Legacy of the Demon (Kara Gillian 8)

He lowers his head, eyes on mine. So beautiful. “Yes.”

Tick. Tick. Tick.

The sound teases my consciousness. My consciousness. Kara. This is a vision. I need to follow the ticking. Marco Knight told me I can camera-fly, but how? Looks like I’ll learn by trying. I reimmerse in Elinor’s experience, aware this time.

I conjure Giovanni’s face in my mind to give me courage, and I pray my voice does not tremble when I speak. “Forgive me, my lord. It is no longer my desire to abide.”

No, damn it, I’m still in Elinor’s perspective. I need to escape it. I’ll fly my camera-view up there, to the top of the bookshelf. I can do this. Uno. Due. Tre . . .

The world shatters and reforms.

One. Two. Three.

Moonlight floods the library. Rhyzkahl’s back is to me.

A different time, but not the bookcase camera-view I was trying for. It doesn’t feel like Elinor’s perspective either. Did I screw something up?

His hands grip the frame of Elinor’s portrait, and he drops his head. He heaves out a deep sigh and pushes from the wall. He gazes long at her image then drapes it in deep red silk.

Not Elinor’s perspective. I’m me. Of course I’m me.

I sneer. “Did you fuck her over as badly as you did me?”

He turns on me, and his face twists in fury. “What are you doing? You should not be here!”

“I can be wherever I damn well please.” I lift my chin. Why wouldn’t I be here? “You burned all of your tell-Kara-what-to-do privileges.”

He advances on me, grips my shoulders. Shakes me hard enough to make my teeth clack together. “Depart. Now.”

This is no meek Elinor he’s dealing with. I snag a book from the nearest shelf—War and Peace, hardback—and whack him on the side of the head. For good measure, I drive my knee into his groin, delighted at his grunt of pain.

He releases me and staggers back, overturns a bookshelf. I sidestep, but he recovers in a heartbeat. Lunges. Grabs my hair at the scalp. Drags me. “Kara, go home.”

“Fuck off!” I slap my hands over his to hold them close to my head, twist my body in a move that should break his wrist.

He pivots with me, snakes an arm around my neck and gets me in a headlock. “Kara, stop! You need to remember—”

The world tilts. Shade and sunlight beyond. The nexus. Dizzy, I claw at the arm around my throat. The world tips back, wobbles drunkenly. The library and moonlight.

Rhyzkahl’s hold is like iron. I kick and struggle to no avail. “Let me go!” The Nexus. War and Peace. Light. Darkness. What is he doing to me?

“You don’t belong here, Kara.” Dappled shade. Red silk.

“No!” I fight down the panic and call up my rage instead, lash out with the one weapon I have in my grasp. “It’s you lords who don’t belong here! You don’t even know where you came from!” Vicious mind control by the demahnk prevents the lords from even considering certain topics. I seize onto the deepest secret I know and wield it as a white hot spear of hatred. “What’s your real connection to Earth? You and all you lordly types.”

Grass and flowers. The world stabilized. Heat. Humidity. Home.

No dream-vision, yet Rhyzkahl still held me. Breathing hard, I scrabbled at his arm. “How’d y’all come to be so high and mighty in the demon realm, huh? Where’s your mama? Who’s your daddy?”

Rhyzkahl released the headlock. I whirled, fists raised and ready to slug him, but he staggered back against the tree trunk and stared at me in open shock. His mouth worked, but nothing came out but an inarticulate gurgle. The leaves of the grove tree rustled as if stirred by a wind I couldn’t feel. Sinking to his knees, he gripped his head and moaned in agony.

The sound ripped through me like a horrific wake-up call. What have I done? He’d dragged me out of the Elinor vision after I screwed up the attempt to camera-fly, and I’d repaid him with crushing pain. My stomach clenched, and I tasted acid. Sure, I’d been disoriented, but I’d wanted to hurt him, to pay him back for the pain he’d inflicted on me. I’d overreacted, and now I had no idea how to fix this. Usually the demahnk intervened to ease the excruciating headache, or sometimes a sufficient di

straction could pull a lord from the mind-loop of agony. But I’d unloaded on Rhyzkahl with the heaviest weapon in my artillery.

“I’m sorry,” I choked out, even as he curled into a fetal position against the trunk of the tree. The leaves murmured. I lifted my eyes to the brilliant canopy. “I swear I didn’t mean to hurt him this badly.”

The shade around him flickered with emerald and sapphire sparkles as if the sun shone through gem stones. I didn’t know if the tree was telling me to go the fuck away since I’d done enough damage, or saying It’s okay, I’ll help him.