My Demon Warlord

by Carolyn Jewel

  She held him close and that point of resistance that had always been between them faded away. His. She was his. He snarled once, again, then lost himself in Maddy.

  CHAPTER 32

  Maddy ended up driving back to Tiburon with Gray, Durian, and Addison, Gray having returned from her sanction to catch a ride with her husband. Maddy’s presence was required at the Tiburon house while Nikodemus needed Kynan with him. They were about to be separated by distance for the first time since she’d sworn fealty to him. She was anxious about a recurrence of her difficulty in being separated from Kynan, but so far, so good. Separation was not the same as being cut off. Their bonds were just fine with separation.

  Durian drove while the rest of them dozed. Addison had the front seat, leaving Gray and Maddy the back. Addison was sound asleep. Two hours into the drive south Maddy gave up trying to relax enough to crash the way Addison had. She stared out the window and counted trees. Telos had sent her a new phone, ready to use out of the box. She thought about texting Kynan but decided that wasn’t a good idea. He was busy. He didn’t need to be pestered.

  She didn’t want him to ask about a blood-bond between them. Not again. Not when she wasn’t ready with an answer. She missed Kynan. Vahid too, ironically, considering he still didn’t like her. She rolled the star rubies Kynan had given her against her palm. One of the inside pockets of her purse was full of the rest of the rubies from Bodega. She’d be fine. She had to be. Had to be. She wasn’t a newbie who didn’t understand her power or the nature of demons. She would settle into this change, and everything would be like it was before.

  Gray patted Maddy’s thigh. “Want to talk about it?”

  “No.”

  “Happy to listen anytime.”

  She pressed her head against the back of the seat and let out a breath. “We didn’t get them all.” This wasn’t the subject Gray had meant, but it was an excellent diversion from the problem of her private and intimate relationship—nonpublic relationship—with Kynan Aijan. “There are more out there like that, small operations who supplied Sessani.”

  “Fucking fuckers.” That came from Addison so, not asleep as she’d thought.

  “Yeah.” Her stomach pinched. She really didn’t like the direction of her thoughts now. She stared at her purse and opened it to get her new phone. She had doubts about her and Kynan as a thing that would last. But none about having a child with him. She wanted a world where her children would be safe, and Kynan would never let harm come to them. Them. Already she was thinking of the future, and what insanity was that? “What if Sessani isn’t the only one doing this on a larger scale?”

  “We stopped her,” Gray said.

  Addison turned around to look into the back seat, determined. “If there are others, we’ll stop them, too.”

  “There are others. We know that.” She picked up her phone and called Kynan. Because. Because she missed him. Because her emotions were involved and she was ruined.

  He picked up immediately. “Go.”

  “Sessani was hooked up with the Russians.”

  “And?” The background conversation included Iskander singing. He had a decent voice, but the lyrics were raunchy.

  “And,” she said with her heart turning to ice in her chest, “the Russians have been pissed off at Nikodemus for the past two years.”

  “And?”

  “And right now they are closer to Tiburon than any of us are.”

  “Oh, goddamn it,” Gray said. Durian sped up.

  Maddy kept the phone to her ear. “Have Tau show you how he does that thing he does. Everybody who isn’t absolutely necessary to cleaning up the compound needs to get there as soon as they can. I’ll call Lys. We need her.”

  “Will do.” Kynan disconnected, but a second later her phone pinged with a text.

  b safe

  Addison pulled out her phone. “Texting Tau now so he knows I want him to teach everyone Kynan picks. Just so there’s no misunderstandings and no delays.”

  “Good thinking.” She texted Kynan a smiley face. Not the heart that had been her first instinct. Too many ways to misinterpret that. Besides, she needed to stay focused on her work with Nikodemus—that was far too important let herself act like a schoolgirl mooning over her first boyfriend. She covered her face because she didn’t want anyone to see her falling apart.

  Six miles from the Tiburon house, when they were still in the flats of Marin County, Addison sat up and grabbed the dashboard. “You feel that?”

  Durian edged the car up to eighty. Maddy’s chest vibrated, and Gray, who’d been sleeping, sat upright. Magekind. Too many of them to feel comfortable. “What the hell?” Gray said.

  Maddy checked her phone for messages and emails. The others did the same. “Nothing. Gray, text me so I know if the damn thing’s working.” A few seconds later the phone buzzed.

  “Any magehelds on the road?” Durian looked at her in the rearview mirror. He wanted to know whether they had a tail because, of the four of them, she was the one who would react to magehelds. “Not close. We’re a little out of my range to be sure about the house. Hold on.” She cast out, drawing on the rubies to extend her range, and yes, the prickle of recognition filtered through her. “Mages not sworn to Nikodemus. Ten? Hard to say for sure from this distance. Yes, as to magehelds. Thirty, maybe. But that’s a guess right now.”

  “Damn.” Addison drummed her fingers on the dash.

  “Addison,” Maddy said. “Can you do Tau’s thing?”

  “I only have this form so no. Damn it to hell.”

  “Why haven’t we heard from anyone at the house?” Gray stared at her phone. “You’d think someone would have gotten word to us. Nikodemus should have known something was happening. What the hell?”

  As if on cue their phones pinged with a barrage of text messages.

  Maddy read the texts as they scrolled onto her screen. “Leonidas is at the house. Wards have been set off.” She scanned down the screen. “Telos reports the Tiburon house is under attack. Oh. He took communications offline until he confirmed we were secure.”

  From the front seat, Durian said, “Better than us not knowing we’ve been intercepted.”

  Addison was holding enough power that Maddy broke out in goose pimples. Durian was off the freeway now and speeding on the surface streets that would get them up to the hillside.

  “How close are the magehelds to the house?” Durian slowed once they hit the narrow, winding road up the hill. “Can you tell?”

  Maddy replied. “Too close. That’s about all I can say right now.” More and more magehelds popped into her awareness as they came closer to the house and the lower-level demons registered.

  “Update on the magehelds?” Gray asked.

  “Uncertain.” She embraced the anxiety that came with a situation like this. Admit it and move on. “There are thirteen mages.” If each of those mages had brought just ten enslaved demons, that was one hundred and thirty demons. Approaching three hundred if they’d brought twenty each.

  More than enough magehelds for cadres of thirteen.

  At the next turn to the house, Addison tapped Durian’s shoulder. “Let me out here. I’m going up the side.” She had a hand on the open door. “You guys watch your backs.”

  Durian pumped the brakes. Addison had her seatbelt off and was rolling out the door before he stopped. “Gray.” Durian had his door open, too. “Take over. I’m heading up, too.”

  Gray dove into the front seat before Durian finished talking. Gray slid underneath him and he rolled out the door. Maddy saw a flash as Durian took to the air. “Brace yourself, Maddy.” Gray didn’t even take the time to slide the seat forward as she hit the gas.

  So much for her separation from Kynan being okay. She needed to join him, needed him to be here with her. The necessity of protecting him stopped her breath. As they flew around another turn, she saw Addison racing up the hill between houses, making leaps that defied gravity.

  “Can you cover us?”
Gray wanted to know whether Maddy could draw enough magic to camouflage them physically and magically.

  “Trying now.” She gripped the rubies. Her magic responded, not as smoothly as she would have preferred but not bad for on the fly. She banged her elbow on her way into the front seat. She’d have a bruise later, but for now, she didn’t feel a thing. “Done.”

  They came around the last turn before the top of the driveway. Thankfully, the gate wasn’t compromised. It opened, and Gray sailed though. They fishtailed to a stop.

  Maddy’s reactions to the attack flooded her before Gray even turned the car off. A body plunged from the roof and landed on the pavement. Not one of theirs. Gray shoved open the door, drawing power as she threw herself out of the car and sprinted toward the house.

  With the rubies clenched in her fist, Maddy took stock of what was happening. Nikodemus wasn’t here yet. Neither were Kynan or Tau. Addison was in the house. Durian was on the roof. Telos and Lys were inside, and Leonidas, a mage, was defending the back of the house. Upstairs with the children, Sheth and Emily had paired and were drawing more power than she would have expected.

  Her phone rang, but it was Wallace, not Kynan. Wallace was one of her street witch successes and a woman with power that they needed here. The instant Maddy answered, Wallace said, “You’re at the house?”

  “Yes.”

  “Palla and I are five minutes out. I have us on speaker. Status?”

  “There are thirteen mages.”

  “Fuck,” she heard Palla say. Just as with magehelds, thirteen was a significant number for magekind. “No coincidence. They want the house.”

  “Eight of the thirteen are significant, two aren’t going to be a huge problem, I don’t think. Three are somewhere between dangerous and difficult.”

  “How many magehelds?”

  “A hundred-seventy left. They’ve suffered casualties.”

  The number of magehelds headed downward again, and amid the chaos of that, the strangeness of Lys Fensic’s power crackled through the air. They might be outnumbered, but they weren’t outmatched.

  The location of the house on a large lot at the top of a hill meant the mages directing the assault were closer than usual to the fighting. They preferred to command their magehelds from a distance. Other than their proximity, this was a textbook assault. Overwhelm them with enough magehelds to keep anyone from breaking free to find the mages, and establish a second line of magehelds whose orders were to prevent anyone from getting past. The strategy was timeworn and therefore predictable—predictable enough, Maddy hoped, that it would fail.

  “Here,” Wallace said.

  “Contact Telos so we can coordinate.” Her phone pinged. Telos had sent everyone a text with the con-call link. What wouldn’t she give for one of Kynan’s meshed wards right about now? She clicked the URL and connected to the call in progress. The Web-conference screen rendered to show Telos’s desktop map application. “Winters here.”

  The ongoing conversation briefly halted. Then Telos spoke. Colored dots appeared on the map as Telos tagged their attackers. Red for mages, yellow for mageheld, green for their own. “We have Palla and Wallace on site. Deploying them northwest to engage.”

  “Got it. We need someone behind that second line of mages. The strongest will be at the back.”

  “Done. Keep your phone on. Tracking you now.” Telos was already on to the others on the call. “Good work, Wallace, thank you.”

  “Nikodemus and Kynan should be here shortly,” Maddy said.

  “Affirmative. Nikodemus contacted me four minutes ago. He’ll be back on the call when they hit land. Lys, help Durian on the roof. Thirty degrees. Winters, I need you on surveillance until Kynan gets here. Tag all the ones you find. I haven’t got them all yet.”

  “Affirmative.”

  To the west and north, the house faced the bay, so she headed east where trees provided cover for the mages. She hadn’t gotten far before she quivered with the reaction that meant Kynan was near. Nikodemus too. Thank the stars above.

  They were coming in by air, but for the next several seconds she felt other demons arrive, too. Tau, Xia, Iskander, Harsh, and Vahid. Dampening magic was trickier in the air, and there were fewer kin with the necessary power. Nikodemus and Kynan had no problem, and they were smart, taking to the air to get a bird’s-eye view. They had to have used Tau’s trick to get here this fast.

  Nikodemus came to ground near the house, hunched over, down on one knee. He held Carson in his arms. How he managed to get her here was a question for much later. Both of them headed for the house at a run. She and Kynan were psychically linked before he landed. His winged form blazed with bronze iridescence and then, in a smooth motion, he shifted to human and continued toward her like there was nothing to worry about. His eyes were dark, dark purple, flecked with gold. He reached her and said, “Let’s do this.”

  Those thirteen magekind had linked up and doubled, even tripled, their combined magic. The primary task for her and Kynan was to reduce the number of mages or find and stop the sacrifice that was feeding that perverse magic.

  At her nod, he dampened them both. It took her breath how easily he hid them. He piggybacked onto her power because it let him find the magehelds, too. She relaxed into the connection. They’d done this sort of thing so often it was second nature. Locate the magehelds and take them down once they were within no-mistakes range of power, then Kynan would release Maddy from his dampening magic. The unexpected appearance of a witch usually unbalanced mageheld demons. At that point, either Maddy or Kynan, sometimes both, would immobilize the magehelds. Or Kynan would dead drop them if he had deep enough access to her to use her awareness of the magehelds.

  Maddy stepped up to the first mageheld they encountered and tagged him for Telos. Its human form was subtly off, either from inexperience or lack of power or both. Likely this was one of the products of Sessani’s breeding program. Inexperienced and unstable.

  The mageheld’s eyes went wide when he saw Maddy, but he took no aggressive action. There was no change in the power the mageheld was holding. There was always the risk that the mage in control would have temporarily lifted the stricture against harming the magekind, but given his passivity, that appeared not to be the case.

  She walked toward the mageheld. “You’re out of position.”

  As soon as he snapped to attention, Kynan dead-dropped him. The mageheld fell to his knees, hands over his chest, blinking rapidly, unable to form words. She immobilized the downed mageheld. Always better to keep them alive if it was safe. When this was over, Carson would sever them if necessary. She and Kynan were perfectly in sync.

  The magehelds on both sides of that one headed for their companion’s last known location and materialized to their right. She tagged them, too. Kynan stopped the first one without trying hard. Something had happened back at the house because one of the magekind disappeared from her senses. The number of magehelds decreased again.

  So it went, until she and Kynan had an open path to the mages. Kynan took down two of them, one witch and one mage. Maddy burned out the magic of the other two. Four down, nine to go.

  A fifth mage loped into view, coming back from the house toward the oaks that marked the boundary of the property. Eleven magehelds raced ahead of him, heading straight for Kynan. All of them held killing magic. She put the mages she’d burned out into the same stasis she’d used on the magehelds and sprinted toward their newest attackers. When the first mageheld was twenty yards away, she skidded to a stop and released a bolt of magic she infused with heat borrowed from Kynan.

  The mage in the forefront tumbled backward. Her heart about stopped when she realized the mages had connected more than their magic. They had a psychic link, too.

  The same realization hit Kynan seconds later, and he caught the edge of that shared consciousness. She was along for the ride as Kynan thrust himself into the head of one of the mages. He scoured everything he found, every thought and memory the mage had eve
r had, and she was along for the ride.

  Power rolled over her, through her, out toward the mage and along the ley lines that connected the other mages. Her center flexed, tightened, bowed, and there was nothing but Kynan and those connected mages and the living death of one of the kin.

  Dozens more magehelds had been freed, and the magic that had accomplished that was still rolling through the air. Nikodemus’s doing. Sparks swirled and swooped, and every few seconds pockets of air combusted.

  A series of psychic thuds echoed back, two close together, another, and then three more mages blinked out, and then the remaining mages vanished from her senses. Gone.

  One of the witches Maddy had brought down screamed once, then the sound cut off. Her body convulsed once, and tendrils of smoke curled up from the body. The nearest magehelds stopped what they were doing.

  Fifty yards away, a tree burst into flames and, in the blink of an eye, it was nothing but ash falling to the ground. She realized what she hadn’t been able to process before. Kynan had obliterated all the mages’ links to the remaining magehelds.

  Silence blossomed. Someone at the house shouted, then Nikodemus sent a psychic all-clear. Maddy took a knee. When she touched the ground, smoke curled up from the dirt and leaves around her finger. Six mages, some of them on the other side of the property, were dead. Kynan had killed them. Every single one of them.

  She found her way back to herself and rejoined Kynan. The magehelds—former magehelds—were in varying stages of reaction to their sudden freedom. Several were on their knees in a semicircle around Kynan. All of them pressed three fingers to their foreheads, and she had no idea whose triumph she felt. Did it matter? Maybe it didn’t.

  He took their oaths, and the oaths of several more, and with each one his power leveled up. Twenty of them, then another ten, and she felt the ripple of the power flowing through him. At one point, he tipped his chin in the direction of the two mages who were still alive. Right.