Legacy of the Demon (8 page)

Gardening. Occupational therapy for a caged demon.

Purple irises flourished on both sides of his house, encouraged to bloom out of season by what little potency he could muster within the prison. On the roof lay yet another granted request: a coil of leather straps and a pile of sandbags that he used to work out.

I didn't grant all his requests. I was proud of myself that I no longer laughed in his face when he demanded to be released.

Rhyzkahl paused between one sigil and the next, flexed his right hand several times before continuing. A deep scar crossed his palm, a remnant of the searing hilt of his essence blade, Xhan, when Mzatal struck through it in order to free me from Rhyzkahl's torture ritual. It was a vicious wound that never fully healed, but I couldn't muster up much sympathy—not when that ritual had left me covered in scars.

I chucked the empty shake bottle into the trash then stepped out the back door. Rhyzkahl immediately stopped the shikvihr and turned to face me, proud and aloof. Sweat glistened on his
skin, but his white-blond hair flowed in glowing perfection past his shoulders, seemingly untouched by Louisiana humidity. Mzatal had left him a thread of potency—enough that he could heal himself and even regrow his hair. Now Rhyzkahl once again looked every inch the demonic lord, a far cry from the pale and stumbling figure who'd been cast out of the demon realm.

Only the incessant twitch in his scarred right hand betrayed the profound damage that wasn't so easily healed. Each of the demonic lords had a ptarl, a demahnk advisor with whom they shared a deep bond that was both arcane and emotional. And unknown to the lords, their ptarl was also their parent. The lords relied on their ptarls for counsel, support, and focus. Yet during the battle at the Farouche Plantation, Zack/Zakaar—Rhyzkahl's ptarl—made a radical, terrible, and necessary decision to sever the three thousand-year-old bond, an act that left them both shattered.

I stopped just beyond his orbit and met his ice blue gaze. “I need you to go into your house, please.”

He turned his back on me and began the shikvihr again.

Tension stiffened my spine. An overtired toddler would be easier to manage. Taking a deep breath, I mentally traced the calming
pygah
sigil. Nope, didn't help. “Go to your house, Rhyzkahl,” I said, without adding any number of curse words that leaped to mind.

He moved with inhuman grace through the practice of the intricate potency-augmenting ritual. “It worries you that, each time you have made this demand, it has been more difficult to force it.” As if for emphasis, he ignited a sigil.

I managed to contain my jolt of surprise to a mere twitch. The glowing loops of the arcane symbol hung in the air, the first he'd been able to ignite since being placed in my tender, loving care. Stark evidence that he was regaining control and command of his abilities.

He's still locked out of the flows
, I reassured myself, yet a whisper of doubt clung close. No way would I admit it to this asshole, though. Fortunately, his prison prevented him from reading minds, plus I had the extra mental protections implanted by Zack and Helori.

“You think I'm worried?” I let out a soft chuckle and deliberately stepped onto the packed dirt of his orbit. “Your little rebellion is no match for what Mzatal has wrought here. If I feel anything, it's
disappointment
that your best effort at defiance is little more than a tantrum.”

He finished the shikvihr, and the sigil dimmed as he drew on its weak augmentation to potency-evaporate his sweat. “It pleases me that I cause you to feel something.”

“Yeah, I
feel
like I'm dealing with a spoiled brat.” I marched across his orbit and stepped onto the nexus. Power embraced me and escalated to a deep thrum as I stopped at the center of the slab. Beneath my feet, a thousand silvery repetitions of a sigil—
my
sigil—formed the shape of a woman with her arms extended, much like Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man. A gift from Mzatal, and my focal point of power. Like Bryce and Seretis, Mzatal and I shared an essence bond. Yet ours had gone silent for a different reason than the closing of the ways between the worlds. At my urging, Mzatal had walled himself off, mentally and emotionally, and taken up his essence blade in order to maintain the undivided focus necessary to save his world.

I could no longer feel him, but I didn't need to. I
knew
, and that was enough.

Tipping my head back, I inhaled deeply and let the power fill my entire being until every cell tingled. This was a lord's power: Rhyzkahl's. Mzatal had plugged him into the infrastructure of the nexus like a lordly battery. Here on the slab I was a demigod.

Or more like a semi-demigod since I didn't know how to do most of what was surely possible. Though the nexus hadn't come with an instruction manual, I'd puzzled out enough on my own to allow me to do my part to help both Earth and the demon realm. But, most importantly, the nexus gave me full access to the arcane and had become my therapy of choice to “rehab” my own damaged abilities.

Rhyzkahl continued to eye me from the middle of his swath, his arms folded and feet planted.

“Go into your house,” I snapped. “I don't have time for this today.” To emphasize my point, I raised a strand of potency behind him and gave him a rat tail flick across the back of his legs.

Ignoring the swat, he lifted his chin in challenge. His scarred hand twitched hard at his side, but he lifted his other and gave me a bring-it-on gesture.

He might as well have given me the middle finger. Anger swelled as the mounting worries crashed down on me, as if summoned by that stupid gesture. Cory and the others who were mutating. Xharbek. The Feds. Everything. I was sick to death of this game, sick of having this hated creature in my back yard and in my personal space.

“I don't have time for this shit!” Teeth bared, I flung my arms out, snaking a dozen bands of potency around Rhyzkahl to push-drag him to his stupid house. For a heartbeat he held firm against my efforts. Doubt flickered ever so briefly within me as he resisted. An invalid no longer, he was most assuredly regaining his strength.

But without Zakaar he couldn't hold the focus. A cry of frustration burst from him as he staggered back and fell through the open door of his house. Right before I slammed the door closed with a burst of potency, I caught a glimpse of his liquid expression. In it was triumph for holding out at all underscored with bleak despair at his failure, along with a shimmer of fear that he might never regain the powerful focus necessary to manage the arcane flows of an entire world, might never truly be a lord again.

Shaken, I dropped to a crouch. I hated this. Hated Rhyzkahl. Hated everything about this entire situation. Hated that I knew the taste of that fear—the gut deep terror that I might never truly be a summoner again. And I especially hated that I'd lost my temper and given him an opportunity to defy me.

Why why
why
did Mzatal have to send him
here
? Having my tormentor as my prisoner sounded fine and dandy, but it sure could suck hard. Resentment rose in a choking wave—partly toward Rhyzkahl, but also toward Mzatal for placing this burden on me. Like I needed even more shit to worry about and deal with and be responsible for. Because I
was
responsible for Rhyzkahl. I was his warden and his caretaker, which fucking
sucked.
And what was I supposed to do when the day came that Rhyzkahl managed to scavenge or hoard enough potency from the trickle allowed to him that he could, in fact, fully defy me?

What was I supposed to do with any of this mess I was in?

Well, you sure as hell don't give up
, I thought savagely. I'd take what I'd been given and use Rhyzkahl-the-battery for the good of humanity. I swiped at my damp eyes then straightened and meticulously cleared all stray potency from the slab. By the time I completed the process, my head was as clear as the nexus, and I felt ready to take on the Cory situation.

Not that it made a difference. With the help of two security guards, Pellini and I carried Cory out to the nexus where I was able to get a nice clear view of Timmy the Tumor with my borrowed lord-sight. A filament of potency finer than spider silk led from the tumor down into the ground. It moved with him, and every effort to track its end—or origin—was met with a potency resonance I couldn't penetrate. After an exhaustive examination, I couldn't find a single thing to explain Cory's condition or hint at either a cause or solution.

“He's still alive,” I said to Pellini. “That's about all I'm sure of.” I sat back on my heels and rubbed my face with both hands. “Shit. He's going to mutate, and I only know that much from seeing the victims at Fed Central.”

“He and the others must've been exposed to something at ground zero,” Pellini said. “If so, there's no unexposing them at this point. We can't stop it.”

We fell silent, and I didn't have to be a mind reader to know we had the same question rattling through our heads.

“So are we next in line to be slimed?” I finally said.

Pellini blew out a heavy breath. “If it came out of the valve, we were exposed. Moreso than anyone else.” He turned his hands over and peered at them. “But no red slime yet.”

“Yet,” I murmured. But why not? Did our arcane ability protect us? Or Ashava's shielding? Or did some other factor give us immunity. Or perhaps we
were
affected, but the slime was incubating.

With that last joyous thought echoing through my skull, I called for the security dudes to help Pellini get Cory back inside.
I remained on the nexus, feeling like a tiny fish in an unknown ocean full of sharks. Crouching, I placed my palm flat on the cool black surface, spread my fingers over my silvery sigils and let their potency tingle through me. Mzatal trusted me to not only swim with the sharks and avoid being eaten, but to beat them at their own deadly game. “I could've used a rule book,
zharkat
,” I murmured, “but I'm figuring it out bit by bit. Rakkuhr. Demahnk. Lords. Demons. I'll do whatever it takes to keep Earth from getting wrecked.” Deep resolve welled in me. “Whatever it takes.”

Straightening, I released the potency lock on Rhyzkahl's door then headed for the house, refocused, recentered, recommitted, and ready to tackle the next crisis.

•   •   •

The basement door was ajar when I came in, which told me Jill was most likely working. Maybe it would be better not to disturb her?

No, that was me being a chickenshit. She needed to know about Xharbek impersonating Zack, and with the Cory emergency in a lull, I had no valid reason to avoid it any longer.

I helped settle Cory on the sofa bed then made my way downstairs. My basement had undergone darn near as much change as the rest of my property. All told it was about the size of the entire ground floor of my house, which had made it the perfect spot for a summoning chamber. Though the middle third of the basement remained clear for potential arcane work, Ryan had built out the south end months ago as an extra bedroom. Before the valve explosion, Idris Palatino had bunked down here, but he'd been gone for well over a month. When we began assigning arcane specialists to DIRT units, he'd requested Sector 5—South and Southeast Asia.

Idris was an insanely gifted arcane user and summoner, and I hated to see him go. But I also completely understood why he wanted to be far from here. Rhyzkahl was an ever-present reminder of the Mraztur—the demonic lords Rhyzkahl, Jesral, Amkir, and Kadir—whose atrocities included the brutal murder of his sister. Unbeknownst to Rhyzkahl, Idris was his son and despised the shared blood. If Idris stuck around, an ugly confrontation was inevitable. And while that kind of showdown had the potential to be highly entertaining in its own twisted way, none of us had the time or energy for it or the potential fallout. Besides, popcorn was hard to come by these days.

At the north end of the basement, bookshelves covered the walls, crammed with the entire contents of my Aunt Tessa's arcane library. I'd taken every last scrap from her house, right after I learned that she'd been lying to me for years, deliberately sabotaging my education as a summoner, and even collaborating with Master Summoner Katashi to have my arcane abilities stripped. She wanted to fuck me over? Fine. I'd use her own resources against her.

Not only was Tessa without her library, but she didn't have Katashi's support anymore either. We'd captured him shortly after the valve exploded in the Beaulac PD parking lot, but unfortunately he was savvy enough to know that our demonic lord allies would strip his mind bare of every detail of the Mraztur's plans. He goaded poor Idris into attacking him, and in a haze of fury, Idris slashed the old summoner's throat.

And that's when things got weird. Katashi did the expected bleed-choke-gurgle-die thing, but then he
discorporeated
, just like a demon. We eventually decided that he must have, in fact, been a demon—most likely a syraza, since they could shapechange. But of course that only left us with even more questions, such as who, when, why, and what-the-actual-fuck.

The library in Tessa's house had been a nightmare of piles and clutter and complete lack of anything resembling organization, much less a filing system. But not here. Not after Jill took over. The library became another outlet for her, and now every book, scroll, tome, page, or scrap of parchment was neatly shelved, and steadily being catalogued with ruthless efficiency. Moreover, a couple of weeks earlier, Jill had put out a call through DIRT and civilian channels worldwide asking for scanned copies of any documents, ancient or modern, that might have bearing on the arcane, demons, rifts, or anything else related to our current situation. Even better, several mega-PhD librarian types stepped up to filter, sort, classify, and database every scrap of info that came in. It was no doubt a fraction of what existed—collectors might be loath to reveal that they owned missing or stolen manuscripts, and there were countries who hoarded their secrets in case it proved valuable later—but every little bit helped.

Jill sat at a long table in the middle of the library area, typing away on a laptop and occasionally glancing at a legal pad beside the computer. Her short red hair was damp from a shower and neatly combed, and she'd changed into jeans and a lace-edged,
black tank top that showed the definition in her shoulders and arms.

She looked up when I reached the bottom of the steps. “Hey, chick. Find out what's going on with Cory?”

“No.” I slumped into a chair at the head of the table. “I hate this. Even using the nexus, I found absolutely zip that could help me help him. The only thing I know is that Cory isn't the only one.” I went on to tell her what I'd seen and learned about the “plague” at Fed Central.

Jill's eyebrows drew together in a frown. “I haven't run across anything like that in what I've catalogued so far, but I've only scratched the surface. I'll drop a note to the librarians to keep their eyes peeled.”

“Anything you can find will help us get a clearer picture.”

She scribbled a note on the legal pad beside her. “I'll start focusing on references to red slime or cocoons or mutations.” A grimace twisted her mouth. “Unfortunately, only about a third of the materials are in English, but I'll skim for drawings.”

“If it's a language that's still in use anywhere, I can absorb enough understanding via the nexus to read it.” I'd discovered by accident that tapping into the arcane flows for a particular area was like plugging into a database of the culture, language, and customs.

Jill smacked her forehead with an open palm. “I forgot about your nexus trick!” She smiled. “How many languages are you fluent in now?”

I grinned. “I'm not
fluent
in anything but English unless I'm still connected to the flows for that region. But apparently enough sticks to the walls of my brain after I unplug that I can
almost
make myself understood in Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Farsi, Punjabi, and Zulu.”

“Zulu? Seriously?”

“Yeah, though I have a tough time getting my tongue around the consonants.” I reluctantly dragged the subject back on track. “Jill, I ran into Xharbek at Fed Central.”

She drew a sharp breath . “I have every law enforcement agency on the lookout for Carl! Is he still there?”

“I don't know. But he wasn't using the Carl, er, shape.” Disguise? Outfit? Skin? Was there a correct terminology?

Her forehead creased. “Then how did you know it was him?”

“Because he was . . . Zack Garner.”

“Does that mean Xharbek found them?” Jill seized my hand
in a painful grip. “Does he have my daughter?” She couldn't bear to say it, but her eyes shrieked,
Has he killed her?

“No, I'm positive he doesn't have them.” Though not for lack of trying. “Xharbek is taking advantage of Zack's absence, using his Special Agent Garner persona to infiltrate and commandeer the FBI's arcane division and influence everyone at Fed Central.”

Anger flashed in her eyes. “I don't understand. You were right in front of him and you didn't do anything?” The chair skittered back as she pushed to her feet. “How could you just let him go? Are you too fucking high and mighty to get your hands dirty?”

I slowly stood, remaining silent while she continued to rage. She needed to get this out of her system.

“Goddammit, Kara! I got to hold my daughter for one whole fucking minute! You know what kind of hell I'm going through here, and you didn't do
shit!
” She seized the legal pad and flung it away. No doubt she'd intended for it to smack impressively into a bookcase, but instead it coughed out a few papers during a short and wobbly course before flopping to the floor in a sad heap. A single piece of paper floated down in lovely back and forth swoops, finally settling gently to the table.

“Well, shit,” she said. “So much for my grand tantrum.”

I scooped up the paper and skimmed it, then gave her a horrified look. “Jill, this is awful!”

“What?” She started toward me, worry filling her eyes. “What is it?”

“Oregano. Macaroni. Sardines. Peanuts.” I backed away as she tried to snatch the paper from me. “These will be
horrible
cookies!”

“Oh! You!” She grabbed the shopping list then seized me in a hug. “I'm sorry. I'm so so so sorry.”

I wrapped my arms around her. “You should be. Sardines in cookies? What kind of monster are you?”

Jill hiccupped a laugh then released me and wiped her eyes. “You are such a dork.” She took a deep breath and blew it out. “Okay, Xharbek is impersonating Zack, and you didn't grab him because, duh, you're not a demigod and you don't have a death wish.”

“Actually, I did grab him. But, yeah, demigod.” I made a face. “I hate to say it, but taking Zack's place is a pretty smart move on his part. Not to mention, an added
Fuck You
to Zakaar.”

Jill dropped back into her chair with a sigh. “Yeah. He's smart.”

“Hey now, our AWOL four are smart, too,” I said. “Smart and sharp enough to have hidden from Xharbek all this time.” I mentally crossed fingers that Xharbek's energy signature would give me an edge in locating them. “They're going to be all right,” I insisted. “No getting bummed out now.”

She remained silent and still for close to half a minute before she finally spoke. “There are days when this library seems to mock me with how much I don't know, but then I realize that I know things it doesn't, and I can learn, and conjecture, or have faith that something is true.” She spread her hands flat on the table. “I know that my daughter is special.
Very
special. I've learned that the man I knew as FBI Agent Ryan Kristoff is actually Szerain, an exiled demonic lord, and I learned that the man I fell in love with, the father of my child, isn't a man at all, but a beautiful and powerful creature who's lived longer than humans have walked on Earth.” Her eyes lifted to mine. “I've conjectured that if Xharbek gets his hands on my daughter, I will never see or touch her again.” Her breath shuddered. “But I have faith . . .” She shook her head. “I
have
to believe that Zack would never hurt our child and would never separate us unless he felt the need was truly desperate.” Her hands tightened into fists. “Yet at the same time, I'm absolutely certain that he was
wrong
to take her away from me. I'm her mother. I should be with her.”

“You'll get her back,” I said fiercely. “We'll fix everything and take down Xharbek, and you'll get her back.”

Jill squared her shoulders, pulling her composure together to give me a nod. “I have faith in you most of all.”

“You fucking bitch,” I muttered as my eyes filled with tears. Sniffling, I blotted them with my sleeve. “That was really low.”

She laughed. “Well, I do. You're Kara Gillian, the Supreme Arcane Commander, Mistress of the Nexus.” Her eyes danced. “And of a certain demonic lord.”

“You did
not
just go there.”

“I'm sorry, how long have you known me?”

“Not nearly long enough.”