Vengeance of the Demon (Kara Gillian 7)

After Pellini ate a replacement hamburger, Bryce accompanied him to his house to pick up his dog and a few days worth of clothing and sundries. An hour later they returned with Sammy, a goofy chocolate labrador retriever with a dangerously exuberant tail. Though uncertain at first with all the new smells, it only took a few minutes for Sammy to decide that having the run of ten acres—full of wildlife to bark at—was the absolute Best Thing Ever.

Fuzzykins was less keen about the presence of a DOG in her demesne, and wasted no time establishing the pecking order. The silly dog wanted nothing more than to be best buddies with the cat and made many enthusiastic overtures of unconditional friendship. It took a muzzle covered in bloody scratches for him to accept the futility of his efforts. Poor guy.

Bryce relinquished the guestroom to Pellini and took over the sofa, more to monitor Pellini’s movements than to be nice. Pellini had the run of the property, but surveillance cameras, the perimeter fence, and Bryce’s eagle-eyes kept him under polite house arrest. I gave Pellini the basic tour, set out fresh towels for him, then finally fell into bed long after midnight. At least I didn’t need to set an alarm for the morning.

Once asleep, I drifted in and out of a weird dream involving giant mosquitoes with human faces auditioning for a talent show. The bizarre scene faded, only to sharpen into a vivid and strange landscape of shifting color and light. Fine threads of lightning coruscated through clouds of energy accompanied by a soft, pleasant crackle. I floated among the clouds, passing through and between them, delighted when I found myself able to choose my direction at will.

“Kara Gillian.”

My name slid through me—felt, not heard—and lured me to its source. I reached up to touch my ears but, where my arm should have been, there was nothing but a swirl in the clouds. Gah! Where’s my body? Even as the panic began, I coalesced into a semitransparent shimmery form as though I’d willed it all into existence. I turned my hands over, flexed my glittering fingers. Too cool.

“Kara Gillian.” The call came again. Closer this time and familiar. I spun toward it and saw Kadir. Sparkly Kadir, composed of a billion twinkling crystals like perfect grains of sand, colorless except for the striking violet of his eyes. Behind his left shoulder drifted a man, semitransparent and shimmery like me, and an equally shimmery Paul knelt close to Kadir’s right leg.

This was some dream.

“Wow, Paul,” I said. “You look really good.”

Kadir laid his hand on Paul’s head. “Kara Gillian.”

The resonance of my name drew me more into myself. “Yo, Kadir. ’Sup?” I laughed and threw a mock gang sign. “Weird having you in my dream.”

Kadir drifted closer. “Wake up.”

The command echoed through every fiber of my being. The surreal landscape leaped into greater clarity. In shock, I recognized the shimmery man behind Kadir as a much more trim Pellini. Everything felt utterly real—not like a lucid dream anymore. Sonofabitch. Kadir had called me into Pellini’s out-of-body wonderland.

Pellini gestured toward Kadir. “Mr. Sparkly.”

“I see that,” I said, cautious and alert now. How much time has Pellini already spent with Kadir tonight? “What’s going on?”

“Chaos,” Kadir said, and lightning flickered through the colored energy clouds around us. “My world disintegrates.”

“So I’ve heard,” I said. “We’re doing what we can on the Earth end, but your friend Katashi is hell-bent on screwing things up.”

“I am friend to none,” he said. “Isumo Katashi is a necessary component, though he neglects symmetry for the sake of haste. This must be corrected.” He opened his hand and set a mass of wriggling potency strands spinning in the space between us like a glob of entangled worms. A discordant buzz rattled my teeth as if I’d had twenty cups of coffee and was poised to vibrate apart. Kadir passed his hand over the strands, transformed the raw potency into a radiant electric blue sigil. It spun in perfect balance and the buzz lifted to a clear tone. With another pass of his hand Kadir warped it, and it lurched around its axis.

“Still functional,” he said, “but asymmetry engenders instability.” Kadir blew on it, and the sigil shattered with a sound like a hundred fingernails screeching across a blackboard. His violet eyes met mine. “Asymmetry engenders instability. It must be corrected.”

Instability. Valves.

“Let me get this straight,” I said, eyes narrowing. “You don’t have a problem with what Katashi’s doing with the valves, only with how he’s doing it. He’s in too much of a hurry to do it your way.” I gave him a sour look. “In other words, you want me to help you by improving on Katashi’s method.”

“Yes,” he said. “By symmetrizing the valves.”

I laughed outright. “Why the hell would I do that?”

“Because each symmetrized valve impedes his progress and stabilizes the system.” He paused and lowered his head, eyes on me. “This is a desirable outcome for you.”

Slowing down Katashi might buy us time to find a way to stop him for good. If Kadir was telling the truth. I glanced to shimmery Pellini to check his reaction to all of this, but he offered me a helpless shrug. He probably didn’t know enough about the dynamics to contribute to either side.

Kadir continued as I mulled it over. “If you do no more than patch valves as they destabilize,

Isumo Katashi will succeed—at enormous peril of catastrophic implosions on Earth.”

Fuck.

I hated to agree with anything that had the potential to advance the Mraztur’s cause. But Kadir had unparalleled skill with potency flows and the valves, and had an obsessive interest in stability. What he proposed made sense in a mutually beneficial way, though the benefit for us was short term.

Kadir’s gaze intensified. “He will risk catastrophe with no qualms. Will you?”