“You’ll get her back,” I said fiercely. “We’ll fix everything and take down Xharbek, and you’ll get her back.”
Jill squared her shoulders, pulling her composure together to give me a nod. “I have faith in you most of all.”
“You fucking bitch,” I muttered as my eyes filled with tears. Sniffling, I blotted them with my sleeve. “That was really low.”
She laughed. “Well, I do. You’re Kara Gillian, the Supreme Arcane Commander, Mistress of the Nexus.” Her eyes danced. “And of a certain demonic lord.”
“You did not just go there.”
“I’m sorry, how long have you known me?”
“Not nearly long enough.”
Chapter 8
Rhyzkahl was still in his house with the door closed when I returned to the nexus. Fine with me. The less distraction, the better.
Though I’d spent countless hours searching for Ashava and the others, this time a flutter of anticipation accompanied me as I stepped onto the slab. I had Xharbek’s energy signature now, as well as my suspicion that he’d narrowed down where they were. If I could find where his nasty self had left the most footprints, I could focus my own search.
I danced the shikvihr, tracing the swoops and arcs of the luminescent sigils with practiced grace until seventy-seven of them floated around me—seven full rings, bright and potent thanks to the augmentation and lord-like focus of the nexus. Though I was able to create floating sigils here on the nexus, mastery of all eleven rings would give me the ability to do so everywhere else on Earth. Floaters offered a huge advantage in speed and intensity over chalk diagrams or glyphs traced without substance in the air. Moreover, each completed ring came with an increase in power. Unfortunately, my training with Mzatal had come to a screeching halt after the battle at the Farouche Plantation, and I had zero idea when it might resume, if ever. With Mzatal closed off and the worlds at war, it was all too possible he might never train me again. And the only other available lord was not someone I wished to train with.
My gaze slid to the little house in Rhyzkahl’s orbit. No fucking way did I want him training me, but there was more than one way to skin a cat. Part of the upgraded security system included surveillance cameras that monitored every inch of the nexus and Rhyzkahl’s prison. And he practiced the shikvihr for hours every day.
A smile stretched my mouth. Learning the sigils from security videos was far from ideal, but it was better than the nothing I had otherwise. Time to take matters into my own hands. After all, no way would I settle for less than the complete ritual.
In the meantime, even a partial shikvihr augmented my arcane skills. Every day I repeated the ritual, using the borrowed power of the nexus like a robotic suit to move my arcanely paralyzed body. Sigil by sigil, I re-carved the mental pathways that made me a summoner, and sigil by sigil, I reminded my essence of who and what I truly was.
Angus McDunn had left a seed of my talent behind when he’d stripped the rest. The nexus and my work with the shikvihr were its fertilizer and super-grow lights, allowing me to regain in weeks what might have otherwise taken years.
With a sweep of my arm, I ignited the rings and drank in the power. They flared then settled into a slow spin around me, seven concentric rings. Using my lord-sight perspective, the flows of Earth potency leaped into a colorful other-worldly hologram around me. Here on the nexus, I sensed them like a network of luminous arteries that spanned the globe. I was able to easily decipher their pulses, detect and smooth turbulence, and identify affected locations. Off the nexus, I could barely even grasp the concept—clear evidence of the vast difference between humans and the demonic lords. Though the lords were half human, their other half came from the nearly godlike demahnk.
Now that I was connected to the flows, I recalled the feel of Xharbek, used it as a focus and methodically eliminated areas where I sensed nothing of his signature, like crossing off states on a map. I continued to painstakingly exclude sections of flows until I was left with perhaps a dozen possibilities, places that flickered with Xharbek’s arcane footprint. Faint, but there.
So far so good. Now to search within those areas. Though Ashava and Zack had strong arcane signatures, I limited my search to Szerain’s since I knew his best of all. Made no difference that he’d been suppressed as Ryan during most of my time with him. The signature was the same. Szerain was Ryan. Ryan was Szerain.
Deepening my concentration, I called up memories to augment my search. Laughing with him while watching his sci-fi TV shows. Arguing over waffles. Promising I wouldn’t forget him when he faced being submerged again. A parting kiss. Hours of . . .
Like an electric shock, resonance of Szerain’s signature shuddered through me. Yet in the next instant it slipped away. Pulse racing, I expanded my senses and traced the energy—right to Beaulac. Beaulac? No way. Had Szerain seriously been hiding under our noses this entire time? I zoomed in on the echo then screeched to a figurative halt.
“The hell?” I muttered. A dome of potency shimmered like an iridescent soap bubble over a ten-mile-wide circle, with downtown Beaulac smack dab in the center. I knew that dome hadn’t been there the day before. Moreover, Szerain’s signature echoed from somewhere within it, fading with each second that passed.
Baffled and worried, I probed the dome then, emboldened, sent my consciousness through its outer layer.
Xharbek. I felt his undeniable stamp on the dome like a prickle at the nape of my neck. But no hint of the AWOL four. I tried to push farther in, but my progress slowed, as if I was slogging through honey. It’s a shield, I realized in annoyance, yet with a hint of triumph as well. Xharbek must have constructed this after our encounter, which told me he’d narrowed down his quarry’s location to this ten-mile area and didn’t want me snooping around.
This was cause for a little mental boogie. My missing people were still missing, but this was the first definable progress I’d made toward tracking them down. Plus, if the shield was here to keep them from getting out and finding a new hiding place—like putting a cup over a spider—maybe I could figure out a way to pry up the edge, or at least peek in.
I pushed deeper, but had to stop almost immediately as a tangle of detached potency strands blocked the way. Usually this sort of worm knot writhed and disrupted the flows around it, but this one was stuck tight to the shield-dome and still as stone. Strange, but I figured that meant it should be simple enough to bypass. Yet when I attempted to skirt it, I received a mind-numbing jolt of badness that left me trembling, both physically and mentally, for half a dozen heartbeats.
Fine. I’d take the time to unravel it. No problem. I’d untangled dozens of potency knots over the last two months, and those were the thrashing, squirming kind. This would be a breeze.
A minute into the process, it kicked into life and began to wriggle, but I already had control of it. Plus, now I had no trouble seeing which strand I needed to pull to undo the knot. I gave it a tug, then watched with satisfaction as the tangle writhed like flailing worms. In a few seconds it would slither apart and settle into a nice, uncomplicated state, allowing me to continue on my merry way.
It began to expand—unusual, though most likely the precursor to separating out. But all thoughts of worm knots fled my mind at a feather touch. Exultation rose as I felt my AWOL four like an echoed whisper—Zakaar, Szerain, Ashava, and Sonny. The contact lasted only the barest of instants, but it was enough. They’re alive. And I know where they are. Well, almost. Still, “somewhere in the Beaulac area” was a tetch more precise than “somewhere in the universe or possibly on another plane of existence.”
Brimming with confidence, I returned my attention to the knot, startled to see that it had expanded even more. And the number of strands had at least doubled. My confidence melted into unease then shifted to outright dread as the knot began to pulse in a heavy, ominous rhythm that sent shudders of discord through the shield-dome and adjacent
potency flows.
Great. Wonderful. I’d gone and taken a stable construct and made it awful. Not only that, but it was my mess to clean up since it was Earthside. No chance that one of the lords in the demon realm would see the issue and fix it for me. I groaned. There was only one lord on Earth and available to possibly help me out. Crapsticks.
“Rhyzkahl,” I called out, hating it with every fiber of my being.
He didn’t emerge for nearly half a minute, long enough for me to wonder if he was doing another stand-and-defy-me. I really didn’t want to drag him out, since that would be a lousy preface to asking for his help. I was just starting to get antsy when he finally stalk-sauntered out. His expression announced I could not care less what you think or want to do, but a hitch in his bearing made me wonder if perhaps he’d chosen not to defy me this time because he didn’t have the confidence to test his power so soon after his last defeat.
I shoved down the flicker of sympathy. No time for that shit right now. “I need your help,” I said, not bothering to hide my worry. “Or advice, or whatever you can offer. There’s a really weird knot in the flows.”
Rhyzkahl crouched to inspect the irises beside his door. He cradled a rich purple bloom against his palm, caressed a petal with his thumb. “What can I do from within this prison?”
Aggravation swelled at his bullshit antics, but I managed to keep it from my voice. “You can tell me what to do.”
“What did you tamper with to cause such an issue?” he asked, tone smooth and snide. He shifted to pull a weed from a row of beets.
I scowled. “There was a worm knot over Beaulac. I’ve unkinked dozens of those with no problem, but this time it—” I broke off in horror as the blob pulsed, and flows from Greenland to Brazil flickered and dimmed. “Shit. Shit. The knot expanded and went crazy. It’s causing potency fluctuations all over the world.” I swallowed, mouth dry. “Rhyzkahl, I need help. Your help.”
He went stone still, hand an inch away from a plant, then stood in a fluid move. “Release me.”
My glare could have melted steel. “You know I can’t do that!”
“Then this issue must not be of grave importance to you.”
Before I could snarl a reply, a sudden gust of wind whipped my hair into my face, and a shadow fell over the nexus. Cursing, I shoved my hair out of my eyes only to see Rhyzkahl staring past me in open-mouthed shock. Expecting a threat, I whirled. Then stared.
A massive tree speared into the sky above us, with a trunk that spanned the five-foot gap from the inner edge of Rhyzkahl’s orbit to the lip of the nexus. A tree with a smooth, white trunk and leaves the color of emerald and amethyst, that towered over even the tallest pines on my property.
This was a demon realm grove tree.
My mind flopped and fumbled uselessly. I couldn’t even begin to comprehend the significance of a grove tree insta-sprouting on Earth, much less in my back yard. Yet I had no time to speculate. I reestablished my lord-view of the flows, heart sinking as I assessed. The knot was over ten times its original size, and a half dozen major flows were dull grey and stagnant. “It’s sucking the life out of the other flows,” I said in a voice that cracked and shook. “I think it’s going to burst!”
Rhyzkahl tore his eyes from the tree and gave me his full attention, arrogance and swagger gone. “Show me.”
“How?” I demanded. “How am I supposed to show you?”
“Find a way or open my prison.” His gaze lifted over my head and tracked down to me even as I felt a feather light touch on my shoulder.
A jewel-tone leaf shimmered against the maroon of my shirt. I reverently grasped the stem, and pins and needles prickled in my fingers as if they were waking up. I’d never held a leaf from a grove tree before. As far as I knew, no one had. Leaves didn’t fall from grove trees.
Except for this one.
The tingle swept up my arm and through my head. “Weave it,” I murmured. Holding the brilliant purple and green leaf in my left hand, I spun out glowing strands of potency with my right, shaping them into an arcane macramé sculpture in the likeness of the aneurysm knot. “There,” I said to Rhyzkahl. “It looks like that.”
He paled. “It is the precursor to an anomaly, Kara Gillian.”
Dread snaked ice-cold tendrils through my gut. An anomaly was a destructive—potentially catastrophic—breach in the dimensional fabric. Not long ago I’d watched via dream link as a gigantic anomaly spawned in Rhyzkahl’s realm, spewing fire rain and triggering catastrophic degeneration that undermined the integrity of both the physical world and the arcane. It had taken the combined efforts of the demahnk and every available lord to bring it under control, and all had suffered injuries during the protracted battle.
We both looked up as the sky shimmered then settled into a darker shade of blue. Rhyzkahl stepped as close to the nexus as his prison would allow, his jaw set in determination. “You must release me, or you doom both our worlds.”
When was he going to get it through his thick skull that I couldn’t fucking let him go, and wouldn’t if I could? It was clear he didn’t think I could do what needed to be done, even if he decided to unbend enough to tell me. But who else was there? Xharbek? Sure, he might defuse the pre-anomaly . . . or he might rip it wide open and be done with the whole mess. Even if I had a way to reach him in time, I couldn’t risk it.
Flows from Beijing to Honolulu dimmed. It’s on me to fix this. “Can I bleed off the pressure behind it?”
“It cannot be bled into either realm,” he said, urgency in his stance and tone. “How can this be here?”
“What difference does it make? Focus on the problem! Tell me how to fix it!”
“It . . .” He cursed and clenched his right hand to control the shaking. “You . . . you must . . .”
“Can it be bled elsewhere? Maybe into the valve system?” I shot an uneasy look up at the sky, now a weird shade of indigo.
“No! To the—” He said a demon word that I knew referred to the interdimensional space. Even balled into a fist, his hand shook. “I can repair this, but I cannot tell you how to do so. Release me.”
The back door banged open. Pellini glanced up then over at me, startling at the sight of the gigantic tree. “Weird shit’s going on all over the place, Kara!” he called out. “But I’m thinking you already know that.”
“I sure do,” I shouted. “Trying to deal with it. Keep monitoring reports and let me know if anything’s about to hit here!” Can’t save the world if a tornado sucks me up. To my relief, Pellini simply nodded and returned inside. Either he had faith in me or he figured we were all going to die and there was no point getting worked up about it. I yanked my attention to Rhyzkahl. “Tell me what to do!”
A sheen of sweat glistened on his forehead. “You must . . .” He swallowed, gaze skittering around him as if seeking a lifeline. Panic filled his eyes, and his mouth worked soundlessly.
The leaf tingled warm in my hand, and realization struck home. Rhyzkahl wasn’t being defiant. He literally couldn’t tell me what to do, didn’t have the focus to break things down and explain them. He’d lived with the support and influence of Zakaar for three thousand years, and his brain wasn’t going to rewire itself to stand on its own overnight.
“Zakaar isn’t here, but I am. You know what to do. I have no doubt about that.” Behind me, the leaves of the grove tree rustled like a whispering voice. “Don’t think of everything that needs to be done. Step by step. Tell me the first thing I need to do. Nothing else.”
Some of the panic melted from Rhyzkahl’s expression. “Find . . . the strand with the least energy in it.”
Progress at last. “Right. I can do that.”
Except I couldn’t. It wasn’t a dozen tangled threads anymore. Hundreds, thousands of strands teamed like eels on meth. I’m going to fail. The thought sliced through my skull with blades of despair. What the he
ll was I thinking? Anomalies were battled by demahnk and lords—teams of them. Not one human quasi-summoner.
Chest tight, I tore my gaze from our impending doom. Below me, the silvery patterns glistened in the black stone of the nexus.
The despair vanished. I knew exactly what I needed.
With zero grace, I flopped onto my back atop the pattern of silvery sigils, then relaxed and allowed its potency to embrace me. In lord-sight, the Earth flows surrounded me as if I lay in the center of a spherical planetarium.
No. Too much input. Too much for my human mind to process even with the nexus boost. With deep, slow breaths, I calmed my racing pulse and refined my focus. Thousands upon thousands of meth-addled eels writhed and pulsed. Closer. Focus on the problem. I blocked out the rest of the flows, pulled in on the pre-anomaly until it occupied the entire sky above me, like zooming in on a touchscreen. Amongst the flailing eels, one strand twitched, curled and grey.
“I found the weak strand,” I said. “Now what?”
“If it is retroflexed, do not touch it.”
“Can’t you just say ‘bent backwards’? It’s curled. Is that what you mean?”
“English is inadequate.”
Despite our desperate situation, I grinned. “Then tell me in demon.”
If he was surprised that I’d tapped into the language, he didn’t waste time showing it. Step by tedious step, he gave me detailed instructions that I carefully followed to unite or disentangle or destroy. The demon language flowed through me, rich with telepathic nuances unavailable in English.
Legacy of the Demon Page 9