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Bryce caught his arm and studied him, a look of concern on his face. “No shitting me. Are you okay?”
Paul dragged in a deeper breath and straightened his shoulders. “Yeah. I’m good. I promise. A little shaky is all.” He gave Bryce a convincingly reassuring smile. “Thanks.”
“Go sit until you’re not shaky anymore,” Bryce ordered and herded Paul toward the futon.
Their interaction spoke volumes of true concern. I breathed a sigh of relief and allowed myself cautious optimism that their relationship was genuine.
Mzatal squeezed my hand, laid his fingers on my cheek. His eyes narrowed. “Beloved, what has happened to you?”
He felt the discord remaining from Farouche’s influence. “I had a run in with Farouche and got zapped by the same sort of thing that affected Paul,” I said, then continued with a summary of the road encounter, trusting he would read the details from me. “It was awful. Ryan cleared the worst of it, but I figure you can get rid of the rest.”
He brought his other hand up in readiness to place on my head, paused, waiting for my consent. That was huge progress from our first days together when he did precisely what he wished whether I liked it or not.
I gave him a smile. “Please do what you can.”
Mzatal cradled my head between his hands, and I felt the subtle whisper of his mental touch. “This is the same energy I cleared from Paul in the warehouse and from Bryce during his healing,” he murmured. He went quiet for a moment, working, and I felt the release of the fear response like the pop of a soap bubble. As a test, I consciously considered kicking Farouche in the balls. Not even a hint of fear in reaction, when a few minutes earlier the thought would have elicited near panic.
I began to smile in relief, then realized that Mzatal remained utterly and impossibly still, even though the Farouche influence was clearly gone.
A wave of dread and worry came to me through the bond. Tensing, I reached up to grip one of his hands. “Boss?” I said, keeping my voice low to not draw the attention of the two men. “What’s wrong?”
His eyes opened, and in them the dread was magnified a hundred-fold. “Rhyzkahl’s virus, the implant in you—its containment was . . . cracked by the incident with Farouche,” he said.
Sick fear threatened to swamp me, but deep breathing kept it at a low simmer. “All right,” I said, rather pleased that I sounded calm. I sure as hell didn’t feel it. “But you can re-contain it, right?”
Mzatal didn’t answer for what was probably a full minute. An eternity of time, while he continued to assess and measure and consider. “I can,” he finally replied. “Though it will require frequent reinforcement now, as it is . . . leaking.” He stroked his thumb over my cheek, visibly holding his own dread in check. “Confusion, or feeling not yourself, would be signs that you are in need of care.”
“Got it,” I said, gave him a light smile I didn’t feel one bit, not with rakkuhr contaminating me like radiation from a faulty nuclear power reactor. “We’ll have to be joined at the hip then, won’t we?” I took a deep breath and released it. “We’ll find Idris, get back to your realm, and then fix this shit once and for all.”
“We will find the means to counter it,” he replied, voice still low yet filled with intensity. “It is still far from coalescing here,” he touched my sternum, “for the final stage.”
My mouth felt as dry as Death Valley. “And if it coalesces?” I knew I’d become Rowan, but would it be like turning on a switch? A gradual morph? Or would I change like a werewolf? WereRowan, I thought somewhat hysterically.
I felt his mental caress, his understanding that I needed to find any shred of humor I could to shield myself from the utter horror of what I faced. “The rakkuhr would crawl sigil to sigil in the order they were created,” he murmured. He slid his hand to my chest, then down my side and to my back, “until it reaches Szerain’s, to finalize with you lost to Rowan.”
I realized I had a death grip on his other hand, and I forced myself to unclench my fingers. “All right,” I said with a slight nod. “If shit starts to get bad, we go back to the demon realm, and you and Elofir can lock it down again.” I didn’t wait for him to confirm or deny that. I didn’t want to dwell on it for an instant longer. “How about I get you caught up on what’s been going on?” I said, and immediately proceeded to fill him in. Idris and the phone call. Everything he said, including the possible StarFire reference. His sister’s death and his mother’s probable role as hostage. Katashi on Earth. The “Rowan” bit at the end of the call, and I now wondered if that had contributed to the crack in the containment of the virus? During the entire summary I consciously remained mentally open to make it easy for Mzatal to read details and nuances. Sometimes that whole no-privacy-around-lords thing was convenient. “Oh, and my aunt—”
“Where is this Farouche?” Mzatal interrupted, his face dark and determined, and I felt his spike of focused anger through our connection. I didn’t have to be a mind reader to know what he was thinking.
I fixed him with a determined look. “No! You canNOT go find the man and throttle him. Not with Idris’s mom being held, and the chance Farouche is involved in that. We have to tread softly until we have more information and can make a definitive move.” I needed another topic to break his dark mood. “There’s more. Idris said, ‘Tell Mzatal I still have his ring and haven’t forgotten the gheztak ru eehn.’”
Mzatal closed his eyes, and I peered up at him. “Zack told me it translated roughly to ‘the devastating failu
re,’” I went on. “I don’t get the connection, but I’m thinking you have a clue.”
Mzatal exhaled and looked down at me. “Gheztak ru eehn is how I designated my loss of you to Rhyzkahl,” he said, voice hoarse with emotion. “It marked that moment and was the driving force for the two of us to work incessantly until we retrieved you from him.”
Comprehension dawned like a flower blooming in high-speed photography. “I get it. By telling me he has your ring, he’s letting us know he’s still on our side. Then he acknowledged that he knows we won’t stop until we get him back, otherwise there’d be no point in him saying that at all.” With the full meaning unfolded, I felt as if Idris was with me now. “It’s not just acknowledging, it’s approving,” I added. “Especially since he gave me the StarFire clue, which trumps everything he’d said earlier about not going after him. ‘I’m still on your side. I know you’ll find me. Here’s some help with that.’ Damn clever execution on Idris’s part.”
Mzatal smiled. “He is brilliant, and we will retrieve him.” He drew a deep breath. “I have assessments to complete outside and have been overly long in the confines of this chamber.”
I felt the anxiety building in him. “Go do what you need to do, lover. I’ll get the guys settled in.”
He gave me a lingering kiss, then departed the basement.
“C’mon upstairs,” I said to Bryce and Paul. “Zack has a pot roast in the slow cooker, and I’d hate to see it go to waste.” I led the way and gave the pair a basic rundown of the layout of the house, showed Bryce his room—the guest room where Zack had been staying. We stopped at the doorway of my so-called office/library. “I hope the futon in here will be okay for you, Paul. If you find it’s too lumpy or uncomfortable, I’ll get you an air mattress.”
“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” he said, his eyes on my dinosaur of a computer, complete with the gigantic seventeen-inch CRT monitor that occupied most of the desk. “Thanks.”
