Fury of the Demon kg-6 Read online

  Ryan grinned, obviously relieved at my reaction. “Yeah. That was all Zack’s idea. Speaking of which,” he said as he pulled out his phone, “I’m calling him to let him know the good news. Anyone else you want me to call?”

  “Jill,” I said. “I’ll call Tessa when I finish eating.”

  “Will do.” After a brief conversation with Zack, he shook his head and hung up. “Did he say to give you a hug or anything? Hell no. He said to tell you he has a stash of chocolate in the utility room, upper shelf, right cabinet.”

  I let out delighted laughter. “He knows me!”

  After I finished the sandwich, I called my aunt to let her know I was okay and would see her soon. The conversation was unexpectedly a little teary on both sides. Damn, it felt good to be home.

  Ryan hung up with Jill at about the same time I said goodbye to Tessa. “She’s coming over tomorrow as soon as she can get a break at work,” he told me, mouth curving in a smile. “Her exact words were, ‘Don’t you let that crazy woman disappear again before I get there!’”

  I grinned. “That sounds like the Jill I know and love!” Jill was, hands down, my best friend. Ryan was a damn good friend as well, but that relationship had certain significant quirks, to say the least.

  I picked up my plate from the table and put it in the sink. That was almost like doing dishes, right? “I’m going to head downstairs and get started on the prep to summon Eilahn,” I said to Ryan.

  “I have to run some errands. Need anything while I’m out?”

  “As long as we have coffee, I’m good until tomorrow.”

  “Okay. I’m going to clean up here, then head out.”

  I have a kitchen elf! Chuckling to myself, I headed down to get to work.

  Down in the basement, I crouched beside the storage diagram, assessed it, frowned. It was nearly fully charged though I’d drained it when I last used it to summon Mzatal four months earlier. Had Tessa stopped by and done it? Not that I was going to complain. It meant I could summon Eilahn an hour from now rather than waiting the six it would take me to charge an empty storage diagram.

  I spent the next ten minutes doing arcane hygiene to clear residual energies from the summoning area. It wasn’t absolutely necessary, but I’d learned from experience that the tedious task saved hassle later. During the actual summoning stray energy could cause unforeseen problems, the arcane equivalent of a rock hitting a fan blade or sand in a car engine.

  Once I was satisfied the space was clear, I rummaged through my box of chalk and found what I needed, then moved to a spot on the concrete floor not far from the storage diagram. Kneeling, I sighed. In the demon realm, floating sigils traced in the air replaced the crude and boring scrawls of chalk. But until I mastered the full shikvihr, the speed and ease of floaters wasn’t possible for me on Earth.

  “Use what you have, Kara,” I muttered to myself as I began to create the perimeter for a syraza summoning diagram. I continued to sketch on the concrete, delighted to find ways to incorporate new principles I’d learned from Mzatal. Chalk’s not so bad when you know what you’re doing, I decided.

  I’d nearly completed the diagram when the basement door creaked opened. “Hey, gorgeous,” Zack called out. “Okay if I come down.”

  I smiled, set the chalk on the floor, and stood. “Hey, sexy. You may enter my lair.”

  Zack quick-timed down the stairs, his movement smooth and athletic. Trim, with short blond hair, perpetual tan, and a ready smile, he looked more like a surfer dude than an FBI agent, despite the suit and haircut. Grinning, he swept me into a hug, lifted me off my feet and spun me around.

  I let out a piercing half laugh, half shriek. “Put me down, you weirdo,” I demanded as I hugged him fiercely.

  After one more revolution, he set me on my feet. “Welcome home!”

  I couldn’t have suppressed my grin if I’d wanted to. “Good to be home.”

  “Ryan and I, we’ve sort of moved in. A little,” he offered with a sidelong glance.

  “Right,” I said with a laugh. “Like Russia invaded Poland a little.”

  “Yeah. Something like that.” His eyes sparkled with humor. “What do you have going on?” he asked.

  “Eilahn told me she’d flay me alive if I left the property without her. You know how she is. I’m summoning her so that I’m not stuck here.”

  Zack forced his mouth into a mock frown. “She could have amended it to where she’d flay you alive if you left the property without her or me. I have some skills, y’know.”

  “Yes you do,” I agreed. As a demahnk—an elder syraza—he had whatever innate skills Eilahn possessed, and more. “But you’re not as scary as she is.” I grinned. “I think it was really her way of making sure I got Fuzzykins back to Earth as soon as possible.” At his questioning look, I explained, “When Tessa summoned Eilahn a couple of months ago, Eilahn brought Fuzzykins along, and the horrid thing proceeded to get knocked up. So now Eilahn wants her to,” I rolled my eyes, “give birth on her home world.’”

  Zack laughed. “Gotcha.”

  “By the way,” I said, “Tessa sent me the newspaper article about Roman Hatch and how he confessed to the murder of Tracy Gordon and how he permanently disposed of the body.” My mouth twitched in a smile. “Nicely done.” Roman Hatch was an ex-boyfriend who’d teamed up with Tracy Gordon—a fellow cop who’d turned out to be a summoner—to create a gate between this world and the demon realm. Not so bad on the surface, except that they murdered several people in the process and intended to trap me in the gate to power it.

  Amusement flashed in his eyes. “Well, Roman did murder Tracy when he threw him into the active gate,” he said. “And since the gate shredded Tracy into teeny bits, he did permanently dispose of the body, too.” Zack spread his hands and assumed an utterly innocent expression. “However, I suppose it’s possible that someone helped him remember a version where he shot Tracy and then dumped his body in the river.”

  I snorted a laugh. Though it took a lot of effort, Ryan was able to shift memories—a mere shadow of true manipulation but still useful when circumstances were dire enough to require it.

  Zack’s gaze swept over the basement. “You need anything for the summoning?”

  “I think I’m good. Almost done with the diagram.” I mentally reviewed the preparation steps, then glanced at him. “Did Tessa charge my storage diagram? It was darn near full.”

  “She hasn’t been here since you left.” He cleared his throat. “I’ve kept it topped up for you,” he said. “I didn’t know when you’d be back, but I thought you might need it.”

  I angled my head and regarded him. Though he had great skills with wards, I’d never known he could do anything related to summoning diagrams. Eilahn had never indicated that she could do so. Maybe it had to do with his being an elder syraza? “That’s awesome. Thanks.” I crouched and sketched the final sigil. “I think that’s about it. I’m almost ready to summon.”

  “You want me to stay or go?”

  I looked up at him, smiled. “I don’t mind if you stay.”

  “Sweet. I’ll be over here.” He moved to the wall, put his back to it and went demon still.

  Smoothly drawing power from the storage diagram, I laid the foundation and created the anchor points for the strands that would form the portal. The arcane structures coalesced with smooth ease, and when the time came to make the call, the power slid through me in a continuous flow rather than coming in stops and starts—far easier than ever before. Apparently, having the seventh ring of the shikvihr and a buttload more knowledge from training with Mzatal made a real difference. I could get used to this.

  “Eilahn!”

  Through the woven potency of the summoning, I felt the ritual find and take hold of the syraza. Had she been unwilling, this would have turned into a battle, like trying to land a big and powerful fish. But with Eilahn eager and ready to come, she slipped through the portal with minimal exertion on my part.

  Not as easy for he
r. Summonings hurt. I knew that from experience. Eilahn stood in the center of the diagram with her head bowed and eyes closed, with only her shuddering breath betraying the stress of the summons. She was in her human form, and I breathed thanks to Mzatal for saving me the hassle and facilitating her shift from syraza to human. Dark skinned and tall, with sleek black hair that flowed past her shoulders, Eilahn had a multi-ethnic look that managed to combine the best of every continent. Her figure was long sleek muscles and curves, feminine and tough. Smokin’ hot chick, no doubt about it.

  An unearthly screeching yowl reverberated through the basement, and I almost fumbled the strands. I quickly recovered, grounded the power and dropped the protections, then scowled at the cat carrier that I now saw beside Eilahn’s feet.

  “You couldn’t forget the cat in the demon realm?” I asked sourly.

  Eilahn gave a lovely frown. “That is a silly notion,” she stated. “I do not forget.”

  I turned my attention to the carrier. “Hello, Fuzzykins,” I said with a sugary smile. “Why haven’t you been playing with hungry reyza like I’ve asked you to do?”

  Eilahn gave me a look, crouched, and murmured to the cat as she released her from the carrier. The evil feline dashed out as quickly as her turgid body allowed, then proceeded to rub up against Zack’s legs, purring loudly. In the next heartbeat she turned, hissed at me, then waddle-ran up the stairs as I returned the hiss.

  Zack met Eilahn’s eyes, and I sensed the demon connection like a vibration on the farthest edge of hearing. She emitted an odd chirp-trill more suited to her demon form. He approached her fluidly, took both of her hands, interlaced their fingers and leaned in to touch his forehead to hers. The vibration shifted quality, intensified.

  I busied myself to give them space to do their demony thing, closed out the summoning diagram, and directed residual potency into the storage diagram.

  A moment later, they parted, and Eilahn turned a steely eye on me. “You have not left this property?”

  “I haven’t,” I said as I held up my hand. “Scout’s honor.”

  “Excellent! Flaying is so very messy,” she observed as she turned and sauntered up the steps. “I do prefer to avoid it, though I would perhaps make an exception in the case of Ryan.”

  I smiled. It was good to be home.

  Chapter 5

  Some people had to deal with jet lag. Me, I got dimension lag. Four-thirty in the morning, and wide awake with zero hope of getting back to sleep. The house was quiet, which I was used to after living alone for so long. However, I felt obliged to creep about, since I figured Ryan probably didn’t want to hear me thumping around this early in the morning.

  I doubted Eilahn and Zack were asleep since the demonkind seemed to need far less rest than puny humans, but I had no idea where they were. Eilahn’s favorite place on the property was the roof and her second favorite was the woods on my nearly-ten acres of property. The roof, most likely, I decided, with the pair of them perched like beautiful human-shaped gargoyles by my satellite dish.

  After making my silent-ish way to the kitchen, I plunked my laptop and notepad on the table, started a pot of coffee, then scrounged in the fridge while I pondered what needed to go on my Hunt for Idris to-do list. Even though I knew he was still in the demon realm, Katashi was definitely right there at the top, so I went ahead and scrawled his name on my pad before prepping my first cup of coffee with the appropriately massive amounts of sugar and cream.

  Like me, Zack had a list of the known Katashi people and would do some digging there. Katashi’s main base of operations was in Japan, but I wasn’t going to make the assumption that his people had Idris there. Master Isumo Katashi had too damn many connections.

  Over eighty years ago, he’d performed the first summoning since the mid-seventeenth century. Self-taught, he’d called Gestamar, a challenging as all hell high-level demon. It still boggled my mind that he’d managed to do so and survive. I couldn’t stand the man, but I had to give him mad respect for that feat.

  As the first summoner of the twentieth century, he naturally became the root source of all modern summoning, which meant that every active summoner had either learned directly from Katashi or one of his students, myself included. Though I’d spent only a couple of useless months with him, my aunt Tessa—who’d taught me—was his student for almost a decade.

  In other words, the old man surely had one hell of a network with students and associates all over the world, which meant a myriad of potential hiding places for Idris.

  I sat, took a sip of coffee and noted Follow up with Ryan and Zack beneath Katashi’s name. Better to wait for some solid info on the old bastard before tackling that mess. I tapped my pen on the paper and considered the events that occurred right before I was summoned to the demon realm six months ago, then wrote TRACY GORDON in all capital letters. Though not directly linked to Idris, Tracy had tried to sacrifice me to make a permanent gate between this world and the demon realm, which meant he surely had connections to someone. Most likely one of the Mraztur since Kehlirik, a reyza of Rhyzkahl, had guarded Tracy’s focus diagram.

  Ryan, Zack, and I had already done a pretty thorough search/tear-down of the house where Tracy Gordon had lived, helped by some nice sledgehammer-to-wall action. I was pretty damn confident nothing remained there that could be useful to us.

  It was his other house that interested me, the one that he owned through a shell corporation, and the one where, in a room packed full of books and papers, Kehlirik had guarded the diagram. If Tracy had kept journals, I figured they’d be there, and I damn well intended to find and take them, along with anything else in his library that caught my eye.

  Finders keepers, you son of a bitch.

  With the sun now rising and my plans of library-pillaging firmly in mind, I finished my coffee, took a quick shower, dressed, then grabbed my bag and headed for the front door.

  I made it out and onto the porch before I realized the hitch in my plans. Two Chevy Impalas sat in the drive, along with a Toyota Camry I didn’t recognize. The Impalas had government plates, which told me that my fed-boys had finally been issued new vehicles to replace their Crown Vics. And I didn’t know who the Camry belonged to, except that it wasn’t me.

  I have no car. I’d resigned from the Beaulac police department, which meant I didn’t have a department-issued vehicle anymore. Well, shit. Ride on the back of Eilahn’s motorcycle? That would make pillaging the library a lot more challenging. I sighed and turned to head back inside, then paused. Something was different about my porch.

  A lot was different, I realized with a start. The stairs had been rebuilt and the railing along the front replaced and painted. Moreover, a swing now graced the porch—a lovely wicker thing that hung from two solid eye-bolts in the ceiling.

  I moved down off the porch and onto the gravel driveway, turned to get a better view of the front of my house. There were flowers—actual living plants—in neat beds on either side of the steps. A pretty little crystal and brass arrangement hung from a corner of the porch, catching the morning sunlight and casting it back out in shards of rainbow. There was even a birdfeeder hanging from the other corner, though I wondered whether any bird would come near the house while demons perched atop it.

  I smiled with warm pleasure. My house looked . . . nice.

  Eilahn leapt lightly from the roof and smiled at me. “You have your bag. Where are we going?” she asked with an enthusiastic lift in her voice.

  “I was hoping to go to Tracy Gordon’s summoning house to check out his library,” I told her. Maybe I could borrow the Camry? That would be better than riding pillion on the motorcycle.

  Her face grew hard and more than a little scary. “Tracy Gordon baztakh unk kirlesk.” She spat into the gravel.

  I didn’t know what that all meant, but it was simple enough to guess the sentiment, and I certainly couldn’t blame her for it. He’d shot her twice, point blank, and killed her. Fortunately, because it happened on Earth, sh
e made it through to the demon realm and recovered. Once through the void was usually successful. Twice, not so much.

  I nodded toward the Camry. “Whose car is that?”

  She followed my gaze, then looked back to me and beamed. “Yours!”

  I gave her a blank look. “How can it be mine?”

  Eilahn ducked through the front door and returned before I had time to process she’d gone. She dangled a set of keys in front of me, displayed the brass fob with Kara’s Kar neatly engraved in script on it. “Because this proclaims that these keys match your vehicle, I have tested them in the ignition, and they fit. Therefore, that,” she said with a nod toward the car, “is your vehicle by the process of a successful trial.”

  Kara’s Kar? I rolled my eyes. My house elves were out of control, but right now I wasn’t about to complain. I took the keys from her and smiled. “Well, let’s try it out!”

  A note on the dash in Zack’s neat handwriting held clear, concise instructions for operating the automatic gate. Yet another point for the elves.

  The house Tracy Gordon had used for summonings and other arcane practices was on the far side of Beaulac, but since it was so early in the morning, and there was little traffic, I went ahead and cut straight through town.

  A garbage truck made noisy work of dumpster-emptying behind Beaulac Junior High, while across the street a man in nothing but shorts and sleep-tousled hair ignored his dog’s yappy barking at the din. A few determined souls headed into Magnolia Fitness Center, clutching towels and water bottles. I was probably still a member there, I realized, since my dues were on auto-payment.

  “Back when I was a street cop, this was right about the time I’d be heading to the station for shift change,” I told Eilahn. “Whether I was coming on or going off duty, I always liked seeing the world wake up.”