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“This is not over,” he snarled.
“Oh, but it will be soon,” I said cheerfully and wrapped his shielded bubble in a sexy little rakkuhr tornado. The height of fashion for scheming demahnk this season. I couldn’t hope to scatter him on my own, but I didn’t have to. I’d contain him until the others finished with the rift, then they would be more than happy to do the honor.
I continued to feed rakkuhr into the cyclone, swirling it tight and fast in the hopes that it would not only prevent him from teleporting out, but also start to wear away at his shields, like water eroding rock. Xharbek was a mountain, but I had a river of the potency streaming from the rift.
Triumph swelled as the rakkuhr-free zone began to narrow. Even better, he was starting to look a little transparent.
His fury abruptly vanished to be replaced by a truly nasty Fuck You smile. Shit. I’d missed something, but whatever it was, I’d deal with it. No way was I going to let this sonofabitch slip away again.
Since I was expecting a tricky reveal, I didn’t startle when Ilana appeared in her own rakkuhr-free circle a couple of yards from Xharbek.
No, my full shock was reserved for the sight of Mzatal at her side.
Chapter 46
Oh. Fuck.
Mzatal stood with a blade in each hand, hair flowing loose about him while rakkuhr swirled around his boots and crawled like flames up his legs. Though the demahnk couldn’t abide rakkuhr, the non-Mraztur lords had merely been conditioned to avoid its use. Easy enough for Xharbek or Ilana to remove that conditioning from Mzatal—or simply allow the demons of the blades to suppress his aversion, as they had in Siberia.
Mzatal’s silver-grey eyes fixed on me, piercing and powerful—yet haunted, as if he knew he’d lost a vital part of himself but was too controlled, too influenced to determine its exact nature, much less do anything about it.
He slashed the air with Khatur. The rakkuhr tornado around Xharbek fell away into formless mist.
“My deepest thanks, honored lord.” Xharbek placed a hand on Mzatal’s shoulder then angled his head my way. “Perhaps such a dire threat to our realm and our person should be eliminated. Permanently.”
Great. Xharbek still couldn’t say, “Kill that annoying bitch,” flat out, but he had no trouble with a strong suggestion.
Ilana gave Xharbek a long look, which told me his suggestion trod perilously close to forbidden territory. For a brief shining moment I thought she might question his goals and withdraw her support.
No such luck. My stomach gave a sick lurch as she put her hand on Mzatal’s other shoulder in a mirror of Xharbek’s pose. Adding her own whammy to Xharbek’s suggestion, I had no doubt.
She doesn’t care that Xharbek is bugfuck crazy.
No. It wasn’t that she didn’t care. Ilana had zero idea that she should care. The demahnk lived with a communal telepathy, which meant that she would never in a million years expect a fellow demahnk to have secrets or hidden plots. Not to mention, it probably would never occur to her that one of her kind could go insane, much less that Xharbek had lost all perspective and reason through a human-style break.
In that same vein, she’d have no way to fathom why a demahnk would deliberately find a way around constraints—especially when they were either inherent or had been placed for what the demahnk would consider to be good reasons. To top it all off, Xharbek was the senior dude, the one in charge, and the one who had the big Plan. Of course, Ilana would go along with whatever he said.
Wonderful. I’d gained insight into the demahnk psyche. Didn’t change the fact that by bringing Mzatal here, Xharbek had made a nasty, dirty, and hideously brilliant move.
Mzatal’s aura swelled into a malevolent volcanic furnace—a thousand times worse than in Siberia, when he’d nearly succumbed to the bloodthirsty vehemence of Xhan and Khatur.
I pulled the rakkuhr in close, ready to do . . . what? I had no idea. This was pretty much the worst possible scenario. Take the most badass lord of all the lords, strip his aversion to rakkuhr, have him wield a pair of demon-possessed power-augmenting knives, and put him under the control of two demahnk.
Yet Mzatal was resisting. Though it didn’t show in his appearance or stance or aura, I knew.
“Zharkat,” I said. “Mzatal. It’s me, Kara.” I mentally reached for him and came up against his walls. But I knew they weren’t completely impenetrable. He’d come to my nexus and created the super-shikvihr with me. He’d called me to Siberia. Most of all, he’d so far failed to turn me into a smoking pile of ash.
Meanwhile, the dastardly demahnk duo of Ilana and Xharbek remained focused on him, their perfect weapon against me. I didn’t have to hear them to know they were pouring treacherous shit into his mind.
Mzatal lowered his head, eyes blazing, and grip tight on the blades. His hair whipped about him like a physical manifestation of his aura, tendrils coiling in serpentine gyrations like living things.
Zharkat. Mzatal. We are one.
His aura enveloped me, suffocating and oppressive, a reflection of his internal conflict. He fought Xharbek and Ilana’s influence, but he wouldn’t be able to resist them forever. Plus, Xharbek surely noticed that I remained in one piece, and would do his best to rectify that wee oversight. Somehow I had to tip the balance, bring my own influence into play, and give Mzatal the support he needed to tell his oppressors to fuck off. Somehow.
Mzatal took a step toward me, stiff and graceless, as if advancing through a sucking mire. Then another, blades rising.
At a loss, I drew on the rakkuhr, used it to reinforce my mental fists as I hammered at his walls. Remember me. Remember our bond. Remember us.
