Demon Marked

and I’ve dipped my handgun bullets in this stuff—but for you, we’ll make sure the birdshot is covered in it. So those pellets don’t have to do much damage. They just have to pierce the skin.”
    “So it’ll stop them before they get in close.”
    “Yes. The sawed-off barrel will make close-range shooting easier. But if they’re already in that close—”
    “Then I’m screwed.”
    “Yes.” He pulled the box of shotgun shells toward him. “I’ll fix these up for you now. We’ll begin practicing tomorrow with regular ammunition so that we don’t waste the venom, but when we aren’t practicing, I want you to keep the gun with you and loaded with the poisoned shells. You keep it with you at all times , either right next to your hand or in your cache, when you figure out how to use that. All right?”
    “Yes.” Her very own boomstick. She liked it. “Thank you.”
    His gaze locked with hers. “Don’t let a demon close to you again.”
    Her chest tightened, like a strange little coil straight through her heart. She didn’t know what Nicholas had felt when the demon had been dragging her around like a rag doll. Afterward, he’d never asked if she was all right.
    But she knew now that he never wanted to see it happen to her again.
    “Thank you,” she said again, even though “ I won’t” might have been a more appropriate response.
    He nodded, stood. Her chest still caught in that sweet ache, she watched him cross to the bedroom. He’d left, but not because of sexual frustration this time. Would he hate for her to know that he cared? She thought he would.
    He returned a moment later with a set of scales and a small, dusty machine. Except for the empty bottles on the top that fed into a steel tube, it resembled a standing car jack. A lever handle jutted from one side.
    “What is that?”
    “A reloading press. To seal the shells after I poison the shot.”
    “You didn’t bring that with you?”
    “No.”
    “But you’ve used it before.”
    “Yes.” He glanced up from the press. “Why?”
    “You’ve been here before, then—after you were old enough to handle guns, ammunition.”
    “A few times, in the summer after I came to America.”
    “So your grandfather wasn’t a complete hermit.”
    “No.”
    He set out a line of empty cartridges—a perfectly straight line, she noted, that he gave his full concentration. But that wasn’t just focusing; he was focusing on not looking at her.
    Was he lying? Hiding something? She couldn’t be certain, but she thought so.
    She had no idea what he could be lying about, though. Perhaps he was just trying to conceal that he cared about someone again—but this time, that he cared about his grandfather.
    “It took a while to hear back from him,” Nicholas surprised her by offering. “He only checked his mail twice a year: at Christmas and tax time, in April. I finally heard back in May, and spent my sixteenth summer here. Chopping wood, mostly. Dropping about forty pounds.”
    “But you didn’t stay?”
    “Revenge isn’t easily served while hiding at a cabin in the woods.”
    So he’d left to destroy Madelyn. “Wouldn’t revenge also have been staying here, and completely forgetting about her? By proving that she hadn’t destroyed you ?”
    His brows snapped together. He looked up from his line of cartridges. “She didn’t. But she did fuck me up pretty well. Pretending she didn’t wouldn’t be proof of anything—it would just be denial. And sticking my head in the sand sure as hell wouldn’t make her pay for any of it.”
    He had a point. And the demon had killed his mother, his father, and his girlfriend. Maybe forgetting about her wasn’t enough. Ash wouldn’t soon be forgetting about Steve Johnson; that was for damn certain.
    The heat left his voice. “Anyway, whether I live or die, she doesn’t care. Before I left England, I was kicked out of school, arrested for heroin possession, all kinds of shit. Whether I was first in my class or expelled, none of it mattered. The only thing that mattered to Madelyn was Wells-Down, and so the only way to get back at her was by taking it.”
    “And you did.”
    “I did. And then I found out she was worse, that the business wasn’t enough. She has to be destroyed.”
    “And that’s all you’ve done, all these years. What will you do when she’s dead?”
    Nicholas blinked, then stared across the table at her with an expression she’d never seen on him . . . but she recognized