Fury of the Demon

Chapter 40

Unbalanced by Zack’s abrupt departure, I barely caught myself before going sprawling and struggled quickly back to my feet. Worry for Zack swept through me, followed by a wave of frustration. He’d sacrificed himself and now he needed support more than ever. An agonized cry broke through my thoughts, snapped me back to the here and now.

Rhyzkahl crumpled to his side then rolled to his back, eyes wide as he began to puke. With a stunned look on his face, Kadir stepped smoothly forward and rolled Rhyzkahl to his side, then set a foot on his shoulder to hold him there so he wouldn’t drown in vomit. His eyes came to me, and I felt his slicing regard. Did he fear that his own ptarl, Helori, would follow Zakaar’s example? Or did he hope for it, estranged as they were?

“Kara,” I heard Mzatal say from behind me, plea in his voice. “Come back.”

I returned to Mzatal’s side, and guilt stabbed me at the shock in his face, his unsteady breath, his uncertainty. I should have warned him somehow. “I’m here, Boss.”

“Kara. Zharkat.” I watched him visibly fight for focus. Now that the unthinkable had happened to Rhyzkahl, the other lords knew it was possible and could conceivably happen to them. “They are not done,” he said. “Jesral and Amkir.”

“Hold it together, Boss,” I told him, centering for us both. “Focus on the now. It’s all good.” A peal of thunder startled me, and a moment later rain pattered down in hard and fierce drops for several seconds then stopped again.

Jesral abruptly threw off the potency net that had held him. He looked just as shaken and freaked as Mzatal, but his focus returned as he concentrated on the situation at hand. Three quick strides brought him to where the blade, Xhan, lay on the ground between him and Rhyzkahl. He stooped to pick it up, then dropped it with a curse and shook his hand as if it had burned him. Jaw set, he pulled a cloth from an inside pocket of his jacket, doubled it, then carefully retrieved the blade and tucked it away. With that accomplished his attention shifted to Amkir, who still lay pinned on the ground. The two lords’ eyes met. Jesral gave a slight nod. Amkir returned it.

Those two are up to something, I thought—and had no time to do anything more.

Jesral’s head swiveled toward me, and he lifted a hand, even as Amkir gestured to where Idris lay bound behind Mzatal. In the next heartbeat I let out a hoarse scream as the sigils on my body flared in hideous reminder of the agony that had formed them. Distantly, I heard Idris cry out, and I realized Amkir must have activated a recall implant in Idris. Like an arcane homing device, the recall was intended to return its subject to the one who placed it. But because Idris was still behind Mzatal’s protections, it could only pull; like tying a rope around someone’s middle and then attempting to yank them through a chain link fence. Pull the rope hard enough and something has to give.

Jesral twisted his hand, and instantly my agony ratcheted up and flashed in quick sequence through each of the eleven sigil scars of the lords, before settling into a steady white-hot burn. My vision went grey, and I staggered, saved from falling as Mzatal threw an arm out and pulled me back against him. The agony abated very slightly with the contact, but behind me Idris gave another pain-filled cry.

A primal scream of fury and frustration burst from Mzatal. His resources were exhausted, and I sensed his awareness that he could perhaps save either Idris or me, but not both. And then even that awareness burned away in the fury that seethed within him.

Jesral closed his fingers, and a pinpoint of searing heat like a tiny sun burned over my sternum. Red tinged my vision, and I shuddered then looked down at the arm around my waist. Why was Mzatal holding me? I began to struggle against the hold. No. I needed to return to Jesral, to Rhyzkahl.

“Kara! Kara!” Paul’s voice yanked me back to myself.

Breathing raggedly, I ceased my struggles. The sigils still throbbed, but I knew who I was. I tried to touch Mzatal through our connection, but his focus was fully on the storm as he called it closer, pulled the lightning and power to him.

Amkir snarled and tightened his hand. Idris screamed again as though being ripped apart, even as thunder pounded across the lawn. Jesral exuded cold, calm focus, a vulpine smile curving his mouth as he twisted his hand again. I jerked in Mzatal’s hold, screamed, “KARA,” through a closing veil of rakkuhr red. Mzatal raised his arm, and I felt him bring the lightning through Khatur. The strike came to the blade in a blinding flash that drove all hint of the red haze from me, and in the next instant the lightning split to slam into the two enemy lords. Jesral flew back nearly a dozen feet and landed in a crumpled, smoking heap not far from Rhyzkahl. But Amkir took the strike solidly, pinned down as he was, and barely had time to utter a choked scream as it seared over and through him.

The pain in the sigils stopped as suddenly as if a switch had been thrown. I dragged in a breath and leaned heavily on Mzatal as I fought to get my equilibrium back. Instead of the exhilaration of the lightning I’d experienced on the mini-nexus, this ripped through me with near-sentient wrath, disturbing and familiar. The essence blade.

I heard Paul give an unsteady laugh, and when I looked over I saw him curled on the ground a few feet away with one arm over his head and the other holding his tablet tightly to his chest. He lifted his head, gave me a wavering grin. “That was so cool,” he breathed.

I gave him a weak smile in response. Easy to enjoy the light show when one was in a Mzatal-made protective cocoon. A dozen or so feet beyond him, Bryce knelt with a hand on Idris’s shoulder, expression tight as Idris’s body twitched.

I looked back at the lords who’d started this bullshit. Both Jesral and Amkir lay moaning, heavily burned, and clearly not an immediate threat, though Jesral struggled to get up. Mzatal’s arm remained an iron band around my middle, and I felt his rage couple with the sentience of the blade and go even darker.

“Boss. It’s done.” I pulled vainly at his arm. “It’s cool now,” I said, but he didn’t seem to hear me. I twisted to see his face, deep dread rising at the wrath that contorted his features. “Mzatal?” I sought to touch him, but a wall of anger blocked all else.

Once again he called the lightning to him. I bit back a shriek, covered my head with my arms as thunder slammed into us, and Mzatal danced the searing power over Jesral and Amkir. The two jerked and writhed beneath the assault for at least a dozen heartbeats, then Mzatal pulled it all into himself, restoring exhausted resources and supercharging.

“Stop!” I yelled at him as soon as he released the strike, but before I could take a breath to say anything more he called it again, this time enhancing it with potency and feeding it through Khatur. Blue-tinged blasts smashed into Farouche’s mansion and the Ops building, fully orchestrated by Mzatal. His breath hissed between his teeth as he raked the potency-fueled lightning over the house. Screams and shouts sounded from within as flames leapt in the lightning’s wake, and in seconds people began to boil out, fleeing like rats from a sinking ship.

I screamed at him to stop, pummeled him with my fists, but he remained utterly distant, lost in his fury and vengeance. His lips pulled back from his teeth, and I felt the power within him build like a charging capacitor. “No, Boss. Mzatal! No!”

I squeezed my eyes shut in pure protective instinct, and in the next instant a flash of potency burst from him. Heat seared over me, though dampened by Mzatal’s own aura and shields, but I heard a scream of agony, quickly cut off. Paul. That was Paul!

Heart pounding, I lifted my head. Everything within a ten foot radius was incinerated to powdered ash—all save the crumpled heap that was Paul. Most of his clothing was gone or seared and stuck to the raw and smoking burns covering his body. His hair had burned away, and one ear was missing. He lay curled on his side, arms crossed over his chest to protect the melted slag that was all that remained of his tablet.

Nausea rose in my throat. Paul’s shielding had saved him from being cremated alive, but hadn’t been enough to fully protect him. It had been meant for bullets and arcane strikes, not a mini-armageddon.

I looked past him to see Bryce and Idris several feet outside the circle of destruction. Bryce had thrown himself over Idris to shield him, but he looked up now. Naked horror filled his eyes. “Paul! Oh god, no . . . Paul!” He lurched to his feet, then dropped to cover Idris again as Mzatal called the lightning and connected upward. The clouds took on a blue glow as multiple thin lightning streaks hissed and crackled incessantly over the entire area like electrified serpents. Rain whipped down, sizzling through the power to land with stinging force.

Bryce found an opening, stumbled up and managed to run-stagger to Paul. “No. NO!” he cried out in wrenching anguish as he dropped to his knees by the crumpled form, desperately searching for any sign of life. “Paul!” He dragged the molten remains of the tablet from Paul’s chest, then recoiled as a layer of ruined flesh came with it, leaving a gruesome wound of exposed ribs and sternum.

Seizing Mzatal’s head, I fought to touch him, to reach him, only to find a maelstrom of rage and grief. Desperate, I struck him hard with closed fists. “No!” I screamed over the unending thunder. “Stop! You’re hurting people!” I pried my hand beneath his fingers, twisted with moves learned from Gestamar. Mzatal’s grip loosened, and I stumbled free of his grasp, yet I didn’t think he was even aware I’d done so.

Singed hair lay wet and slick against Kadir’s skull as he limped toward me, and a vicious and twisted burn marked a forked path from face to thigh down his left side. He staggered as a random strike hit a few feet from him, but continued inexorably forward, teeth bared as he looked beyond me. I yanked my gaze around to see Ryan standing several feet behind Mzatal, a few inches within the blasted circle.

Light and sound and heat and rain pummeled me from all directions, but I ruthlessly shut it out, stood before Mzatal and focused solely on him. Glowing with raging power, he planted his feet and raised Khatur high. The bizarre lightning stopped and the thunder ceased, but I knew Mzatal wasn’t finished. Deep terror filled me as I sensed him draw power. The burst that so grievously injured Paul would be a mere spark compared to what he sought to do now.

“Ryan!” I shouted, desperate. “I can’t reach him. Help me reach him!” I swiveled to Kadir. “Both of you! Do something to help me!” Lord Creepshow wasn’t an ally by any stretch of the imagination, but right now we were all at risk of obliteration.

In answer, Kadir lowered his head and began to trace. Ryan gave a guttural cry, his features shifting weirdly as he called potency between his hands into a crude ball. I returned my full focus to Mzatal and called to him with everything I had. Zharkat. Zharkat. You will slay me. Cease, my love. I beg you. You will slay me.

A flicker, a whisper of response, the barest brush of awareness of me. He still drew power, still raged, yet it was a needed chink in the otherwise impenetrable wall.

Rain lashed down, plastering the dress against my body and blinding me. I reached again, called to him, shut out all but Mzatal. Distantly, I felt Kadir and Szerain prepare, then bit back my scream as they struck—Szerain with a crude hammer blow of potency in Mzatal’s back, and Kadir with a superbly elegant burst that covered Mzatal’s skin in a network of azure neon like freakish varicose veins.

Please. You must stop. You will kill us all.

The potency burned over Mzatal. It got his attention, but it was my presence and touch that riveted him. He breathed heavily through bared and clenched teeth, held the strike.

“Zharkat,” I said, weeping. “Boss. Please stop.”

His eyes found mine. He was lost—in the grief and anger and power, and in the need to vent all of it. His body trembled with the effort of keeping it in check.

I threw my arms around him as if I could help him hold the strike back. My focus widened, and now I took in everything happening around us.

Bryce knelt by Paul, performing CPR with desperate efficiency, exposed bone beneath his hands. “C’mon, kid, God damn it, come on!” Ryan had collapsed to his back, features completely his. Kadir watched with cautious intensity as he prepared another strike. Idris lay curled on his side, eyes wide and staring, jaw slack.

Mzatal felt it all through me—the destruction, the pain, the fear, the death—and his control of the fury wavered.

“Mzatal. Send Khatur away,” I ordered, using every means of communication I had with him. “Send the blade away. NOW!”

His eyes locked on mine, as hard as silver-grey flint—unyielding, uncompromising, but still holding the catastrophic potency at bay.

Boss. Zharkat. Beloved, I called to him. Feel me. Remember yourself. Be right here. Right now. With me.

Breath hissing through his teeth, Mzatal shifted his grip on the blade. For a horrific second I thought he intended to drive it through me, but then he let out a harsh growling cry and slashed the blade down across his forearm to open a deep gash. Luminescent blood sizzled and vaporized on the blade, and I staggered, nausea rising, as I felt Khatur take the offering. In the next heartbeat, the blade disappeared from Mzatal’s hand, banished.

Mzatal shook with the intensity of the gathered potency, the cumulation of black anger I couldn’t fathom. He still maintained enough control to keep it leashed, but not for much longer. Even now it ripped at him. I felt the pressure build—a sealed volcano, poised to explode, and when it did Mzatal would stand alone in the middle of a blasted crater.

“Down. Down!” I urged him. “Ground it into the earth and to the lake.”

He let out a tortured cry, dropped to his knees, and flattened his palms on the ground. I went with him, kept my arms around him, called to him.

The lake, I told him. Send it to the lake. The world trembled. A narrow fissure split the ground between us and the water, a crack of earthen lightning. An instant later the lake erupted into a boiling cauldron.

Holding Mzatal, I helped him channel the power as it poured out of him. Steam rose in a massive, seething cloud. The shaking in the earth eased. The worst of the steam dissipated, leaving behind a fetid stench.

Breathing hard, Mzatal knelt with hands still flat on the ground, regret and frustration echoing through him in discordant rhythm along with a headache that sliced at him, much like the one he’d had at my house.

I slowly released him, stood unsteadily, and looked around. Kadir, intently watchful, gave a slight nod then limped to the burned and moaning forms of Amkir and Jesral, seized each by the collar and dragged them toward the node. Flames licked from the roof of the plantation house, tempered, but not quenched by the heavy rain. Half of the Ops building lay in ruins, and potency residue still writhed over it like fine arcs of electricity. People moved, shouted, and screamed in the flickering light, but all seemed too caught up in their own nightmare to bother with the intruders who’d just nuked the place. No doubt someone had called nine-one-one by now but, as isolated as the plantation was, it would be a good fifteen minutes before significant response arrived.

“Mzatal,” I said, sickened. “Paul . . . Paul needs you.”

He pushed up to kneel without meeting my eyes. As he stood, I felt him consciously withdraw from me and close me off as he went to crouch by Paul. For a moment I could only stare as our connection thinned until it felt like the vacuum of space, cold and silent. What was he doing? I mentally extended, found a wall and no entry. “Mzatal?”

I dimly heard Bryce shouting. “You fix him, goddammit! You did this to him! You goddamn bring him back!”

Mzatal ignored him, ignored me, as he straightened and moved to Idris. Bryce cursed and resumed CPR on Paul. In othersight I saw Mzatal unwind the arcane hooks that would have killed Idris in a few more minutes. That was good. A wave of vertigo came and went. I liked Idris. Clever and talented, that one.

I frowned. Did I know Idris that well? The rain eased from a torrent to a gentle fall, and I turned in a slow circle, taking it all in. Kadir shoved Amkir and Jesral through the node portal, then turned and surveyed the area with narrowed eyes as he approached Rhyzkahl’s motionless form. Mzatal carried the unconscious Idris back to set him down near Paul, then knelt and placed his hands on the horribly burned young man and went still. Bryce shifted back, jaw set and eyes on Mzatal, but he didn’t say anything as the lord worked on Paul.

I lifted my hand to the silent receiver in my ear, unable to escape the feeling that someone was supposed to be telling me something. Reminding me of something. Vertigo flickered over me once more. My hand dropped, and I fought to hold onto a slick plain of never-ending glass, tilting me toward oblivion—

“Kara.”

I spun toward the voice, toward Ryan as he climbed to his feet. Dream fragments merged with reality, dispersed to reveal firm ground beneath me. Kara. “Here,” I gasped. “I’m here. Kara.” The grove. I still felt the grove through the open node. That’s what I needed to focus on right now. I was Kara, and Kara could do cool shit with the grove.

“Kara,” Ryan repeated as he moved to me. “Kara.”

I took a deep breath, tasted the boiled lake in the air. “Ryan, I killed Pyrenth,” I said, voice cracking. “And Jesral almost had me, and Mzatal, he . . .” I trailed off, unable to voice it.

“Kara,” he murmured as he gathered me close. “Be right here, right now. You have to focus. Too much is going on.”

I clung to him, fought my way back up and dug in. “Right. Right. I’m here.”

“Kara.” That was Mzatal, voice tight and mega-controlled. “Kara,” he said again, yet the connection remained silent and empty. I released Ryan and moved toward Mzatal. The ground seemed to pitch and roll beneath my feet, but I couldn’t tell if it was the aftermath of all the tremors, like trying to walk on land after a long boat trip, or if it was simply my own tenuous grasp on my reality because of the rakkuhr virus.

Idris let out a low groan from where he lay beside Paul. Paul didn’t groan. I wasn’t even sure Paul was breathing beneath Mzatal’s hands. At the edge of my vision I saw Kadir carry Rhyzkahl onto the gazebo platform, push him through the node then stride away in the direction of the burning mansion. My hatred of Rhyzkahl remained unchanged, but for now I banked the fires of my rage. He suffered terribly with the loss of his ptarl, and it was enough for me in this moment.

“Kara,” Mzatal said, and I returned my focus to him. “Call Vsuhl.” His words came sharply, bitten out to slice the air, and I didn’t know if it was because he had everything focused on Paul or if he’d closed off even basic warmth from me.

Yet I did as he asked. Perhaps he needed my help to save Paul? The blade coalesced in my hand, edge catching the glare of the remaining floodlights and the fires. None of Pyrenth’s blood on it. A self-cleaning blade, I thought with an edge of hysteria. How fucking handy was that?

Mzatal jerked his hand out toward me. “Give it to me.”

I didn’t move. Behind me I heard a weird cough-gasp that I knew was Szerain fighting his way up through Ryan. Mzatal demanded Vsuhl back with no regard for what I’d gone through, no regard for what he’d so recently wrought through his own blade, through Khatur, no regard for . . . anything?

“No.” I said it softly, but I knew he heard me.

Mzatal gathered up Paul in his arms, teeth gritted against the headache that I could see still plagued him. “Kara, no time for this,” he said, flat and harsh. “Give me the blade.”

The silence in our connection beat at me at me like nightmare wings. “No.” I took a slow step back, and my gaze dropped to Paul. “You need to go.”

I wanted to feel some sort of reaction to my denial of him, but there was nothing. No flicker, no clench of the jaw or distress in his features. Mzatal’s gaze merely flicked past me to Szerain, and I felt the exiled lord’s desire for Vsuhl like that of a starving wolf for a doe. “Then send it away,” Mzatal said, tone curt and blunt as he brought his gaze back to me. He placed his foot gently on Idris. “Kara,” he said, yet there was nothing there but the word. None of him came with it. “Kara,” he repeated, more softly.

I banished Vsuhl without protest. I wanted to understand what happened. I wanted to scream WHY. But I didn’t. There wasn’t time for me. “Go,” I told him, the silence between us a heart-wrenching void. “You need to go and save Paul.” Bryce took a step toward Mzatal. He intended to go with Paul, I knew.

Mzatal’s expression, already stony, went to the lord-unreadable mask. His eyes came to me, then rested on Bryce. In another heartbeat he was gone with Paul and Idris.

Bryce gaped at the empty patch of sodden ash. “No. No! He left without me!”

I wanted to collapse and hug myself and cry, but I didn’t have the fucking luxury to do so. “Ryan,” I said with as much resolve and conviction as I could muster. “I need you to go to Sonny and get Ms. Palatino away from here and to safety.”

He nodded. “Can do. After that I have to find Zack.”

“I’ll take care of it,” I assured him. Focus on the job now. I could do that. “I’ll find Zack. I promise.”

Ryan hesitated then gave another nod and loped off toward the hole in the fence.

“Bryce, I need you with me,” I said.

He still stared in shock at where they’d been. “What the fuck?”

“Bryce,” I snapped out like a whip. “I need you with me.”

His shoulders jerked back as he focused. “Right,” he said, still shaky. “Right,” he repeated, more firmly this time. Paul was gone and there wasn’t a fucking thing he could do about it. I knew more about that feeling than I wanted to.

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.”