Touch of the Demon

  Rhyzkahl stalked down the tunnel, a glowing mass of azure potency already prepared in his right hand. He stopped a pace beyond my barrier, his eyes first on Mzatal, then on me.

  Shit shit shit. My heart pounded as I saw him, felt him again. Terrible memory whispered to me, the icy mask of his expression as he touched the blade to my flesh. I forced the images down, gritted my teeth, and called upon the grove for more energy to reinforce the seal.

  Amkir stopped a few feet behind Rhyzkahl and folded his arms across his chest, looking as hard and angry as ever. Just stay there, asshole.

  Rhyzkahl lifted his left hand to the barrier and began to work at unweaving it. For all its flimsy appearance, I knew the damn thing held a lot of power, and, to my relief, he wasn’t able to push straight through it. Yet I also knew it wouldn’t stop him for long. Sweat dripped down my sides with the struggle to maintain hold as he picked away at it. I continued to assess and reinforce my construct, but I realized my inexperience left inherent weaknesses in the shield, like a steel door hinged with duct tape.

  Rhyzkahl lowered his head, gaze penetrating me. “You are mine,” he said, his voice clear and resonant.

  “The fuck I am!” I called out as I braced myself to hold the seal. “I belong to myself, asshole.”

  “This is a new trick for a summoner,” he said, working his hand into the barrier, his aura radiating angry, focused confidence. “Mzatal has trained you well for me.” His eyes narrowed as he sneered. “Do you spread your legs as readily for him as you did for me, chikdah?”

  “Name-calling and slut-shaming?” I asked. “Is that the best you can do?” I struggled to keep the power flowing despite the growing fatigue from the effort. “Would it bother you if I’d slept with him?” I knew that it would, and right then anything that might distract him from unweaving my barrier seemed like a good idea. “Would it piss you off if I told you he sucked on my tits then bent me over the table in his chamber and fucked me?”

  Rhyzkahl’s aura flared, striking me like wind off the desert. Oh, shit. Baiting him had refocused rather than distracted him. Bad move.

  “Kara!” Mzatal called out in a warning, but it was too late for me to take the words back. Rhyzkahl bared his teeth, gave a sharp cry of anger, and tore at the barrier.

  I backed hurriedly. Damn it. “Boss!” I called out. “No time left!”

  “Ten heartbeats,” he said through clenched teeth.

  “Don’t have it!” I swallowed heavily and took another step back.

  “Channel everything you can into the barrier,” Mzatal said. “Then move behind me.” In a furious swirl of his hands, he slurred the last three sigils together and called for the union of the rings.

  “It’s going. Shit!” I felt as well as saw my barrier disintegrate as Rhyzkahl ripped through it. I scrambled to move fully behind Mzatal.

  Rhyzkahl lifted his hand the instant the barrier cleared and made a vicious cast at the shikvihr. Mzatal swept his arm to ignite the pattern even as the attack struck it.

  The shikvihr flared blindingly, then collapsed on itself with an earsplitting crack and a concussive jolt that threw me to my hands and knees. I gasped in pain and shock, watched a drop of blood from my nose splat on the stone beneath me as if in slow motion. Mzatal staggered back in the aftershocks, clearly off balance and at a disadvantage. I lifted my head and saw Rhyzkahl look from Mzatal to me, then…hesitate. My gut told me he didn’t want to hurt me. Not that I had any illusions about it being because he gave a shit about me personally, but because he didn’t want to damage his “tool.” Cop-mode set in, looking for the advantage and finding it. Maybe.

  I scrambled to my feet and staggered to Mzatal. Rhyzkahl stepped forward as he called potency to his hand again, beautiful features hardened to ugliness by what could only be hatred.

  “Kara,” Mzatal said, his breath coming heavily, but his voice strong. “Get behind me.”

  “The hell I will,” I said. “I don’t stand a chance without you, and he needs me alive.” I only shook a little as I pulled Mzatal’s left arm over my shoulder and across my chest in the same way he’d held me when I faced Vahl. Except that now I was a human shield. And though I sure as hell wasn’t ready to die, it also positioned me such that Mzatal could easily kill me if things got even worse. Going to Rhyzkahl was not an option.

  Dissonance abruptly flooded me, as though every cell in my body suddenly awoke and vibrated at an uncomfortable frequency. I nearly gave in to the impulse to pull away from Mzatal, then stopped as a strange familiarity wound through the discomfort. “What the hell?” I said through gritted teeth, eyes locked on Rhyzkahl as he stood statue-still. Hopefully the human shield bit was causing him to reconsider his strike tactics. “Mzatal?” My hands gripped his arm. “Why does this feel so weird?”

  Mzatal tightened his arm across me. “I do not know,” he said, his breath hissing as though in pain. “But I…feel the grove.”

  Even as he said it I could almost, almost, see the interplay of my grove energy and Mzatal’s aura, like trying to see something through a fogged window. Rhyzkahl lowered his head and pulled more potency to him. He’d obviously figured out some way to get around my oh-so-noble defense and didn’t plan on giving us leisure time to figure out this dissonance.

  The familiarity abruptly clicked into place. The sigil series on the beach, the discordance I’d experienced there. “Boss,” I gasped. “It’s like a series out of alignment.”

  He inhaled sharply, and in the next instant I felt him mentally shift, even as I reached through the fog to him, as if tuning a ring of sigils and clasping Mzatal’s mental hand all at once. The dissonance faded, and though I felt that more harmony waited just beyond my perception, I couldn’t reach for it right then. Adjustment to the overlap of my grove-fueled power with Mzatal’s potency required all my focus. “We can do this together,” I told Mzatal with newfound confidence as I leveled my gaze at Rhyzkahl.

  Mzatal pulled me tightly to him. “Kara,” he said, the richness of that single word conveying his understanding of what I’d done—what we had done—on all levels.

  Rhyzkahl cast a strike at us, and Mzatal deflected it as if it had been no more than a wiffleball. I drew more power from the grove, intaking breath at the ease with which it flowed into me, into us. I shared that power with Mzatal, offering him a deep reservoir to use as needed. I felt as much as saw the shimmering potency coalesce in Mzatal’s right hand.

  He extended his hand before us, opening his fingers wide as he channeled power into a wall of interwoven green, gold, and purple strands of light, erected between us and Rhyzkahl. Breathing deeply, Mzatal exerted arcane pressure on the wall, pushing.

  I smiled as Mzatal forced Rhyzkahl back a step, and I opened myself more to the grove, feeling the murmurs of its semi-sentience. Rhyzkahl’s gaze slid over me, and a ripple of sensation set my skin itching faintly, as though the sigil scars had goose bumps. The memory of the torture rose again, and I dove into the connection with the grove, immersing fully. Power flickered in sparkling green iridescence over my skin and through my being as I focused, added a layer to the arcane wall, and pushed with Mzatal.

  Rhyzkahl fought to move against the dual force, face hard and determined, neck muscles and braced stance revealing the extreme physical effort that accompanied his resistance. Half-step by grueling half-step, he retreated into the tree tunnel, unable to stand fast in the face of our united effort.

  “I will have you,” Rhyzkahl growled, the words carrying to us and the mountains beyond.

  The threat speared me, igniting pure hatred like a fountain of flame from my gut to my head. “Never!” I shouted. The grove power scorched through me, welcome and unhindered. Mzatal channeled it into a devastating strike that lanced forth in a scintillating burst of green and gold. Rhyzkahl took the blast fully in the chest, and his strangled cry twisted with the sharp crack as it took him down.

  I bared my teeth, feeling power like a vast, still sea respond to my deep need
as he sprawled to his back. Now I had him at my control. I wasn’t the one writhing in pain this time. Power suffused me. I bore down on him with the grove energy, willing him to suffer. Willing him to die.

  I leaned back against Mzatal, smiling as I watched Rhyzkahl struggle to shift from the supine position. Amkir stepped toward him, and I raised a barrier of shimmering grove potency between the two lords. Rhyzkahl was mine. I opened the floodgates to the sea of power and, through the grove awareness, I knew what Rhyzkahl felt: invisible pressure closing in on him, crushing, taking his breath. I tasted his first flickers of fear, and my smile widened. I dimly felt Mzatal telling me I had to release Rhyzkahl, but the song of the grove washed it aside, raw and wild and torrential. My breath came in shuddering gasps as power seared its way through me. Vahl sought to enter the tree tunnel, to reach the Tormenter, but I held the grove inviolate, allowing none to enter. No one would touch him but me.

  I heard Mzatal shouting my name, but the words burned away as soon as they reached me. He shouted to Vahl, to Ilana, to Amkir, but my focus was on the vile sack of shit who even now could barely draw a breath.

  A sudden resistance slid between the Tormenter and my power, blocking my vengeance. My eyes narrowed and I pushed harder.

  Kara! Kara, you must let go!

  Awareness hit me like a slap. The resistance was Mzatal as he fought to keep me from killing Rhyzkahl. No. He deserves to die!

  Kara!

  Mzatal called to me on all levels as he maintained the shield on Rhyzkahl. The loss of even one lord would throw all of the arcane perilously out of balance. Turek had shown me, and Mzatal sought to remind me now. Mzatal. I realized with horror that I was about to hurt him as well. Aghast, I hurriedly sought to disengage, but the power rushed through me in torrents, responding only sluggishly to my efforts. Mzatal swayed behind me, his arm locked across my chest. Rhyzkahl went still. Amkir stood in the tunnel beyond the fallen lord and my barrier, face flushed and anger palpable.

  Vahl strode toward me, but I had no time to spare for him in my desperate bid to curtail the flow. His eyes narrowed, then he drew back his arm and slugged me hard.

  White pain exploded in my face. The power dropped away from me like water from a burst balloon, and I sagged heavily in Mzatal’s grasp. As the world spun around me, I thought I heard Mzatal yell to Vahl to get Rhyzkahl out of our grove.

  Our grove.

  Mzatal went to his knees, breathing heavily and still holding me. “Kara?”

  I groaned. Pain throbbed in my jaw, and everything dipped and tilted around me. “Here. Ugh.”

  His hand came up to cradle my face, easing the worst of the throbbing and the spinning-world effect. “Rhyzkahl is gone.”

  Somehow I managed a woozy smile. “And you’re here,” I slurred.

  He looked down at me. “We are here.”

  I gave him a radiant smile.

  And then I passed the fuck out.

  Chapter 37

  I woke about a thousand years later, certain that someone had driven a truck through the bed and over me a few dozen times during the night.

  Ilana chimed and stroked hair back from my face. I gave her a faintly puzzled smile, while I tried to remember why I ached from head to toe and why Ilana would be so close and attentive. “What happened?”

  “Rhyzkahl sought you yesterday,” she said as she brushed her hand over my forehead.

  Rhyzkahl. All of it flooded back to me. “We won,” I said.

  She inclined her head. “Yes, you did. Rhyzkahl was denied.”

  I exhaled. I knew I should be elated at the victory, but tension coiled in the pit of my stomach with the memory of exultation in sharing with Mzatal and then my subsequent loss of control of the grove energy. “And Mzatal? Is he all right?”

  She smiled. “Until only a moment past, Mzatal has not left your side, and then only to attend a matter that could not be left longer.”

  “But he’s all right?” I asked again.

  She smiled. “He is depleted, though otherwise well.”

  A feeling of ease and comfort stole through me. “Now I feel bad for waking up after he left,” I confessed.

  The syraza chimed in laughter. “You woke because he left, precious one.”

  “Hunh?”

  “There was a peace upon you while he was here,” she told me, “and you slept deeply and well. When he left, you reached for that peace like a blanket that had slipped from you, found it missing and so, awoke.”

  The truth of it wound through me, and I smiled wryly. “He’s still going to be annoyed that he wasn’t here.”

  “Yes, he will be,” she replied, violet eyes alight with amusement. “Take the opportunity to bathe, and you will feel more refreshed when he returns.” Her head tilted, and her eyes unfocused briefly. “He is still with Idris.”

  I considered everything that had happened in the past few days, and my smile slipped a bit. “It scared me that I liked him so much.” I grimaced. “When we argued, it was like I lost something I couldn’t replace. I wondered if maybe it was just Stockholm Syndrome, where a prisoner begins to have, um, positive feelings for their captor, but now…” I shook my head.

  The syraza leaned forward. “What you name ‘Stockholm Syndrome’ originates here.” She touched my forehead with a long finger. “Determine if the origin of your ‘like’ of him is here,” she tapped my forehead again, “or here,” she tapped my chest above my heart, “or somewhere beyond both.”

  “Before yesterday, I was too confused to know.” I sat up and dragged my hand through my hair. “Something happened when we faced Rhyzkahl.” I paused, considered. “I’m not confused anymore. It’s not about weighing pros and cons in my head, and it’s not a weird falling-in-love thing. It’s…” I trailed off as I realized I didn’t have words for it.

  “Beyond both,” Ilana said quietly. “Find the balance between the head, the heart, and that which lies beyond.”

  “Easy for you to say,” I said with a smile. “But right now I’m going to take a nice long bath. Deep thinking will be a lot easier once I start feeling human again.”

  I headed to the bath and lounged for awhile as I processed the events of yesterday. We’d beaten Rhyzkahl. Holy shit. We beat him. My argument with Mzatal seemed so trivial now, though I knew the core of it still mattered tremendously. I remained a prisoner because of the agreement, yet it was hard to even bring up the same feelings about it. A different light had been shed on the trust between us. I couldn’t explain it, but right now I knew I trusted him as much as I could trust anyone. More really.

  My hands were nicely pruney by the time I dragged myself out of the bath-pool. I toweled off, slipped on a robe, and headed out, then paused at the sight of Mzatal standing in his usual spot on the balcony, looking out, hands behind his back.

  I took a deep breath, padded out in my bare feet. I stood beside him, not saying anything.

  “I brought you to these rooms so that I could watch over you,” Mzatal said quietly. He exhaled a low breath. “And, I wanted you close.”

  It took me a few seconds to figure out what he was talking about. Then I realized. Oh, right. I moved out. Technically, this wasn’t my bedroom anymore.

  He shifted and splayed his hands on the rail. “It cannot be like it was.”

  “Well, I fucking hope not,” I replied, with perhaps a hint of acid in my voice. But then I sighed and shook my head. “I hope it can be better.”

  “It already is,” he said. “So much has clarified.”

  I looked over at Mzatal. I knew much had clarified for me, especially with regard to how much I trusted him. But how much had clarified for him? And, if so, in what way?

  His left hand dipped into a pocket then placed a ring on the rail. My ring. The one I’d thrown against the wall. The lovely blue stone had a long crack in it.

  I felt a flush rise and opened my mouth to apologize for treating his gift so poorly, but he spoke first.

  “While I was on the balco
ny after leaving you in the workroom yesterday,” he said, voice low and resonant, “I had begun considerations for the restructuring of our agreement.”

  I picked up the ring, ran my thumb over the fracture in the stone. “What sort of restructuring?” I asked, stomach suddenly knotted with tension.

  He turned fully to me. “I would ask you to trust me as I trust you, and terminate the agreement altogether. It is a limiting factor.”

  The tension dropped away so completely that for an instant I felt weightless. “I’d like that,” I managed to say through the near-dizzying relief. Mzatal enfolded me in his arms and bent his head over mine as he let out a long breath, murmuring something in demon.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “Words of gratitude are not needed,” he replied. “I cannot give you what is already yours. But I accept them and offer mine to you. Dak lahn.” He pulled away only far enough to take the ring from my hand. “I will have the stone replaced.”

  I shook my head. “No. Leave it. I want the reminder, corny symbolism and all.” I smiled and held my right hand up, palm down for him. A smile touched his mouth as he slid the ring onto the middle finger.

  I tilted my head back to look up at him. “We kicked Rhyzkahl’s ass, didn’t we?”

  His eyes crinkled as his smile widened. “Yes. And well.” But his smile faded a heartbeat later. “Kara,” he said.

  Exhaling, I grimaced. “I know. It got out of control,” I said quietly. “I couldn’t stop it. I almost—”

  “Yes, but you did not,” he interrupted. “It is not typical for a summoner to channel such energies and was too much without experience or training.”

  I thought about that for a moment. “I had something similar on Earth, I mean as far as the big wild energy.” My gaze went to the distant sea. “My car went into a river, and I couldn’t get out. Thought I was going to drown. Then I felt the river and somehow used it to bust my way out of the car. That big power saved my ass there, too, but I never actually had control over it to lose.”