Doranna Durgin - Claimed by the Demon

One thing I’ve learned about these mysterious demon blades...whenever they’re involved, things happen fast and furious, from the relationships to the writing.

Unlike the previous Demon Blade book in which Devin James has had time to absorb the nature of the blade, watching his brother’s journey, Mac has little understanding of the challenge overtaking him—and when the interference of a third party escalates that challenge, he has little chance of maintaining the control so necessary to a blade wielder. Not on his own...and not with just anyone.

Lucky for him, Gwen isn’t just anyone. And Mac isn’t slow to see it.

Gwen and Mac took over these pages right from the start, running full speed ahead with the words curling out behind them. Gwen’s past grew into clarity; Mac’s future grew ever more precarious. And it’s their willingness to embrace the fast and furious that will make all the difference....

Doranna Durgin

Someone’s coming.

The demon blade told Devin James as much, drawing him to the expansive window of the old Rio Grande bosque estate just southwest of Albuquerque. It was a primary blade...a powerful blade. It claimed this entire region for its own, and it kept track.

It whispered to him of encroachment. Of changes. Of danger.

It suggested it should take control.

“Go to hell,” he muttered at it, arms crossed and scowling out into the early morning darkness.

A quiet step from behind; arms wrapped around his. A slightly sharp chin pressed against his shoulder. He shrugged against it, briefly increasing the silent contact.

Some thing’s coming.

The demon blade was named Anheriel, and it had changed everything.

It had killed his brother, threatened his sanity, remolded his life.

It had given him Natalie.

And now it had given him responsibility. This estate, inherited from the man who would have killed him—who would have taken Anheriel, combining their blades to create of himself an invincible creature—not so much possessed as in collusion with the demons within. Demons turned to trapped entities who craved redemption...but who could find it only through those wielders strong enough to resist their insidious corruptive influence.

The endless battle within.

And the estate’s library was giving him the means to fight that battle, providing information about those demons. Natalie was giving him the means to fight it.

Devin James, back from the brink.

Just in time, it would seem.

Coulda, shoulda, woulda been in Vegas.

It wasn’t the first time the thought flashed through Gwen Badura’s mind, but this time might have been the loudest. She sat in her tough little VW Beetle along the side of quiet old Route 66, looking west upon the dark bulk of the Sandia Mountains and knowing she’d just about reached destination on this strange walkabout.

“What do you mean, you’re not coming?” Sandy’s voice still rang with wounded disbelief in her mind.

No little wonder. They’d had the vacation trip planned for months. And boy, had Sandy planned. After a year of urging Gwen to lighten up and have some fun before she hit thirty, her friend had targeted Vegas for the big moment—shows and casinos and plenty of role modeling. Time for Gwen to let her hair down.

It had to be said, Gwen had a lot of hair to let down. Unruly, tangled curls that passed as brunette as long as she didn’t take her head out into the direct sun or expose the coppery cast of the freckles on her arms. Stealth redhead, that’s what she was.

Stealth redhead with an attitude.

Stealth redhead looking at the Sandia Mountains and its windward foothills spread out before her, imagining Albuquerque beyond.

“I can’t,” she’d said to Sandy. “I have to do this thing...”

Right. Because there was no real explanation, was there? I have to follow this sudden salmon-swimming-upstream urge to head somewhere else.

She hadn’t even known where. Not until this evening.

Not until she’d pulled over to the side of the road, looked out over the mountains, and suddenly known...this was where she’d been heading. Following the inner voice that had been her companion since the night her father had died—warning her, chivvying her, getting her in trouble.

But never like this, driving her right out of her home and onto the road and here—to the city beyond the mountains. But she’d listened anyway. So yeah, she was here.

She just didn’t know why.

Michael MacKenzie sat on the hood of his Jeep Wrangler and contemplated the Albuquerque city lights, wondering what the hell he was doing here in the first place.

Restless feet, he was used to. Driven feet? Not so much.

Herded. But by who?

More likely, by what.

Even the demon blade couldn’t explain it—although the damned thing usually did leave him with more questions than answers. Left him wary, too. Of himself...of others. Of the moment-to-moment byplay with the world outside of himself that most people took for granted.

He hadn’t been most people for a while now.

Well, he was here; he’d get the lay of the land before he settled in. That meant driving the informal circuit around the city, from the highway to the big north loop around the reservation end of the city and feeder streets back south again. Not many people on the roads, easing toward midnight—now was the time to do it.

Mac tossed his map in through the open passenger window—under this moon, his blade-given vision had no trouble following its detailed streets—and pushed off the hood. The sooner he did the circuit, the sooner he could crash at the little hotel just off the airport cluster.

The sooner he could figure out what had brought him here and how hard it might try to kill him.

He stretched, rotating his shoulders...breathing deeply before he slipped in behind the wheel. Quiet, hearing his own breathing in the darkness, perched on the south-side berm with his nose full of sharp, dry dust and the fading scent of sun-warmed cactus.

The slam of the Jeep door rang loud in the night; the engine was only a secondary insult. He rocked the gear stick into place, nursed the clutch past its chronic initial sticking point and headed out to drive the city.

The blade sat quiescent on the passenger seat, half-covered by the map and an empty pretzel bag. The passenger foot well was crammed with his smaller duffel and netbook case and a jacket stuffed beside a carelessly jammed shave kit. The cargo area had been done on auto-pack—the sleeping bag, the air pad, the big duffel, a gallon of water, the cooler...all of it and more, everything in its place. Everything always ready to go.

Especially Mac.

He drove into and around the city. At first, he felt little of it through the blade—just a smothering kind of darkness, trickling in only because the knife was thirsty enough to bother. Going past the hospital, that was a biggie. And there—a hotel, close to the highway and hosting some sort of convention.

Nothing worth lingering over. The knife—an inexplicable impossibility of living metal and unrelenting demand, literally thrust upon him in the dark—had its standards.

It wanted the good stuff. The intensities of grief and fury and fear and love. It found the violence of the night and drove him there—where he’d end up in the middle of it, battered by echoes of outside feelings and usually battered by fists and pipes and the occasional bullet.