Demon . . . It might be too late. The sun could be up. With a desperate need, she stopped trying to fight, patting passively at his hand as if wanting to speak. And like the proud fool he was, he eased up, letting a slip of air into her. “What?” he said as she sucked in the air gratefully in huge gasps.
Eyes watering, she looked up at Ulbrine’s self-satisfied smirk, wishing she could tell Daniel to go hide somewhere. It was going to get really ugly in here really fast. “Algaliarept,” she rasped, and Ulbrine’s eyes widened. “I summon you.”
36
Ulbrine’s hands sprang away from her neck. Horrified, his gaze went to the barrier over his head and back to reassure himself it was still there and that a demon wasn’t materializing in it with them. “Y-you . . .” he stammered, clearly knowing she had summoned a demon without a protection circle. “What have you done?”
Eyes watering, she sucked in air. His aura-tainted barrier hummed so strongly, it was almost an ache in her skull. “Probably killed us all,” she rasped, hand on her throat. The sun would be up soon. All she had to do was survive until Algaliarept was pulled back across the lines—unless the sun was already up and it was too late.
But with an almost inaudible pop, a dark blot materialized in the center of the room.
Trisk sat up, her skull and back tingling where they’d touched the inside of Ulbrine’s barrier. Above her, Rynn Cormel straightened. The barstool in his hand slowly touched the floor, no longer hammering on Ulbrine’s circle. Orchid hovered above him, and Trisk followed the pixy’s attention to the haze sending out tendrils of smoke as if searching for the limits of its prison.
“Mother pus bucket,” a gray voice echoed into the silent room. “I am . . . loosed?”
“Stop!” Professor Thole jerked Daniel close, as if he might break the circle they were in.
“Hey!” Daniel shouted, his word of affront seeming to ripple through the haze of nothing in the center of the room, pushing it into something that almost had a shape.
“I am loosed!” a voice boomed, and as the Weres backed into a corner, the black swirled, grew, and became . . . a demon. “Felecia Eloytrisk Cambri!” The grotesque form had goat-slitted red eyes. They were the only thing she recognized. “Have you called me to bargain?”
Orchid’s dust turned a frightened black, and the pixy darted to hide in the ornately carved hearth surrounding the fireplace. “My God,” Trisk whispered. Algaliarept’s form had no skin, the striated red muscles bulking up and relaxing as he watched the Weres scramble for cover. She’d never seen him in this guise, but it was obvious it was Algaliarept.
“You should be so lucky,” Algaliarept said, but his attention shifted when Piscary rose, Rynn Cormel ghosting to stand at the old vampire’s side. Flat, blocky teeth grinned with ill intent as Algaliarept breathed deeply, nothing but a homespun loincloth between him and the rest of the world as his flayed body leaked blood to pool on the floor.
“No one summons me free of a circle and survives to see another sunrise this side of the ley lines,” Algaliarept said, and Trisk’s nose wrinkled at the reek of burnt amber.
“Hold, ancient worm!” Piscary all but hissed. “You may be immortal, but even a god dies without his head.”
“I have no issue with you, vampire. Let me take my prey and go,” Algaliarept said, a haze coating him for a brief instant. It soaked in to leave elegantly embroidered linen and a dusky skin, taut with a wiry strength. His head expanded, a muzzle and pointy ears forming. With a shaking shudder, the Egyptian god Anubis stood in Piscary’s living room. The jackal-headed monstrosity licked his long muzzle, a throaty laugh bubbling up and over sharp teeth.
Piscary growled, the elegant man vanishing under a thousand years of instinct. Hunched, his hands made into claws, he advanced with an unreal grace. Hate scented the air with vampire incense. Behind him, the Weres began creeping to the door.
Algaliarept followed Kal’s attention to them. His long face split into a tongue-lolling wolf grin. “Lentus,” he said, his voice thunderously low, brushing the edges of the audible range, like an elephant’s inaudible rumble.
“Move!” Colonel Wolfe shouted, forming a living front as Mrs. Ray bolted.
“Look out!” Trisk shouted, and the woman turned, her eyes wide in panic as she slid to the floor, her heels hitting the door as a black ball of loosed energy hissed over them. It slammed into the old oak panel, and a black goo spread, creeping out as if alive.
Colonel Wolfe exclaimed in disgust, the sound evolving into a high-pitched howl as he brushed at his front. A drop of black had hit him, and it had begun to burn.
The demon’s laugh seemed to push upon the very air, darkening it in bands of ripples spreading from him in waves. Licking the spittle from his lips, Algaliarept turned to the undead vampire and performed an elegant bow of invitation.