Rise of the Demon, page 48
This was just a different flavor of sacrifice.
I clambered to my feet. “I’ve decided.”
“Are you sure?”
I opened so she could feel my complete acceptance. But still I spoke the words.
“Yes. I’m sure.”
She took two steps to close the distance between us, threw her arms around me in a fierce hug, then released me. We were on top of the column now, wind shrieking and lightning slicing and the heart of darkness gibbering.
Mzatal roared above, sound penetrating to my core. He couldn’t hold back much longer.
“Ready?” she asked.
Despite the thudding of my heart, I couldn’t help but laugh. “Let’s do this shit.”
Ashava lightly touched the middle of my forehead with her index finger.
I let out a choked cry as sensation like pure cleansing fire raced through the sigils. Not pain. Not burning. But an unadulterated sense of the lords. Kadir and Szerain had already consummated their sigils, adjusting them to reflect their true and current selves, and now the rest shifted, adapted, elevated and unified by my total and willing acceptance. They became an intrinsic and essential part of me, and in doing so created the quintessential expression of my potential. Timeless in the universe, among the stars and galaxies. Free. Whole. Me.
I drew in a breath of rebirth and dropped to a crouch, the fierce sensations settling into my being as thoughts caught up to experience. I was still Kara. Still very very Kara. Yet the definition of Kara Gillian had expanded. I was everything I was before, and so much more. I was . . . complete. Ultimate.
“Well, this is pretty fucking cool,” I murmured, then grinned. Oh, yeah, I was definitely still Kara who loved a good f-bomb.
Testing, I extended my senses. Holy shit, I was aware of, well, all of it. The people, the lords, the demons. In Dekkak’s chamber, Michael sat cross-legged with Hrrk cradled in his lap, face a mask of concentration. I sensed that Prikahn had encouraged him to go through the rift to protect the pup and himself. I stretched farther, testing. The Between shimmered with shifting light. On Earth, Tandon and Bryce organized security personnel to assess and repair defenses, to be ready in the event of another attack. On my porch, Boo and Catherine wept in each other’s arms while Lenny sat beside them and did his best to offer comfort.
Plenty of time to explore all of the potential later. I turned my attention to the column beneath me.
Oh yeah, if Mzatal reached that, everything was fucked. Now I understood the full nature of what it held and what he’d done to safeguard it. Several months ago, I’d entered its depths and found summoner Rasha Hassan Jalal al-Khouri in a dimensional pocket, sketching sigil after sigil.
I now knew she’d been working with Mzatal, layering in a final crucial firewall at his behest: He could only activate the doomsday device if Rowan existed—fully realized and aware and having come to it of their own volition. Not the abomination the Mraztur would have wrought.
It was the ultimate failsafe. He could only try to destroy the world if there was someone who could stop him.
Well, that someone sure as fuck existed now. And I wasn’t going to wait for Mzatal to come to me.
Wings sprouted from my shoulder blades. Kickass warrior angel wings of fierce red and gold.
For the barest instant, I considered reaching into the column to disarm the device, nullifying the demahnk’s plan in a single swift action. But no. Even that oh-so-brief access would give Mzatal the opening he needed to trigger the device.
My gaze locked onto the circling dragon, then I let out a battle cry and leaped into the air.
Mzatal dove at me the instant I took flight. Now that I existed as Rowan, he could indeed flip that final switch, which meant the battle was truly on.
He folded his wings, arrowed toward the column. I body slammed him out of the way, using the considerable power at my disposal. I still had control of the arcane and the grove power. Could still call rakkuhr to me. All an intrinsic part of my very being now.
And I was really good at it.
The dragon tumbled and landed awkwardly, gouging deep furrows in the ground. I quickly raised shields of power between him and the people and demons. His other attacks had seemed more geared toward chaos and mayhem than murder, but everything had shifted now. Those prior sorties had been to draw me out, show me what the stakes were, give me the opportunity to make the choice. To stop him.
I wrapped him in cables of arcane, a hundred times stronger than the net we’d tried earlier. Bound his wings and limbs and jaw.
No more testing. No more feints. This was war.
A deep growl rumbled in his throat, his eyes intense upon me. An instant later blue-white power flashed from him, weakening the cables enough for him to break free and spring into flight.
He climbed, higher and higher, while I maneuvered to stay between him and the column. He wheeled toward Alpha Squad with a roar that shook the ground.
I appeared between him and the squad—allowed myself an instant of Holy shit! I can fucking teleport!—then blasted him hundreds of feet back into the air.
I teleported to hover before him, then immediately darted aside to evade a blast of lightning. Again he breathed lightning at me, but when I blipped away, I was startled to find yet more aimed at the precise spot where I reappeared.
The reaching forks of electricity slowed to a crawl, and I let out a shaky laugh at this discovery of yet another neat Rowan trick. Time itself hadn’t changed, but my perception of it had, which allowed me to take control of the energy and redirect it into the charred wasteland.
But the experience was eye-opening, and a gut-wrenching reality check. Mzatal had always been formidable, powerful, able to assess countless probabilities and plan and react accordingly—and becoming a dragon had clearly not blunted any aspect of that ability.
I allowed my perception to return to normal and delivered a devastating blast of combined potency at him, then returned to my position above the column. The force of my attack sent him hurtling back, yet still he recovered, eyes narrowed, arcane crackling around his jaws.
I hovered above the column as he climbed high above me. Higher and higher yet.
My gaze followed his upward progress. I couldn’t save him. I couldn’t beat him without destroying him. And I couldn’t spare him. Not with literally everything at stake. Billions of lives. Dreams. Hopes. Loves.
It was an awful, gut-wrenching realization. Tears tracked down my face as I looked up at that fierce and beautiful and oh-so-deadly creature. I knew what I had to do. For everyone. And for him. He was a slave to the Mraztur demahnk, and I would NOT leave him to that fate.
As if in response to my epiphany, the lightning scar that wove through his sigil on my chest flared with stinging heat. An affirmation—gut wrenching but undeniable.
I appeared directly before him, stroked his cheek with a feather-light arcane touch. The dragon bared his teeth, and I felt the hair-thin crack in the barriers around his essence widen by the tiniest, infinitesimal amount. A single concept flowed through me: Together.
The truth of it could not be denied. Together we can do anything.
I opened up enough for even the demahnk-controlled aspect to see . . . to feel my love. Though I was resolved in my course of action, I allowed it to sense a whisper of uncertainty within me, hesitation. What would hopefully appear as weakness.
Together we baited the demahnk.
Together we offered all to save the worlds.
I let my love for him shine until I glowed with it. Then I retreated, just enough to look as if I wouldn’t commit. Couldn’t.
Mzatal let out a roar that thundered across the landscape and dove toward the heart of darkness.
I teleported to the column top, ready and waiting when the lightning came. Embraced it, reshaped it into a supernova column of power and directed every bit of it at that hair-thin crack around his essence.
It burned through the crack, through his core, through his essence.
Burned away his fetters and the controls holding him, backlashed hard and vicious through the ones who held those fetters.
And for a millionth of a second, I felt his caress . . .
Approval
Love
Sorrow
Joy
And then he went nova.
I threw a shield over everyone on the ground to protect them from the blast, yet let it pass through me—a brilliant nebula of coruscating colors across the spectrum.
Felt the faintest final touch of him.
Then it was gone.
He was gone.
Chapter 47
No time to grieve. First things first. I reached into the column and deactivated the doomsday device, detached it from the heart of the world, and scattered its elements to the farthest reaches of the universe.
That done, I lifted my hand and called Khatur to me. It leaped into my possession as if it had been waiting. I welcomed the blade, promised it wouldn’t have to wait much longer now, then sent it away again until the time for restoration.
Ilana and Trask and Ssahr had fled. But there was nowhere they could hide from me, and I’d deal with them soon enough.
I dispelled the shield protecting everyone below, then descended to the ground.
Ashava threw her arms around me, and I hugged her close as we spoke and shared without words. Triumph and grief and crushing loss and stunning victory. She understood, and I loved her for it.
After a moment, I released her and gave her a crooked smile. Then Szerain came and embraced me, and right on his heels, Idris. They, too, understood what this victory had cost me. Everyone did.
“Give me a moment,” I said quietly, then I closed my eyes, touched the void, sought the essences of all who’d died in this battle and were now making their uncertain journeys back to Earth. Too many. Our people and Jesral’s. Even the three mules who’d perished. With gentle nudges I set them on their way, guided them home, took away chance. Once the last made it through, I did the same for the demons slain on Earth, helping them return to their home world.
With that addressed, I turned my focus to the next and most pressing priority.
“It’s time to set the elders free,” I said, then backed away and opened a twenty-foot-tall rift.
Dekkak emerged and took a position a dozen feet before me. “You are prepared to fulfill our pact, Kara Gillian?”
I stood tall, felt the blades and all three gimkrahs on the fringe of my consciousness. “I am.”
Seretis, Bubba, and Gurgaz stepped through the rift, each carrying a gimkrah.
Lord. Human. Demon.
Michael followed behind them, carefully cradling Hrrk, and I grinned as Prikahn bounded over to retrieve his puppy.
Without a word, Seretis, Bubba, and Gurgaz set the three gimkrahs before me. The heart of each crystal orb shifted from deep maroon to pulsing blood red.
I called Khatur to my hand, set the tip of the blade into the topmost rune of their gimkrah. Rakkuhr snaked from the orb to entwine the blade and hold it in place. I did the same with the Xhan and Vsuhl blades and their respective gimkrahs, then took a step back. Blade song rose anew, joined this time by deep bass vibrations from the orbs, hauntingly beautiful, tragic—and exultant. The unexpected resonance of Mzatal shimmered through me for a bare instant, bringing a wave of grief I almost failed to quash. It wasn’t him, merely the lingering shadow of his hand in the making of these prisons.
I beckoned to Lord, Human, and Demon. Each moved forward and took hold of the blade hilt before them, waited.
Dekkak gave me a grave nod then backed away. A lot. I suddenly remembered the massive manacles and chains of makkas I’d seen within the column when I recovered the master gimkrah. Xhan hadn’t seemed all that large in his gimkrah, but then again, that was more of a virtual setting.
Out of an abundance of caution, I retreated as well. A lot.
“Let’s do this,” I said, then disintegrated the makkas bands with a thought—and perhaps a showy flick of my fingers.
Lord, Human, and Demon drove the blades into the crystals, deep into those pulsing hearts, then scrambled back to stand by Dekkak.
Light blazed, radiant and fierce, and deep tones beyond hearing shook the ground. A hot, dry wind whipped in a vortex around us, carrying sparks of rakkuhr. A roar like a thousand lions engulfed us then faded to silence.
The air stilled, and the world settled. Before me were three enormous demons, larger than Dekkak. I already knew Xhan’s true luhrek form, though seeing him full-size made him all the more impressive. He carried himself with fierce intensity, no longer merely a gracious and mellow philosopher and teacher, but the full embodiment of all aspects of his essence, with an aura of breathtaking presence and potency.
Khatur was a zhurn, with crimson eyes glowing like a forge, her hide the deep black of the void, and each wing as long as a school bus. To my everlasting shock, Vsuhl was a zrila—demons I’d only ever known as small, scuttling tailors and weavers. The one before me now was epically massive, with a head as big as my entire body, and skin of deep indigo and magenta. They bared their teeth in greeting—pointy teeth as long as my arm.
I gave all a deep bow of respect. Xhan lowered his head and peered at me. “You are fresh and new, Kara Gillian.”
“Much has transpired, honored Xhan.”
Dekkak stepped before the elders and gripped an appendage of each in turn, ending with Khatur. “Kara Gillian told a tale of betrayal and sacrifice. Did she speak truth?”
Khatur’s voice rumbled like a mountain rockslide. “Kara Gillian spoke truth. And we, the three, have reconciled amongst ourselves. We take a moment now to commune.”
The three settled facing one another and went still as statues.
Dekkak spread her wings wide and bellowed in triumph and jubilation. “Kara Gillian, our agreement is fulfilled, your honor unblemished.”
Seretis beamed, face full of pride. “Well done, my dear.”
Dekkak angled a clawed hand toward him. “Qaztahl, we must address your standing, for you were never in the terms of the pact with Kara Gillian.”
“Indeed, Imperator. My bargain is my own, and I will continue to live by it.”
She bent low, her face in front of his, breath stirring his hair. “Much has changed. Perspectives. Perceptions. Perspicuity. You have acted with honor and courage worthy of the Jontari. I release you from your oath of bondage. You are free.”
He inclined his head to her. “As I have ever been, honored one. May we move forward together in harmony.”
Bryce swept Seretis up in a bearhug the instant Dekkak returned her attention to me.
“What of the kiraknikahl?” she growled. “The Ekiri and the demahnk.”
“Trust me,” I said with a fierce smile. “I haven’t forgotten about that lot.”
First things first. Taking Seretis and Bryce with me, I teleported to the top of the column. Chittering void no longer, merely a smooth, unbroken surface. We held each other’s hands, three points of a triangle. Aided by his bond with Bryce, I drew in the feel of Seretis, then flung a billion seeking tendrils into the universe to call his sire Lannists’s scattered essence home. A tiny prismatic speck appeared within our triangle. Then another. More gathered, faster and faster, as if drawn by ever-increasing gravity. Soon the aggregation was as large as a beachball, flashing crystalline colors.
I welcomed Lannist, helped him coalesce into his human form. He gave me a brilliant smile, then pulled Seretis into a fierce embrace. No longer ptarl-bonded but still acknowledging and treasuring the paternal link.
Lannist released Seretis and turned to Bryce, embraced him too, murmured gratitude and appreciation, then faced me again. I smiled and returned all three to the ground below.
Time to deal with the others.
I reached out again, this time to all of the Ekiri demahnk. Ilana. Trask. Fiar. Greeyer. Zakaar. Helori. Dima. Korlis. Lannist. Ssahr.
The worlds are still breaking. Your fuckups must be rectified. You may either remain and help or rejoin the collective. I conveyed the message without words, in an instant outside of time.
Zakaar and Helori joined me atop the column. A swirl of amethyst leaves indicated Rho’s full support and presence.
Below, Greeyer appeared by Elofir, wrapped him in an embrace, then kissed him on the cheek, stepped back and disappeared to await banishment.
Fiar did the same with Vrizaar—held him close for several heartbeats, then placed a gentle kiss on his forehead and was gone.
Lannist remained steadfast beside Seretis.
I didn’t expect any of the other demahnk to show themselves, not after everything they’d done or had supported. But to my surprise, Dima teleported to Amkir, took his hand and brought it to her forehead, as if asking forgiveness. Emotion twisted his face as he gave a quick jerky nod, then he threw his arms around her. They remained like that for several heartbeats before Dima stepped back, cupped his cheek with her hand and gave him a soft, sad smile. Then she vanished.
I took a moment to center myself and get my eyes to stop stinging. Yeah, I was a mega-powerful being now, but still the same old sappy Kara.
Breathing deeply, I extended, linking together Helori, Zakaar, and Rho, then added the Jontari elders and Dekkak, the lords, the humans and demons below, the pod people, Kadir’s Kids on both worlds, and myself to form an indomitable and glorious gestalt. Reached farther and linked in the human companions, everyone still at the compound, and the other summoners and practitioners on Earth. More connections, more links, on and on, until both worlds stood poised and ready.
With the gestalt at my control, I reached to the Ekiri pavilions, dove deep into that infinite space at their heart and sought the collective. Made contact. Connected. Then evicted the banished demahnk, yeeting them toward the heart of the Ekiri collective with the command to never ever return.
Xharbek! I called, found him distant and still very much scattered. Teeth gritted, I gathered him, relishing the thought of sending him away forever. But my anticipated angry vengeance failed to manifest. Instead, empathy spawned compassion. My now broader perspective understood his suffering and the subsequent madness brought on by being abandoned by his kind. I finished gathering him and sent him to the collective. Go home. Do better.
