Keeping our fingers entwined, he wrapped his arms around me. “It is . . . ” He paused, as if searching for a suitable English word. “It is a confluence, a convergence point of power flows, albeit different and of much lower intensity than in my own world. Such is the foundation of a nexus.”
I processed that. “A mini-nexus.”
“In a manner of speaking,” he said. “It is raw now but with development, yes, potentially a . . . mini-nexus.” I heard the smile in his voice.
“That’s pretty darn nice,” I said. “Why is it in my backyard?”
He gave me a light squeeze before releasing me. “The question is, why is your backyard here?”
I turned and gave him a puzzled look, but an instant later it hit me. “My grandparents had this house built here. And my grandmother was a summoner.”
“She no doubt sensed it, even if subconsciously.”
I looked down at the unassuming bit of grass. “Having this here should help, right?”
“It will help much in accessing and deciphering the flows,” he agreed.
“And now it’s OURS!” I threw my head back and did my best Evil Laugh. Mzatal gave me an indulgent look, though amusement flashed in his eyes.
“Indeed, quite useful,” he replied with deliberate understatement.
I laughed more normally, then gave him a quick kiss. “Hang on, I’ll be right back.” I ran to the porch, grabbed a battery-powered lantern, then returned and took his hand again. “I have to finish the tour. There’s one more thing I want to show you.”
He didn’t resist as I led the way across the yard and down the hill. At the edge of the tree line was a path I’d attacked with the weed-whacker and pruning shears earlier in the day. The light from the lantern cast long shadows before us as we worked our way through the trees.
The path finally opened into a broad clearing. A pond took up most of the area, about sixty feet across at its widest point, with a perimeter of grassy bank that extended another twenty feet or so. I led him to the left, then lifted my lantern high to show him the rough pavilion I’d set up for him—a rug over a waterproof tarp on the ground, covered by a wide canopy tent with its walls rolled up despite the likelihood of rain. Mzatal loved open spaces and could easily ward for environmental control to suit his mood. A decent air mattress, simple chair, and a folding table completed the lavish furnishings.
“It’s not much, I know,” I said, suddenly nervous. Compared to anything in the demon realm, this was a lame, tacky ensemble. “But I didn’t think you’d enjoy staying in the house all the time, and I know it’s not an ocean view, but I’ve always liked the place.” I clamped my lips shut as I realized I was babbling.
He gave my hand a squeeze, then pulled me close. “I deeply appreciate the consideration,” he said, gratitude in his voice. “I would not care to abide the confines of the dwelling for extended periods.”
Relieved, I put my arms around him. “There’s a lot we can do to improve on this, too. I had to make do with what I could scrounge in limited time,” I told him. “I sort of threw this together in about an hour after I looked around the house this afternoon and realized it wouldn’t do at all.”
“It is more than sufficient for my needs, beloved,” he said as he lowered his head to kiss me.
I slid my arms around his neck, returned the kiss, and proceeded to welcome him to Earth in the best way I knew how.
Chapter 10
A raucous squawk from a blue jay woke me, and it took me several seconds of Why the hell is a bird in my bedroom? before I remembered where I was.
Sunlight filtered through leaves and pine needles to create shifting patterns on the tent canopy above me. A squirrel chattered in annoyance not far away, and a dragonfly buzzed near the canopy and then zipped past. Subtle wards designed to keep insects away shimmered by the tent poles. “Afterglow” had consisted of my polite and loving demand that Mzatal teach me that particular arcane protection.
I sat up and found Mzatal standing naked a few feet from the edge of the pond. With his back to me and his unbound hair pulled forward over one shoulder, I had a lovely view of his back, where well-formed lats swept down to a narrow waist above a perfectly muscled ass. Though he was the eldest of the demonic lords, I couldn’t help but think that sort of thing was irrelevant considering they were all several millennia old. All had an ageless look about them of men in their prime, though I now knew that most trained diligently to maintain peak physical condition—Mzatal included.
Mzatal’s hands worked potency strands in rhythmic patterns, but I had no idea what he was doing. I felt the caress of his mental touch as he turned his head to give me a smile. I returned both smile and mental caress, then scooped up my clothing. It would be lovely to while away the day watching him work in the nude, but the pile of stuff from Tracy Gordon’s house awaited my attention.
“What are you doing?” I asked as I dressed.
“There is much potential in the confluence behind your house,” he told me. “I am using this valve as an anchor point to stabilize the flows between here and there.”
Frowning, I tugged shoes on. “Wait, there’s a valve here?”
“Yes. I will adjust the concealments.” He made a peculiar little twist of his hands. “Are you able to sense it now?”
I moved toward him, then felt it—a ripple in the arcane flows, as if a layer of thin silk waved over my skin. I’d experienced it before with the valve in my aunt’s library and the one in the parking lot of the Beaulac PD. I hadn’t understood the sensation at the time, but now I had some hard-core training under my belt, along with the seventh ring of the shikvihr.
“Oh wow,” I breathed. “When I was a kid I came out here all the time, and I’d sit right where you are and read or do homework or just daydream.” A smile spread across my face at the memory. “It always felt so . . .” I groped for a word to describe it, then shrugged. “Right. It felt right.”
Mzatal touched my cheek and gave me a fond smile. “You were drawn to it even then, beloved.” But his eyes went back to the valve, and his smile faded.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“It is very draining being on Earth,” he said, frustration lacing his voice. “I do not know how long I can maintain. Perhaps two days.”
Shit. The amount of native potency on Earth was vastly lower than in the demon realm. The lords depended on that energy source, like a plant depended on the sun, and right now Mzatal was a battery draining faster than it could recharge. Humans didn’t have the same problem when in the demon realm—in fact they tended to thrive and only risked “overcharge” if the ways between the two worlds closed, such as what happened during the cataclysm.
Yet while I’d known he wouldn’t be able to remain indefinitely, I hadn’t expected the time frame to be so desperately short. We don’t even have a real lead yet, I thought with worry.
“How are Zack and Szerain able to stay here for such an extended length of time?” I asked. “Can’t you do whatever they do?”
He shook his head. “Zakaar is demahnk and thus not affected in the same manner as other demons,” he said. “And Szerain is diminished, much disconnected from potency, and living as a human. Neither means serves as a solution for me.”
I sighed. So much for an easy fix. “Does it help for you to be around the valve?”
“It does,” he reassured me. “And the confluence may also prove useful. I will work today to stabilize and integrate both, since I will need them to seek Idris as well as to maintain my potency.”
“All right.” I kissed him, slid my hands around to cup his delightfully firm ass. “I take all the credit for using up your power last night.”
Chuckling low, he caught my head and returned the kiss with toe-curling fervor. “And I will give credit where credit is due.”
• • •
I returned to the house with a spring in my step, and told myself I wasn’t going to worry about Mzatal’s limited time here. We’d simply
have to work our butts off until he had to leave. Our current plan was for him to immerse in tracking Idris through the flows—which had the added bonus of allowing him to recharge at the same time, even if only a trickle. Meanwhile, I’d focus on the more conventional, though no less important, aspects.
Breakfast was a quick affair, consisting of coffee alongside bacon piled atop a cream-cheese covered bagel and smushed into a sandwich. I ate this with one hand while Eilahn and I retired to the living room to continue the Sisyphean task of working through Tracy’s journals. I’d been fooled by the ordered condition of his library. Sure, everything was arranged all nice and neat, but within the actual journals and notebooks, disorder reigned on a scale to eclipse that of my aunt’s library.
However, despite the pervasive random passages and enough stream of consciousness to make James Joyce cringe, I gradually found a rhythm to the entries, and after about half an hour of reading, I straightened.
“I think I have something. These look like some of his notes for that gate he made in the warehouse.”
Eilahn shifted with uncanny smoothness from her kneel-sit to peer over my shoulder. “Yes, it does appear so.” Numbers, notes, neatly sketched sigils, and a half dozen alternate ritual configurations covered several pages in a tattered and coverless spiral bound notebook. She reached and traced a slender finger down a column of numbers. “What are these?”
Frowning, I puzzled over them. “Oh! It’s dates and times,” I said after a moment. “Look, it’s year month day hour minute, though it’s only the ones that had passed before Tracy died that have the hour and minute.” With that realization, I examined them more closely and looked for patterns. “See how these dates have a range of times by them, but crossed out? He’d narrowed them down to specific times. Then we have ones with the range only, and here, these later dates don’t even have a range.”
“Ah, yes.” She angled her head. “It is as if he was tracking an event.”
I peered at the numbers. “You mean like he knew the date of something but didn’t know the time?” I drummed my fingers on the page as I considered that. “I think I get it. He knew the date of whatever it was, wrote down the time of it, and then managed to extrapolate a range of time for the next few dates.”
Eilahn’s finger paused on one line of numbers. “That is the date you were summoned by Mzatal.”
“And the day Tracy died.” A curse whispered out of me. “He didn’t live to mark down the time of whatever it was.” There were many more dates after that one. A year’s worth, every few weeks. Including—
“Today!” I bounced in my seat. “Eilahn, look. Whatever it is, there’s one happening today.”
She lowered to a crouch, gaze skimming the column of dates and times. “Yes, between nine and noon.” Her mouth twitched as she angled her head at me. “I assume you wish to go witness this event, whatever it is?”
I laughed. “Do you really need to ask?”
“No,” she replied with a smile. “It was indeed a foolish query. But we will need to make haste as it is already after nine.”
Standing, I grabbed for my bag. “Let’s roll.”
• • •
A sturdy padlock secured the chain link gate at the industrial park, but after Eilahn peered closely at the lock for nearly half a minute she announced that “someone” had very carelessly failed to clasp the lock shut.
I grinned and helped her pull the gate open. My demon bodyguard had some cool tricks up her sleeve.
We passed through the gate and closed it behind us, then continued down the main drive. An eerie ghost-town quality pervaded the complex as we passed empty storefronts—auto supply store, ceramic tile showroom, discount furniture outlet, and others of that general ilk. None of the high tech industry the developers had hoped for.
“No way all these places went out of business since I was last here,” I said, a little shocked as I realized that was nearly six months ago. “The new owner must have cancelled all the leases as soon as he bought the buildings.”
Eilahn’s steady gaze tracked around us. “Perhaps the one who purchased this complex did not wish to wait for the end of the various lease periods before beginning work on the exciting new development in health care?”
After a few seconds of thought, I shook my head. “Still doesn’t make sense. These places look like they’ve been closed several months. If there was a rush, all of this would be torn down by now.”
“A mystery,” she murmured, smile playing on her mouth. “We shall endeavor to solve it, yes?”
I laughed. “Sure. I’ll put it on the to-do list.”
The warehouse where Tracy Gordon had attempted the gate—and where he’d died—still looked much the same as it had several months ago: a faded industrial grey facade with grime-covered glass double doors and a dark foyer beyond. It had belonged to a corporation owned by Roman Hatch, my now-incarcerated ex-boyfriend who’d decided to help Tracy Gordon kill a bunch of people and lure me to my doom.
I scowled. Damn it, all of my exes were pieces of shit. Rhyzkahl headed the list, of course, even if he didn’t count as a “boyfriend.” Didn’t matter. He was a steaming piece of shit. On the other hand, I couldn’t discount that the common factor with all of the exes was me. With each one I’d ignored warning signs, too lonely and needy and desperate to listen to the little voice within me that questioned my actions.
Yet I’d changed a hell of a lot in the past six months, as had my perspective. Mzatal and I shared a trust and connection beyond anything I’d ever thought possible, and I had every belief that I’d finally broken the self-destructive pattern.
I pushed away all thoughts of boyfriends and exes and pieces of shit as I noted the white SUV in the warehouse’s parking lot. I continued past the building, frustrated that I couldn’t personally run the tag without jumping through hoops and calling in favors. Compromising, I stopped long enough to grab a pen and scrawl the tag number on a gas receipt. I could always give it to Ryan and Zack to check it for me later if need be.
When I reached the end of the block, I turned and came back. Still no sign of people anywhere. A golf cart was parked in an alley two buildings down from the warehouse, but I didn’t see anything else that struck me as out of the ordinary. I finally parked across the street, got out and swept an assessing gaze around while Eilahn did the same. Still no sign of people or obvious threats, so together we hurried across the street to the parking lot.
I placed my hand on the hood of the SUV. “Warm,” I murmured to Eilahn. “Hasn’t been parked here long.” Whoever it belonged to either had permission to access the complex, or had gained entry by illicit means, much as we did. Either way, it bothered me that it was parked by this particular building.
Uneasy, I headed into the shadowy narrow street that ran along the side of the building. I knew we were going to have to break into the warehouse, but I had no desire to be obvious about it and go through the front.
We were nearly to the rear of the building when Eilahn placed a hand on my arm. “Voices.” Her eyes narrowed, and now I heard them from around the corner of the warehouse.
A yelp of what sounded like shock.
Another voice, shrill with stress. “Hands up!”
A third, calmer voice. “No trouble here, sir.”
“That can’t be good,” I murmured and broke into a jog. Within two strides Eilahn overtook me, peered around the corner quickly before motioning for me to continue. I did so, then followed as she made her way toward an open door on the back end of the warehouse.
“No sudden moves! Let me see some ID!”
And a quieter, “It’s no problem. I’m cooperating.”
Wary, I put my hand on my gun to reassure myself it was there. We peered around the doorway and suddenly found ourselves with a prime vantage as two men stood near the center of the large, empty warehouse, facing a third who leveled a large handgun at them.
None of the men seemed to notice us in their peripheral vision, and
I quickly processed details as Eilahn and I crouched to avoid becoming targets ourselves. Tall and gangly and with freakishly long arms, the gunman wore a baggy Apex Security uniform along with an expression that hovered between panic and bravado. His finger rested on the trigger in a mockery of any sort of proper training or trigger discipline, and his aim jerked back and forth between the other two: a young man with Hispanic features and a slender build, and a tall, broad-shouldered man dressed in a dark suit.
The wide-eyed younger man clutched what looked like a tablet computer to his chest with one hand and held the other up, fingers splayed. In sharp contrast, the suited man modeled utter calm as he performed a slow and careful two-finger extraction of something from his inside jacket pocket, most likely the demanded ID. As he did so I caught the hint of a bulge beneath his left arm.
A shoulder holster? Not that it made a difference. Even if the guard had seen a weapon it was idiotic and reckless for him to confront possible intruders without backup. Still, the situation needed to be defused before this twitchy rent-a-cop shot someone. I opened my mouth to tell Eilahn to call nine-one-one, even as a series of beeps abruptly sounded from the young man’s tablet. He jerked and gave a muffled cry, then fumbled and dropped the device.
The tense tableau shattered into chaos. The security guard startled, swung his gun toward the younger one. “Don’t move!” the guard cried with an excited, cocky edge to his voice. I’d heard that tone before, usually from rookie cops who were too hyped up by the power of the badge and gun, and in desperate need of a solid kick in the ass.
“Paul! Get down!” the dark-suited man ordered. In a fluid move, he dropped his ID and shifted his weight, made a twisting dive to put himself in front of the young man and take him down. A flash burst from the muzzle, and the sound of a gunshot slammed through the warehouse as the two men tumbled in a heap.
For an instant I thought the takedown had succeeded and the guard had missed, then I heard a horrible wet cough and saw blood spatter.