Touch of the Demon

  “Rhyzkahl, don’t do this.” I felt my lips move, felt the clench in my throat, but heard no sound.

  Rhyzkahl heard. “It is already done,” he said, voice terrifying in a different way than Mzatal’s scary-as-fuck voice—colder and carrying a promise of horror. “Can you not feel it? There is more. Much more.” Lifting my wrists a smidge higher, he moved me to the very center of the diagram.

  I let out a squeal of discomfort and fear as he pulled my wrists even higher up behind me. Strappado. That’s what this torturous position was called. I only knew that because I had a case last year of consensual BDSM that went too far. And now I understood Mzatal’s warnings, far too late. Had he known what lay in store for me? And, if so, why hadn’t he fucking told me? My heart slammed within my chest. I knew I was deeply and seriously fucked. I tried to pull grove power, but it felt as if I ran up against a smooth wall.

  “It cannot touch you here,” he said. “You yourself sealed the chamber against the grove.”

  Sick horror filled me. “You swore not to do me any harm!”

  He didn’t even pause before responding. “‘During that time in your world,’” he said, clearly quoting the words of our agreement back to me, “‘I will do nothing with the intent of causing you harm.’”

  My world. Stupid. Stupid! “Stop! Don’t do this!” I didn’t even know what “this” was, I only knew it was going to be bad.

  Rhyzkahl made certain I was in the very center of the diagram, then lifted my wrists until they were slightly higher than my shoulders, forcing me to lean forward to relieve some of the burn of the uncomfortable position.

  “Mzatal,” he said, snarling the name. “He thought to keep you from me, use you himself.” He gave a cold smile. “He will pay for his audacity.” His breath hissed, and I saw that the thorny protrusions on the blade hilt had molded around his fingers. Deep red fire wreathed his hand and crept up his forearm. I had the very bad feeling he couldn’t release the blade even if he wanted to, at least not until this ritual was finished.

  My gut clenched as I stared at him. “Why are you doing this?” I swallowed hard. “Is this what happened to Elinor? Did you kill her too?”

  Pain exploded in my face as he backhanded me hard, knocking me off balance, and I gave a strangled cry as my shoulders wrenched in the bindings. Dizzy from the vicious blow, I struggled to get my feet beneath me again. As soon as I did so, Rhyzkahl gripped my chin hard and turned my face fully toward him. “I did not kill her!” he said, fury replacing the ice in his voice. “Never speak that again.” His gaze slid over the puffiness of my eye, but it didn’t seem to touch him. “Look. At. Me.”

  Whimpering softly, I met his eyes. My terror increased at the darkness I saw there.

  “Twelve,” he said. “We will begin with the number twelve.” The grip on my chin tightened. “Look well, Kara Helene Gillian.” His eyes penetrated me with dark intensity. “By the time we reach one, you will no longer have the resolve to look into my eyes. And when we are complete, that name will be a forgotten whisper, and you will have a new one.”

  The truth of it was etched in his perfect features. He wasn’t going to kill me. Whatever my fate, it would be much worse. I spit into his face, knowing it would surely be my last act of defiance.

  Rhyzkahl didn’t show a flicker of reaction. Still gripping my chin, he wiped the spittle away with the back of the hand that held the blade, then shifted to lay his other palm against the side of my face. “Only by breaking you, dear one, can I rebuild you into a greater existence, a new life,” he said with a sickening gentleness of tone. “Enthralled, you will be safe, cherished.” He smiled at me, caressing my cheek with his thumb. “You will thank me when you fully understand what I have done for you, when you understand that I have saved you.”

  He lifted me in the arcane bindings until I was on my toes. My breath hissed through my teeth in bursts with the strain in my shoulders. “Bullshit…you…insane…fucker.”

  All hint of the deranged gentleness evaporated as he leaned close, breath hot on my face. “Through you we gain Szerain’s blade. Through you, we open a gateway to a new world. Then you will be with me forever.” The bindings grew into a sheath that enveloped me, preventing my body from moving even a millimeter. Only my head was free. I thrashed futilely with a blossoming panic.

  He brought the blade close to my face. I let out a breathless scream, sick with horror as I reflexively tried to jerk away.

  “You have met Xhan before, under tame circumstances,” he said, moving the blade before my eyes, voice cold and penetrating again. “This time, it reveals itself fully to you.”

  You are mine.

  I recoiled from the horrific presence of Rhyzkahl and the blade, unable to jerk anything but my head away, and that only a few inches.

  Snarling, he wound fingers in my hair close to my scalp, pulled my head up, and bound it in that position, stripping even that small freedom of movement from me. With a gesture, he lifted me completely off my feet so that my chest was at his eye level, yet he kept me in the sheath so that the strain on my arms and shoulders wasn’t as great as it could have been. He placed his left hand in the center of my chest. “We begin with the first sigil here,” he said in a cold and unwavering voice that told me that he was not fucking stopping. He dropped his hand and placed the tip of the blade against my skin. I let out another scream at the touch of the blade. I thrashed and struggled to no avail—his power held me immobile, though my muscles fought to respond.

  A low hiss that sounded like pleasure came from him as he began to work, knife biting precisely as he carved my flesh. I cried out as pain seared through my chest, every bite of the blade like a window into the depths of hell. My vision began to gray, and I didn’t fight it. If I couldn’t escape through death, at least perhaps I could find a temporary oblivion.

  Rhyzkahl looked up into my face as I began to pass out. “No!” He said, clenching his teeth as he yanked the oblivion away from me. Full awareness returned like a slap, and I let out a low sob.

  He continued to work methodically, precisely. Occasionally he would look up into my face after doing a section, as though looking for something. At times it almost seemed as if the blade led him.

  I trembled, panting in ragged gasps of breath. Finally, he lifted the blade from my skin and passed his hand over the incisions. I shuddered in relief, whimpering at the pain in my shoulders, wrists, and chest. He stepped back, eyes on the sigil he’d just carved, and spoke a few distinct words in demon. With a flick of his left hand, he removed the encasing sheath, allowing me to fully sag in the bindings with my feet still far from the floor. Another keening scream escaped me as I kicked my legs futilely, struggling for nonexistent purchase as my shoulders shrieked in agony. The diagram flared in eager response.

  The red flame coiled around his arm from blade to shoulder, arcs shimmering with a discordant potency that I knew was far different from what I’d always worked with. “It is beautiful.” His eyes dropped to the sigil. “And now, together, we bring it to life,” he said, voice unspeakably scary in its soft intimacy, as though we were actually working together.

  Tears streamed down my face. I shook my head as much as I could. “No, please…no…”

  Rhyzkahl moved close to me again, laid his left hand alongside my face. “In the pain, dear one,” he said in the same scary intimate voice, “is the true connection made. Without it, all of this,” he gestured vaguely with the knife, “is for naught.”

  He stepped back two paces, lowered his head. He inhaled as he brought the knife upright before his chest, gripping the hilt in both hands. I shook in the bonds, knowing he didn’t mean simply the pain from my shoulders and the carving he’d made in my skin.

  “NO!”

  He lowered the blade and pointed toward my feet, wrapping each in roiling sheets of viscous black shot through with flickers of brilliant red, burning like fire that did not consume my flesh. I screamed, thrashing, desperately wanting to pass out but ut
terly unable. His face settled into intense calm as he drew the fire up my legs, and I shrieked in agony.

  He brought the dark fire up to the level of the sigil, hissing as ruby lightning leaped from the blade to connect fully with the ignited sigil. I couldn’t even scream anymore, could only jerk in the bindings. He held it for ten heartbeats of eternity, then dropped all the arcane pain instantly, leaving only the ghost of its memory. Yet I wasn’t burned. It didn’t seem possible that such unspeakable agony could leave no physical damage in its wake.

  He wrapped me again in the sheath of potency, taking some of the weight off my arms. My breath wheezed, and I twitched. I could barely think, but I knew I needed to be able to think, to remember myself. He’d told me I would forget, forget who I was, forget my name. I wanted desperately to lose myself; it was my only possible escape. But I also knew once I did, I would never come back.

  “Kara…I’m Kara,” I managed to whisper.

  He closed the distance between us, stroked the back of his fingers down the line of my jaw in a move that was more possessive than tender. “You will have a new name soon, and a new life.”

  Licking dry lips, I fought to focus on him, barely able to believe that I’d endured such pain only seconds before. “I’m Kara…”

  He placed his hand on the right side of my chest, just below the collarbone. “For now, yes.” My pain faded more with his touch. “And I will ever remember you as you were.”

  I wheezed out a breath. “Fuck you…hate you.”

  “That serves well for now.” He removed his hand, brought the blade to the base of my throat. “And so we begin anew.”

  My tears fell as he began to slice. “Kara…I’m Kara.”

  We went through the cycle again. And again. Carve the sigil, fire it with a new form of pain. Begin again.

  I lost track of how many times we’d gone through this. Maybe it was only three…or seven…or thirty. Eventually I began to wonder if there was ever a time when I wasn’t here, wasn’t a canvas for sigils, wasn’t in agony. I tried to remind myself who I was.

  I tried to remember who I was.

  “You are Rowan,” Rhyzkahl said, helping me. He lifted my lolling head, looked into my eyes. “Rowan.”

  I dragged in a breath, feeling the name. He brought the pain, but then he stopped the pain. Perhaps he was right. I tasted it on my tongue.

  He put a hand to the side of my face, cool and smooth, easing the pain. “Yes, say it,” he said voice soft and soothing. “Say your name.”

  Kara…Kara…

  A name. Felt more than heard, as if from an incredible distance. I tasted it, found it more right than the other. “Kara,” I managed to rasp.

  He took a long deep breath, lifted his hand, allowing the pain to return. “No. Rowan.” He moved around to my left side, began another sigil, ignored my keening wail of a scream.

  Kara…

  “You are Rowan,” Rhyzkahl said, returning to stand before me. Once again he laid his hand on my cheek, once again gave me numb refuge from the pain.

  I heard him. Heard the name. Heard the distant call.

  Kara…

  “I’m…K-Kara.”

  He pulled his hand away, allowing the pain to flood in. I spasmed in the bindings, vision going red as my shoulders dislocated.

  “You bring the pain upon yourself,” he told me as he brought the blade before me. “Speak your name—Rowan—and end it.”

  Kara…Kara…Kara…

  I moaned, unable to say either name.

  Stepping back, he gestured, pulling my arms out to my sides, though keeping them twisted enough to maintain the searing agony in my shoulders. Another gesture pulled my legs apart until I was stretched in a vicious spread-eagle about a foot off the ground.

  Once again he bound me in potency to keep me from twitching and marring his work. He set the blade on my upper back, slowly parting my flesh in the complex pattern.

  Once again, he brought the pain.

  I hung limp in the cruel position, twitching within the imprisoning sheath as he began a new sigil. A thousand times we’d been through this. Surely it had been that many. Yet other than the carving of my flesh and the ruin of my shoulders, I was undamaged. Each bout of agony was only that, yet all of that.

  I couldn’t pass out. That way was closed off to me. But another way beckoned, shimmered with a promise of ease, of a different sort of oblivion. All I had to do was relax my grip on myself. Let go, and the pain would fade away. I could drift there and be nothing.

  Kara…KARA!

  I moaned. No. I couldn’t let go. I’d never find my way back. “…here,” I whispered.

  Rhyzkahl lifted his head. “Mzatal.” He bared his teeth and growled a very nonhuman sound. “Dahn!” He moved swiftly to grip my hair, hauled my face close to his. “What have you done?” He snarled, face contorted in fury.

  “…here,” I gasped, “…Kara.”

  He released my hair with a shove, then backhanded me. “He will not know you. Your name is ROWAN.”

  I shuddered in pain, uncertain which name was right. He moved to my back, drew a breath, and began a new sigil.

  Kara…Kara…Kara…

  Twitching, I whimpered, “…here.”

  Rhyzkahl carved the sigil into my lower back, taking far longer with this one than any other. At last he finished, moved back around to look into my face. “After this, you will know your name,” he said, voice hard again and full of fury. “And he will no longer touch you.”

  The pain was about to come again. I saw it in his eyes, in his snarl. This one would be worse than all the others.

  Rhyzkahl lowered his head, lifted the blade before him. The red fire writhed over his arm and torso as he called down the agony, bringing pain upon pain, making me feel as if my very bones were on fire. Lost in the agony, I couldn’t even scream.

  The relentless torment abruptly flickered and died, and I dimly heard a cry of pain that wasn’t my own. I struggled to focus on Rhyzkahl. His breath hissed through his teeth as he looked down at the knife in his hand. Brilliant blue fire surrounded his fist, and the azure gem in the pommel glowed as though lit by an internal sun. He shook his hand as though to release the blade but the cruel spikes on the hilt still curled around his fingers, locking it in his grip.

  I gasped for breath in the brief surcease. He raised the blade before him again, igniting the pattern around us both and in every nerve in my body. “Rowan…Rowan!” he growled.

  There was no way to think beyond the pain. No way to hold onto myself. No oblivion to escape to.

  Kara!

  The entire diagram stuttered. Rhyzkahl screamed in fury and frustration as the rings of sigils fractured in a cascade of arcane sparks. Within three heartbeats all were dark, leaving only a lone amber sigil above us to cast any light. I hung, twitching, as the name, my name, reverberated in my essence. Kara.

  “…here,” I breathed.

  Rhyzkahl stood with hands clenched as he assessed the ruin of the diagram, clearly seeking what could be salvaged. With a flick of his hand he released the bindings holding me. I crumpled hard to the floor, barely feeling it amidst the other pain. I no longer heard the call, but it didn’t matter now. I knew who I was. I didn’t know much else, but I knew that.

  My breath rasped as Rhyzkahl moved to me. He stood over me, looking down, right hand still locked onto the hilt of the knife. It no longer burned with the red fire. Now it gave off a mist, like dry ice.

  Breath hissing through his teeth, he crouched and grabbed my left wrist, hauling my arm forward and sending another electric jolt of pain through the dislocated shoulder.

  “…please,” I whimpered, “no…more.”

  Rhyzkahl’s eyes lifted to mine, then lowered to the mark on my forearm. “I salvage that which can be salvaged,” he said, setting the hideous blade against my skin above the mark. I tried to jerk away, but his grip was too strong, and I was too weak.

  “I take back that which I gave to you,”
he said through clenched teeth as he sliced the skin of my arm. He began to excise the mark from me, breath coming heavily as the strands shuddered. “And we will begin anew.”

  Of all the pain he’d dealt me, all the mind-fucking torments—my skin doused with acid, my organs shriveling and squeezing, my bones on fire—none could compare to the pure hell of this right now. The mark was more than an arcane brand or a mere symbol. Its strands hooked deeply into my essence, and as that horrible blade sliced through my flesh, it was as if all of those strands were ripped from me, tearing and stretching at the very core of my being. I screamed through a throat already raw, arching my back, near blind from the torment. A shudder went through Rhyzkahl, and a tiny part of me knew that the pain of the excision wracked him as well.

  He dropped my arm and staggered upright, holding the strip of flesh in one hand and the blade in the other. I sucked in shallow gasps of breath as the echoes of the unholy pain continued to reverberate through me.

  I jerked at a sudden harsh tug, though no one was touching me.

  Kara

  “…here,” I gasped.

  Rhyzkahl gave a cry of primal rage. “Dahn. Dahn!” He dropped to his knees and dragged me up, holding my chest to his with his left arm as I sagged. “He will not have you!” He let out an animal scream. “You will not have her!” Breathing heavily, he brought the blade to my throat, looked down into my face.

  I felt the blade part the first layers of skin. I met his eyes and forced my words through split and swollen lips. “I…am…Kara.” Even if I died now, at least I remained me.

  The tug deepened, and I sucked in a ragged breath. Rhyzkahl continued to hold the blade at my throat, yet didn’t press it deeper, didn’t draw it across to make the slice that would end me.

  His eyes stayed on mine as the pull increased.

  “Kara!” My name burst from his lips in a harsh scream, reverberating through me as I dropped away from him and into the void.

  Chapter 19

  I felt smooth stone beneath me, cooler than the floor of Rhyzkahl’s summoning chamber. I lay sprawled on my right side and stomach, my arms twisted at impossible angles. Pain seared through my shoulders and the rest of me, but I could only twitch and whimper. Everything about me felt wrong, unclean, as if I’d been immersed in slime.