Diana Rowland - Fury of the Demon

He echoed my sigh. “It’s so convoluted,” he said, as if the implications carried eons of pain. “I can’t process all of the possible complications yet. What I do know is that if you hadn’t given Vsuhl to him, you wouldn’t be here, wouldn’t be Kara. And that’s all that means anything right now.”

A warm glow went through me. It mattered to him that I was still me. “And you’re still Zakaar. Even more than you were before.”

He remained silent for several seconds. “How is Ryan?” he finally asked.

How could I explain it? “He seems all right. We had a pretty normal evening.” Grimacing, I sat up. “Zack, he knows about Szerain, but he looks like Ryan. I don’t understand. Did you partially resubmerge him or something from a distance?”

“No,” he said as though pronouncing a death warrant. “He did that. On his own. With Vsuhl, he freed himself, and is using it to give him a measure of stability.” He made a sound like a half-sob. “But he isn’t ready.”

My worry spiked. “Zack? What’s wrong?”

“I can’t do this,” he said in a broken voice. “Szerain is in danger, and he’s dangerous. I can’t protect him or others. I can’t deal with it.”

“I’m not sure you have to,” I said carefully. “Not the way you did before. He may not be ready, but there’s nothing we can do about that now, and I know he’s not going to abandon you. Neither will the rest of us. Once in the posse, always in the posse.” I wanted to reach through the phone and give him a hug. “It’s going to be all right.”

“I can’t see it,” he said weakly. “But I’ll believe you.”

“You’d better,” I told him.

I heard him clear his throat softly, take a breath, release it, then take another. “Kara, have you ever killed anyone in the line of duty before?”

The abrupt change of subject had me blinking in confusion. “No, I’ve never even been in a position to . . .” I suddenly understood where he was going with this: Pyrenth. That night, when I found Zack and brought him to Jill’s house, he had no doubt sensed my pain over the reyza’s death.

“Pyrenth was the first,” I said, throat tight. “No, wait.” An uncomfortable realization struck me. “He’s the first I knew for sure. I Earth-killed a kehza and a graa, but, at the time, I assumed any demon killed on Earth made it back through the void to the demon realm.” Now I knew that, while there was a good chance a demon could return, it was by no means a certainty.

“And if they’d died before on Earth and returned—”

“Then the good chance drops to crappy,” I finished for him. A second death on Earth for a demon usually meant death for real. Eilahn had died on Earth once already, and so I worried doubly for her.

“Pyrenth had traversed the void once before.”

The implications of that simple statement left me mentally scrambling and ripped a new wound in my pain over his death. I took a moment to put it all together. Zack waited in patient silence on the other end of the line.

“When I made the decision to use deadly force to stop Pyrenth from taking Idris,” I finally said, “I was playing the odds that he’d make it through the void and back to the demon realm. My intention was to stop him, to kill him if that’s what it took, with a secondary consideration that he’d have a chance of making it home. But it was a gamble.” I closed my eyes and let out a long slow breath. “I thought his odds were better than they were, but it was always a gamble.” Explaining it, actually speaking the words out loud, helped. My respect and gratitude for Zack climbed even higher. He was going through ten tons of shit and yet he still took the time and thought and energy to help me get through this.

“I chose the blade over a bullet because it had a better chance of taking him out of the game,” I went on. “I didn’t know there were no ‘odds’ with Vsuhl, that a kill was final.”

“Pyrenth gambled too,” Zack said gently. “Rhyzkahl couldn’t force him to come to Earth. Pyrenth knew the danger and chose to come. You killed him in the line of duty, and he died in the line of duty.”

Tears pricked my eyes. Those were hard terms though ones I could understand. It still gnawed that Mzatal hadn’t warned me that dead by the blade meant Really Dead, but the heavy guilt around Pyrenth’s death abated somewhat.

“Thanks, Zack,” I said.

“ Sihn ,” he replied, and I heard a whisper of smile in his voice.

“You doing okay with Sonny?” I asked, ready for a change in subject.

“He’s a blessing. I’m not sure I’d have made it this far without him.”

At least that much was working out well. “I figured it’d be good for both of you. He needed to help someone.”

“I read him,” he said. “He’s a mess. Good pairing.”

I laughed softly. “My whole posse is fucked up. It’s perfect.”

After reassuring Zack that Jill was doing well and Steeev was taking good care of her, I hung up, found some shorts, and then followed the smell of coffee. Ryan leaned against the kitchen counter, arms folded across his chest, and eyes unfocused as though lost in thought. I continued toward the coffee pot as it made its last gurgles.

“Morning, sunshine,” I said with a bright smile. Yeah, let’s just keep pretending everything’s nice and normal.

He startled a bit, then smiled. “Morning, sleepyhead.”

“It’s not that late,” I pointed out. “You’re not exactly an early bird yourself today unless this is the second pot of coffee.” I retrieved two mugs from the cabinet, filled them.

“Nope. I’m running late.”

I placed the mugs on the table and sat. Okay, I was awake, and I had coffee. What the hell was I supposed to do now?

Ryan pulled out the chair opposite mine and dropped into it. “Now what?” he asked in an eerie echo of my thoughts.

I started to say I didn’t have a clue, then shook my head. “We can’t keep on pretending everything’s normal,” I said. “We both know it’s not.” He gave a grim nod, and I continued. “I need training still. I need to find out if Paul is all right. And I need to talk to Mzatal.”

“Sounds like you have a plan.” Ryan picked up the mug nearest him, took a sip, then made a that-doesn’t-taste-right face.

I winced a little. “I guess I do.”

“That’s half the battle.” He stood and moved to the spice rack.

I dumped sugar and cream into my coffee. “And what’s the other half?”

“Perseverance and follow-through,” he told me. “A lot of people have plans . They’re useless unless you do something with them.”

I gave him a wry smile. “Time to get my ass in gear then.”

“Drink your coffee first,” he said, then returned to the table to put a scant spoon of sugar and a shake of cinnamon into his cup.

I quickly lifted my mug to my mouth to hide my mild shock. Ryan always drank his coffee black. Was this whole Ryan-appearance simply a pretense to make it easier on me, or did Szerain need to keep it like this? A pang of loss went through me. Was there any of my Ryan left? I sipped my coffee and, for a moment, wished that I could go back to that beach in the demon realm where I’d gone with Helori, and simply be away from everyone and everything for a while. And just as quickly pushed the whiny self-pity down. This wasn’t about me, and I wasn’t going to run away from my problems. Too many others depended on me.

“What about Zack?” I left the question wide open to see where he’d go with it. I’d assured Zack that Szerain wouldn’t abandon him as all the others had, but it was an assumption.