Fury of the Demon

A pinpoint of heat ignited over my sternum, much the same as when Jesral attacked me earlier. An instant later, it diffused and Mzatal’s sigil crawled with fire. I sucked in a gasping breath. “They’re waking up.” I swallowed hard. “Not good. Last phase.” In through the nose, out through the mouth. Kara.

Szerain squeezed his eyes shut. “Zakaar,” he breathed. He needed Zakaar, needed his support. I now saw that the breaking of the ptarl bond had shaken Szerain as deeply as the other lords, and was made even worse by Zack’s absence.

“No!” I put every bit of power I could into the word. “Zakaar can’t be here,” I snapped out. “It’s only us four, and it won’t even be me much longer if you don’t pull yourself together.” I leaned closer. “Szerain! Right here. Right now. I need you.”

His eyes flew open, the uncertainty of a moment before replaced by fixed intensity. In a slow, deliberate move, he laid his fingers on my sternum where the invisible arcane fire crept upward. “Mzatal,” he pronounced. The first to be carved by Rhyzkahl, the sigil sucked away the heat then writhed like ice beneath my skin. A wave of vertigo hit me, and I swayed, yet Bryce’s firm grip on my arm kept me upright. A soft buzzing drone set my teeth on edge, as though a dozen voices hummed out of tune.

Szerain slid his hand up to rest beneath my collar bone. “Rhyzkahl.” Then to my side. “Kadir.”

With each name, ice twisted beneath his fingers, and the hum grew clearer as though a voice found a harmonious note. Mzatal. Rhyzkahl. Kadir. The exact order Rhyzkahl had carved their symbols into my flesh.

Heart pounding, I seized Szerain’s wrist. “You’re activating the series. Why?”

Bryce shifted his grip on my arm. A quick glance at him revealed a shimmer of doubt in his eyes, though his face revealed nothing. Eilahn stopped tracing sigils and stood, watching us intently.

Szerain twisted from my grasp. “Rhyzkahl began the process when he struck you with the virus,” he told me, almost growling the words. “Jesral completed it when he drew the rakkuhr to your chest earlier. Now the series activates, as was Rhyzkahl’s intent, and I can’t stop it. But I can complete the circuit before the virus does.” He leaned closer, face intense. “Kara, I don’t have a backup plan.”

I took that in. “You complete it, and then what?”

“I keep you from losing yourself.” He said it with calm assurance, but the droplet of sweat that slid down his cheek betrayed his tension.

A feather touch of heat brushed my chest through the ice, and the hum wavered—Rhyzkahl’s activation breaking through while we stood debating.

“Do it,” I said quickly, pulse slamming. If I thought about it any longer I’d lose my nerve. And myself.

Szerain touched his hand to my belly. “Jesral.” Ice answered him, and the hum steadied. He moved around me. “Seretis.” One by one he activated the sigils.

“Vahl.”

“Vrizaar.”

“Rayst.”

“Elofir.”

With each, the harmony steadied and the cold fire increased, like ice encapsulating the heat of rakkuhr. His hand rested on my tailbone. “Amkir,” he said with particular vehemence.

Only one sigil remained. A single note of the hum whined out of harmony like an insane mosquito. The horrible icy ache penetrated to my bones. Szerain laid his hand flat against the sigil on my upper back, and I closed my eyes, braced myself for the next level.

I felt a tremble go through him, yet he said nothing.

“Szerain.” I named the sigil for him, my voice tight and hoarse. “Szerain.”

A sob choked from him. “Szerain,” he echoed. The searing ice receded, leaving only phantom echoes. The hum shifted to soft harmonious tones, eerily familiar.

He slid his hand to the small of my back, rested it on the twelfth sigil—the one meant to unite the other eleven, but never ignited. The scar blossomed with heat under Szerain’s hand, and I jerked in shock. I’d never felt anything in that sigil. The tones cut off and the world abruptly dipped and swayed. Only Bryce’s hold on my arm kept me from falling.

“What’s going on? Szerain?” Blood pounded in my ears. “What did you do? That’s never been anything but a scar!”

He drew his fingers over the sigil in swirling patterns laced with fire. “Kara, it has never been a mere scar. A scar can be resolved to unblemished skin.”

Mouth dry, I fought to balance the rising apprehension with my trust of him, of Ryan. “What are you doing to it?”

“I am using it to stop what Rhyzkahl started,” he told me. “Now I need Vsuhl.”

Numb shock seeped through me. “No, Szerain,” I said, voice shaky. “I can’t do that.”

“Yes, you can. And you will.” He wrapped his arm around me and pulled me back against him. “I have activated the unifier. I need Vsuhl. Without it, I can’t finish what I’ve begun, and the sigil is nothing more than a detonator.” He spoke close to my ear, confident, uncompromising. “When the virus reaches it, you don’t lose yourself—you die. I need Vsuhl. Now.”

Eilahn gave a cry of anger even as Bryce’s grip tightened to pull me away.

With a sweep of his free arm, Szerain raised a transparent barrier of shimmering blue along the perimeter of the nexus to block Eilahn. In the same motion, he slammed Bryce away from me with a hammer fist of potency, snaked arcane bindings from the ground to hold him fast where he stood.

Fear wound together with fury to rip through me. “You fucking piece of shit.” I said through clenched teeth. “You turned me into a ticking time bomb to make sure I didn’t have a goddamn choice.” And I didn’t. I had no fucking choice. I held my hand down at my side, focused, called the blade to me.

“You would have made the wrong choice otherwise.” He held me tighter, his arm locked around my waist. “Kara, give it to me. Now,” he commanded, voice fierce.

Eilahn railed at him in demon, screamed kiraknikahl, oathbreaker, over and over along with a few other words. In my peripheral vision, Bryce cursed and struggled against the bonds, jaw clenched and eyes riveted on me.

Vsuhl coalesced against my palm, whispered. Rakkuhr heat crawled up my chest and down to my side, igniting Kadir’s sigil. Szerain had no reason to save me once he had what he wanted, I realized, hating the feel of him against my back. With grim resolution, I co

Teeth bared, I shifted my grip on the hilt, slammed my foot onto Szerain’s instep, and twisted in his unwelcome embrace. “Take it, chekkunden!”

Vsuhl sang as it bit into him, low on his side, but Szerain caught my wrist and wrenched it hard. I lost my grip on the hilt, and the world tipped crazily as Vsuhl tumbled to the ground.

With a harsh cry, Szerain wrapped his hand in my hair and threw me face down on the grass. Air whooshed from my lungs as he planted his knee over my shoulder blades. As he reached and claimed Vsuhl his aura smothered me, subtly powerful, covert, and tinged with chaos.

Breathing heavily, Szerain spoke in demon, the cadence like an invocation. I struggled for air, scrabbled for purchase in the grass to throw him off. A line of thin fire lashed through the twelfth sigil. Vsuhl, drawing my blood, tasting me. Three more swift cuts, and then Szerain shifted to straddle my thighs and pressed both hands against the small of my back.

I sucked in a desperate breath, felt the flare of the restructured sigil.

“Vdat koh akiri qaztehl,” he pronounced with precise clarity while I struggled vainly beneath him.

The rakkuhr answered him like a dog called by a beloved master. Where it had crawled through the first three sigils, it now raced across my body, igniting one after another. It paused at my upper back, in Szerain’s sigil, coalesced in a fiery mass of red heat, then dove down my spine to the twelfth beneath his hands.