Fury of the Demon (Kara Gillian)

by Rowland, Diana

“I’m calling because I told them I wanted to call. And yeah, part of it is to say please, please leave off searching for me. It’s better for everyone that way.” He said it all with utter conviction, as though he actually believed it. “But mainly, I called because I wanted to hear your voice, to talk to you.” And now his voice carried an unmistakable echo of longing. And grief.

  I had no way to unravel truth from bullshit, but that didn’t stop the wrenching ache in my heart. “All right. Let’s talk about something besides us not coming after you.” I gave Ryan a desperate Anything yet? look, but he pressed his lips together and shook his head. “I locked down the seventh ring of the shikvihr a few days ago,” I told Idris.

  “Yeah? You’re kicking ass,” he said with a lightness that wasn’t there before. “I bet you got hung up on the next to last sigil though. You never could balance inverse coils worth a damn.”

  I let out a weak laugh. “You’re right about that, but I think I have the hang of it now. I’m a prodigy, remember?” I said with a snort of amusement. “I even shaved eight minutes off the stair climb. You still staying in shape? Running any?”

  Ryan finally gave me a thumbs up which I hoped meant he had the trace, but he followed it with a keep going hand signal.

  “I was until last week,” he said. “Got the ninth right before I . . . came to Earth, but I haven’t done any training in the past few days, even with Master Katashi here. There hasn’t been time.”

  Fuck. The Mraztur had found a way to send the old bastard to Earth. “You’ve been busy with your new associates?”

  I heard a shuffling on his end and muffled voices as though he’d lowered the phone and covered it. A second later he returned. “I have to go now,” he said the tension of the earlier part of the call back in his voice. “Tell Mzatal I still have his ring, and I haven’t forgotten gheztak ru eehn. So leave me be. You don’t want to start a fire you can’t put out.”

  My throat tightened. “I’ll tell him. No promises on the fire though.” I paused. “Tah agahl lahn.”

  “Me too,” he said, the words catching. “I’m sorry.”

  I was about to ask what for when a man’s voice I didn’t recognize spoke a single word.

  “Rowan.”

  The line went dead. My heart thudded as I recoiled from the unexpected assault, yet other than the adrenaline response, I didn’t feel any different. Was the asshole simply fucking with me? I wouldn’t put it past an ally of the Mraztur, but my instinct told me they had a deeper purpose. Why else allow the phone call?

  Zack took the recorder from me, switched it off and eyed me critically. “You okay?”

  I lowered the phone, stared at it. “Shit.” I drew a shaky breath, then looked up at Zack. “I think so. Fucking bastards.” Anger threaded with fear coiled through me. “I’m pretty sure Kastashi’s people attempted to Rowanize me with a command word.” I frowned and fell silent while I did a quick personal assessment. Name? Kara Gillian. Age? Thirty. Love life? Pretty damn awesome. “I still feel like me,” I told Zack. “I don’t know if the attempt failed, or if it has a delayed effect, but either way, I intend to be hyper-vigilant until I summon Mzatal.”

  “You might not notice any difference in yourself,” Zack warned. “We’ll keep an eye on you as well, and I’ll make sure Eilahn understands fully too. You all right for now?”

  I did my best to push down the worry. “So far I feel peachy. Thanks for having my back.”

  “You got it, babe,” he said with a reassuring smile. “However, my guess is they expected at least part of their trap on the murder victim to touch you. They didn’t count on Ryan being such a badass and tackling you away from it in time.”

  Grinning, I looked over at Ryan who was still on his phone. “I’m a seriously lucky bitch.” I returned my attention to Zack, caught his sleeve, and pulled him in close. “What does ‘gheztak ru eehn’ mean?” I murmured.

  He answered softly, “Roughly, ‘the devastating failure.’”

  I frowned. What the hell was that supposed to mean?

  Ryan hung up and came over to us. “Got something. Idris was on a cell phone registered to Russell Dobry of Austin, Texas. Best guess based on changing cell towers is that he’s thirty to forty miles north of Austin on US 183 in a northwest-bound vehicle. I wanted you to talk as long as possible to see if the tower switched again. The phone is off now.”

  “Northwest of Austin.” I tugged a hand through my hair. “Heading where? New Mexico? Utah? The local fucking diner?” I let out an unintelligible word in frustration.

  Ryan grimaced in sympathy. “There are a lot of possible destinations. What did you get from the call?”

  “He’s either rolled over, been manipulated, or is playing a tight game with his captors,” I said. “I can’t see him going over willingly to them. However, he also said he’s ‘seen some stuff’ in the past month and implied that it changed his perspective, so I’m putting turncoating on the back burner but not eliminating it. He also let slip that Katashi’s on Earth now, but I don’t know if he meant to do so.”

  “You got a recording?” Ryan asked.

  “Most of the call,” I said. “I’ll go over it to see what I can pick up.” I pressed my hands to my eyes, forced myself to think through it logically. “If his heart is still on our side, he’d have tried to get some info into the call that could help us. There were others there with him, so it’d be cryptic.” I dropped my hands, inhaled a ragged breath. “Here’s what I know. He’s around Katashi’s people for sure because he knew Katashi was here on Earth and knew about Tsuneo and Tito being at the warehouse. He said he cares about Mzatal and me and doesn’t want to see us hurt, said we will be if we go after him. Claims that bad stuff will happen if we find him, but didn’t elaborate.”

  Ryan frowned. “Why let Idris talk to you at all? Why not just call and say . . . that name?”

  “I don’t know. There has to be more to it.” I started pacing again. “Whatever Katashi and his peeps are, stupid ain’t one of them. Maybe a combination of small components.” I shrugged. “Like, I’m pretty sure Idris really did want to talk to me. The captors placating their captive. And maybe they needed some time with me on the phone to build up to the whammy.” I gave a helpless shrug. “I’m grasping at straws, but they had to know there was a chance we’d trace the call. So why weren’t they concerned about that?”

  “Either they want us to know where they are,” Ryan said, “or it doesn’t matter because they don’t think we can find them, even with a trace.”

  I nodded, way too tired to get my brain to digest it properly. “That phone was most likely stolen. Can you find out when and where the last call was made on it? That might give us another clue.”

  “Sure thing,” he said, then laid his hand on my arm. “There’s not much we can do tonight. Why don’t you go grab some sleep and get a fresh start in the morning.”

  I started to protest, to tell him Idris was out there somewhere right now in Texas and we had to do something. Ryan’s hand tightened slightly on my arm as though anticipating my response, and it was enough to stop the resistance. I let out a long exhale, slumped a little. “Yeah, you’re right. I’ll be a lot more useful once I’ve slept.” I rubbed my eyes. “I’m going to go curl up in bed, but I’ll listen to the recording a few times before I go to sleep. I can do that much.”

  “Sounds reasonable.”

  Zack handed the recorder to me. “I made a copy and erased the command word part. You don’t need to hear that again.”

  I gave him a grateful smile. “Thanks. Y’all try not to blow the house up or anything while I sleep.”

  Ryan gave a laugh. “Not making any promises on that one.”

  I gave him a smile, then headed upstairs. I stopped by the living room, picked up the empty turd plate along with my note pad from atop the stack of Tracy’s journals, then stuck the plate in the dish
washer and trudged to the bedroom.

  Fatigue held me firmly in its grip by the time I crawled into bed with the notepad and recorder. I wasn’t sure I’d make it through one listen, but I had to at least try. I owed Idris that much. I settled back in the pillows and started the recording.

  “I care about you,” Idris said, “and I don’t want to see you or Lord Mzatal hurt.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut against the fierce ache at the sound of his voice, familiar and dear.

  “But if you find me, the shit’s going to hit the fan and people will get hurt.”

  An image of him crystallized in my mind as I listened. Eager smile and keen blue-grey eyes beneath an unruly mop of blond curls. His words ran together like the distant rush of a river.

  “You think you have everything figured out, then whoosh! the game changes.”

  His voice cleared as though right by my ear. “You don’t want to start a fire you can’t put out.”

  You don’t want to start a fire you can’t put out.

  The room was cold. Achingly so. I needed a fire to counter the chill that knifed straight to my core. Shouldn’t be so cold this time of year. I could go turn up the heat, I thought dimly, but when I got out of bed to do so the room was pitch dark and the floor ice cold glass.

  I wandered barefoot through darkness on an endless plain of smooth glass. Cold and black. Nothing. Forever. Step after frigid step.

  “Dear one.” A voice. His voice. “Do not fret. It does not become you.”

  “Lord Rhyzkahl?” I whispered, felt the darkness swallow the words. “Where are you?”

  “I am here. I am always here.”

  I looked down as a pale amber glow pierced the darkness. A beautiful filigree design of intricate fine lines glimmered on my upper chest with soft, breathtaking radiance. My throat tightened. “My lord? I do not understand.”

  “Do you not, precious one?”

  The glassy plain began to tilt. A voice like the hiss of sand flowing over stones whispered in my ear.

  Rowan.

  I cried out in shock as I lost my footing. “My lord!” Heart pounding, I flattened myself on the glass, braced with hands and feet to keep from sliding.

  “Elinor. Elinor!” A different voice. Distant and desperate.

  “Giovanni!” I called into the darkness. “I am lost! Help me!”

  “Count, Elinor. Uno. Due. Tre. Quattro. Count.”

  Rowan.

  “Uno,” I said, then shrieked as the glass tilted more. Terror gripped me as I began to slide toward oblivion.

  “Elinor!” he called. “Kara!”

  Giovanni’s face swam in the darkness. Square jaw set with worry. Teasing smile gone. “Kara. Count.” His image distorted. Twisted. “Kara.”

  “Due. Tre,” I said through gritted teeth. The glass leveled enough to stop my descent. “I’m here. Kara. Quattro. Cinque.”

  Giovanni slipped away but other faces rose from the darkness to take his place.

  Tessa. Jill. Zack. Mzatal. Ryan. Jekki. Eilahn.

  People. My people.

  My family.

  I woke with a start, pulse stuttering as the fragments of the dream scattered. “People,” I gasped. “Family.” I scrabbled for the recorder, scanned through it, seeking the sentence. Found it, listened, then listened again.

  “I care about you, and I don’t want to see you or Lord Mzatal hurt. But you find me, and the shit’s going to hit the fan and people will get hurt.”

  “Fucking shit.” I played it one more time to hear the slight emphasis on “people.” I threw the covers off and ran down the hall, yanked the basement door open and flew halfway down the stairs before realizing I couldn’t see a goddamn thing. “Ryan!” I shouted as I ran back up the steps, flicked the switch at the top of the stairs then scrambled back down as fluorescent light filled the basement. “Ryan! Wake up!”

  He jerked upright. “What? Shit!” He threw an arm over his eyes to shield them from the glare. “What’s wrong?”

  “I need you to look something up.” I snatched his laptop from the end table and thrust it at him. “Idris said he didn’t want to see me or Mzatal hurt. Then he said if we looked for him, the shit would hit the fan and people would get hurt. People. Not just Mzatal and me. The first people who come to mind are his family.” I continued to hold the laptop out for him while I shifted impatiently from foot to foot like a pee-pee dance. “I need you to find out what you can about his family. Close members first. Then you need to do your FBI shit and get them into a safe house until this blows over.” I made a frustrated noise. “Damn it! Why didn’t I think of this earlier?”

  “Whoa. Slow down.” He rubbed a hand across his eyes, tucked the sheet around his waist then took the computer from me and settled it on his lap. “Gimme a sec to catch up.”

  I paced back and forth on the rug in front of the futon. “I know he has two older sisters. Both his parents are alive, and at least one grandmother. No idea about extended family.” This was the family who’d adopted him when he was fourteen, after the parents who’d adopted him when he was a baby had been killed in a car accident. Even though Idris had been with the Palatinos for less than a decade, I knew he’d fully embraced them as family, as real as any he might’ve been born to.

  “I’m working on it, hotshot.” He flicked a glance up as he typed, then raked a more thorough gaze over me. “I like the new look.” A smile twitched at the corners of his mouth.

  I stopped my pacing, looked down, then rolled my eyes. I still had on what I’d worn to bed: pink tank top and blue panties. No bra. “Oh great. Nearly naked,” I groaned, though I couldn’t fully hide my own amusement.

  “Yes, you are.” The smile lingered on his mouth, then he dropped his eyes to his screen.

  “It’s not fair.” I plopped onto the futon to watch him type. “I’ve never seen you nearly naked.”

  “I’m naked right now,” he told me, eyes still on the screen, though the skin around them crinkled in amusement, “but I have the sense to keep the sheet over me. It might be too much for you.”

  “I can take anything you dish out,” I shot back, grinning. If the view from the waist up was any indication, I had no doubt he’d look good naked.

  “I do love a challenge,” he murmured with a low chuckle, working the touch pad and clicking on stuff. “Here we go. Sister, Amber Palatino Gavin. Sister, Rose Palatino. Parents, Angela and Jerome Palatino. All in the Seattle area. Maternal grandmother, paternal grandfather living. Definitely extended family. Aunts, uncles, cousins.”

  I nodded. “Let’s focus on the immediate family. Can you get them to a safe spot?”

  He gave me a reassuring nod, then glanced at the clock on the end table. “Five-fifteen a.m. I need to connect with Zack. Is he up?”

  “No clue,” I lied. I had every confidence he was awake since the demahnk slept about as infrequently as the lords did, but Ryan only knew Zack as human. “He’s usually up before me anyway. I’ll go make coffee and see if I can find him.”

  Ryan gave an absent nod, already doing stuff on his laptop again.

  I returned upstairs, looked out the back window and was unsurprised to see Zack nimbly climbing over the high wall of the new obstacle course, neck and neck with Eilahn in the predawn light. I turned back to the kitchen and got a pot of coffee going, and a few minutes later I heard a thump on the roof as Eilahn found her favorite spot, and the simultaneous creak of the back door as Zack entered.

  “Hey, Zack.” I held out a towel and gave him the rundown of my morning revelations and suspicions while he wiped off a sheen of sweat and mud. “And now Ryan needs your help to arrange a safe house.”

  “Good work,” he said with an approving nod. “I’ll go check with him.”

  “Thanks.” I grimaced. “I want to be sure they’re safe.”

  He gave me a r
eassuring smile. “We’ll do everything we can. I promise.” He tossed the towel neatly through the laundry room door and into the hamper, then headed down into the basement.

  I set to work cleaning the kitchen in an effort to channel my angst and worry. Unfortunately, Zack and Ryan kept the kitchen fairly spotless, and the three minutes it took to empty the dishwasher and wipe down the counters didn’t do much to ease my mood.

  I pulled an egg carton from the fridge then fumbled it, barely hearing the squish-crunch of eggs meeting the floor as a truly horrible thought occurred to me. “Zack! Ryan!” Ignoring the mess, I ran for the steps and bounded down. “Check to see if any of his family are missing. One of his sisters? A cousin?”

  Both Ryan and Zack turned to look at me, faces grim.

  “Oh shit,” I breathed. “Who?”

  “His sister Amber and his mom,” Ryan said. “They both went missing a few weeks ago.”

  It fit all too well. I sank to sit on the futon as dread clenched at my gut. “Pull a pic of Amber,” I said dully. “I bet she’s our vic from the trailer.”

  Chapter 15

  Tears of fury stung my eyes as I mercilessly whisked the surviving eggs. A photo of a smiling Amber in her wedding dress confirmed her as the murder victim. Poor Idris. No wonder he was cooperating. Sister tortured and killed, and no telling what they threatened to do with his mom, if she was even still alive. And Idris was the kind of guy who’d do everything he could to protect anyone—even a perfect stranger. This surely ripped his heart out.

  Ryan came upstairs but didn’t wisecrack about the ferocity of my egg-murder, which told me his news wasn’t particularly good. I dumped the eggs into a pan on the stove. “Anything?”

  “Not really. They were abducted from a mall parking lot in broad daylight,” he told me, voice flat. He pulled two mugs down from the cabinet, filled both with coffee. “They had lunch with some ladies from their church, left the restaurant, but never made it to their car.” Impotent fury swept over his face. “Security cameras malfunctioned, so no vid, and no witnesses have come forward.”