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I flicked on the headlights though it was only dusk. Too many distracted drivers on the street. What the hell will we wake up to tomorrow? The same scenario played out in at least one driveway of every street—families cramming belongings into vehicles, piling in, and getting the hell away from demonic monsters and bizarre destruction. Panic. Common sense. I couldn’t blame them.
I glanced in the rearview mirror, and a measure of my dark mood lifted. Bryce had his arm around Jill as she dozed against his chest. She needed the attention and consideration that Zack wouldn’t or couldn’t give. Bryce cared.
I found classical music in Pellini’s collection and let the soothing strains of Mozart accompany us home.
Chapter 40
I parked the truck, got out, and opened the door for Bryce. He gave me a nod of thanks then slid out with Jill in his arms and carried her toward her mobile home. No more need for her to stay in the house. She’d stopped being a target the instant the bean—Ashava—was born.
I watched them go, grateful again to have Bryce with us. He would give Jill the care she desperately needed right now. I had zero worry that he’d push anything with her. He was being there for her, and that was enough for him because he loved her, and it wasn’t about what he could get out of the situation. I wasn’t even sure if he knew he loved her, but I did. I wasn’t blind.
The door to the mobile home closed softly behind the two. My own home beckoned, and I hauled myself up the steps and inside. My phone rang with Pellini’s ringtone seconds after I kicked the door shut
behind me. “Hey,” I answered. “Just made it home.”
“Good, fire up the laptop,” he said, tense and rushed and with an underlayer of essence-deep weariness. “I’m emailing you a bunch of pictures. You are going to straight up shit a cat sideways. Idris did.”
“Idris shit a cat?” I flopped onto the sofa and opened the laptop. “Where are you?”
“Sideways. We’re in the Ruthie’s Smoothies parking lot. You remember the bone itch we got when Knight grabbed you?”
“More of a buzz for me, but yeah,” I said. “Definitely caused by something by Ruthie’s? What is it?”
“I don’t know what we have. Pics are in the first email I just sent you. A couple of big crystal things with Kadir’s symbol on them. Force field or wards won’t let anyone close. Except me.”
I opened the email. “Holy . . . shit.” Big? More like humongous. Two clear crystal shards, jagged at the top, six feet in diameter and fifteen feet tall. One in front of the dry cleaners, and the other in the parking lot in front of Ruthie’s with a Subaru wagon perched precariously atop it. “Sounds like the bone buzz has something to do with our connection with Kadir.” That was not a pleasant thought.
“Seems so,” Pellini said. “But that’s the tame news. Check out the video in the next email.”
I watched it all the way through, then again. Watched it a third time as cold lead filled my bowels. Four feet off the ground to the right of the crystals, a crack of white light widened into an anomaly the size of a Frisbee. People screamed, talked, shouted near the camera. Between one frame and the next, Carl—Xharbek—blinked in, worked his hands around it. Shrank it, sealed it, vanished. End video.
No wonder Idris shit a cat sideways “An anomaly.” My voice quavered. “On Earth.” The first, as far as I knew. I had an ugly feeling it wouldn’t be the last.
“Idris said we were lucky it was a small one.” Pellini didn’t sound like a man who felt lucky. “We’re heading out to the node. Nothing else we can do here.”
“I’ll keep my phone on me,” I said. With a weary goodbye, he hung up.
I clicked on his third email—an aerial view of downtown Beaulac—then stared at the impossible image. The area of devastation wasn’t roughly circular or any other shape the mind could accept as possible through natural means. The police department and its valve sat smack dab in the middle of an eleven-pointed star a half mile across, with lines of destruction as clear as if they’d been stamped out with a cookie cutter.
Heartsick, I closed the laptop. There’d be time the next day . . . or the next . . . to see what the media, doomsayers, and government did with this. Demons. Arcane bombs. Untouchable crystals. Star-shaped earthquakes. Anomalies. Teleporting people. Baby dragons.
Baby. Shit. Knight and the twelfth. Ashava, not the sigil on my back. I’d forgotten all about that. Seemed trivial compared to everything else. I retrieved my journal from the bedroom, sat at the kitchen table, and flipped to the dog-eared page with Knight’s warning.
Twelve. The twelfth is a radical game changer. Spawned of fierce cunning. Beauty and power exemplified. Beware the twelfth.
My heart pounded as I read it. It took on a whole different meaning when referring to a person rather than my sigil. But Ashava had connected to the twelfth sigil at the PD. I found the page with the invocation Szerain spoke when he created the twelfth sigil on my lower back the night of the plantation battle. It had been part of saving me from becoming Rowan—weaponized summoner and thrall of the Mraztur. But clearly there was more to it.
Vdat koh akiri qaztehl.
Infinite resources to the all-powerful demonic lord unfettered.
I flipped back and forth between the two pages as I drew the clues together. Trembling, I slammed the journal closed and shoved it across the table.
Eleven plus one is twelve.
All-powerful demonic lord.
Not the sigil. Not Szerain. Eleven lords. Plus one.
