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I knew what he meant from my own experience with Mzatal. It was an exchange of concepts and thoughts that made for a far deeper communication and understanding than mere words could manage. “Can he help me?” I asked.
His face abruptly scrunched, and he jerked his hands up to grip his head. “Shit,” he gasped. Eilahn sat up, displacing the cat.
Worry spiked through me. “What is it?” I demanded. An attack? I swept my gaze around but saw nothing out of the ordinary. Then again, that didn’t mean shit since I had no way to detect arcane use. “Bryce, tell me what’s wrong!”
He dropped to his back. “Ver . . . tigo,” he groaned, still gripping his head.
I crouched and put my hand on his shoulder, at a loss for how to help. “Eilahn? Do you sense anything?”
“I sense no attack,” she said, but her eyes remained narrowed as she scanned around us. She staggered to her feet, swayed.
“Sit down,” I ordered, surprised when she did so without protest, though her frustration with her weakened state showed in the droop of her shoulders.
Bryce cursed and slapped his hands onto the concrete as if to keep from sliding off a tilting earth. Sammy leaped up and began to bark, but I ignored the excitable dog and held onto Bryce’s shoulder in the hopes of giving him a sense of stability. Sammy bounded toward the woods, barking with increased intensity.
“Shit shit,” Bryce hissed through clenched teeth. “Valve.”
My heart skipped a beat. “It’s gone bad?” Shit. There was no one home to stabilize it. Sammy charged into the woods and down the trail toward the pond, continuing to bark his damn head off. “Oh, no,” I breathed. If that stupid dog got himself hurt or killed by an unstable valve, Pellini would lose it.
“I’ll be right back,” I told Bryce then took off after the dog. “Sammy! Here boy!”
The dog paid me zero heed and raced on ahead without a single break in the barking, quickly disappearing from sight. “Sammy!” I yelled, running as fast as I dared along the trail without risking smacking into a tree. “Stop! Heel! Sit, dammit!”
A pain-filled yelp cut off the barking, followed by an ominous silence. My gut turned to ice. “Sammy!”
An unearthly screech ripped through the woods, chilling me further. I didn’t need arcane skills to know that was no hawk or owl. I slapped at my hip for a gun that wasn’t there. I’ll see what I’m up against, I told myself as I slowed. With a shred of luck maybe I’d be able to grab the dog and run the hell away.
Three more cautious steps brought the pond clearing into view. A horse-sized creature with claws and scales and too many legs flailed on the ground as white light streamed from a long rent along its torso. A graa—an eighth-level demon. A heartbeat later the light spiderwebbed over its body and flared. Before I had time to cringe, a sharp crack echoed through the clearing. I blinked spots away from my vision and saw the demon was gone, leaving behind nothing but trampled grass and the stench of rotting flowers and sulfur. Sammy lay sprawled half a dozen feet away, bleeding heavily from several ugly wounds.
“Oh, no.” I ran forward, only now registering that someone else was there, crouched beside the injured dog.
“Seretis?” I blurted in shock. Tall and handsome, with brown hair that waved past his shoulders, and sculpted cheekbones. A flowing red poet-style shirt was paired with dark blue breeches and black boots with gold stitching. It was definitely him, though he looked more than a little worse for the wear. One sleeve bore a rip from shoulder to elbow, mud caked his left boot to the ankle, and blood oozed from a palm-sized abrasion on his cheek. He ran his hands lightly over Sammy and murmured in demon. I fumbled for words, torn between the desire to ask how the hell he was here and my worry for the dog. “Please, can you help him?” I asked as I dropped to my knees by Sammy. Other answers could wait.
“I seek to do so, Kara Gillian,” he said. “The flows here are odd and far weaker than I am accustomed to.” His aura surrounded me like a soft summer breeze. Though muted without my arcane senses, it remained clearly palpable.
“Thank you. He’s very dear to a friend and ally.” The dog whimpered, and I stroked his head. “It’s okay, boy,” I said to him. “The nice man is going to help you.”
Sammy shifted only enough to lick my hand as the demonic lord worked on him. The bleeding soon slowed to mere seeping, but the wounds remained open and ugly.
“A support diagram would serve well,” Seretis said without lifting his eyes from the injured animal.
My stomach knotted. “I can’t,” I said, voice rough. “I don’t have my skills anymore.”
“Ah,” he said simply. “That is unfortunate.”
Not quite the word I’ve been using, I thought but kept it to myself. Damn it, Seretis needed support. Sweat beaded his face, and his skin had a pale cast to it. An unfocused look in his eyes told me he fought dizziness. He needed better access to potency, like a human at high-altitude in need of an oxygen tank.
I gave myself a mental head-slap. Duh. There was a big ol’ tank of potency right in my backyard. “Can you stand?” I asked him. “There’s a nexus right down that trail which should help you.”
“I will manage,” he replied then deftly traced a sigil I couldn’t see which he placed on the dog. To ease pain, I figured. I’d been through that process a few times and knew the general motions.
Sammy’s whining eased, which told me I was right. Seretis gathered the dog in his arms and stood. “I have told Bryce to remain where he is as he was afflicted by my transit through the valve.”
Through the valve? That explained part of how he got here, though I still had plenty of questions. “Yeah, it knocked him for a loop,” I said then took hold of Seretis’s arm to steady him when he swayed. “C’mon, it’s not far.”
He cradled Sammy to him and allowed me to lead him down the trail. When the dog whimpered he spoke gently in demon to ease him. “How did you lose your touch to the arcane?” Seretis asked me in an equally gentle tone. “To tell me, you need only bring it to mind.”
Relieved, I did so. I had no desire to tell the painful story again. After a moment he nodded. “I will assess your condition after tending to this Sammy.”
