Sins of the Demon kg-4 Read online

  I had to smile. “In other words, you were a dick because you were thinking about how to stop being a dick.”

  He chuckled. “Well, when you put it that way.…”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I appreciate it, no matter how it came about.”

  He put his hands on his knees and gave a nod, seeming relieved. “Okay, well, I should get out of your hair then, but how about we catch up tomorrow—I can bring over pizza and some DVDs of shows that I’m sure you’ve never seen but I think you should.”

  I groaned. “You’re still trying to make me a nerd, aren’t you?”

  “No,” he said with a dramatic sigh. “I think there’s no hope of that. But it won’t stop me from trying.” He stood, and I followed suit. “So, tomorrow?”

  I nodded. “It’s a plan.”

  He smiled, gave me a close hug. I allowed myself to relax against him before we separated. For a brief instant I thought he was going to do something like kiss my forehead or cheek or something else that fell within the affection-between-friends boundary, but he merely smiled at me before turning and leaving.

  I watched through the window as he drove off. We’d broken through a huge barrier in our relationship. He’d come to accept the presence of Rhyzkahl in my life. I could stop with the cycles of guilt and angst and all that.

  Except that I felt as if it wasn’t real. Is this all part of the act? Am I just another facet of his cover?

  Chapter 6

  After Ryan left I made a glancing effort at cleaning the kitchen that extended to loading the dishwasher and nothing else. A nap followed shortly thereafter, and even though I’d only intended to sleep for a couple of hours, it was nearly ten p.m. when I woke.

  There was a note on my bathroom mirror from Eilahn—written with a dry-erase marker in a flowing, elegant script—telling me that she was running some errands and that I was to stay inside. She never left my property without informing me first—not because she felt she had to report to me, but because she wanted to reassure me as to my safety, and to be sure I knew to stay within the wards.

  I let out a small sigh of relief. This was the second time I’d summoned Rhyzkahl since she’d become my guardian, and I never knew whether she’d expect to be in the summoning chamber with me. But the last time I summoned she had errands as well, so apparently she was fine with making herself scarce. Not that I was worried about anything going wrong with the summoning itself because of her presence, but time with Rhyzkahl was…

  Well, let’s just say I preferred privacy for those summonings.

  I’d learned not to worry when I couldn’t find her in the house. Most of the time she was roaming on the rest of the ten acres that made up my property. The majority of it was woods, and I had a suspicion that wherever she called home in the demon realm was heavily wooded, because she moved through the trees and undergrowth with an uncanny silence and grace that spoke of a deep ease with her surroundings.

  I headed to the kitchen to make a pot of coffee. Did Eilahn ever get homesick? As confident and assured as she seemed to be, surely there were chinks in that armor somewhere. For that matter, did she have family? A mate? I dumped the water into the top of the coffeemaker, troubled that this was only now occurring to me.

  There’s too damn much that I don’t know about the demons and their world. I readied my mug with sugar and creamer as I pondered that. The demons were usually deliberately mysterious and evasive when it came to questions about their world—at least, that’s what I’d always been taught and had come to understand from the reading I’d done during my studies to become a summoner. In fact it was considered a waste of effort to ask those sort of questions, since the asker would likely end up paying for an answer that didn’t actually give any information.

  Even though it had never particularly bothered me before, I found that it bugged the crap out of me now. Why wouldn’t the demons answer those type of questions? Or maybe the question should be, why are summoners discouraged from asking them?

  I poured my coffee and sat. I had a demon at my disposal now. Maybe it was time to start finding some shit out.

  After I finished waking up I showered and began my usual mental preparations for summoning. I was only summoning Rhyzkahl, but I didn’t want to get out of the habit of being in the proper frame of mind.

  I laughed as I toweled my hair dry. I’m “only” summoning Rhyzkahl. He was supposedly one of the most powerful of the demonic lords in existence, and I was now an old hand at bringing him through. Of course, if he wasn’t willing to be summoned, it would be an entirely different matter. Such a summoning would require several summoners working together to be certain that the lord could be contained long enough for whatever was required so that they could avoid being slaughtered. Rather like the summoning of Szerain that had accidentally turned into a summoning of Rhyzkahl. Over thirty years ago six summoners had teamed up to summon the demonic lord Szerain, in an attempt to obtain healing for the breast-cancer-ravaged wife of one of the six, Peter Cerise.

  My hands slowed then stopped, and I let the towel drop to the floor. Szerain was willing. That’s what Tessa had said. That’s why those six summoners had decided to summon him instead of some other lord. But if he was willing, why did they need six summoners? Why else would they all be there? This had been gnawing at me in the background for the last month and a half. And now I was seeing more ways that it just didn’t add up. Was Szerain willing, or simply more open to such things? But again…why six summoners?

  Before heading downstairs I considered the various things I could possibly ask Rhyzkahl. I was limited to two questions per summoning. And I was obligated to summon him no less than once a month. But there’s nothing that says I can’t summon him more often than that.

  I mused on that as I changed into the gray silk shirt and pants that I wore for summonings. There were only two problems with the simplistic math of summon-the-demonic-lord-more-often-and-get-more-questions-answered option. First was that summonings took power. The simplest and most common source of power was the natural potency that filled the world—strongest and easiest to draw during the full moon. I’d learned of a way to store that potency, which gave me more flexibility as to when I could summon, but even that had limitations.

  The second problem was that once I summoned the demonic lord to this sphere, he was most certainly not under my control except for the terms of our agreement. One of the reasons my summonings of him were easier was because I didn’t bother attempting to maintain the sort of bindings and protections that could hold a being of his power. Our deal was that he would stay no longer than half a day and would abide by the same judicial laws of this sphere that applied to me.

  That still gave him a shitload of wiggle room, and I didn’t want to push my luck any further than I had to.

  Maybe that was why they used six summoners…to bind Szerain? But if they’d truly had sufficient protections in place, then how was it that Rhyzkahl had been able to break through the bindings and slaughter them? He’d caught them with their guard down, which seemed to indicate that there’d been no major protections—which would mean that their goal had not been to bind Szerain. So, what was it?

  I had plenty of questions for the demonic lord. Most of the time he was the best—and often only—source of information, as long as I knew how to phrase the question. I always had the option to wade through the unorganized nightmare that was my aunt’s library, but right now I had a resource that was, if not at my beck and call, at least available to me—and I’d be a moron not to try and tap it as much as possible while I could.

  And then there was the other reason to summon Rhyzkahl.

  The sex.

  Holy hells, but the sex was fantastic. My usual pattern was to angst over the fact that I had this “demon with benefits” relationship, but a tough talk from Jill not too long ago had managed to shift my thinking on that somewhat. I was a grown-up. I was allowed to enjoy sex. And I damn well intended to.

  Pausing
at the door to the basement, I took off my robe and folded it carefully by the door. One of my many quirks was my superstition about changing into my summoning garb: I always walked naked down the basement stairs and got dressed at the bottom. The few times I’d dared to mix it up something had gone wrong with the ritual. It was a damn chilly walk into the frigid basement tonight, but I wasn’t about to start making changes to my routine.

  At the bottom of the stairs, I quickly pulled on the grey silk pants and shirt and, as soon as I was dressed, immediately moved to the other end of the basement to get a fire going in the fireplace. I breathed a sigh of relief as the warmth began to spread throughout the room then moved on to the task of setting out my implements and lighting the candles. Even though my storage diagram was close to being full of power, I intended to do this the “old school” way and use the natural available potency of the full moon. No sense wasting what was stored, and this way I still had plenty of power in reserve in case I needed to summon another demon in the next few days.

  And with everything that had happened today, I had a feeling I’d be wanting to do just that.

  I didn’t need to make any significant changes to the large diagram that dominated the center of the room. Still, I checked it carefully to make sure the symbols were crisp and nothing had become smudged or marred in any way. Much like a preflight checklist on an airplane. Too much was in play during a summoning for me to take chances.

  Standing at the edge of the diagram, I took a deep, settling breath and allowed the energy to fill me before I carefully redirected it into the diagram and the portal I needed to form. I chanted steadily, using the cadence of the ancient words to shape my will. I bypassed the protections that would normally protect me from the demon I intended to summon. Instead, I took that power and augmented the protections that shielded me from the energies of the forming portal. One could never be too careful on that front.

  Within a dozen heartbeats the portal snapped into place. I spoke the demonic lord’s name, calling him with my will and my voice. Another dozen heartbeats and he was through, crouching in the center of my diagram as the portal closed smoothly behind him.

  I released the breath I was holding as my vision cleared, and I could see the crouched figure in the center of the diagram. I’d summoned the demonic lord close to half a dozen times, and had yet to shake the persistent worry that something could and would go wrong.

  Then again, that was probably something I shouldn’t shake. The day I stopped worrying would also probably be the day I stopped being as meticulous and careful, and even the slightest error during a summoning could spell the kind of disaster that ended with the summoner in teeny-tiny bits.

  It’s a wonder that anyone takes the risk. Yet, it was so incredibly worth every second of risk, at least to me. Even before I’d decided to use the summoning as a supplement to my police work, I’d always felt a draw, a hunger to see and learn more. Every summoning was an accomplishment, a trial I’d overcome.

  As soon as one full moon was over, I’d dive back into my studies and begin preparing for the next. It was almost like an addiction. Perhaps that was part of the talent? The hunger for it? After all, why take the risk, otherwise? If someone were to “design” a summoner, it would sure be useful to make them want to do it.

  That was an oddly disturbing thought. I quickly chased it from my head as the demonic lord straightened. Then I could only stare, blinking like an idiot at him.

  “What are you—” I clamped my lips shut on what I was about to say and hurriedly reworked it so that I didn’t use up one of my allotted questions. “Your clothing is…um…not your usual, er, style.”

  I was accustomed to seeing him in clothing suited to…well, a Renaissance festival—breeches, flowing shirts, boots, that sort of thing. I’d always assumed that he wore that style of clothing because that’s what demonic lords wore in the demon realm.

  But…now he had on black jeans that hugged the muscled contours of his legs without looking sprayed on, a crisp tailored shirt so white it nearly made his silver-blond hair look dark in contrast, and a grey jacket that looked like it was some sort of exceedingly expensive silk-wool blend.

  And his hair. Holy shit, the hair! His hair had formerly hung to his waist, but now it ended just past his shoulders. Even the normal alabaster hue of his skin looked like it had been replaced with the faintest touch of…a tan?

  He looked like an action hero on the red carpet. He looked hot—in a completely new and different way from what I was used to. And I didn’t know what the hell to make of it. What game was he playing now? There was no possible way this had been done solely to impress me.

  The light from the fireplace bathed his skin in a warm glow. A smile twitched his lips, and his crystal blue eyes found mine. “Smoothly performed, as usual,” he said with approval, and it took me a few seconds of mental floundering to realize he was referring to my summoning technique. Normally I’d have basked in the glow of such a compliment—especially since he never gave empty compliments—but at the moment I was still attempting to recover my composure at seeing this transformed version of him. And—what?—he wasn’t even going to respond to my statement or explain the change in his look? He knew I didn’t dare waste a question on that.

  He stepped out of the circle and slid his arms around me, bending his head to kiss me. But to my surprise he kept it light and released me barely a second later.

  “There has been another incident?” he asked, eyes narrowing as he looked down at me.

  Was my worry that obvious? “Several,” I said, pushing aside my curiosity about the overhaul of his appearance—at least for the moment. “A graa attacked this morning.” I shoved my sleeve up and showed him the wicked bruise and the shallow puncture its claw had left. “But Eilahn said she didn’t think it was trying to kill me.”

  He frowned and absently stroked his hand over my arm, eyes still intent on mine. “Go on.”

  A lovely warmth spread along my bicep as the ache faded. “And two people are dead whom I had every reason to hate, though I don’t know for certain there’s a connection.”

  “But your instincts tell you there is,” he stated.

  “They do,” I replied. “Both had nosebleeds, and I’ll bet my next paycheck that the autopsy will show that they died of the same thing—whatever that was.”

  “And there is more yet?” he asked.

  “Yep. After we got back home there was another summoning attempt,” I told him. “Eilahn saved my ass—threw me through the wards of the house.”

  An eyebrow lifted. “Threw you?”

  “Pretty much,” I said with a smile. “Luckily she’s been teaching me how to fall.”

  “Good that she foresaw the need.” He ran his hands lightly from my shoulders down my back. Tingling warmth followed his touch along with a decidedly pleasant cessation of aches and pains. “You suffered no serious injury,” he stated.

  I obligingly pressed closer to make it easier for him to examine me. “Just bruises.” I tipped my head back to look up at him. “Pretty sure I have a few lower down.”

  Amusement shimmered in his eyes as he slid his hands down to cup my ass. “I would not wish for you to be suffering in any way.” Then he lowered his head to nuzzle my neck. “Unless I’m the one making you suffer…and scream,” he murmured against my skin.

  I laughed breathlessly as heat flashed through me, but I forced myself to temper my ardor. He was still utterly beautiful, with a body like a Greek god, and he still had that demonic lord presence. But now I could actually picture him going out in public without drawing any more attention than any other incredibly gorgeous man would. And I realized with an abrupt shock that it was oddly unsettling. Here I’d finally wrapped my head around the idea that I didn’t need to feel guilt or angst about enjoying sex with him. I felt that Rhyzkahl and I had settled into an understanding of our relationship. He was my fantasy fuck-buddy, and since there was no chance that it would ever spill over into the “r
eal” world, I didn’t have to worry about strings attached—other than the ones binding me to him as his sworn summoner.

  But now…This shit just got real. Sure, I was a grown-up and I was allowed to have sex with anyone I wanted. But that also meant I didn’t have to be ruled by my hormones.

  “You have questions,” he stated, a slight smile on his face as he eyed me. Could he tell how off-balance I was? “I would not wish to succumb to distraction and not give you the full measure of our agreement,” he added.

  I took a breath and did my best to clear my thoughts. Okay, so the goalposts had been moved. I knew these changes were important, but unfortunately I had other stuff to deal with that was a lot more pressing. “Will questions about threats to me originating in the demon realm count against my two questions?”

  A sparkle of amusement flashed in his eyes, and before he could open his mouth I jabbed a forefinger at him and narrowed my own eyes. “And don’t you dare count that against me, either,” I added.

  He inclined his head slightly. “And now you seek to rework the terms of the agreement. Shameful.”

  Normally I’d have been deeply frightened at the insinuation that I was being less than honorable, but he still looked amused. Or so I hoped. “Merely seeking to clarify what might be seen as a loophole,” I replied. “Since it is our very agreement that puts me in jeopardy, it seems to me that questions concerning matters that might affect it negatively—like me dying or some such thing—go beyond the scope of the usual boundaries where I ask questions merely to further my own education or base of knowledge.”

  “You are becoming skilled in the manipulation of words and meaning,” he said, and this time he actually gave a slight smile.

  I gave a soft snort. “Yeah, well, spending so much time with a demon will do that to you.” Living with Eilahn was like a verbal chess match sometimes.