by Joe Jackson
Kari knelt down once again before the priest could answer, and she pulled the collar of the victim’s shirt away from his neck. There were no bite marks, which said that the succubus wasn’t trying to steal the man’s essence: Kari assumed that meant there was no magical connection between the victims. She’d considered that the succubus might be siphoning magical power from her victims and then killing them, but that was clearly not the case – at least, not with all of them. Kari sensed the two human males were waiting for her attention before they resumed their conversation, so she rose back to her feet.
“Portal magic?” Devin queried toward Kari. “Why would this be a consideration?”
“Eli – the half-corlyps that was with me when I came to see you – was telling me a tale of some work he did for the Order before the Apocalypse,” Kari explained. “He described a portal that was built to try to usher demons from the underworld onto our world, and said that they were sacrificing people to power it. I thought maybe that’s what this succubus is doing here.”
“I have never heard of such a thing. Are you certain he was telling you the truth?” the priest asked skeptically, his arms folded across his chest. There was doubt in his expression, but Kari could see it was less about the portal magic and more about Eli.
She blew out a short sigh to keep herself from getting defensive on her friend’s behalf. “Something happened during Bosimar’s tenure that was kept a secret from just about everyone,” she answered, and Devin seemed quite surprised. “I know he’s half-corlyps, but I’ve found no reason not to trust Eli.”
“I was not suggesting that,” Devin assured her, but he stopped himself as Kari waved a hand dismissively. He bowed his head somewhat apologetically and continued, “I must confess, I am not overly familiar with portal magic; you would need to speak with a wizard about such things, I think. However, my divinations suggest that there was little done to our victim here other than a simple murder. I do not detect any traces of his lifeforce or soul being pulled away toward anything unnatural, such as a portal.”
“This is maddening!” Kari spat. “From what I’ve been told, the death toll is up to about twenty-nine now? What’s her game?”
“I cannot say,” Devin answered, and the marshal waited to let the priest finish. “Perhaps she is simply an agent of chaos and death. Such hardly seems out of place, even for a succubus.”
“No,” Marshal Saracht said evenly with a wave of his hand. “If her intent was to draw Lady Vanador to this city, directly or indirectly, then there is a definitive purpose to her actions. If she were simply bent on chaos and death, she would not have allowed one of the Order’s senior-most demonhunters to pry into her affairs. That was a calculated risk, which now leads me to believe that Lady Vanador is not the target – she’s the bait.”
Devin was clearly shocked. “Bait? Whatever for?”
The marshal didn’t respond, placing his hands in the pockets of his black suit coat, his sharp eyes narrowed to fix Kari with their vigilance. Soon the priest of Zalkar was likewise staring at Kari, clearly wondering if the veteran demonhunter had any idea what the succubus might be after or why. Kari sorted through the thoughts, but before she spoke, she walked to the doorway and asked her other three companions to join them. She introduced the marshal and the priest to her friends and Sharyn, and filled them in on what conclusion the marshal had come to.
“Any idea what she’s truly after?” Sharyn queried when Kari was finished.
“I have...a suspicion,” Kari said slowly, carefully. She didn’t want to betray any more of Eli’s secrecy than she already had without first letting him know. All along’ Kari had assumed that the assassin was after her. If the marshal was right, however, and the succubus wanted to use her as bait, there was only one creature Kari could think of that might be the target of such a ruse. “For now, I don’t want to say what it is, but Marshal, I might be able to at least point you in the right direction. Does Lord Black keep any powerful wizards in the city or on his staff?”
“Not on his staff, no. However, there are a couple of fairly powerful wizards that reside in the city, and Lord Black does call upon them from time to time. What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking the assassin’s real target is a sorcerer…and a very powerful one,” Kari added, again being slow and careful not to reveal too much. Sherman started to ask a question but Kari held her hand up to stifle him, shaking her head slowly. “This information stays between the six of us,” she ordered. “Right now we can’t let the assassin know that we may be on to her and what she’s really after. And we absolutely can’t let her actual target know.”
“You will explain this in more detail, I assume?” Marshal Saracht asked. In his patient demeanor and gaze, Kari could see that he trusted her a lot more than she trusted him.
“As soon as I can talk to Eli,” she answered, turning her attention fully back to the marshal. “If you or one of your men can find him, have him meet me at the inn for supper. I’ll meet the rest of you at Zalkar’s church after supper and fill everyone in then. Also, see if you can get one or more of these wizards to come; we can use their help to see if my suspicions are right. For now, take care of this victim, and see if Lord Black has any intention of resuming martial law.”
Marshal Saracht bowed his head toward the demonhunter. “As you wish, my lady,” he said. He walked to the door to instruct the guards waiting outside.
“I’ll explain everything, but not here, and not yet,” Kari assured her friends. The paladins and the ranger glanced to each other and then nodded to Kari, and Devin likewise agreed.
“I will see to it that the temple is kept clear of visitors after the dinner hour,” he said. “I will see you all soon. Be safe.”
Kari dismissed the others with a casual gesture and made her way back to the inn. Along the way, she turned the theory that she was bait and not the actual target over in her mind, and each time it made even more sense. She wondered why she hadn’t seen it herself, but in the end, all she could do was give thanks for having met Marshal Saracht.
*****
The inn was still mostly empty when Eli arrived for dinner, and at Kari’s request, Alyssa served them both some fresh stew and then left them to speak privately. Kari was curiously impressed by the marshal’s ability to find Eli, particularly if he was trying not to be noticed, but then she guessed it wasn’t too difficult to find a half-corlyps in a city with only a handful of resident serilian-rir. She stared at her friend and wondered if he had found anything of interest, and what he had spent the day doing. He didn’t strike her as the type to get up before dawn, so she found it more than a little surprising that he had left before sunrise.
Kari took a moment to give thanks for her meal, and Eli glanced around the common room. There wasn’t anyone close to them, and once Kari finished praying and met his gaze once more, he spoke quietly but freely. “So, you know that church of Achirun that you were telling me about?” he asked, and he cracked a half-smile as she nodded, her attention fully fixed upon him. “You don’t need to worry about them. Well, at least not about them worshipping or trying to summon any sorts of demons.”
“What do you mean?” she pushed him. She began to eat while she waited for him to explain, so her food wouldn’t get cold.
Eli glanced around again. “Let’s just say that the whole demon-worshipping thing is just a cover,” he said slowly, and then he spooned up a mouthful of stew and raised his brows at her.
Kari considered what he meant, and her own brows rose as she realized he was telling her he’d found the Black Dragon Society in the most unlikely of places – or was it the most likely? Aeligos often spoke of hiding in plain sight because it was the least likely place one’s enemies would look. Still, Kari was shocked that he was able to locate them so easily, even given his own familiarity with assassins’ guilds and their habits. Without pushing him for further details, she wondered whether Kaelin Black knew that his lawyers were, in fact, his enemies
– probably using and manipulating him to their own ends. Of course, there was still the possibility that Black actually was the same person as BlackWing, and that he was running both his government and its nemesis. It seemed highly unlikely at this point, and that was a game Kari wasn’t even sure Aeligos and Eryn could pull off – and they were two of the smartest, most manipulative people she’d ever met, in either life.
She took a sip of her water and glanced around before she met his eyes again. “But if it was really BlackWing that came to see us in DarkWind, then he may be working with the succubus – which means the Society might be working for or with her, too,” she said.
“They’re not,” he countered, leaning over his food to keep his voice down. “In fact, your little succubus has killed a couple of their number, so they’re not exactly fond of her. Seems most likely that BlackWing really did want your help, he just didn’t want you to know you were helping him. The Society’s been trying to find the succubus, too, but they suspect she hangs around Black…”
“Lord Black,” Kari interrupted, and Eli’s face scrunched up. “It raised the marshal’s hackles a bit when I referred to the Earl casually. We need to be careful not to disrespect him, or we may lose what help we have.”
“Good point,” he agreed, and he made a gesture that could’ve been all at once apologetic and dismissive. “Anyway, the Society suspects the succubus hangs around Lord Black, just like he suspects she hangs around them. Obviously, that’s not the case if Markus is keeping the Earl busy, so I think it’s safe to assume she’s not working with or hanging around either of them. Have you found anything out yet?”
“Yes, that’s why I had the marshal tell you to meet me for dinner,” she said. “I need to ask you how much of what you’ve told me can be told to others. I know you’ve been careful not to tell me certain things, but you were willing to break your oath to Bosimar, so I need to know if I can tell the others what you’ve told me.”
“If I didn’t want you to use the information, I’d have just kept my mouth shut like Tor. Kari, I came with you and I’ve been letting you in on Bosimar’s secrets so you can kill this demon and figure out what’s going on. Like I said, if Bosimar wanted to keep all this stuff secret, he should’ve just killed the lot of us, because nothing stays a secret forever,” he said. “What did you want to tell the others? Maybe it’s something I can elaborate on.”
Kari shook her head. “I think you told me enough to get the point across,” she said, “but you’re free to tell them whatever else you want to when we go see them after supper. Although now that I think about it, are you wrapped up with the Society already?”
Eli waved a hand and shook his head. “No, they know who I am and what I’m up to already,” he answered. “Lord Black’s got some of them among his staff or in his guard, it would seem. They weren’t hostile, and they did talk to me a bit to at least let me know they’re not working with the succubus, but they made it pretty clear that trying to infiltrate them would end with me floating face down in a pond somewhere. They were quite clear on that, and on the fact that the Earl wouldn’t give a rat’s ass if they did it.”
Kari chuckled. She could tell Eli was usually careful in what he said in front of her, but from time to time, shades of his childhood growing up in Oge and DarkWind showed in the way he spoke. She found it amusing, as Ty could be the same way from time to time, and Kari didn’t take offense to it the way her mother-in-law did. Eli was what most would call low-class or even trash, but there was a good man underneath it all, and that meant more to Kari than his language, his etiquette, or his mannerisms. After all, she hadn’t exactly grown up prim and proper, herself. She briefly recalled what she’d called Mick Jacobs when he apprehended her in Solaris, and a semi-embarrassed grin crept onto her features.
“That’s good, actually,” she said. “We’ll be meeting with the twins, a ranger named Sharyn that’s been helping them, and the marshal over at Zalkar’s church after supper. I didn’t want you to be seen with the marshal if you were trying to work with the Society.”
“No worries there,” he said with a grateful nod. “So what did you want to tell them?”
“Just about the portal, all the things going on with that,” she said vaguely as several more people filtered into the common room. She began to feel uneasy speaking with the room filling up, and she gave a subtle gesture to drop the subject that Eli easily picked up on.
They finished their dinners in silence and then made their way over to the church. Darkness had settled in fairly early in the springtime evening. The high windows of the church were aglow when they ascended the steps, and Kari absently ran her hand through the blue eternal flame that sat on the church’s top step. Eli paused and watched her, and when Kari realized he’d stopped following, she turned by the door to face him. He looked quizzically at the blue flames but ran his hand through it the same way Kari had.
"What's that about?" he asked, gesturing over his shoulder with a thumb.
"The eternal flame?" Kari asked rhetorically. "They're supposed to let you know if a god is displeased with you. If they're angry with you, it'll burn you – even if you're serilian-rir." Eli's brows rose and he turned to glance at the blue flame once more. When he turned back, Kari simply smiled and patted his shoulder, and she led him through the doors.
The Morevilles, Sharyn, Marshal Saracht, and Devin Sanstrom sat on benches near the center of the horseshoe, waiting for Kari and Eli to come fill them in. Among them was another human dressed in a scarlet and purple robe with the cowl up, and from under the hood showed only a wizened face and thin, grey hair. Kari couldn’t tell how old the man was just from looking at him, and guessing was usually a waste of time with those who practiced wizardry. The power of the arcane was known to extend lifetimes, so for all Kari knew, the man could be in his second or third century. She bowed her head to him and he returned the gesture, his hawkish eyes taking her in carefully. When Kari reached the center of the horseshoe with Eli beside her, she waited to be introduced to the wizard.
“Mr. Harrington, may I introduce you to Lady Karian Vanador, Sword of the Heavens,” the marshal said, and the robed elder human rose and shook Kari’s offered hand.
“Please, call me Dominick,” he said with the barest of smiles. “How may I be of service, my lady?”
“Well, let me make sure everyone knows what’s been going on so far,” Kari said. She nudged Eli gently and gestured toward the benches. Once he and Dominick were seated, Kari started the tale from the beginning: when she slew Ressallk on Tsalbrin. Using the firm but gentle gestures she’d picked up from Aeligos over the years, she kept anyone from interrupting the tale, and she filled everyone in on the events of the previous few weeks. She made sure to include the details of the killings in DarkWind and the conclusions Aeligos came to, and then she briefly went over the encounter in Lajere, leaving out only the details of her dreams. When at last her tale came to a close, she asked if there were any questions, and was pleasantly surprised when no one spoke up.
“Now, before we get into last night’s killing and our investigation this morning, I want to let Eli go over some of the details of the plot he and his friends helped to stop while working for Jason Bosimar,” she said, and she motioned Eli back to the center where she stood.
He joined Kari in standing before the others, but it was clear by his mannerisms that he wasn’t comfortable speaking in front of a group. Kari found it amusing that the half-corlyps seemed to have little fear of undead, werewolves, or demons, yet he was intimidated by a small human audience. He glanced once at Kari before he began to speak. “All right, from what Kari said to me over dinner, I’m guessing she wants me to talk about the portal we encountered before the Apocalypse,” he began. He filled in the details about how the portal was “fueled,” and the belief that it was to usher Sekassus into the world, but he didn’t fill in much more detail than he had when he explained it to Kari. His explanation was complete, though, and the others nodded to
show they were following Kari’s line of thinking.
Once Eli finished his own short tale, Kari spoke again. “Now, this morning I started thinking that maybe BlackWing or someone else we don’t know about yet might have built a portal, and that the succubus might be committing these murders to power it,” Kari said, but she paused when Dominick, the wizard, shook his head lightly.
“Portal magic is very particular with regard to the area,” the elder human explained. “For the life energy of the sacrifices or victims to be drawn to the portal, all of the killings would have to have been committed in its immediate vicinity. While I am not completely familiar with the marshal’s investigation, I know that the murders have been spread around the entire city, with the exception of the Temple District. Also, the murders you described in DarkWind would have been of no use in such a case.”
Kari bobbed her head in appreciation; the possibilities were slowly being narrowed down. “Good to know,” she said. “As I was going to say, though, that’s what I thought this morning. After we investigated last night’s murder, though, Marshal Saracht came to the conclusion that I’m not the target of this plot; I’m the bait.”
“Bait? For what?” Eli asked on behalf of everyone else.
“Not what; who,” Kari said. “And my suspicion…is Emma.”
“But why would…oh,” Eli replied. “You think this is all set up to look like another portal, to draw Emma here if she wants to sabotage the plans?”
Kari nodded. “Without getting into too much detail,” she explained to the others, “this demoness, a mallasti called Emma, seems to appear whenever a demon king threatens invasion. And in every situation, she seems to do something to either ruin that king’s plan or else help someone else ruin it. Thanks to Eli sharing what he did for Bosimar, the tale my mate and his siblings shared on our journey to Tsalbrin, and the information Eryn was able to relay after we beat Gaswell, I think this succubus is faking an invasion to draw Emma out and kill her.”
