As soon as Bravo squad moved out, Bryce ushered Elinor from our vehicle, making sure she kept her face hidden within the borrowed hoodie. We needed to keep her presence secret until it was time to reveal her as Xharbek bait, and the makkas bracelet she wore only blocked arcane sensing. Beneath the hoodie, she had on a set of my combat fatigues along with a pair of my boots—an outfit that had thrilled her to pieces but would also hopefully fool any demonic watchers in the area.
Bryce had surprised me by volunteering to serve as Elinor’s bodyguard, merely saying that he felt like he needed to come along. Since his feelings were usually right on the mark, and since Elinor didn’t have the slightest whiff of tactical training, I gratefully accepted his offer.
Elinor and Bryce tucked into the unit’s formation behind Szerain, Turek, and me. Sergeant Roma snapped orders to Alpha squad, and we cautiously advanced into the strange terrain.
Very strange. Rakkuhr crawled everywhere like foggy pythons. As we proceeded forward, the street became oddly pliant, akin to a rubberized track surface. The grass that had been finding its way through cracks now shied away from our approach—which was better than the neon purple daisies along what was once the sidewalk. One lunged and sank thorn-teeth into Ahmed’s boot before he could jerk back, leaving several embedded in the leather.
Rat-roach creatures with shiny black carapaces and glowing red eyes scurried away from us to hide in crevices. One sought refuge among the Dastardly Daisies and suffered numerous bites before it could scramble free. A perfectly normal-looking sparrow regarded us from atop a tumble of moldy bricks then belched a tiny gout of flame that crisped a tendril of crimson vine.
Yet throughout it all, in odd contrast to the weirdness, the air was filled with a pleasant clean and citrusy scent.
We were halfway to the valve when a mass of at least a hundred rat-roaches swarmed from beneath a crushed bus and scuttled toward us. Kowal took them out with her flamethrower before they could get close, then dealt with a cluster of hedgehog-sized horseflies in the same fashion. An Irish setter poked its head out of a gap between chunks of concrete, but as it emerged, it revealed a grotesquely long, serpentine-yet-furry body supported by a few dozen normal dog legs—complete with a wagging tail at the hind end. It started toward us, expression eager, then slunk away as I brought my pistol up to bear.
“Jesus.” Pellini’s voice cracked on the word. I looked over to see him lowering his gun as the dog-ipede retreated. “Glad I didn’t have to shoot it, but maybe I should’ve anyway.”
“Right there with you, dude,” I replied and fought down a shudder.
Elinor pivoted slowly, taking it all in. “Such havoc Xharbek has wreaked for no just cause,” she murmured. “That asshole.”
Bryce cast a sidelong glance at me along with a hint of a smile.
I grinned. “Indeed he is.”
The road became squishier the farther we went, until it was like memory foam on a giant trampoline. Rakkuhr drifted fifty feet overhead in thick, low-hanging clouds shot through with streaks of black lightning. There’d been no sign of the rat-roaches since the flamethrower incident, though dozens of other oddities kept us on our toes.
We were less than a hundred feet from the valve when a reyza flew over. Weapons snapped up and stayed trained on the demon as it landed atop a partially crumbled building.
My eyes narrowed. No gold, and nowhere close to rating even a one on the Gestamar size scale. “That’s not a Jontari.”
“You’re right,” Szerain said. “That’s Kajjon. One of Amkir’s.” His gaze traveled over the area, then he lifted his chin. “And the reyza perched in that caved in window is Rodian. Jesral’s.”
I caught a glimpse of a small kehza before it ducked around a corner. Good grief, these demons looked downright puny after dealing with the Jontari and a certain imperator.
Roma moved up beside me. “Did the demons put their younglings out for us to fight?”
“No, these are a different kind,” I said. That was easier than trying to explain the difference between lord-allied and Jontari. “They may be smaller, but they’re smart. Geniuses with teeth and claws. Don’t underestimate them. And for every one we spot, there are probably two or three more out of sight.”
“Good to know.”
As we neared the ruined PD parking lot, Alpha squad deployed to provide cover and suppress demon interference, even as Bravo squad signaled that they were in a solid flanking position to our right. From that same direction, I spied Pellini and Idris picking their way around a cluster of Biting Begonias on their way to the valve.
With Turek and Bryce following, Szerain, Elinor, and I headed to a spot across the street from the valve and what had once been the Grounds For Arrest coffee shop.
Now it was grounds for a nest. A shop-sized nest riddled with tunnels, made of trash glued together with a glistening amber resin. An awful scritch-scratching noise came from within, and my brain helpfully supplied an image of thousands of the rat-roaches lurking in the darkness. Gee, thanks, brain.
Szerain drew crackling potency to his right hand, ready for a strike. In silent accord, we moved on to the vacant storefront next door. This was bad. Bad-bad-bad. If these various vermin could not only mutate, but set up house and multiply in less than a day, Earth would be overrun before the week was out. Ants. Earthworms. Birds. Fish. Tigers. People. If we failed to get the mutagen shut down, we’d be in deep shit.
Bursts of small arms fire clattered here and there—the squads dealing with threats. Szerain continued another dozen feet to a relatively clear spot then began to dance the shikvihr. He needed the solid potency boost for his part in this. While Elinor fidgeted in a broken doorway, I tugged gloves on—since I needed my arcane abilities intact—then prepped the makkas wire into lassos. I wanted it to be as simple as possible to wrap Xharbek up in the stuff .
By the time I had a lasso ready in each gloved hand, Szerain’s shikvihr was complete and ignited. Elinor drew herself tall and stepped out into the street, hands in tight fists by her side, likely to keep them from shaking.
Within the spinning rings of the shikvihr, Szerain raised his hand and called Vsuhl to him. I cursed under my breath in dismay. That wasn’t in the game plan. Surely he didn’t need the damn demon knife in order to break the bond.
Or maybe he did. Breaking the ptarl bond wasn’t going to be a walk in the park. It was hard to blame him for wanting all the arcane support he could muster. To him, the knife was a powerful and well-established tool in his potency toolbox, like the shikvihr.
How the hell am I ever going to get that blade away from him?
Elinor looked over at Szerain and received a small nod of encouragement, then shot her gaze to me. She was scared but appeared determined not to chicken out.
I hurried to a nearby spot by a pile of rubble then gave her a smile and a thumbs up. “You got this,” I said. “Just remember—we’re literally soul sisters.”
She blinked in surprise then brightened. “So we are!” Resolute, she took a deep breath, shoved the hood back, then gripped the makkas bracelet that kept her from Xharbek’s notice and pushed it up and over her sleeve.
Crouching, I watched and waited, lassos ready in my grasp.
A demon bellow sounded from around the corner, followed by shouts and three shotgun blasts. Rifle fire cracked in the opposite direction as a pair of kehza beat their wings in hard flight toward the cloud cover.
Xharbek’s here, I thought yet still startled when he appeared only a few feet from Elinor. He was in Zack form, but his sneering smile was one the true Zack had never worn. Rakkuhr swirled around him though it stayed at least a foot away, as if he had an invisible rakkuhr-blocking shield. He stepped toward Elinor, but the triumph on his face only lasted a fraction of a heartbeat before it shifted to black fury. I didn’t have to be a mindreader to know he’d sensed the firewall and realized she was ruined
for his purposes.
Elinor backed away. He moved as if to pursue, then flinched, though nothing physical had touched him. Szerain. A second later, Xharbek staggered and gave an incoherent cry that echoed through me with a strangely familiar sense of chaos.
Szerain stood as pale as a corpse, hands raised above him, clenched on Vsuhl. A shudder passed over his body, and I could practically see the bond shredding.
Xharbek stumbled and went to one knee even as Szerain let out a heartrending scream and crumpled. He wasn’t unconscious, but it was clear he couldn’t do anything. So much for Szerain having the advantage by being the one to break the bond.
Xharbek was affected though, which was all I needed. I lunged up from my crouch with the lasso ready to drop over his head. But before I’d covered half the distance, he shoved upright and flung out a hand, smacking me with a blast of arcane that sent me flying back a good twenty feet to land in the street.
The air whooshed from my lungs, but the rubbery concrete saved me from broken bones. I rolled to my side and struggled to get my breath back as Xharbek let out a shriek of pent up frustration and visceral hatred. His face twisted—literally—shifting from Zack to Carl to a rookie cop whose name I couldn’t remember to a state representative to at least a dozen other faces, male and female, none of whom I recognized. Through each change his eyes stayed wild.
“No more,” he shouted, voice hoarse and furious. “Fuck the lords! Fuck all of you! Be it known that the hybrid spawn have destroyed themselves and you human insects with them.”
He vanished.
“Kara!” Bryce was there, helping me to my feet. “What the hell just happened? That wasn’t Zack, was it?”
“Xharbek,” I wheezed then staggered as Elinor threw her arms around me.
“He is vanquished!” she cried. “How brave you are!”
“No, he’s not vanquished,” I said. His Fuck the lords still reverberated through my mind. “He isn’t done with us yet.” I cast a wary look around even though I knew I wouldn’t see him coming.
Elinor released me and cast her own worried glance around. “Is he not restricted from doing us direct harm?”
“Yeah, but he’s also crazy.” Would Xharbek even give a shit about the constraints anymore? Especially since he wasn’t as restricted as the other demahnk. He’d already increased the rakkuhr flow from this valve and added enough mutagen to disrupt life as we knew it. If he cranked it open more, would we be able to stop it?
A faint ground tremor set the crimson vines quivering. Turek let out a croon of worry as he cradled Szerain in both sets of arms. My This Is Really Bad feeling climbed higher.
The street vibrated but not like the tremor. A car engine revved, and I spun to see a military light utility vehicle racing our way, tires squealing oddly on the rubbery street surface as it careened around rubble.
That’s Jill, I realized in shock and dread. There was no reason for her to be driving here like a bat out of hell unless something horrible had happened to the others.
She screeched to a stop less than a dozen feet away then flung herself out of the vehicle, breathing hard.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Bryce demanded an instant before I could say the exact same thing. Worry twisted his face as he ran to her, easing only slightly when he noted the makkas taped onto her arm.
Jill gave him a quick, hard hug that seemed to surprise them both, then wheeled toward me. “It’s Ashava,” she gasped. “She’s practically beating on the inside of my head. She needs to come here, but you have to help her. Now. It’s really important.”
My tongue stumbled over itself in astonishment for several seconds. “Help?” I finally managed. “How?”
“She says to reach for her?” Jill gave a confused shake of her head then seized my hand. “She told me you’d know what to do. So do it. Hurry!”
There was no nexus here to aid me, but I had mega-Mom power instead. Using everything Szerain’s sketches had revealed of Ashava’s spirit and personality, I fixed the sense of her in my mind then mentally reached, as if extending a hand to help someone out of a ditch.
I felt a hand seize mine, both physically and in a ghost-grip of the arcane. The next thing I knew, a lovely young girl with auburn hair and brilliant blue eyes stood before us.
“Mommy!” she cried out with unabashed joy, then she threw her arms around Jill’s waist and pressed her head to her mother’s chest.
Jill let out a choked sob and held her daughter close. After only a few seconds, they stepped apart, as if both remembered the urgency of the situation.
Keeping hold of her mother’s hand, Ashava turned to me, eyes grave in a ten-year-old’s face. “Xharbek is mad,” she said, and I clearly felt the dual meaning of angry and crazy. “You killed the Katashi syraza, his key instrument on Earth. You stole his chance to use Elinor. And Szerain broke the bond.”
One thing was for sure, Ashava was hands down the most well-spoken two-month-old I’d ever met. And the tallest. “We might have twisted his panties kind of tight,” I said with a snort.
“The lords have failed him,” she continued. “They wouldn’t or couldn’t do what he decided was needed to stabilize the demon realm. I’m now his last chance to execute a plan that benefits him more than any other.”
I scowled “Exploiting you against your will in the process.”
She wrinkled her nose. “I wouldn’t be crippled as the lords are, but I’d be enslaved nonetheless.” Her little shoulders squared with determination. “Xharbek’s approach isn’t the only way,” she announced fiercely, as if to make her proclamation known to all. “And he will never have me.”
Her face paled an instant before a strong tremor shook the ground. Beyond her, Pellini and Idris scrambled to their feet and backed away from the valve.
Jill pulled Ashava close as if to shield her. “What’s wrong?”
“Xharbek has washed his hands of the lords,” Ashava whispered. She looked up at her mother then at me, eyes wide. “And of me.”
Chapter 45
The earth shuddered then shrieked as the spongy asphalt by the valve pulled apart in a rift-crack barely ten feet long and no more than a pace across. But instead of the magenta flames I was so accustomed to, luminous red potency roiled from the rift and spread like ground fog in all directions.
My heart began to pound. “He’s ripped the valve open.” Xharbek had tried to accomplish the same thing via Katashi’s arcane bomb, but now he’d given the plan his own crazypants rift-style upgrade. This would be a catastrophic flood of rakkuhr.
Pellini and Idris eased toward the valve-rift, already engaged in the monumental task of rakkuhr containment.
Elinor let out a cry of dismay. “I will assist them.” She took off, with Bryce on her heels.
“It’s too much for us to control!” Ashava said, lower lip quivering ever so briefly. “Xharbek will destroy both worlds.”
Jill jerked her chin up. “Then we’d better stop him.” She took hold of Ashava’s shoulders and gave her a full-strength Listen up, because I mean business glare—one that I’d been on the receiving end of a few times. “Xharbek wanted to use you, but he forgot that you’ve defeated him once already. You saved Earth when you were only a few minutes old. You have power.”
Ashava’s eyes darted to the incapacitated Szerain, then she gulped as it hit her that she was the Big Lord On Campus at the moment.
“Stop that,” Jill ordered, voice rippling with love and tender rebuke at Ashava’s doubt. “You’re more than a demonic lord. More than all of them combined. You are a qaztehl.” She spoke the last word with an intensity that seemed to ripple out from the two of them like shock waves.
Inhuman stillness settled over Ashava. “Thank you, mother,” she said with calm assurance. “I am Ashava, firstborn daughter of Zakaar and Jillian Lenora Faciane. Unfettered qaztehl.”
&n
bsp; Her aura rolled over me like a Louisiana afternoon thunderstorm, magnificent power with the promise of destruction or life-giving mercy.
Holy shit. Mzatal had a powerful and intense aura, but while he was the Sun, Ashava was a SuperGiant star, dazzling all within reach.
Then she smiled brilliantly, shifting from goddess to girl in the blink of an eye. “I’m so glad you’re here!” she cried out and threw her arms around Jill’s waist.
“Ditto that,” Jill said, hugging Ashava close. “Though I shudder to think what kind of turmoil my house will be in when I get back.” She grinned at my questioning look. “After Roper dropped off the makkas, Michael immediately fixated on makkas-collaring the kittens.” She rolled her eyes, but they sparkled with genuine affection. “Unfortunately, Pellini’s dog thought ‘chase the kitty’ was a great game. Michael managed to collar four of them, but by the time I dashed out, two were still in hiding, and Lilith was breaking out the tuna—”
“Incoming!” Bryce shouted, bringing his rifle to bear on a zhurn flying in our direction like a piece of night.
Jill didn’t waste a single instant. Before the ing left Bryce’s mouth, she clutched Ashava close and dropped to the ground, shielding her with arms and legs and body, even as Ashava threw a barrier of potency around them both. Mother and daughter, fiercely protecting each other. Utterly adorable.
The crack-crack-crack of Bravo Squad’s weapons filled the air, but the zhurn made a tough target as it darted from shadow to shadow. Bryce and I drew down on it as it came within range, both of us waiting for a clear shot.
Yet instead of arrowing straight at us, it swooped and snagged the makkas lasso with a claw then hurled it into the rift with the finesse of a Frisbee pro.
Then it let out a screech like tearing metal as two hundred pounds of dog slammed into it. A growl and the snap of teeth, and the screech cut off.