The blade is sharp—sharp enough to butcher me, I suppose—and it slices easily through the thick fabric of the robe. My victim stumbles back, hood falling down to reveal the face of a woman I don’t know. One of the others screams. The demon spins me in the screamer’s direction and shoves my hand out so the blade sinks into the depths of their hood. I feel the metal catch against bone, then bite into soft flesh. The figure screeches in pain and tries to grasp at my arm, but my wrist twists, and they go rigid, slipping off the end of my blade and hitting the ground.
The remaining three scatter, terrified. They’re not fighters. None of them are even armed. The demon hunts them down one by one. It’s a bloodbath, and I watch it all helplessly, a passenger in my own body as he slaughters them.
No, not quite a passenger. Because I move with him. Evey stab, every slash is made by my hands. I feel the strain in my muscles from burying the knife in deep again and again, feel the hot, sticky splash of their blood on my skin, hear their gasping final breaths.
“Stop it. Stop it. STOP IT!”But it doesn’t matter how much I scream into my mind, how much I beg. He doesn’t relent until my nightgown is stained crimson, until I’m up to my elbows in it. Until every one of them is dead, and I stand alone in the chamber.
Alone with the demon who has taken me over.
He has me pull one of the black robes off the nearest dead body. The man must be my father’s age, his empty eyes shining in what’s left of the candlelight. My feet move toward the entrance of the chamber, and I glimpse for the first time a set of steps and a shiny brass banister in the gloom beyond.
At first, I’m afraid he’s sending me out after the other sorcerers, but he stops us at the doorway, lifting the hand that still clasps the dripping knife.
“What are you doing?”I ask, the words edged with panic as I watch my hand carve runes into the wooden doorframe.
Finally, he answers me, his voice murmuring inside my head with cool disdain.
“Embarrassing to think you don’t know how a rift is made, considering you just acted as the anchor for one.”
He has me reach out for a lit candle and hold the flame against the nearest rune until it sparks alight. I watch the fire flare through the markings in quick succession. I’ve seen this part before, but always at a distance. In theory, the runes will burn right off the wood after they’re activated, leaving no trace of carvingorfire once the rift is closed.
As the final rune lights up, the air in the doorway shudders and splits open. I barely have a chance to take a real look at where I’m going. I only glimpse dark sky and a patch of rocky ground before the demon is shoving me through the rift, into another realm.
Syrus
With a lurch, my eyes snap open and I settle fully back into my body. I take in the familiar walls around me, the scent of polished wood, and the purple light shining dimly through the window of my home. I’m no longer split across two consciousnesses, but the change is so abrupt that for a second, I’m unsure what’s happened. One moment, I was in the woman’s mind as she stepped through the rift, and then the next…
I reach for her mind again, seeking to brush up against that spiky, vivid consciousness I was nestled inside just moments before, and find…nothing. An abrupt, absolute blackness.
Damn it.I should’ve guessed traveling through the aether would overwhelm her.
I rise from my chair, stepping around my desk and thumbing the pin at my collar. It tells me my chamberlain is already waiting outside.
“Vizmodeus,” I call as I pull my cloak down from its hook. My office door opens to admit the pale-faced demon.
“So? Was it what you hoped?” Viz slides an ivory hand through his silver hair, leaving it even more disheveled than usual.
I grit my teeth. “It was…different than expected.”
He flashes an unnecessarily smug smile at me, looking vindicated. “I was right, wasn’t I?”
“Not entirely.”
“Pfft, a coward’s answer. Just admit it was reckless. Or at least not nearly as useful as you claimed it would be.”
I roll my eyes as I shrug the cloak around me, adjusting the fit before I pin it closed.
“You think reading in bad lighting is reckless, Viz.”
“It is, right up there with answering some vague magical summons from Strata for the fun of it.”
I could’ve ignored the pull—of course I could. A few humans dabbling in blood casting aren’t enough to make me go anywhere against my will. But my emotions got the better of me. As physically strong as I am to resist magic like that, I’m weak enough in mind to have given in to it.
“It wasn’t particularly fun, as it happens,” I concede. “The idiots tried to bind me.”
Viz’s bone-white jaw drops. “Are they mad?”
“Dead, actually. Half of them, anyway—the rest escaped. Maybe the fools didn’t know what they were getting into, or perhaps one of them had some sly trick up their sleeve I hadn’t seen before. Something other than the human sacrifice they were attempting when I arrived. That was just lazy.”
