Mark of the Demon (9 page)

Today my aunt was dressed in a mid-calf-length blue velvet dress, with heavy silver chains draped around her waist and black suede boots on her feet. She lifted her eyes from her book and peered at me as I sat in the chair next to her.

“Well, you’re alive,” she said without preamble, setting her book aside. “Which means that if you summoned Kehlirik it didn’t go too horrendously wrong.” She leaned forward, eyes narrowing as she looked into my face. “But you sure don’t look very happy about a successful summoning.”

“The summoning of Kehlirik went fine,” I said. “I’ve officially completed my training and am now a full summoner.” I paused. It would be so easy to just leave it at that. But then I wouldn’t get any answers. “I … uh, tried to summon again last night, and … well, things didn’t go quite the way I’d planned.”

The angles in her face seemed to sharpen. “That right there is a very bad thing. When there’s any deviation from the plan in a summoning, someone usually ends up in bad shape.” She arched an eyebrow. “So, what happened? You tried to summon a higher-level demon again and couldn’t hold it? You dismissed it? It didn’t come all the way through?” She shook her head. “Two big summonings in a row is pretty dicey.”

I groaned. “Aunt Tessa, I don’t know what went wrong. I wasn’t trying anything ambitious at all. I was trying to summon a lower demon, Rysehl. Easy. And I
called
Rysehl, but that wasn’t what came through.”

Tessa went very still, and when she spoke, her voice had lost all trace of its usual gaiety. “Kara, what came through?”

Shit. How was I going to explain to my aunt that not only had I somehow screwed up the summoning but then I’d gone and had
sex
with the creature?

Tessa reached out and grabbed my hand, bony fingers painfully tight on mine. “Your silence is unnerving me, kiddo. Spill it.”

I winced. “I called Rysehl—I’m sure I did! But it wasn’t Rysehl. I’m still not sure what he was, but he said his name was Rhyzkahl.”

My aunt was silent, and when I looked up at her I was shocked to see a stricken expression on her face. “Aunt Tessa? What is it?”

She swallowed visibly, throat bobbing in what would have otherwise been a comic manner. “Rhyzkahl.” She let out a ragged breath. “Yet here you are still, and in what appears to be one piece.”

I tried to give a diffident shrug. I didn’t
have
to tell her about the sex part, did I? “Yeah, well, I mean, I, uh … just remembered what you taught me about dismissals.” I avoided looking directly at my aunt.
I am such a damn chickenshit
. “So, um … what is he?”

“You … dismissed him,” Tessa stated, voice flat with disbelief.

“I’m still here, right?” I tried to keep my voice steady and blasé.

My aunt remained silent, and after several seconds I risked a peek at her face. Tessa crossed her arms over her chest and glowered at me.

“Young woman,” she said in a voice that was cold enough to destroy the entire citrus crop of Florida, “you are going to tell me exactly what happened last night.”

I took a nervous breath. “Not until you tell me who or what Rhyzkahl is.”

I steeled myself for a verbal flaying, but instead Tessa just sighed and nodded. “Yes, you need to know that. I’m sorry I didn’t already teach you that, but, by the spheres! I’d no idea you’d be insane enough to call one of his ilk.”

“I didn’t do it on purpose! Who
is
he?” I looked at my aunt warily. “Is he some kind of creature that can take human form?”

Tessa shook her head. “No, nothing so simple as that. Library. Now.” She unwound her legs and was out of the room before I could stand. By the time I walked down the hall and into her library, Aunt Tessa was already sitting cross-legged on the floor with a stack of books piled about her.

I set my bag down on a pile of papers on the table. There was no point in looking for a clear space. In fact, I had always thought that
library
was an inappropriate term for the room. Describing a room as a library gave one the impression that it was fairly ordered, with books on shelves and arranged in some logical manner or system. But order and logic did not apply anywhere here.

True, there were shelves on the walls, all of which were filled with books or papers of various types, but the books were shoved onto the shelves in a completely haphazard manner, often without any attempt to keep the spine out to make it easier to look for a specific title. There was no free wall space; absolutely every inch, from floor to ceiling, all the way to the molding around the door, was bookshelves. A broad wooden table dominated the center of the room, with two worn leather-upholstered chairs beside it. Books, scrolls, and papers tumbled over one another on the table and chairs, with more piles of books in scattered locations on the floor throughout the room.

And from the center of the ceiling hung an enormous, luxurious crystal chandelier—utterly out of place and looking far more suited to the ballroom of an ocean liner.

I’d once had the temerity to throw my aunt’s own words back at her and point out that the chaos in the library could attract unwanted energy and interfere with her summonings. I’d been rewarded with the crisp response that just because I didn’t
understand
her organizational system didn’t mean it didn’t exist. Hell, for all I knew she really did have some sort of methodology, but in ten years I had yet to fathom it.

Tessa scratched the side of her nose, then motioned me over. “Are you
sure
it called itself Rhyzkahl?”

I moved over to my aunt and knelt beside her. “Umm, yeah. Pretty darn sure.” More than sure. Those words were seared into my memory, along with the memory of him lying beside me, his hand resting on my hip, his lips on my skin. The sight of him standing and pulling his shirt on, muscles rippling more pleasingly than any male model—

I abruptly realized that my aunt was peering at me, eyebrows drawn together. I summoned an innocent look and worked on controlling the flush.

Tessa gave me a measuring look, then pointed to a picture in the tome before her. “That’s Rysehl.” The picture showed a wingless creature that looked like a goat/dog/lion, with an elongated reptilian face and small stubby horns that curved up and forward from the sides of its head. A spiky ridge crest rose from the middle of its forehead, extending down to the nape of its neck. In the picture the demon crouched, head tilted to one side as if listening for something. I knew this demon, knew the face. This
was
Rysehl, a fourth-level demon. The one I’d intended to summon.

I shook my head. “Definitely not what came through last night.”

Tessa shrugged and turned to a page that was marked with a black feather. “All right, then, how about this one? This is Rhial.” I didn’t recognize this particular demon, but I could see instantly that it was a
mehnta
, a ninth-level demon—which was obviously not the one I had encountered.
Mehnta
looked like human females—albeit winged human females with clawed hands and feet and dozens of snake-things coming out of their mouths. Most assuredly not Rhyzkahl.

“No.” I was starting to get annoyed. I knew what demons looked like. The differences between the lower- and higher-level demons were unmistakable. The higher the level, the bigger and more intelligent they were. Seventh and up were winged, with the twelfth-level
reyza
nearly half again as tall as a normal human. The faces of
reyza
were still bestial, with mouths full of deadly sharp teeth and long extended fangs, but not as much so as those of lowers. The higher demons’ bodies were far closer to a human’s, too, though with more muscle and power than any human could ever hope to attain. “It wasn’t a
zrila, savik, ilius, luhrek, nyssor, faas, kehza, graa, mehnta, zhurn, syraza
, or
reyza.”
I rattled the names off quickly.

“Thank you for that lesson in demonology,” my aunt replied dryly.

I sighed. “Aunt Tessa, I thought you recognized the name Rhyzkahl. What is he?”

Tessa ignored me and flipped to another section of the tome. “This one is Rhykezial.”

This picture didn’t show a creature that I had any familiarity with at all. It looked more like a painful cross between a squid and a spider, and I figured it was one of the multitudes of creatures that could not be summoned between the planes. Or perhaps something from another plane entirely. There were a multitude of planes, but the demon realm was the only one that ever intersected with this world, as far as I knew.

I let my breath out gustily. This was starting to feel like looking at a lineup. “No, Aunt Tessa. Can’t you just tell me what Rhyzkahl is?”

Tessa closed the tome with a soft
thud
. “I just don’t want to believe that you summoned that one. To be honest, I find it very
hard to believe
that you summoned that one.” She gave me a sidelong look. “Especially since you’re still here and still you.”

I could feel the flush starting to rise again. “I’m here and I’m me. And I told you. I
didn’t
summon him.”

Tessa stood, pressing her lips together as she moved to a bookshelf by the door. She hummed to herself—a tuneless, discordant thing—tapping her finger on her chin while she scanned the shelves. Finally she made a small noise of triumph and pulled a thin volume off the top shelf, turning and dropping it in front of me.

I blinked. “Aunt Tessa, that’s a comic book.”

Tessa sniffed. “It’s a graphic novel.”

I managed to hold back the eye roll. “Okay, it’s a
graphic novel
. I thought you were going to show me Rhyzkahl.”

“Well, these creatures don’t exactly want to sit still for portraits. But this artist managed to make one of his characters look almost exactly like Rhyzkahl. Or what Rhyzkahl is presumed to look like.” She leaned over, then flipped quickly to the middle of the volume. “Here.” She stabbed her finger at a panel.

I exhaled in a rush. It was
him
, or as close as a human artist could capture. The same build, the same hair, and the artist had even managed to capture a trace of the power in his eyes.

“He’s seen him,” I murmured, eyes on the drawing. It depicted Rhyzkahl standing on the top of a battlement with a
reyza
to his left. A smirk curved his lips as he looked down at a man dressed in medieval-style garb kneeling before him. “He doesn’t call him Rhyzkahl in this, but he’s seen him.” I scanned the rest of the page, seeking other depictions.

Tessa muttered something under her breath that sounded suspiciously foul and vulgar. “And so have you, it seems.” She reached in front of me and slammed the graphic novel shut, then snatched it from my hands as she straightened, turned, and shoved it back into its space on the shelf. She spun and stabbed a finger at me. “How? How did you survive?”

I lifted my chin mulishly. “You haven’t told me what he is yet!”

Tessa rubbed at her temples, grimacing. “I’ll tell you, but then you need to tell me what you did during your ritual that allowed Rhyzkahl to come through.”

“I don’t know what I did!” I wanted to stand and pace, but there was no possible way to do that in this room. “It was a summoning of Rysehl, for fuck’s sake! I made a fourth-level diagram! I called his name!”

“Well, you must have done something!” she snapped. “I doubt Rhyzkahl just decided to drop in for tea!”

“I don’t know! That’s why I fucking came here—to try to find out!” I had my hands clenched to keep them from shaking, but the quiver in my lower lip betrayed how unsettled I was.

Tessa exhaled. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m just worried about you.”

I nodded, throat tight. “Sorry I yelled.”

Tessa rubbed her eyes, then shook her head, as if she’d lost an internal argument. “Rhyzkahl … is not a regular demon, not a creature that can be summoned by the usual means. Or at least not by the means that we employ for summonings of any of the twelve levels of demon.” She toyed with the chains around her waist. “I know I’ve mentioned them to you briefly, but I can understand why you wouldn’t ever think that one had come through.” She sighed and spread her hands. “Rhyzkahl is a lord. One of the Demonic Lords.”

I stared at her. “Wait. I thought they were like demigods.”

“They are. They are incredibly powerful and refuse to be bound or subservient. This is why they are so dangerous.”

I swallowed harshly. “All of them?”

Tessa locked her gaze on me. “All of them.” She lowered her head, eyes still on me. “Rhyzkahl is ancient and has one of the largest followings of any of the lords. He is ambitious, and devious, and takes matters of honor very seriously. Even if he could be summoned, he would
never
submit to any manner of terms and would destroy any summoner who dared to bring him through.”

I struggled to parse this new information. I didn’t doubt my aunt’s knowledge, but Tessa’s description of Rhyzkahl didn’t match my own experience of him. Or did it?
He was certainly terrifying when he first came through. I thought I was going to be destroyed
. I’d felt the menace of him in that first rush of terror, when he’d scattered the bindings like dust. Perhaps it was true.
So why
didn’t
he destroy me?
I asked myself for perhaps the thousandth time.

I mentally replayed Tessa’s words, then abruptly snapped my gaze up to my aunt. I wasn’t a slightly experienced homicide investigator for nothing. Aunt Tessa was keeping something back. “How would you know that the drawing resembled him?” I demanded. Then I pointed at Tessa. “You’ve seen him too!”

To my surprise, Tessa went pale and sank to sit on the floor. “Powers of all, yes. I have. I was a stupid teenager. And the only reason I’m still here is because he … was otherwise occupied.”

Something in my aunt’s tone told me more than any words could. I knew enough about demons that if my aunt—my powerful, experienced-summoner aunt—was this shaken by a memory that had to be over thirty years old, it had to have been bad.

I leaned forward and placed a hand solicitously on her knee. “I’m sorry, Aunt Tessa. Are you all right? Do you need me to get you anything?”