Since I was expecting a tricky reveal, I didn’t startle when Ilana appeared in her own rakkuhr-free circle a couple of yards from Xharbek.
No, my full shock was reserved for the sight of Mzatal at her side.
Chapter 46
Oh. Fuck.
Mzatal stood with a blade in each hand, hair flowing loose about him while rakkuhr swirled around his boots and crawled like flames up his legs. Though the demahnk couldn’t abide rakkuhr, the non-Mraztur lords had merely been conditioned to avoid its use. Easy enough for Xharbek or Ilana to remove that conditioning from Mzatal—or simply allow the demons of the blades to suppress his aversion, as they had in Siberia.
Mzatal’s silver-grey eyes fixed on me, piercing and powerful—yet haunted, as if he knew he’d lost a vital part of himself but was too controlled, too influenced to determine its exact nature, much less do anything about it.
He slashed the air with Khatur. The rakkuhr tornado around Xharbek fell away into formless mist.
“My deepest thanks, honored lord.” Xharbek placed a hand on Mzatal’s shoulder then angled his head my way. “Perhaps such a dire threat to our realm and our person should be eliminated. Permanently.”
Great. Xharbek still couldn’t say, “Kill that annoying bitch,” flat out, but he had no trouble with a strong suggestion.
Ilana gave Xharbek a long look, which told me his suggestion trod perilously close to forbidden territory. For a brief shining moment I thought she might question his goals and withdraw her support.
No such luck. My stomach gave a sick lurch as she put her hand on Mzatal’s other shoulder in a mirror of Xharbek’s pose. Adding her own whammy to Xharbek’s suggestion, I had no doubt.
She doesn’t care that Xharbek is bugfuck crazy.
No. It wasn’t that she didn’t care. Ilana had zero idea that she should care. The demahnk lived with a communal telepathy, which meant that she would never in a million years expect a fellow demahnk to have secrets or hidden plots. Not to mention, it probably would never occur to her that one of her kind could go insane, much less that Xharbek had lost all perspective and reason through a human-style break.
In that same vein, she’d have no way to fathom why a demahnk would deliberately find a way around constraints—especially when they were either inherent or had been placed for what the demahnk would consider to be good reasons. To top it all off, Xharbek was the senior dude, the one in charge, and the one who had the big Plan. Of course, Ilana would go along with whatever he said.
Wonderful. I’d gained insight into the demahnk psyche. Didn’t change the fact that by bringing Mzatal here, Xharbek had made a nasty, dirty, and hideously brilliant move.
Mzatal’s aura swelled into a malevolent volcanic furnace—a thousand times worse than in Siberia, when he’d nearly succumbed to the bloodthirsty vehemence of Xhan and Khatur.
I pulled the rakkuhr in close, ready to do . . . what? I had no idea. This was pretty much the worst possible scenario. Take the most badass lord of all the lords, strip his aversion to rakkuhr, have him wield a pair of demon-possessed power-augmenting knives, and put him under the control of two demahnk.
Yet Mzatal was resisting. Though it didn’t show in his appearance or stance or aura, I knew.
“Zharkat,” I said. “Mzatal. It’s me, Kara.” I mentally reached for him and came up against his walls. But I knew they weren’t completely impenetrable. He’d come to my nexus and created the super-shikvihr with me. He’d called me to Siberia. Most of all, he’d so far failed to turn me into a smoking pile of ash.
Meanwhile, the dastardly demahnk duo of Ilana and Xharbek remained focused on him, their perfect weapon against me. I didn’t have to hear them to know they were pouring treacherous shit into his mind.
Mzatal lowered his head, eyes blazing, and grip tight on the blades. His hair whipped about him like a physical manifestation of his aura, tendrils coiling in serpentine gyrations like living things.
Zharkat. Mzatal. We are one.
His aura enveloped me, suffocating and oppressive, a reflection of his internal conflict. He fought Xharbek and Ilana’s influence, but he wouldn’t be able to resist them forever. Plus, Xharbek surely noticed that I remained in one piece, and would do his best to rectify that wee oversight. Somehow I had to tip the balance, bring my own influence into play, and give Mzatal the support he needed to tell his oppressors to fuck off. Somehow.
Mzatal took a step toward me, stiff and graceless, as if advancing through a sucking mire. Then another, blades rising.
At a loss, I drew on the rakkuhr, used it to reinforce my mental fists as I hammered at his walls. Remember me. Remember our bond. Remember us.
Nothing.
Thinking at him really hard wasn’t working. I focused on Xhan and reached in the hopes of making contact through the blade as I’d managed once before. But I immediately recoiled from their remorseless savagery. Both blades were stoked to a berserker frenzy, unrestrained and vicious. That avenue of communication was closed.
Impotent rage swelled within my chest, sending black lightning crackling through the groundcover of rakkuhr. I couldn’t get through to him. I couldn’t breach that wall. My team was occupied and unavailable to help. I was going to die at the hands of my lover.
And it would destroy Mzatal to be the instrument of my demise.
I’m so sorry, my beloved.
Heat flared at the small of my back. The twelfth sigil. Ashava’s. Her gentle touch brushed my mind, imparting encouragement and unwavering support. Gratitude swept through me at the gesture, and on its heels an idea sparked into being. I bore eleven other sigils—an intricate scar for each lord. Experience had demonstrated that the scars maintained a connection to the lord they represented—and the lords were the offspring of telepathic beings who engaged in communal thought as easily as breathing. Moreover, the lords had passed their legacy on to their descendants. Me, Idris, Elinor, and so many more. Having Ashava’s support rocked, but why stop there? I needed backup, and lots of it.
I placed the back of my hand over Ashava’s sigil, reinforced the connection and let her feel my intent. She responded with understanding, followed by the sense of Jill—fiercely protective of all whom she held dear. Elinor joined them, her presence as familiar as my own skin.
Yes! They were busy with the rift, but I wasn’t alone. A pleasant tingle in the scar on my left side accompanied the arrival of Seretis and Bryce. An instant later my upper chest blossomed with warmth as Rhyzkahl’s sigil flared into life, then he and Idris joined the crazy mind-meld.
There were no words, simply a sharing of knowing.
Of purpose.
Now that’s how to have a kickass posse!
“Zharkat,” I said. The power of the gestalt backed my word, sending it reverberating through the air. “Mzatal.”
His aura flickered, but the walls remained. He advanced another step, right arm drawing back for a thrust that would end with me consumed by Khatur.
A single concept floated through the gestalt. More.
To my surprise, Elofir’s sigil scar along my right abdomen began to prickle. His calm touch joined the mind-meld, and with it a soft brush of his lover, Michelle Cleland. An instant later, my surprise turned to outright shock as Jesral’s warmed. His presence followed—cold and calculating and snarky—with the unequivocal sense that this was merely a momentary truce. Fine by me.
Within the span of three heartbeats, others ignited. Rayst, whose sigil-scar lay entwined with Seretis’s. Vrizaar, sigil flaring on my left back, then Vahl’s along the right, followed by a caustic burning at the very base of my spine that marked Amkir’s. With each addition, the gestalt grew—enemies uniting against a common threat. Even Szerain’s sigil held a weak flutter of presence, bolstered by Turek. Last was Kadir, heralded by a creepy wash of goosebumps on my right side, and carrying with him the whisper-touch of Paul and Pellini.
> Only one sigil remained still and silent. Mzatal’s, in the very center of my chest. Its partner—my sigil—lay over his heart. He’d carved it there as a reminder of what he’d walled off.
“All right, Kara,” I murmured. “Tear down this wall.”
Lifting my hands, I pulled rakkuhr and sent it racing through the sigil-scars. They’d been born of rakkuhr, and now I called to that spark at the heart of each one, setting them aglow until I blazed with power. The sigils’ original purpose was to replace my Self with the Rowan entity in order to turn me into a weaponized summoner. But Rowan couldn’t hold a candle to what this Self was about to do.
Zharkat. Mzatal. I am here. We are one.
I encapsulated the emotion and heart and promise and truth of those words, then hurled it at Mzatal’s barriers. The gestalt roared with unified purpose and drove the capsule forward to smash against his walls like an extinction event meteor slamming into a planet.
A crack appeared. Thinner than a hair on a bumblebee’s ass, but a crack nonetheless. Through it, I arrowed straight to his essence.
Mzatal gave no outward sign that I’d reached him, but his response resonated in the core of my being—a brief touch, an acknowledgement. We are one.
On my chest, his sigil went supernova, and his white-hot presence merged with our glorious gestalt. He turned on Xharbek and buried both blades in the motherfucker’s heart.
Faster than the speed of thought, we channeled our unified strike through Mzatal and into the seething malice of the blades. Xharbek threw his head back and flung his arms wide, mouth stretched in a silent scream. Light webbed over him, searing hotter and tighter until he burst into a vortex of a billion prismatic sparks that spun around the blades. Yet rather than scattering, the sparks picked up speed and began to rise.
Without missing a beat, Mzatal brought the tips of the blades together in the midst of the vortex. The sparks froze in place for a fraction of a second then collapsed into a golf-ball-sized orb of darkness balanced on the blade points.
Mzatal gave an unearthly roar of anger and hatred that reverberated through the gestalt like a clap of thunder. In a brutal move, he jerked the blades apart. Rakkuhr crackled between them, taking on the form of a dragon’s head that snapped its jaws closed around the orb. An ethereal scream of anguish rose and faded even as the rakkuhr-dragon head dissipated, leaving nothing but empty air in its wake.
The world shuddered. Ilana collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut, then vanished.
I put my arms out for balance until the earth stopped moving. “We did it,” I breathed. Did something at least. Wasn’t sure exactly what. Was Xharbek scattered or destroyed completely? Or had the blades consumed him?
Doesn’t matter, I told myself. For now, he was out of our hair.
With its purpose fulfilled, the group mind dispersed like a cluster of balloons released in the wind. The sigils faded to their former quiescence, except for Ashava’s.
And Mzatal’s.
Ashava’s had eased to a mellow warmth, but Mzatal’s sigil felt like a sun-scorched rock scraping the flesh from my sternum.
His appearance did nothing to reassure me. The skin of his face stretched taut over the bones, and his hands gripped Xhan and Khatur so tightly it was a wonder they hadn’t shattered. His aura retreated, but as if it was being sucked away rather than by his own will.
Horror filled me. It was Siberia all over again, but supercharged. The blades had been hard enough to control after Mzatal bladed Big Turd, and this time they’d defeated—possibly even consumed—a demahnk. With a portion of his mental energies devoted to resisting manipulation, Mzatal lacked the razor-sharp focus needed to withstand the blades’ influence. Now they sought to consume him. His sigil continued to blaze upon my chest because it was his lifeline.
Still holding the blades at arm’s length, Mzatal dropped heavily to his knees, as if unable to spare the resources to remain upright. He was like a man struggling to stay on his feet while hurricane winds lashed at him. Rakkuhr sparked between Khatur and Xhan, setting the air crackling with an ancient and inscrutable potency. Mzatal bared his teeth as he fought the will of the blades, every muscle straining. Yet despite his efforts, his right fist rotated to angle Xhan toward his heart.
Frantic, I sought to resurrect the gestalt. Rhyzkahl, Seretis, and Ashava answered, with Szerain a faint whisper, and through them exuded the presence of Jill, Bryce, and Elinor. I didn’t expect a response from the others—not without a world-destroying threat to act as a beacon. But surely our local crew would be enough to help Mzatal subdue the blades.
The gestalt hurled its full force at Xhan and Khatur, but the ferocity of the unified blade energy drove it back and sent me staggering. We might as well have been trying to put out a forest fire with a water pistol filled with gasoline. Mzatal shook with effort, skin translucent, while Xhan’s point edged closer to his chest.
I slapped my hand over his sigil, and the howls of triumph of both blades screeched through my essence. They knew Mzatal couldn’t withstand their combined attack.
“Rhyzkahl!” I swung around, surprised to find him standing only a few feet away. Over by the rift, Bryce-Seretis struggled to control the seal potency Rhyzkahl had passed to him. “Take Xhan back. Please. Mzatal can’t hold out against both.”
“No,” he said, voice uncompromising though regret shone in his eyes. “I will not accept that burden again.”
Though my heart plummeted, I couldn’t blame him. He was finally free of his blade. “Can you distract it or something?” I asked. Begged.
Rhyzkahl remained silent for a terrifyingly long moment, gaze on the struggling Mzatal. His eyes dropped to the thick scar on his right hand, then he gave a soft snort of not-quite amusement and strode toward Mzatal.
Cold dread speared through my heart. That scar came from Mzatal’s attack via Xhan, when he rescued me from the Rowan torture ritual. Even worse, Mzatal wasn’t reacting to Rhyzkahl’s approach. His entire focus was on preventing Xhan from skewering his heart—which meant he was utterly defenseless against an outside attack. If Rhyzkahl chose to seek vengeance for the injury or his nexus imprisonment, Mzatal couldn’t do a fucking thing about it. If he tried to defend himself, he’d fall to the blades.
If I intervened to stop Rhyzkahl, he’d fall to the blades.
I have to trust Rhyzkahl. Fuck.
Rhyzkahl stopped a foot from Mzatal, eyes locked on his former essence blade. Xhan. Spikes thrust from its hilt, curling around Mzatal’s fingers to lock the knife in his grip. The dark blue jewel in the pommel sparkled and flashed as if it contained a thousand manic fireflies, while the oily sheen of the blade captured and warped the light, and sent it crawling along the wicked edge.
Rhyzkahl’s lips pressed thin. Through the gestalt, he sent a single concept. Be ready.
Like a striking cobra, he shot his scarred hand out, clamped it tight around the foul blade, then jerked it along the razor-sharp edge and away.
Even with his warning, I flinched in shock. Droplets of blood arced through the air and sizzled on the blade. Xhan shrieked with terrible delight as it lunged for Rhyzkahl.
Which meant, for this instant, it wasn’t fixated on Mzatal.
I hurled a focused blast at Xhan and coupled it with a shout, both mental and out loud: “Send it away, zharkat! Now!”
Mzatal gave a mutinous cry and yanked Xhan up above his head. The rakkuhr connection between the two blades flickered.
The thorns withdrew. Xhan vanished.
Mzatal dragged in a labored breath, then a deeper, more controlled one. The balance had shifted back to him, but it was too soon for me to feel relief.
“Now the other,” I urged him. “Send it away as well.”
Still on his knees, he lowered his hands and bowed his head, gazing down at Khatur.
“Mzatal, send it away.” I wanted to run
and throw my arms around him, but I didn’t trust that fucking blade. Would suck to get this far and end up with a gut full of Khatur.
Seconds ticked by while my nerves wound tight. Mzatal finally exhaled a long breath, lifted his head, and straightened his spine. But to my dismay, he slid his blade into the sheath at his side.
That’s not the same fucking thing as sending it away! I thought in frustration. Sure, it wasn’t in his hand anymore, but its influence remained damn near as strong. A tidal wave of dejection threatened to suck me under. Even though the fucking knife had nearly destroyed him, he still couldn’t—or wouldn’t—send it away.
And here I was, oath-bound to take both blades from him. Even diminished as he was, I couldn’t imagine wresting them away. How was I supposed to manage it when he returned to full strength?
I did my best to shake off the gloom. Nothing I could do about it right now. We’ll just stick a pin in that particular problem.
With Khatur sheathed, it was safe—safer—for me to go to Mzatal. I broke into a run but skidded to a halt when Ilana appeared a few feet beyond him. She wavered as if a strong wind would topple her. Her hide was a dull grey rather than its usual pearlescent white, and her delicate wings folded in tight as the rakkuhr retreated to leave her in a clear zone.
Without hesitation, I raised a protective rakkuhr veil around Mzatal. “Fuck off, bitch!” I snarled. “You’re not taking him.”
Ilana regarded me coolly with her large violet eyes, reminding me of a parent waiting for a child to get a tantrum out of their system.
“I can hold this shit all day,” I told her with a nod to the veil.
Her head tilted. “Can you, Kara Gillian?”
Of course I couldn’t, but that didn’t matter. The veil was a temporary barrier to keep her away from him until the others finished sealing the rift.
And then what? We couldn’t fight Ilana the way we’d fought Xharbek. Not only was I working with a reduced gestalt, but I sure as shit didn’t want to give Mzatal any excuse to call Xhan back to him. Besides, Ilana was his ptarl. He wouldn’t attack her without overwhelming provocation—especially manipulated as he was. And even if, by some miracle, the rest of us found a way to take her down, Mzatal would suffer terribly as a result.
Legacy of the Demon Page 51