by Joe Jackson
Turillia’s wicked laugh announced her presence before Kari ever saw her. Kari realized in that instant that there was one possibility she hadn’t thought of until now: if Turillia only needed a small dose of Emma’s blood, then their entire rivalry and battle could have been for show. It was possible Turillia had attempted the same bargain with Emma that she had tried with Kari, and that she’d offered to let the mallasti girl serve her rather than be a slave to whatever king she already served. Circumstances seemed to prove otherwise, but lying on the floor as she was, completely at the mercy of two demons, Kari wasn’t sure what to expect.
The succubus stepped over the fallen demonhunter and approached Emma, who backed up to the window. That eased Kari’s tensions slightly. Turillia regarded Kari for only a second, and she let forth another chuckle before she turned back to the mallasti. “I knew you would kill her for me if I just bided my time,” Turillia said, and Kari realized she was speaking common to try to instill more fear in the demonhunter.
“Leave her out of this; she is still of use to the Master,” Emma returned.
“Ah, but who will manipulate her once I’ve killed you and sucked every drop of blood from your body, Emmalikas?” the succubus returned with her fanged grin.
“Even should this scheme of yours succeed, if you kill this hunter, you will draw the eternal ire of the Master. And you greatly overestimate your abilities if you think this one will be so easily slain,” the mallasti said, and Kari shut her eyes as Emma lifted a clawed hand and unleashed another bolt of lightning. Kari waited for the following thunderclap, but none came.
Turillia laughed, and Kari opened her eyes to see the succubus standing where she had been, unharmed. Emma still seemed her usual, impassive self, but Kari could see the mallasti was concerned that Turillia had shrugged off yet another powerful arcane attack. Turillia turned her eyes back to Kari, and her grin grew wider. “But her power is fleeting!” she mocked the demonhunter. “You are so stupid. Everything you think you have figured out, you have figured out because I allowed you to. You are nothing but bait: meat on the hook to attract the true prize. Now, you are better than bait: you are a hostage and a bargaining chip, to be sold to the highest bidder when I claim my place.”
Turillia turned back to Emma and took a threatening step forward. Emma held up a hand and pushed the succubus back a step with a gesture. “Cease your struggles, Emmalikas,” Turillia said to her, and the succubus paced over toward Kari. She produced one of her long, straight blades, and put it to Kari’s throat. “Give me what I want, or I will kill this demonhunter and let the penalty of failure fall upon you. Since she is more important to the Master than you, I expect you will make the correct choice. But even if you flee, I will hunt you down and kill you. You cannot hide from me anymore.”
“If you kill her, the Master’s eyes will fall upon you,” Emma countered. “The severity of this one’s punishment will not mitigate his anger toward you.”
“I will be a king by then, protected from him by our laws,” Turillia purred. “Or did you believe I undertook this gambit without regard to the possible consequences? I have built toward this for years, and I will not let some slave or her pet demonhunter stand in my way. This is your only chance to die comfortably, Emmalikas: I will cloud your mind and drain you painlessly if you submit to me now. If I have to chase you...you will feel every drop of blood leave your body, until your inevitable death.”
“That is a risk this one will take,” Emma said. She threw both hands forward toward Turillia, and the window behind her imploded. Glass shards rained down across the room, and Kari had to turn her head to protect her eyes. The glass shards bounced impotently off of her armor, but when she turned to look at Turillia, she saw the succubus had been forced to use her wings to protect herself. The membranes were torn and shredded from the glass, and the golden eyes of the succubus were locked in a scowl of pure, vengeful fury. Emma jumped out the window into the stormy night, and after a brief glance toward Kari, Turillia drew her second sword and gave chase.
None of the glass had managed to cut Kari, protected as she was in her paluric armor. She was glad Turillia didn’t immediately make good on her promise to kill her as well; Emma had at least bought Kari time enough to recover from the lightning strike. It still seemed odd that the mallasti didn’t want to kill Kari but kept putting her in danger by incapacitating her. Eli was right in that Emma – and her intentions – were quite difficult to figure out. Kari managed to prop herself up on her right elbow, and she narrowed her eyes against the mist that blew through the smashed window. It would still be some time before she could get her legs back under her, but she thought she should have enough time.
Kari looked to the place where Turillia had stood only moments before, and her brow furrowed as she considered the succubus hadn’t left any muddy footprints. It somehow just seemed impossible for her to have walked across the street without getting muddy, and Kari couldn’t put her finger on how she’d managed it. Her contemplations came to an end as Turillia stepped over her again and turned to face her. Kari’s heart nearly stopped; she had no idea how the succubus had gotten back upstairs so quickly. She hadn’t come back in through the window, and when Kari glanced at her feet, she saw now that Turillia was marked by the mud Kari had expected to see.
The succubus drew her twin straight blades, put them tip-down to the floor, and knelt near Kari’s face. Her golden, slit-pupiled eyes were full of malice, and she grinned at the demonhunter, showing those fangs again. In her vicious smile, Kari could see that the succubus was planning to try to drain the power of Kari’s Blood Oath for herself.
“Poor little demonhunter,” Turillia taunted, and she ran her finger along the jawline of Kari’s helmet. She pulled the helm off and grabbed Kari roughly by the snout. “I must admit, I had my doubts that this entire plan would work. I have heard of you and your skill at killing our kind for so many years; I thought you would pose much more of a challenge.”
Kari swung her head to the side to free her snout from the succubus’ grip. “Spare me your gloating,” Kari said. “If it weren’t for Emma’s lightning, I’d be cutting you up by now.”
The succubus grinned again and shook her head lightly. “Even in the face of death, your overconfidence has not faded a bit. I will admit, your skill with the swords is impressive, but if you honestly think you’d so easily best me...well, I supposed idle threats are a waste. I was going to kill you or sell you, but I think I have a better plan. All this skill and power you think you have...will soon be mine. Now, have you any last words? I will be certain to pass them on to your mate and child before I send them to join you.”
Kari’s poker face remained firmly in place: she kept her eyes locked with those of the succubus. She knew that whatever she did, she couldn’t alert Turillia to the dark form that had appeared in the window. “Actually, I do have some last words,” she said when the timing seemed right. “Do you smell a wet dog?”
Kari was blinded and nearly gagged, her face and open mouth spattered with pieces of Turillia’s flesh and a spray of blood. The werewolf hit the succubus again with its other massive, clawed hand, and sent the succubus airborne to crash into the wall beside the window. Turillia tried to scream in pain, but with much of her face missing, it came out only as an inarticulate moaning. The pain and the fury behind it multiplied when the shattered glass from the window tore up her hands and the exposed skin of her legs. Joining that pain and fury a moment later was terror, as the eight-foot, black-furred mass of snarling fangs and razor claws stalked toward her.
Kari wiped the blood from her face and spat it out of her mouth, and she tried to clear her eyes enough to mark Turillia’s position and condition. The succubus was trying to get to her feet, but her legs were wobbly, and she couldn’t properly stand while being lacerated again and again by broken glass. When Turillia lifted her head, Kari saw that the succubus’ jaw hung limply and to the side, and her face was a ruined mess of blood and shredded fles
h. It appeared Turillia was trying to teleport away, but her arms were shaking as she tried to shut out the pain enough to enact the arcane power.
It mattered little. The werewolf pounced on the demon, and it picked her up effortlessly in one of its massive, clawed hands. It snarled in her face for only a moment before it pulled her head back sharply by the hair and bit her throat out. Turillia died instantly, and the werewolf cast her body aside carelessly before it jumped up into the shattered window pane. The black-furred beast turned to regard Kari only briefly before it let out a massive howl and jumped from the second-story window, out into the rain.
Kari fought with all her might to get to her feet, but she thought better of her efforts after a moment. She called upon Zalkar’s strength instead, and she opened her cloak fully to let his symbol flood the room with its blue glow. She abandoned her will to him, allowing his strength to flow through her like adrenaline. It was a unity of mind and joy that empowered her, and drove the fatigue and limpness from her body in a tidal wave of strength. Filled with the power of her Blood Oath, Kari stood up, and any trace of what Emma had done to her was gone. She spat what remained of Turillia’s blood out of her mouth, wiped the rest from her snout with her cloak, and took stock of the situation.
Turillia’s body crumbled to dust in the corner near the window when Kari’s gaze fell across it. She remembered Eli, Katarina, and Piotyr describing the same thing happening to BlackWing when he was killed, and Kari’s eyes widened. Turillia hadn’t been boasting: Kari was quite mistaken in thinking the succubus had lost any of the power she’d stolen from the shadow demon. Her performance in the cemetery had been good enough to convince Kari that she couldn’t teleport anymore, and Kari had mistakenly taken that to mean the succubus was losing the power she’d stolen.
That wasn’t the case, and Kari stared at the near-invisible traces of dust where Turillia’s body had been. She understood, then, that Turillia had taken everything she could from the demon. Now all that remained was to seal that power in herself by killing and draining Emma. The werewolf that had just saved Kari’s life had done her a great service in more ways than one: not just in saving her life, but in destroying a duplicate of the succubus. Kari’s mind worked furiously to make sense of what she had just seen, and as she thought of the events of the past few weeks, it now all made sense.
Turillia could be in two places at once.
It explained how she had killed the three members of the Blood Order without BlackWing’s help. It explained how she had harried Kari all the way to Barcon from DarkWind while still killing for, and drawing power from, BlackWing. And it explained what had just happened: two Turillias – one chased after Emma, the other stayed behind to kill Kari. Kari figured the one that led her into the old city hall was a decoy, and that the other must have gotten there earlier in the day and hidden herself somehow. If that was the case, it meant that Turillia and the shadow demon had turned Kari’s own trap against her, and only the intervention of Emma and a black werewolf had saved the day. Kari considered this power Turillia possessed; she had no idea what kind of power it was, or how Turillia had stolen it from the demon, and then it hit her.
Kaelin Black could be in two places at once.
Kaelin Black and BlackWing were the same person, and Kaelin Black didn’t even realize it. Whether it was a power of Kaelin Black’s, or of the demon that had taken possession of him fifty-seven years before, Turillia had taken that power from BlackWing. And BlackWing was nothing more than a duplicate of Kaelin Black, one the demon could possess, use, and abuse at will for its own pleasure – or that of Turillia. That’s why Kaelin Black had no luck capturing or killing BlackWing. The only thing it didn’t explain was why BlackWing was trying to kill himself, in essence. Kari wondered: would killing Kaelin Black have given the demon sole possession of Lord Black’s body, and thereby the entirety of the rule of Southwick County?
Kari blew out a long sigh, and realized she didn’t have time to think the entire situation through. She had to chase down Turillia and Emma, and kill one or both of them to put a stop to the immediate threat. Then she could worry about having Kaelin Black exorcised and trying to drive the demon away for good. She planned to keep her word to Marshal Saracht and try to save Lord Black, but to even have a chance of doing that, she had to kill Turillia, and either capture, kill, or drive away Emma. After being shocked and left at the succubus’ mercy, she was leaning more toward killing Emma at this point.
She thought briefly of Markus, and whether he’d even tried to brave the storm on his griffon. Kari tread carefully over to the window, avoiding the broken glass, and she looked down to the street. It was too far a jump for her to comfortably make when she couldn’t use her wings to glide, so she rushed back downstairs to exit the safer way. The lower level was empty when she passed through it, so Kari shouldered her way through the loosely-boarded window and out to the muddy street.
Kari ran to the center of the square fronting the old city hall to try to gauge which way her enemies had run. She saw Deirdre picking herself up out of the mud, so Kari whistled loudly to attract the attention of the others, and approached the half-elite priestess. Kari helped Deirdre to her feet, concerned that the priestess may have been hurt again so soon after being bitten by BlackWing, but Deirdre seemed all right. “What happened?” Kari asked quickly.
“The mallasti came running by,” Deirdre said, glancing west down the road toward the stable square. “I let her by, since you said you wanted to capture her, and instead I waited for the succubus, to see if she was giving chase. Turillia hit me with something – some sort of force spell that knocked me down – and then as soon as I got to my feet, this massive werewolf knocked me right back to the mud.”
“So they all went toward the stable square?” Kari pressed. The others were approaching, though there was no sign of Markus flying around on a griffon. Kari figured that was just as well, in this weather.
Deirdre waited until the others reached them to answer. “Yes; Emma, Turillia, and a big, black werewolf all headed to the stable square. Let’s move quickly!” the priestess barked.
“No, wait,” Kari said. She had to raise her voice over the sound of the rainfall, but she tried to keep calm and not sound like she was yelling at her companions. “Turillia is not our only target here. Katarina, Piotyr: I need the two of you to go to Lord Black’s tower and make sure he doesn’t leave it. Beat him up, use your auras, I don’t care what you do, just keep that demon inside the tower, or this fight is going to be more than we can handle. Sherman, we have a werewolf involved now and I need Sharyn. Go with Katarina and Piotyr, and look around for her. When you find her, get her to the stable square as fast as possible. Deirdre, Eli: you two are with me. Has anyone seen Markus?”
“No sign of him,” Sherman said. “It’s unlikely he was able to fly a griffon in this weather, but he may still be at the stable square when you get there.”
“That will have to do, then,” Kari said with a nod. She, Deirdre, and Eli ran as quickly but carefully as they could down the muddy streets toward the stable square. The night sky was lit up over and over by lightning, but thankfully the rain stayed steady and didn’t get worse. The flashes were coming from ahead and behind, as was the thunder, and soon Kari figured out why: many of the lightning strikes were happening in the stable square. Emma and Turillia were apparently having an arcane duel, which didn’t bode well. If Turillia was confident enough in her stolen power to challenge Emma to an arcane duel, she must have absorbed a considerable amount of strength from the shadow demon. The chances of Kari being able to engage her in a contest of steel, then, were much slimmer.
Watch whistles sounded from all around, and Kari cursed the luck. Any other time, she’d want a squad of law enforcement with her to try to apprehend a demon, but in an arcane contest, guards would be little more than casualties. “Deirdre, head off the guards if you can!” Kari called over her shoulder. “Get them to seal the inner and outer gates of the stable
square, but keep clear of the battle!”
“Yes, ma’am!” Deirdre shouted back. She stopped and then summoned a minor nimbus of light to make herself easier to see in the rainy darkness, and Kari heard her begin calling for the watchmen to come to her.
Kari and Eli continued on toward the stable square. When they arrived, the portcullis had been blown in completely, and lay in the muddy grounds of the square. Several guards lay about the area, their still forms strewn in the mud, but Kari didn’t have the time to check on them to see if they were all right. She trusted that Deirdre would handle that once she’d gathered the city watch and set them to the tasks Kari had requested. Kari’s first priority was to get to the battle and put a stop to the magical duel before the two demons destroyed half the city. With Eli at her back, Kari was confident she could stop Turillia…so long as Emma didn’t incapacitate them all again. She hoped Eli’s presence might keep the mallasti from doing anything harmful to them, but his previous dealings with Emma left Kari with a lot of doubt.
The entire square lit up shortly before a massive boom, and Kari and Eli were both forced to stop and close their eyes against the intensity of the flash. When Kari opened her eyes again, she saw that part of the outer wall had been blown into a hail of stones by Emma’s lightning, and they rained down into the square with wet thuds. Turillia responded in kind, but Emma seemed to absorb the bolt rather than simply deflect it. Still, it was obvious the demons would destroy the city before they harmed each other, though Kari was somewhat relieved to see that Emma was the more powerful of the two in terms of the arcane.