Fury of the Demon

Chapter 10

A raucous squawk from a blue jay woke me, and it took me several seconds of Why the hell is a bird in my bedroom? before I remembered where I was.

Sunlight filtered through leaves and pine needles to create shifting patterns on the tent canopy above me. A squirrel chattered in annoyance not far away, and a dragonfly buzzed near the canopy and then zipped past. Subtle wards designed to keep insects away shimmered by the tent poles. “Afterglow” had consisted of my polite and loving demand that Mzatal teach me that particular arcane protection.

I sat up and found Mzatal standing naked a few feet from the edge of the pond. With his back to me and his unbound hair pulled forward over one shoulder, I had a lovely view of his back, where well-formed lats swept down to a narrow waist above a perfectly muscled ass. Though he was the eldest of the demonic lords, I couldn’t help but think that sort of thing was irrelevant considering they were all several millennia old. All had an ageless look about them of men in their prime, though I now knew that most trained diligently to maintain peak physical condition—Mzatal included.

Mzatal’s hands worked potency strands in rhythmic patterns, but I had no idea what he was doing. I felt the caress of his mental touch as he turned his head to give me a smile. I returned both smile and mental caress, then scooped up my clothing. It would be lovely to while away the day watching him work in the nude, but the pile of stuff from Tracy Gordon’s house awaited my attention.

“What are you doing?” I asked as I dressed.

“There is much potential in the confluence behind your house,” he told me. “I am using this valve as an anchor point to stabilize the flows between here and there.”

Frowning, I tugged shoes on. “Wait, there’s a valve here?”

“Yes. I will adjust the concealments.” He made a peculiar little twist of his hands. “Are you able to sense it now?”

I moved toward him, then felt it—a ripple in the arcane flows, as if a layer of thin silk waved over my skin. I’d experienced it before with the valve in my aunt’s library and the one in the parking lot of the Beaulac PD. I hadn’t understood the sensation at the time, but now I had some hard-core training under my belt, along with the seventh ring of the shikvihr.

“Oh wow,” I breathed. “When I was a kid I came out here all the time, and I’d sit right where you are and read or do homework or just daydream.” A smile spread across my face at the memory. “It always felt so . . .” I groped for a word to describe it, then shrugged. “Right. It felt right.”

Mzatal touched my cheek and gave me a fond smile. “You were drawn to it even then, beloved.” But his eyes went back to the valve, and his smile faded.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“It is very draining being on Earth,” he said, frustration lacing his voice. “I do not know how long I can maintain. Perhaps two days.”

Shit. The amount of native potency on Earth was vastly lower than in the demon realm. The lords depended on that energy source, like a plant depended on the sun, and right now Mzatal was a battery draining faster than it could recharge. Humans didn’t have the same problem when in the demon realm—in fact they tended to thrive and only risked “overcharge” if the ways between the two worlds closed, such as what happened during the cataclysm.

Yet while I’d known he wouldn’t be able to remain indefinitely, I hadn’t expected the time frame to be so desperately short. We don’t even have a real lead yet, I thought with worry.

“How are Zack and Szerain able to stay here for such an extended length of time?” I asked. “Can’t you do whatever they do?”

He shook his head. “Zakaar is demahnk and thus not affected in the same manner as other demons,” he said. “And Szerain is diminished, much disconnected from potency, and living as a human. Neither means serves as a solution for me.”

I sighed. So much for an easy fix. “Does it help for you to be around the valve?”

“It does,” he reassured me. “And the confluence may also prove useful. I will work today to stabilize and integrate both, since I will need them to seek Idris as well as to maintain my potency.”

“All right.” I kissed him, slid my hands around to cup his delightfully firm ass. “I take all the credit for using up your power last night.”

Chuckling low, he caught my head and returned the kiss with toe-curling fervor. “And I will give credit where credit is due.”

I returned to the house with a spring in my step, and told myself I wasn’t going to worry about Mzatal’s limited time here. We’d simply have to work our butts off until he had to leave. Our current plan was for him to immerse in tracking Idris through the flows—which had the added bonus of allowing him to recharge at the same time, even if only a trickle. Meanwhile, I’d focus on the more conventional, though no less important, aspects.

Breakfast was a quick affair, consisting of coffee alongside bacon piled atop a cream-cheese covered bagel and smushed into a sandwich. I ate this with one hand while Eilahn and I retired to the living room to continue the Sisyphean task of working through Tracy’s journals. I’d been fooled by the ordered condition of his library. Sure, everything was arranged all nice and neat, but within the actual journals and notebooks, disorder reigned on a scale to eclipse that of my aunt’s library.

However, despite the pervasive random passages and enough stream of consciousness to make James Joyce cringe, I gradually found a rhythm to the entries, and after about half an hour of reading, I straightened.

“I think I have something. These look like some of his notes for that gate he made in the warehouse.”

Eilahn shifted with uncanny smoothness from her kneel-sit to peer over my shoulder. “Yes, it does appear so.” Numbers, notes, neatly sketched sigils, and a half dozen alternate ritual configurations covered several pages in a tattered and coverless spiral bound notebook. She reached and traced a slender finger down a column of numbers. “What are these?”

Frowning, I puzzled over them. “Oh! It’s dates and times,” I said after a moment. “Look, it’s year month day hour minute, though it’s only the ones that had passed before Tracy died that have the hour and minute.” With that realization, I examined them more closely and looked for patterns. “See how these dates have a range of times by them, but crossed out? He’d narrowed them down to specific times. Then we have ones with the range only, and here, these later dates don’t even have a range.”

“Ah, yes.” She angled her head. “It is as if he was tracking an event.”

I peered at the numbers. “You mean like he knew the date of something but didn’t know the time?” I drummed my fingers on the page as I considered that. “I think I get it. He knew the date of whatever it was, wrote down the time of it, and then managed to extrapolate a range of time for the next few dates.”

Eilahn’s finger paused on one line of numbers. “That is the date you were summoned by Mzatal.”

“And the day Tracy died.” A curse whispered out of me. “He didn’t live to mark down the time of whatever it was.” There were many more dates after that one. A year’s worth, every few weeks. Including—

“Today!” I bounced in my seat. “Eilahn, look. Whatever it is, there’s one happening today.”

She lowered to a crouch, gaze skimming the column of dates and times. “Yes, between nine and noon.” Her mouth twitched as she angled her head at me. “I assume you wish to go witness this event, whatever it is?”

I laughed. “Do you really need to ask?”

“No,” she replied with a smile. “It was indeed a foolish query. But we will need to make haste as it is already after nine.”

Standing, I grabbed for my bag. “Let’s roll.”

A sturdy padlock secured the chain link gate at the industrial park, but after Eilahn peered closely at the lock for nearly half a minute she announced that “someone” had very carelessly failed to clasp the lock shut.

I grinned and helped her pull the gate open. My demon bodyguard had some cool tricks up her sleeve.

We passed through the gate and closed it behind us, then continued down the main drive. An eerie ghost-town quality pervaded the complex as we passed empty storefronts—auto supply store, ceramic tile showroom, discount furniture outlet, and others of that general ilk. None of the high tech industry the developers had hoped for.

“No way all these places went out of business since I was last here,” I said, a little shocked as I realized that was nearly six months ago. “The new owner must have cancelled all the leases as soon as he bought the buildings.”

Eilahn’s steady gaze tracked around us. “Perhaps the one who purchased this complex did not wish to wait for the end of the various lease periods before beginning work on the exciting new development in health care?”

After a few seconds of thought, I shook my head. “Still doesn’t make sense. These places look like they’ve been closed several months. If there was a rush, all of this would be torn down by now.”

“A mystery,” she murmured, smile playing on her mouth. “We shall endeavor to solve it, yes?”

I laughed. “Sure. I’ll put it on the to-do list.”

The warehouse where Tracy Gordon had attempted the gate—and where he’d died—still looked much the same as it had several months ago: a faded industrial grey facade with grime-covered glass double doors and a dark foyer beyond. It had belonged to a corporation owned by Roman Hatch, my now-incarcerated ex-boyfriend who’d decided to help Tracy Gordon kill a bunch of people and lure me to my doom.

I scowled. Damn it, all of my exes were pieces of shit. Rhyzkahl headed the list, of course, even if he didn’t count as a “boyfriend.” Didn’t matter. He was a steaming piece of shit. On the other hand, I couldn’t discount that the common factor with all of the exes was me. With each one I’d ignored warning signs, too lonely and needy and desperate to listen to the little voice within me that questioned my actions.

Yet I’d changed a hell of a lot in the past six months, as had my perspective. Mzatal and I shared a trust and connection beyond anything I’d ever thought possible, and I had every belief that I’d finally broken the self-destructive pattern.

I pushed away all thoughts of boyfriends and exes and pieces of shit as I noted the white SUV in the warehouse’s parking lot. I continued past the building, frustrated that I couldn’t personally run the tag without jumping through hoops and calling in favors. Compromising, I stopped long enough to grab a pen and scrawl the tag number on a gas receipt. I could always give it to Ryan and Zack to check it for me later if need be.

When I reached the end of the block, I turned and came back. Still no sign of people anywhere. A golf cart was parked in an alley two buildings down from the warehouse, but I didn’t see anything else that struck me as out of the ordinary. I finally parked across the street, got out and swept an assessing gaze around while Eilahn did the same. Still no sign of people or obvious threats, so together we hurried across the street to the parking lot.

I placed my hand on the hood of the SUV. “Warm,” I murmured to Eilahn. “Hasn’t been parked here long.” Whoever it belonged to either had permission to access the complex, or had gained entry by illicit means, much as we did. Either way, it bothered me that it was parked by this particular building.

Uneasy, I headed into the shadowy narrow street that ran along the side of the building. I knew we were going to have to break into the warehouse, but I had no desire to be obvious about it and go through the front.

We were nearly to the rear of the building when Eilahn placed a hand on my arm. “Voices.” Her eyes narrowed, and now I heard them from around the corner of the warehouse.

A yelp of what sounded like shock.

Another voice, shrill with stress. “Hands up!”

A third, calmer voice. “No trouble here, sir.”

“That can’t be good,” I murmured and broke into a jog. Within two strides Eilahn overtook me, peered around the corner quickly before motioning for me to continue. I did so, then followed as she made her way toward an open door on the back end of the warehouse.

“No sudden moves! Let me see some ID!”

And a quieter, “It’s no problem. I’m cooperating.”

Wary, I put my hand on my gun to reassure myself it was there. We peered around the doorway and suddenly found ourselves with a prime vantage as two men stood near the center of the large, empty warehouse, facing a third who leveled a large handgun at them.

None of the men seemed to notice us in their peripheral vision, and I quickly processed details as Eilahn and I crouched to avoid becoming targets ourselves. Tall and gangly and with freakishly long arms, the gunman wore a baggy Apex Security uniform along with an expression that hovered between panic and bravado. His finger rested on the trigger in a mockery of any sort of proper training or trigger discipline, and his aim jerked back and forth between the other two: a young man with Hispanic features and a slender build, and a tall, broad-shouldered man dressed in a dark suit.

The wide-eyed younger man clutched what looked like a tablet computer to his chest with one hand and held the other up, fingers splayed. In sharp contrast, the suited man modeled utter calm as he performed a slow and careful two-finger extraction of something from his inside jacket pocket, most likely the demanded ID. As he did so I caught the hint of a bulge beneath his left arm.

A shoulder holster? Not that it made a difference. Even if the guard had seen a weapon it was idiotic and reckless for him to confront possible intruders without backup. Still, the situation needed to be defused before this twitchy rent-a-cop shot someone. I opened my mouth to tell Eilahn to call nine-one-one, even as a series of beeps abruptly sounded from the young man’s tablet. He jerked and gave a muffled cry, then fumbled and dropped the device.

The tense tableau shattered into chaos. The security guard startled, swung his gun toward the younger one. “Don’t move!” the guard cried with an excited, cocky edge to his voice. I’d heard that tone before, usually from rookie cops who were too hyped up by the power of the badge and gun, and in desperate need of a solid kick in the ass.

“Paul! Get down!” the dark-suited man ordered. In a fluid move, he dropped his ID and shifted his weight, made a twisting dive to put himself in front of the young man and take him down. A flash burst from the muzzle, and the sound of a gunshot slammed through the warehouse as the two men tumbled in a heap.

For an instant I thought the takedown had succeeded and the guard had missed, then I heard a horrible wet cough and saw blood spatter.

“Eilahn, get the gun!” I snapped out as I ran forward. She bypassed me in a flash of demon speed then used a cool spin-twist move to easily wrench the gun from the idiot security guard and drop him to the floor.

I slid to a stop and fell to my knees by the two men. The suited man jerked and struggled for breath as he lay face down atop the one he’d called Paul. A small dark splodge glistened on the back of his navy suit jacket, but the blood splatter on Paul and the floor told me the bullet had blown through.

“Bryce! No!” Paul’s eyes were wide with shock as he scrabbled beneath the man, trying to hold him and wiggle from beneath him at the same time. I siezed the injured man’s shoulder, tugged and rolled him onto his back, then bit back a curse as I saw his blood-soaked shirt and the dark red pool on the concrete. Blood bubbled from his mouth as he fought for breath. Paul scrabbled up and to his knees, horror filling his face at the sight.

“Eilahn, a little help here!” I called over my shoulder only to find the syraza already beside me. She dropped into a crouch and set the gun down—a .45 I absently noted—then ripped the bloody shirt open and covered the terrible exit wound in his right center chest with both hands. I shifted away to give her room and pulled out my phone to call nine-one-one. There wasn’t much else I could do for the guy at this point. A .45, I thought in disgust. For a security guard. Compensating much?

My eyes fell on the ID he’d dropped. Bryce Thatcher. StarFire Security. That was a top-notch personal security company with an excellent reputation. Was he Paul’s bodyguard? He’d sure as hell acted like one. There’d been zero hesitation to leap and take a bullet that would have no doubt killed Paul. I winced. And probably had killed Thatcher.

Bryce Thatcher. How did I know that name?

An electric jolt of memory zapped through me. The list of names in Tracy’s red journal. I jerked my eyes up to the young man. “His name is Bryce Thatcher?”

Eyes glazed in shock, he managed to focus on me and give a jerky nod.

“He does not have long,” Eilahn murmured with a slight nod to me that indicated she remembered Thatcher’s name from the list. Shit. This guy was named in a summoner’s journal and happened to be in this warehouse at this particular time. Finally a possible lead, and that dumbfuck security guard had to go and blow a hole in him.

Eilahn shifted her attention to Paul. “Give me your shirt.”

“Wh-what?” He gave her a baffled look, too rattled to understand her intent. She growled low in her throat as she stripped off her own shirt, packed the wound with it and held pressure.

“We need Mzatal,” I said.

Eilahn’s mouth tightened. “Yes, I cannot hold him long.” I didn’t need othersight to see her weave the potency strands for healing but I could tell it was rudimentary compared to a lord’s. “Three minutes,” she added. “Perhaps a minute more.”

Even EMS can’t help him at this point, I thought with grim certainty. I hit Zack’s number on speed dial, then stood and moved a short distance away, far enough to be out of earshot of Paul and the dazed guard.

Thatcher coughed up blood and frantically struggled to breathe. Paul groped for his hand, clung to it. “No—no! You can’t die.”

I turned away from the scene as Zack answered.

“Garner here.”

“Zack, I need Mzatal where I am—Tracy Gordon’s warehouse—as soon as possible,” I said, voice low and urgent. “There’s a man here who might hold some answers to the Mraztur’s plans, and he’s been shot. He’s close to death.”

I expected an I’ll get right on it or something like that. Instead there was only silence on the line. Dread curdled in my gut. While Eilahn’s ability to arcanely travel was drastically compromised on Earth, Zack was demahnk and didn’t have the same limitations. I knew he had the ability to get Mzatal here before Thatcher died. Why hesitate?

“Please,” I said. “I know you can do this. It’s important.” I glanced back at the trio. Eilahn’s face remained clenched in a rictus of concentration. Paul clutched at Thatcher’s hand as if holding him back from the jaws of death.

My dismay rose as Zack remained silent. “If he agrees,” he finally said, voice oddly taut.

If he agrees? My annoyance flared at his hesitation. “If Mzatal doesn’t agree, let me talk to him. This is important!”

“If he doesn’t agree, I’ll call back,” he replied, then disconnected.

I stared at the phone as shock and anger battled it out for precedence in my skull then jammed the phone into my pocket and returned to crouch beside Eilahn. “Zack was hesitant about coming,” I said in a low voice, “but he said he’d bring Mzatal if he agreed.” And if Mzatal didn’t agree, there would be some words between us. Oh, hell yeah.

She gave me a tight nod, then narrowed her eyes and focused on Thatcher. “You must stay here,” Eilahn told him. “Do not go. Stay here.”

“Yes, god, Bryce,” Paul wept openly. “You can’t leave me. Please. I . . . I can’t take it there without you!”

Thatcher’s hand spasmed in his. Blood bubbled in his mouth as his eyes sought Paul’s. The attachment between the two was clear. Though Paul looked to be around twenty, he radiated an innocence that made me think of him as younger. Thatcher might have been Paul’s bodyguard, but there was something deeper as well.

“Please. Please,” Paul continued, voice choked with barely restrained sobs. “I can’t stay there without you. I can’t do it. I’ll die. You’re all I have. You have to live!”

Out of the corner of my eye I saw the guard stagger to his feet, then stumble toward the door. I briefly entertained the notion of chasing him down and securing him, then discarded it. I doubted he was going to run and tell anyone he’d just shot a guy. If charges needed to be pressed later, I could track him down through the security company.

Thatcher’s hand clenched on the kid’s again, then his head lolled to the side. Dead, I thought in dismay, then saw that blood still bubbled at his mouth. No. Not dead. Yet.

A ripple of arcane touched me. I turned to see Zack and Mzatal by the front entrance.

I stood as Mzatal strode toward us. “Boss, he’s in bad shape. Can you save him?”

The lord’s gaze went to the dying man, eyes narrowing at the severity of the injury. “I do not know,” he replied and went to one knee beside Thatcher as he said something in demon to Eilahn. He removed the blood-soaked shirt from the wound and laid his own hands over it, face hardening with intense focus.

Eilahn crouched nearby, naked to the waist, and obviously completely unconcerned by it. Zack remained at a distance, face expressionless and arms folded over his chest. Paul shifted back as Mzatal knelt, then looked up at him and went still, mouth dropping open. I had to control a smile. Yeah, Mzatal had that effect on people.

“I will need your assistance, zharkat,” Mzatal told me, voice tight. “He is very nearly gone.”

I’d never worked with him during a healing before, and I struggled for several precious seconds while I sought the best way to support. The lords didn’t heal with sigils and wards. As far as I could tell from all I’d witnessed, they healed by drawing damaged flesh together with elegant sutures of potency and then “reminding” the body of its proper form in order to restore itself—encouraging the tissues to heal a thousand times faster than naturally.

But no matter the method, it still required potency, and I could at least help collect and prepare the patterned strands.

Mzatal drew from me and through me the instant I touched the pattern. I sucked in a sharp breath while I sought to maintain the balance of the flow of power. Through the support connection I felt his struggle to hold a spark of life in Thatcher’s body. Sweat broke out on Mzatal’s brow, though he remained motionless. The strands burned away as he tapped them, and I was hard pressed to keep up with the drain and help control the integrity of the structure.

Thatcher coughed up a gout of blood and drew a gurgling breath. Paul surged forward to seize his hand again. “Bryce, oh god, come on,” he pleaded, eyes on his friend’s face. “You can do it. Don’t leave.”

With the initial heavy drain past, I balanced the flow to Mzatal to fuel his effort. Like a shadow seen through a sheer curtain, I watched him locate critical bleeding and weave repairs, felt him urge Thatcher’s body to remember its healthy state and form.

Again Thatcher coughed, but this time he followed it with a clearer breath. Through Mzatal, I felt his tenuous connection to life strengthen as the sense of drowning in his own blood decreased. Paul gripped Thatcher’s hand, yet his gaze remained on Mzatal, an almost worshipful expression on his face. He knew Mzatal was doing something miraculous to save his friend.

Thatcher’s face twisted in pain. “God . . . Oh, god,” he rasped, breath noisy, but without the horrible death-rattle gurgle of before. “P-Paul . . . okay?”

Tears spilled down the young man’s face as he gave his friend a tremulous smile. “I’m okay. You saved me.”

Even my cynical ass could appreciate the poignancy of the moment, but I didn’t have much chance to do so as a movement by the back door yanked my attention. At first I thought that perhaps it was emergency services, summoned by the damn security guard. It would be a bit of a pain to deal with cops or EMS right now, but—

I stared, mind in denial for several precious seconds as, impossibly, Katashi’s senior summoner strode into a warehouse on the outskirts of a small town in south Louisiana. Tsuneo, the treacherous asshole who bore a tattoo of Jesral’s mark on his hip, and who had performed a hostile summoning of Gestamar several months back. Beside him loomed another man I recognized from my brief time as Katashi’s student: Tito, not a summoner, more of a thug type with a sensitivity to the arcane.

Anger flared. “You!” I shot to my feet and moved to get in front of Mzatal and the others. I drew my gun even as Tito pulled his to put us into a great little standoff.

Tsuneo’s gaze hardened at the sight of me, but in the next instant his face went slack with shock as he not only saw Mzatal but felt his aura.

What the hell was Tsuneo doing here? For that matter, what were Thatcher and a computer nerd doing here? Was everyone here for a frickin’ arcane flash mob?

Moreover, was Thatcher also a summoner? Was Paul? Even more vital for Thatcher to live through this so we can question the hell out of him, I thought grimly.

I heard a hiss-growl from behind me, and the hair on the back of my neck lifted as Mzatal’s aura flared, dark with fury. He stood and stepped forward with hands still dripping blood, radiating Bad Mojo like a sun about to go supernova as he faced the traitorous summoner. His left fist remained clenched at his side as his right opened in a stance I recognized all too well. Lowering his head, he moved toward the interlopers.

Shit! I kept my gun leveled on Tito and risked a quick glance back at Thatcher. He still breathed, but I knew he was far from stable.

As Mzatal advanced, Tsuneo took a stumbling step back and looked around wildly as if trying to come up with a miraculous defense. He apparently concluded there was none because his next move was to run like hell for the exit.

Mzatal lifted his right hand and called scintillating blue-white potency to it even as Tsuneo darted through the door and out. Tito frowned, apparently balanced upon a razor’s edge decision of whether to fire or run.

Mzatal rendered the decision moot. Face stone-hard and focused, he hurled the potency at Tito like a lightning strike. The man screamed and dropped the gun as the burst impacted his belly and spread over him in a rippling cascade of light. He jerked heavily for several seconds, then crumpled to lie twisted and utterly still.

The deadly potency flickered and died as Mzatal continued forward. Behind me I heard Thatcher’s struggle for breath, and Paul’s agonized entreaties for him to hold on, to stay.

“Boss!” I yelled, holstering my gun. “You’re losing Thatcher. Let Tsuneo go! We’ll track his ass down later.”

Mzatal took two more steps then stopped, his hands clenched at his sides, violently seething potency boiling off of him. Yet he still didn’t turn back toward me and the man dying on the floor. I knew he wanted to pursue Tsuneo, exact revenge for the injury to Gestamar and the insult of the summoner’s betrayal and allegiance to the Mraztur.

“Boss,” I urged. “Mzatal, please! We need Thatcher alive.” Behind me, the wounded man’s breath grew more labored.

Mzatal remained lord-still for several more agonizing seconds while I fought the urge to grab him and pull him back to finish the healing. Finally he turned, met my eyes for a powerful instant before striding back to Thatcher. I let out a ragged sigh of relief as he knelt and placed his hands back on the mess of the chest wound.

I quickly resumed balancing the pattern and the flows, then looked back at the crumpled body of Tito. No doubt he was dead.

Shit. This was a mess.

Welcome to Earth, Boss, I thought with a sigh.