I took that in. “You complete it, and then what?”
“I keep you from losing yourself.” He said it with calm assurance, but the droplet of sweat that slid down his cheek betrayed his tension.
A feather touch of heat brushed my chest through the ice, and the hum wavered—Rhyzkahl’s activation breaking through while we stood debating.
“Do it,” I said quickly, pulse slamming. If I thought about it any longer I’d lose my nerve. And myself.
Szerain touched his hand to my belly. “Jesral.” Ice answered him, and the hum steadied. He moved around me. “Seretis.” One by one he activated the sigils.
“Vahl.”
“Vrizaar.”
“Rayst.”
“Elofir.”
With each, the harmony steadied and the cold fire increased, like ice encapsulating the heat of rakkuhr. His hand rested on my tailbone. “Amkir,” he said with particular vehemence.
Only one sigil remained. A single note of the hum whined out of harmony like an insane mosquito. The horrible icy ache penetrated to my bones. Szerain laid his hand flat against the sigil on my upper back, and I closed my eyes, braced myself for the next level.
I felt a tremble go through him, yet he said nothing.
“Szerain.” I named the sigil for him, my voice tight and hoarse. “Szerain.”
A sob choked from him. “Szerain,” he echoed. The searing ice receded, leaving only phantom echoes. The hum shifted to soft harmonious tones, eerily familiar.
He slid his hand to the small of my back, rested it on the twelfth sigil—the one meant to unite the other eleven, but never ignited. The scar blossomed with heat under Szerain’s hand, and I jerked in shock. I’d never felt anything in that sigil. The tones cut off and the world abruptly dipped and swayed. Only Bryce’s hold on my arm kept me from falling.
“What’s going on? Szerain?” Blood pounded in my ears. “What did you do? That’s never been anything but a scar!”
He drew his fingers over the sigil in swirling patterns laced with fire. “Kara, it has never been a mere scar. A scar can be resolved to unblemished skin.”
Mouth dry, I fought to balance the rising apprehension with my trust of him, of Ryan. “What are you doing to it?”
“I am using it to stop what Rhyzkahl started,” he told me. “Now I need Vsuhl.”
Numb shock seeped through me. “No, Szerain,” I said, voice shaky. “I can’t do that.”
“Yes, you can. And you will.” He wrapped his arm around me and pulled me back against him. “I have activated the unifier. I need Vsuhl. Without it, I can’t finish what I’ve begun, and the sigil is nothing more than a detonator.” He spoke close to my ear, confident, uncompromising. “When the virus reaches it, you don’t lose yourself—you die. I need Vsuhl. Now.”
Eilahn gave a cry of anger even as Bryce’s grip tightened to pull me away.
With a sweep of his free arm, Szerain raised a transparent barrier of shimmering blue along the perimeter of the nexus to block Eilahn. In the same motion, he slammed Bryce away from me with a hammer fist of potency, snaked arcane bindings from the ground to hold him fast where he stood.
Fear wound together with fury to rip through me. “You fucking piece of shit.” I said through clenched teeth. “You turned me into a ticking time bomb to make sure I didn’t have a goddamn choice.” And I didn’t. I had no fucking choice. I held my hand down at my side, focused, called the blade to me.
“You would have made the wrong choice otherwise.” He held me tighter, his arm locked around my waist. “Kara, give it to me. Now,” he commanded, voice fierce.
Eilahn railed at him in demon, screamed kiraknikahl, oathbreaker, over and over along with a few other words. In my peripheral vision, Bryce cursed and struggled against the bonds, jaw clenched and eyes riveted on me.
Vsuhl coalesced against my palm, whispered. Rakkuhr heat crawled up my chest and down to my side, igniting Kadir’s sigil. Szerain had no reason to save me once he had what he wanted, I realized, hating the feel of him against my back. With grim resolution, I connected to Vsuhl, felt it and wondered what an essence blade would do buried in the heart of a lord.
Teeth bared, I shifted my grip on the hilt, slammed my foot onto Szerain’s instep, and twisted in his unwelcome embrace. “Take it, chekkunden!”
Vsuhl sang as it bit into him, low on his side, but Szerain caught my wrist and wrenched it hard. I lost my grip on the hilt, and the world tipped crazily as Vsuhl tumbled to the ground.
With a harsh cry, Szerain wrapped his hand in my hair and threw me face down on the grass. Air whooshed from my lungs as he planted his knee over my shoulder blades. As he reached and claimed Vsuhl his aura smothered me, subtly powerful, covert, and tinged with chaos.
Breathing heavily, Szerain spoke in demon, the cadence like an invocation. I struggled for air, scrabbled for purchase in the grass to throw him off. A line of thin fire lashed through the twelfth sigil. Vsuhl, drawing my blood, tasting me. Three more swift cuts, and then Szerain shifted to straddle my thighs and pressed both hands against the small of my back.
I sucked in a desperate breath, felt the flare of the restructured sigil.
“Vdat koh akiri qaztehl,” he pronounced with precise clarity while I struggled vainly beneath him.
The rakkuhr answered him like a dog called by a beloved master. Where it had crawled through the first three sigils, it now raced across my body, igniting one after another. It paused at my upper back, in Szerain’s sigil, coalesced in a fiery mass of red heat, then dove down my spine to the twelfth beneath his hands.
Silence like the void engulfed us.
Szerain stroked my back, trailed his fingers over the sigil and wove the rakkuhr with disturbingly familiar ease. Into the silence he spoke a word that made all else pale.
“Rowan.”
“No!” I screamed. “Szerain! What have you done?” My foundation tilted, and I again found myself on a glassy plain with nothing between me and oblivion. “I can’t hold on!” I cried out in horror as I began an inexorable slide into the void. “I’m Kara!” I’m . . . Kara?
Eilahn let out an inhuman shriek and dove at the barrier, crashed against it. Bryce fought the arcane bonds, shouted my name.
Szerain moved off of me, gripped me by the arm, and dragged me to my feet. He shifted his grasp to the hair at the back of my head, leaned close, his face a hard mask.
“No,” he snarled. “You are Rowan.”
The name ripped through me like a mass of spinning razor blades, severing me from my Self. I mentally clawed for stability, but this time there was nothing—nothing—to cling to. My Self fell away until it was little more than a tiny, distant pinprick of light in the void.
As if through a fog, I saw Bryce jerk against the bindings. “You fix this!” he shouted at Szerain. “I swear to god, if you don’t, I’ll fucking kill you!”
Doubtful, little man, I thought as the fog cleared. The identity of whom the prisoner spoke slipped away like sand through my fingers, unimportant.
Szerain released my head and stepped back, his always-keen eyes on me. A slice in his dark t-shirt revealed a hint of skin and faintly luminous blood.
I rolled my head on my shoulders, looked down at my body, at the glorious scars given to me by my lord Rhyzkahl. I ran my hands over my face, my throat, my breasts, my body, then raised my eyes to Szerain in triumph. I watched his features shift into fuller lips and higher cheekbones as he embraced the reconnection with Vsuhl. Yes. This was the Szerain I knew so well.
He drew a deeper breath, lowered his head slightly to regard me. Behind me, the bound captive cursed. That one would be a choice prize for Lord Kadir or Lord Amkir.
“Szerain,” I said, smiling calmly as I inclined my head. A greeting of sorts, I supposed.
“Rowan,” he replied.
My smile widened. “You know me.”
“I called you,” he said mildly as he took a half-step closer, blade down at his side. “And yes, I do kn
ow you. Very well. You should not be here.”
“But you called me here.” Amused, I swept my gaze around before returning it to him. “And this place will serve as well as any other.” I let out a low laugh. “Better than any other. I have this.” I gestured to the mini-nexus below us. Ah, yes, my lord Rhyzkahl would be most pleased to have control of a converged confluence on Earth.
Szerain’s grip shifted on the blade. Nervous? Satisfaction coiled through me. He should be. I’d have Vsuhl back from his diminished grasp soon enough, ready to hand over to Lord Jesral in triumph. Another few minutes of integration and my metamorphosis would be complete, my power beyond the imagination of any mere summoner.
“You do not have anything, Rowan,” Szerain stated. “You are owned.” A sneer touched his mouth, though his eyes remained hard upon me, assessing. “Nothing but a tool.”
I lifted my hands, looked at them, then looked beyond them to Szerain. I frowned. Why did that bother me? I was the tool of gods. In the void, a pinprick of light flickered distractingly.
“Aren’t we all?” I asked him, lips curving into a smile.
“Some more than others,” the lord replied, low and resonant.
I fixed my gaze on the repulsive ring, on the cracked stone. Unworthy of one such as I. My lord Rhyzkahl would offer me true treasures, not the dross given by a lesser qaztahl. I slipped the ring from my finger, held it up before me. Delicious potency answered my call, flowed easily to me from the nexus. I focused it on the gem, delighted in the discordant vibration that rose within it. A heartbeat later it shattered in a magnificent shower of crimson sparks. “And I revel in the knowledge that I am owned by my lord Rhyzkahl.”
“No,” Szerain said through clenched teeth, stepped closer. “You, Rowan, are owned by me.”
I let the ring with its empty, twisted prongs drop to the grass, swung my gaze to him. “In that, Lord Szerain, you are mistaken—”
—The syraza shrieked and dashed herself against the barrier. The prisoner shouted a word, a name, her name—
—as Szerain buried the blade in my chest.
I managed one brief gurgled gasp before white hot agony seared through me. I vaguely heard the captive yelling, cursing as he fought against the bonds of potency that restrained him. The syraza too screamed in rage, clawing at the arcane shield as I clutched at Szerain’s hand and arm.
Blood filled my mouth, and I pulled my eyes up to Szerain’s. His mouth twisted in a merciless snarl, one hand locked in the hair at the back of my head as he twisted the blade, shoved it sideways. My knees buckled, but Szerain’s hold on the blade and my hair kept me upright. I coughed, and blood spilled over my chest and his hand.
His eyes remained hot and intense upon mine, and once again he twisted the blade. Agony ripped through my entire body, as if Vsuhl excised life from every cell.
Impossible. I am Rowan. I am . . . invincible.
I tried to scream but had no breath, could only stare at Szerain in horror as my vision dimmed and the blood pounded in my ears. Kara . . . Kara . . . Kara . . .
The captive. Still shouting her name. Face contorted in distress. So much like another who’d called to me. To me? Who was I?
Vsuhl whispered. You are mine. I will keep you. I will hold you. Mine.
Szerain cried out, screamed a word in demon, savagely twisted the blade once more and then banished it even as it remained buried in my chest. It dragged barbed hooks through me as it left, arcane pain more terrible than when Rhyzkahl sliced the mark from her arm. Kara’s arm?
Kara . . . Kara . . . Kara . . . Elinor!
Bryce. Mzatal. Calling. Giovanni. Calling.
Elinor! Kara!
I collapsed to my side. No breath. No pulse. No pain. Grey mist filled my vision.
Szerain shoved me to my back, pressed his hands to my chest.
Kara . . . Kara . . . Kara . . .
Bryce. Calling. Calling my name. Mzatal. Calling . . . my name.
My name.
Kara.
My name is Kara.
Kara. I knew. Then a black wind swept in, and I knew nothing more.
Chapter 43
I woke on the sofa in my living room beneath a faded quilt. Sunlight beamed through a window, throwing a pattern of squares onto the rug. Not squares, I thought. No right angles. I struggled for a few seconds to come up with the right word. Quadrilaterals. Yeah, that was it. Still had my third grade math skills. That was cool.
Someone stepped in the quadrilaterals, turned and stepped through them again. I lifted my focus a few feet. Bryce, pacing back and forth in front of the fireplace, stark worry twisting his features. Bryce. He’d called to me, shouted my name.
Kara.
I sucked in a gasp and jerked upright as memory crashed over me. Both hands flew to my chest, clawed at a blade that wasn’t there.
Bryce whirled to face me. “Kara?”
My pulse thundered as I fumbled at my chest. “Bryce?” I croaked. “I—” Pulse. Heart beating. I stilled my shaking hands and pressed them hard over my sternum. Felt the reassuring thud beneath it.
A shift of movement near the door pulled my attention. Eilahn, eyes on me and a smile whispering across her face as she sat with one knee up and the other leg tucked beneath her. Bryce crouched before me and took hold of my shoulders, his features battered by uncertainty and fatigue as he searched my face. “Kara?” he asked. Asked. He wasn’t sure, couldn’t be sure who I was.
But I knew exactly who I was, and that knowledge steadied with each beat of my heart. “Yeah, I’m Kara,” I said, rewarded by relief that shone in his eyes. “I’m Kara,” I repeated, and would have said it a third time except something sharp jabbed at the palm of my left hand, distracting me.
I pulled my hands from my chest to see what poked me, went cold and still at the sight of the twisted gold and silver prongs that thrust up from the empty setting of my ring like imploring hands. Sick grief wound through me. She had destroyed the stone. The cracked and perfect stone of the ring Mzatal had given me.
Bryce released my shoulders, let out a low sigh. “He put it back on your finger,” he said in a low voice and touched a finger gently to the prongs. “After he brought you back, that is.” A whisper of pain and horror threaded through the words, and I looked up sharply. Shadows huddled beneath bloodshot eyes, and stubble marked an uneven path along his jawline.
“You look like hell,” I blurted.
He let out a wheezing laugh. “You’re one to fucking talk!”
I struggled to laugh along with him, but it was a pitiful effort. Bryce sensed it and let his own die away, then shifted from the crouch to sit on the coffee table before me.
“He told me he had to . . . summon her, summon Rowan in order to get her out of you.” Bryce shook his head. “I’m not explaining it very well. Sorry. I was kind of yelling at him a lot and probably missed some of what he said.”
“It’s all right,” I murmured, then took a deeper breath. “I’m me again, and the virus is gone.” Of that I was certain. Szerain knew the rakkuhr with terrifying intimacy, knew Vsuhl’s hunger, and had used one nightmare to defeat another.
And I didn’t know how to feel about any of it.
“What happened after he,” I gestured vaguely at my sternum, “did that?” I had on a t-shirt, I suddenly realized. And running shorts. Eilahn’s work, no doubt. I gave her a nod of gratitude, for far more than the clothing. She inclined her head in response, relief stark on her features. She’d had no way to divine Szerain’s true intent and, like Bryce, had surely thought the worst.
Bryce’s mouth twisted into a smile. “You mean after you joined the ‘Devastating Chest Wound’ club?” He thumped his own chest in mock-solidarity, and this time my laugh was more genuine. “Jesus, Kara,” he breathed. “When he stabbed you and twisted the blade, I thought that was it.” Remembered shock and horror flickered over his face. “But then the knife vanished. He dropped to his knees beside you and slapped his hand over the wound, started wo
rking the healing.” He blew out a breath. “I don’t think he was sure he’d be able to save you. He was sweating it, hard.”
I touched my chest again. “Yeah,” I said, voice quavering only a little. “I doubt that kind of damage to the heart by an essence blade is a walk in the park to fix.”
He shoved a hand through his hair. “Well, I don’t ever want to do that again.”
“I’m with you there,” I said fervently. “I am one hundred percent cool with never getting stabbed in the chest again.”
“So.” Bryce cleared his throat. “Agent Kristoff is a demonic lord. Did not see that coming.”
I smiled weakly. “Surprise?”
He let out a short, sharp laugh. “Understatement of the year.”
My fingers moved over my sternum, and I felt the sigil scar beneath the shirt, a gap in its lines where Vsuhl had cut and Szerain had healed. And Szerain had done something to the twelfth sigil, changed it. But to what?
“So, uh, where’s Ryan?” And wasn’t that ever a loaded question, I realized after I asked it. My last memory of him was as a completely unsubmerged Szerain in full possession of his essence blade. I had no idea what sort of state he’d be in now.
“I don’t know,” Bryce said with a slow shake of his head. “He left this morning and said he’d be back tonight.”
“Did he look like . . . Ryan when he left?” I asked somewhat hesitantly. I had a sudden image of an unsubmerged, Vsuhl-wielding Szerain out in the world. I couldn’t help but worry about, well, consequences.
“Yeah, he did,” Bryce said to my relief. “While you were busy getting pesky holes in your chest, Sonny left about a billion messages on my phone telling me Zack wanted to talk to Ryan—I mean, Szerain.” He grimaced. “Szerain went down to the basement to return Zack’s call, and when he came back up a little after sunrise he was all Ryan. Looks, mannerisms, everything.”
Zack had sensed it all—the blade, Szerain unsubmerging. That must have freaked him out pretty hard. But how did Szerain get to be Ryan again? As far as I knew, the act of submersion—including making him look like Ryan—was inflicted on him by another. Had Zack recovered enough to blip over and do it? I found that improbable; he’d been a total mess when I left him. Could he have done it over the phone somehow?