Mark of the Demon (Kara Gillian 1)

I walked up the steps to my aunt’s house and rang the doorbell. It was barely six a.m., but I knew she would already be up and about. True to form, the door opened before the echoes of the bell had faded away.

“Hiya, sweets. You know you don’t have to ring the bell.”

“Aunt Tessa,” I said without preamble, “we need to talk.”

Tessa’s smile faded and she gave a nod, as if she’d been expecting this visit. She turned and headed down the hall to the kitchen and then sat at the counter, pushing a cup of tea toward me.

I couldn’t help but smile a bit as I lifted the cup. Perfect, as always.

“Aunt Tessa, I need you to tell me about the time you saw Rhyzkahl.”

Tessa sighed and set her hands on the counter as if to examine her nails. “I knew you’d be coming to me at some point about that whole thing.” She lifted her eyes to mine. “It’s all connected, isn’t it?”

“I’m almost positive,” I said. “But I need some more information, and you’re the only one who can give it to me.”

Tessa squeezed her eyes shut briefly. “I can still see the whole thing. Even almost thirty years later.”

“Greg told me that you two were in the basement when his father attempted to summon Rhyzkahl,” I said, gently prompting.

Tessa shook her head firmly. “No, he wasn’t attempting to summon Rhyzkahl. Only someone with a death wish would do that. He was trying to summon another lord, Szerain, who was much lower in stature than Rhyzkahl and supposedly willing to negotiate terms. It was a ridiculous and doomed attempt to heal his wife of breast cancer, which had gone undiagnosed and untreated because of his insane aversion to the medical community.” Her voice was filled with bitterness. Then she sighed again. “Not that there was much that could have been done back then. They just didn’t have the treatments they do today, but she might have had a few more years.” An expression of regret flickered across her face. “We’ll never know now.”

“Aunt Tessa,” I said, leaning forward. “Please tell me everything that you remember about that night.”

Tessa curled her hands around her cup, empty as it was. “Greg and I had both just turned seventeen. Our birthdays were only a few days apart. We’d been playmates since we were just kids—used to spend darn near every waking minute together. When we got older, the friendship just naturally progressed to intimacy.” Her lips twitched. “I guess you could say we were best-friend-fuckbuddies.”

I knew she wanted me to react, but I refused to amuse her. Get to the point, I thought silently.

After waiting a few breaths for me to respond, Tessa began to speak again. “Greg’s mother had been sick for a while, and his father decided that performing an incredibly risky, idiotic, insane summoning was preferable to actually taking her to seek medical help. We knew that it was breast cancer only because Greg had snuck her out and taken her to see a damn doctor.” Anger colored her voice. “At that time, I had no idea what a summoning was or that I had any talent for it. I knew that my mother had a private study that was sometimes locked, but that was about it. But that Saturday night, Greg called me and asked me to come over. He didn’t say so, but I knew he was worried about his mom and didn’t want to be alone. His parents had some sort of dinner party planned for that night, and I figured that meant we’d have lots of time to fool around in his basement.” A ghost of a smile lit her face. “I was doing my best to distract him from his worries, when people started coming downstairs. My mother was among them, which I hadn’t expected. We scrambled to grab our clothes and dove behind a bookcase, figuring we’d hide until they all left again.” She shook her head. “But they didn’t leave. We stayed behind that bookcase and watched as the ritual began.” She set the cup down and stood, moving to the sink to look out at her backyard and the morning sun on the lake beyond.

“Go on,” I prompted after a moment.

Tessa rolled her head on her neck as if trying to ease the tension. “You have to understand the … feelings of guilt that I’ve dealt with all these years. I know it’s not rational, but I feel guilty all the same.”

“Aunt Tessa, why?”

“I could feel the ritual, feel the opening of the portal.” Her voice was low, thready. “It was the first time I’d ever seen a summoning, and I could instantly feel that it was something I could do.” Her shoulders slumped. “And without knowing what I was doing, without thinking, I sat in my hiding place behind that bookcase and I reached out mentally to that portal as it opened.”

“Oh, shit,” I breathed.

“Yes. I altered the forming of it, changed the structure just enough …”

“And Rhyzkahl was pulled through.”

Tessa’s hands were white-knuckled on the rim of the sink. “Yes. Completely unwilling and without any warning. And because it was an imperfect portal, it was probably quite painful for him as well.”

I shivered. The memory of his unshielded fury came back to me.

“He … he’s beautiful, as you know. Angelic. There was a moment, a perfect small moment, when all everyone could see was that beauty, and everyone thought that the summoning had gone as planned.” She turned back to me, hugging her arms around herself. “And then he let us feel the full extent of his anger.”

“I’ve felt it,” I said softly.

Tessa gave a single jerky nod. “It was a bloodbath, a slaughter, but I’ll grant him this: He took his vengeance but did not revel in the suffering. Only enough to satisfy his honor.” A shudder rippled through her. “But it was still a horror to watch. He killed two of the men first, literally ripped them apart. He broke the necks of two women.” Tessa took a deep breath. “The only summoners left were my mother and Peter Cerise. They were both pinned down by his sheer power.” She brushed her hair out of her face, hands shaking slightly. “Rhyzkahl knew we were there, hiding. He looked straight at us. I could … feel his presence, feel him measuring and testing us.” She fell silent for several heartbeats. “I don’t know exactly how he killed my mother, but in one breath she was alive and screaming in terror, and then she just … fell silent, sighed, and didn’t breathe again.” She licked her lips. “Greg’s mother was next. Powers above and below, how he drew that out! Peter Cerise was held down by the unbelievable potency of Rhyzkahl, both legs snapped like dry twigs. Couldn’t move, forced to watch as Rhyzkahl ripped gobbets of cancerous flesh from his wife, that angelic face utterly impassive.”

I realized that my hands were clenched into tight fists under the table, nails digging into my palms.

Tessa dragged a hand across her face. “And then he gathered his power and was gone, leaving the blood and the slaughter.” She made a breathy sound that I realized was meant to be a laugh. “It’s funny. I hate Rhyzkahl for what he did that night, but I could never blame him for my mother’s death. It was Peter Cerise’s arrogance and my ignorance that were the true causes for what happened.”

“Aunt Tessa! You can’t blame yourself like that.”