Legacy of the Demon

  Decision made, I let my hand sink into the wall, then I was inside the pocket with only the barest sensation of movement. A shiver ran through me, and not only because the air was as cold as a meat-locker. Though I was several feet from the chains, their effect smothered my arcane senses like a thick blanket of wet cotton.

  After taking careful note of precisely where I’d entered, I approached the podium. The core of the crystal globe had been dull brownish red when I arrived, but as I neared it flashed with scarlet lightning, giving the unsettling impression it was snapping at me. I unslung my backpack and pulled out a fleece jacket. I couldn’t risk direct contact with the makkas bands on the gimkrah, and who knew what the runes on them might do. Using the jacket like oven mitts, I lifted the globe from the podium and stuffed into the backpack. Mission accomplished.

  To my relief, the return to the main chamber proved as simple I’d hoped. But how was I supposed to get out of the column? The room had a serious lack of glowing EXIT signs.

  “Doesn’t Mzatal know about fire codes?” I muttered. Sign or not, a way out existed. All I had to do was find it.

  I checked each wall in turn but found only more dimensional pockets—some empty, some like arcane attics filled with stored furniture and miscellaneous objects, but none with another living being. My gaze fell on the pedestal. Could it be that simple? As I placed my hands on the cool stone, a mild sensation of being inside an upward swirling vortex permeated me. This was it. I closed my eyes and envisioned the top of the column then let the vortex lift me.

  Chapter 29

  “You all right?” Pellini called out from below.

  I gave him a thumbs up then scuttled down the column steps. When I reached the grass, I kept going and beckoned him to hurry away with me. “I got the gimkrah, but Xharbek was there,” I panted. “That asswipe is the puppet master behind everything.” As we hustled down to the ravine path, I briefed him on the highlights. “I’m sure he wants me to get shredded in the summoning, but he practically gave the gimkrah to me, which makes me suspicious as all hell. I just want to be home. Now.”

  “You won’t get any argument from me.”

  To my relief, our little group and Janice were waiting across the ravine on the path to the grove. Michael grinned and waved, but Turek let out a furious roar. Alarm swept over Michael’s face as he pointed above my head. Hand on my Glock, I spun to see four reyza hurtle from a rift high in the sky. The instant they were clear, the rift snapped closed behind them.

  “Pellini, incoming!” I shouted, drawing my weapon. Gold adorned one of the demons. Jontari.

  “Sonofabitch,” he growled, already sighting on the approaching threat. “Not a single goddamn place to take cover.”

  And no way in hell could we make it to the palace before they were on us. “Then we stand and fight,” I said, copying his stance.

  As I sighted on the lead demon, an arc of lightning incinerated it. A killing ward of Mzatal’s. No time to celebrate, though. The other three reyza shot through the dispersing ash-cloud of their dead brother, taking full advantage of his sacrifice and the brief hole in the defenses.

  Kehlirik let out a fierce scream of defiance as he arrowed toward us from atop the palace. That evened the odds a bit, though it would be a race to see if he could reach us before the Jontari. A dozen feet ahead, the earth heaved upward and resolved into a hulking humanoid shape. One of Michael’s golems. I breathed a thank you, hope for survival rising as Pellini and I ducked behind its bulk for cover.

  “This is going to be brutal,” Pellini muttered, eyeing the quickly approaching Jontari.

  “Good thing we’re awesome.” Working the arcane at turbo-speed, I prepped six makeshift shield-busters. The quartz spheres that Idris used held the potency better than brass and lead, but my buster-bullets had done the trick against Big Turd in Siberia. I gave Pellini three, and we each loaded them into our respective magazines and chambered a round.

  Peeking from behind the cover of the golem, I fired twice at the closest reyza then cursed as the rounds flashed and pinged off his shielding. “No good!” I said. “The demons can tap full potency here for shields.”

  And then we were out of time. The reyza dove at us and raked claws over the golem, scattering dirt, but the golem snatched it out of the air, giant earthen hands twisting to break one wing. Demon and dirt limbs flailed as the two skirmished. Pellini and I scrambled away, and the other two attackers took immediate advantage of our loss of cover. A scarred yet agile reyza hit Pellini like an airborne freight train, sending both of them tumbling over the edge of the ravine.

  “Pellini!” I cried out, running toward where they’d disappeared. I’d barely closed half the distance when the demon rose into view then swooped on me. I dodged and rolled, but he caught me with pathetic ease then tossed me in the air like a rag doll before slamming me face down on the grass.

  My breath whooshed out with the impact, and my gun tumbled from my grasp. I struggled to fill my lungs then wheezed out a scream as the demon gripped my calf and wrenched, sending pain exploding through my knee. I scrabbled for my gun, but he pinned me down with a foot across the back of my thighs then ripped the backpack from me. With a scream of triumph, he pressed down harder on my legs. Heart racing, I steeled myself for the downward slash of claws that would finish me.

  Kehlirik bellowed in fury. The weight on me disappeared, and the sting of arcane fallout rippled over me. He just saved my ass. I lifted my head to see my attacker fend off Kehlirik with a vicious claw kick and tail lash then leap into the air with my backpack in hand. The other Jontari sent an arcane blast sizzling over me to strike Kehlirik, then both climbed high, wings beating hard.

  Dazed, I flopped onto my back and sucked in precious air. Twenty yards away, Kehlirik struggled to get to his feet while ugly red arcane flickered over him. Nearby, the broken-winged demon thrashed out from beneath a pile of dirt, but Turek streaked toward it and swept two sets of claws out to lay open its throat. High above, a new rift swallowed the two departing Jontari then closed after them.

  Despair squeezed my chest. In mere seconds, a single Jontari had not only dispatched Pellini and me with ease, but stolen the gimkrah as well. Bam, bam, bam.

  Pellini! I pushed up and limped to the ravine edge, knee threatening to give way with every step. He lay at the bottom of the ravine, crumpled on his side. It was clear he was hurt, but I couldn’t tell how badly. His legs jerked, and he had his arms clutched around his middle. But he was alive.

  “Pellini!” Gritting my teeth against the pain, I clambered over the edge and slid-staggered down to him. “Hey, man, did you break something?”

  He rolled to his back, breath coming in short, agonized rasps. For an instant I thought he was cradling a small, bloody creature—a mishmash of lumpy dark yellow and rust brown and whitish-pink coils.

  “Oh fuck,” I breathed. Abdominal fat and liver and intestines. A vicious gaping wound ran from just below his right ribcage to his left hip. Several feet of intestine lay in the dirt beside him.

  He focused on me with effort, eyes glazed and shocky. “Kara,” he wheezed. “I think this is bad.”

  “We’ll help you,” I told him in a shaky voice then screamed, “Turek!” Dropping awkwardly to my uninjured knee, I ripped my jacket off and tried to cover the gash. Blood pooled and spilled over my hands. “Pellini, it’s going to be okay.”

  Turek leaped down and landed beside me. He took a fraction of a heartbeat to assess, shouldered me aside, then sunk four sets of claws into the edges of the horrible wound to pull it as closed as possible. Pellini was still conscious, but there was too much blood.

  And dying in the demon realm probably won’t save his life like it did mine, I thought with numb dread. With the ways between the worlds so screwed up now, dead was dead at least eighty percent of the time.

  Janice scrambled down the ravine. “Is he—oh, Jesus.”
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  I fully expected her to turn away and puke, but to my surprise she ran to Pellini’s other side, yanked her own jacket off and wedged it under his neck to open his airway. His awful wheezing eased a bit, and I spared her a brief nod of gratitude. Still, Pellini had minutes, at most. “Turek, can we get him to the grove?” Even if Rho couldn’t help, perhaps it could at least get us to the realm of a friendly lord. Except that all the lords and demahnk were likely either battling the big southern anomaly or on Earth.

  Turek growled. “Moving him would but hasten his demise.”

  Pellini’s hands went slack and slipped to the ground.

  Fear clawed at my chest. “Shit! Pellini, don’t you dare die on me!” I mentally reached for Mzatal in the desperate hope that my need could penetrate both the screwed up interdimensions and the walls between us. But I might as well have been shouting into the void. I fumbled a shaking hand beneath my shirt and pressed it over his sigil on my chest, tried again.

  Nothing.

  Blood burbled from Pellini’s mouth. Cursing, I shifted my hand to cover Kadir’s sigil scar. Pellini was his protégé, and I knew damn well the clever lord had learned to teleport. He had the best chance of getting here in time.

  I focused on Kadir—the feel of his aura, the sound of his voice, the violet of his eyes—and sent out a call through the sigil. Nothing. Not the slightest tingle. I grabbed Pellini’s hand, pressed it to the sigil, and willed the lord here. More nothing. “I . . . I’ll go to Kadir’s realm and run to the gate. I can call Kadir from there.”

  Before I could get to my feet, Pellini jerked beneath our hands then went limp.

  “He’s not breathing,” Janice said.

  “CPR,” I managed to fumble out. I moved into position and began compressions. Buying time at the most. One, two, three, four, five.

  Janice grabbed my elbow. “Kara, it’s just making it worse.”

  “No. That can’t be right.” I pushed again to prove it then saw the pressure forcing blood from the wound. Horrified, I yanked my hands back and looked from Turek to Janice for a solution.

  Her eyes swam with sympathy. “He’s lost too much blood. I’m sorry.”

  Turek released his hold and edged back.

  I can’t save him. The thought careened through my skull. Even if I ran flat out, I couldn’t possibly get to Kadir’s gate to call him before Pellini finished dying and discorporeated. Utter helplessness threatened to drown me.

  “You stupid fucking asshole,” I croaked. “You weren’t supposed to fucking get killed here. That wasn’t part of the plan.” Any second now the light would start to consume him, and he’d be gone. In a week or two he’d reappear on Earth. His body would, at least. But not his essence, unless he was very lucky. “I need you. Don’t you know that? You’re—”

  Janice let out a shriek. I jerked my head up to see Kadir standing only a couple of feet away with Paul beside him.

  “Save him,” I gasped out, scrambling back to give the lord room. “Please.” I turned an imploring look on Paul. “Please.”

  Kadir regarded me, his head tilted and lips parted slightly, as if I were a perplexing problem.

  “Lord Kadir,” I said, doing my best to keep my voice strong and steady. “We need your help. He’s dying.”

  His laugh sent a chill through my bones. He sidled close, nostrils flaring as he took in my scent. “Dead.”

  “No,” I said with conviction. “You wouldn’t have come here for a dead man.”

  He traced the line of my jaw with his index finger. “I tend my children.”

  With that, he went to one knee beside Pellini and placed a pale hand on the exposed liver. Paul knelt by Kadir’s side, then both went stone still. I realized with a start that Kadir wore Earth jeans and a polo shirt, and his golden-blond hair was woven into a braid.

  Seconds ticked by while nothing happened. At least nothing I could see. Pellini hadn’t discorporeated yet, which I hoped was a good sign. But he wasn’t breathing, either.

  The seconds stretched to minutes, and I clamped down on my urge to demand an update. I pressed my fist to my mouth, unable to tear my eyes away from Pellini.

  After several agonizing minutes, Paul lifted his head and met my eyes. “I need you to do the shikvihr with me.”

  “Huh?” I said, caught off guard by the nature of the request. Do the shikvihr with Paul? He had the ability to interpret and subtly influence energy flows, including potency, but his skills weren’t the “make sigils and wards” kind.

  “I need you to do the shikvihr with me,” he repeated. “To support Kadir. Please.”

  Okay, so I hadn’t misheard him. “Yeah,” I said, shaking off my surprise. I staggered to my feet, nearly going down again when my knee gave way. “Hang on.” I quickly wove a binding that had a secondary property of radiating cold and placed it on my knee, then I wrapped a band of potency around the whole thing. It was a sucky brace, but better than nothing. “How do you want me to do this shikvihr?”

  “Dance it like normal.” He positioned himself beside me so that only a few feet separated us. “I’ll do the rest.”

  More questions crowded in, but I shoved them aside. I took a few seconds to pygah to help mask the distraction of the knee pain, then I began tracing the glowing curves of the first sigil in the air. I faltered as Paul joined me, matching my movements as if he’d danced the shikvihr a thousand times before. Quickly regaining my focus, I moved on to the next sigil. Though Paul danced the ring precisely, he wasn’t forming actual sigils—which baffled me. What was the point? My sigils tingled in my awareness like mini-beacons of various frequencies, but I sensed nothing from his efforts.

  Of course it wasn’t as if I had anything better to do at the moment, and I’d provided support diagrams for lords before, just not through a shikvihr.

  I completed the first four rings, igniting each in turn. On the fifth ring, a whisper-touch of Kadir resonated in the pattern. Paul’s expression—lips parted and head tilted—reminded me more than a little of the lord.

  They’re using their essence bond, I realized. Mzatal and I had worked together countless times, each an extension of the other, to create an outcome greater than combined individual efforts. It was how we’d created the super-shikvihr. Paul didn’t have the ability to trace sigils but, through the union of minds and beyond, Kadir guided his movements and used him as a proxy. In a way, it was like how I’d been using Pellini as an arcane proxy for the past two months, talking him through needed arcane manipulations. Yet these two didn’t need words.

  Kadir’s resonance in the ritual increased with each new sigil I traced, though there was something different about the feel of it that I couldn’t quantify. It wasn’t until I ignited the fifth ring that comprehension hit me. His resonance doesn’t make my skin crawl as much as usual, I thought in amazement. That was Paul’s doing. He influenced potency flows as easily as breathing, and in ways that differed from how lords or summoners worked. Right now, not only was Paul acting as a shikvihr proxy, but he was also modulating the resonance of my rings so that out-of-phase Kadir could draw from them. Freaking awesome teamwork.

  And together, we’ll save Pellini, I thought fiercely. Already the lord worked to close the last of the horrific wound.

  Halfway through the seventh ring, a faint echo of Pellini filtered through Kadir’s resonance. I finished the ring and ignited it then gasped as the sigils pulsed in time with Pellini’s heartbeat. Hope lifting, I started toward him, but Paul took my arm.

  “Wait,” he said. “Kadir needs more.”

  My heart sank. “I can’t. I don’t know the eighth ring.” Sure, I’d watched surveillance video of Rhyzkahl practicing, and even followed along, but while that gave me a head start on the broader strokes, it was useless for finer movements.

  “It’s all right,” Paul said with an encouraging smile. “Just follow my lead.?
?? With that he began to dance the eighth ring, oh-so-slowly.

  You can do this, Kara. Focusing, I copied his every movement, from the angle of his feet and tilt of his wrists all the way down to the subtle movements of his fingers. Kadir’s resonance enveloped me like icy snot, charging my hands with the esoteric energy I hadn’t yet mastered.

  Though Paul’s tracings left only empty air, mine formed shimmering sigils. Twice he had me dispel a sigil, patiently repeating the movements until I got it right, but at long last I completed the very last sigil of the eighth ring.

  “I can’t ignite it,” I said, panting as if I’d just finished a marathon. Not only did a lord have to culminate a newly learned ring, but I’d first have to dance it on my own and with no assistance. Still, even an unculminated ring gave the shikvihr more oomph.

  “Pretend like you can,” Paul said.

  Pretend? Then again it couldn’t get much more bizarre than it already was. With a mental shrug, I went through the physical and arcane motions for igniting a ring, oddly unsurprised when it flared bright, igniting to pulse in blazing glory with the other seven.

  The sigils dimmed as Kadir tapped their power. I scrambled to fuel them with redirected flows. Pellini sucked in a labored breath, and though I wanted to rush to his side, the ritual needed constant tending.

  Kadir formed a gelatinous globe of scum-green potency between his hands and dropped it onto Pellini’s chest. The blob shuddered then broke into a billion chartreuse fragments that crawled over Pellini like neon maggots and burrowed into him—his joints, his gut, his throat, his eyes. Everywhere. Though Pellini didn’t appear to be conscious, he writhed as if being eaten alive.

  I turned my worried gaze on Paul.

  He met my eyes, his face serene. “It’s part of the process.”

  Fine. Weird lord. Weird healing.

  But no way was Kadir doing this out of the goodness of his heart. What price would he exact for bringing Pellini back from the dead?