Touch of the Demon

Copyright © 2013 by Diana Rowland.

All Rights Reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-101-59740-8

Cover art by Daniel Dos Santos.

Cover design by G-Force Design.

DAW Book Collectors No. 1611.

DAW Books are distributed by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

All characters and events in this book are fictitious.

All resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.

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First Printing, January 2013
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DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED U.S. PAT. AND TM. OFF. AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES —MARKA REGISTRADA HECHO EN U.S.A.

PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

Huge thanks to Carrie Vaughn, Daniel Abraham, and Paolo Bacigalupi for helping me stay saneish during the writing of this. Special thanks to Tara Sullivan Palmer for inviting my kid down the street to play with her kids when I was churning toward my deadline. Enormous thanks to Mary Robinette Kowal, Nina Lourie, Nicole Peeler, and Lindsay Ribar for reading the early drafts and not pulling any punches. Many awesome thanks to Matt Bialer, Joshua Starr, and Betsy Wollheim for doing the behind-the-scenes heavy lifting and support. Sweaty thanks to Robert Butler, J.J. McCleskey, and my sister, Sherry Rowland, for giving me a way to maintain what little sanity I have. And, finally, super duper, smoochy lovey thanks to my husband, Jack, and my daughter, Anna, for putting up with me and for believing in me and for being the Best Family Ever.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

I didn’t whimper when the demonic lord placed the collar around my neck and sealed it closed. Didn’t curse as it dampened my ability to see the arcane and nullified the chances of anyone’s being able to locate me. Didn’t cry. Didn’t scream. Didn’t fall to the floor and curl into the fetal position.

I wanted to. Holy shit, did I ever want to. But in all my years of being a summoner and of being a cop, I knew that if ever I had to appear strong, it was now—when face to face with a demonic lord in the demon realm.

“
Don’t you recognize it?”
the lord had asked. “
It’s your old summoning chamber.”

My gaze swept the chamber again. Its dark grey marble floor carved with worn glyphs joined matching walls, so numerous that the room felt circular. No windows, no furnishings, and a massive set of charred double doors ahead of me, one ajar, and two smaller doors to the sides. Arcane light cast by shimmering sigils high above bathed everything in an amber glow and eerie sliding shadows. Wisps of smoke rose from glowing coals in a brazier against the wall, likely the source of the pungent skunk-spray-meets-jasmine odor.

I’d appeared here less than two minutes ago, finally summoned to the demon realm after over a month of dodging the attempts; an evasion aided by wearing an arcane-crippling arm cuff similar to the collar I wore now. Already I could tell that this collar wasn’t as brute force crude as the cuff. I wasn’t nauseated and could actually see the glimmer of sigils and patterns dancing at the edges of my vision,
though I knew without even trying that I wouldn’t be able to touch or form them.

The demonic lord stood before me, tall and elegant in what looked like a perfectly tailored charcoal grey Armani suit, complete with crisp white shirt and black tie. Keen silver-grey eyes set in a face with an Asian cast left no doubt that he was thoroughly assessing me on all sorts of levels. Inky black hair entwined with gold cord hung to the small of his back in a heavy intricate braid. Power pulsed from him in such controlled undulations that I got the sense I was only getting a hint of his full aura.

The human—otherwise known as the asshole who summoned me—busied himself at the perimeter of the summoning circle, anchoring the flows and sealing the portal. Though he couldn’t have been much more than a teenager, I had to give him some credit. Bare-chested, tall, and lean with a crazy halo of curly blond hair, he dispelled and traced sigils with a confidence that told me he was damned skilled.

I straightened my shoulders. “I’ve never been here before. What sort of game is this?”

The lord’s face grew hard, and when he spoke his voice was a lava flow promising to consume all in its path. “No game, summoner.” He seized my chin, looked into my face as though determining my worth. “If you do not know, then you have been kept well hooded by your lord.” He released me with a slight shove, and I staggered back a step before recovering. Terror coiled in my gut, but I did my best to put on a sneer.

“This is not my summoning chamber,” I said, squaring my shoulders and doing my damnedest to look like I did this sort of thing every day. “I know that much.” I scowled and brushed myself off. My pants felt sticky, and when I glanced down at my hands, I realized I was still fairly spattered with atomized bits of Tracy Gordon, the very recently deceased summoner whose collapsing gate got me into this mess.
Gross!
I dragged my gaze back up. “Why have you summoned me?”

The lord’s eyes skimmed over me, taking in my general appearance and the spattered bits on my pants and—I knew—in my hair. I had no doubt he knew exactly what it was. But if he thought his summoning of me had disrupted a ritual and shredded a summoner, he sure as shit didn’t
show a flicker of dismay or remorse. Instead, he turned away, clasped his hands behind his back, and headed for the doors.

“Bring her,” he ordered.

A soft scrape of sound from behind alerted me—claws on stone. I turned to see the largest
reyza
I’d ever seen moving my way. Manlike, well-muscled, and more than half again as tall as the lord, he approached, teeth bared in a bestial face, and tail flicking behind. His skin shimmered bronze in the amber light as he spread huge leathery wings. The movement wafted a faint musky, spicy scent toward me that made me wonder if Old Spice was a cheap knockoff of Eau de Reyza.

Gulping, I raised my hands, palms out. “There is no need for force, honored one,” I said quickly. “I will offer no resistance.”

The reyza growled low in his throat and pointed a clawed hand toward the doors. It was pretty clear what he meant, and I turned quickly to comply. It hadn’t been all that long ago that the reyza, Sehkeril, had eviscerated me during the confrontation with the Symbol Man, so I’d pretty much let go of any illusions I might have held about the overall friendliness of demons.

Doing my best impression of a cooperative prisoner, I passed through huge doors of finely carved wood. Twice as tall as me, the heavy doors had definitely been through some shit. Char ate into the wood, in places almost deeply enough to go all the way through the door. A faint acrid odor lingered, though the damage looked smooth, as though from a long time ago, worn down over the years.