Diana Rowland - Touch of the Demon

“Were he standing here right now,” Helori said, “what would you do?”

I swiped at my eyes, not surprised to find that I was crying. “I sure as hell wouldn’t scream anything. Not even a choice name.” I took a deep breath. “I won’t scream for him anymore. I’ve screamed too much for him already.” My gaze drifted to a flock of iridescent green sea birds swooping and diving into the water. Last time I’d seen a flock wheeling, I’d been in the gazebo at Rhyzkahl’s. “I hate him. He’s less than scum.” Then I smiled very slightly as I returned my attention to Helori. “But if he was standing right here, I might very well kick him really hard in the goddamn balls.”

A whisper of a smile touched his face.

I drew a deep breath and then blew it out. “Mzatal healed my body,” I continued. “Nothing hurts anymore.” I toyed with a patch of sand that had made its way onto the blanket, drew random patterns in it while I spoke. “The problem with healing my body of the injuries is that my mind feels like it should be healed as well.” I paused. “It’s not. It’s just as stretched and twisted and shattered as my shoulders were. I can be a real tenacious bitch.” I shook my head, gulped. “But this…. It’s like I’m barely holding onto myself.”

“Yes. I know,” Helori said. “It is why I proposed this time away for you. It is why we are here—to help you regain that hold.”

“ You proposed it?” I gave him a puzzled look.

“Mzatal was exhausted and truly confounded about how to expediently work with the loss of yourself.” He gave me a gentle smile. “I offered this as a possible means.”

“Thanks,” I said softly. “I didn’t even know you before this.”

“As I said, once you summoned Rhyzkahl single-handedly, you became known among the syraza,” he said, then chuckled low. “And now you are getting to know something of me, though that can be a blessing and a curse.”

I laughed weakly. “I’m infamous. Great.”

My gaze returned to the gull-things. I could do this now. I had to do this now. Hands shaking and heart pounding, I shifted to kneel. I grabbed my shirt before I could panic and change my mind, then practically ripped it and my bra off and threw them aside. Breathing shallowly, I knelt half-nude before him.

Helori traced a sigil in the air above us. I flinched before realizing it was just the damn pygah, then scowled at my reaction.

“Be gentle on yourself,” he murmured. “As he was not.” He traced three more sigils around the pygah and set it spinning slowly above us.

“I made it this far, didn’t I?” I replied, though my voice quavered. The resonance of the pygah combined with the other sigils to form an almost palpable cocoon of calm. Slowly, I unclenched my hands, though I still wasn’t ready to look at the pygah or myself yet.

He took gentle hold of my left wrist, straightened my arm, and held it nearly straight out from my shoulder, so that I didn’t have to look down to see the scar where the mark used to be. “Look first here,” he said. “The first evidence of your betrayal.”

Ghostly echoes of the essence agony shimmered through me as I forced my eyes to the long, rippled scar. Sweat stung my armpits. “The fucker,” I whispered.

“He knew when he placed the mark that he meant to use you,” he told me. “Though the way you were used shifted from the original intent.”

My gaze rose to him. “Shifted? What do you mean?”

Helori lowered my arm. “You were initially slated to be used to retrieve Vsuhl, and then to die in a ritual to create a permanent gate to Earth,” he said. “Your value changed once Rhyzkahl became aware of your grove affinity.” He stroked a thumb lightly over the scar on my forearm, then looked back up to my face. “That affinity made you far more valuable and useful, and thus they chose to make you a thrall, so you could be a long-term tool for their use. You would have been powerful, utterly compliant, and obliviously content.”

I’d heard some of this from Rhyzkahl during the ritual, but here, away from the torment, it abruptly clicked into place. “That son of a bitch,” I breathed. I’d never been able to understand why Amkir had treated me with such open hostility from the moment I met him, nor why Rhyzkahl had left me and not intervened in the altercation sooner. It was a test , I realized. Those assholes had set me up. I’d told Rhyzkahl about using the grove power on Mzatal, and they wanted to see if I could do it again.

My anger rose, and I let it keep going, let it burn away at the panic and fear. I scowled up at the pygah, tempted to bat it away. I didn’t want to be calm right now. I dropped my gaze back to Helori. “Tell me about these sigils.”

“United, they are a key to the potency of this world,” he said while dissipating the pygah. “The ritual was not completed, and so this purpose was thwarted.”

I listened carefully, jaw tight. “Why twelve?”

“The twelfth is the unifier, but the ritual failed before it was ignited.”

“So, a sigil for each lord?” I asked.

“Yes, one for each, plus the unifier,” he said, watching me closely.

“Tell me,” I said, holding my anger close to me like armor. “Tell me about each one.”

Helori shifted forward, touched the sigil over my sternum and part of my breasts—the first that Rhyzkahl had carved. “This one represents Mzatal, laid as an anchoring presence for the rest.”

That surprised me. “Why? Is Mzatal stronger than the others?”

“He is the oldest,” Helori stated. “And has proven to be a stabilizer for all of them.”

I pointed to the sigil that spread across my upper chest, above Mzatal’s. “He made this one next.”

“Rhyzkahl,” he said and placed a hand over it while I exhaled a shaking breath.

His hands traveled over my body while he traced the sigils and murmured the names. There was nothing sexual about his touch. It held only ease and recognition.

“Jesral,” he said, touching the one on my lower abdomen that wound up and over the lowest part of my breasts. My lip curled at the name.

“He knew,” I said, hatred flaring. “He walked me to the ritual.”

“He would have shared mastery over you upon completion,” Helori stated.

“Mastery.” I tasted the word. “Fuck him. Fuck them all.”

He nodded agreement, shifted his hand to lay it fully over a convoluted and uneven sigil on my right side. “Kadir.”

A shiver raced over me. “Bad Monkey.”

“Bad Monkey. Yes,” Helori agreed. “Very Bad Monkey.”

I gave a small smile. He understood perfectly.

He shifted around me, naming more, then touched the one on the lowest part of my back, a sigil that dove to my tailbone. “Amkir.”

I snorted. “He’s an asshole,” I said. “Appropriate that he should be close to mine.”

Helori chuckled softly. “Yes, he is. Definitively.”

I exhaled as Helori placed his hand on the only one he had yet to name—the sigil that began at the nape of my neck, flowed over much of my upper back, and coalesced in a focal spiral between my shoulder blades. I’d never seen it, but I remembered fully every slice of Rhyzkahl’s blade across my skin. “Szerain,” I murmured. One of the few I don’t despise , I thought, but then frowned. I only knew Ryan. I didn’t know Szerain. There was every chance I could despise him as well.

“The last, here,” he said, touching my lower back. “The sigil was completed, but not ignited. Idris and Mzatal disrupted the ritual to assure it was not.”

I turned to look at him. “Could it still be?” I asked, speaking my fear.

He shook his head. “The unifying sigil carries its own potency, as does each of the others. But they are not united and cannot be simply through ignition of this last one, now.”