“You mean other than ‘go grab him’? Not much. He asked if I had any pull with you. If I thought you'd use your tracking to find the guy before his super noticed he'd lost yet another collar.” Alex sat on the edge of the desk and tilted his head. His eyes searched her face and then traveled down to her arm.
“Did he seem nervous?” She backed up a bit, leaned against the wall and let the cold of the black stone wall seep through her jacket. Her arm pulsated, but she did her best to keep her face neutral.
“Well, yeah. He’d lost a prisoner, right? Of course he was nervous. It's his head if he's caught doing something stupid like that. Now he’s gonna get his ass kicked too. He sent you to get this bum, and now you’re damaged. Not cool.”
“Did he say anything else?” She gasped the words out as a jolt of pain rocketed up her arm, burrowed into her neck, and then connected with her heart.
“You okay? You don’t look so good.” Alex jumped up and joined her at the wall. He put a hand on her shoulder and stared into her eyes, as if he could will her to talk. “You stubborn mule, go get this looked at. You’re worse than mi madre.”
She closed her eyes. If he was lapsing into Spanish, he must be really concerned. “Did he say anything else?”
“Lemme see. Chester was just sitting there on his ass in that sorry excuse for an apartment. No problemo, except the bum talked Daryl into stopping off at a bar. Which is odd, ’cause Daryl don’t drink. Never trust a man who can’t enjoy a good beer.”
“And that’s where Chester cut loose? At a bar? Does Chester have compulsion talent?” She opened her eyes to find Alex staring down at the arm she now cradled with her other hand. The concern in his eyes nearly made her lose what little control she had over herself.
Alex shrugged. “Daryl didn’t really say. Just handed me the piece of shirt I gave to you, and begged me to ask you for the favor. Not to tell anybody. I’d have said the same thing, if I’d been that stupid. Look, Tari, this can wait. Let us check into all this. You go get looked at.”
Her stomach throbbed, and her neck felt as if a worm burrowed under the skin. The headache that had been in the background blossomed with new vengeance. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, willing the pain now wracking her body to subside long enough to think.
Something wasn’t quite right. She couldn’t put her finger on it, other than Chester didn’t seem capable of escaping from a bathroom stall, much less Sentinel custody. But he probably wasn’t that drunk at the time. If he had some sort of natural compulsion ability, it might explain it. Maybe. It was just too hard to tell with him this drunk.
“From the limited information in the database, if that was a real demon, you need more than just a healer. If he got a decent blood sample from you, he can start pulling at your power. Healer or no. When he gets enough, he’ll have control over your body. You’ll be a prisoner in your own head, while he’ll run the show. Tari.” Frankie stood up and took her shoulders in his hands, “To call this a big deal is an understatement.”
The cold inside her felt more solid now, and her neck ached as the pain pounded on ligaments. Her blood felt…sluggish. She knew he was right. She’d read the stories. She remembered a history tutor warning her about this type of creature. She’d just thought they were stories told to frighten her into staying in bed at night as a child. So much for fairy tales. Daric had said she had a week before the demon’s spell would be complete.
A week.
Crap.
She sagged against Frankie, fixated on her problem. What should have been a normal arrest of an idiot with minor magic infractions had turned into some sort of hellish nightmare. What would happen to the Dolphin Throne if someone got control of her power? What about her friends. Her family. The House of Xannon.
What would happen to her?
She shuddered as she pictured the rest of her life spent looking out through her own eyes but being unable to control her actions. Being someone else’s puppet. A vision of the Dolphin Throne swam through her mind. For the first time, she saw herself sitting on it, but instead of looking like the leader her mother insisted she needed to be, she was laughing maniacally as her power incinerated everyone near her. She saw the demon, standing in the shadows next to her, hissing in triumph.
Her stomach boiled as her thoughts swirled and the cold knot at the back of her neck pulsed in some strange rhythm of its own. She fought the urge to throw up. She could hear her mother’s voice in her head. All those lectures about the security of the throne, the need for an heir, and the duty of the Scion to provide one circled and lodged in her chest along with a healthy dose of guilt and irritation that she’d let this happen in the first place.
If the demon was able to control her actions and power, everyone around her would be in danger, and they wouldn’t even know it until it was too late. If the demon got control.
That was the key.
“I have to stop him from getting that control. If Daric Voltain was right, I have a week. I still feel like myself, for the most part.” She pushed away from Frankie, to find Alex right behind her. She backed away from them both, trying to take back some of her dignity.
Other than being exhausted and starving from her fight with the demon, and the strange cold knot at the base of her neck which gave her a resounding headache, and the searing wound on her arm—she felt fine.
“I just have to figure out where the demon is, how he’s using my blood and stop it before the week is up. Simple, right?”
The look of doubt on Alex’s face said everything.
“How did the demon even know where I was going to be? This whole thing smells like the garbage in that alley.”
“We’ll help. We’ll follow the trail from the beginning. Daryl, then Chester. You, chica…” Alex pointed at her, “get to a healer. We’ll let you know when we got something.”
The steps solidified in her mind. Block the takeover of her power, find the demon and destroy him. It sounded like a plan.
Frankie cleared his throat. “Alex, I say we hold Chester in cell #3 ’til we sort this out.” He tapped on the keyboard a few more times, putting the information into the official record.
“Fine. As long as she gets to the healer.” Alex poked her arm.
“As long as you tell me the instant this idiot is sober.” She poked him back, but her heart wasn’t in it. After giving her a hard look, Alex turned back to their prisoner.
“Alright, brainless, on your feet.” Alex pushed Chester with his foot, but he remained on the floor. “Dammit, Tari, you coulda snatched him before he got so loaded.”
“I’m not sure he’s ever been sober.” It had seemed easier to grab him while he was drunk, but now she wished she’d grabbed him before he’d managed to get so wasted. She could be interrogating him right now, instead of waiting for the whiskey to wear off. But no amount of magic would make the alcohol process through his body any faster. She’d have to wait.
Alex reached down and pulled Chester up by his pants, set him mostly upright, then guided him roughly to the door that led to the holding cells. He pushed Chester up against the wall and held him with one hand as he pressed the palm of the other up to a plate on the wall. The panel above the plate beeped in approval. Alex muttered, a sound more like a growl than actual words. The panel beeped again and lit up green, which allowed the door to swing open.
Alex propelled Chester through the door in front of him, then stopped in the doorway to look back at her. “You gonna be okay? You need help getting to the healer?” Alex jostled Chester, who groaned.
“Just let me know when he sobers up, okay?”
Alex raised an eyebrow, then pushed on through the door.
Tarian leaned against the cool wall and let the pain wash over her.
“You know we got your back, right?” Frankie’s face glowed in the light from the computer.
“Yeah.” She gulped, willing the nausea to retreat. “And I got yours.”
“Don’t think I don�
�t know what that means. I know you. You'll be all about trying to protect us instead of asking for help. And you can’t do this thing without help. So let us.” Frankie looked at her over the screen. His eyes flashed with too much understanding. They knew her too well. Most of the time, she’d have said that was a good thing. But today, she had the sinking feeling all it meant was they were in just as much danger as she was. She’d never forgive herself if something happened to them.
Since the only way in and out of the Cellar was by portal, she opened one to the healer’s hallway knowing Frankie would look to see that she went directly to the healers. She stepped through, closed the portal, then leaned against the wall. Exhaustion washed over her.
What if this power she felt circling inside her could reach out to others? Anyone near her was in danger. The thing in her neck writhed, and the wound pulsed, both a living connection to a demon straight out of horror stories. She needed to get her arm healed and the demon out of her body. Fast. Or she needed to get out of the house and never come back. Alex and Frankie, along with her mother and sister Calliope, would want to help her, no matter the danger. She couldn’t let them take that chance. Frankie was right. She wanted to protect them, and her family, above anything else.
For the first time in her life, she felt alone.
She took a few steps toward the healer’s quarters, but the knot in her neck punched her with a jolt of pain, and the pulse in her wound bonded with it in a throb that never quite matched her heartbeat. She fell against the wall, hoping it would support her since her legs didn’t seem to want to do the job. The polished stone soothed the flushed feel of her face. She put her burning forehead against it.
A force from deep inside her neck, foreign and slightly oily, reached out into the air around her and searched for something.
An odd sound permeated the air and her ears. She struggled to listen. Clicking, singsong staccato. She couldn’t immediately place it, but it reminded her of the ocean. Surely she wasn’t hallucinating already. It seemed absurd, but her energy was low and with everything that had happened maybe she was losing it.
She forced air in and out of her lungs. Each breath renewed the war with whatever it was that struggled to connect with something around her. She tried to pull her focus together enough to form a shield around herself, but she couldn’t muster enough energy. She’d spent too much fighting the demon the first time, and the wound constantly drained her. The travel portals had sucked what remained of her strength. Her body simply refused to gather any more. She’d need sleep and food, and she couldn’t have either. Too much pain coursed through her arm and head. Too much power circled around her body that didn’t feel like her own.
“Tari? Are you okay?” The soft voice echoed down the hallway and reverberated in her head.
Tarian turned to see her sister, Calliope, standing just outside the door to the main healer room. She’d tied her hair blonde back, and held a bundle of cloth like she’d been sewing. She looked so much like their mother that Tarian squinted just to be sure it wasn’t Marielle standing there. Calliope’s forehead creased as she got a good look at Tarian.
The odd force inside Tarian’s neck leapt through her throat and pushed toward Calliope. Tarian backed away, even as her sister moved forward.
“Get back.” Tarian put her hands up to block her sister. “I mean it, Calli. Get away from me.”
She turned and ran, before her sister could protest.
She didn’t even look where she was going, as long as it was away from Calliope. The force inside her felt like a string pulled tight from somewhere outside herself. Her injured arm nearly lifted on its own. If the demon did this, he did it from thousands of miles away through some of the toughest magical walls ever constructed.
Her mind spiraled, then she slammed down on that thought process. It was too fast. Too soon. She had a week. That’s what Daric Voltain had said. A week, dammit.
What if he was wrong?
She barreled out of the healers’ hall and into the main one at a dead run. She had to get out of the house. It would be easier in the entry. She could use the steady stream of power embedded in the rock and wood that was always available in the travel alcoves. She pushed toward it, nearly blind in her need to get there before something horrible happened. Focus. She needed to put up some sort of shield between her and her enemy. She needed to put distance between herself, the Dolphin Throne and the rest of her family. From the feel of things, her shield would have to be a lot stronger than any she’d ever created before. Without energy. Without sleep, food or help of any sort. Her eyes twitched as sweat dripped into them.
How could she shield against something she couldn’t even see, that lived inside her own body? How could she shield herself from…herself?
She reached the rotunda at a full run and turned toward the entry. Her boots, covered in vomit and city grime, slid on the polished stone. Her arms circled in the air in a futile attempt to keep herself upright, then she landed on her butt, skidding halfway across the floor from the momentum of her run, out of control.
Chapter 7
The receiving hall doors burst open on Tarian’s right. Two Sentinels stormed out, followed by a blond man with eyes wide in anger or fear, she couldn’t tell which, followed by her mother. Loud staccato burbling filled the air, and a filament of light formed fingers that reached straight for her. Tarian slid to a stop near a large potted plant, her foot embedded in a bench.
More Sentinels surged into the rotunda with weapons drawn. Tarian knew they’d focused their magic, because the hairs in her nose wiggled and made her sneeze. They looked ready to kill. Tarian struggled to get her feet underneath her so she could get out of the way of whatever the hell was going on. Shouts reverberated off the circular walls. Boots clumped, weapons clicked, and an odd buzz rang through her ears. Her own name bounced back to her from somewhere. Then her mother’s name. She saw her mother raise a hand toward the blond, who seemed to have frozen in position.
The Sentinels pointed their weapons at the stranger even as they backed away from the fingers of light that advanced on her. The power inside her struggled against the fragile hold she had on it like a cold stone cutting through the back of her neck. It wanted to join with the filament of power. Or the power called to it, she couldn’t tell which. The power stream pulled at her, a force which threatened to drag her into the stream.
She forced her body to back away on all fours, but found her momentum stopped by another giant indoor palm. She had a fleeting glimpse of her mother’s shocked face before the glow enveloped her. Fear gripped her as she felt the odd lump inside her surge through her throat and greet the filament extending from the reception hall as an old friend.
Light surrounded her, and warmth drenched her arm and the thing at the base of her neck. Relief flooded through her as she realized the outside power helped energize, rather than drain, her. She added it to her own dismal energy force, then tried to wrap it around the stone. If she could just get whatever it was wrapped up in her own power, surely it would destroy the demon’s link.
It was harder than anything she’d ever done in her life. Blood rushed through her ears. She struggled to catch her breath. The odd scene around her faded into the background as she fought her internal war.
“Tari!”
Calliope. Dammit. Her sister had followed her. Of course she had. But now Tarian couldn’t spare a breath for anything—couldn’t warn her away. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t even really see. She put a hand on the back of her neck, squeezed it, and focused on creating a shield around the foreign object lodged inside her. She’d never tried to shield something inside her own body before and didn’t have the slightest clue how to do it. Instinct guided her, but instinct would only get her so far.
“Let me help.” Calliope’s voice was quiet in the middle of all the noise, but Tarian heard her anyway. Her sister put soft hands on her arms, and Tarian drew on her sister’s fresh energy. The power from the Dolphin Throne circ
led them. She felt her mother’s energy join the flow, almost as if her arms circled them both. The strength of the ocean, a gentle wave of power and a singsong call mixed with joy and determination, wove in and around them. In the back of her mind, she put a name to the sound. Dolphins. Her life-long friends, who gave her family the Dolphin Throne.
With the added strength of two other women, and the throne itself, the stone’s influence retreated. She used the shield spell she already knew to fashion one around this parasite inside her neck. It wiggled, fought, throbbed under her hands.
It was like trying to hold onto a grease puddle, but eventually she managed to force the shield into place and cocoon the odd…thing…in a ball of air energy woven tight, with water energy to seal any cracks. The thing didn’t break, but the power flowing from it spread into her shield, which reverberated with it but didn’t yield. She gasped with relief as the pain receded and her head cleared a little.
Tarian held the focus of power from her sister and mother for another minute, just to be sure this…thing…wouldn’t escape. When the shield held, she let the focus of power from her mother and sister go, and collapsed as the backlash washed over her. Power always rebounded. Usually it wasn’t enough to worry about. She’d normally absorb it back into her body, burning calories which would cause a bit of a drop in blood sugar, but otherwise she’d escape unharmed. This much, however, was too much. She fell against Calliope, her legs unable to keep her upright.
Her sister’s hands on her arms helped ease Tarian’s descent to the floor, but the stone still bruised her knees. She fell forward on her hands, and discharged the last of the rebounding power into the rock floor. Solid, steady, boundless earth, soaked up what she dished out. The power reverberated outward along the floor and up the walls to the ceiling, dispelling into a portion of everything it touched, including people. It wasn’t her favorite way to discharge. Connecting with Earth this way always gave her a headache after. Water worked best. But it was convenient, and she’d never be able to crawl all the way down to the shore to use the ocean or dolphins as a release.
Demons & Djinn: Nine Paranormal Romance and Urban Fantasy Novels Featuring Demons, Djinn, and other Bad Boys of the Underworld Page 115
