The tension abruptly fled Zakaar, and his knees buckled. Taken off guard, I managed to lower him to the ground with a bit of control, then knelt beside him and cradled him to me while I murmured I am here, I love you over and over.
Zakaar, his face twisted in tormented sadness, jerked heavily, much as Rhyzkahl had done, as a low anguished noise issued from his throat. A wave of desolate despair swept over me from him. Eyes still on Rhyzkahl, he gave me a brief mental touch, like the brush of a phantom’s fingers, then vanished.
Chapter 40
Unbalanced by Zack’s abrupt departure, I barely caught myself before going sprawling and struggled quickly back to my feet. Worry for Zack swept through me, followed by a wave of frustration. He’d sacrificed himself and now he needed support more than ever. An agonized cry broke through my thoughts, snapped me back to the here and now.
Rhyzkahl crumpled to his side then rolled to his back, eyes wide as he began to puke. With a stunned look on his face, Kadir stepped smoothly forward and rolled Rhyzkahl to his side, then set a foot on his shoulder to hold him there so he wouldn’t drown in vomit. His eyes came to me, and I felt his slicing regard. Did he fear that his own ptarl, Helori, would follow Zakaar’s example? Or did he hope for it, estranged as they were?
“Kara,” I heard Mzatal say from behind me, plea in his voice. “Come back.”
I returned to Mzatal’s side, and guilt stabbed me at the shock in his face, his unsteady breath, his uncertainty. I should have warned him somehow. “I’m here, Boss.”
“Kara. Zharkat.” I watched him visibly fight for focus. Now that the unthinkable had happened to Rhyzkahl, the other lords knew it was possible and could conceivably happen to them. “They are not done,” he said. “Jesral and Amkir.”
“Hold it together, Boss,” I told him, centering for us both. “Focus on the now. It’s all good.” A peal of thunder startled me, and a moment later rain pattered down in hard and fierce drops for several seconds then stopped again.
Jesral abruptly threw off the potency net that had held him. He looked just as shaken and freaked as Mzatal, but his focus returned as he concentrated on the situation at hand. Three quick strides brought him to where the blade, Xhan, lay on the ground between him and Rhyzkahl. He stooped to pick it up, then dropped it with a curse and shook his hand as if it had burned him. Jaw set, he pulled a cloth from an inside pocket of his jacket, doubled it, then carefully retrieved the blade and tucked it away. With that accomplished his attention shifted to Amkir, who still lay pinned on the ground. The two lords’ eyes met. Jesral gave a slight nod. Amkir returned it.
Those two are up to something, I thought—and had no time to do anything more.
Jesral’s head swiveled toward me, and he lifted a hand, even as Amkir gestured to where Idris lay bound behind Mzatal. In the next heartbeat I let out a hoarse scream as the sigils on my body flared in hideous reminder of the agony that had formed them. Distantly, I heard Idris cry out, and I realized Amkir must have activated a recall implant in Idris. Like an arcane homing device, the recall was intended to return its subject to the one who placed it. But because Idris was still behind Mzatal’s protections, it could only pull; like tying a rope around someone’s middle and then attempting to yank them through a chain link fence. Pull the rope hard enough and something has to give.
Jesral twisted his hand, and instantly my agony ratcheted up and flashed in quick sequence through each of the eleven sigil scars of the lords, before settling into a steady white-hot burn. My vision went grey, and I staggered, saved from falling as Mzatal threw an arm out and pulled me back against him. The agony abated very slightly with the contact, but behind me Idris gave another pain-filled cry.
A primal scream of fury and frustration burst from Mzatal. His resources were exhausted, and I sensed his awareness that he could perhaps save either Idris or me, but not both. And then even that awareness burned away in the fury that seethed within him.
Jesral closed his fingers, and a pinpoint of searing heat like a tiny sun burned over my sternum. Red tinged my vision, and I shuddered then looked down at the arm around my waist. Why was Mzatal holding me? I began to struggle against the hold. No. I needed to return to Jesral, to Rhyzkahl.
“Kara! Kara!” Paul’s voice yanked me back to myself.
Breathing raggedly, I ceased my struggles. The sigils still throbbed, but I knew who I was. I tried to touch Mzatal through our connection, but his focus was fully on the storm as he called it closer, pulled the lightning and power to him.
Amkir snarled and tightened his hand. Idris screamed again as though being ripped apart, even as thunder pounded across the lawn. Jesral exuded cold, calm focus, a vulpine smile curving his mouth as he twisted his hand again. I jerked in Mzatal’s hold, screamed, “KARA,” through a closing veil of rakkuhr red. Mzatal raised his arm, and I felt him bring the lightning through Khatur. The strike came to the blade in a blinding flash that drove all hint of the red haze from me, and in the next instant the lightning split to slam into the two enemy lords. Jesral flew back nearly a dozen feet and landed in a crumpled, smoking heap not far from Rhyzkahl. But Amkir took the strike solidly, pinned down as he was, and barely had time to utter a choked scream as it seared over and through him.
The pain in the sigils stopped as suddenly as if a switch had been thrown. I dragged in a breath and leaned heavily on Mzatal as I fought to get my equilibrium back. Instead of the exhilaration of the lightning I’d experienced on the mini-nexus, this ripped through me with near-sentient wrath, disturbing and familiar. The essence blade.
I heard Paul give an unsteady laugh, and when I looked over I saw him curled on the ground a few feet away with one arm over his head and the other holding his tablet tightly to his chest. He lifted his head, gave me a wavering grin. “That was so cool,” he breathed.
I gave him a weak smile in response. Easy to enjoy the light show when one was in a Mzatal-made protective cocoon. A dozen or so feet beyond him, Bryce knelt with a hand on Idris’s shoulder, expression tight as Idris’s body twitched.
I looked back at the lords who’d started this bullshit. Both Jesral and Amkir lay moaning, heavily burned, and clearly not an immediate threat, though Jesral struggled to get up. Mzatal’s arm remained an iron band around my middle, and I felt his rage couple with the sentience of the blade and go even darker.
“Boss. It’s done.” I pulled vainly at his arm. “It’s cool now,” I said, but he didn’t seem to hear me. I twisted to see his face, deep dread rising at the wrath that contorted his features. “Mzatal?” I sought to touch him, but a wall of anger blocked all else.
Once again he called the lightning to him. I bit back a shriek, covered my head with my arms as thunder slammed into us, and Mzatal danced the searing power over Jesral and Amkir. The two jerked and writhed beneath the assault for at least a dozen heartbeats, then Mzatal pulled it all into himself, restoring exhausted resources and supercharging.
“Stop!” I yelled at him as soon as he released the strike, but before I could take a breath to say anything more he called it again, this time enhancing it with potency and feeding it through Khatur. Blue-tinged blasts smashed into Farouche’s mansion and the Ops building, fully orchestrated by Mzatal. His breath hissed between his teeth as he raked the potency-fueled lightning over the house. Screams and shouts sounded from within as flames leapt in the lightning’s wake, and in seconds people began to boil out, fleeing like rats from a sinking ship.
I screamed at him to stop, pummeled him with my fists, but he remained utterly distant, lost in his fury and vengeance. His lips pulled back from his teeth, and I felt the power within him build like a charging capacitor. “No, Boss. Mzatal! No!”
I squeezed my eyes shut in pure protective instinct, and in the next instant a flash of potency burst from him. Heat seared over me, though dampened by Mzatal’s own aura and shields, but I heard a scream of agony, quickly cut off. Paul. That was Paul!
Heart pounding, I lifted my head. Every
thing within a ten foot radius was incinerated to powdered ash—all save the crumpled heap that was Paul. Most of his clothing was gone or seared and stuck to the raw and smoking burns covering his body. His hair had burned away, and one ear was missing. He lay curled on his side, arms crossed over his chest to protect the melted slag that was all that remained of his tablet.
Nausea rose in my throat. Paul’s shielding had saved him from being cremated alive, but hadn’t been enough to fully protect him. It had been meant for bullets and arcane strikes, not a mini-armageddon.
I looked past him to see Bryce and Idris several feet outside the circle of destruction. Bryce had thrown himself over Idris to shield him, but he looked up now. Naked horror filled his eyes. “Paul! Oh god, no . . . Paul!” He lurched to his feet, then dropped to cover Idris again as Mzatal called the lightning and connected upward. The clouds took on a blue glow as multiple thin lightning streaks hissed and crackled incessantly over the entire area like electrified serpents. Rain whipped down, sizzling through the power to land with stinging force.
Bryce found an opening, stumbled up and managed to run-stagger to Paul. “No. NO!” he cried out in wrenching anguish as he dropped to his knees by the crumpled form, desperately searching for any sign of life. “Paul!” He dragged the molten remains of the tablet from Paul’s chest, then recoiled as a layer of ruined flesh came with it, leaving a gruesome wound of exposed ribs and sternum.
Seizing Mzatal’s head, I fought to touch him, to reach him, only to find a maelstrom of rage and grief. Desperate, I struck him hard with closed fists. “No!” I screamed over the unending thunder. “Stop! You’re hurting people!” I pried my hand beneath his fingers, twisted with moves learned from Gestamar. Mzatal’s grip loosened, and I stumbled free of his grasp, yet I didn’t think he was even aware I’d done so.
Singed hair lay wet and slick against Kadir’s skull as he limped toward me, and a vicious and twisted burn marked a forked path from face to thigh down his left side. He staggered as a random strike hit a few feet from him, but continued inexorably forward, teeth bared as he looked beyond me. I yanked my gaze around to see Ryan standing several feet behind Mzatal, a few inches within the blasted circle.
Light and sound and heat and rain pummeled me from all directions, but I ruthlessly shut it out, stood before Mzatal and focused solely on him. Glowing with raging power, he planted his feet and raised Khatur high. The bizarre lightning stopped and the thunder ceased, but I knew Mzatal wasn’t finished. Deep terror filled me as I sensed him draw power. The burst that so grievously injured Paul would be a mere spark compared to what he sought to do now.
“Ryan!” I shouted, desperate. “I can’t reach him. Help me reach him!” I swiveled to Kadir. “Both of you! Do something to help me!” Lord Creepshow wasn’t an ally by any stretch of the imagination, but right now we were all at risk of obliteration.
In answer, Kadir lowered his head and began to trace. Ryan gave a guttural cry, his features shifting weirdly as he called potency between his hands into a crude ball. I returned my full focus to Mzatal and called to him with everything I had. Zharkat. Zharkat. You will slay me. Cease, my love. I beg you. You will slay me.
A flicker, a whisper of response, the barest brush of awareness of me. He still drew power, still raged, yet it was a needed chink in the otherwise impenetrable wall.
Rain lashed down, plastering the dress against my body and blinding me. I reached again, called to him, shut out all but Mzatal. Distantly, I felt Kadir and Szerain prepare, then bit back my scream as they struck—Szerain with a crude hammer blow of potency in Mzatal’s back, and Kadir with a superbly elegant burst that covered Mzatal’s skin in a network of azure neon like freakish varicose veins.
Please. You must stop. You will kill us all.
The potency burned over Mzatal. It got his attention, but it was my presence and touch that riveted him. He breathed heavily through bared and clenched teeth, held the strike.
“Zharkat,” I said, weeping. “Boss. Please stop.”
His eyes found mine. He was lost—in the grief and anger and power, and in the need to vent all of it. His body trembled with the effort of keeping it in check.
I threw my arms around him as if I could help him hold the strike back. My focus widened, and now I took in everything happening around us.
Bryce knelt by Paul, performing CPR with desperate efficiency, exposed bone beneath his hands. “C’mon, kid, God damn it, come on!” Ryan had collapsed to his back, features completely his. Kadir watched with cautious intensity as he prepared another strike. Idris lay curled on his side, eyes wide and staring, jaw slack.
Mzatal felt it all through me—the destruction, the pain, the fear, the death—and his control of the fury wavered.
“Mzatal. Send Khatur away,” I ordered, using every means of communication I had with him. “Send the blade away. NOW!”
His eyes locked on mine, as hard as silver-grey flint—unyielding, uncompromising, but still holding the catastrophic potency at bay.
Boss. Zharkat. Beloved, I called to him. Feel me. Remember yourself. Be right here. Right now. With me.
Breath hissing through his teeth, Mzatal shifted his grip on the blade. For a horrific second I thought he intended to drive it through me, but then he let out a harsh growling cry and slashed the blade down across his forearm to open a deep gash. Luminescent blood sizzled and vaporized on the blade, and I staggered, nausea rising, as I felt Khatur take the offering. In the next heartbeat, the blade disappeared from Mzatal’s hand, banished.
Mzatal shook with the intensity of the gathered potency, the cumulation of black anger I couldn’t fathom. He still maintained enough control to keep it leashed, but not for much longer. Even now it ripped at him. I felt the pressure build—a sealed volcano, poised to explode, and when it did Mzatal would stand alone in the middle of a blasted crater.
“Down. Down!” I urged him. “Ground it into the earth and to the lake.”
He let out a tortured cry, dropped to his knees, and flattened his palms on the ground. I went with him, kept my arms around him, called to him.
The lake, I told him. Send it to the lake. The world trembled. A narrow fissure split the ground between us and the water, a crack of earthen lightning. An instant later the lake erupted into a boiling cauldron.
Holding Mzatal, I helped him channel the power as it poured out of him. Steam rose in a massive, seething cloud. The shaking in the earth eased. The worst of the steam dissipated, leaving behind a fetid stench.
Breathing hard, Mzatal knelt with hands still flat on the ground, regret and frustration echoing through him in discordant rhythm along with a headache that sliced at him, much like the one he’d had at my house.
I slowly released him, stood unsteadily, and looked around. Kadir, intently watchful, gave a slight nod then limped to the burned and moaning forms of Amkir and Jesral, seized each by the collar and dragged them toward the node. Flames licked from the roof of the plantation house, tempered, but not quenched by the heavy rain. Half of the Ops building lay in ruins, and potency residue still writhed over it like fine arcs of electricity. People moved, shouted, and screamed in the flickering light, but all seemed too caught up in their own nightmare to bother with the intruders who’d just nuked the place. No doubt someone had called nine-one-one by now but, as isolated as the plantation was, it would be a good fifteen minutes before significant response arrived.
“Mzatal,” I said, sickened. “Paul . . . Paul needs you.”
He pushed up to kneel without meeting my eyes. As he stood, I felt him consciously withdraw from me and close me off as he went to crouch by Paul. For a moment I could only stare as our connection thinned until it felt like the vacuum of space, cold and silent. What was he doing? I mentally extended, found a wall and no entry. “Mzatal?”
I dimly heard Bryce shouting. “You fix him, goddammit! You did this to him! You goddamn bring him back!”
Mzatal ignored him, ignored me, as he straight
ened and moved to Idris. Bryce cursed and resumed CPR on Paul. In othersight I saw Mzatal unwind the arcane hooks that would have killed Idris in a few more minutes. That was good. A wave of vertigo came and went. I liked Idris. Clever and talented, that one.
I frowned. Did I know Idris that well? The rain eased from a torrent to a gentle fall, and I turned in a slow circle, taking it all in. Kadir shoved Amkir and Jesral through the node portal, then turned and surveyed the area with narrowed eyes as he approached Rhyzkahl’s motionless form. Mzatal carried the unconscious Idris back to set him down near Paul, then knelt and placed his hands on the horribly burned young man and went still. Bryce shifted back, jaw set and eyes on Mzatal, but he didn’t say anything as the lord worked on Paul.
I lifted my hand to the silent receiver in my ear, unable to escape the feeling that someone was supposed to be telling me something. Reminding me of something. Vertigo flickered over me once more. My hand dropped, and I fought to hold onto a slick plain of never-ending glass, tilting me toward oblivion—
“Kara.”
I spun toward the voice, toward Ryan as he climbed to his feet. Dream fragments merged with reality, dispersed to reveal firm ground beneath me. Kara. “Here,” I gasped. “I’m here. Kara.” The grove. I still felt the grove through the open node. That’s what I needed to focus on right now. I was Kara, and Kara could do cool shit with the grove.
“Kara,” Ryan repeated as he moved to me. “Kara.”
I took a deep breath, tasted the boiled lake in the air. “Ryan, I killed Pyrenth,” I said, voice cracking. “And Jesral almost had me, and Mzatal, he . . .” I trailed off, unable to voice it.
“Kara,” he murmured as he gathered me close. “Be right here, right now. You have to focus. Too much is going on.”
I clung to him, fought my way back up and dug in. “Right. Right. I’m here.”
“Kara.” That was Mzatal, voice tight and mega-controlled. “Kara,” he said again, yet the connection remained silent and empty. I released Ryan and moved toward Mzatal. The ground seemed to pitch and roll beneath my feet, but I couldn’t tell if it was the aftermath of all the tremors, like trying to walk on land after a long boat trip, or if it was simply my own tenuous grasp on my reality because of the rakkuhr virus.
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