Touch of the Demon (60 page)

The two lords continued to stare at each other for a half dozen heartbeats, and then turned in unison to face me as if they’d come to a truce. Mzatal approached me with Rhyzkahl a step behind. I focused on him, vision shifting strangely. The power burned within me, completely beyond my control, but with it came an awareness of
everything
. I knew every blade of grass, every stone, every lord. Amkir struggled to stand. Jesral staggered toward the downed Vahl on the other side of the courtyard. I felt every demon, felt Idris behind me—still alive, thankfully, though who knew how long that would last if Mzatal couldn’t help me stop this.

Mzatal reached and grabbed my right wrist, calling deeply to me, touching me through our shared connection.

I sucked in a breath as my blade responded to his. Vsuhl emanated a tone that soared through me, lifting, potent. Not audible, but
felt
in my essence. Mzatal’s Khatur answered in a harmony that unified the energies, wound them together, and I heard them, knew them, expanded into the new joining. Everything vibrantly translucent.

Mzatal called to me, and I answered:
“Here. Here. Here.”
I turned my head to look at him, looked into him. A pinpoint of blinding light in vast darkness. “Mzatal,” I breathed. “So lonely.”

He froze, hand on my wrist, eyes locked on mine, acknowledging. Rhyzkahl stepped forward with a scowl. My gaze shifted to him. I saw him. All of him. Crystalline leaves adrift on swirling water, far from the tree. Pushed by inexorable winds into foul depths. “Dear one,” I whispered. “So lost.”

He straightened, face going liquid for a brief flash before returning to the mask of determination. Vsuhl extended to Rhyzkahl’s blade, to Xhan, and then recoiled violently sending a crashing wave of discord through the entwined melody of Vsuhl and Khatur. I trembled with the discordance, grateful that Vsuhl withdrew. The blade song wrapped around me, wrapped around us. Vsuhl, Khatur, Mzatal, me. I expanded. Xhan sought to join, but the
rakkuhr
dominated it, smothered it.

“All of you, so lost,” I whispered. The wind ripped my words away, yet I knew they carried to all corners of the courtyard. “Foolish dear one.”

A syraza appeared behind Mzatal, laid a hand on his shoulder. Ilana. Not the one I wanted. Needed. Not
my
syraza.
“Eilahn!”
My voice carried through the universe, unstoppable.

Mzatal shifted his grip so that it covered my hand over the hilt of the blade. I returned my burning gaze to him. “Take it from me.”

Mzatal’s mouth pressed into a hard line as he gripped Vsuhl’s hilt and tried to wrest it away, backing it with potency when he found it immovable. “Ah, zharkat,” he murmured such that it touched my very essence with its sorrow. Ilana stepped back, vanished.

My expanded awareness flared an instant too late as Jesral threw his dagger at my exposed back. I jerked hard as the steel buried deep, piercing my heart. Rhyzkahl gave a cry of rage and cast a powerful strike at Jesral, sending him into a tumbled heap. Pain seared through me even as deep memory stirred. Time swirled and slowed. I slid between the moments.

The gate, so perfect, has become a wild maelstrom. How? What did I do wrong? Now the ritual tears at me, tears at the world. I cannot stop it! Lord Szerain’s face is cast in alternate mottled patterns of light and dark as the patterns flicker and fail. Help me. My lord, help me! He will stop this. He will save me. He steps close and wraps his arm around my waist from behind, murmurs something in demon against my ear. I don’t understand what he means, but I trust him. He has me now. He will save me. Pain blossoms in my chest.

My entire body convulsed as the memory collapsed into darkness, the Elinor aspect recoiling. “No!” I screamed at
everything, needing to see beyond this moment, recognizing in Elinor of then an echo of what raged within me now. Vsuhl vibrated against my palm, whispering just beyond my understanding, its tone shifting and winding through the grove energy. Whispering.
Rakkuhr
churned within me and over my skin. Molten metal dripped to the stone as the seething potencies in my body expelled Jesral’s knife, healed the tissue in its wake. For all Jesral’s many and terrible faults, he’d known the way to stop the breaking of the world, but had not the means.

I knew who had the answer. Knew who’d stood at the center of the destruction of the world. Knew who wouldn’t look at what came with the pain. Burning, I felt Mzatal and Khatur calling to me, through me, Mzatal’s hand wrapped around mine, around Vsuhl, around us. I willed time to slow. Slid between. Called up the pain, called to Elinor.

Pain blossoms in my chest, and I look down. Lord Szerain’s fist is wrapped around the hilt of his blade. No. No! I don’t understand. I don’t understand! He bears me to the floor. Cold face. Cold stone. Cold inside. Pain. More pain. Only pain. Giovanni’s face. Save me. Elinor Elinor Elinor
…
Elinor Elinor Elinor
…
forever. Pain.

I sank to my knees, this pain eclipsing the roiling power. Vsuhl whispered.
Held within. Entrapped. Rakkuhr. Pain for all. Rakkuhr entangled. Elinor.
And more that came through from the blade, beyond words. And then the pain receded to be replaced by the burning of the three potencies. Wind, cracking thunder, and shaking ground greeted my return from the time slide, and I breathed heavily.

I understood so much more, yet I had no time now to process it. I bared my teeth and climbed to my feet. Mzatal and Rhyzkahl stood before me, small, but not insignificant.

I spoke to Vsuhl.
You stopped this before. How do I do it now?

Vsuhl whispered, its meaning flowing through me.
Two blades. I will open the way. I will hold you. Not them. I am here. Waiting.

My gaze touched the two lords. “Both. You both must end this. Strike me with both blades. It’s the only way.” I understood. No normal blade could take me down now, no strike of a lord’s potency. Nor could a single essence blade. Too much was in motion. Too much boiled within me. I
shuddered, or perhaps it was yet another quake. The tremors grew more severe. Chaotic dances of lightning lit the near black sky. “I won’t be the cause of another breaking of the world.”

Mzatal touched me deeply through our connection, sharing with me his stricken resignation.

My tears burned away before they could fall. “Do it. Do what you must.”

A syraza appeared two paces beyond the lords, and my heart leaped with a fierce relief and joy. Eilahn, aroused from stasis by the potency of my call and the sheer fucked-up-ness of my situation. She stretched her wings and placed her right hand on Rhyzkahl’s shoulder and her left on Mzatal’s. She wasn’t here to save me, I knew. No one could do that. But she would be with me here, now, at the end of it all.

Rhyzkahl’s free hand tightened into a fist. “There is no other way,” he said through clenched teeth. As I watched, I felt him detach, his face taking on that icy look I knew so well.

Mzatal’s eyes were deep wells of pain as he shifted his grip on his blade. I felt their blades, knew their blades. Like the first ignition of the columns, the Three should have resonated in harmony. But the
rakkuhr
spiked the melody, fractured it, punctuating it with bone shuddering disharmonies a hundred times worse than fingernails on a chalkboard.

Eilahn left the lords and moved behind me, took hold of my shoulders. I leaned back against her, deeply grateful for her support. I tipped my head back and looked up at the roiling sky.
I never got the chance to say goodbye to so many people
. “Please find a way to let my aunt and the others know,” I said to Eilahn. Let them have closure at least. The wind screamed around us, but her chiming came to me even through the noise and discordance, and I knew she’d heard and would do as I asked.

She slid her arms around my shoulders, holding me close to her.

<>

A cold touch wound around me, a razor coil of ice.

The two lords exchanged looks that said everything from
I fucking hate this
to
Do it now.

The cold touch deepened, and something tugged at me through the maelstrom of power.

<>

Mzatal shifted his grip again. “
Zharkat
,” he murmured, then moved in for the strike. Rhyzkahl moved barely a fraction of an instant behind him, yet before either blade could touch me, a flash of something like comprehension came over Rhyzkahl’s face. With demonic lord speed he knocked Mzatal’s strike wide to cut deeply into my right forearm instead of driving into my chest.

“Summoning,” he hissed to Mzatal.

And then the breaking world dropped away.

I knelt on smooth stone, Eilahn’s wings curled protectively around me as I gasped raggedly for breath. Tremors wracked my body, as much from the shock of the summoning as from the abrupt surcease of power rushing through me. Pain lanced up my right arm, lost in the flood of churning sensations. I heard Eilahn murmuring in demon above my head as she cradled me to her, supporting me in ways far beyond the physical. Searing pain of backlash raked through my body, and a harsh cry escaped me, but before it could burn deeper, the resonant potency of Vsuhl engulfed me, easing the backlash and quieting it.

Not stone, I slowly realized as my ability to focus and think returned. I wasn’t kneeling on stone, but concrete.

A hissing sound like drops of water on a hot griddle drew my attention. I stared at the deep gash in my right forearm for several heartbeats before I remembered that Mzatal’s blade had bitten there rather than my heart. Blood ran in sluggish rivulets down my hand and vaporized on the long blade I gripped tightly against my thigh.
Vsuhl
. I felt its whisper still. Voices and movement around me retreated to fuzzy distance. With each hiss of blood the pain in my arm lessened.
Vsuhl
, I breathed. I felt its answering touch, knew something of its sentience after what we shared while the world broke apart. But the world no longer crumbled, and a familiar, ubiquitous and wonderful stench identified my location. Earth.

Eilahn withdrew her wings as I lifted my head, though she kept her arms around me. A chalked diagram surrounded me, looking strangely dull and crude after all I’d
witnessed in the demon realm. Its sigils and protections wavered with a feeble glow, and even as I noted it, the luminescence faded to mere chalk on concrete. A few paces away was another, smaller diagram. A storage diagram much like—no,
exactly
like the one I used.
This is my summoning chamber.

My gaze went to the summoner. Tessa. I almost didn’t recognize her at first. Exhaustion and strain marred her features, and it looked as if she’d lost weight. Not that she had any to lose in the first place. But as my eyes met hers, the exhaustion dropped away to be replaced with a fierce joy and triumph that was one hundred percent Tessa.

“Welcome home, sweets,” she said, voice trembling slightly in emotion and fatigue as she finished anchoring and grounding the remaining portal strands.

“I’m home,” I croaked, stunned. I shook my head to clear it, then struggled to stand, only able to do so with Eilahn’s help. “I’m home,” I repeated, then gave a uneven laugh. “You saved me. Wow. Best aunt ever.”

“Kara!”

I turned at the familiar voice. A grin spread across Ryan’s face as he took a step toward the diagram. Zack was there too, giving me a fond smile.

“Ryan!” My smile began then faded. Warmth radiated into my palm from Vsuhl, and I tightened my grip in protective reflex on its hilt. Its whisper intensified.
Szerain
.

Ryan jerked to a sudden stop. He stiffened and took a long strangled intake of breath, eyes wide and intense on the blade in my hand. Zack laid a hand on Ryan’s arm.

Ryan. Szerain. I staggered, dimly aware of Eilahn steadying me. “Ryan,” I breathed, trembling in the wake of the power overload. “You killed her,” I whispered hoarsely. “Imprisoned her for
centuries
.” Elinor’s essence, trapped within the blade for all that time. In pain. So much pain. Vsuhl and Elinor had shown me the horrific truth, and the sense of it ran through me in uneasy shivers. “
Centuries
.” The word hissed through my teeth with a touch of my own personal potency.

Ryan’s face contorted in a tangled mess of shifting features, anguish and exultation. He inhaled, a long throaty sound as if drawing breath for the first time, and shuddered, eyes on the blade. Zack gripped him by the upper arm. His
regard went to Ryan, then to me, then back to Ryan, as if balancing on the razor’s edge of decision.

Ryan…no, he was far more Szerain now. Different face. Broader of cheek. Fuller lips. Higher brow. The same as in Elinor’s memories. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Tessa backed to the wall, eyes wide. I knew that the revelation of Ryan as a demonic lord had to be a
teensy
bit of a shock, but I couldn’t spare any attention for her right then.

Zack tightened his grip and put a hand on Szerain’s head. I knew Zack intended to submerge him again in that moment, and my stomach lurched.

“Dahn,
dahn!
” Szerain said, struggling to pull free as Zack spoke in demon. With the residuals of the power still flickering through me I understood the meaning.
Only for a moment.

Szerain stilled, gave a single nod. Zack’s brow creased with worry, as if hoping he wouldn’t regret this decision. Slowly he released Szerain’s head, but kept a firm grip on his upper arm.

I trembled and clenched my hand on Vsuhl’s hilt. Szerain lifted his head and met my eyes, his own glistening bright as if with tears. A heartbeat later, he stared again at the blade as though inexorably drawn. Shudders ran through him every few seconds, and his head jerked to the side as though with a heavy tic.

“Slew Elinor. Created you.” He took a step forward, shoulder pulled back where Zack still held his arm. He shook, shifting between an aura that radiated jubilant freedom and chaos.