Vengeance of the Demon: Demon Novels, Book Seven (Kara Gillian 7) (42 page)

He hesitated, no doubt wondering if I was up to it, then climbed in the back. “Get us home in one piece.”

I rolled my eyes. “Yeah yeah yeah.”

My cockiness aside, it took every remaining shred of my focus to navigate through the affected area. Debris was everywhere, and gaping fissures split the pavement in places. I gave emergency vehicles right of way and spent minutes at a time waiting to drive the next leg After a three block drive that felt as if it took an eternity, we rolled out of the devastated area. Like night and day. No gradual dissipation of energy and destruction as in an explosion. A sharp line of demarcation. Even some buildings were half wrecked and half pristine. Un-fucking real.

I flicked on the headlights though it was only dusk. Too many distracted drivers on the street.
What the hell will we wake up to tomorrow?
The same scenario played out in at least one driveway of every street—families cramming belongings into vehicles, piling in, and getting the hell away from demonic monsters and bizarre destruction. Panic. Common sense. I couldn’t blame them.

I glanced in the rearview mirror, and a measure of my dark mood lifted. Bryce had his arm around Jill as she dozed against his chest. She needed the attention and consideration that Zack wouldn’t or couldn’t give. Bryce
cared
.

I found classical music in Pellini’s collection and let the soothing strains of Mozart accompany us home.

I parked the truck, got out, and opened the door for Bryce. He gave me a nod of thanks then slid out with Jill in his arms and carried her toward her mobile home. No more need for her to stay in the house. She’d stopped being a target the instant the bean—Ashava—was born.

I watched them go, grateful again to have Bryce with us. He would give Jill the care she desperately needed right now. I had zero worry that he’d push anything with her. He was being
there
for her, and that was enough for him because he loved her, and it wasn’t about what he could get out of the situation. I wasn’t even sure if
he
knew he loved her, but I did. I wasn’t blind.

The door to the mobile home closed softly behind the two. My own home beckoned, and I hauled myself up the steps and inside. My phone rang with Pellini’s ringtone seconds after I kicked the door shut behind me. “Hey,” I answered. “Just made it home.”

“Good, fire up the laptop,” he said, tense and rushed and with an underlayer of essence-deep weariness. “I’m emailing you a bunch of pictures. You are going to straight up shit a cat sideways. Idris did.”

“Idris shit a cat?” I flopped onto the sofa and opened the laptop. “Where are you?”

“Sideways. We’re in the Ruthie’s Smoothies parking lot. You remember the bone itch we got when Knight grabbed you?”

“More of a buzz for me, but yeah,” I said. “Definitely caused by something by Ruthie’s? What is it?”

“I don’t know
what
we have. Pics are in the first email I just sent you. A couple of big crystal things with Kadir’s symbol on them. Force field or wards won’t let anyone close. Except me.”

I opened the email. “Holy . . . shit.” Big? More like humongous. Two clear crystal shards, jagged at the top, six feet in diameter and fifteen feet tall. One in front of the dry cleaners, and the other in the parking lot in front of Ruthie’s with a Subaru wagon perched precariously atop it. “Sounds like the bone buzz has something to do with our connection with Kadir.” That was
not
a pleasant thought.

“Seems so,” Pellini said. “But that’s the tame news. Check out the video in the next email.”

I watched it all the way through, then again. Watched it a third time as cold lead filled my bowels. Four feet off the ground to the right of the crystals, a crack of white light widened into an anomaly the size of a Frisbee. People screamed, talked, shouted near the camera. Between one frame and the next, Carl
—Xharbek—
blinked in, worked his hands around it. Shrank it, sealed it, vanished. End video.

No wonder Idris shit a cat sideways “An anomaly.” My voice quavered. “On Earth.” The first, as far as I knew. I had an ugly feeling it wouldn’t be the last.

“Idris said we were lucky it was a small one.” Pellini didn’t sound like a man who felt lucky. “We’re heading out to the node. Nothing else we can do here.”

“I’ll keep my phone on me,” I said. With a weary goodbye, he hung up.

I clicked on his third email—an aerial view of downtown Beaulac—then stared at the impossible image. The area of devastation wasn’t roughly circular or any other shape the mind could accept as possible through natural means. The police department and its valve sat smack dab in the middle of an eleven-pointed star a half mile across, with lines of destruction as clear as if they’d been stamped out with a cookie cutter.

Heartsick, I closed the laptop. There’d be time the next day . . . or the next . . . to see what the media, doomsayers, and government did with
this
. Demons. Arcane bombs. Untouchable crystals. Star-shaped earthquakes. Anomalies. Teleporting people. Baby dragons.

Baby.
Shit
. Knight and the twelfth. Ashava, not the sigil on my back. I’d forgotten all about that. Seemed trivial compared to everything else. I retrieved my journal from the bedroom, sat at the kitchen table, and flipped to the dog-eared page with Knight’s warning.

Twelve. The twelfth is a radical game changer. Spawned of fierce cunning. Beauty and power exemplified. Beware the twelfth.

My heart pounded as I read it. It took on a whole different meaning when referring to a person rather than my sigil. But Ashava
had
connected to the twelfth sigil at the PD. I found the page with the invocation Szerain spoke when he created the twelfth sigil on my lower back the night of the plantation battle. It had been part of saving me from becoming Rowan—weaponized summoner and thrall of the Mraztur. But clearly there was more to it.

Vdat koh akiri qaztehl.

Infinite resources to the all-powerful demonic lord unfettered.

I flipped back and forth between the two pages as I drew the clues together. Trembling, I slammed the journal closed and shoved it across the table.

Eleven plus one is twelve.

All-powerful demonic lord.

Not the sigil. Not Szerain. Eleven lords. Plus one.

The twelfth lord.

“And her name is Ashava,” I murmured.

Ramifications jangled in terrifying cacophony. Ashava was the child of a demahnk and a human. Did the same hold true for the other lords? Eleven demahnk. Ptarls. Guardians. Advisors.

Parents?

Demonic lord unfettered
. Ashava. Perhaps she’d be able to think what she wished without fear of excruciating headaches. I already knew she could shapeshift. My heart lurched. Were all of the lords shapeshifters bound to a single form? And, if so, was it the Demahnk Council who had crippled them? Their own offspring? I brought my hand to my mouth, sickened.

And Szerain. He had to have known when he forged the sigil on my lower back that Ashava was a demonic lord. Was the sigil to help him, to help her, or to bind her into an alliance before she was even born? If he knew what she was, that meant he also knew his own parentage—which seemed impossible in light of the headache punishment for forbidden knowledge. But . . . maybe that was part of the reason the demahnk exiled and imprisoned him on Earth. Uncontrollable.

Too much to think about, and no sure answers at hand. I went to the sink and ran cold water, splashed my face and pressed cool fingers over my eyes.
Let it go for now. Take a hot shower. Get some sleep. Lay it all out tomorrow.
Yeah, deal with it later. Along with everything else.

Exhaustion gripped me as I dried my face and hands, so much that I almost missed the glow in the backyard. Frowning, I peered out the window. It emanated from the nexus—which had
never
glowed before. That much I was sure of.

I slipped out the back door and down the steps. The silvery pattern in the obsidian emitted a soft and natural radiance, like a myriad of luminous fish at the surface of a dark sea. A dozen feet from the slab, I halted and looked down, skin prickling. A five-foot wide swath of trampled grass ringed the nexus, with yet another five feet of untouched grass between slab and swath—as if someone had paced around and around the nexus for hours in a defined orbit, never straying from it.

My pulse quickened as I looked toward the far side of the slab. Standing with his back to me was a barefoot figure wearing nothing but a simple white shift. Tall. Broad-shouldered. White-blond hair.

Rhyzkahl.
Like I needed this shit. Baring my teeth, I drew my gun. Not a pointless gesture with him diminished.
If he’s still diminished
, I silently warned myself. “What the
fuck
are you doing here?”

Tensing, he spun as if startled—which made no sense considering the lordly mind-reading talent. He eased as he took in the sight of me then
sauntered
in my direction with the unhurried pace of a second hand around a clock. Yet I didn’t miss how he maintained his distance from the nexus and never stepped out of the band of trampled grass. Wary but curious, I backed away from the swath and kept my gun trained on him.

With a quarter of the circle remaining between us, he stopped and glared at me. Potency burns marred the left side of his face and hand, and the glow from the nexus revealed soot and grass stains on his silky white robe, along with a few streaks that appeared to be dried blood. His hair was still finger-length, but more sexy-tousled than bed-head now. Though my own attraction to him was non-existent to the point of revulsion, I could appreciate that he would always have that God Of Sex vibe to him.

“You have been industrious,” Rhyzkahl said with a disdainful flick of his fingers toward the new and improved nexus.

“You like?” I said, smile tight. “I’m taking an art class at the Vo-Tech. That’s my senior project.” I angled my head. “Why are you tromping around my backyard like a homeless romance-novel cover model?”

Frustration skimmed over his face, but he schooled it into a haughty sneer. “Why should I not? I find this mockery of a nexus amusing.”

I lowered my gun and holstered it. “You want to take it for a spin?” I asked, watching him. “Be my guest. Go ahead and hop on up there.”

His lifted his right hand as though he wanted to strangle me with it, fingers stiff, and palm marred by a deep burn. “I choose not to.”

“Pussy,” I said.

Rhyzkahl dropped his hand as he grappled for a response. “I cannot,” he finally said through gritted teeth.

I folded my arms over my chest and paced beside the swath toward where he stood. Two planets in different orbits. “You can’t touch the nexus,” I stated, “but you can’t leave it either.” I stopped and regarded him as a theory coalesced. “Mzatal trapped you.”

Rhyzkahl put on his scowly-haughty mask, but his eyes betrayed his fear. “He is anathema,” he spat.

“To you, yes.” I looked toward the woods and the pond trail then back to the orbit of trampled grass. “Mzatal’s gone hard core and kicked you out of the demon realm.” I said, piecing clues together. Rhyzkahl’s shoulders stiffened, confirming my hunch. Tapping my chin with one finger, I considered. “Because you weren’t pulling your weight?” I shook my head. “No. You were fucking up the balance.
That’s
why your realm kept getting more than its share of anomalies.” I chuckled as a muscle worked in his jaw. “You were like a black hole warping the fabric of space and time with no Zakaar to stabilize you, so Mzatal drove you to the valve,” I gestured to the potency burns on his face and hand, “and chained you here.” Not only that, Rhyzkahl couldn’t read me. Of that, I was certain. “Do I have it right? Mzatal gave me a pet lord?”

Rhyzkahl took a threatening stride to the edge of his orbit. “I am
not
your pet,” he snarled, vein throbbing in his forehead when I didn’t flinch.

“You just need to be tamed, that’s all,” I said with a soft laugh, delighted at the outrage and denial that bristled in his stance. I was probably enjoying this
way
too much, but I needed it after the day I’d endured. I glanced up at the sky. “It’s supposed to rain later tonight. If you’re a good boy, I might give you a blanket.”

Rhyzkahl made an inarticulate sound as I walked away, but I didn’t look back. As soon as Idris and Pellini came home, we were going to barricade that damn valve by the pond. I didn’t care how exhausted we were. No more surprise guests.

I continued inside and to the bathroom, stripped off my clothing and,
finally
, indulged in the searing hot shower I’d longed for since my arrest. I shampooed my hair three times, scrubbed every inch of my body with the loofah, then closed my eyes, stood under the spray, and let my mind empty.

Eventually, I felt clean and renewed on a number of levels. After drying, I wrapped a towel around me and padded to my room, pulled on shorts and a plain t-shirt then descended into my basement.

Idris’s duffle lay in a crumpled heap on the floor beside the futon, along with a pile of dirty clothing. Ryan’s belongings occupied the dresser and table, but I had a feeling they’d never be retrieved. Szerain still maintained the Ryan persona, but for how long? A pang of loss whispered through me. The Ryan I’d laughed and cried with was gone forever.
I never got the chance to say goodbye.

The cigar box that held my summoning implements rested on the oak table. I opened the lid, let the comforting scents wash over me, then lifted the knife out. Edge keen and bright, hilt as familiar as my own hand. For over a decade my identity had been wrapped up in the contents of this box and everything it represented.

Summoner. Arcane practitioner. Powerful. Special.

I replaced the knife in the box, closed it and carried it upstairs. In the laundry room, Fuzzykins lay on her side in a nest of towels while her kittens eagerly nursed. She gave me a soft
brrrump
and only one dubious look when I pulled down the ladder to the attic. As soon as things settled a bit I’d coordinate with Idris to send the cats to the demon realm.

Though my last trip to the attic had been several years ago, the single light bulb still worked and filled the dusty space with clear, white light. My attic had a sturdy floor and shelves that held a miscellany of items once deemed worth saving and mostly never touched again. I found an empty spot next to a stack of old board games with missing pieces and tucked the cigar box into it. No grief or regret or sadness welled. The box and its contents were mementos worth treasuring, but I was more than a mere summoner or arcane practitioner. I had skills and savvy and experience. Powerful. Special. I was
Kara Gillian
, damn it.