Fury of the Demon (Kara Gillian) (4 page)

Idris, crumpled on his side on a cement floor. A man’s hand on his shoulder. A ring on the middle finger—dual stones, dark red and onyx, set in intricate gold filigree.

Mzatal’s frustration and anger filled our connection, and the strand flashed and disintegrated as he sent a seething blast of power into the ritual. The sigil rings shattered, and I felt Mzatal direct the backlash toward Rhyzkahl and Jesral.

Rhyzkahl staggered back a step but managed to deflect most of it. Jesral wasn’t so fortunate and took a direct hit that cast him back hard into the trunk of a tree. Eyes locked on Mzatal, Rhyzkahl stalked into the center of the nexus, likely to replenish potency.

Breathing hard, Jesral shoved away from the tree. His gaze dropped to the blade in my hand, and his face hardened, then in a move like a striking viper he cast an attack at Mzatal.

Mzatal shifted his weight and deflected the strike with an angry flick of his hand. “Send Vsuhl away,” he gritted out.

I hesitated, tempted to argue the need for both blades, yet Mzatal’s insistence remained firm. Reluctantly, I sent the blade away, even as Mzatal hurled a return volley of jagged potency like stylized lightning. With a determined sweep of both arms, Jesral deflected all but one, staggered and spun as it struck him in the hip.

Mzatal’s aura washed over me and tumbled like a raging river of acid toward Jesral, pressing his advantage. His attack followed, in a barrage that knocked the already off-balance Jesral back several feet. Jesral shot a quick look at Rhyzkahl, face shifting to a mixture of anger and outrage as he seemed to realize that Rhyzkahl wasn’t planning to help him in his duel with Mzatal. The Mraztur had broken the age old “lords only fight one-on-one” agreement when they sought to prevent me from recovering Vsuhl but, for whatever reason, Rhyzkahl didn’t seem willing to do so again.

Continuing to trace and enhance Mzatal’s attacks, I glanced at Rhyzkahl. His attention remained fixed on Mzatal, eyes narrowed in what looked like calculated interest. As I watched, he shifted his scrutiny to me and began to trace an odd compact construct with both hands.

Dread coursed through me, and I gave Mzatal a mental nudge.
Rhyzkahl’s doing something, Boss
, but to my dismay his response was sluggish, distracted. Snarling, he sent another strike toward Jesral, while I tried harder to get his attention.
Mzatal. Stop attacking Jesral for a second!

Rhyzkahl’s mouth spread in a vulpine smile as whatever he’d formed coalesced into a golf ball-sized creation that seethed orange and red. My dread shifted to full-blown alarm.
Rakkuhr.
Mzatal swiped aside a valiant effort from Jesral and drew power for a blow that would take Jesral down. Rhyzkahl glanced to the fully occupied Mzatal, smirked, then lobbed the tightly wound ball toward me in an underhand throw.

“Boss!” I yelled, eyes widening. Frantically, I tried to pull power from Mzatal’s strike to deflect the thing as it expanded and arced toward me like a softball from hell. My alarm finally cut through Mzatal’s haze of anger even as he loosed the attack on Jesral. He snapped his focus to me and then to the
rakkuhr
-laced sigil ball as it struck his shields. Its outer layers burned away like a meteor entering the atmosphere, the sigil emerging as a glowing red speck that arrowed toward the center of my chest.

In a fraction of a blink of an eye, Mzatal slammed a wave of power at the speck to deflect it.

Almost
deflect it. The thing struck my left deltoid and drove in with a wave of agony utterly at odds with its size. I choked out a cry of pain as the sigil scars on that side of my body erupted in fiery pins and needles.

I felt Mzatal call Eilahn and Steeev to us, then he seized my head in his hands, eyes boring into mine in assessment. Breath hissing, I clutched my shoulder, though the fire in the sigils seemed to be fading. Cursing low, Mzatal released me and turned to focus on Rhyzkahl, who stood with his hands held out in imitation of a non-threatening position, although his expression was positively gleeful and full of satisfaction. Jesral lay sprawled behind him, taken down by Mzatal’s last strike.

Rhyzkahl lowered his head. “Rowan.” The name dragged razored claws through my mind.

Rowan.
The name he’d used when he sought to enthrall me. I shook my head to clear a brief wave of dizziness, then bared my teeth at him. “Kara,” I told him. “I’m
Kara
.”

Rhyzkahl ignored my response and moved to Katashi, crouched and laid a hand on the old man. Jesral groaned and tried to roll over, but couldn’t manage even that.

Mzatal wrapped an arm around me. “You are Kara,” he said firmly.

I dragged my attention back to Mzatal, surprised to see distress in his eyes. “Huh? Oh.” I frowned. That sounded right. “Yeah, Kara. I’m Kara.” Of course I was Kara. Grimacing, I continued to hold my shoulder. “Shit, that stung.”

The two syraza swooped in to land beside us. Rhyzkahl effortlessly swung Katashi’s limp form over his shoulder and stood, then gave an ugly laugh. “She will be your downfall, Mzatal,” he called out.

A muscle twitched in Mzatal’s jaw, but he swiveled his head to look at Eilahn. “Take her to the grove.”

Eilahn hissed in Rhyzkahl’s direction as she set her hand on my arm. The world dropped away and reformed, and then we were at the entrance to the tree tunnel. I took a deeper breath as we entered, relieved that the
not quite right
sensation was far less now that I was in the grove.

“What did Rhyzkahl mean by that?” I asked Eilahn, troubled. “How would I be Mzatal’s downfall?”

“I do not know,” she replied, eyes dark with worry. “Perhaps he believes you distract Mzatal.”

Could that be it? I rubbed my shoulder, unsettled, but the arrival of Mzatal and Steeev halted any further musing. Mzatal’s face was an unreadable mask as he strode toward us, but to my shock it melted into full-blown concern as he saw me. He gripped my shoulders. “Zharkat,” he said, once again giving me an assessing look.

“Let’s get out of here,” I said, and didn’t wait for a reply before asking the grove to take us back to Mzatal’s realm.

“Mzatal, I saw Idris after he went through to Earth,” I said as soon as we were within the familiar trunks of his grove. “I didn’t see much. Cement floor, and there was a man there with a funky ring—gold, with a red stone and a black stone.”

He released my shoulders, and I watched him visibly shift his focus from what happened to me and onto Idris. “The summoner who received him?” He lifted a hand, traced a quick message sigil and sent it.

“It had to have been.” I rolled my shoulder, grimacing slightly at the residual ache. “Boss, I need to go to Earth to look for him.”

To my surprise he shook his head. “No,” he said almost absently, eyes focused elsewhere.

“No? Why not?” I frowned at him. “He’s on Earth. We sure as hell won’t find him from here.”

His attention steadied on me, and he took my hand. “Forgive me, zharkat,” he said as he headed out of the grove. “I meant not you alone.”

I peered up at him as we walked. What the hell was going on with him? I’d never seen him this distracted.

“Right,” I said. “Of course. You send me, and then I summon you.” I searched his face. “Are you all right?”

“I have asked Elofir to come here,” he told me as we exited the tree tunnel. Ilana was there, and beyond her the glass of Mzatal’s palace glittered in the afternoon sun. I gazed at the waterfall that tumbled from the cliff beneath the palace to join the sea far below. How had I never noticed the way the spray transformed the light into wavering rainbows?

“To help you prepare a ritual to send me to Earth,” I said with a slight nod. “That makes sense.” I gazed at the palace.
Those are some seriously nice digs
, I thought in admiration, then blinked as the view shifted to the interior of Mzatal’s solarium. Ilana had transported us. I hadn’t expected that, but I didn’t mind at all that she’d saved us the walk.

Mzatal murmured thanks to his ptarl, then turned to me as she departed. The worry was back in his eyes. “No,” he said. “I have asked him to come assess you.”

My brow furrowed. “Me? Why?” I moved to an elegant settee, ran my hand over the lustrous wood and marveled at its sheen and the rich depth of the finish. “I hardly feel that zap anymore,” I told Mzatal.

“It missed its mark,” he said, eyes going to the center of my chest before lifting to my face again, “but it is still quite active. I need perspective, and so I have called for Elofir.”

I looked at him sharply. “Active?” All thoughts of wood and polish fled. “What is it doing?”

He moved to me, very lightly touched my sternum. “That is what I will determine with Elofir,” he said. “You feel it in the scars, yes?”

Anxiety began to tie clever knots in my stomach. “Well, they burned at first, but that’s mostly faded.” I felt the tingle of the grove activating. “Elofir’s here.”

I startled a heartbeat later as he arrived in the room accompanied by Greeyer, his ptarl. Not that there was anything about Elofir I feared. Lithe like a dancer and with a gentle demeanor backed by quiet strength, he carried no hint of threat in his aura, and was the only true pacifist among the lords. Yet the situation had to be pretty serious if it couldn’t even wait the five minutes or so it took to walk from the grove.

My heart began to pound unevenly as Mzatal turned to him. “It was an unknown implant wrought with
rakkuhr
,” he said without preamble.

A grave expression settled on Elofir’s face. “Where did it strike?”

“Her left shoulder,” Mzatal replied, “though it was intended for center chest. You will find it easily on assessment.” He tugged his hand over his hair in a
very
uncharacteristic show of anxiety.

Elofir looked to me. “With your permission?”

Throat tight, I nodded. “Yes. Yes, of course,” I said, eased ever so slightly by the courtesy.

He gestured for me to sit, then dropped to one knee before me when I did so. Immediately I had the hyper-awareness of every single ache or pain or twinge or tickle or itch now that I knew
something
was wrong. Nose itches? Yep, definitely a brain tumor.

He lightly touched my shoulder, then went still. To my surprise—and dismay—Mzatal began to pace.

“How have you felt since it happened?” Elofir asked, voice mild.

I gave Mzatal a worried glance. His obvious distress was starting to seriously freak me out. “I feel fine,” I told Elofir, looking back to him. “If anything, I seem to be more aware of stuff around me.”

Mzatal stopped pacing abruptly and traced the pygah sigil to calm and center himself, apparently realizing he wasn’t exactly helping me chill.

Elofir pulled his hand back and stood. He looked over at Mzatal and gave a small nod, confirming some suspicion to judge by the pain that flashed through Mzatal’s eyes.

“Y’all need to tell me what’s going on before I lose it,” I said with a tight smile.

Mzatal crouched before me and took my hands in his, ran his thumb over the cracked gem of my ring. It had been his Christmas present to me, though the rich blue stone in its intricate gold and silver setting had been whole at the time. The damage had happened when I threw the ring against the wall during a heated argument—a confrontation that had proven to be necessary to clear the air and establish trust in our relationship. I now cherished the ring with its crack as a reminder of the obstacles we’d overcome.

He drew a breath. “Rhyzkahl used the
rakkuhr
to create an implant that can not only self-replicate but also adapt to accomplish its purpose,” Mzatal said, voice low. “Within minutes of the initial contact, it had diffused its outer layer throughout your physical body as well as in your aura.”

I forced myself to not react, not speak, until I could process that a few times. “Like some sort of arcane virus?” I asked, a bit surprised that my voice actually sounded mostly normal.

“That is a close analogy.”

“And what is this virus meant to do?” I asked, very carefully maintaining my it’s-all-cool voice as much as possible.

Mzatal’s hands spasmed briefly on mine, betraying the depth of his wrath, though it didn’t show in any other way. “Rhyzkahl activated it with a word,” he said, eyes on mine.

I gulped. “Oh.”
Rowan.
He’d called me Rowan. In the horrific torture ritual, Rhyzkahl had sought—and failed—to strip my identity and create Rowan, a thrall unswervingly dedicated to his service, his tool. Looked like he hadn’t given up on his desire to own me. “That fucking son of a bitch.” I scowled to bury the sick fear. “My asshole ex-boyfriend gave me an
infection.
”

“Elofir and I will contain it,” Mzatal assured me. “The implant missed its intended target.” He laid his fingers on my sternum, over the scar of the first sigil Rhyzkahl had carved. “Had it struck here, it would have activated my sign, then those of the other ten lords. Once complete, you, beloved, would be gone and Rowan birthed.”

I shook my head in denial. “But I thought he couldn’t do shit with the scars after you crashed the ritual.”

He moved his hand to rest on the small of my back over the twelfth scar, the one Rhyzkahl had failed to ignite during the ritual. “The unifier sigil is inert,” he said. “It is true that he cannot use it to conjoin the others and create that which he sought, a Rowan thrall to focus the unified potency of all eleven lords.”

The place under his hand felt . . . normal. Though the other scars burned or tingled or crawled or itched at times, the twelfth seemed nothing more than grotesquely beautiful body art. “If he can’t turn me into a weaponized super Rowan, what the hell is he trying to do then?”

“Adapt and use the other sigils to create a lesser thrall,” he told me. “One dedicated to his cause. I cannot determine the full purpose, but if nothing else it serves them to destroy you and strip my zharkat from me.”

“Great. A budget Rowan.” The sick fear twisted. High tech or low end, either way I lost my identity and ceased to exist. “Can you get rid of it?” I asked tightly. “Some arcane antiviral?”

“As it is crafted of
rakkuhr
, I do not know a means at this time.” His aura went very dangerous and dark. “The implant must first be contained so that it cannot migrate to your chest, and then we will wring the means of its deactivation from Rhyzkahl.”