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“Warlord,” Dekkak said in demon, her voice rumbly, rich, and loud. “You failed your imperator.”
Straight to the point. No abuse. No name calling. No nonsense. Which somehow made the castigation all the scarier. Note to self: be nice and direct when chastising underlings.
Dekkak moved with a speed at complete odds with her size, and in a single bound had Yulz pinned beneath one clawed foot. She crouched low and hissed into his face, baring gleaming white fangs that tapered to needle sharp points. I wouldn’t have blamed big badass Yulz one bit if he’d peed himself, but he simply went stone still.
In a savage move that was almost too swift to follow, Dekkak hooked a claw through the three gold rings in his right ear and ripped them free, splattering the grass with blood. “These honors will abide on this crippled world where you disgraced yourself,” she snarled and flung the adornments into the darkness.
Okay, maybe a little abuse. Note to self: let’s not take management lessons from Jontari imperators. Though I supposed there were worse possible fates for a demonic employee who failed to meet goals. While the scary-as-fuck imperator was momentarily distracted, I edged my way to the center of the nexus, within the comforting bounds of the super-shikvihr and in easy reach of gobs of nexus power.
Dekkak stepped off Yulz then stretched her great wings wide, nearly spanning the entire distance between my porch and the edge of the woods. The internal vibration in my bones increased to barely tolerable discomfort, as if she’d fired up a potency generator. With a groan, Seretis dropped to one knee beside her, overwhelmed by her presence rather than as a gesture of homage.
My simmering dread cranked up several degrees. Alpha Squad was at least fifteen minutes away. If Dekkak decided to take flight and wreak havoc elsewhere, I had no sure way to stop her. A potency blast from the nexus was unlikely to take her out completely—even if I diverted power from the bindings on Yulz—and Dekkak’s retaliation was certain be swift and merciless. Except for the purported bargain, she had no known reason to stay. I needed to keep her here until the squad arrived.
“Dekkak!” I called out, amplifying my voice with potency.
I could have whispered for all the difference it made. Clearly the demon queen wasn’t going to give the locals the time of day, and she sure as shit wouldn’t be called to heel, no matter how loudly I shouted.
Instead, she let out an almighty roar followed by a bellowed “RHYZKAHL!” as she reached for him.
With zero hesitation, I released my gathered potency and sent it surging into the perimeter of Rhyzkahl’s prison. I didn’t know how much Mzatal’s built-in protections were affected by the rift, or how they’d hold up against an imperator, but I was damn well going to do what I could to keep them working. I was the warden, and I intended to do everything possible to keep Rhyzkahl safe.
Violet lightning arced from the ground and struck Dekkak’s outstretched hand. She jerked back, palm smoking. Residual arcane crackled over her arm.
Get away from him, you bitch! I silently jeered. This was one lord she wouldn’t be adding to her collection.
“MZATAL!” she screamed, fangs bared. Rakkuhr flame-shielding blossomed over her like a manifestation of fiery hatred. Her tail slashed through the air, forcing me into a desperate leap and dive to avoid getting smacked.
I skidded to a stop at the edge of the nexus, already pulling potency as I scrambled to my feet. Through the headset, I heard Bryce snapping orders, but I didn’t have the spare bandwidth to pay attention.
Dekkak rounded on me, powerful legs flexed as if poised to spring. “And you,” she growled in heavily accented English. “Kara Gillian.”
NOW, she acknowledges my presence. I darted back to the center of the nexus and readied a shield of potency, though I doubted it would be enough to keep Dekkak from squashing me like a bug. Not with most of my available power tied up in the bindings on Yulz and the summoning in general.
Except that she could have squashed me at any point since coming through and hadn’t. I flicked a quick glance at Seretis, more curious than ever about the nature of the bargain he’d made with the imperator. Yet even naked, bloodied, and kneeling in the grass, he maintained an expression as impassive as any lord could hope for.
Dekkak’s knees were at my eye level, forcing me to crane my neck in order to look at her face. “Dekkak,” I said. “I am pleased to finally meet you, honored one. You are clearly more than worthy of your formidable reputation.” The acrid stench of burned demon flesh stung my nose.
Dekkak sank into a deep crouch, shifting close enough that her rakkuhr shielding reached acid fingers toward my skin. But I wasn’t about to step back and give her the satisfaction. Besides, it was just chest puffing. A true power play would have had me retreating out of a desire to keep my flesh attached to my bones.
She scraped the claws of her uninjured hand across the nexus, sending up a screeching nails-on-chalkboard sound. “Your human swarm, your DIRT, arrives here. Soon.” Her eyes glowed red and gold as they rested upon me. “Our interplay begins. Now.”
Could she sense the approaching team? Or was she making an assumption based on previous DIRT responses to rifts? Not that it mattered. DIRT was coming. She knew. Bad shit would happen.
I folded my arms and affected a casual stance to show how very not scared of her I was. “What interplay is that, Dekkak?” No, really. Not scared. Nope, not me.
Instead of answering, she extended a hand toward the rift and spoke in demon. “Emerge, my honored ones. The diminished Earth awaits you.”
Since I didn’t want to reveal that I understood her, I schooled my expression to “slightly befuddled.” But on the inside I did a full body flail while shouting: Oh, come ON! More demons? Not quite the interplay I had in mind.
I pretended shock when the rift vomited a buttload of demons, but the dismay on my face was real enough. Four reyza and a Chinese-dragon-faced kehza took flight and scattered in all directions. A shadowy zhurn with burning red eyes followed, melting into the night as if it had never been there.
In my earpiece, I heard Bryce warn all personnel of demons on the property, and to sh
oot only if attacked. Good man. Bad demons.
Like sentient coils of smoke and flashing color, a pair of ilius wound like housecats around Dekkak’s legs. “Seek your surrogates,” she told them, and after one final rub against her shins, they headed straight for the house.
“Hey! Why are those two ilius going into my house?” I said, mostly for Bryce’s benefit. He was sharp enough to get the hint that I wanted one of his people to keep tabs on the two demons.
