Touch of the Demon

  Shouted words penetrated the fog of pain, but I couldn’t understand them. The wrongness persisted, as did the shouted commands. I tried to see through swollen eyes. I thought I knew the two men in the room. I knew that neither were the Tormentor. I didn’t know much else.

  “Kara!”

  My name. That was my name. I knew that too. The dark-haired one shouted my name. He stood several feet from me, as if reluctant to approach. Barefooted. Never seen him barefooted. Face twisted in concentration, he worked the arcane with blinding speed, tracing sigils and patterns and sending them to do…I had no idea what.

  “Kara!” He shouted again. “Rhyzkahl seeks to follow. You must cast him back. Push him back through the conduit.” He turned to the blond one. “Prepare to seal it as soon as it is clear.”

  Cast him back? I struggled to comprehend. I was Kara. Everything hurt. The sense of wrongness filled me, and I let out a mewling cry. I felt him, the Tormentor. He still sought to touch me, to pull me back. I dragged in a wretched breath and struggled to push the wrongness away, gathered what shreds of will I still had to drive back the smothering miasma.

  “Kara! Again. Cast him from you!”

  I moaned and recoiled as the foul touch returned. You are mine, it whispered. No other may touch you thus. You will be eternal.

  I sucked breath through a throat raw from too much screaming. Shaking, I threw my head back, channeled rage and pain and betrayal and hatred, then let it all loose upon the wrongness, upon the Tormentor, shoving him back and away from me with everything I had left.

  And then I collapsed, spent. I could see the blond one tracing quickly. I no longer felt the Tormentor, as if the door had been closed upon him. Yet I still felt wrong, deeply soiled, and awash with relentless pain.

  The dark-haired one crouched, still several feet away, eyes intent upon me. “Kara.” He inched forward, reached out a hand even though he was still far from me, pulled something from the air around me and, with a flick of his fingers, dispersed it. It stung, whatever it was he did, and I flinched and whimpered.

  “Kara.” Kara.

  I heard my name, felt my name. “Here,” I whispered, lips barely moving.

  He continued to inch forward, continued to pluck things from around me. Each time he did so it stung, like the snap of a rubber band against my skin, but with every sting the sense of yuck seemed to fade.

  “Idris,” the dark-haired man said over his shoulder without taking his eyes from me. “Prepare a support diagram with my tertiary parameters.”

  The blond man nodded, beginning to rapidly trace. He glanced over at me for the first time, and his face paled. He looked quickly away, throat working as if holding back the urge to spew.

  I knew this dark-haired one. Not the Tormenter, but one of his ilk.

  “Mzatal,” I breathed.

  “Yes, Kara, Mzatal,” he responded, exuding utter calm as he slowly crept forward, pulling, dispersing, steadily clearing the arcane crap that clung to me. Behind him, the blond one—Idris, yes, that was his name—Idris finished tracing a diagram and ignited it. Mzatal instantly breathed deeper, and I could sense the flow of power as he drew potency from the new pattern.

  I wanted oblivion. I wanted to pass out, escape the pain, escape everything I’d just been through, but that relief eluded me as though behind a locked door with no key. My gaze drifted to the pattern. I didn’t try and focus on it. I didn’t want to focus on anything. My mind wanted to drift, and I let it. I didn’t want to be aware or awake. I didn’t want to be in the here and now.

  Kara!

  I jerked back to myself, whimpered as the movement sent fresh pain lancing through me. “Mzatal,” I moaned. He wasn’t going to let me drift. Wasn’t going to let me lose myself. I might never find my way back. “…you…called me.”

  “Yes,” he said, still working his way forward. “And I am still calling you.”

  I fought to work moisture into my mouth. “You…have me.” He’d sworn to retrieve me. And he had. I was right back in his control, right back to being his prisoner.

  “Yes, almost,” he replied. “And until I can touch you, I will continue to call you so that you do not slip away.”

  He did continue to call to me, sometimes sharply, when I began to drift. Every time, his voice and an incorporeal touch—more intimate and penetrating than words—brought me back. After what felt like an eternity, he reached me and placed a hand very lightly on my shoulder. The simple touch dragged me back to myself, as if surfacing from the depths of water. Pain flared, and I sucked in a ragged breath.

  Mzatal shifted to sit cross-legged beside me and laid his hand carefully on my cheek, easing the bruising and swelling of my face. His fingers came away bloody, and I realized that Rhyzkahl’s ring must have cut me when he’d backhanded me.

  “Tired,” I mumbled, easier now with my lips and face not so swollen. “Sleep.”

  “Not yet, Kara,” he said. “The sigils are still active.” He took a blanket offered by a faas, rolled it and positioned it under my head, then spread a second one over me, giving me at least that bit of coverage and dignity, for which I was deeply grateful. I’d had my fill of humiliation, but if he hadn’t provided a blanket, I wouldn’t have had the energy to ask for one.

  Mzatal placed both hands on my shoulder. Delicious warmth flowed through to me, and my breathing eased somewhat.

  “Foot massage…and cabana boys…peeled grapes…”

  A whisper of a smile touched his mouth. “I can have a faas feed you taba fruit.”

  A shudder went through me as the heat in my shoulder intensified. “No deal,” I murmured. “Idris…in loincloth….”

  “That is a possibility I will take under consideration,” he said. Idris blinked and straightened, casting a horrified look at Mzatal’s back. I wanted to laugh, but I knew it would hurt far too much. “You will, for the moment, settle for replenishment from tunjen juice, once I have straightened this shoulder,” Mzatal continued. He took my arm and straightened it into a more natural position. I tensed, expecting excruciating pain, but he had blocked it such that I felt little more than a dull ache and a pop as the shoulder shifted back into its proper configuration. “The binding that held you dislocated both of your shoulders,” he told me. “I must make adjustments on them before you can be moved.”

  I managed to focus on him. “Yeah…how’d you know…binding?”

  “The marks on your wrists,” he said after a moment. “And I witnessed it.”

  My eyes sought his. “How? Why…?”

  “Through Rhyzkahl,” he replied. “Through the blade. Xhan.”

  I struggled to process this.

  “It is how I knew when to call to you so that you would not lose yourself,” he said. “And the physical recall, regrettably, depended on Rhyzkahl’s removing your mark.”

  A shudder went through me, bringing with it new spasms of pain. It was several heartbeats before I could speak. “And that’s what…you always wanted…me, unmarked.”

  He shifted his hands slightly, seeking the worst of the damage. “Yes, though this was not a means I would have chosen.”

  Despair rose. Betrayed and tortured by Rhyzkahl, and now right back to being Mzatal’s prisoner again. More trapped than ever. I swallowed hard, still not daring to move my arm. I had no doubt there was plenty of muscle damage.

  Mzatal moved his hands to my forearm, covering the wound from the excision of Rhyzkahl’s mark. A strangled breath escaped me as memories of the essence-rending pain echoed. He exhaled forcibly and shook his head, as if he could feel it too. When he lifted his hands from me, he looked like he wanted to puke.

  I shuddered. “Bad…?”

  He answered with a nod and traced a pygah over us. “I am going to turn you to your other side,” Mzatal said. “But before that, you will drink juice.”

  I nodded, then gasped at the pain the movement brought. Gestamar moved forward and helped Mzatal get me into a semi-upright position, supporting my head
so that I could drink from the mug Mzatal held for me. I was so weak it was a struggle to drink. Juice dribbled onto my chest, and I let out a low cry of pain as it hit the raw sigils, burning and stinging.

  “More,” Mzatal urged when I tried to stop. “You must drink it all.” Wearily, I complied, though he was more careful not to let any spill. My stomach roiled as he and Gestamar eased me to my other side, and I fought the brief wave of nausea. Mzatal placed his hands on my other shoulder and sent healing warmth through it.

  I knew it would take him a while to get me fixed up totally, but then he’d finally have me right where he wanted me: a nice, whole summoner of his very own, one with grove affinity and a tie to the cataclysm. A wave of homesickness swept over me, briefly overshadowing the pain, and I closed my eyes to hold back tears. I wanted to be with the people who really cared.

  “Kara,” he murmured, as he manipulated the shoulder back into its joint. “Kara,” he repeated softly, and I knew he was calling to me as before.

  I exhaled a shaking breath, tears leaking. “Here.” Forever.

  He popped the shoulder into place, then gently shifted me to my back. “Yes. Here. I will not allow him to have you again.”

  I stayed silent, aching far beyond the physical. Gestamar moved forward to pick me up but, gesturing him back, Mzatal slid his arms beneath me, lifting as if I weighed no more than a feather. My head lolled against his shoulder, and I tried without success to hold back the whimper.

  I knew Mzatal was easing the pain as best he could, but there was only so much he could do in this moment. My shoulders were back in their sockets, but the damage was still there, and the sigils covering my torso were still raw and open.

  The disjointed thought of his nice white dress shirt floated in. “Mess up…your shirt.”

  Mzatal looked down at me, and that faint smile touched his lips again. “It is already done, so there is no purpose in dwelling upon it.”

  I expected him to take me to a sick room or some other area assigned for my use, but instead, he carried me upstairs and down a long corridor. He reached a set of double doors intricately carved with impossible figures like an Escher print, opened them without a touch and strode through. These were his rooms. There was no mistaking that. What the hell was going on? He passed through the outer chamber—simple and spacious, the far wall fully glass with a balcony beyond—and then into a bedroom: two adjacent walls of glass, big bed, three ilius coiled by the pillows, and it felt like Mzatal. He gently shooed the ilius off the bed as if they were cats, then waited as a faas spread a heavy quilt over the bed.

  “Kara, I am going to place you on your belly for a time,” he told me as he gently settled me on the bed and moved me into position. “I will begin with your back.”

  I held my breath, trembling, as the pain flared. He got me settled and my arms into the most comfortable possible position then adjusted the blanket over my legs and butt. I stared out at the setting sun, the sky alight in orange and purple and pink.

  Mzatal splayed both hands over my upper back, then jerked them away as if recoiling from a shock. A heartbeat later I felt his hands on my back again, trembling so slightly I wasn’t sure if I imagined it. Gradually the familiar warmth began to flow from his hands. With every heartbeat the pain faded and my breathing grew easier.

  I drifted as he worked, but not like before where I thought I might lose myself. This was more the not-quite-sleep I’d go into on those rare occasions when I could afford a full body massage. Not that this was anything like a full body massage, but the sense of deep relief and easing was the same as he seemed to literally pull the pain from me. I wanted to sleep, but that was still impossible.

  He lifted his hands from me, and I roused from my light stupor. Fully night beyond the glass now. “Is it working?” I mumbled. “Are you getting them off?” Already it was far easier to speak and breathe, though I was still a long way away from being pain free. But the sense of yuck and wrongness had definitely lessened.

  Mzatal didn’t answer for a moment, and when he did his voice carried none of its usual potency and richness. “Your back is complete,” he said, fatigue and faint quaver in his tone. “I will shift you now so that I may work on your front.”

  He rolled me as gently as possible. It still hurt, but it was so much less than before that I only cried out once. I looked up into his face as he tugged the blanket back up to my waist. His eyes lacked their usual bright intensity, and he held his mouth in a tight line as if holding back the urge to spew.

  He took a warm wet cloth from a faas and began carefully wiping the blood away, gaze flicking over the sigils, reading the patterns. The arcane cauterization of the blade left the cuts seeping—nothing like the bloody mess that would have resulted from a normal knife.

  An odd tug of worry went through me at his appearance. It didn’t make sense that I should be worried about the well-being of my captor, yet even so it was clear that he’d pushed himself to the brink of collapse to get me back. Whatever the hell his motives were, he’d saved me from a deeply horrible fate, and dealing with the sigils clearly sucked ass.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  Mzatal gave a slight nod as if to say, yes I’m just dandy, but then gave a faint grimace and shook his head. “I require a moment,” he said, voice sounding as normal as anyone else’s, which felt utterly wrong coming from him. “This is difficult.”

  “It’s cool.” I paused. “Thanks.”

  He knelt beside the bed, one hand resting lightly on my upper arm. He closed his eyes, bowed his head. I wondered if he was still drawing from Idris’s support diagram. I had the strangest desire to cover his hand with mine, though I was sure I still couldn’t move my arm to do so. Probably a lot better that way. I was fucked up in so many ways right now, and I knew my judgment was completely bonked. Hell, that’s how I’d ended up in this mess.

  Mzatal remained still and silent for what had to be at least five minutes. Finally he lifted his head and opened his eyes. They held a bit more of their normal vitality, though still far from their usual keen intensity. “Now I will finish,” he said. “And you will be able to sleep.”

  “Sleep…here?” I asked, brow creasing.

  “Yes, it is safest.” He set one hand on my upper chest and one on my abdomen, took a deep breath as if gathering the resources to begin again. “And under my eye.”

  “Right.” I exhaled a shaking sigh. “Under your eye. Guess I won’t be allowed to go on hikes to the grove.”

  His gaze shifted from my sternum to my face, silent.

  “Why didn’t you just…tell me?” I asked, voice cracking badly. “Why not…just say: Hey, Kara, he’s going to fuck you up?”

  The fatigue on his face seemed to deepen. He looked back to the sigils and began to work. “I intended to tell you as soon as I removed the mark, and you were clear of Rhyzkahl’s influence. Even then, you would likely not have believed me. But the information could have served you later, while you were at his palace.” He breathed slowly and somewhat unsteadily, and with each breath the pain from the sigils faded more. “He has never done anything this extreme before.”

  I let out a low sigh. He was right. I wouldn’t have believed him, but I sure as hell might have caught on to the undercurrent at Rhyzkahl’s if I’d had the warning.

  “I’m never going home again, am I?” I asked after a while.

  He looked visibly ill, though I was fairly sure it had nothing to do with my question and everything to do with the fucking sigils. “If you mean to Earth, then I cannot say for certain, though it is in the realm of possibility that you will not.”

  It was the answer I’d expected, but that didn’t make it hurt any less. “I’m unmarked now,” I said, watching his face carefully. “If I don’t agree to work for you, then why the hell would you possibly let me continue to live?”

  Mzatal shifted his hands to the very first sigil that had been carved upon me, and now the last one to be healed. What seemed like an eternity
ago, he’d asked me my heart’s desire. My life had depended on my answer then, and he echoed it back to me now. “Because, Kara Gillian, you have yet to reach your full potential.”

  I looked away. “You’re a slick motherfucker.”

  He exhaled, and in the next heartbeat searing heat flooded through all the sigils. My hands clenched in the sheet as he kept firm contact on me. A shudder went through him, and his breath hissed through his teeth. Finally the heat faded, and his hands slid from me. Gasping in relief, I took several deep breaths. The sense of wrong was gone now. I remained plenty fucked in other ways, but at least I didn’t feel as if I’d been dipped in sewage.

  Mzatal sank back to his heels, head bowed, trembling slightly as his hands dropped limply into his lap. Shock ran through me at the pained grimace on his face.

  Worry for him rose. “Mzatal?…Mzatal?”

  He remained perfectly still as my inexplicable worry increased. At long last he took a deep breath and lifted his head, though I had the sense it took incredible effort to do even that.

  His gaze touched mine. “Here,” he replied softly. “Now you sleep.”

  And I did.

  Chapter 20

  “Come, Rowan.” Jesral tugged on my leash, rousing me from my fitful doze. “You have work to do.”

  I drew back from him. “No, please.”

  The slim lord scowled. He gave the leash another sharp tug, then lifted a quirt and smacked it across my bare hip. I yelped and scrambled to my feet.

  “Come,” he repeated as he turned and began to walk. Heart pounding, I hurried after him. I knew he’d drag me if I didn’t.

  He pulled me to the center of Rhyzkahl’s summoning chamber, then disappeared into darkness, leaving me alone. Cold air sent gooseflesh rippling over my bare skin. Dim red light streamed from a sigil high above, and as I stood shivering, more sigils flared into life to surround me in a slowly spinning circle. Shying away from them, I cast a frantic gaze around. “Mzatal?”