Touch of the Demon kg-5 Read online

  “Who destroyed all this?”

  “Szerain.”

  My twisting anguish deepened. “Why?”

  “After the cataclysm, after the last of the humans died, Szerain started to sculpt and paint but finished nothing. What he began, he destroyed. In time, he did not begin.”

  A deep sadness tightened my chest. I crouched and picked up a severed stone hand. Slender fingers. A woman. The dream image rose of a shattered statue of Elinor, and I wondered if there was a connection. And if there was, what did that mean? The statues were broken after Elinor died so it couldn’t be her memory. My breath caught, and cold sank into my bones. From the floor in front of me, the half shattered face of a man stared in horror, mouth twisted in a scream.

  I looked around, really seeing the fragments now. Each was as exquisitely crafted as any of the statues in the palace, but every face and twisted limb was the shard of a horrific story. I gingerly placed the hand back on the floor and stood, feeling as though I trespassed on someone else’s nightmare. I backed toward the stairs, scrubbing my hands on my jeans. “Let’s go.”

  Safar huffed and bounded up the next curve. I followed, glancing back once at the testament of pain. Was this why I’d never seen Ryan show any sort of artistic ability? Did this agony still grip him? Or was it simply that Szerain couldn’t express it through Ryan? I found either possibility equally heartbreaking.

  On the next level, Safar disappeared up, but I had to stop and stare. This too was the entire floor of the tower and, judging by the big bed, was likely Szerain’s chambers. Hundreds of foot-high statues in wood and stone lined shelves and niches in the walls. Mostly humans with a smattering of demons mixed in.

  The tassels of hair, the paintings in the shrine, and now this. Did he grow attached to each and every human only to watch them age and die? How could anyone survive such repeated loss?

  A tumble of books and papers overflowed a huge table and littered the floor around it, making Tessa’s library look as tidy as an evidence locker. Frowning, I took a step closer. Everything else in the room was in a modicum of order, but the table’s disarray had the feel of having been ransacked. I hadn’t seen any indication of that anywhere else in the palace despite its being all but abandoned. Not that there was anything I could do about it even if I wanted to. For all I knew it had been like that since his exile. Still, I made a mental note of it.

  A draft of fresh air flowed over me, and Safar bellowed from above. I headed up the stairs and found him outside an open door that led to the top of the tower. He bared his teeth at me and bounded to the wall, bellowing again. I closed the door and followed, taking in the sights.

  The tower rose above the palace roofline at the end of the west wing. To the west, wooded hills rolled, spiked with random fingers of stone, and mountains hunched on the horizon. To the east lay the courtyard with the columns, the other wing with its melted tower, and beyond that…holy fucking shit.

  My steps slowed, and all sense of déjà vu vanished. Elinor had never seen this before, and I’d only had a partial view of it from the balcony on the first day with Mzatal.

  In the distance, a crater the size of a small city dominated the utterly barren terrain to the northeast. From it, a great rift sliced across fractured stone, losing itself in a jumble of too-sharp, angular mountains. Gouts of arcane flame leapt and fell from the rift in an eerie dance of chaotic color. Blackened hills devoid of vegetation undulated southward in a widening swath as far as I could see. I had the sneaking suspicion that the odd rock formations in the forest to the west were shards from the disastrous event in the east.

  I reached the parapet and spread my hands on the pitted stone. “It looks like a bomb went off,” I breathed.

  “The cataclysm,” Safar said as he hopped onto the wall and crouched. “Very bad. Much destruction.”

  I struggled to comprehend the forces that could have wrought such devastation. And I…Elinor did this? How is that even possible? “Is it like this all over the planet?”

  “It is most evident near the domain of the Lords, where the ancient valves shattered,” he said, “though it is everywhere. The fire rain here was the worst.” His wings drooped. “The primeval forest is gone. These woods are young, reestablished only a century ago.” He tapped the mottled and pitted stone of the battlement. “Traces yet of the burning.”

  Nausea roiled my stomach as I ran my fingers over the rough surface. “What about the groves? Were they destroyed as well?” A weird pang gripped me at the thought.

  “Dahn. The groves retreated.”

  “Retreated?” I asked, frowning.

  “Retreated into the soil,” he clarified. “All survived intact save one that was lost to a chasm, though none could be used for near a hundred years.” He huffed. “And the one here closer to a hundred and fifty.” Safar gestured toward the crater with a claw. “That was the first valve to go. The rest followed within a day. That was a very bad day.”

  “Gestamar said that the ways were closed and the humans all died.” I looked up into his face. “How many?”

  He gazed out over the blasted landscape. “There were near six hundred here with the lords. Most who did not die from cataclysmic events died within a year. A few survived almost two.” He shook his large head. “With the ways closed so completely, the humans could not balance the potency within themselves and burned out.”

  “Wouldn’t they go back to Earth? Make it through the void?”

  Safar grunted and shook his head. “Dahn. No. With the ways closed, there was no passage.”

  I gripped the stone hard. I knew damn well why Mzatal had suggested I come up here—so that I could feel exactly how I was feeling now. But why? What purpose did it serve in his game? I hurriedly wiped away my tears. “How were the ways opened up again?”

  The reyza turned on the wall and resettled into a crouch facing me. “Szerain and some of the demahnk, the Elder syraza, worked for over two hundred years to correct the inter-dimensional ruptures and arcane distortions enough to reestablish a valve.” His eyes slid to mine. “In one nine zero eight on your calendar, in the area you call Siberia.”

  “Oh…wow. So, do you need valves to equalize the arcane pressure or something?” Tessa had a small one of these valve things terminating in her library, and I’d speculated that it functioned as a pressure release valve.

  Safar gave a nod. “Simply stated, yes. After that, more were possible, and with less impact.” He snorted, lifted his face as if to feel the sun on it fully. “Fifteen years later, at the age of fourteen, Katashi performed the first summoning in centuries.”

  “Katashi?” I blinked in surprise. Katashi had mentored Tessa in summoning for nearly a decade, and I’d spent a miserable couple of months with him during which I learned zilch except that he was an intolerant, inflexible asshole. I’d assumed he was in his seventies, but if Safar was right, Katashi would actually be over a hundred years old. Damn. Well, that explained why so many summoners had been trained by him. I hadn’t realized that he was pretty much the grand poobah of modern summoning.

  Safar snorted, “Kri, Katashi. He summoned Gestamar in his near disastrous first summoning. Had he been slain by the recoil rather than merely injured, it is improbable that you would be a summoner now.”

  Holy crap. Summoning an ancient reyza like Gestamar as an untried and unmentored summoner was a mind-boggling accomplishment. Katashi must be a fucking genius. Not that he’d shared any of that with me.

  I stared out at the horrific view, skin crawling from the feel of it. Did the demons hate me—Elinor—because of all of this? So far they didn’t seem to be holding a grudge, and, for right now, I was okay with not knowing the answer.

  For that matter, the demons had been downright accommodating. “Not that I’m complaining, but considering I’m a captive, why are y’all being so nice to me? Apart from Mzatal, who’s pretty much a dick.”

  Safar lowered his head and peered closely at me. “It serves no purpose to cause
you unnecessary distress. I have read Earth books, seen Earth captives, so I understand your question, though I do not understand causing distress without purpose.”

  Earth. I hugged my arms around me, suddenly feeling horribly homesick and isolated. I wanted my own bed, real coffee…hell, I’d even take some of Tessa’s weird fruity tea at this point. I wondered what “necessary” distress they’d cause if they decided they had a purpose.

  The groan of hinges pulled me from my self-pity spiral. I looked back to see the young blond man stepping out through the doorway. He smoothed down the front of a way-cool belted tunic-coat; a faintly Indonesian-looking thing of a color that flowed from purple to green to black as he moved. Definitely not Earth off-the-rack. He ran his hand over his hair with the supposed aim of taming it a bit, though it immediately sprang up again into the unruly blond cloud.

  Straightening, I turned to face him. He stepped forward and cleared his throat, fidgeting slightly and not looking at all like the focused summoner of the previous night. I still pegged him at around twenty, but right now he was doing a great impression of a nervous teen. “Greetings,” he said with a lift of his chin as he quite obviously fumbled for something resembling poise. “I am Idris Palatino.”

  I dipped my head in a nod. “I’m Kara.” I paused. “But I suppose you already knew that.”

  He actually blushed. “Yeah,” he said, looking down and picking at his sleeve. “I kinda had to know it to…y’know.”

  “To summon me,” I finished for him, but I tried to keep the bitterness from my voice. I couldn’t find it in me to be obnoxious or snarky to him. It’d be like kicking a puppy.

  Idris exhaled, lifted his gaze back up to me. “Yeah, summon you.” He smiled nervously. “It was hard.”

  I leaned back against the stone wall, shrugged. “Well, I don’t always come when called.”

  His smile increased a bit. “I mean, it’s not something you do every day—try to summon a human blind while they were on the move.” He shook his head. “But even when I could find you, I couldn’t lock on.” His forehead creased. “It was weird.”

  My own smile spread to a grin. “Yeah, I bet you couldn’t.” The cuff I’d worn back on Earth was a crude version of the collar and blocked the arcane pretty damn effectively.

  “Everything looked okay,” he continued. “Even Lord Mzatal said it was good, but then…nothing!” An exasperated expression crossed his face, and he shook his head. “I almost didn’t believe it when I actually got a lock on you, but then you came through and—” He abruptly paled and drew in a sharp breath. “Holy shit.” He paled more.

  “Idris?” I pushed off the wall and wondered if he was about to pass out. “You okay, dude?”

  “Shit,” he breathed. “The blood. You were covered in blood and…” He gulped. “Did I screw up a ritual you were working on?” His eyes lifted to mine, pleading. “Did I cause someone to be…”

  “No,” I said emphatically, shaking my head. “No, Idris, I swear that had absolutely nothing to do with your summoning of me. That was an entirely different clusterfuck.”

  He exhaled in profound relief. “Oh. Okay.” Some of his color began to return. It was clear he didn’t like the image of someone getting shredded, but he was obviously better able to deal with the horror of it if he wasn’t the cause. “Sorry,” he said, giving me a shaky smile. “Kinda freaked me out.”

  “Understandable.” I liked him a lot more now that I knew it would affect him so deeply. So what the hell is he doing here serving this lord? I wondered.

  “It was a gate,” I told him. “Or rather, an attempt at one. The summoner who created it—Tracy Gordon—tried to lock me into it.” I grimaced. “I got out, but then the guy’s partner threw him into the still-active gate.” I flicked my fingers out in a “explosion” gesture, winced. “The reason you weren’t able to summon me was because I had something a lot like this,” I said, tapping the collar around my throat.

  Idris began to smile, then grinned as the pieces fell into place for him. “That’s why the sliders would just…slide! I thought it was a new variance or something and couldn’t nail it.” Remembered frustration flashed across his face. “The lord said it was something Earth-side and to keep doing what I was doing.” He rolled his eyes. “Now I’m glad I didn’t start trying new variances. I’d never have—” He winced. “—um, gotten you.” A puzzled look came over him. “But, if you had an artifact why didn’t you leave it on or stay behind wards?”

  I let out a low snort. “After Tracy died it unbalanced the gate. It would have been disastrous, so I took the cuff off to close the gate down properly.” I shrugged, spread my hands. “So, for you, patience is a virtue.”

  “Yeah, for sure in your case,” Idris said. “It’s not usually possible to summon a human from Earth unless they’re at a hotspot—a permanent place that’s been amped up for that. Humans simply don’t carry enough natural potency for it to work right. Like, when I summon Katashi here, it’s from a hotspot at his place.” He shrugged.

  “How the hell did you get me then?” I held no illusions that I had some sort of mega-potency going on.

  He grinned. “It was something the lord figured out and had me work on with him. It took a whole month to get the parameters right,” he said with a note of casual pride in his voice. “Lord Mzatal knows his stuff. He had me tap into one of the hotspots here and learn the patterns. It kinda developed from that.”

  “Is it pretty much the same the other way around? I mean, a summoner on Earth trying to get a human from here?” I continued to hold onto the slim chance that Tessa would get past her summoning block and rescue my ass. Slim because ever since she’d spent time in the void earlier this year, she’d given no indication that she would ever summon again. She’d always summoned like clockwork before, and I wondered if she even could now. But surely she would at least try to rescue me, right?

  “Well, the human still needs to be on a hotspot,” he said. “But for the most part it’s about the same.”

  My hopes lifted again. “How many hotspots are there here? One on every corner?” Hey, a girl could dream.

  “Nooo, not one on every corner.” He laughed, though not unkindly. “Not even close. But even so, to get enough power to pull a human, it’d take at least two skilled summoners,” Idris said. “Probably three to be sure. All summonings from this end take both a summoner and a lord working together.”

  Hope dashed. Other than Katashi, I didn’t know if Tessa knew any other summoners. And with her avoidance of summoning and summoning topics, there’d been no chance to teach her the nifty storage diagram I’d developed, which might have given her the potency needed to do it alone. Double crap.

  Idris seemed pretty cozy, not at all like he was under duress or anything. Here he was talking about doing arcane Research and Development with Mzatal as if it was normal everyday business. What the hell was he doing here with that dickwad? “How long have you been here with Mzatal?”

  “Just under four months,” he replied. “It goes fast.”

  “And how long have you been summoning?”

  His shoulders lifted in a shrug. “Since I was sixteen. Almost four years now.”

  I stared at him. “Only four years? Holy shit. I’ve been doing it close to a decade, and I don’t think I know a tenth of what you do.”

  “Well, I learned a lot from Master Katashi,” Idris said. “And now that I’m here,” his face filled with awe, “every single day is just…wow.”

  Another summoner trained by Katashi. So, why the hell didn’t I learn anything worth a shit while I was with him? “Okay, please don’t take this the wrong way, but how does your family handle you being here?”

  He let out a soft chuckle. “Well, they don’t know I’m here,” he said, copying my emphasis. “They think I’m in Japan on a special foreign school program. Master Katashi takes care of all that.”

  “They don’t expect emails or phone calls?” I asked somewhat dubiously.
r />   “Yeah, well, Master Katashi told me not to worry about it.” He shrugged again, smiled. “He said everything would be taken care of.”

  Holy crap, but this kid sure seemed way too naïve and trusting to be dealing with demonic lords. “Don’t you miss your family?” I hid a grimace, oddly bothered by the idea of him being in the demon realm without his parents’ knowledge. Yeah, sure, he was a legal adult, but it still seemed weird.

  He exhaled, gave me a smile tinged with sadness. “Don’t get me wrong, my family’s great. But I’ve only been with them since I was about fourteen.”

  “Something happened to your natural family?” I winced and shook my head. “I’m sorry. I have a habit of being too nosy sometimes. It’s none of my business.”

  “Nah, it’s okay,” he replied. “Actually I was adopted twice. The first couple got me when I was a baby.” A fond smile crossed his face, and it was clear that he’d enjoyed a good childhood. But then his smile slipped. “There was a car accident. A truck crossed the center line and they died. I was in the backseat.” He exhaled. “I was lucky—I got adopted almost immediately by another really great couple.” The smile returned to his face. “Turned out that the guy who lived across the street from my new family was a summoner. One day he caught me peering at his wards, and that was the start of all this.” He gestured to encompass the demon realm. Safar gave a low snort from his perch on the wall.

  “I’m sorry about your parents,” I said quietly. “My mom died of cancer when I was eight, and my dad was killed by a drunk driver three years later. My aunt raised me. She’s a summoner,” I added. Tracy’s comment rose in my mind. We don’t have a choice. They make sure we become summoners. I pushed it away for now.

  “Do you learn a lot with Mzatal?” I asked in a ruthless change of subject. By the relief on his face it was clear he was just as glad of it.

  “Yeah,” he said, making a face like a glazed-eyed goldfish. “Holy shit, there’s always more.”