Legacy of the Demon (40 page)

That was a big
if
. And I needed to make a decision. Banish or bind?

The magenta flames abruptly snuffed out, and the hiss went silent. I froze, eyeing the suddenly quiescent rift warily, potency strands partially woven in my hands. In my peripheral vision I saw everyone else in similar attitudes of waiting for the other shoe to drop. Even Roper had abandoned the hose and backed slowly away as he unslung his rifle.

Rakkuhr fog mushroomed upward and spread with the speed of a tidal wave. My bad feeling quintupled. I'd dealt with hundreds of rifts and never seen anything like this before. The fog rolled toward me. I sucked in a breath and held it as everything was blanketed in uniformly opaque red.

Fuck this shit. I tapped into the vortex of potency at the heart of the nexus, drew out thick strands and set them swirling around me. Blind me with an arcane fog? I'd blow that crap away with an arcane fan.

At least I hoped it would work like that. I heard Bryce's murmured voice in my earpiece, telling everyone to stay calm and on their toes. Then, “Whatever you're doing, Kara, keep doing it.” Relieved, I drew more potency, fed it into my whirlpool-fan-thing, and set it flying faster and faster.

The fog thinned then dissipated completely, revealing a
naked man standing beside the rift. One eye was swollen shut, and crusted blood clung to his face. Pale gold potency ringed his neck and trailed into the rift like a collar and leash.

I heard Bryce suck in a breath, and a second later recognition punched me in the gut. “
Seretis
?” I started forward but stopped when he held a hand up in warning.

“Dekkak is coming through,” he croaked.

I breathed out a curse as all the pieces fell into place. It was a setup. The whole thing. Xharbek was probably chortling right about now. All he had to do was tip Dekkak off about the summoning and let the imperator take care of the Kara problem
. Innards everywhere
.

Dekkak had sent Yulz through to let him spring the trap and take a hostage. That was why he grabbed Pellini. At least one thing had gone our way.

With the nexus, I had sufficient power at my disposal to bind Dekkak—except I had no idea how to bind a demon coming through a rift instead of a summoning portal. And with an open rift, Dekkak probably wasn't coming alone.

I pulled potency and started fashioning bindings. This would take being lordy to a whole new level.

Pellini hollered, “Alpha Squad's a good twenty minutes out!”

Great. Looked like we were going to be on our own for the worst incursion ever. Everyone here was armed to the teeth, but Pellini and I were the only ones with relevant experience. Maybe I could somehow use the nexus as a shieldbuster?

Bryce stood tense and motionless, eyes riveted on the lord. Seretis took a stumbling step away from the rift, gaze settling on his bond-brother. “This is for the best.” He gave Bryce a flickering smile, then returned his attention to me. “I hope.”

My apprehension skyrocketed. In the entire history of the universe,
This is for the best
almost always went hand in hand with,
This really hurts.
“Seretis, what have you done?”

He lifted his shoulders in a despondent shrug, demeanor an odd mix of weariness and sanguine anticipation. “Struck a bargain.”

“With an imperator?” I asked in disbelief. “For what? Why?” Whatever the reason, it looked like he'd gotten the short end of the deal.

Seretis gave me a barely perceptible head shake then glanced at Bryce. As I watched, Bryce's face went from still as stone to alight with comprehension. They were communicating through
the essence bond, I realized. Most likely relaying whatever Seretis didn't want to say aloud.

Dekkak wouldn't know about their bond
, I thought and crossed mental fingers that Seretis was taking full advantage of Dekkak's ignorance.

“Desperate measures in desperate times, Kara Gillian,” Seretis said. “You cannot blame me.”

My lips pressed thin. “I'll decide who to blame when I have all the details.”

Bryce's voice crackled brisk and urgent in my earpiece. “After you left the demon realm, Seretis started picking up some of my thoughts. He doesn't know why it started happening again. He got the drift of our plans that way and found out that the Jontari have the master gimkrah.”

Seretis flinched as the rift burped a gout of magenta. “She is coming.”

Wait.
She
? Dekkak was a . . .
girl
demon?

Bryce cut through my momentary stupefaction. “Jesral met secretly with Rayst.”

Yikes. Poor Seretis. His life partner was hobnobbing with the smarmy head honcho of the Mraztur. And he had no Lannist for support.

“Seretis saw the writing on the wall,” Bryce went on, “what with that crap on his homefront, his ptarl gone, our plans in motion, and the transfer of the gimkrah. So he messaged Dekkak with a proposal.” Bryce paused. “One he hopes you'll turn in our favor, but if not, he's . . . sorry. That's all I know.”

I kept my expression blank, but inside I moaned
fuuuuck
. Okay, so Seretis had been faced with dire circumstances and took action. Except he wasn't like Mzatal, who saw move upon move in advance. He was underestimated, sure. More empathetic than the other lords, yeah. But a strategic mastermind? Probably not.

The only possible upside was that, if Seretis thought there was a chance to turn whatever his proposal was in our favor, it meant Dekkak might not be in instant kill mode when he—
she
—arrived. Unless Seretis was playing us, but I found that tough to believe. Even though I couldn't be absolutely sure of his intentions, I had faith in the sanctity of his essence bond with Bryce.

Either way, I was stuck without a rule book in the middle of a game to decide the fate of two worlds. And, more urgently, the fate of me and everyone I cared about.

I briefly considered banishing Yulz then decided against it. One SkeeterCheater wasn't going to make a difference, and there was a chance I could use him as a bargaining chip. A very slim chance, but at this point I was simply trying to keep from sliding off a tilting chessboard.

Huge clawed hands reached upward from the rift and grasped its lip. Every joint of the scaly, blood-red fingers sported a gold ring etched with blocky symbols.

Heeeeeeere's Dekkak
, I thought with just the right amount of hysteria.

With an agile move as if shrugging off the earth itself, Dekkak pulled herself up through the rift. She was bigger than Yulz—close to the two-story height of Big Turd and equally broad. Moonlight glinted off rugged scales that began at the top of her head and swept down to cover her back and shoulders. As far as I could tell, the scales were the only obvious physical feature that differed from a male, yet there existed an intangible quality about her that proclaimed her as powerfully
female
.

“Hold your fire,” I murmured into the headset. “For now.” She hadn't ripped anyone in half yet, and there was no guarantee we could take her down even if we dumped our entire arsenal on her at once. We needed to pacify her, cleverly work whatever bargain Seretis had cooked up, until Alpha Squad got here. Then we stood a fighting chance. Maybe.

Fucking hell, but this bitch was intimidating.

There was no hint of the rakkuhr flame-shielding, but potency radiated from her—different, but no less impressive than the aura of a lord. It penetrated me, setting my bones buzzing and my teeth on edge. Gold glittered on her hands and horns, but otherwise, she wore no adornments except . . .

Shit.
On her left ear, a Beretta 92 dangled from a slim iron hoop.

Dekkak was scary enough with claws and teeth and size, but it was that relatively subtle detail that described the scope of what we were up against here. Whether that gun was a trophy from the Dirty Thirty—the DIRT team who'd gone through a rift to take the fight to the demons—or merely an amusing-to-her trinket, the gun-turned-bauble symbolized the vast power gap between Dekkak and my people.

Though my heart hammered, I willed my face to stone. I'd learned long ago to never reveal my internal battles during a
summoning, even for the weakest of the relatively tame lord-bound demons. Mr. Poker Face Mzatal was the ultimate example of the impassive exterior, whether fighting for his life or deciding between tea and tunjen. I strove now to emulate him.

Dekkak's nostrils flared, and in a tiny corner of my mind I knew she smelled my fear. Yet her gaze swept over me and halted on the netted Yulz. Sucked to be him, but I was more than happy to be the unnoticed insect. Every second she spent focused on Netboy meant no one here died, and Alpha Squad was a second closer.

“Warlord,” Dekkak said in demon, her voice rumbly, rich, and
loud
. “You failed your imperator.”

Straight to the point. No abuse. No name calling. No nonsense. Which somehow made the castigation all the scarier.
Note to self: be nice and direct when chastising underlings.

Dekkak moved with a speed at complete odds with her size, and in a single bound had Yulz pinned beneath one clawed foot. She crouched low and hissed into his face, baring gleaming white fangs that tapered to needle sharp points. I wouldn't have blamed big badass Yulz one bit if he'd peed himself, but he simply went stone still.

In a savage move that was almost too swift to follow, Dekkak hooked a claw through the three gold rings in his right ear and ripped them free, splattering the grass with blood. “These honors will abide on this crippled world where you disgraced yourself,” she snarled and flung the adornments into the darkness.

Okay, maybe a little abuse.
Note to self: let's not take management lessons from Jontari imperators.
Though I supposed there were worse possible fates for a demonic employee who failed to meet goals. While the scary-as-fuck imperator was momentarily distracted, I edged my way to the center of the nexus, within the comforting bounds of the super-shikvihr and in easy reach of gobs of nexus power.

Dekkak stepped off Yulz then stretched her great wings wide, nearly spanning the entire distance between my porch and the edge of the woods. The internal vibration in my bones increased to barely tolerable discomfort, as if she'd fired up a potency generator. With a groan, Seretis dropped to one knee beside her, overwhelmed by her presence rather than as a gesture of homage.

My simmering dread cranked up several degrees. Alpha Squad was at least fifteen minutes away. If Dekkak decided to
take flight and wreak havoc elsewhere, I had no sure way to stop her. A potency blast from the nexus was unlikely to take her out completely—even if I diverted power from the bindings on Yulz—and Dekkak's retaliation was certain be swift and merciless. Except for the purported bargain, she had no known reason to stay. I needed to keep her here until the squad arrived.

“Dekkak!” I called out, amplifying my voice with potency.

I could have whispered for all the difference it made. Clearly the demon queen wasn't going to give the locals the time of day, and she sure as shit wouldn't be called to heel, no matter how loudly I shouted.

Instead, she let out an almighty roar followed by a bellowed “RHYZKAHL!” as she reached for him.

With zero hesitation, I released my gathered potency and sent it surging into the perimeter of Rhyzkahl's prison. I didn't know how much Mzatal's built-in protections were affected by the rift, or how they'd hold up against an imperator, but I was damn well going to do what I could to keep them working. I was the warden, and I intended to do everything possible to keep Rhyzkahl safe.

Violet lightning arced from the ground and struck Dekkak's outstretched hand. She jerked back, palm smoking. Residual arcane crackled over her arm.

Get away from him, you bitch!
I silently jeered. This was one lord she wouldn't be adding to her collection.

“MZATAL!” she screamed, fangs bared. Rakkuhr flame-shielding blossomed over her like a manifestation of fiery hatred. Her tail slashed through the air, forcing me into a desperate leap and dive to avoid getting smacked.

I skidded to a stop at the edge of the nexus, already pulling potency as I scrambled to my feet. Through the headset, I heard Bryce snapping orders, but I didn't have the spare bandwidth to pay attention.

Dekkak rounded on me, powerful legs flexed as if poised to spring. “And
you
,” she growled in heavily accented English. “
Kara Gillian
.”

NOW, she acknowledges my presence
. I darted back to the center of the nexus and readied a shield of potency, though I doubted it would be enough to keep Dekkak from squashing me like a bug. Not with most of my available power tied up in the bindings on Yulz and the summoning in general.

Except that she could have squashed me at any point since
coming through and hadn't. I flicked a quick glance at Seretis, more curious than ever about the nature of the bargain he'd made with the imperator. Yet even naked, bloodied, and kneeling in the grass, he maintained an expression as impassive as any lord could hope for.

Dekkak's knees were at my eye level, forcing me to crane my neck in order to look at her face. “Dekkak,” I said. “I am pleased to finally meet you, honored one. You are clearly more than worthy of your formidable reputation.” The acrid stench of burned demon flesh stung my nose.

Dekkak sank into a deep crouch, shifting close enough that her rakkuhr shielding reached acid fingers toward my skin. But I wasn't about to step back and give her the satisfaction. Besides, it was just chest puffing. A true power play would have had me retreating out of a desire to keep my flesh attached to my bones.

She scraped the claws of her uninjured hand across the nexus, sending up a screeching nails-on-chalkboard sound. “Your human swarm, your
DIRT
, arrives here. Soon.” Her eyes glowed red and gold as they rested upon me. “Our interplay begins. Now.”