At the very center of the slab, stood Ryan. No, Szerain. The demonic lord had spent over fifteen years on Earth as Ryan, during which time he’d learned how to diminish his aura of potency and hide in the guise of a human. But he wasn’t fooling me. I had no doubt it was one hundred percent demonic lord Szerain in control out there.
A quick survey of the area revealed Eilahn on the roof of the house, along with Steeev, Jill’s bodyguard. Both were syraza in human form, watching the situation unfold and ready to intervene with demon speed at the first indication of danger. Eilahn crouched atop the chimney, her gaze riveted on Szerain. Steeev stood on the crest of the roof beside her, dark skinned, beautiful, and utterly motionless.
Szerain knelt and placed his palms flat on the slab. A wave of potency rolled over me, stinging like wind driven sand and setting the grass a foot around the concrete eerily vertical and vividly chartreuse.
Jill took a step back from the unnerving display as I moved up beside her. In the next instant the grass flattened toward the center, and I felt a tugging tickle as potency flowed toward Szerain. On my torso the eleven sigil scars left by Rhyzkahl prickled and itched while the twelfth—the sigil Szerain had altered and ignited—began to pulse at the small of my back.
Holding back a shudder, I sought a clue of Szerain’s purpose as I concentrated on the feel of the potency flow and the reaction of my scars. “He say what he’s doing?”
“Not a word,” Jill said. “I might as well be a recording of ‘Where have you been?’ and ‘What are you doing?’”
I had no answer to the “where” part, but I knew the “what”—at least vaguely, which was more than I would have had a year ago. Mzatal’s training, along with all the intense practical experience of the past year, allowed me to discern that Szerain drew a delicate web of potency toward him, like a fisherman hauling in a net. But what was he trying to catch?
A pins-and-needles sensation prickled over me as I stepped to within a few inches of the outer edge of the nexus. “Ryan—Szerain—what are you looking for?”
“Not now,” he growled.
Annoyed, I bit back a tart response. “I don’t exactly know what he’s doing,” I said to Jill, “but disrupting it might not be the best plan since possible worst case scenarios could include the end of the world as we know it.”
“Oh, is that all?” She folded her arms over her belly and narrowed her eyes at me. “How do you know he’s not trying to end the world as we know it?”
Her remark hit too close to the truth for my comfort. Centuries ago, Szerain had triggered a cataclysm in the demon realm—changing that world drastically if not actually ending it. Moreover, for the past fifteen years he’d been imprisoned and exiled to Earth for an offense I had no information about. He’d only been free a short time and surely wasn’t embroiled in anything that intense. Yet. I was almost positive. Gah.
I kept my expression confident. “I’m forming a judgment based on what I can sense,” I gestured toward Szerain, “along with the fact that he hasn’t screwed us over yet,” that we know of, I silently added, “and my hope that I’m not being an idiot.”
That final one was the kicker. My history with Szerain left me with more questions than answers. The last time I’d seen him on the nexus was shortly after the plantation conflict, when the Mraztur’s “virus” threatened to strip my identity and transform me into Rhyzkahl’s thrall, Rowan. Through drastic actions, Szerain removed the viral imprint in time to save me. However, the process not only allowed him to activate the twelfth sigil on my torso, but also let him reclaim his essence blade, Vsuhl. With the arcane support of the blade, he freed himself from his submersion and imprisonment as Ryan, rendering him fully able to speak and act as Szerain. Since then, to my enormous frustration, he’d given me no answers about the significance of the activated twelfth sigil or what he intended to do now that he was free.
The three essence blades were the wild cards in all of this. Millennia ago, Mzatal created Khatur for himself, Xhan for Rhyzkahl, and Vsuhl for Szerain. I knew they were far more than mere knives. I’d possessed Vsuhl for a short time and felt its sentience, and only later realized the subtle influence it had exerted over my thoughts and feelings. Perhaps the lords weren’t as susceptible to the effect as a mere human was, but they most certainly weren’t immune.
Uneasy, I watched as Szerain wound in the last strands of the net. Potency like blood-red lightning and shadow arced from his fingertips to the slab then spread over the circle like crimson fire.
Rakkuhr.