Fury of the Demon (Kara Gillian) (3 page)

“Well, if this demonic lord gig doesn’t work out for you,” I said with a smile, “I can hire you out to clear cropland.”

Amusement touched his mouth. “An interesting proposition, zharkat.”

“Just something to keep in mind.”

A touch like a brush of leaves caressed me as the grove activated. “Someone’s coming,” I told Mzatal, then scowled. “Amkir.” One of the Mraztur. King of the assholes.

Mzatal growled a curse. “He will be a thorn in our side if we do not turn him away now.”

“Then we’d best kick his ass quickly so we can get on with our business,” I advised with a tight smile.

“Agreed.” His expression darkened with annoyance over the distraction. With me at his side, he strode toward the stand of white-trunked trees. Ten yards from the grove he stopped, took a wide stance and coalesced a glowing ball of potency in his right palm.

I prepared to trace the sigils and direct the flows that would augment his attack, should it come to that. I no longer traced a standard summoner support diagram to feed him potency. We’d become a team, unique, communicating without words or even direct thought, in more of a unified awareness. All of the
qaztahl
—demonic lords—lacked the ability to create portals, and so I was able to supply those aspects, along with touches of grove energy. As he formed either attack or defense, I wove in flows, added my tweaks, and together we created pure awesomeness.

Amkir emerged from the tree tunnel trailed by a syraza and a venerable-looking reyza. I knew—or at least was pretty sure—we didn’t have to worry about the two demons since they all tended to stay out of any direct conflict with the demonic lords. Sometimes the demons would fight amongst themselves for their “side,” though I had yet to figure out the dynamics, and their explanations of the rules left me baffled. It was easiest to let them do their thing and not try to make sense of it.

Hard-faced, with dark eyes and a slightly olive complexion, Amkir came to a sharp halt at the sight of Mzatal. His confident smirk slipped into a scowl, but then he lifted his chin and squared his shoulders. “I have no business with you, Mzatal.”

Mzatal’s aura flared with menace. He swept his hand up to send potency in a scintillating veil to block the entrance to the tree tunnel. “If you travel with your syraza to your
allies
,” he snarled the word, “I will hunt you, and I
will
hurt you.”

The native potency flowed around us, appearing in my othersight as rivulets of varicolored light that spider-webbed through a faintly luminescent mist. I chose the strands I needed and called them to me, then wove them into enhancements for our shield, smiling in fierce satisfaction as the arcane barrier settled solidly into place. Mzatal wasn’t about to let Amkir retreat only to return once we’d gone for Idris.

Amkir glowered and clenched his fists at his sides. He knew Mzatal could and would carry out his threat. “Why block the grove then? Do you wish to entertain yourself and your slut by attacking me with no provocation?” His disdainful gaze slid to me, then back to Mzatal. “Or does she revel in carnage? Do the screams of others make her wet?”

Mzatal slowly opened his right hand. I felt the power build. “You will agree to depart and not return to this hemisphere for half a day,” he stated.

Amkir dropped his eyes to Mzatal’s hand and he took a step back, fear marring his expression for an instant before Totally Pissed Off took its place. “No,” he said through gritted teeth. “I will depart for half a day
if
you agree to stay any attack on me.”

“You will depart via the grove within fifty-five heartbeats,” Mzatal pronounced as he continued to draw power. “You will not return to this hemisphere for half a day. Unless you take aggressive action, I will stay any attack on you for fifty-five heartbeats, beginning . . . now.”

“Agreed,” Amkir snapped, clearly not happy that the countdown had already begun. “I will depart and pass my time imagining myself deeply buried in your
chikdah
.”

Oh, dude, did you ever say the wrong thing.
Mzatal was already in a pissy mood, plus he had a few minutes to kill while we waited for Steeev.

Looked like he was going to kill more than time. Okay, maybe just damage. A lot.

“Well worth imagining,” Mzatal said, “and a pleasure you will never have.”

Amkir didn’t seem to notice that Mzatal had yet to drop the shield, and I allowed myself a silent chortle. I knew damn well Mzatal had fully intended to allow Amkir to leave—right up until the point the scowly-faced lord made his
chikdah
comment, a word which translated best as “cunt.”

Feeling safe for the remainder of the countdown, Amkir turned his gaze on me and licked his lips. “When you are with Rhyzkahl again, I will have my time with you, little whore.” I gave him a bored look, which served nicely to rile him up more. “You will beg for the mercy of my cock in your throat rather than all else I have planned for you,” he sneered. With a final smirk, Amkir turned to depart then froze as he realized the shield still blocked the grove entrance. He glanced over his shoulder, a hint of panic in his eyes. “Drop the barrier, Mzatal, and I will depart as agreed.”

“As it is not an attack, it is not included in our agreement,” Mzatal informed him, then narrowed his eyes. “For utter clarity, that which you speak to my zharkat, you speak to me, Amkir.” He uttered the name with dark menace. “Kara Gillian does not beg.
Nor do I
.” He shaped the potency already gathered, drew in more. “Two heartbeats.”

Amkir spun to face us again and hastily traced protections, but the
Oh Fuck
look on his face told me he knew they’d be woefully inadequate.

Moving faster than thought, Mzatal swept his hands in a complicated pattern that stripped Amkir’s weak shielding, then followed it with a dazzling blue net of potency that blanketed the hapless lord in crackling arcane bindings.

The syraza stepped back and the old reyza pulled his wings in close as Amkir gave a strangled cry and dropped to his knees. Face contorted in pain, he collapsed to his back, jerking in the glowing net. It was meant to simply hurt him and not damage him, I knew. Well, not
long term
damage at least. Dumbass. If he’d kept his mouth shut, he could’ve left unscathed.

Mzatal dissipated the shield over the tree tunnel. “Have you more to say to us?” he asked the downed lord. After a moment of no answer except labored gasps and choked whimpers, Mzatal released the net and inclined his head to the reyza. “Honored one, please depart with Amkir in accordance with our agreement, as you witnessed.”

The reyza rumbled assent and moved forward to scoop up the lolling Amkir. Mzatal turned away, took my hand and strode toward Steeev, who’d returned from his reconnaissance while we were occupied with Amkir.

Eilahn joined us as Steeev gave his brief report: Rhyzkahl and Jesral were already engaged in the ritual process, and Idris wasn’t the only human they were sending back to Earth. Katashi was in the ritual as well.

“We are out of time,” Mzatal said. “As soon as Amkir recovers enough, he will warn Rhyzkahl that we are coming. We must go now and stop the process.”

Steeev laid his hand on Mzatal’s shoulder even as Eilahn laid hers on mine.

“With you, Boss,” I murmured.

Mzatal brushed my cheek with his fingertips, then gave a nod to Steeev. In the next heartbeat the world dropped away, then surged back up again in a different location.

It took me a few seconds to get my bearings as we arrived, but Mzatal already had his essence blade, Khatur, in one hand as he traced glowing strike enhancements with the other. The nexus was little more than a cleared and well-trampled circle in the rainforest with eleven stones, of about my height, evenly spaced around its perimeter. Idris and Katashi crouched in the center, and filling the space between the two men and the stones were more than a dozen concentric rings of ignited, floating sigils. Like strands of colored light woven into intricate patterns, the sigils drifted from ground-level to chest height, some pulsing light to dark, and others simply shimmering. By the degree of activation, I knew the ritual was well underway.

Idris had his back to us, and though I couldn’t see any ropes or bindings, I knew there were more subtle ways in which he might be restrained. Katashi faced our way and fixed his gaze on Mzatal. The old summoner had two hands again, I noted. Mzatal had sliced one off during Katashi’s failed attempt to snatch me for the Mraztur, but obviously one of the lords had decided to grow it back. Bully for him.

On the far side of the nexus, Rhyzkahl, tall, blond, and angelically beautiful, traced completion sigils with hurried, though precise, gestures. Jesral worked feverishly beside him to direct the energies toward the center of the ritual and initiate the transfer. Jesral’s keen eyes flicked our way once, sharp features betraying only confidence. Slim and dark-haired, he reminded me of a male model, though not the hunky kind. He’d be the model wearing the purple velvet suit and slouching oh-so-perfectly in a wingback chair while an unlit cigarette dangled from between two fingers.

I sank into my connection with Mzatal, felt his purpose then captured and wove elusive strands from the flows to enhance his tracings with my personal touches. But my eyes were on Idris. As though feeling our presence, he glanced back over his shoulder, and my heart lurched at the haunted look on his face as he met my eyes.

A translucent silver-blue cylinder of power snapped into existence around Idris and Katashi—Mzatal’s creation, designed to delay the ritual for as long as possible. Without his intervention it would finalize in a matter of seconds, sending both Idris and Katashi to who-the-hell-knew-where on Earth.

Mzatal’s intention flowed clearly through our connection.
Disrupt the ritual without damaging Idris.
I quickly traced sigils to augment his containment cylinder as I searched for weak spots in the sigil patterns.

There.
Between the second and third rings, a link wavered as though its bounding sigils had been hastily set. I “showed” Mzatal the weakness, but to my dismay I realized he couldn’t exploit it. He needed all of his focus and power to hold the shield that slowed the ritual, and had nothing to spare to make a strike.

I felt his frustration mingle with mine as the ritual built to a throbbing crescendo. “Five heartbeats, zharkat,” he said through gritted teeth. Cursing, I desperately sought a solution.
Four.
I had my not-a-Glock, but that wouldn’t be enough to even put a ripple in it. It would be like using paintballs to try and stop a charging crack addict.

Three.
Beside me Mzatal trembled with the stress of holding the shield. Beyond the diagram Rhyzkahl bared his teeth in a triumphant smile, lifted his blade and gave Mzatal a mocking salute.

That was it. I
knew
a way to exploit the weakness.

Two.
The rings flared, and there was no time left to consult with Mzatal. With his attention so intensely focused on holding Idris, he’d never be able to read my intention in time to respond.

I slammed closed my connection to the grove, jerked my hand into the air and called Szerain’s essence blade to me.

Vsuhl coalesced in my hand for the first time since I’d nearly caused a second cataclysm during its retrieval. During that ritual my grove power had melded with the blade’s with no ill effect, but the addition of
rakkuhr
—the foul potency utilized by the Mraztur—had catalyzed the other two powers into an uncontrollable force that had nearly ripped the world apart.

I really didn’t want to repeat that experience, hence the decision to cut myself off from the grove before calling the blade. Safety first, and all that.

The blade’s potency flooded me, sharp and fierce, but I had no time to revel in it. I tightened my grip on the hilt and united its power with that of Mzatal’s blade.

Mzatal faltered in shocked surprise, entire body jerking as if he’d brushed a live wire. Yet his loss of focus lasted only an instant, and he quickly recovered to weave the combined blade potencies into the strike. I focused on the weak spot in the rings, but instead of sending potency directly toward the ritual, he simply thrust his hand palm down toward the ground.

Nothing happened.

One.

Even Jesral shot us a look of
What the fuck?
His eyes came to rest on Vsuhl, and his hands ceased to work the potency. Hunger and desire and avarice flowed from him. Holy shit did he ever want this blade.

Zero.
I sucked in a breath as I felt it, and in the next instant Mzatal’s strike burst from the ground in a blinding flash beneath the weak spot of the rings.

The cylinder turned into a seething vortex of potency. Katashi screamed as a surge threw him from the center to land in a crumpled heap almost twenty feet left of the perimeter. Idris cried out in pain, then hunched in on himself as if clinging to the center.

I held Vsuhl, focused the power as I sought a way to extract him from the still active ritual. As soon as the vortex dropped, anyone still in that center would go to Earth. And with the ritual damaged, I had a feeling it wouldn’t be a fun experience.

“Idris,” I breathed, and in that moment I was right beside him—part of the vortex, yet untouched by it. “Idris.”

He looked up at the vortex—at me—tortured desperation in his eyes as he clutched the ritual strands together, repaired them. “Kara . . . no,” he choked out. “I need to go.
Have
to let them send me. Please. Stop.”

He’s been manipulated
, I thought with sick rage. An extension of the mind reading ability of the lords, manipulation involved altering memories, attitudes, motivations, or damn near anything else an inventive lord could dream up. In a summoner, such tampering drastically decreased their effectiveness, yet I couldn’t come up with any other explanation for why he resisted our help. Mzatal continued his efforts to unwind the diagram, but with Idris holding the ritual from the center, I didn’t see how we could extract him without damaging him profoundly.

“It’s going to be all right,” I told Idris.

Closing his eyes, he shook his head, then pulled the strands and was gone.

I yelled a curse and dove forward, both physically and arcanely, to catch a portal strand. I closed my grip around one right before it slithered through.