Opening my eyes, I withdrew to the living room. Then twice more. With each shift, my control of how much I saw and felt increased.
Weird . . . and cool. Concentrating, I called forth Rhyzkahl’s shadowed chamber. Heavy drapes hung over the windows with only the faintest hint of daylight at the edges. The sigil in the ceiling cast a sluggish illumination onto the bed and little more.
I stood near the bed with my chin up and my gut churning. His silky white-blond hair had been cropped to finger length, and he currently had a serious case of bed head. The faas had probably cut it since several feet of hair would be a stone bitch to keep tidy on a bed-bound patient. His beautiful face was haggard and drawn, and he looked as if he’d lost a solid thirty pounds since the plantation battle.
Breathing unsteadily, he fought to sit upright but could only manage to prop on an elbow. “What is it . . . you want?” he croaked.
Delicious shock coursed through my veins. He wasn’t controlling this. His reactions were too natural—unmeasured and unscripted. I was in his dreamspace, not the other way around. And that meant that what I saw here was his reality—the weight loss, the cropped hair, the shadowed room.
This had the potential to be very interesting. I finished my perusal of the chamber before answering. “Want? From you?” I snorted and raked my gaze over him. “Seeing you like this is a damn good start.” My tormenter helpless and in pain. A decent and noble person would have at least a whisper of sympathy for Rhyzkahl. Not me. The asshole had willfully duped, used, and tortured me, had been party to submerging Szerain in his horrific imprisonment as Ryan, and had sponsored human trafficking. And that was only what I knew of.
Frowning, I sauntered to the side of the bed. He followed my movement warily, trembling as though in pain. I paused to test the dual awareness, saw my living room, felt the afghan. It really did seem too good to be true, which meant I needed to stay on my toes. I wouldn’t put it past one of the Mraztur to set an elaborate trap using Rhyzkahl as bait.
“What are you playing at now?” I asked him, wary. Testing. “Why did you call me to your dreamspace?” Experimenting, I pictured butterflies erupting from the cushion beside him. To my surprise and delight, dozens streamed forth in an iridescent flutter to circle and float in the dome. Verrrrrrrry interesting. “That’s what this is, isn’t it? Your dreamspace?”
Disbelief widened his eyes as he stared at the spectacle. “No . . . no!” He swallowed noisily and turned his head toward the door. “Rega,” he called out in little more than a hoarse whisper. “Rega!”
I laughed as the door stayed firmly closed. “The faas can’t save you from yourself, Rhyzkahl,” I told him. “No one is going to answer your call.”
His gaze skittered around the room in wild panic. “This cannot be,” he rasped in distress. His fingers plucked feebly at the sheet. “No. It cannot.”
His dream sendings to me had felt utterly real. Was that how he perceived this? “What cannot be?” I asked with a tilt of my head. “That I’m in your crib? That you can’t read me?” I sidled closer and regarded him. “Damn, you look like shit.”
Breathing raggedly, Rhyzkahl again tried to sit up only to sag into the cushions. “You are here.” A wild and desperate look came into his eyes. “You are here. I feel you. Here.”
“Would you stop fucking saying that?” I snapped. “Yeah, I think we’ve established that I’m heeeeere.” I slung my hands out wide to encompass the whole dreamspace then dropped them to my hips. “And now I get an early Christmas present.” Pursing my lips, I gave him an obvious once-over. “Are you hurting?” Not that I really needed to ask. He was devious, sneaky, underhanded, and deceitful, but even he couldn’t fake all the signs of pain. Cautious breathing, muscle tremors, sunken cheeks, and the misery that colored his aura. Still, I wanted to hear it from him.
“Yes.” His throat worked, and a deeper agony lit his eyes. “Zakaar.”
“What about him?” I asked, voice hard as obsidian. “Don’t you dare try and tell me you give a flying fuck about his condition.”
Desolate despair etched more lines into his face. “I cannot . . . cannot exist . . . without Zakaar.”
Yep, as I suspected, his “concern” went no further than how Zack’s condition affected his own. Rhyzkahl was a hot mess because of the broken ptarl bond, but Zack suffered far more—locked in human form and unable to touch the other demahnk. I leaned close and bared my teeth. “Zakaar warned you. He gave you every chance to stop being a fucking asshole.”
“Cannot fault Zakaar,” he rasped. “He will . . . return.” He lifted a shaking hand to touch my forearm. “He will.”
I jerked away and stepped back, ignoring his low moan as I pulled my arm from his touch. “I wouldn’t hold my breath on that, if I were you,” I said. “I don’t see him returning to kiss your boo-boos and make them better any time soon.” I paused to savor the moment. “Or ever.”
He made a desperate reach toward me. “No, no . . . stay close,” he pleaded then withdrew his hand as if realizing it might be a deterrent. “Stay close. Please.”
Suspicious, I considered him. “Why?” I edged a bit closer, watching him carefully. He closed his eyes, and a small amount of the tension eased out of his face and body.
“Hurts less.” He swallowed. “I can think more clearly . . . when you are near.”
Perhaps my presence grounded him since he no longer had Zakaar to give him balance? But why me? Somehow I doubted that any random human had the same effect. Maybe it was my affinity with the demon realm groves that made me a walking Vicodin for the fucker? Or perhaps it had to do with Elinor—the summoner who’d inadvertently triggered a cataclysm in the demon realm hundreds of years ago. A fragment of her essence lingered on mine, which was a large part of why Rhyzkahl had oh-so-nicely picked me for his torturous sigil scar ritual. For that matter, maybe it was those fucking scars. Whatever the reason, it meant I now had serious leverage over the son of a bitch.
I poked him hard in the shoulder with a knuckle. “How’s that?” I asked with false brightness. “Does that help?”
To my shock my little jab might as well have been a tiny charge of power. A look akin to orgasmic relief bathed his features, and the anguished feel of his aura eased a smidge. “Yes,” he replied, deathly serious as he met my gaze.
Mouth pursed, I nodded, then punched him in the face as hard as I could.
“Fuck You!” I shouted as he let out a wheezing cry of pain. I danced back from the bed and shot him the bird with both hands.
Heedless of the blood pouring from his nose, he struggled off the bed and to his feet as I continued to withdraw. “Kara, no,” he gasped. “Do not . . . leave me.” He collapsed to the floor, hand extended and face panicked. “No, Kara . . . do not leave me. Please.”
“Buh-bye, dear one.” I blew him a mocking kiss. “Now, wake up.”
With no more effort than it took to breathe, I withdrew from the dreamscape into the full presence of my living room. Not a trace of Rhyzkahl in sight or arcane sense. Awake, super-charged with adrenaline, and feeling insanely alive, I shoved the afghan aside and leaped to my feet. Humming with elation, I flipped on the light. Everything dripped with color and vibrancy, and my blood thrummed through my body.
“Rot in hell, motherfucker,” I sang then proceeded to dance badly around the room with only Fuzzykins to judge me.
It didn’t take long for my overall fatigue to catch up and tell me to cut out the dancing crap. I yanked my summoning journal from the bottom of the pile of papers and notes on the coffee table, settled in the recliner and flipped to a blank page. Though I was craptastic about keeping up with day to day journaling, I was trying hard to keep a record of important occurrences. This dream-thing most certainly ranked right up there in importance, especially since I didn’t know how it happened. Could it possibly be connected to the incident with Jill on the valve? She’d said Rhyzkahl cried for me. Yeah, well, he could keep crying for all I cared.
I
dutifully recorded the event—along with some choice expletives. I intended to share this incident with Zack and Mzatal and absolutely no one else, which meant I needed to safeguard my notes. Though the journal itself was warded, I traced three intricate aversions on the page, then added a fourth for good measure. A far cry from the pink diary I had as a kid with its lock that could be picked with a bobby pin.
Riding the tide of my wild and crazy journaling frenzy, I also made notes on the pond valve weirdness with Jill, then dragged my notebook from my purse and transcribed Zack’s sleep-talking into the journal.
Jill. Rhyzkahl. Szerain. Ekiri akar. Sovilas mir nah shey. Xharbek. Ashava.
Next, I flipped back to find Marco Knight’s strange warning.
Twelve. The twelfth is a radical game changer. Spawned of fierce cunning. Beauty and power exemplified. Beware the twelfth.
All sunshine and lollipops. That sucker belonged with the info from when Szerain altered and activated the twelfth sigil on me. I backtracked to that entry in my journal. The words Szerain spoke when he called rakkuhr to consummate the sigil loomed in the middle of the page.
Vdat koh akiri qaztehl.
Qaztahl was the demon word for a demonic lord. I’d asked Eilahn about the phrase, and she had explained that the shift from the “a” sound to “e” in qaztehl simply designated uber power. It roughly translated to Infinite resources to the all-powerful demonic lord unfettered.
Unsettling enough on its own and, paired with Knight’s ominous words and Szerain’s unknown motivations, enough to give a girl nightmares. I tucked the journal back under the papers, returned my notebook to my purse, then toddled my ass off to bed. Nightmares or not, I intended to sleep like the dead.
Chapter 7
No nightmares, eight hours of sleep, and a fresh pot of coffee had me feeling like a new woman. Voices in conversation reached me as I poured a cup. Coffee in hand, I stepped out onto the front porch and waved to Jill and Steeev as they crossed the yard. “Are you sure you feel okay to go to work?” I asked her after I descended the steps.
Steeev opened the passenger door of her car, then stepped aside and waited. Jill frowned up at me with one of her Of course I’m fine looks. “Steeev told me what happened, but I don’t remember any of it,” she said with a shrug. “Then again, I got fourteen hours of sleep last night, so I can’t complain too much.” She grinned at my discomfiture. “Don’t worry, I won’t make that my routine sleep aid.”
“Damn right you won’t,” I said as I approached and looked her over. She seemed fine, but it bugged me that we still had no clue how she’d gone from the house to the pond in a split second. “Anything funky with the bean after all that?”
“Nothing other than being quiet and letting me sleep all night. I’m usually up a dozen times to go pee.”
“Almost forgot to tell you, there’s been a change of plans,” I said. “I summoned Mzatal last night, and he’s sending Bryce and hopefully Idris through this morning. We’ll have a full house again.”
She eased herself into the passenger seat. “You’ll have a full house. I have my mobile home to add one layer of separation from the chaos.”
I waited for her to lower the window after Steeev closed her door. “Speaking of chaos, do you mind if they borrow your other car?”
“That old thing needs a lot of love,” she replied with a snort, “but they’re free to use it if they’re mechanically inclined. It’s parked by the crime lab because that’s where it last broke down. Keys are in it.”
“Guess we’ll see if Bryce knows engines,” I said, grinning. “If he can’t get it working, I’ll rent something.”
“You might want to get your credit card ready.”
“Call me if anything weird happens, okay?”
She rolled her eyes. “Yes, mom.”
I forced a smile. She hadn’t seen herself all lit up with power on the valve. Yeah, I was going to worry a teensy bit. Fortunately for my peace of mind, she had a demon bodyguard watching her every move. “See you tonight,” I said, then climbed back up the steps and watched them drive off. Weird life. My life.
After finishing my coffee, I headed out to the nexus. I wouldn’t be summoning humans from the demon realm this morning. Instead, with Mzatal and another qaztahl “pushing” from the other side, my role would be more like catching a ball than reeling in a fish. Though I knew the theory, confidence warred with nerves. I enjoyed the challenge of new undertakings, and I had faith in my skills and training but, on the flip side, it was new. If I fucked up, the ones to pay the price would be the guys being sent to Earth.
No pressure, right?
Eilahn lay curled in her makeshift nest, and had probably been there all night absorbing energy. She lifted her head as I approached, then stood in a single fluid motion, bounded to the tree by the porch, and was up and onto the roof in a heartbeat.
Slowly pacing around the perimeter of the nexus, I searched for any residuals from Szerain’s escapade yesterday, relieved when all appeared normal. I moved to the center of the platform and reviewed my plan. Under ordinary circumstances, I wouldn’t need to do a thing to help bring the guys to Earth. After all, only a few weeks earlier Mzatal and Kadir had pushed me through without any help from this end. But with the arcane flows so discombobulated now, it would be harder for the lords to judge the trajectory and force of their push—like not knowing if a slide was greased.
In other words, I needed to make a big ol’ pillow—or a catcher’s mitt—with the shikvihr as the stuffing. The shikvihr was the advanced ritual foundation for arcane work, and thus far I’d mastered seven rings. Though its floating sigils wouldn’t coalesce for me on Earth until I acquired the eleventh ring, it still boosted my capabilities overall—like having an extra battery. I didn’t have to use a separate storage diagram anymore to stockpile potency for rituals.
I set the knife by my feet and chalked Mzatal’s sigil eleven times in a circle around me, then twice I mentally traced the simple flowing lines of the pygah sigil. Calm settled in, and I felt a click of connection with the nexus. I stood and began to dance the circles of the shikvihr, visualizing each sigil as I traced it in the air. Seven rings of eleven sigils each. As I completed and sealed the last circle, a tingle began in my feet and inched upwards. Laughing, I pumped my fist in triumph then hurriedly checked my watch. Five minutes until go time.
The potency flowed like wispy streams beyond the nexus. I extended my arcane senses into it, gathered strands to me then waited. A few minutes later the strands vibrated, signaling the beginning of the push. Focusing down into the nexus, I channeled potency and wound the strands through and around the shikvihr. The vibration increased, and without warning an arcane gale-force wind rose vertically from the ground, nearly ripping apart my magic catcher’s-mitt-pillow-thing. Heart hammering, I pulled more strands from beneath the nexus, reinforcing the entire structure. Seconds later a vortex, twenty feet across, opened below me, and I balanced on a tiny island above a roaring, lightning-shot chaos maelstrom.
Holy fucking shit! Gulping down panic, I regrouped and struggled to keep my mitt-pillow as stable and secure as possible. The resonance in the strands fluctuated, and the roar of the vortex refined to a low pure tone. An instant later, specks from far below grew and resolved into Idris and Bryce hurtling upward. Wait. Crap! I was above them. How the hell was I supposed to catch them without my mitt-pillow blocking their ascent?
Thinking quickly, I choked off the potency, like crimping a water hose, enough to alter the consistency of my mitt-pillow into a squishy-cloud. Bryce and Idris rose on the wind, tumbling and flailing to ground level and past. They slowed as they hit the squishy-cloud, yet the propelling force from the demon realm drove them through it and upward.
Grabbing strands, I slammed the vortex shut, but to my horror the two men were already at least fifteen feet above the ground. The arcane wind dropped to nothing, and they let out shouts of alarm as they stopped rising and tumbled down. I released the crimp
in the potency hose and shoved power into the squishy-cloud-mitt-pillow even as both hit it. They slowed abruptly, then landed with a thunk on the concrete.
“Are you guys okay?” I called out as I anchored the wild flows.
Idris lay with his arms and legs splayed, staring up at the sky, his chest heaving. Bryce sat up and rubbed his shoulder. “Jesus fucking Christ!”
“I’m so sorry!” With sharp movements, I dispelled the shikvihr. “That didn’t exactly go as I’d expected.”
Idris rolled to his side, spat out blood, then shifted to sit crosslegged. “What a ride! I’ve never seen a portal like that before. And cool work with the impact cushion.”
I let out a weak laugh and plopped to sit. If it was new and different, Idris was all over it. At only twenty years old, he possessed an insanely keen knack for the arcane. He’d cropped his halo of blond curls down to a short and tidy style since I’d last seen him, and a selfish, wistful pang went through me at the sight. Not the sweet, innocent boy anymore. He looked years older now, features stronger. Coupled with his tall muscular build, he gave off a distinct “man to be taken seriously” vibe. Which he was, especially with Rhyzkahl for a daddy. Not that either of them knew.
I turned to Bryce. “You okay?”
Bryce stretched his arms out, nodded. “I’m good. The rough landing was more of a surprise than anything.” He stood up then grinned as I gaped in shock. “You think it’ll do?”
“Uh, yeah,” I said, still staring. Idris had cut his hair, but Bryce . . . I knew it was Bryce only because he’d come through the vortex. His previously brown hair was now jet black, and there were subtle changes to his facial structure as well. Higher, broader cheekbones. A cleft in his chin. An aquiline nose. Even his overall skin tone was somewhat darker.
“That’s incredible!” I said in astonishment. “And, hot damn, this sure solves a problem that’s been bouncing around in my brain.”
Vengeance of the Demon: Demon Novels, Book Seven (Kara Gillian 7) Page 6
