Vengeance of the Demon (Kara Gillian 7)

“The world is full of strange and curious things,” he said with a straight face then climbed the steps to the porch. “Don’t forget to call me.”

And one of those strange and curious things is you, I thought with mild amusement. “No worries there,” I said. “You’ll probably regret volunteering soon enough, though.” I kept my tone light, but I had a feeling he didn’t really know what he was getting himself into.

“Time will tell, Kara Gillian,” he said as he opened the front door and entered the house. “Time will tell.”

• • •

Jill and Pellini had gone off to their respective beds by the time Idris and I made it back to the house. The only light still on was the one over the stove in the kitchen, but the empty sofa indicated Bryce was awake. Though I didn’t see him in any of the common areas, I felt no need to worry. I knew he wouldn’t be far from Jill.

Idris headed straight for the basement to map out the valve repair plan for the next day. With Bryce taking over Jill-duty, Idris would be partnered with Pellini. That would be interesting, to say the least.

I slouched into the recliner, too wired and unsettled to go to bed. My routine for the past few weeks had been to check the nexus and survey the protection wards before turning in, but obviously that would need to come off my chore list. Along with a dozen other tasks that Idris would have to take over. This sucks, I thought in ginormous understatement.

Out of habit I reached for Mzatal, with as much result as if I’d reached for the moon. My breath shuddered out. The loss of the bond gnawed at me, and my overall uncertainty salted the wound. I wanted—needed—to talk to Mzatal, get his advice and opinion about what happened to me, as well as his comfort and support. The bond had been an intrinsic part of our relationship for six months, and I felt its absence now as keenly as if I’d lost my right hand. Did Mzatal feel the same way? What was six months against the thousands of years he’d lived without a bond? I didn’t know if the relatively brief time would make it easier for him to handle the loss or if it made it all the more tragic.

My chest tightened as I ran my thumb over the curled prongs of my ring. If only I could touch him, I’d feel better. A whisper. That’s all I needed—

“Stop it,” I growled to myself and stomped down my self-pity. I was mooning and moping like a lovesick teenager, for fuck’s sake. How was that going to solve my problems? Maybe I wasn’t thousands and thousands of years old, but I’d managed perfectly fine for thirty years without any sort of quasi-telepathic connection. Sure, it hurt like walking barefoot over broken glass, but there were other ways to send word to Mzatal. Idris would need to summon a demon to deal with the wards on Tessa’s house anyway, so it might as well be one of Mzatal’s.

Cursing, I pushed up from the recliner and stalked to the kitchen, unable to keep my frustration at bay. Sending a message to Mzatal via demon was a lousy and not-always-reliable substitute for the conversation with him I truly craved. Hell, even if our bond was working at its best, a mental touch wouldn’t give me any answers. I’d need an interdimensional connection like the one Bryce and Seretis had, with a true exchange of thoughts.

I stopped dead in the hallway. Bryce and Seretis! Maybe Bryce could get word to Seretis and ask him if my affliction could be reversed? Short of returning to the demon realm, I saw no other way to get the direct input of a demonic lord.

Excited by the possibility, I proceeded to hunt for Bryce. A teensy part of me wondered if he was in the guest room with Jill, considering his obvious-to-me deepening affection for her. I instead found him in a rocker on the back porch, a shadow in the shadows.

“Hey, Bryce,” I said. “You okay?”

“Hey,” he replied. Quiet. Subdued. “How’d it go at your aunt’s house?”

I winced. “Not so great.” I sat in the rocker next to his and filled him in on the salient points.

“Damn,” he said when I finished.

“Yeah.” I went quiet, listened

to the chirp of crickets in the dark and the croak of frogs from the woods and pond. Not far above the trees, the moon waxed gibbous. Four days until the full, I thought idly. Easy to pinpoint the moon’s phase after more than a decade of obsessing over it. A year and a half ago I’d have been chafing at having to wait four days to summon again.

I had one hell of a long wait in front of me now.

“My condition screws up the team,” I said. “Idris is now the only one who can perform the necessary arcane maintenance. It helps that Pellini can see the arcane, but it’s not enough. We need to find a solution as soon as possible.” I looked over at him. “Do you think you could ask Seretis what he thinks?”

My eyes were adjusted to the gloom enough to see his grimace. “I already tried with no luck,” he said, regret coloring his words. “I couldn’t get the specifics across. I’m sorry.”

“Oh. Yeah, okay,” I said with the lightness of a bowling ball covered in concrete. “It was worth a shot. Thanks for trying.” Back to square one—wherever that was. Stupid tears pricked my eyes, and I blinked furiously, grateful for the darkness.

His shadow shifted, and he put his hand over mine on the chair arm. “I’ll connect with Seretis in the morning from the nexus. It’s the best time of day, and the link is always stronger there. I think I’ll be better able to get my point across to him then.”

I turned my hand over, threaded my fingers through his, drew from his strength. “Thanks, Bryce.” Any other words on the topic seemed unnecessary. I squeezed his hand. “What about you? What has you brooding in the dark with the mosquitos?”

He exhaled. “Security gets trickier when long-range weapons come into play.”

“Good news is they don’t seem to want Jill dead. They could have accomplished that today. They want the baby—alive.”

He disengaged from my hand and stood, moved to lean on the porch rail and lifted his gaze to the moon. “I need to get you and Pellini up to speed on the camera security system,” he said. “While you and Idris were gone, I made notes on everything I could think of regarding Jerry, McDunn, and Carter. The file is on Paul’s system and the laptop.”

Ice slid between my ribs. “You’re leaving?” I barely got the words out then couldn’t stop the torrent. “I understand. I really do. Better for you to be close to Paul. And Seretis. Mzatal shouldn’t have sent you here in the first place. Did he even ask if you wanted to come? I know he can be presumptuous—”

“Kara! I’m non-essential.”