Kynan was halfway into the room. That trick with the wards had been wickedly effective. A corpse sprawled by the table staring sightlessly at the ceiling, mouth frozen in a scream, an arm stretched upward. Blood pooled in a burned out crater that had once been the man’s face. Wisps of smoke wafted from its chest and open mouth.
One.
An inert form lay on the steel table. Not dead, but dying and not human. Blood dripped down its arm onto the floor. Bright red, acrid scent.
Two.
Freed demon at the far side of the room, hand on the wall, shuddering and shifting between human form and his true form. She immobilized him.
Three.
A mage she assumed was Cifai pointed at Kynan and opened his mouth to shout.
“Stop—” The word was loaded with compulsion for the mageheld whom the surviving mage believed had possession of her will.
Four.
Maddy kept her attention on him.
Count four, warlord. Confirm?
So much information taken in, processed in a split second, and instantly relayed to Kynan.
One free kin. One dead mage, one dying mageheld. One living mage, probably Ugo Cifai.
Kynan corroborated the count and echoed back his assessment of the rank of the two demons relative to his own. Mid-level for the demon still unable to maintain physical coherence. High for the one on the table.
“—him.”
They’d been in the room for two seconds. Between second two and second three, Kynan destroyed his remaining network of wards. Not trivial. The lights stopped flickering. She kept her back to the wall and made another visual sweep at the same time she checked for sources of magic she couldn’t identify.
Clear. Do you confirm?
Confirm.
Nothing out of bounds.
Acknowledged.
Kynan walked to within an arm’s length of the mage. “Ugo Cifai.”
Cifai jabbed a finger at her and snapped, “Keep him under control. The warlord is to obey me. Make it so.” The mage drew on his magic, and the black-bladed knife in his hand glowed white along the cutting edge. “Kynan Aijan,” he said calmly, “I require your assistance.”
“Fuck you, mage.” He reached for the knife with a mirthless grin. “No more killing.”
Cifai, assuming Maddy had correctly identified him, sent a wave of compulsion at her. “Vahid. The witch is to command his obedience.”
Maddy played up the chance to keep Cifai unaware that there was no indwell as he believed. The longer he mistakenly thought his mageheld was in control of her, the better. “I am trying, mage.”
“His obedience now!” Cifai glowered at her and the demon on the table. “It will soon be too late.”
Kynan grabbed the front of the mage’s head with his other hand. “I said no more killing.” His grin widened. “Except for me.”
A few seconds later he let go, and Cifai slumped to the floor. Vahid and the thirteen magehelds outside were now free.
One mage. He spoke into her head, full of satisfaction that would have been her own if she’d been close enough to kill that bastard. Dead.
On the floor, Cifai’s eyes saw nothing. She had no sympathy. If he’d had his way, that would have been Kynan on that table.
Kynan walked to the mageheld she’d immobilized. “Let this one go now.” Because Maddy was so tightly linked with Kynan, she felt his push into the other demon’s psychic space, and once again she could no longer distinguish herself from Kynan. They pulled the demon’s name from its consciousness.
Goban.
New to his existence. So young. An odd combination of power and ignorance.
The demon laid out on the steel table didn’t react to the power flowing through the room, and her sense of him continued to fade, although his chest moved and blood continued to drip from his body. Beneath the table an obscenely red pool oozed toward the drain. Nothing from him. No name. No rank.
Maddy caromed back to her body. It was disorienting to abruptly be so far from the dying demon when half a second ago she’d been standing in front of him. She was going to have to figure out how to deal with those rapid switches between states of connection.
The stairwell-side door opened, and Vahid staggered inside, his strangled cries bouncing off the walls. Twice, his physical form flashed between human and a jackal-headed biped. Maddy pressed her back to the wall, but Vahid’s attention landed on her and, predictably, he tried to kill her.
She deflected his attack and retaliated with more power than she preferred to use on demons that were disoriented from the end of their magical enslavement. She didn’t want to escalate the situation by stopping Vahid with touch—he would not welcome that contact with her—so she erected a barrier around herself. With a keening cry, Vahid hammered at the barrier only to have Kynan grab him by the throat and slam him against the wall.
“You shouldn’t have done that.” With the tip of his forefinger, he tapped the demon’s forehead. His head snapped back, hit the wall, and rocked forward. There was a dent in the wall the size and shape of Vahid’s skull. The former mageheld gasped once, then, still crazed, leapt at her again. Kynan’s hand shot out, focusing energy that paralyzed the other demon. “Think about twitching,” Kynan said, “and you’re dead before you’ve been free long enough to know it’s real.”
Vahid’s mouth opened in a full-toothed snarl, but no sound came out. His eyes turned brilliant purple.
“Settle yourself.” Kynan stroked the demon’s cheek. “She’s not the witch who did this to you.” He wiped tears from beneath Vahid’s eye and brought him close until they were cheek to cheek. Kynan whispered, “She’s not the one.” Vahid’s heaving chest slowed, and his forehead dropped to Kynan’s shoulder. The two stood until Vahid shuddered. “Yes,” Kynan said, pulling him closer yet. “It won’t always be like this.” He glanced at Goban, still struggling to maintain a coherent form. “Welcome to freedom, my friends. Let’s hope it lasts longer than a few minutes.”
At a nod from Kynan, Maddy released the barrier she’d erected to protect herself. Vahid glared at her but did not move.
Kynan Aijan was a warlord. Nothing new in that. For years, she’d had him neatly tagged as to his abilities. This much power, and no more. This was the state of his sanity and no better or worse. Now, everything was different. What frightened her was the possibility that he was the same as ever, but that she’d refused to see until now.
Kynan moved to the demon prostrate on the steel table. Without looking away from the injured demon, he said, “The witch is mine. Harm her in any way, and your free lives will be short.”
Winters. Ramping down the link so this one doesn’t have a bad reaction because you’re here. I’ll link back when it’s safe to have you with me.
Acknowledged.
Kynan brushed his fingertips along the injured one’s forehead. The demon’s spine bowed, and the smell of blood got sharper while colors she couldn’t name pulsed at the periphery of her vision.
On the table, the injured demon went psychically hot and sat up, gargoyle-like down to his stone-gray hide. He blinked yellow-green eyes that made an eerie complement to the livid red of his injury and the blood that covered his upper body. The wound in his chest remained a vermillion slash down the center of his chest because the poison on the blade Cifai had used was designed to prevent a demon’s otherwise rapid healing. Injuries like his, suffered during a ritual like the one Cifai had intended, could take years to fully heal. If they ever did.
Slowly, he slid off the table, unsteady, but with impressive cohesion. He gripped the edge of the table and surveyed the room. A high-ranking demon. He looked in turn at Kynan, Vahid, and Goban. In order of rank. He paused too long on her with a gaze full of hate and venom. Not that she blamed him, but still. She braced herself for another attack.
“Rangi,” Kynan said. Her skin prickled from head to toe. She took that as a good sign, that he’d made contact with the demon and had a name. Kynan’s magi
c burned through her, melding with her by way of their bonds. Was this how it would be from now on? His magic alive in her with no way for her to be free of the desire to possess him?
Rangi’s gaze settled on the two dead mages, eyes yellow discs in crimson sclera. Maddy kept her magic on tap. Another reanimated corpse seemed unlikely, but the newly freed weren’t predictable or logical. Add in the gravity and nature of this one’s injuries, and paranoid caution was the best course. Rangi blinked twice more, shuddered once with a violence that sent a spray of blood arcing through the air. He brought himself under control and propelled himself at her.
Not unexpected at all. She didn’t want to hurt him any worse than he was already, but she wasn’t going to stand there and be an easy target, either. She flicked a finger, and his forward progress stopped.
“Mine.” Kynan grabbed Rangi’s shoulder and squeezed hard. “Off limits.”
With his chest bleeding anew, Rangi’s roar of protest echoed off the walls. The demon shoved against Maddy’s barrier, seething with hate. She retreated to her place against the wall by the door. The least sign of hostility from her would only incite him to worse behavior when what he needed was the opportunity to come back to sanity.
Unfortunately, he seemed to take the fact that she was breathing as an aggression because he lashed out again. Kynan caught the demon by the back of his neck and slammed him to the floor, face-down.
“Against the rules.” He flipped the demon onto his back, leaving a thick smear of blood on the floor. He bent over Rangi. “Pay attention. You get one free pass, and that was it. One and only one because we haven’t told you yet. Listen close. All three of you.” He pointed at her. “She is off limits. Go after her, and I will take you down. Winters, it doesn’t pay to be nice. Next time you protect yourself from some asshole like this, you make him hurt.”
Rangi fought against his restraints. The lights flickered once, then again, then burned steadily. “She is complicit.”
In response, Kynan smiled slowly. His side of their bonds flexed in response to Kynan’s draw on his magic. With a low hiss, every drop of blood on the floor and walls turned to ash. Wisps of smoke curled from the wound in Rangi’s chest, and he bared his teeth in a grimace of pain. “You want to live,” Kynan said, “leave her the fuck alone. If she doesn’t kill you, I will.”
“The only good witch is a dead witch.”
Kynan made a short motion, and the few places where Rangi’s wound had healed broke open. Fresh blood sizzled then, turned to ash. “We clear now?” he asked in an iron voice.
Rangi glared at Maddy, blinking his yellow eyes.
“My advice is don’t piss him off again.” She lifted her hands. “Sorry. He’s a pain in the ass that way.”
As if she’d never spoken, Rangi said, “Yes, warlord.”
Kynan stroked Rangi from the top of the shoulder to his lower rib cage. The curls of smoke vanished. “I’m saying this once,” he said to the room at large. “If you head south, you’ll be in territory controlled by Nikodemus. The magekind can’t harm you there. No mage or witch is permitted to hold demons, not new magehelds, not existing ones. The rules are easy to remember. No harming the magekind. You don’t do anything to or with humans without full consent. You break those rules, there are no second chances.”
The entire time he spoke, he continued his caress of Rangi. The demon’s injury healed perceptibly, and yes, that was a push of his magic into the demon. A few moments later, Rangi sat up, unwittingly, she thought, mirroring her own seated, knees-up posture. Kynan ran through the rest of the information they needed and how to contact someone for help if they ran into trouble.
When he finished, Maddy said, “We hope you’ll consider staying with us. All of you. Rangi, Vahid. Goban.” Like Rangi, she nodded at them in order of their rank, a necessary convention to adopt when you worked for a demon warlord. Procedures for dealing with the newly freed were clear and unambiguous. As long as they followed the rules, they were free to go. She hoped they stayed. Emancipation wasn’t a cure, just a necessary condition.
Nobody said anything. Kynan shrugged. After a glance at her, he hooked back into their previous connection, and it was like the world coming back sweeter and more precious than before. Her bonds flexed and relaxed, and tension that had become a knot in her chest dissolved. Until the link was back, she hadn’t even realized not having it had been such a drain on her. She clutched the tops of her knees. That couldn’t be good.
Rangi turned blood-tinged eyes on Kynan. “You protect the guilty and punish the innocent? Why?”
“Because I’m an asshole. Just like you.” He returned Rangi’s snarl. “I fucking told you. She’s mine.”
Rangi considered Kynan for several seconds. He pushed to his feet, the wound in his chest slowly dripping blood. He faced Kynan and pressed three fingers to his bowed head. Crimson drops hit the floor. “Thank you for the warning,” Rangi said.
Maddy’s awareness of Kynan trembled deep in her chest, and his exultation at Rangi’s obeisance became hers, too. Of the three demons, Rangi alone remained in non-human form, motionless now, but with rapidly cycling magic. She kept an eye on all three and sat there thinking that if she had these four demons as hers, she’d be beyond harm.
Kynan folded his arms across his chest and studied Goban and Vahid as if he didn’t know what she was thinking. Maybe he did because a smile flickered on his lips. “You heard what I said, right?” Colors streaked through the air around him, tiny currents of gold, green, and violet that pulsed with energy. “About Winters.”
Goban nodded. “I heard.”
“Forgive him, warlord. He is one of the raised.” The words rasped from Rangi with painful effort. “He knows nothing about the free kin or the Entelechy. You.” He gestured. “Show him respect. He is Kynan Aijan. Acknowledge him, Vahid. Goban. Now. You are free because of him.”
Goban touched his forehead. He was clumsy but sincere as far as she could tell. “Warlord.”
Rangi pointed at Vahid. “Acknowledge the warlord.”
“I will not.”
“He is Entelechy. Are you?” He snorted and made a derisive gesture. “Who do you come from that you do not need to acknowledge Kynan Aijan?”
“My mother is Neda Sessani.” Vahid tipped his chin up. “My father was the warlord Bejar.”
CHAPTER 16
Kynan and Winters ended up alone with their good friend Vahid because Rangi and Goban elected to leave, as was the right of all newly freed kin. Their right, but now he and Maddy had to deal with one of Bejar’s lineage, a demon who didn’t know shit about anything except being enslaved to one of the magekind.
Unlike Winters, Kynan had anticipated Vahid’s answer to Rangi’s question. She’d never seen Sessani and so had no idea how strongly Vahid’s human form resembled his mother. But he was inclined to patience with Vahid because Kynan had known Bejar before his fall to Neda Sessani and again, briefly, while Sessani and Magellan were lovers.
Now, here he was, face-to-face with another of Bejar’s progeny. Kynan fixed Vahid with a look. “I knew Bejar.”
Bejar had been among the first of the Entelechy to fall to magic users. It had happened before the kin understood the danger they were in. In those days none of the kin understood the significance of humans who saw the culpability of one demon as belonging to all demons. Once humans had figured out how to call out their own latent magic, they’d acted swiftly and without mercy. The kin had taken too long to understand and adapt.
Kynan knew Winters well enough to guess what she was thinking. If Bejar had been Sessani’s mageheld at the time Vahid was conceived, then there had been no consent from Bejar. The magekind loved to talk about how humans needed to be protected from the kin yet saw nothing wrong with ordering a mageheld into their beds or sending them out to do the same to someone else. What a fucked-up world. Nikodemus was right to make sure the rules applied to kin and magekind alike.
She made fists of her hands. “I have
n’t wanted to kill one of my own this badly since dit Menart.” Outrage vibrated in her voice, and Kynan could not help but respond. It was a side effect of the closed bonds. If the two of them were anything like normal, he’d be touching her now, soothing her, sharing her reaction. “What Sessani did is an abomination,” she told Vahid. “From Bejar to you to Rangi and Goban. All of them. Every single act was an abomination. I will not tolerate it.”
He was happy to let her emotion lead for now. Vahid needed to see her outrage. He could have used that himself back when Carson freed him. But he hadn’t known about Winters until much later. What Sessani was doing was a direct echo of Magellan’s work, and in Vahid, Kynan saw his own fate playing out in a potentially less destructive way.
Like Bejar, Kynan could have been forced to father children against his will, but that was a fate he’d been spared. For centuries, Magellan had tried to break Kynan. He’d been forced to the mage’s bed not because he preferred males but because a crack in Kynan’s sanity—something, anything—might’ve made it safer to attempt a ritual murder with him as the victim. Sessani had had great luck with breaking her magehelds this way.
“Bejar would have done everything possible to help you.”
“Before he was given to Infante, he did what he could.” Vahid glanced away, jaw tight. “More than anyone else.” Vahid’s hopefulness twisted him up. “Where is this Infante? I would like to find him and free my father.”
He and Winters exchanged a glance. “I’m sorry,” she said. She was so ferocious when she was working that her tender reply to a demon who had been nothing but a danger and an asshole to her came out of the blue. Except it wasn’t out of the blue at all. Not for her. “I’m so sorry. Bejar was killed.”
Kynan put a hand on Vahid’s shoulder because he would never accept condolences from Winters. Vahid leaned into the contact.
With a glare that all but accused Winters of the murder, Vahid said, “How?”
He maintained physical contact. If nothing else, the fact that Kynan outranked him would steady him. But he was prepared for Vahid to lash out. At him. At Winters.
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