyond his means. “Oh, very well played, Natalie, well played indeed. But I’m afraid you’re right. You’re both going to die—and very soon.”

Not that they’d paid any attention when he’d opened the door, or that Natalie now did anything more than flip her hair back and scowl at him from where she knelt over the failing body of her lover.

“Compton,” she said, and he hadn’t expected the cold nature of her voice. He’d not even thought she had it in her—so carefully nurtured into being his very own creature as she was. “What have you done? What are you
doing?
”

He scoffed. “Surely you don’t think I’m going to play that game where I now tell you everything.”

“Surely I do!” she snapped. “You damned well owe me!”

He pondered that. She had, after all, brought him to this moment, if not through the exact path he’d expected. “Perhaps I do,” he conceded. “But I’d also have to
care.
”

“Bastard,” she muttered. “I already know enough. I know the attacks have nothing to do with the restaurants and everything to do with you. I know you have one of these blades—that you probably have more than one. What I don’t understand is how you’re still sane.”

He smiled at her. “That’s easy, my dear. I know better than to fight it. I went looking for what the blades can give me—so what fool would I be to deny the full power of them?” He lifted his gaze to the shallow closed cabinets that held his blades—minors, both of them, just waiting for a major to pull them together in a Triad—and felt the song of them. Inhaled it, opening his lungs to draw in the influence, the taste of hot metal on the air and the power brushing up against his skin. “This is what two of them can do,” he said, trancelike. “Two of them, given full freedom, given full feeding. Can you imagine what I can do with a Triad?” And he snapped his eyes open to catch the realization on her face, the dread...the utter terror.

Through him, the blades drank. Greedy, as ever. Hungry, as ever. Quivering with restraint.

He shook his head—once, sharply. “Not yet, lovelies.” And spoke the words to end their influence over Devin James’s blade. Precise words with glottal stops and tangling consonants, rhythmic and surging.

For the major blade could only be absorbed while not in direct conflict with the other members of the intended Triad. Only while in its classic, fierce acquisition mode. Only while on the hunt, or in the fight.

And an opponent down was no opponent at all.

* * *

What the fu—?
Devin rolled over on a groan, and repeated himself out loud—opening his eyes to find Natalie leaning over him—upside down, at that.

She said instantly, “Compton’s here.”

Oh, yeah, pretty much all he needed to know. Devin wrenched himself to his side, up to his knees. Didn’t really matter what had happened, or why it had stopped happening.

More or less. For a ferocity of pain still twisted through his chest, still left his leg wavering beneath him. His breath came hot in his throat, a spongy sound to his breathing.

Not as bad as he’d been. But not healed. Not
re-
healed. He cursed again, pushing the heel of his hand against his brow. If he pushed hard enough, maybe it would all just make sense....

“Talk to it,” Natalie whispered, daring to lean in close...her urgency gone beyond any mere disagreement over how they might proceed. Her face had drained of color; her eyes shone, a hint of red at the rims. Then she said, much more conversationally, “Mr. Compton was just telling me about his plans to rule the world. Or something like that.”

“Big surprise,” Devin grunted, finally finding the man—there, over at the wall—by one of the display cabinets, now open. Anticipation brought his schooled features alive—revealed a faint glint of something beyond it in his eyes.

Instead of his ubiquitous suit, he wore loose slacks and a black turtleneck, setting off the impeccable silver of his hair. The blade in his grip gleamed an impossible dull black matte—a knife that shouldn’t have gleamed at all. A tactical knife with a tanto blade, rear hook and rip teeth in front of a deep forefinger groove.

It fit Compton’s hand most perfectly.

“He’s got a blade,” Natalie said, and if her voice sounded a little high and carried the faintest of tremors, she nonetheless kept her words matter-of-fact. “Devin, he’s got
two
blades. And he wants yours.”

Devin stared blankly at her. It was, for the moment, all he had in him to do.
Two?
And he wanted a third?

How did he even still have his mind? How had he gotten
two?
How did he even know—what was he even— The blank look gave way to stunned and nearly incoherent reaction. “What the
fuck?
”

“Brilliant,” Compton said dryly. “I am bested before we even begin.”

“Works for me,” Devin said. “Natalie, let’s go.” And he got one leg under him, ready to push off—as if he thought they could do just that.

“Indeed,” Compton said. “Walk away from the man who arranged the circumstances of your brother’s death? Who has repeatedly attempted to end your own life, as well as your new lover’s?” He made a derisive noise at Natalie’s surprise. “Yes, of course, my dear—it does show.”

Devin’s eyes narrowed. “That old man,” he said. “Outside the architectural firm.”

“Oh, certainly,” Compton said. “He would have killed Natalie. Killed her and been gone while you held her dying in your arms, blaming yourself. He is a consummate professional.”

“Devin,” Natalie said, her voice broken. “I’m sorry. I’m
sorry.
”

“Don’t blame yourself, my dear,” Compton told her. “You reacted as you were meant to. It was a no-lose scenario for me.”

“Breaking him down. All of it...the things that happened here,” Natalie said. “So you could come after the blade.”

“Hey,”
Devin said, straightening ever so slightly. “
Trying
to break me down.”

Natalie’s mouth twitched in the barest smile.

“Two blades,” Devin said, and this time he did make it to his feet, looking pointedly at the wall cabinet and the custom-made holder for the unique throwing knife there—a wooden handle fitting into its asymmetrical wheel of blades. “What the hell are you even thinking?”

“That,” Compton said, inclining his head ever so slightly, “is mine to think.”

“Oh,
now
you’re just playing with your food,” Devin snapped. He didn’t allow himself to think that Compton had plenty of reason for such confidence—didn’t allow himself to acknowledge the weakness that pain and blood loss and new shock had wrought in him.

The blade would only keep him alive, and only keep him fighting, as long as it was
his.

Except the blade was afraid.

Affected by whatever Compton had done. And afraid.

Maybe, just maybe, for the moment, they were in this together.

For Compton moved away from the shelves, and that glint was back in his eye, and in his movement showed every moment of his discipline in the gym and the influence of a blade. “I
played,
” he said. “I’m done playing now. Now, I need a good fight. A
hard
fight, to cement the new bond.” He held out his blade—not a threat, but a presentation, formally done.
“Baitlia.”

Devin stared in silence—suddenly aware of protocol unknown. Not posturing, here—or at least, not
all
posturing. But a Thing Done.

An introduction.

It has a name?

He didn’t miss Natalie’s desperate glance; he had no illusions his contrast with Compton—smooth and suave and confident, standing in opposition to a man battered and leaking blood and barely on his feet.

A man holding an unnamed blade.

“Well, hell,” he said. “How about I kick your ass, and then we’ll talk?”