Reluctant Adept: Book Three of A Clairvoyant's Complicated Life (42 page)

He barked out a humorless laugh. "All this." He jerked his fingerless hands at his ruined body. "I endured for you and your dearest love. And look!" He thrust his stump of a right hand toward the king. "The asshole still doesn't have a fucking clue!"

When my back crashed against a solid expanse and cool hands gripped my upper arms, I started, and it took me a moment of blurry-eyed confusion to realize I'd stumbled backward into Nathan.

"Steady, love," his cultured voice soothed as he whispered at my ear, his chin resting lightly on my left shoulder, the one opposite Red. "Just realized you're surrounded by monsters, have you? Here's a bit of advice: Stay true to your beliefs. Don't allow fear or guilt to sway you. It's what we seek, particularly when it comes to someone as virtuous as you."

He chuffed softly, his nose brushing the tender skin at my neck. "Listen to the monster at your back who owes you a turn. If you have the power to leave, take me with you and I'll owe you another."

"Lire … please. You loved me once," Vince said, his body again restored to the pinnacle of health. "If you care about me at all, give back the king. You've seen what he's capable of. He despises humans. If it were up to him, we'd all be exterminated. If you think he'll treat you differently because of your gifts, you couldn't be more wrong. He plans to use you. You know this. Please, just … go. Leave him here and go."

I stared at him, the final pieces slamming into place as my tears dried on my cheeks. "That's why you did it, isn't it? Azazel promised to ease your suffering, to make you whole again."

"Yes. The demon was the only one who had balls enough to help me. Everyone else was either too chickenshit to step up or too busy enjoying the show." He narrowed his eyes and snarled, "I'll
never
be that powerless again. Never. And I'll be damned if that motherfucker doesn't endure more than half of what he did to me!"

Blinking, I tried to swallow the wet knot in my throat. "Oh, babe. Don't you see? You already got that wish—both counts. But the real tragedy is that you've only succeeded in punishing yourself."

"What the fuck do you know?" he roared. "You haven't been maimed! You're not permanently disfigured!"

I flinched at the animosity in his words and, with a heaviness I'd not felt since my father's death, looked away from his contorted face, realizing now that Tíer had been right. There was nothing I could do to save him. Vince was as lost to me as he was to himself, and I had to live the rest of my life knowing that I'd failed him.

Biting my trembling lip, I removed and pocketed my gloves, grasped Nathan's right hand with my left, and then extended my free hand to the king. I could have sidestepped my TK past his shroud, but I didn't like the idea of grabbing him without permission.

Above Maeve's frantic ranting and Vince's furious expletives, I cleared my throat and then, with as much dignity as I could contrive, said, "We're leaving. Take my hand if you want to come with us."

As Azazel said something to Maeve about speaking thrice, Red tugged at my hair. "Hurry. Maeve is offering it her blood."

King Faonaín glanced down at my outstretched fingers as though he expected them to be festering with some communicable disease. When his narrow-eyed gaze snapped to mine, he studied me intensely before his hard expression yielded to one of frank astonishment. In a blink, the naked emotion vanished, replaced by his austere mien, but he stepped closer, reaching for my hand.

It's possible, if I'd lunged for him, I might have been fast enough to reestablish my telekinetic hold on his body and sidestep the three of us away, but Nathan's shout jerked my attention from the king in time to see Azazel's massive bulk clearing the abyss. With a ton of jagged-toothed razor-clawed monster about to crash down on us, I did the one thing I could think of that wouldn't be thwarted if Azazel had a shroud. I sidestepped my TK and pulled as much of the higher realm into the material plane as I could, forming an impenetrable bubble around us—similar, I hoped, to what the djinn had done in the conference room.

In my ridiculous millisecond-long fantasy, I visualized foiling Azazel's attack with my shimmering bubble and then waving a cheeky goodbye as I whisked the three of us to Tíereachán's side for my hero's welcome.

When Azazel's incomparable weight crashed down atop my meager shell, I hadn't figured on the pain.

The force of the demon's impact knocked the wind out of me, driving me to the floor as a thousand invisible daggers punched through to my core. If not for Tíer's impassioned shout in my mind along with Red's at my ear, I might have passed out. In spite of redoubling my telekinesis, my bubble shrank by a third. Unfortunately, Azazel's unrelenting hammering with its sledgehammer-sized fists didn't allow for recovery, much less rational thought.

I cried out, curled on the stone floor, clenched in agony, while Azazel turned my barrier into a punching bag. I struggled to remain conscious, investing all of my will in maintaining the integrity of my thin, shimmering shell. Blood from my nose, and possibly my ears, coated the stone beneath my cheek, mixing with my sweat to form a warm, sticky mess.

"It's killing her!" I heard Red cry out, although what he thought Nathan or the king could do about it, I had no idea.

Tíereachán shouted at me to hold on, they were trying break through the magically sealed door, but between the strength of that barricade and lack of available potential, it was proving to be slow going, even for their combined power. If I had the bandwidth to share Earth's stream with them without compromising our safety, I would have, but I scarcely possessed the wherewithal to parse his thoughts, much less risk siphoning off power from my core.

I lost all sense of time. There was me, the integrity of my circle, and the all encompassing pain brought with each of Azazel's unflagging concussive strikes. Through my sweat-blurred view, even I could see how this would end. As Azazel dealt yet another ferocious series of blows upon my gradually shrinking bubble, a victorious grin split its hideous lips. It wouldn't be long until my barrier became too small to contain the three of us. Already, Nathan and the king knelt on either side of my body, their heads bowed to avoid hitting the top of the bubble. Blood trickling from my nose, leaked into my mouth. I hung on to my composure with every shred of willpower I could rally, but a sob eked past my sticky lips.

As my gaze found Red, who knelt near my face, stroking my cheek, my unshed tears and sweat blurred my view of his fuzzy form. I knew, and I suspected he did too, that I hovered near my limit. The final salvo was coming, the one that would shatter my defenses, render me senseless, and leave the rest of them at Azazel's mercy.

I trembled at the memory of what those claws were capable of doing.

"Dearest Lire, let go," Red murmured, his voice as kind and soft as the paw he smoothed across my brow. "You have suffered enough for us. Faith will see us through. Our souls are not your burden to carry."

When Azazel's twin fists wound up for probably the last time, I heard Maeve's anguished cry as the king pushed Red aside, roughly lifted my head, and shoved something cool around my neck. Using the hair at the back of my head as a handle, he raised my face level with his, shook me like a naughty cat, and then swiped his fingers beneath my bloody nose before touching them to the object that weighed heavily against my collarbone.

The welcomed explosion of magic that roared through me, combined with the pain of Azazel's descending blows, shattered my barrier and tore the frantic scream from my throat: "Drustan, come!"

Maeve shrieked, "Don't kill her! Azazel, she has the collar!"

As Azazel's colossal fist streaked toward me, too late to avoid, I realized the inevitable. The king hadn't just bequeathed me the collar; he'd also given me a chance to share his grisly fate. If I couldn't speak my command, calling the Hunt was useless. Rendering me unconscious was a first step in that direction.

Out of the corner of my eye, something streaked across my vision, colliding with Azazel and diverting his strike. In a move too fast to appreciate, blood splattered my face as Azazel tossed Nathan's limp form to fall somewhere behind me with a dire thud. But the distraction provided me enough recovery time to reestablish my bubble, thicker and stronger this time, as Drustan's towering appearance next to me provided a much needed confidence boost.

Instead of hammering against my renewed circle, Azazel stepped back to sneer at the king, "Nicely played, Faonaín." It turned to me, grinning wide. "What will you do now, Adept? Order the Hunt to kill me?" The demon chortled, watching blithely as Drustan offered me his hand to help me stand, which I accepted after I'd rescued Red from the floor.

"Mistress, what command do you give the Hunt?" Drustan asked me, his rumbling voice once again coming to me from beneath his massive horned helm.

I frowned. "Don't call me that. You know how I feel about it. My name is Lire."

"As you wish," he replied. "Mistress
Lire
, what command do you give the Hunt?"

I scowled, all set to issue a rebuke, but decided I had more important things to sort out than our social footing.

"Go ahead," Azazel goaded. "Use them as your executioner. Order them to take my head and serve it upon one of the king's many gilded platters."

I took a breath, intending to do just that (minus the head-on-a-platter thing), but stopped shy of opening my mouth.

I could order the Hunt to kill or, even, to capture Azazel—but to what end? And what of the risks?

Capturing the demon would result in the Master of the Hunt dumping Azazel at my feet, like he'd done earlier when he'd delivered me to the king. And ordering the Hunt to kill Azazel wasn't much better. True, it would get the demon out of our hair, but temporarily since demons couldn't be killed. Their physical forms were conjured from the blood and magic of their summoners. If Drustan managed to destroy Azazel's current form, Maeve could resummon the demon anytime she wanted.

Then, there was the whole matter of potentially sentencing the Hunt to an eternal chase. If Azazel escaped through its portal, the Hunt would be forced to pursue the archdemon until it returned to this realm. And as long as Maeve didn't own the collar, it was to her advantage to keep the Hunt eternally occupied. No doubt she'd choose to skinny dip in the River Styx before summoning the demon to this realm again.

The bitter thought froze me in my lug-soled boots while Azazel stood little more than a yard away and taunted me. "So, little girl, nothing to say? No orders to give?" It laughed and beamed at the king. "How sad. Perhaps your ploy wasn't so shrewd after all, Faonaín. Humans really are best left as fodder."

As the demon wound up to strike yet another monumental blow against my barrier, I turned to the master and blurted, "Drustan, if you can, would you please take this demon, Azazel, and throw it into the River Styx?"

Instead of an order, I'd issued a request. And a wishy-washy one at that.

Drustan's body started, and when he looked down at me, canting his helm-clad head to the side in confusion, despair rose up to grip me by the throat.

Clearly, I'd misinterpreted his earlier comment about 'doing no less.'

Brilliant move, moron.

I'd been given
one
chance to catch Azazel by surprise and what did I do? I totally blew it by trying to eliminate Drustan's risk of an eternal hunt.

Next to me, the king uttered a furious grunt. Judging by his twisted expression and the set of his shoulders, he was about to bitch slap me into next week. Maeve, of course, burst out laughing and scoffed something about brainless humans and their belief in fairytales. But it was Azazel's shocked expression and the halt of its impending swing that truly broadcasted my failure.

Unlike Maeve, Azazel knew the Styx wasn't a myth. I could see it in the demon's abysmal eyes as its surprise turned to determination and it tensed its muscles for escape. It was about to disappear down its bolthole, taking Vince with it. At this point, even if I reissued my failed request and made it an order, it was too late. Azazel was already poised to flee. If I gave the command now, I'd sentence the Hunt to eternal pursuit for sure.

If I hadn't listened to my heart and wasted my one precious chance trying to be Miss Clever Pants, I could have delivered a major blow to the demon invasion, never mind save the three of us from a painful death. But
no
. I had to go all soft and give Drustan a way out, instead of just giving the freaking order, consequences be damned.

As Azazel turned to leap over the chasm, Drustan's shrill whistle blasted my ears, making every one of my abdominal muscles jolt in surprise.

Out of nowhere, a throng of gyrating hounds and half-a-dozen huntsman surrounded Azazel, each hunter spinning hundreds of whisper thin, spectral filaments that whipped from their fingers to stick to the demon's face, feet, and arms. With a roar that shook the ground, Azazel swatted at the nebulous fibers, swinging its hands through the air as though the strands were a swarm of killer bees, each one of them issuing a painful, debilitating sting.

In mere seconds, the blizzard of silky threads had coated the demon and pinned its arms to its sides. Blinded, it managed two stumbling steps before the substance tripped up its feet. The cocooned eight-foot behemoth fell to the ground, issuing a teeth-rattling tremor that had me flailing my arms for balance.

Drustan vanished from my side and reappeared a tick later astride his warhorse, a few feet from his circled huntsmen. Alongside his black spectral steed stood a sleek, riderless mare with a mercurial coat that made a Lipizzaner look like a flea-bitten carthorse.

With a unified, orchestrated movement, the standing huntsmen swooped their arms into the air, using their attached filaments to catapult Azazel's silk-wrapped body onto the silvery gray's saddled back. Although the burden looked capable of crushing the lean animal, she hardly shifted her elegant, long-legged stance under the demon's considerable weight. Before I had time to marvel at this, or at the efficiency of their capture, Drustan angled his horse in my direction.