The Trouble With Demons rb-3

by Lisa Shearin

  No one was taking him from me.

  Mychael was standing at Justinius’s right, wearing his steel gray formal uniform. Vegard had told me once that Mychael was responsible for the uniforms he and his knights wore. If I didn’t know Mychael was humble, modest, unassuming and all that, I’d say that he’d had those uniforms made for the express purpose of leaving no doubt that he was completely irresistible. I smiled. Then again, I’d only known Mychael for a little over two weeks. There was lot about him that I didn’t know.

  Mychael was still an enigma, wrapped in a riddle, coated in yum. Only now the enigma was a little less mysterious; I was a few clues closer to solving the riddle-but damn, that man would always be coated in yum.

  “A fine man, your Guardian,” my father commented.

  “He’s not mine.”

  Now it was Arlyn’s turn to smile. “That’s not what your eyes are saying.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Precisely what I said.”

  “He’s a Guardian; I’m a Benares-never the two shall meet.”

  Vegard cleared his throat meaningfully behind me. Mychael and I had more than met.

  “You know what I mean,” I told him.

  “Ma’am, the boss doesn’t care what anyone thinks.”

  Until the Saghred and I came along, Mychael’s reputation was spotless and his position secure-and his neck wasn’t in danger of leaving his shoulders. “Maybe he should,” I murmured.

  “Or maybe you shouldn’t,” Vegard countered.

  One side of my mouth quirked in a quick grin. “You sound like your boss.”

  He winked at me. “Why, thank you, ma’am.”

  At Justinius’s command, Piaras arose to thunderous applause. Arlyn and I joined in, and Vegard added some loud whistles. He wasn’t the only one. The Guardians in the audience were enthusiastically welcoming their new little brother. Between what Piaras had done with the bukas and his display of courage at the Saghred’s containment room door, he was well on his way to gaining the respect and admiration of his brother Guardians that he’d always wanted. I didn’t think I’d ever seen Piaras that happy. The kid was virtually glowing. Dreams coming true had a way of doing that.

  Now all we had to do was stop the nightmares from becoming real.

  Six souls had escaped from the Saghred.

  Sarad Nukpana was one of them.

  The demon king was still inside. But to tell you the truth, if I’d had a choice between the demon king and Sarad Nukpana, I would have picked the demon. His demonic majesty just wanted to raise hell. Sarad Nukpana wanted vengeance: slow, sweet, and personal. Then he wanted the Saghred and all the power that came with it.

  I didn’t think it could get any worse than demons. I was wrong.

  My father had told Mychael and me that Sarad Nukpana and the others would possess one body after another, keeping themselves corporeal until they could find the perfect hosts-people with enough magical power and influence to be useful to them.

  “Sarad is still body jumping,” Arlyn said, his voice low enough for my ears only. He could still read my mind. I wasn’t surprised. And considering that we had to hide who he was, it could be a literal lifesaver. “If he remains in the same body from one sunrise to the next, it’s permanent. He doesn’t want that-at least not yet.”

  It was the “not yet” part that had me waking up in a cold sweat for the past two nights. I could feel the son of a bitch; I knew he was out there. And he wanted me to know it; he wanted me to wonder when and where he would finally show himself. The goblin wanted me, but first he wanted me terrified. His cat-and-mouse game had only just begun. He could be anywhere-and inside of anyone.

  I don’t play cat and mouse. And I don’t do terrified-at least I was trying really hard not to. Not being scared out of my skin was easier said than done. Sarad Nukpana wasn’t just stalking me, he was haunting me. He wanted to drag out the game as long as possible. I was determined to end it before he got started. I knew where he had to be-the goblin embassy. Problem was, getting in would be next to impossible; getting out would take nothing short of a miracle. Quite frankly, I wasn’t chomping at the bit to take a stroll into enemy territory to go ghost hunting.

  Rudra Muralin had come through that mirror into the citadel, and he hadn’t been seen since. Tam’s source in the goblin embassy said their new ambassador had come home. What I needed to know was had he come home alone. I was betting he hadn’t.

  “What will happen to the people he infests?” I asked Arlyn.

  “When he leaves them, they’ll be disoriented for a day or so; or insane if they weren’t emotionally stable to begin with.”

  I could see where being possessed by Sarad Nukpana could do that. And Rudra Muralin was already nuts.

  “No trail of dead bodies to follow?”

  My father shook his head. “Sarad will be careful. He has everything to gain, and too much to lose. He will be cautious until he is ready to make his move.”

  And when he made that move, we would all know about it.

  I looked back up at the dais where a line had formed to welcome Piaras into the Guardians.

  “Piaras is safe,” Arlyn assured me.

  “How do you know that?” It came out a little sharper than I’d intended.

  “Sarad would possess Piaras for spite, but it is too great a risk for him. As a cadet, Piaras will be living in the citadel, and he will be closely watched. Sarad will not risk capture to satisfy a petty vengeance.”

  He was right, and I knew why. Sarad Nukpana wouldn’t waste time or strength on anything petty, most of all vengeance. No doubt Nukpana thought that revenge was best served in cold blood and up close and personal. And when he came for me, I wanted to have a fitting welcome waiting for him. I said I wanted to; I didn’t have a plan yet. I told myself that brilliant retaliation takes time. Too bad my time was running out.

  Mychael was walking toward us, and I knew it wasn’t for a casual hello. We hadn’t had much time to talk in the past two days and had had absolutely no time alone. Mychael had the Guardians’ best spellweavers secure the Saghred as well as they could, and they’d done a fine job with no objections from the rock. The Saghred had been cut open; apparently it needed some time to heal. The spellweavers had likewise secured the Scythe of Nen, which was being kept in an undisclosed location. Undisclosed was good; hopefully spellweavers were good at keeping secrets-and hopefully elven intelligence hadn’t recently bought itself a Guardian spellweaver.

  When Mychael got close enough, I asked the inevitable question. “Your office?”

  “Please.”

  The Guardians we passed in the wide corridors had smiles and salutes for their paladin. They’d heard that Mychael had closed the Hellgate. That was the story we’d told, and that was the story we were sticking to-and with Mychael’s report, that version had become official. It wasn’t a lie. It was more like a simplification of an entirely too complicated truth. Mychael had been the one to hit the Hellgate and the demons on the other side with more white magic than they could survive. My and Tam’s roles had been reduced to no role at all. Officially, I’d been too injured from my catfight with the demon queen, and Tam’s strength had been exhausted keeping the Hellgate stable until Mychael could take over. It was Mychael’s magic that had closed the Hellgate-that Tam and I had helped fuel that magic didn’t bear mentioning.

  Vegard and Arlyn walked a few paces behind us. They were my bodyguards, but Mychael was their commander. I knew it had to feel strange beyond belief for Mychael with my father’s soul being in the body of one of his junior knights, but he handled it well, better than I would have in his place. I had to hand it to Mychael; he would have made a fine actor. No one watching or listening to him would suspect that Arlyn Ravide was anything other than one of his young knights.

  Mychael told Vegard and Arlyn to stand guard and see to it that we weren’t disturbed, and then he closed his office door behind us.

  Blessed silence,
and no sense of anything outside of the room. Mychael’s office had always been warded, but he’d recently laid on a couple of fresh layers. Very recently.

  “Just being careful,” he told me.

  “There’s no way we can have too much of that.”

  Mychael almost laughed. “You? Careful? I would say I couldn’t believe you broke into Carnades’s house and attacked the demon queen, but I can believe it. The last one I saw with my own eyes.”

  “It wasn’t like I had a choice.”

  “I will admit that even if he hadn’t already been kidnapped by Rudra Muralin, Carnades would never have turned over the Scythe to anyone. But attacking-no wait, that would be too dignified-tackling the demon queen was not-”

  “Again, I had no choice. Tam needed a distraction, so I-”

  “Tam is perfectly capable of causing his own distractions.”

  “So I wanted to take down the bitch,” I snapped. “She sent her spawn to feed on students. The kids they would have eaten would have been the lucky ones.” I stopped and exhaled slowly, forcing myself to calm down. I spread my hands. “You do your job; I do mine,” I said in as much of a level tone as I could manage. “I’m a Benares. I can go places and do things that you can’t. Since you had no prior knowledge of my actions, your nose is clean. And since we weren’t caught at Carnades’s house, so is mine.”

  “You could have been caught.”

  “But I wasn’t.”

  “What happened to sending for help? I could have gotten a search warrant.”

  “I didn’t have time to wait for help, backup, a cheering section, or anything else. The fact that the Scythe had just been snatched only confirms it.”

  Mychael gave me a look; you know the one. “You didn’t have time to wait, or you just didn’t want to?”

  Coming clean is good for the soul-and sometimes the temper. I managed a crooked grin. “Both.”

  “I assumed as much.” Mychael shook his head, the barest shadow of a smile on his lips. “I should arrest you, if just to save you from yourself. Worse yet, you talked five of my best men into going with you.”

  I held up a hand. “Only two came into the house with me. Vegard and Herrick insisted. Vegard wasn’t going to leave me; Herrick wasn’t leaving Piaras.”

  “That’s another thing-you took Piaras.”

  “He’s a virgin. I had to.”

  Mychael blinked. “Excuse me?”

  I told him about virgins and the Scythe, purity finding evil, and all that.

  Mychael didn’t laugh; but he didn’t need to, those blue eyes of his were doing a fine job of both. And it did an even better job of taking the tension right out of the room.

  “Then it was a good thing that you knew about Piaras,” he admitted, trying to keep from smiling. “Finding a virgin on this island on short notice would have been a challenge.”

  I snorted. “To say the least. And I suspected about Piaras; I didn’t know for sure.”

  “How did you-”

  I winced. “I had to ask him.”

  “I hate I missed that.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Sora told me you had gone to Carnades’s and why,” Mychael said. “And Herrick told me you’d gone into the tunnels under the house. I’d just received confirmation that the Hellgate was in the Assembly. Knowing where those tunnels led-but mostly knowing you-I assumed the worst and went straight to the Assembly.”

  “I’m glad you did,” I admitted. “Things weren’t going quite as I planned.”

  Mychael raised one eyebrow. “What I witnessed was the culmination of an actual plan?”

  “More like a loose gathering of possible actions.” I picked at the expensive fabric on the back of one of his guest chairs. “Please tell me you have a better plan for Carnades.”

  Carnades knew about our umi’atsu bond, his word carried weight, his accusations would be believed, and if Mychael, Tam, and I were forced to appear before the Seat of Twelve, there would be no doubt. And since the Saghred was involved, even Justinius Valerian wouldn’t be able to save us.

  “Carnades knows and so does Rudra Muralin,” I said. “One of them is going to act on that knowledge. Soon.”

  Mychael’s face was somber. “It won’t be Carnades.”

  “You say that like it’s not good news.”

  “Carnades has had one visitor. Markus Sevelien’s ship came in with the high tide, night before last.”

  “Dammit, Mychael, you said you’d tell me!”

  “You demanded; I never promised. I needed to know who Sevelien saw first. That would be difficult with one of your daggers sticking out of his chest.”

  “I just want to talk to him.” My words coming out from between clenched teeth said otherwise.

  “And if he didn’t answer correctly, he would have been sporting your steel-or more likely, his security detail would have killed you before you got the chance.”

  I froze. “Security detail? Markus has never had one of those before.”

  “He does now. Mages, heavy hitters.”

  “Which of your men followed him?”

  “I did.”

  I blinked. The paladin of the Conclave Guardians didn’t follow; he delegated. Then I knew why Mychael trailed Markus himself. Me. Mychael trusted his men, but no doubt some things he wanted to do himself. Because of me.

  “Carnades had a meeting scheduled with three of the Seat of Twelve,” Mychael said quietly.

  “You have names?”

  “I do.” He paused. “After seeing Markus Sevelien, Carnades canceled that meeting. He hasn’t seen anyone since.”

  The implications of that kicked an already bad situation into the realm of catastrophic. “Markus told him not to do anything,” I heard myself say. “Yet.”

  Given enough time and motivation, I could usually get into someone’s mind. Not literally, but I could observe them enough to know how they would respond in a given situation. It was a knack that had come in handy on several occasions, saving my life in at least two instances. I’d never been able to read Markus Sevelien to save my life-and I just might have to.

  “Justinius has two sources inside Carnades’s household,” Mychael was saying. “They said that Sevelien stressed most strongly to Carnades the need to rest, remain at home, and see no one.”

  “Sounds like an order to me.”

  “It was.”

  While I loved the idea of Carnades staying home and keeping his mouth shut, I didn’t like that Markus Sevelien in all probability knew everything that Carnades did. And my blood ran cold at the thought of Markus being the one who was ultimately pulling Carnades’s strings.

  “Where’s Markus now?” I asked, though I knew. He wouldn’t be anywhere else.

  “The elven embassy,” Mychael confirmed for me.

  “And Rudra Muralin is in the goblin embassy.”

  “And neither one has left since they arrived.”

  “Plots and nefarious deeds are best brewed in one place.” I tried for a quip; it didn’t quite make it.

  “Raine, promise me you won’t try to see Sevelien.”

  I answered with silence.

  “I will be meeting with him myself,” Mychael told me. “As I do with every dignitary or official who drops anchor in our harbor.”

  “It sounds like you’ve already set it up.”

  “I have.”

  “I want to be there.”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Why?”

  “For every obvious reason.”

  And every last one of those reasons involved me.

  “Where are you meeting him?” I asked.

  “Here in the citadel.”

  That made me feel marginally better. Markus wouldn’t try anything on Mychael’s home turf-at least the Markus I knew wouldn’t. I had no idea what the Markus who could order Carnades Silvanus around was capable of.

  “Think he’ll be straight with you as to why he’s here?”

  One side of Mychael’s lip
s curled in a quick smile. “Of course not. They never are. With some it’s like verbal chess. Getting information from Markus has always been more like verbal fencing.”

  “Has always been?” I was incredulous. “You’ve met him?”

  “On several occasions, either business or politely social.”

  “I take it I’m business.”

  The crooked smile came back. “I certainly wouldn’t call you politely social.”

  “Touchй.” I was silent for a time. “Markus knows me, but he’s kept it a secret until now. Though for all I know, he still might not have told anyone. People like him don’t associate in public with people like me. You’d have been better off if you’d done the same thing. I’m a lot of things you don’t need to have anywhere near you, now or ever.”

  Mychael leaned back against the closed door and crossed his arms over his chest. “And what kind of things would those be?” he asked, his blue eyes sparkling.

  I was stunned. He actually thought all this was funny. “Infested with an ancient rock of evil should be reason enough. But if you need another: you uphold the law; my family doesn’t.”

  “Raine, you aren’t your family,” Mychael told me. He thought for a moment, then let out a little laugh. “Most of us aren’t like our families, and some of us don’t want to be.” He leveled those eyes on me. “You, Miss Raine Benares, are impulsive, trouble personified, you defy me at every turn, and to order you not to do something is a waste of my breath.” He stepped away from the door and slowly came toward me. “But you’re also brave to the point of being damned near fearless, unwaveringly loyal, fiercely protective of those you love, and have literally stormed the gates of Hell to keep them safe.” Mychael stopped directly in front of me; amusement and sincere admiration shone in his eyes. “You’re the most challenging woman I’ve ever had the pleasure to meet.” His voice lowered to a bare whisper. “And yes, I did say pleasure.”