Captain Hornak eyed me as he tapped something on his phone then lifted it toward me. Out of its speakers came a voice, distorted by the arcane, but definitely mine. “A gate? Like, a way to travel between the realms? That’s what these crystals are?”
Shit. I kept my face as composed as humanly possible and tried my best to look as if I had not, in fact, just been totally busted. I knew the area was under twenty-four seven surveillance, but I hadn’t known there was audio, or that it could be sensitive enough to pick up a whispered conversation. “Yeah, well,” I said, lifting my chin, “I’m not exactly sure how he got here.”
The captain’s lips pressed tight. “A.C. Gillian, if you think I’m in the mood to play games, you’re sadly mistaken. Your ally will be taken into custody for a debrief, after which it will be decided whether he is indeed an ally or an enemy to the people of Earth.”
An angry retort built in my chest, but I swallowed it as Paul let out a low hiss and jerked from my grasp. His scan turned frantic, as if—
As if he’s missing a piece of himself, I realized in a light bulb moment. I’d known that Paul and Kadir had developed a strange yet close relationship after the lord took him to his realm to heal. But I was starting to understand it was more than that. My guess was that somewhere along the way they’d formed an essence bond—a bond that Paul couldn’t feel now that he was on Earth.
Paul edged toward the space between the crystals. “I’m not going anywhere with you,” he told Hornak, voice defiant yet shaking.
“Son, take another step, and it’ll be your last,” Captain Hornak growled as, with drill team precision, every weapon in a hundred-foot radius was trained on Paul. “I only need to say one word.”
Paul froze, but I felt him considering a dive through the gate.
“I don’t think you want to do that,” I told Captain Hornak—and Paul. I slipped my hand beneath my shirt and pressed it over Kadir’s sigil scar on my side.
“You’re in no position to make threats, A.C. Gillian,” Hornak replied, but his gaze had turned to the Spires. “A gate to the demon realm, eh? About damn time we have a way to reconnoiter and get some worthwhile intel on the ugly sons of bitches.”
“We don’t know if the gate works both ways yet.” I casually set my free hand against the nearest crystal spire. “There’s research that needs to be done first.” Before Hornak had a chance to realize I was stalling, I tapped into Kadir’s ubiquitous potency signature in the gate. With every bit of focus I could muster, I concentrated on touching Kadir through both the sigil scar and the crystals with a simple message: Paul needs you. Gate. Earth.
• • •
I edge close enough to Lord Szerain’s library window to glimpse the lords gathered in the courtyard below during a recess of the Conclave. Uno, due, tre, quattro . . . only ten. I bite my lip.
Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Not as pleasant as grandfather’s bracket clock. Yet there is no clock here in the library. Daft I am. Tick. Tick. Tick.
The malaise of a thousand plagues descends upon me. Dread sucks the strength from my body. I cannot breathe. Cannot move. He is behind me.
He wraps his arm around my waist, pulls me back against him. Were it not for his hold, I would surely collapse.
“Elinor.” His breath is hot against my ear. I dare not recoil lest he take offense.
“L-lord Kadir,” I whisper.
He inhales deeply, close to my neck. “I know your scent, baztakh.”
Tick. Tick. Tick.
My knees fail. My senses flee.
Kara!
Get a medic over here.
No! She’ll be all right. Give us some room.
“Buhllini,” I mumbled. “What’re you doing in the demon realm?”
“You gotta get up, Kara. C’mon.” Strong hands dragged me to my feet, out of Kadir’s grasp.
No. Only a dream-vision of Kadir. I slammed into full awareness. “I’m okay. Rebound potency knocked me silly.”
Pellini had a firm grip on one of my arms and stood with his free hand extended protectively in front of us. To my dismay, Paul struggled facedown on the asphalt in the midst of a knot of soldiers, his hands cuffed behind him. An abrasion marred one cheek, but he appeared to be free of bullet holes, at least. And, other than tingling all over, I didn’t seem to have sustained any lasting damage. “How long?”
“Thirty seconds.”
And no sign of Kadir.
Captain Hairball turned from Paul to face us with an annoying gleam of triumph in his eyes. I glared at him. “You need to let him go. Don’t make me put on my I-outrank-you-on-arcane-decisions hat.”
His gaze narrowed. “What the fuck is going on, Gillian? I need an explanation yesterday.”
I proceeded to spew a ridiculous mass of arcane terminology to rival Paul’s technobabble, real and fabricated. After half a minute he held up his hand, clearly unimpressed.
“You’re coming to DIRT HQ with us where you can discuss your ‘hat’ wardrobe with the General.” He flicked his hand, and two soldiers hauled Paul to his feet. “What we have here is an intruder who needs to be locked down until he’s been fully debriefed and cleared, and a couple of DIRT specialists who need checkups.”
Shit. There was no denying Hornak had the manpower to “escort” us in. Short of trying to dive through the gate, I was out of options.
Pellini shifted his weight beside me. “They aren’t backing down,” he murmured.
My breath caught as pins and needles prickled through Kadir’s sigil scar. A grim smile curved my mouth. “Neither are we.”
The web of lightning flared over the Spires, and a single tone sounded, long and low. Heart in my throat, I watched the space between the crystals. C’mon c’mon c’mon, you creepy weirdo. Don’t you dare let Paul down.
As if in answer to my summons, demonic Lord Kadir stepped out of thin air and into the realm of humans.
Chapter 12
An unearthly wind whipped pale blond hair around androgynous features as Kadir’s icy-as-death aura inundated us like an arctic tsunami. Fresh burns marked his exposed skin and peeked from beneath fire-rain-shredded clothing—evidence of his engagement with the anomaly in Rhyzkahl’s realm. Tendrils of rakkuhr slithered to him and writhed over his boots. Though it had been my bright idea to call him, doubt gripped me.
“My lord!” Paul cried out. I dragged my gaze from Kadir, fully expecting to see a compound in full freakout and all weapons turned on the newcomer. But no one moved. With the exception of Pellini, Paul, and myself, every single person in sight was eerily still, with only their frantic eye movements confirming they were alive. Captain Hornak stood motionless with his hand inches from his sidearm, face locked in a scowl. His eyes followed Kadir as the lord strode toward Paul.
“He’s here,” Pellini said, voice filled with awe.
“Yep,” I murmured. “And for the record, I’ve never seen a lord do this living statue trick.”
Kadir flicked his fingers. Paul’s handcuffs disintegrated into black dust. He quickly wriggled free of the two soldier-statues who held him then fell to his knees. “I’m okay,” he said, eyes locked on Kadir’s face. I could almost feel him trying to convey that he wasn’t hurt and to please not kill anyone.
Any doubts about the essence bond between the two evaporated when Kadir crouched in front of Paul and healed the abrasion on his cheek with a pass of his hand.
Pellini nudged me. “You think they’re . . .”
“Beats the hell out of me.” At this point, I figured anything was possible—even the unsettling lord having . . .
I shuddered. Nope. Couldn’t make my brain accept any thought that combined Kadir and Sex. Some things went far beyond the realm of human comprehension, and I was okay with that.
Kadir stood and paced a slow circle around Captain Hornak then sauntered toward a squad frozen with their rifles partly raised.
I nudged Pellini. “I’ll keep an eye on Kadir. See if you can find a way to reverse the gate, to suck him back through in case he does something Not Good.” That was the only possible option at hand if things went to shit. I couldn’t go head to head with a demigod, and I doubted verbal negotiation would get me very far.
“That’s one hell of a long shot,” he muttered, “but I’ll see what I can do.”
I hurried to Paul as he clambered to his feet. “What’s he doing?” I asked with a tilt of my head toward Kadir.
Paul’s gaze followed him. Kadir wove between the squad members, pausing to trace the line of one poor soldier’s jaw with a graceful index finger. “Acclimating. Getting a sense of Earth and the situation.”
My eyes narrowed. “And then what?”
“I don’t know,” Paul said. “He’s been itching to experience what it was like to pass through the gate, but beyond that—”
“Wait, what?” I put a hand to my head in confusion. “I thought this was his gate. Hasn’t he been through it before?”
“Yes, it’s his, but it was only usable by humans. The lords themselves couldn’t travel through any of the gates. But ever since this one woke up, Lord Kadir has been working to change that.”
“Looks like he succeeded,” I murmured, regarding Kadir as he leaned close to the soldier and sniffed. A glance at Pellini showed him running his hands over the nearest crystal in search of a miracle.
I had a feeling we were going to need one. The premeditation behind Kadir’s arrival left a nasty taste in my mouth. Even if his plans didn’t fully align with the Mraztur’s, he itched for unrestricted access to Earth—and I highly doubted it was so he could kick back by a campfire under the stars of our world and sing Kumbaya with his new human buddies. “Does Kadir have anything to do with the rifts and the demons and rakkuhr coming through?”
“Absolutely not,” Paul said without hesitation. “In fact, it’s ticking him off. The flows are getting screwed up, and there’s nothing he can do about it. The demons creating the rifts are in the Jagged Peaks region, and it’s off limits.”
I gave him a sharp look. “Off limits?”
“Something to do with oaths and agreements. That’s all I know.”
“Damn demon oaths have gotten in my way more than a few times.”
He grimaced. “I wouldn’t have known even that much except Lord Kadir got zapped when he probed the off limits area from his plexus. He was out cold for a whole day.”
Interesting. I rather doubted that the demons had the kind of protections that could lay out a lord. Seemed far more likely that Kadir got zapped by the oh-so-sweet-and-loving Demahnk Council for poking his nose where they didn’t want it poked. Considering that they’d submerged and exiled Szerain to Earth, I had no doubt they’d slap down a lord who broke rules. “Was it worth it? Did he find out anything?”
“No!” Paul folded his arms over his chest and glowered. “He was just trying to figure out why the demons weren’t making it through the void alive after getting killed on Earth.”
“Maybe it hasn’t been long enough,” I suggested. “After I died in the demon realm, it took me two weeks to return here. And I think it was about that long before Eilahn made it back after she was shot on Earth. Or maybe the demons who didn’t make it back had died here once before?” A first death for a demon on Earth or a human in the demon realm often meant a return to the home world safe and sound. A second death usually meant death for realsies.
Paul shook his head. “That’s not it. They’re coming through without a mark on them, but eight out of ten are dead, as if the bodies got remade but didn’t get turned back on. It’s been like that ever since the valve explosion back-blasted into the demon realm. A syraza showed up on the clifftop in Mzatal’s realm a few days later, dead as a doornail.”
I sucked in a breath. “Katashi!” I exclaimed. “I knew he had to be a demon. Am I right?”
“Got it in one,” he said, smiling at my excitement. “Lord Kadir believes the syraza took over the life of the real Katashi nearly forty years ago, after a decade of preparation.” His attention drifted back to Kadir who strolled toward a knot of soldiers and auxiliary personnel in front of the old smoothie shop.
I managed to catch Pellini’s eye then sighed when he gave me a “still no luck” glower. Crapsticks. “So fake Katashi is dead dead.” At least I could be hugely relieved on that count. Scratching even one name off the My Nemeses list was a huge deal. Though I sorely wanted this news to exonerate Tessa, the unpleasant truth was that the Katashi she’d known and revered for the past thirty years had been the fake-Katashi. Hell, she might have even known he was a demon. “Whose puppet was he? Jesral’s?” That made the most sense considering one of Katashi’s key summoners, Tsuneo, had a tattoo of the slimy lord’s sigil.
“Nope,” Paul said, to my surprise. “All the lords seemed truly shocked that he was a demon. They—” He broke off, tensing as Kadir stopped in front of a burly soldier.
“What is it?” I frowned in Kadir’s direction but couldn’t see anything different in his terrorize-all-the-humans behavior. “Paul, what’s wrong?”
The words were barely out of my mouth when Kadir’s aura shifted from ice-cold scary to trapped-in-a-room-with-one-hundred-serial-killers scary. Paul started toward Kadir but halted when the lord glanced at him over his shoulder.
Paul retreated to me, pale and tense. “It’s . . . okay,” he told me. “He’s not going to hurt the guy.”
The burly soldier unfroze and dug in his pockets. A moment later he came out with a pen and what looked like a paper napkin and began to write.
“What on earth is Kadir doing?” I asked, frustration and bafflement rising. “Getting the dude’s phone number?”
Paul didn’t answer. Kadir left the soldier to his writing then strolled toward us, his aura engulfing me like a tidal wave of eel-filled slime. Palms sweating, I squelched my survival instinct to get the hell away. Along my ribs, Kadir’s sigil scar itched.
He stopped before me with an enigmatic smile that sent chills up my spine. “No need to fret thus, Kara Gillian. I depart.”
“Wait,” I said and forced myself to stand taller and lift my chin. “We have common ground. You don’t like the flow disruption caused by the rifts. We don’t like anything about them. What can we do Earthside to counter the damn things?”
Kadir studied me for several heartbeats, ice-cold gaze intensifying. “Use the rakkuhr as the demons do. Tame it. Shape it to your will.”
Gooseflesh swept over my skin at the mere thought of handling the vile shit, but I gave a nod of acknowledgement. “Show me how.”
He hissed out a breath. “I do not touch it. It is insidious.”
Interesting. Kadir and Mzatal vehemently reviled rakkuhr. Rhyzkahl and the other Mraztur used it, though I had the sense it held them in a stranglehold grip. Not so for Szerain. He commanded it. That was likely at least part of why he’d been exiled to Earth. “Then how can Szerain manipulate it unscathed?”
Kadir leaned close until his face was only inches from mine. “Szerain is dangerous.”
“That’s why I need him.” Szerain was dangerous because he’d broken the rules, pissed off the Demahnk Council. That alone earned him a gold star in my book. And with rakkuhr screwing up Earth, I needed him more than ever.
Kadir straightened, his eyes narrowed. “You dabble in destruction, Kara Gillian.”
I bared my teeth. “I dabble in survival.”
Kadir laughed, a sound that lifted the hair on the back of my neck. “As do I.” He glided toward the Spires with Paul in his wake. “In the end, we shall see whose dabbling leads to survival.”
“Working together to save both our worlds would be a nice change,” I called after him.
Pellini dropped his hands from the crystal and wisely shifted well away from the gate-gap,
clearly uninterested in a surprise vacation to the demon realm. Kadir paused and regarded him, dangerous expression warming ever so slightly, then he placed his hand on Paul’s shoulder and stepped into the gap between the crystals. The gateway flickered, and Paul gave me an encouraging smile an instant before he and Kadir vanished.
Pellini and I exchanged a what-the-fuck look.
“Did they—” He clamped down on the rest, but it was obvious we were both wondering the same thing. Despite the gate’s showy flickering, neither of us had felt it activate. Did that mean Kadir had found a means to teleport like the demahnk? It was certainly possible. The lords were all half demahnk, and Kadir had previously demonstrated the ability to surf interdimensional flows in a way no other lords could. But if Kadir had teleported rather than use the gate, then I had an uneasy feeling that he was still on Earth—with Paul, who could tap into computer networks as effortlessly as a lord tapped into potency flows.
“Whew!” I said, eyes on Pellini. “I’m glad they’ve gone back to the demon realm.”
“Yeah, no kidding!” He blew out an exaggerated breath. “That was intense.”
As if some deity had thrown a switch, the statue-people staggered free of their invisible bonds. Hornak barked shaky orders for status updates and surveillance footage, but my eyes went to the burly soldier as he looked around furtively and shoved the pen and napkin in his pocket. Crap. What had Kadir done to the poor guy? I headed his way as Hornak cursed about hazy memories and nothing but fuzz and static on the camera feeds. At least the consensus seemed to be that Paul and Kadir had, indeed, returned to the demon realm.
I glanced at the soldier’s name tag and gave him a kind smile. “Corporal Frazier? Are you all right?”
Sweat beaded on his forehead and dark splodges marked his maroon shirt under his arms. “Yes, ma’am. Just shaken.”
“That’s understandable. Lord Kadir has that effect on pretty much everyone.” I gestured toward his pocket. “What did you write on the napkin?”
He paled and took a half-step back. “It’s . . .” The word came out in a strangled croak, as if he’d tried to hold it in and failed.