Touch of the Demon (Kara Gillian 5)

Somehow I managed a woozy smile. “And you’re here,” I slurred.

He looked down at me. “We are here.”

I gave him a radiant smile.

And then I passed the fuck out.

Chapter 37

I woke about a thousand years later, certain that someone had driven a truck through the bed and over me a few dozen times during the night.

Ilana chimed and stroked hair back from my face. I gave her a faintly puzzled smile, while I tried to remember why I ached from head to toe and why Ilana would be so close and attentive. “What happened?”

“Rhyzkahl sought you yesterday,” she said as she brushed her hand over my forehead.

Rhyzkahl. All of it flooded back to me. “We won,” I said.

She inclined her head. “Yes, you did. Rhyzkahl was denied.”

I exhaled. I knew I should be elated at the victory, but tension coiled in the pit of my stomach with the memory of exultation in sharing with Mzatal and then my subsequent loss of control of the grove energy. “And Mzatal? Is he all right?”

She smiled. “Until only a moment past, Mzatal has not left your side, and then only to attend a matter that could not be left longer.”

“But he’s all right?” I asked again.

She smiled. “He is depleted, though otherwise well.”

A feeling of ease and comfort stole through me. “Now I feel bad for waking up after he left,” I confessed.>“Kara!” Mzatal called out in a warning, but it was too late for me to take the words back. Rhyzkahl bared his teeth, gave a sharp cry of anger, and tore at the barrier.

I backed hurriedly. Damn it. “Boss!” I called out. “No time left!”

“Ten heartbeats,” he said through clenched teeth.

“Don’t have it!” I swallowed heavily and took another step back.

“Channel everything you can into the barrier,” Mzatal said. “Then move behind me.” In a furious swirl of his hands, he slurred the last three sigils together and called for the union of the rings.

“It’s going. Shit!” I felt as well as saw my barrier disintegrate as Rhyzkahl ripped through it. I scrambled to move fully behind Mzatal.

Rhyzkahl lifted his hand the instant the barrier cleared and made a vicious cast at the shikvihr. Mzatal swept his arm to ignite the pattern even as the attack struck it.

The shikvihr flared blindingly, then collapsed on itself with an earsplitting crack and a concussive jolt that threw me to my hands and knees. I gasped in pain and shock, watched a drop of blood from my nose splat on the stone beneath me as if in slow motion. Mzatal staggered back in the aftershocks, clearly off balance and at a disadvantage. I lifted my head and saw Rhyzkahl look from Mzatal to me, then…hesitate. My gut told me he didn’t want to hurt me. Not that I had any illusions about it being because he gave a shit about me personally, but because he didn’t want to damage his “tool.” Cop-mode set in, looking for the advantage and finding it. Maybe.

I scrambled to my feet and staggered to Mzatal. Rhyzkahl stepped forward as he called potency to his hand again, beautiful features hardened to ugliness by what could only be hatred.

“Kara,” Mzatal said, his breath coming heavily, but his voice strong. “Get behind me.”

“The hell I will,” I said. “I don’t stand a chance without you, and he needs me alive.” I only shook a little as I pulled Mzatal’s left arm over my shoulder and across my chest in the same way he’d held me when I faced Vahl. Except that now I was a human shield. And though I sure as hell wasn’t ready to die, it also positioned me such that Mzatal could easily kill me if things got even worse. Going to Rhyzkahl was not an option.

Dissonance abruptly flooded me, as though every cell in my body suddenly awoke and vibrated at an uncomfortable frequency. I nearly gave in to the impulse to pull away from Mzatal, then stopped as a strange familiarity wound through the discomfort. “What the hell?” I said through gritted teeth, eyes locked on Rhyzkahl as he stood statue-still. Hopefully the human shield bit was causing him to reconsider his strike tactics. “Mzatal?” My hands gripped his arm. “Why does this feel so weird?”

Mzatal tightened his arm across me. “I do not know,” he said, his breath hissing as though in pain. “But I…feel the grove.”

Even as he said it I could almost, almost, see the interplay of my grove energy and Mzatal’s aura, like trying to see something through a fogged window. Rhyzkahl lowered his head and pulled more potency to him. He’d obviously figured out some way to get around my oh-so-noble defense and didn’t plan on giving us leisure time to figure out this dissonance.

The familiarity abruptly clicked into place. The sigil series on the beach, the discordance I’d experienced there. “Boss,” I gasped. “It’s like a series out of alignment.”

He inhaled sharply, and in the next instant I felt him mentally shift, even as I reached through the fog to him, as if tuning a ring of sigils and clasping Mzatal’s mental hand all at once. The dissonance faded, and though I felt that more harmony waited just beyond my perception, I couldn’t reach for it right then. Adjustment to the overlap of my grove-fueled power with Mzatal’s potency required all my focus. “We can do this together,” I told Mzatal with newfound confidence as I leveled my gaze at Rhyzkahl.