He bent and picked up Paul’s fried tablet with its bits of charred flesh as though it was nothing more than a piece of litter. Looking my way, he opened his mouth to speak then shut it, gaze going behind me.
I turned to see Kadir approaching, limping heavily from the massive burn that charred his thigh. Deep burns also distorted the left side of his face and torso. His eyes stayed riveted on me as he led a gasping and stumbling Farouche by a noose of potency around the man’s neck. I watched their approach warily. As much as it rocked my world to see Farouche in such a position, I wasn’t in the mood for Kadir’s weird-and-creepy shit right now.
He stopped two paces away from me, drew Farouche up to stand beside him before releasing the potency noose. Farouche drew in a ragged breath, a combination of fury and fear burning in his eyes. Yet he lifted his chin and put on a fierce smile in an attempt to regain some composure.
I offered Farouche a deliberately bland look before I shifted my attention to Kadir, doing my best to give the impression I was dismissing the man as uninteresting and unimportant.
Expression tight with what had to be unbearable agony, Kadir regarded me. “Kara Gillian,” he rasped. “in the agreements and protocols of this world, is this one,” he gestured toward Farouche, “considered deserving of punishment?”
I knew exactly why Kadir would ask me this, especially after finding out about the men who’d been sent because they “deserved punishment.” I’d been warned by more than one lord about how dangerous Kadir was, and how he liked to . . . hunt. Hell, even Rhyzkahl had warned me about him.
But Kadir had simply asked me a question. And so, I simply answered.
“Deserving of punishment?” I nodded. “Yes. Without question.”
Farouche’s smile shifted to a smirk. “You’re judge, jury, and executioner now, Ms. Gillian?” he drawled. “I believe this is better decided in a proper court of law.”
I readied a retort, but before I could speak, Kadir turned to him, aura shifting to cold as fuck.
“No, James Macklin Farouche,” he said in a voice that set my own bowels clenching even though it wasn’t directed at me. “I am judge. Jury. Executioner.” He punctuated each word with potency. “Kara Gillian confirms what I had already drawn from here.” He traced a burned finger slowly down the man’s temple.
Sweat beaded on Farouche’s upper lip as he paled. “I’m a businessman,” he said, no longer smirking. “That’s all. Sometimes business gets a little ugly.”
“He wouldn’t get the justice he deserves here in this world,” I said somewhat dully, part of me hating that I was sending Farouche to what was surely a fate worse than death, with another part of me knowing how fucking evil the man was and how many lives he’d utterly destroyed. If anyone deserved a fate worse than death, it was this bastard. “He’d easily be able to influence the jury and witnesses,” I continued, sick despite it all. “I doubt he’d spend a single day in prison.”
Kadir snaked the loop of potency around Farouche’s neck again. “The businessman will spend time with me.”
“No,” Bryce said, interrupting Farouche’s gabbled protest. He dropped Paul’s fried tablet. “He’s mine.”
Farouche’s head snapped around as Bryce stepped forward, and relief filled his eyes. I didn’t have to read minds to know the thoughts going through his head: A little of the old fear-whammy and Bryce would be his dog again. Oh, dude, I thought with a whisper of bitter amusement. You have no idea.
I took a slight step back to defer to Bryce as Kadir turned a penetrating gaze on him. A chilling smile curved Kadir’s lips as he no doubt read Bryce’s claim and his intention. Kadir glanced to Farouche, gave the potency leash a brief tug. “Are you indeed his?”
Ignoring the leash as best he could, Farouche smiled, smugly confident. “Yes. Justice demands that Thatcher have custody of me. We have a long history.”
Bryce’s expression didn’t so much as flicker from the impassive mask as he regarded his former boss. “Yes, we have a long history.” He met Kadir’s eyes. “He’s mine,” he repeated.
I took another step back. Kadir narrowed his gaze at Bryce. “I understand he is yours,” he said through clenched teeth. “I acknowledge he is yours.” He reached to grip Farouche’s wrist in a tight grasp, and by the pain that flashed over the man’s face I knew it was just on the verge of bone-breaking. “But in this moment he is mine for facilitating this.” He gestured toward the unstable node, and I suddenly understood Kadir’s anger. He was OMG crazy and dangerous and unpredictable, but at the same time an order-and-rules freak—which was probably how he managed to function at all. The screwed up node was not only likely rule-breaking of the highest order but was also messy and threatened to fuck up the order of things in both worlds. His first action upon arrival had been to stabilize the node portal, and was probably the only reason he broke the rules and came through at all.
And now I realized why Kadir hadn’t joined the attack on Mzatal here, or accompanied the other Mraztur four months ago at Szerain’s palace when I performed the ritual to call Vsuhl. It was against the rules for the lords to engage in anything but one-on-one combat.
“In another moment he will be yours,” Kadir continued, then drew Farouche’s hand to his mouth in a smooth and powerful motion. Before Farouche had time to react, Kadir sunk his teeth into the flesh at the base of the man’s thumb and ripped a chunk free.
Farouche let out a hoarse scream as Kadir spat the gobbet at Bryce’s feet. Bryce didn’t shift away or react and kept his face utterly smooth and expressionless as Kadir tightened his grip on Farouche’s wrist with an audible crack of bones. Farouche screamed again, knees buckling as Kadir viciously wrenched his hand and then, merely by touching the man’s temple, roused him from a near faint to full awareness.
“Such a brief time, a moment,” Kadir murmured as he allowed the trembling Farouche to go to his knees, “yet so much can transpire.” He crouched, hissing low as the crisped flesh of his thigh crackled grotesquely, then reached and gripped Farouche’s balls, wringing another—higher—scream from Farouche as he squeezed and twisted hard.
Kadir held the man in this agonizing position, one hand squeezing the broken wrist and the other tightening on his nuts, until Farouche’s eyes rolled back in his head. Only then did Kadir release him, though immediately gripped him by his hair to again touch his temple and rouse him to full consciousness. But he wasn’t finished. He ripped Farouche’s shirt open, and as though reading from Farouche the torments he had inflicted on others, Kadir used potency to create four parallel slices in the man’s chest. Methodically, he ripped away the strips of flesh, wringing screams of agony from Farouche. He dropped the bloody strips to the ground, licked his fingers, and potency burned the remainder of the blood from them. He stood, hauling the gibbering Farouche upright, then shoved him to crumple at Bryce’s feet.
“And now the moment is yours,” Kadir stated and wiped the blood on his mouth away with the back of his hand. I kept my teeth clenched, pygahed desperately, and prayed I wouldn’t upchuck.
Bryce gave a slight nod, face still betraying absolutely nothing, which impressed the hell out of me considering my own reaction. “You’re finished with him?” he asked.
“I am.”
Bryce dropped his gaze to Farouche. “Mr. Farouche? Can you look at me please?”
Breathing in pained whimpers and cradling his arm to his chest, Farouche turned his head to look up at Bryce. His face shifted subtly, and I knew he was attempting to exert his influence, get Bryce back under his thumb—or what was left of it, I thought with a silent snigger.
Bryce met Farouche’s eyes, then drew his gun and shot him in the head.
I jerked, even though I’d known it was coming, but I managed not to startle when Bryce put a second round into the man’s skull.
Bryce exhaled softly and holstered his weapon again, tension slipping from his stance. He’d
never intended to taunt Farouche or torture him, I realized. For Bryce, killing Farouche hadn’t been revenge. He’d killed the man to make sure no one else ever died on his order or suffered the way he and Sonny and Paul and countless others had.
Kadir’s gaze went from Bryce to me, then he spoke to me in demon. “Kara Gillian, shik-natahr, zharkat of Mzatal. There is no other but you to seal the node when I depart.”
I had no idea what “shik-natahr” meant. The tenuous grove connection hadn’t provided that meaning, but a glance at the node told me that leaving it unsealed was not a viable option.
“Tell me what to do,” I said.
He lifted his hand toward my temple, paused as I tensed. A faint smile of dry amusement touched his mouth. “I honor my agreement with Mzatal concerning you,” he stated. “I only wish to transfer that which you require in order to seal the node.”
Right. He wouldn’t fuck around with agreements or the condition of the node. I gave him a slight nod and controlled the automatic urge to pull back as he touched my temple. My vision flickered for the barest instant, and then he pulled away, turned, and limped off without another word. I waited a few seconds before following, instructions clear in my head for what to do. Kadir crouched, made a few adjustments to the flows surrounding the node, then stepped through and was gone. I crossed the rubble-littered ground to the gazebo platform and stood before the node portal. I shivered at the feel of the energy—as if the portal sought to pull me through from the inside out. I couldn’t even imagine how miserable traveling through one would be. I pygahed to ensure utmost focus, then quickly sketched the needed sigils and made the adjustments as if I’d been born knowing them. Three heartbeats later the portal aspect of the node narrowed, then closed with little more than a sub-audible pop.
I turned to Bryce. “Let’s get out of here.”
Chapter 41
Somewhere in the numb void left by Mzatal, I found enough focus to keep going. We weren’t out of this yet, and the hint of distant sirens only emphasized that point. Bryce pulled a flashlight with a red filter from his pocket and lit our way as we double-timed it across Farouche’s property and to the hole Mzatal had melted in the tall and formidable metal fence. I felt Mzatal’s arcane signature as we passed through, like catching a whiff of cologne on a shirt. My chest tightened, and I slowed, but Bryce caught my elbow and urged me onward, over a rise and through a thick stand of bamboo to where an inflatable raft waited on the bank of the bayou that paralleled the fence line.
The rain was barely a light mist now, and stars glimmered to the west, peeking out from behind the retreating storm clouds. After we paddled our way across the sluggish bayou, Bryce pulled a knife and made three long gashes in the vinyl of the raft. Working quickly, we found several decent-sized rocks, rolled the shredded raft around them, then tossed it into the middle of the water to disappear beneath the mud-brown surface. Ryan would have done the same with the raft that had carried him, Sonny, and Angela across. No need to leave them on the shore and make it obvious that people had crossed.
I began to climb up the levee, but Bryce paused, still facing the water. Twitching with impatience, I watched as he unholstered his pistol and disassembled it in about three seconds flat. His expression remained utterly stoic as he chucked the slide and magazine into the water, then he pulled a slim toolkit from a pocket and removed a rasp from it. In a practiced move, he scraped the rasp through the barrel several times, hammered it against the firing pin, then tossed the rest of the gun pieces into the water.
He replaced the little rasp in his toolkit, slipped it back into his pocket, then turned to me. “Let’s go.” The whole process had taken perhaps thirty seconds.
Professional hit man, making sure the gun can’t be traced to the two bullets in Farouche’s skull. But I didn’t comment aloud, and together we scrambled up the levee and made our way to the vehicles.
Ryan paced an anxious line in front of his car. Sonny leaned against it with his arms folded casually, though his fingers drummed a nervous staccato on his bicep. The back door of the car was open, and as we hurried up a woman I recognized from her picture as Angela Palatino stepped out.
I wanted nothing more than to get the hell out of there and start looking for Zack, but I knew I couldn’t not take a few minutes to deal with her. I owed that much to Idris.
The tight grip she held on the top of the car door betrayed the level of her tension, and obvious signs of weeping marred her lovely face. I shot Sonny a questioning glance. Misery filled his expression, and then he briefly put his arms in a baby-holding position.
Baby? I thought, baffled, but then it clicked. Her daughter. Angela had no doubt asked Sonny where Amber was, and he’d been forced to tell her the brutal truth.
“Is Idris all right?” she asked, eyes flicking briefly past me as if expecting him to come over the levee at any moment.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, only lying a little. Idris was a mess the last time I saw him, but I knew Mzatal would call in every favor he had to make him all right. “He went with one of our other operatives for debriefing,” I continued, lying a lot this time, then shoved down my impatience to get out of there. “I’m very sorry about your daughter.”
Grief clouded her face. “Thank you.” I saw the questions forming in her eyes—Why did all this happen? Why was Idris’s cooperation so necessary? Why did my daughter have to die?—and I quickly spoke to forestall them, since I hadn’t the faintest fucking idea how to answer.
“Agent Kristoff is going to take you to the rest of your family,” I said, gesturing to Ryan. “I’m sorry, but there’s not much more I can tell you at the moment since the investigation is ongoing.”
“But I will get answers?” she asked.
“As soon as we have them,” I lied yet again. Her scrutiny remained on me for several more excruciating seconds, and I had the gut-twisting feeling she knew damn well I was feeding her a pile of bullshit. She finally gave a nod, sat back within the car, and closed the door, though I had the definite sense she wasn’t done with me or any of this. She’d merely given me a reprieve.
It was enough for now. I moved to Ryan. “Can you handle getting her to the safe house on your own?” I asked. “I need Sonny.”
Ryan gave me a nod. “Yeah. I got it.”
I glanced to Sonny. “You okay with that?”
He had a deer-in-headlights look about him, but he gave a nod of assent. “Sure. Whatever you need.” A tug of sympathy went through me. Sonny was suddenly in a different world with different rules—a world without Farouche and his influence—and it was clear he didn’t have the faintest clue of how to deal with it. Luckily, I had an idea.
Ryan leveled a stern look at me. “You be careful.”
“Always,” I said.
Sonny slid into the backseat of Zack’s car. Bryce stood by the open passenger door but didn’t get in, and it took me a second to realize he was holding it open for me. “I can drive,” I insisted.
“I know you can.” He smiled, but there was steel behind it. “But I’ll drive.”
My protest died away. He was acutely aware of my identity issues, and intuitive enough to recognize that Mzatal’s behavior and cold distance had left me even more distracted. No doubt he preferred not to be a passenger with a muddled-me driving. I met his eyes with silent gratitude and climbed in.
Bryce settled behind the wheel and cranked the ignition. “Where to, chief?”
“We’re looking for Zack.” Where the hell would a distraught demahnk go in the middle of the night? “Let’s try the Nature Center. There’s a valve there. Gotta start somewhere.”
As Bryce pulled out, I found my phone and called Zack. Voicemail picked up after half a dozen rings.
“Zack, it’s me,” I said. “We’re looking for you. Hang in there. I’ll keep calling.” I disconnected and glanced over to Bryce. “Well, it didn’t go straight t
o voicemail, which means he still has it on.”
“That’s good.” A frown puckered his mouth. “What the hell happened with Zack? All I know is that he somehow took out Rhyzkahl, then vanished.”
I did a mental head-smack. Of course Bryce was clueless. The exchange had been entirely in demon and he didn’t have the benefit of the universal grove translator.
“It’s really complicated,” I said with an apologetic wince. “You can’t breathe a word of this to Ryan.” Bryce gave me a nod, and I glanced in the back seat and got Sonny’s as well.
Of course now I had to figure out what to say. “You remember Ilana?” I asked Bryce. I knew Sonny would be clueless, but no way could I explain the whole demon realm dynamic right now.
When Bryce nodded, I continued. “She’s Mzatal’s demahnk advisor, his ptarl. And Zack is . . . was . . . Rhyzkahl’s ptarl. What you saw was him breaking that bond.” I paused for emphasis. “That’s never ever been done before.”
Bryce maintained his bland expression, but there was a hint of holy shit in his eyes when he glanced my way. “That sounds pretty big. What happened to Zack?”
“I wish I knew,” I said. “But we have to find him. When he left he looked shattered.” And how long will Ryan remain stable without him?
Yet we didn’t find him at the Nature Center or the next two places we looked, and though I called his phone several times, it continued to ring then go to voicemail.
“One more try,” I said after a frustrating hour of searching and calling. “If he doesn’t pick up this time, I’ll have to enlist Ryan to trace Zack’s cell.” I really didn’t want to involve Ryan in the search, nor did I want to deal with whatever official channels would be necessary for such a thing, but we were running out of options.
“You gotta do what you gotta do,” Bryce noted with pragmatic calm.
Once again I called Zack and waited through five rings. But this time, it stopped ringing without going to voicemail, and my heart rate spiked. I couldn’t hear anything on the other end, but I knew Zack had answered. I willed calm into my voice. “Hey, Zack. I’m out looking for you, dude.”
Fury of the Demon (Kara Gillian) Page 47