A demon bellowed.
A strangely familiar woman yanked my shoulder, her eyes wide with fear.
I tumbled from Mzatal’s arms and over the balcony wall, plummeted toward rocks and sea while Elinor’s scream drowned out the roar of wind.
Heart pounding, I jerked awake. Dust motes floated lazily in early morning light that seeped around the edges of my curtains. A squirrel fussed in the tree outside my window, and the air held a whisper of coffee and biscuits.
Eerie remnants of the dream lingered. I hurried to flick on the lamp. Mzatal’s aura immersed me still, but darker, more—
I flung off the covers, grabbed shorts from the floor and yanked them on then sprinted down the hall to the kitchen window.
Mzatal was here, crouched in the center of the nexus. I ran out the door, pulse hammering with a rush of elation and apprehension, then stopped on the bottom step to drink in the sight of him.
Moisture from a humid Louisiana morning clung to the grass and slicked the porch rails, yet the surface of the nexus remained dry and unaffected. Mzatal looked dressed for battle, in close-fitting pants and shirt in a color somewhere between black and dried blood. A cord of the same color bound the thick braid that hung down his back.
On the far side of the nexus, Rhyzkahl paced a short arc, eyes trained on Mzatal, and jaw set in anger.
With the deadly grace of a lion, Mzatal stood and drew his essence blade, Khatur, from a sheath at his side.
Worry punched through me. I’d never known him to carry Khatur in a sheath. He’d always sent it away to whatever dimensional pocket of space-time the essence blades went when not in use. Had he become so dependent upon the knife that he wouldn’t let it out of his sight?
He turned toward me. Eyes locked on mine, he drew the blade across his left palm. An unwholesome hiss of satisfaction whispered through my mind like the breath of an alien wind: the nightmarish sentiments of Khatur. My uneasiness spiraled higher.
Mzatal flicked his hand, spattering blood onto the nexus. It sizzled when it struck the black surface, and a white hot glow raced through the delicate silver tracings.
My sigil.
Heat blossomed in my head like reverse brain freeze. I grabbed the porch railing to keep from losing my balance.
The glow on the nexus crept outward as Mzatal continued to bleed. Warmth spread from the top of my head through my neck and into my chest. Beyond Mzatal’s aura of power, I felt him, felt his intensity. Pulse thrumming, I crossed the grass to the outer edge of Rhyzkahl’s prison.
Rhyzkahl strode toward me. “What is he doing?” he asked, voice edged with frustration.
“He’ll tell you if he wants you to know,” I said archly. I wasn’t about to admit I had the same question. Rhyzkahl growled and turned his back on me.
Blood disappeared from the surface of the knife as if sucked into the metal. Mzatal sheathed Khatur and held up his left hand. A different essence blade coalesced against his palm, and cold slid through me. Xhan.
Rhyzkahl staggered as if struck, naked shock flashing over his face before he regained composure. Xhan was Rhyzkahl’s blade. The one he’d used to carve the sigils into my flesh. He’d lost the knife at the plantation battle after Zakaar severed their bond. I’d last seen it when Jesral picked it up—or tried to, and had been forced to wrap it in a cloth. I wasn’t at all surprised that Mzatal took it from Jesral, yet I’d never in a million years expected him to actually wield it. And, clearly, neither had Rhyzkahl. He stepped to the inner boundary of his prison, eyes on his blade and hands fisted white at his sides.
Thorns burst from Xhan’s hilt, writhing as they sought to entrap Mzatal’s fingers. Sweat broke on his brow, and I felt the depth of his battle of wills with the knife. Mouth tight as if steeling himself, Mzatal set the knife against his bleeding palm and closed his fingers around it. Blood hissed and sizzled on the blade as he slowly drew it from his fist. He held it at arm’s length, his body taut and teeth bared while his free hand dripped blood onto the nexus.
Xhan’s voice whispered in my head. You are mine. You are mine.
“No,” I breathed. “What the ever living fuck is he doing?!”
Rhyzkahl’s attention remained riveted on Mzatal and Xhan. “He is not strong enough,” he murmured. “The fool will doom us all.”
I shot Rhyzkahl a scathing look then crossed to the nexus. Warding shimmered around the perimeter, but my experience and instinct told me none of it targeted me. I stepped onto the stone then staggered, throwing my arms wide for balance as potency unlike anything I’d ever felt seared through my bones and threatened to rip me apart cell by cell.
Drawing demigod-like power and focus from the nexus, I centered and stabilized. I was still in one piece, but I needed to adapt to the frequency if I wanted to stay that way. As soon as I felt balanced, I moved behind Mzatal and wrapped my arms around him. He tensed as I made contact but didn’t hesitate to tap into the support. We’d worked as one more times than I could count, and even though we no longer had an open connection, I knew him and he knew me.
He drew a deep breath, and I felt him intensify his efforts to subdue the blade. I joined the battle, using all of my nexus-derived ability to concentrate on beating Xhan into submission. My scars flared with burning pain, real and remembered. I clung to the sensation, used it as focal point to overpower the very knife that had carved the sigils.
Treacherous. Traitor. The words slammed through me like a scream. Vile oppressor.
Teeth clenched, I willed the blade to shut the fuck up and settle.
As each drop of Mzatal’s blood struck the nexus, potency pounded from my feet to my head. Mzatal entwined his aura with mine, and our power increased tenfold. Unintelligible words screamed through me as Mzatal wrested control from the blade and sent it away. Arcane silence filled the void it had left. Mzatal shook from the effort, his breath labored. Sweat soaked his shirt, and mine as well where I embraced him, but I didn’t care.
Rhyzkahl looked on with an expression of grudging awe tinged with envy.
I held my beloved for a few heartbeats longer, then reluctantly released him and stepped back. I’d intruded upon his self-imposed isolation for long enough, though I didn’t regret a single second of it.
Mzatal lifted his bloodied hand high and tightened it into a fist. When he opened it again, the wicked slice was healed. In a fluid motion, he turned to me, stripped off his sweaty shirt and cast it aside.
I stared at his chest, where a new, intricately beautiful pattern of raised scars formed a sigil, much like the ones that covered my torso. Yet while my sigil scars represented each of the eleven demonic lords, the sigil over his heart was mine. My sigil. Tears spilled over as I lifted my eyes and found his gaze upon me, if only for a heartbeat.
When he began to dance the shikvihr ritual, tracing and igniting the sigils of the first ring with fluid grace, I danced my own right along with him. We moved in harmony, each creating our own shikvihr. Trace, ignite. Trace, ignite.
Ring after ring of sigils flowed from us until we reached my skill limit at the culmination of the seventh. Without missing a beat, Mzatal ignited my shikvihr before continuing on with his. Joy and power and exhilaration surged through me as he danced the eighth ring around me. I stood motionless, adapting to the energies.
Mzatal completed the eleventh sigil of the eleventh ring and ignited his shikvihr. We stood at the center of a vortex of potency like nothing I’d ever felt before. The full power of Mzatal. The full power of me.
But he wasn’t finished.
With delicate movements, he drew spider-silk strands of potency between his shikvihr sigils and mine in an act of unspeakable intimacy. I turned as he turned, watching every movement, feeling them as a caress on my essence. Now I understood why he bore my sigil. Closed off and merged with his essence blade, Mzatal was ruthless and formidable. He commanded unmatchable res
olve and focus that allowed him to stay a thousand moves ahead of his opponents, and see and anticipate distant potentials. He’d been closed off once before—a solitude that lasted two thousand years, with all distractions shut out and full focus on his goals.
But this time one of his goals included me. He’d carved the sigil as a lifeline, to maintain a connection despite the barriers. A hope for a life beyond his self-made prison.
Together we can do anything. Even if we aren’t together.
He finished the intricate weave of our potency. “Remove your shirt,” he said, voice uncompromising. I tore my gaze from the connected sigils. His face was as hard and intense as ever, an unreadable mask of stone. But his eyes . . . I drew a steadying breath. His eyes held the emotions he dared not otherwise reveal.
I stripped off my shirt and tossed it aside. He moved the leaf from where it lay over my heart to rest on my shoulder, then he placed his palm over his sigil scar in the center of my chest. “Damaged.”
“Only the sigil,” I said, mouth dry. Curves and patterns severed when Szerain had thrust his essence blade into my heart in order to save my life.
Without a word, Mzatal began to slowly trace the loops of his sigil on my skin, his touch sensuous, light, and undeniably powerful. Where the lines were broken, he repaired them, and with a final touch ignited the sigil with searing fire that faded to comforting warmth in a heartbeat.
He replaced the leaf atop it and covered both with his hand. “It is of better use whole.”
I spread my hand over the sigil on his chest. “We are better whole.”
Rhyzkahl gave a rude snort.
Without taking his eyes from mine, Mzatal sent a shrieking bolt of lightning from his free hand to strike Rhyzkahl square in the chest. While Rhyzkahl writhed among the zucchini, Mzatal moved behind me and set his hands on my shoulders. As he slid them down my arms, the strands between our sigils flickered with golden light to match the morning sky. He covered the backs of my hands with his, laced his fingers between mine as the strands glowed strong and steady.
Moving as one, hands united and arms sweeping in graceful arcs, we called forth the full union of our shikvihr. When our dance was done, a new construct surrounded us. Not a pair of eleven-ringed shikvihr entwined, but a thrumming single circle of potency that flowed like liquid light in an endless loop. Beautiful, with a purpose and function that shone with dazzling clarity. Two months ago, Mzatal had gifted me the power of a lord via the nexus and Rhyzkahl, but this addition, this super-shikvihr would remain in place and allow me to tap into that power even away from my property.
I leaned back against him, enjoying the contact, the touch I knew we might never share again. Fingers still joined with mine, Mzatal wrapped his arms around me and crossed our wrists over my heart. After a moment, he shuddered then stepped back, breaking away before his will crumbled.
As I turned to face him, he caught my left hand and stripped the stoneless ring from my finger. While I watched, baffled, he placed it in my palm and folded my fingers over it, then clasped my hand between his. Heat flashed within my fist, gone before it could register as pain. Mzatal released me, wheeled away and strode from the nexus. The demahnk Helori appeared in human form beside him, and then they were gone.
I let out a shaky breath and opened my hand. Mzatal had given me this ring last Christmas, and the stone was broken not long after during a terrible argument. I’d kept the ring as a reminder of that schism—one we never wished to repeat. Later, Rowan had destroyed the stone, but after Szerain ripped her away from my Self, I’d stubbornly continued to wear the twisted ring. Now it lay on my palm as a raw lump of gold and silver alloy.
“I can work with this,” I murmured. Mzatal hadn’t destroyed the broken ring. Instead he’d made it ready to be created anew. A fresh start. Drawing potency from the super-shikvihr loop, I reshaped the lump into two slender rings, gleaming and unadorned. The smaller one I slipped onto my finger. The other, I threaded through the cord that held the grove leaf, keeping it safe until the ring’s rightful owner could bear it.
A laugh bubbled up. “My preccccioooouuussss,” I whispered. Grinning, I pulled my shirt on and headed inside, while Rhyzkahl twitched in an inglorious heap.
Chapter 14
Pellini handed me a cup of coffee when I stepped into the kitchen. “I was about to call for security until I realized it was Mzatal out there with you.”
I smiled and took a sip, pleased to find it perfectly over-sugared and mega-creamed. “Guess you saw my topless act.”
His mouth twitched in amusement. “Nothing I haven’t seen before.”
“It has to be getting old by now,” I said. A couple of years back, Pellini had been among the Beaulac PD personnel who saw me appear naked in the station break room after I died in the demon realm and returned to Earth. And, after Angus McDunn stripped my abilities, Pellini had busted into the bathroom to drag me from the tub and my spiral of despair.
“Looking at boobs never gets old,” he said with a grin.
Laughing, I rolled my eyes then moved to the kitchen window. Rhyzkahl had stopped twitching and dragged himself up to a sitting position. “Can you see the changes in the nexus?” I asked Pellini.
He squinted out the window. “I saw the sigils when y’all were laying them, but now there’s only a shimmer, like heat waves. I feel like there’s more, but when I try to see, it slips away.”
“It’s plain as day to me. Mzatal created—” I stopped and shook my head. “No, we created this super-shikvihr loop that extends my range. It’ll be a game changer for me.”
Pellini frowned. “What exactly is he doing on Earth?”
“I don’t know specifics, but I have no doubt it involves countering the Mraztur, and that has to be good.”
“Uh huh.” He made no attempt to hide his dubious tone. “I’ll add him to the DIRT Alpha-level watch list.”
I bristled, but I made myself take a sip of coffee before speaking. “You mean the list that has Kadir, Angus McDunn, Tessa, and Katashi’s people on it?”
Pellini’s gaze remained steady on me. “That’s the one.” Though he didn’t say it, I clearly heard the added Do you have a problem with that?
And my initial gut reaction was, Yes, I have a huge problem with lumping Mzatal in with confirmed assholes. But I forced myself past the knee-jerk loyalty to consider where Pellini was coming from. It wasn’t doubt in Mzatal, but a perfectly sensible caution where any of the lords were concerned. To Pellini, the lords were guilty until proven innocent, and he intended to remain alert and suspicious of everything they did. I couldn’t find it in myself to blame him, especially in light of how the plans and actions of the lords had fucked up Earth. In fact, I held the same attitude, except about Mzatal, of course. He’d already proven himself in my eyes.
I took a deep breath and nodded. “Personal bias aside, it sounds reasonable to me.”
Pellini’s shoulders relaxed.
“But,” I added and hid a smile as he tensed again. “If Mzatal takes his shirt off anywhere on this planet, I want a priority rush on that footage to my inbox.”
Pellini let out a strangled laugh. “God almighty. I don’t know whether to be thrilled or terrified that you’re in charge of defending the planet.” Shaking his head, he retreated to the war room.
“I can save the world and enjoy sexy pics of my hot hunny!” I called after him.
“Earth is fucked,” he shouted back.
Still smiling, I returned my attention to the nexus in time to see Rhyzkahl pull himself to his feet and stagger around his circuit. My amusement drained away, and I took a long drink of coffee to cover my twinge of guilt that I’d enjoyed seeing him put in his place.
He collapsed to sit with his back against the grove tree, head lowered. My guilt gave way to sympathy. Mzatal hadn’t shown mercy with that blast. Then again, it was possible the blast had g
iven Rhyzkahl an attitude adjustment. And I had questions that he might only answer in a weakened state.
We didn’t have tunjen fruit on Earth to make the demon realm restorative drink, but I created the best equivalent possible with what I had available—a concoction of lemon, orange, and carrot juices. Glass in hand, I headed out back with my bribe.
Rhyzkahl didn’t lift his head as I stepped into the deep shade of the tree.
“Have you come to gloat?” he asked, voice ragged and face hidden by his hair.
“I’ve already done that,” I said. “But I’m trying to not be cruel. You let Amkir zap me back when I was at your palace, so I know how much it sucks. I’m sure a Mzatal lightning bolt is a hundred times worse.” I crouched and held out the glass. “Here, I brought you some juice.”
For an instant I thought he’d play the stubborn lord and refuse, but he finally lifted his head and took the juice with a trembling hand. “Mzatal proved himself to be a true chekkunden,” he said, then drained the glass.
My eyebrows lifted. “Because he slapped you down for being a dick?”
“For drawing you into his game.”
I gave a harsh laugh. “Are you kidding me? First off, there’s no game between us, and he hasn’t drawn me anywhere I wasn’t willing to go—though that’s probably impossible for your devious little mind to understand. And second, if he’s a chekkunden for loving me, empowering me, and treating me like an equal, what does that make you?” I cocked my head. “What’s the demon word for lying scheming treacherous back-stabbing asshole son-of-a-bitch motherfucking deceiver?”
“Qaztahl.”
“Give me a break. You expect me to buy that all the lords are shitstains like you? Seretis? Elofir?”
He leaned his head back against the white bark of the tree. “Believe what you will.”
“Certainly nothing you say.”
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