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Rhyzkahl’s gaze finally came to rest on me. I could feel him assessing me, measuring the breaths of life that I had left. I met his eyes, even as the dull roaring in my ears began to grow louder and the gray began to close in on my vision.
He stepped to me and crouched. “Ah, my dear Kara. When I had finally decided you were of no further use to me, then you prove otherwise. Resourceful and clever.” He turned his dazzling smile on me and stroked my cheek with the back of his fingers. The gray receded a breath as the dizziness faded. Returning my stolen essence to me, I realized. Buying me a few more minutes.
“So now you call me to you.” He lifted his head, taking a deep breath. “And now you are slain. But that one,” and he gestured toward the sniveling Cerise, “would have contained me had you not called me.” He stood. “And thus I find myself in the most unpleasant circumstance of being in your debt.” He gave a soft laugh, not seeming at all displeased. He stepped to the edge of the diagram that had been painted in my blood.
“I am here in this sphere, unfettered, dearest one.”
I could only pant raggedly. Breath was harder to come by with every second, and the pool of blood before me continued to widen.
“And you lie before me, eviscerated most unpleasantly.”
What, there’s a pleasant way to be eviscerated? I thought, though I had no strength left to voice it. But at least I could die with sarcasm.
“A choice for you, then, in payment of my debt.” He turned back to me. “I can return myself to my sphere, relinquishing this opportunity to gain power in this realm.” He nudged a section of my bowels with the tip of his boot. “Or I can restore you. Choose.”
I sucked breath with effort. I’d already accepted that I was dying. I already knew the calm of it. And there was no way that I could let him roam free in this world.
I shook my head. It was probably just a millimeter of motion, but it was enough to tell him my choice.
He laughed softly. “And for once you are predictable. Very well. I will return myself to my own demesne.” He strode over to Peter Cerise and seized him up by his hair.
“No!” Ryan shouted from within the circle. “No, you have to help her. Restore her!”
Rhyzkahl paused, then slowly turned to look at Ryan. He lowered his head. “And what do you offer me in exchange?”
I could see Ryan swallow and go pale, unprepared for the full force of Rhyzkahl’s potency.
“Me,” he gasped out. “She deserves to live through this. She defeated Cerise. She kept you from being imprisoned!”
Rhyzkahl inclined his head a fraction. “And I have already resolved that debt.” His eyes flashed. “And you would give yourself over to me that she might live?”
“No!” Had I managed to say it out loud? I was so cold. He couldn’t give himself. He didn’t know what he was offering! Ah, shit, Ryan, no. Just let me go. It’s all right.
Rhyzkahl turned his head to regard me, the summoner dangling from his grip like a kitten in the jaws of its mother. “Ah, so poetic. ‘No! Save the other in my stead!’” His smile was beautiful, but his voice mocked us both. “As tempting as your offer is,” he said to Ryan as he calmly set Cerise on his feet and wrapped an arm around him, holding Cerise’s back to his chest, “you are not fully aware of yourself.” Rhyzkahl wrapped his other arm around the whimpering Cerise’s head, then, as easily as twisting a stem from an apple, pulled off the man’s head. He dropped both head and twitching body to the floor at his feet, completely oblivious to the blood that sprayed over him, staining his white garments in chaotic patterns. “It would not be an equal repayment, even as treasured as Kara is.”
My eyelids drifted downward, too far gone to even be horrified by the gruesome means of Cerise’s death. My breath flowed out of me, and I had no need or desire to take another. It’s all right, Ryan. It’s all right.
“Come home with me, Kara.” Rhyzkahl reached down with a blood-covered hand and grasped mine. A flash of white light surrounded us, and then we were elsewhere.
I was lying on what appeared to be a dais, in front of a throne of white and gold stone carved in a familiar pattern. I was dimly aware of a sharp, tangy, and not entirely unpleasant smell and an unfamiliar language being spoken above me. I could see white marble walls beyond the dais, graced by vast open archways surrounded by intricate burnished gold ornamentation. Through one archway was a broad balcony and a distant turquoise sea set aglow by the rays of a rising or setting sun. Above the sea were figures in flight, and I realized with awe that I was seeing zhurn and graa and syraza wheeling above the sea in an intricate dance of wings and air, claws and teeth.
Just past the throne was what looked like a nude woman with hair that flowed to the floor, but the segmented wings like a beetle’s on her back and the mass of twining strands where a tongue should be told me this was a mehnta. To her right was a coiling of smoke and teeth and shifting colors, a demon I recognized as an ilius.
I was dying, but this almost made it all worth it, to see the demons, to see their realm, their home. This wasn’t how I had pictured the demon realm at all, and I realized with chagrin that I had fallen into the same trap as those who assumed all demons were evil. I’d pictured the demon realm to be a dark place of fire and rock, but this was beauty and elegance, more like a vision of what heaven might be. How many humans have ever seen this?
I barely had strength to keep my eyes open any longer, but I could sense as much as see Rhyzkahl crouch before me.
“Ah, dear one. I ca
It’s all right, I thought, dimly seeing sparkles of light at the edge of my vision. So this is really the demon realm?
“Yes, dearest, this is my demesne. Would that I could keep you here as mine, but even here you are dying.”
Too bad I can’t see more of the place. Oh, well. The sparkles of light grew brighter and more insistent.
“There will be another time for that. I ca
Confusion muddled through me even as the light grew brighter, obscuring all else. Chance? Payment? No, not Ryan!
I heard a melodious laugh just before a ripping crack obscured all else.
CHAPTER 30
The void was nothingness. Not light or dark, but the absence of all reference. No color, no sound, no touch. I drifted for a time, seconds stretching to eternity, aware of the void and feeling the expectation, the anticipation of something more, something beyond the void.
But the nothingness swallowed sensation and thought alike, and I gradually ceased to wonder.
Come on, Sweets.You can’t stay. You don’t belong here. You need to keep going.
Going?
Yes, keep going through. Go on through, sweetling. You’re doing just fine.
I am?
You always have. I’m so proud of you.
Where am I going?
Through. Go on through.
Through?
He’s calling you. Just follow his call.
Too easy to lose the way.
Too hard to keep from unraveling when there’s nothing to remind you of who you are and where you should be.
Another eternity passes in the flick of an eyelash.
Kara. Kara, you need to come back.
A feathery touch on the edge of my essence.
Come on, Kara. Find your way back. You’ve been gone long enough.
A flickering awareness of self. Curiosity. Emotions and awareness creeping back in gradually.