Hours later—or at least that’s how it felt—I’d resolved the knot from millions of strands to a single bulging balloon with two outlets. Even though I’d been lying down the whole time, my entire body ached, muscles quivering at the end of their endurance.
Rhyzkahl gave me the final steps. I simultaneously activated the refeed to Earth’s flows and the pressure release to interdimensional space. For a moment, nothing happened, then the pre-anomaly shrank and vanished with a pop that seemed to echo throughout the universe.
A weak chuckle rasped out of me. “We’re still here, so I guess it worked.” The world flows seemed intact and had regained much of their previous luster, but the number of interdimensional rifts had increased. Damn it. At least no anomalies. I reassessed Xharbek’s shield-dome of potency over Beaulac. Now it quivered like fluorescent lime Jell-O rather than the surface of a bubble, but it appeared stable enough.
Zoop. Sha.
I sat bolt upright. “What the hell?” The sound was the dimensional fabric opening and resealing, which told me something had come through. But I had no idea what, and my attempts to track it yielded zilch.
Zoop. Sha.
This time, I caught an echo. Whatever-it-was had passed through somewhere to the south. Within seconds, the Beaulac shield-dome flattened as if an invisible weight slowly pressed down on it.
Zooooooop. Splort. Sha.
I couldn’t have missed that one if I tried. A compact ball of bluish potency flashed and rotated about ten miles away, even as the shield-dome re-expanded. Narrowing my eyes, I focused in on that area. The parking lot of Ruthie’s Smoothies—a known hot spot that now had a brand new irregularity. “Gotcha, you little bitch.” As soon as I finished dealing with this crap, I could go investigate the—
The Earth flows winked out. My heart lurched in shock, but a heartbeat later they flickered back to life in sections, like power returning to a city, grid by grid. I blinked, then blinked again and shook my head. Something was different. The flows felt the same, but the color seemed off.
My head throbbed with the effort of holding the lord-sight for so long, which was probably why the flows looked odd. I released it then gasped with relief under a perfectly normal blue sky and a perfectly un-normal demon tree. We’re still here. The world is still here. Good enough.
I staggered to my feet with Thank you for your help on my tongue, but the words crumbled beneath sudden revulsion. Tendrils of red potency crept along the ground and wound through the trees like arcane kudzu. Everywhere.
Rhyzkahl startled, recoiling from the strands nearest him before steadying. “Rakkuhr,” he murmured, eyes alight with victory at odds with the dismay in his voice. “They succeeded.”
Aghast, I took in the sight and feel of the sinister alien potency of the demon realm. Terrible comprehension hit me like a hammer between the eyes. The rakkuhr hadn’t popped into existence when the flows went dark. It had already been here. Undoing the tangle of the pre-anomaly had somehow opened a pathway that made it visible to othersight.
“How can it be here?” I sputtered. “It’s not native to Earth. How did it . . . ?” I yanked my gaze to the flows as my dread flared into pure, unadulterated horror. Not only was the rakkuhr on Earth, but it permeated the flows as well. Throughout the world, rakkuhr seeped from every rift. And there, at the rubble of the Beaulac Police Department, a.k.a. ground zero, rakkuhr streamed from the demon realm to Earth.
Nauseated, I pulled away from the flows. “What did you mean, ‘they succeeded?’ Was this the Mraztur plan? Flood Earth with rakkuhr?”
Rhyzkahl surveyed the coils of rakkuhr, brow furrowed. “Not this soon,” he said as if to himself. “Not this much.”
All that rakkuhr at ground zero . . . I sucked in a sharp breath and pressed a hand to my stomach. “Cory. Is the rakkuhr the reason why he and the others are changing?”
“Changing? How?”
I narrowed my eyes. “Red gel pod and metamorphosis.”
As if I’d thrown a switch, Rhyzkahl regained his composure and put on a neutral mask.
Well, that answered my question. “You’re attacking Earth,” I said, anger rising. “Why would you maniacs do that?”
Rhyzkahl gestured toward his orbit. “I am attacking nothing.”
Hands clenched, I fought the urge to pound him flat with the potency at my disposal. But through my haze of rage, I mentally replayed the last few seconds. He’d been shocked and damn near appalled by the amount of rakkuhr, right up until the moment I mentioned people changing. Then he became all lordly.
I carefully banked my fury and stepped off the nexus, walked up to him and folded my arms over my chest. “People are changing. That didn’t surprise you, which tells me you were expecting it.” I lifted my chin. “Is that your goal? Mutate everyone?”
Rhyzkahl met my gaze levelly. “With so much rakkuhr, such is always possible.” An unpleasant smile curved his mouth though a glimmer of fear haunted his eyes. “Have you never wondered why the nyssor and mehnta resemble humans so closely?”
He could have slapped me with a fish, and I wouldn’t have been as shocked. Nyssor were demons who looked like adorable human children, except for eyes with sideways-slit pupils, and a mouth full of hundreds of needle-sharp teeth. And mehnta looked like human women, except for the wings beneath a hard, shiny green carapace on their back, and a dozen or so tentacles in place of a mouth. And sure, I’d wondered why those two species resembled humans, but I’d chalked it up as yet one more weird thing about the demon realm.
But humans mutated by rakkuhr made perfect and horrible sense. Of course, it also confirmed Rhyzkahl had known the rakkuhr influx would happen, and that people would be mutated by it.
“This is an attack, and you were a part of it,” I said with sad weariness. “Part of the Mraztur’s plan to send rakkuhr pouring through to Earth.” I shook my head, feeling numb and sick. “Even after how you betrayed me, I never expected your end goal to be the destruction of my world.” I sighed. “You really are a piece of filth.”
“It was not my goal,” he replied, lip curling. “Your chekkunden lover destroyed the last chance of a gentler solution.”
“Chekkunden” roughly translated to “honorless scum.” Damn, was I ever tempted to smack him into a different kind of orbit. “That’s hysterical,” I said. “Mzatal’s the only lover I’ve had who isn’t chekkunden. Meanwhile, you lead the pack when it comes to my asshole exes.” I narrowed my eyes. “And what did Mzatal do to fuck up your so-called gentler solution? And solution to what?”
His scarred right hand twitched, and he clenched it. “He disrupted our ritual. Stole you away.”
Stole you away. Time slowed to a crawl, and I went completely and utterly still. Mzatal had indeed stolen me away—from the ritual in which Rhyzkahl had tortured me, bringing pain upon pain as he carved sigils into my flesh with his essence blade and rakkuhr. Had Mzatal failed, I would have lost my self and become Rowan, a weaponized summoner for the Mraztur.
“That was your gentler solution?” My voice was soft with rage. “Torturing me? Destroying me? Turning me into a thrall?”
Rhyzkahl’s gaze bored into mine. “Gentler for Earth,” he said. “Gentler for humans.”
Every beat of my heart seemed to shake the air. I didn’t want to ask the question, didn’t want to know the answer. Didn’t want to know if perhaps it had been wrong to survive the torment. “And what, pray tell,” I managed, “is the problem that requires such a gentle solution?”
His face remained impassive. “The impending destruction of the demon realm and, subsequently, Earth.”
Bullshit. I didn’t trust him. Couldn’t trust him. And I certainly couldn’t believe that anything was as cut and dried as “had to sacrifice you or we all die.” Asshole.
“Then I guess I need to get my ass in gear so I can save the world.” I gestured grandly to the a
rcane tendrils of red and shadow. “Enjoy your rakkuhr.” And with that I turned my back on him and headed to the house.
Chapter 9
Pellini came out onto the back porch as I reached the steps. “I’m going to go out on a limb and say that this is bad. Right?” He swept a worried look over the tendrils of rakkuhr.
“Extremely,” I said, “and it’ll only get worse.” A low headache took up residence at the base of my skull. “Is Jill inside? I’ll fill everyone in about all this crap, but I need to talk to her first.”
“She’s in the war room.”
I thanked him and headed to what used to be my dining room. Now maps covered three walls, and dominating the fourth was a giant flatscreen TV permanently tuned to the recently created Demon News Network. Despite the silly name, DNN really did maintain the best and most up-to-date coverage of arcane-related world events. Jill sat at the far end of a long table littered with papers, and weapons. A thick, leather-bound book lay open in front of her, and a plate of chocolate chip cookies remained untouched atop a pile of reports.
She frowned when I entered. “You look stressed. Eat a cookie.”
“I am, and I will,” I said, “but before I tell everyone the bad news, I have a bit of good news for you.” Jill straightened. I took a deep breath and bulled on. “Even though things went to shit out on the nexus, I got a signature hit on the AWOL four.”
She dropped her hands to her lap. I didn’t need to see to know she was clenching them together. “What does that mean in people-speak?” she asked quietly.
“That they’re alive for sure. And on Earth . . . sort of.”
“Where?” Her eyes narrowed. “And what does ‘sort of’ mean?”
I probably could have left off that last part. “I know they’re within a five mile radius of downtown Beaulac, but the arcane signatures phase in and out. Like they’re here then they’re not, but . . . more here than not.” I winced. “I wish I could explain it better.”
Jill sat in silence for a moment. “You’ll tell me when you have more specifics.” It was an order backed by a scary undercurrent of intensity.
“The instant I know.”
She nodded, quick and firm. “I’ll call Bryce and Pellini in so you can give us the bad news.”
After the two arrived, I briefed everyone on the unfolding rakkuhr disaster. Pellini monitored our DIRT feed on the laptop, face going stony as I spoke.
“Are we all going to mutate?” Bryce asked when I finished. “I’ll put in my order for wings now.”
“I’ll make a note of it,” I said, grateful for the attempt at humor in a terrible situation.
“Is the new landscaping part of this?” Jill asked.
It took me a second to figure out what she meant. “Oh, the tree! No, it’s a demon realm grove tree. As weird as it sounds, it’s more than just a tree. It’s, er, an ally.” I spread my hands. “Sorry. It was freaky for it to appear out of nowhere. And no, I have no idea how or why it did.”
Jill rolled her eyes. “I’ve seen weirder things. At least it hasn’t tried to eat anyone. Yet.”
“I think we’re safe from being eaten,” I assured her.
“Can you draw on grove power now that it’s here?” Pellini asked.
“No, it won’t work quite like that,” I said, knowing without even needing to try. “This tree is just a satellite branch of the demon realm groves.” I managed an innocent look as a collective groan rose at the pun.
“So what’s our next move with the evil red magic?” Bryce asked.
“I don’t know how to stop the flow of rakkuhr,” I said, “but there has to be a way, and we’re going to damn well find it.”
“Well, duh.” Jill flexed her biceps. “Saving the world is what we do.”
I chuckled. “Yeah, I guess it kind of is.” But my good cheer quickly drained away under the weight of everything else. “Speaking of, how’s the rest of the world?” Maybe we’d be lucky and the only fallout from the worm-knot-pre-anomaly-crap would be a few minutes of oddly colored skies around the world.
Pellini’s grim expression gutted that hope. “Earthquake in Kansas. Fire rain in Buenos Aires. Tornados in Manhattan and Fairbanks. Over a dozen simultaneous rifts, including a hundred-footer down in New Orleans.” He turned the laptop so I could see the DIRT command reports updating like crazy on the screen. I’d be up to my eyeballs in calls soon. No rest for the—
A flurry of action on the TV caught my eye. “Someone unmute that!”
DNN coverage showed a jagged crevice running several hundred yards down a traffic-clogged street in India. A thick layer of ice rimmed its edges—a sure sign of a sizable interdimensional rift below. Within the fissure, garish magenta flames roiled and lit the night. The ticker at the bottom of the screen read “Hundreds feared injured and dead in Mumbai” between insets of chaos at two other sites. I watched in sick horror as a black and yellow auto-rickshaw teetered on the brink then tumbled into the abyss. I didn’t want to think how many vehicles and people had been swallowed when the thing opened.
Pellini hit the remote just as DNN anchorman Nigel Crowe turned the audio over to their man in the field. Screams, shouts, and honking horns backed the reporter’s frenzied commentary.
“That’s the biggest rift yet,” Bryce said. “It’ll be a bitch to contain.”
“No demons yet, though,” Pellini said. “Maybe we’ll luck out.”
“That’s like hoping for no mosquitos in the swamp.” I slouched into my seat but straightened again as the camera panned to the arrival of DIRT helicopters. With nowhere to land, the choppers hovered while armed team members rappelled to car roofs. Idris Palatino was the first down, expression deadly serious.
“Thank god Idris was close enough to respond,” Bryce said.
“Blind luck,” I said. “That team was on twenty-four hour R&R in Mumbai before heading to Kolkata.” With the super-fast response time and Idris’s skill, there was a slim chance he could slap an arcane Band-Aid on the rift before any demons came through and complicated matters. It wouldn’t stop them, but it would at least keep the rift from expanding long enough for the DIRT team to get into position.
“He’s looking pretty buff,” Jill said. The cameraman seemed to agree since he stayed on him. Idris swept an appraising gaze over the scene then began to dance the shikvihr atop a van while the rest of the team deployed SkeeterCheater over the far end of the rift. No way would they have enough of the graphene-composite netting to cover a fissure this big, but they might manage to tangle a few demons.
As if the bastards heard my thoughts, at least a dozen kehza swarmed from the rift, gaining altitude fast. Crocodile-like savik clung to the walls just below the lip, working their claws to weave potency in ways that could only mean bad news for Earth.
Idris sealed the second ring of his shikvihr, then scanned the area to assess the demon activity. He unslung something from a shoulder strap and fished a golf ball-sized glass sphere from a belt pouch.
Bryce leaned closer to the TV. “Is that a slingshot?”
As the world watched, Idris wiggled his fingers over the sphere, then loaded the slingshot and fired at the nearest kehza. The cameraman zoomed on the demon in time to capture the sphere bouncing off an invisible shield a few inches from the demon’s hide. Idris raised his hand to signal his team, and an instant later bullets tore into the demon’s midsection. Shrieking, it tumbled to the ground.
“Oh snap!” I cried out in delight. “He used an arcane grenade to disrupt the kehza’s shielding!” It didn’t matter that the arcane wasn’t visible on TV. I could infer what he’d done. About a year ago I’d fallen victim to an arcane “grenade.” When I told Idris about how it had dampened the arcane in its area of effect, he’d been fascinated by the concept. I wasn’t at all surprised that he’d figured out a way to replicate it. He must have made several in advance and infus
ed them with potency right before firing them.
For the next minute or so Idris “charged” and shot more spheres. To my surprise, he had a Glock and was helping take down the demons as soon as they lost their shielding.
His gun jammed, and we all held our breaths as a kehza wheeled toward him. But without an instant of hesitation, Idris went straight into the slap-rack-ready procedure to clear the jam then fired on the kehza, taking the demon out before it could dive.
Pellini let out a whoop. “I taught him that! Did you see how smoothly he cleared that jam? And look at that perfect shooting form.”
“Your training just saved his life,” I said with a warm smile. “You have a right to be proud.”
I looked back at the TV in time to see a kehza with a wingspan of at least twenty feet swoop toward the camera, a single gold loop glinting in the demon’s ear. The jaws of its Chinese dragon-like head stretched wide in an all too familiar ululating war cry. The camera swung away and tumbled before it cut out, but the audio continued for another disturbing second.
Pellini jumped to his feet. “Jesus fuck!”
I hit the mute button as the coverage switched to a smaller scale incursion in Jakarta, where the Indonesian Army with no DIRT backup fired grenades to try to dislodge savik from the fissure. “Shit! Bryce, contact DIRT HQ and tell them to get word to Jakarta to stop firing grenades into the rift.” The locals were doing what made sense to them, but they were only going to make the rifts bigger. We needed liaisons in all the local militaries, but there was never enough personnel, never enough training, never enough time.
Bryce retreated to the living room to make the call. I sagged back into my chair. “At least we still have a world.” I sighed. “Even if it is getting demon smacked.”
“We’re going to need a lot more cookies,” Pellini muttered.