Legacy of the Demon (Kara Gillian 8)

“Yeah. I think so.”

“Can you make it here?”

He exhaled. “I’ll make it.”

“If at any point you feel like you might not be able to keep driving, you fucking call, got it? We’ll come get you.”

“I will. Thanks.”

“Marco, no matter what happens, I promise we’ll take good care of you.”

He hung up without replying. My anxiety had retreated, but dread took its place. I returned inside and filled Pellini in.

“Huh.” He frowned. “Does that kill your theory that having arcane abilities is a protection?”

I massaged the back of my neck. “I don’t know. I’m not sure if Knight’s abilities are arcane or something else.”

Pellini’s mouth twisted. “Don’t know about you, but I sure hope they’re something else.”

A cry of alarm from the guest room cut our discussion short.

“Shit!” I dashed down the hall and careened into the room. On the bed, a disoriented Giovanni clawed from beneath the blanket, eyes wild with confusion.

“Giovanni.” I grabbed his shoulders. “You’re safe. It’s okay.”

A small measure of the panic left his eyes as he took in the sight of me, though the confusion remained.

“I’m Kara. Kara Gillian.” I released him and eased back.

A frown puckered his forehead. “Sì, Kara.” Except he pronounced it Kah-rah. He muttered something in Italian, gaze darting around the room, then switched to English. “You cannot be here. Where is Elinor? Elinor!”

At least I was pretty sure that’s what he said. I hadn’t counted on a language barrier since I knew he spoke English, but apparently the seventeenth-century version had evolved in accent and pronunciation and inflection in the past three hundred plus years.

“I can help you understand me better,” I said, slowly and distinctly. “But you need to come with me.” I added gestures to get my point across.

He scrambled up and backpedaled shakily toward the window, rattling off a stream of Italian that included my name, Elinor, and Szerain. I had no clue about the rest. My smattering of nexus-imbued Italian was useless, since mine was the current-day version.

“Pellini, a little help!” I advanced on Giovanni and threw an arm around him as his legs gave way. The sight of Pellini sent him into more of a panic, but he weakened as he struggled against me and passed out when Pellini reached him.

Pellini looped one arm around Giovanni’s waist and drew his arm over his own neck. Giovanni topped me by only a few inches but was solid enough that I was glad to relinquish him.

“To the nexus,” I told Pellini. “I’m hoping that if I can connect him to modern Earth flows, we’ll be able to update his language and orient him.”

“Makes as much sense as anything else,” Pellini said with a shrug. “What about your other guest?”

I thought about it for less than a heartbeat. “I don’t have the time or energy to deal with Rhyzkahl or his bullshit.” Or the stomach to force him into his house so soon after the headache incident. “Let him see. Let him wonder. There’s nothing he can do about it, and he’ll find out eventually.”

Pellini chuckled under his breath and helped me get the unconscious Giovanni out the back door and across the porch. Rhyzkahl sat against the tree with Squig beside him. He didn’t look at me with malice, which told me he didn’t remember my Cruella de Kara act. But shock registered on his face as he recognized the supposedly long-dead Giovanni, and his gaze remained locked on us until we made it onto the nexus and I raised a curtain of potency as a privacy screen. We could see out, but he couldn’t see in.

Pellini laid Giovanni at the center of the slab then retreated to the grass. “Can you keep him calm while you’re doing the language trick?”

“I can get him nice and chill.” I crouched beside Giovanni and tapped in to the super-shikvihr that flowed around us then traced four floating pygah sigils over Giovanni. Envisioning calm clarity for him, I placed one each on his forehead, throat, chest, and abdomen. His aura shimmered over his body like a layer of azure fog and, with slow precision, I selected delicate strands of local potency and attached them to it, then more and more until I had five times the number I would have needed for myself.

I closed my eyes to shut out all visual stimuli. The strand colors intensified in my mind’s eye, displaying subtle differences in hue. I expanded into clear intention beyond thought, called in conversations and culture and images and objects. As those flowed—“downloaded”—I overlaid impressions of the environment: Rhyzkahl and his prison, the grove tree, Sammy, the kittens, security, warding, personnel, the house layout.

More and more, until his aura crackled with sparks like static electricity. Enough. Deep in the flows, I moved, reluctant to release the luscious connection, yet aware of my purpose. One by one, I disconnected the strands and merged them back into the flows.

At long last I looked up at Pellini. “I’m going to try to wake him. Stand by in case he freaks.” I traced a fifth pygah for good measure then called potency up from the nexus in gradually intensifying waves like a giant sensory alarm clock.