Touch of the Demon

I jerked at a sudden harsh tug, though no one was touching me.

Kara

“…here,” I gasped.

Rhyzkahl gave a cry of primal rage. “Dahn. Dahn!” He dropped to his knees and dragged me up, holding my chest to his with his left arm as I sagged. “He will not have you!” He let out an animal scream. “You will not have her!” Breathing heavily, he brought the blade to my throat, looked down into my face.

I felt the blade part the first layers of skin. I met his eyes and forced my words through split and swollen lips. “I…am…Kara.” Even if I died now, at least I remained me.

The tug deepened, and I sucked in a ragged breath. Rhyzkahl continued to hold the blade at my throat, yet didn’t press it deeper, didn’t draw it across to make the slice that would end me.

His eyes stayed on mine as the pull increased.

“Kara!” My name burst from his lips in a harsh scream, reverberating through me as I dropped away from him and into the void.

Chapter 19

I felt smooth stone beneath me, cooler than the floor of Rhyzkahl’s summoning chamber. I lay sprawled on my right side and stomach, my arms twisted at impossible angles. Pain seared through my shoulders and the rest of me, but I could only twitch and whimper. Everything about me felt wrong, unclean, as if I’d been immersed in slime.

Shouted words penetrated the fog of pain, but I couldn’t understand them. The wrongness persisted, as did the shouted commands. I tried to see through swollen eyes. I thought I knew the two men in the room. I knew that neither were the Tormentor. I didn’t know much else.

“Kara!”

My name. That was my name. I knew that too. The dark-haired one shouted my name. He stood several feet from me, as if reluctant to approach. Barefooted. Never seen him barefooted. Face twisted in concentration, he worked the arcane with blinding speed, tracing sigils and patterns and sending them to do…I had no idea what.

“Kara!” He shouted again. “Rhyzkahl seeks to follow. You must cast him back. Push him back through the conduit.” He turned to the blond one. “Prepare to seal it as soon as it is clear.”

Cast him back? I struggled to comprehend. I was Kara. Everything hurt. The sense of wrongness filled me, and I let out a mewling cry. I felt him, the Tormentor. He still sought to touch me, to pull me back. I dragged in a wretched breath and struggled to push the wrongness away, gathered what shreds of will I still had to drive back the smothering miasma.

“Kara! Again. Cast him from you!”

I moaned and recoiled as the foul touch returned. You are mine, it whispered. No other may touch you thus. You will be eternal.

I sucked breath through a throat raw from too much screaming. Shaking, I threw my head back, cha

And then I collapsed, spent. I could see the blond one tracing quickly. I no longer felt the Tormentor, as if the door had been closed upon him. Yet I still felt wrong, deeply soiled, and awash with relentless pain.

The dark-haired one crouched, still several feet away, eyes intent upon me. “Kara.” He inched forward, reached out a hand even though he was still far from me, pulled something from the air around me and, with a flick of his fingers, dispersed it. It stung, whatever it was he did, and I flinched and whimpered.

“Kara.” Kara.

I heard my name, felt my name. “Here,” I whispered, lips barely moving.

He continued to inch forward, continued to pluck things from around me. Each time he did so it stung, like the snap of a rubber band against my skin, but with every sting the sense of yuck seemed to fade.

“Idris,” the dark-haired man said over his shoulder without taking his eyes from me. “Prepare a support diagram with my tertiary parameters.”

The blond man nodded, begi

I knew this dark-haired one. Not the Tormenter, but one of his ilk.

“Mzatal,” I breathed.

“Yes, Kara, Mzatal,” he responded, exuding utter calm as he slowly crept forward, pulling, dispersing, steadily clearing the arcane crap that clung to me. Behind him, the blond one—Idris, yes, that was his name—Idris finished tracing a diagram and ignited it. Mzatal instantly breathed deeper, and I could sense the flow of power as he drew potency from the new pattern.

I wanted oblivion. I wanted to pass out, escape the pain, escape everything I’d just been through, but that relief eluded me as though behind a locked door with no key. My gaze drifted to the pattern. I didn’t try and focus on it. I didn’t want to focus on anything. My mind wanted to drift, and I let it. I didn’t want to be aware or awake. I didn’t want to be in the here and now.

Kara!

I jerked back to myself, whimpered as the movement sent fresh pain lancing through me. “Mzatal,” I moaned. He wasn’t going to let me drift. Wasn’t going to let me lose myself. I might never find my way back. “…you…called me.”

“Yes,” he said, still working his way forward. “And I am still calling you.”

I fought to work moisture into my mouth. “You…have me.” He’d sworn to retrieve me. And he had. I was right back in his control, right back to being his prisoner.

“Yes, almost,” he replied. “And until I can touch you, I will continue to call you so that you do not slip away.”

He did continue to call to me, sometimes sharply, when I began to drift. Every time, his voice and an incorporeal touch—more intimate and penetrating than words—brought me back. After what felt like an eternity, he reached me and placed a hand very lightly on my shoulder. The simple touch dragged me back to myself, as if surfacing from the depths of water. Pain flared, and I sucked in a ragged breath.

Mzatal shifted to sit cross-legged beside me and laid his hand carefully on my cheek, easing the bruising and swelling of my face. His fingers came away bloody, and I realized that Rhyzkahl’s ring must have cut me when he’d backhanded me.

“Tired,” I mumbled, easier now with my lips and face not so swollen. “Sleep.”

“Not yet, Kara,” he said. “The sigils are still active.” He took a blanket offered by a faas, rolled it and positioned it under my head, then spread a second one over me, giving me at least that bit of coverage and dignity, for which I was deeply grateful. I’d had my fill of humiliation, but if he hadn’t provided a blanket, I wouldn’t have had the energy to ask for one.

Mzatal placed both hands on my shoulder. Delicious warmth flowed through to me, and my breathing eased somewhat.

“Foot massage…and cabana boys…peeled grapes…”

A whisper of a smile touched his mouth. “I can have a faas feed you taba fruit.”

A shudder went through me as the heat in my shoulder intensified. “No deal,” I murmured. “Idris…in loincloth….”

“That is a possibility I will take under consideration,” he said. Idris blinked and straightened, casting a horrified look at Mzatal’s back. I wanted to laugh, but I knew it would hurt far too much. “You will, for the moment, settle for replenishment from tunjen juice, once I have straightened this shoulder,” Mzatal continued. He took my arm and straightened it into a more natural position. I tensed, expecting excruciating pain, but he had blocked it such that I felt little more than a dull ache and a pop as the shoulder shifted back into its proper configuration. “The binding that held you dislocated both of your shoulders,” he told me. “I must make adjustments on them before you can be moved.”

I managed to focus on him. “Yeah…how’d you know…binding?”