I clicked on his third email—an aerial view of downtown Beaulac—then stared at the impossible image. The area of devastation wasn’t roughly circular or any other shape the mind could accept as possible through natural means. The police department and its valve sat smack dab in the middle of an eleven-pointed star a half mile across, with lines of destruction as clear as if they’d been stamped out with a cookie cutter.
Heartsick, I closed the laptop. There’d be time the next day . . . or the next . . . to see what the media, doomsayers, and government did with this. Demons. Arcane bombs. Untouchable crystals. Star-shaped earthquakes. Anomalies. Teleporting people. Baby dragons.
Baby. Shit. Knight and the twelfth. Ashava, not the sigil on my back. I’d forgotten all about that. Seemed trivial compared to everything else. I retrieved my journal from the bedroom, sat at the kitchen table, and flipped to the dog-eared page with Knight’s warning.
Twelve. The twelfth is a radical game changer. Spawned of fierce cunning. Beauty and power exemplified. Beware the twelfth.
My heart pounded as I read it. It took on a whole different meaning when referring to a person rather than my sigil. But Ashava had connected to the twelfth sigil at the PD. I found the page with the invocation Szerain spoke when he created the twelfth sigil on my lower back the night of the plantation battle. It had been part of saving me from becoming Rowan—weaponized summoner and thrall of the Mraztur. But clearly there was more to it.
Vdat koh akiri qaztehl.
Infinite resources to the all-powerful demonic lord unfettered.
I flipped back and forth between the two pages as I drew the clues together. Trembling, I slammed the journal closed and shoved it across the table.
Eleven plus one is twelve.
All-powerful demonic lord.
Not the sigil. Not Szerain. Eleven lords. Plus one.
The twelfth lord.
“And her name is Ashava,” I murmured.
Ramifications jangled in terrifying cacophony. Ashava was the child of a demahnk and a human. Did the same hold true for the other lords? Eleven demahnk. Ptarls. Guardians. Advisors.
Parents?
Demonic lord unfettered. Ashava. Perhaps she’d be able to think what she wished without fear of excruciating headaches. I already knew she could shapeshift. My heart lurched. Were all of the lords shapeshifters bound to a single form? And, if so, was it the Demahnk Council who had crippled them? Their own offspring? I brought my hand to my mouth, sickened.
And Szerain. He had to have known when he forged the sigil on my lower back that Ashava was a demonic lord. Was the sigil to help him, to help her, or to bind her into an alliance before she was even born? If he knew what she was, that meant he also knew his own parentage—which seemed impossible in light of the headache punishment for forbidden knowledge. But . . . maybe that was part of the reason the demahnk exiled and imprisoned him on Earth. Uncontrollable.
Too much to think about, and no sure answers at hand. I went to the sink and ran cold water, splashed my face and pressed cool fingers over my eyes. Let it go for now. Take a hot shower. Get some sleep. Lay it all out tomorrow. Yeah, deal with it later. Along with everything else.
Exhaustion gripped me as I dried my face and hands, so much that I almost missed the glow in the backyard. Frowning, I peered out the window. It emanated from the nexus—which had never glowed before. That much I was sure of.
I slipped out the back door and down the steps. The silvery pattern in the obsidian emitted a soft and natural radiance, like a myriad of luminous fish at the surface of a dark sea. A dozen feet from the slab, I halted and looked down, skin prickling. A five-foot wide swath of trampled grass ringed the nexus, with yet another five feet of untouched grass between slab and swath—as if someone had paced around and around the nexus for hours in a defined orbit, never straying from it.
My pulse quickened as I looked toward the far side of the slab. Standing with his back to me was a barefoot figure wearing nothing but a simple white shift. Tall. Broad-shouldered. White-blond hair.
Rhyzkahl. Like I needed this shit. Baring my teeth, I drew my gun. Not a pointless gesture with him diminished. If he’s still diminished, I silently warned myself. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
Tensing, he spun as if startled—which made no sense considering the lordly mind-reading talent. He eased as he took in the sight of me then sauntered in my direction with the unhurried pace of a second hand around a clock. Yet I didn’t miss how he maintained his distance from the nexus and never stepped out of the band of trampled grass. Wary but curious, I backed away from the swath and kept my gun trained on him.
With a quarter of the circle remaining between us, he stopped and glared at me. Potency burns marred the left side of his face and hand, and the glow from the nexus revealed soot and grass stains on his silky white robe, along with a few streaks that appeared to be dried blood. His hair was still finger-length, but more sexy-tousled than bed-head now. Though my own attraction to him was non-existent to the point of revulsion, I could appreciate that he would always have that God Of Sex vibe to him.