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.”