Vengeance of the Demon: Demon Novels, Book Seven (Kara Gillian 7) (14 page)

Fuck. It was a sad day when Pellini was the reasonable one. Idris looked similarly chastened by the dressing down.

“Maybe . . . locked down here, unless he’s with one of us?” I offered.

Idris visibly fought down his resistance to the elimination of the demon realm option, and I was pretty sure he pygahed. Twice. Maybe three times. “Locked down here?” he finally said. “How?”

“He moves in here,” I suggested and prayed that Idris’s receptive mood would continue. “If possible he takes a leave of absence from work, and we would reassess as needed.”

What followed then were negotiations that rivaled the Louisiana Purchase. With Bryce’s not-always-gentle guidance we managed to reach a compromise that kept Pellini from being summarily deported to the demon realm while also keeping him from roaming free. Idris wasn’t happy with it, and I hated screwing Pellini over like this, but it was the best possible compromise in a horrible situation.

“I’m sorry it has to be this way,” I said to Pellini after everything was decided. “Is there anything you need right now?”

“Another hamburger,” Pellini grumbled. “The demon ate mine.”

After Pellini ate a replacement hamburger, Bryce accompanied him to his house to pick up his dog and a few days worth of clothing and sundries. An hour later they returned with Sammy, a goofy chocolate labrador retriever with a dangerously exuberant tail. Though uncertain at first with all the new smells, it only took a few minutes for Sammy to decide that having the run of ten acres—full of wildlife to bark at—was the absolute Best Thing Ever.

Fuzzykins was less keen about the presence of a DOG in her demesne, and wasted no time establishing the pecking order. The silly dog wanted nothing more than to be best buddies with the cat and made many enthusiastic overtures of unconditional friendship. It took a muzzle covered in bloody scratches for him to accept the futility of his efforts. Poor guy.

Bryce relinquished the guestroom to Pellini and took over the sofa, more to monitor Pellini’s movements than to be nice. Pellini had the run of the property, but surveillance cameras, the perimeter fence, and Bryce’s eagle-eyes kept him under polite house arrest. I gave Pellini the basic tour, set out fresh towels for him, then finally fell into bed long after midnight. At least I didn’t need to set an alarm for the morning.

Once asleep, I drifted in and out of a weird dream involving giant mosquitoes with human faces auditioning for a talent show. The bizarre scene faded, only to sharpen into a vivid and strange landscape of shifting color and light. Fine threads of lightning coruscated through clouds of energy accompanied by a soft, pleasant crackle. I floated among the clouds, passing through and between them, delighted when I found myself able to choose my direction at will.

“Kara Gillian.”

My name slid through me—felt, not heard—and lured me to its source. I reached up to touch my ears but, where my arm should have been, there was nothing but a swirl in the clouds.
Gah! Where’s my body?
Even as the panic began, I coalesced into a semitransparent shimmery form as though I’d willed it all into existence. I turned my hands over, flexed my glittering fingers.
Too cool.

“Kara Gillian.” The call came again. Closer this time and familiar. I spun toward it and saw Kadir.
Sparkly
Kadir, composed of a billion twinkling crystals like perfect grains of sand, colorless except for the striking violet of his eyes. Behind his left shoulder drifted a man, semitransparent and shimmery like me, and an equally shimmery Paul knelt close to Kadir’s right leg.

This was some dream.

“Wow, Paul,” I said. “You look really good.”

Kadir laid his hand on Paul’s head. “Kara Gillian.”

The resonance of my name drew me more into myself. “Yo, Kadir. ’Sup?” I laughed and threw a mock gang sign. “Weird having you in my dream.”

Kadir drifted closer. “
Wake up
.”

The command echoed through every fiber of my being. The surreal landscape leaped into greater clarity. In shock, I recognized the shimmery man behind Kadir as a much more trim Pellini. Everything felt utterly real—not like a lucid dream anymore. Sonofabitch. Kadir had called me into Pellini’s out-of-body wonderland.

Pellini gestured toward Kadir. “Mr. Sparkly.”

“I see that,” I said, cautious and alert now.
How much time has Pellini already spent with Kadir tonight?
“What’s going on?”

“Chaos,” Kadir said, and lightning flickered through the colored energy clouds around us. “My world disintegrates.”

“So I’ve heard,” I said. “We’re doing what we can on the Earth end, but your friend Katashi is hell-bent on screwing things up.”

“I am friend to none,” he said. “Isumo Katashi is a necessary component, though he neglects symmetry for the sake of haste. This must be corrected.” He opened his hand and set a mass of wriggling potency strands spinning in the space between us like a glob of entangled worms. A discordant buzz rattled my teeth as if I’d had twenty cups of coffee and was poised to vibrate apart. Kadir passed his hand over the strands, transformed the raw potency into a radiant electric blue sigil. It spun in perfect balance and the buzz lifted to a clear tone. With another pass of his hand Kadir warped it, and it lurched around its axis.

“Still functional,” he said, “but asymmetry engenders instability.” Kadir blew on it, and the sigil shattered with a sound like a hundred fingernails screeching across a blackboard. His violet eyes met mine. “Asymmetry engenders instability. It must be corrected.”

Instability.
Valves.

“Let me get this straight,” I said, eyes narrowing. “You don’t have a problem with what Katashi’s doing with the valves, only with
how
he’s doing it. He’s in too much of a hurry to do it your way.” I gave him a sour look. “In other words, you want
me
to help
you
by improving on Katashi’s method.”

“Yes,” he said. “By symmetrizing the valves.”

I laughed outright. “Why the hell would I do that?”

“Because each symmetrized valve impedes his progress and stabilizes the system.” He paused and lowered his head, eyes on me. “This is a desirable outcome for you.”

Slowing down Katashi might buy us time to find a way to stop him for good.
If
Kadir was telling the truth. I glanced to shimmery Pellini to check his reaction to all of this, but he offered me a helpless shrug. He probably didn’t know enough about the dynamics to contribute to either side.

Kadir continued as I mulled it over. “If you do no more than patch valves as they destabilize, Isumo Katashi
will
succeed—at enormous peril of catastrophic implosions on Earth.”

Fuck.

I hated to agree with anything that had the potential to advance the Mraztur’s cause. But Kadir had unparalleled skill with potency flows and the valves, and had an obsessive interest in stability. What he proposed made sense in a mutually beneficial way, though the benefit for us was short term.

Kadir’s gaze intensified. “He will risk catastrophe with no qualms. Will you?”

“You already know the answer to that,” I said with a scowl.

“I do,” he said. “In this, you are not foolish.” He stroked Paul’s head as though he were a dog at his side, a gesture that left me chilled and unsettled.

“Paul,” I said, “are you all right?”

He lifted his gaze to Kadir. “You may speak,” the lord told him.

Ugh!

Paul leaned against Kadir’s leg and brought his eyes to mine. “I’m good,” he said. “Not dying anymore.”

My concern spiked higher at the submissive move. “Not dying is good, unless the alternative is worse.” I drifted closer. “Paul, you need to give me some kind of reassurance.”

“No,” Kadir said and stroked Paul’s head again. “He does not. All that is required is that you learn to symmetrize a valve.”

Paul rested his head against Kadir’s thigh and gave me a smile, but didn’t speak again.

Impotent rage settled into my gut. Kadir had saved Paul’s life, but at what cost? I didn’t want to think of what he’d done to Paul to force such subservience. “Paul, is there anything you want me to tell Bryce?”

Kadir sparkled brighter then began to disintegrate, even as Paul grew fully transparent. “You may tell Bryce Taggart that this one thrives.”

“Wait!” I called out. “How am I supposed to learn to symmetrize a valve?” Kadir worked potency in a disturbing way, unlike any other lord or arcane practitioner I’d ever encountered. No way could I figure it out on my own.

Pellini, still shimmery, spoke up. “It’s too late. He won’t stop now.”

An instant later I slammed into my body as if I’d dropped from a height. Heart pounding, I sucked in a breath. My limbs felt heavy and awkward, but the sensation passed before I could panic.
I need to go find Pellini!
No sooner had the thought formed than sleep overtook me again.

I woke to an urgent knock on my door and weak sunlight filtering through my curtains.

“Kara,” Bryce called from the hallway. “We have a situation.”

I rolled out of bed and yanked open the door. “What’s wrong?”

“Pellini got past me while I was in the bathroom,” he said. “He’s on the nexus, and Idris just went out to confront him.” With that, he strode off toward the back of the house. I started to follow then double-checked what I was wearing. A tank top and undies. No bra. I grabbed a pair of running shorts and tugged them on as I hurried after Bryce, but I couldn’t shake the feeling I’d forgotten something important. Not the bra. Something else.

No time to stop and rack my brain. With Pellini on the nexus and an already suspicious Idris on the way there, bloodshed would soon follow. I flew out the back door, across the porch and down the steps to see Pellini at the center of the nexus, his back to the house. Idris prowled around the edge of the concrete slab like a predator seeking a way to reach its prey.

“Pellini!” Idris yelled. “Come out of there now!”

“What happened?” I asked as I slid to a stop on the dewy grass beside Idris. Déjà vu. I’d stood in this same spot a few days ago when Szerain commandeered the nexus. “What did he do?”

Idris spun toward me, face flushed in anger. “This!” He thrust his hand toward Pellini and struck a veil of transparent potency. Iridescent waves rippled away from the point of impact. “I can’t get through. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

I suppressed a groan. “Pellini, what are you doing?” I called out.

Pellini ignored us and turned in a slow circle at the center. Bryce descended the steps, gun in hand, and watched everything carefully.

Idris glared at me. “Happy now?” Once again he tried to penetrate the obstructing veil, this time with a punch so hard and fast I wondered if he’d backed it with potency. Pretty incredible feat if he had. The veil shimmered dark purple and green, but remained intact. He made an inarticulate sound deep in his throat. “We should’ve locked him down!”

“I don’t need an I-told-you-so right now, okay?” I hated that he might have been right. “Give it a minute. He hasn’t hurt anything.”

Pellini continued to turn, waving his hands in front of him as if playing invisible bongo drums in slow motion. Where his hands passed, tangled strands of glowing chartreuse potency coalesced in the air. A moment later a ring of the weird-yet-familiar potency floated around him.

Idris let out a strangled cry of frustration. “What is
that?
”

“I’ve seen it before,” I said. “When I helped stabilize Paul in the demon realm.” No way was I going to mention Kadir to the already livid Idris. Not yet. My gaze lingered on the strands of potency. I’d seen it elsewhere too, hadn’t I? Once again, the feeling I’d forgotten something important passed through me.

Pellini cupped a section of the ring between his hands, then withdrew them to reveal a strange floating sigil.

Idris went still, face a portrait of shock. “No way.”

I stared at Pellini, mouth open. “He . . . created a floater.” Neither Idris nor I could trace floaters on Earth. That required mastery of all eleven rings of the shikvihr. Moreover, Pellini hadn’t traced the sigil—he’d created it all at once. Before either of us could process that bit of information, Pellini transformed the ring into eleven vibrant chartreuse and violet sigils.

“
Kadir
,” Idris said through clenched teeth. He might not have recognized the chaotic raw potency, but there was no mistaking the unique Kadir-style sigils. “Bryce, can you shoot him?”

“Hey!” I said. “No one’s shooting anyone!”

Idris leveled a glower at me. “So, the dude imprinted by Kadir—the one who claims to know nothing of the arcane—is out on your nexus, fulfilling Kadir’s agenda. And you’re okay with that?”

“Will you please stop being an asshole for a few goddamn minutes?” I gestured toward Pellini and the ring of sigils he’d set spinning around him. “I have a way to stop him if I have to. It worked on Szerain, it’ll work on Pellini.” As the words left my mouth, the important thing I’d forgotten slammed into me with crystalline clarity.
Kadir and Pellini in interdimensional space.
I sucked in a breath. “I know what he created. It’s a way to teach us how to symmetrize the valves.”

“How do you know?” Idris asked with outright disbelief. “And why for chrissake would we want to do that?”

“I saw Kadir last night,” I said with measured calm. “He drew me into a non-physical place between worlds, like Pellini described.” I forged on despite the increasing
What the fuck?
on Idris’s face. “He said the demon realm is in chaos, and Katashi moves too fast with the work he does, and that we needed to learn how to symmetrize the valves.”

Idris eyed me warily. “You get that your explanation doesn’t put me at ease, right?”

I rubbed my eyes. “I can’t believe I’m trying to do this without coffee.”

“Okay,” Pellini said. He scrutinized the ring of sigils and gave a satisfied nod. “Okay.” He stepped carefully between two sigils and made his way toward us. Bryce holstered his gun but didn’t relax one bit.

“When did you learn how to do that?” I asked Pellini, pointing at the circle of sigils.

He stepped off the nexus and glanced back. “Just now, I guess.”

“I don’t understand,” I said with gross understatement. “How did you know what to do?”

“Mister, um, I mean, Kadir said I’d know.” He shrugged. “It’s for you and Idris.”