“Why is he on earth, posing as a human, and with no apparent knowledge or memory of being a demonic lord?”
The air seemed to grow heavy as he regarded me. I could hear my heart thumping as I waited for his answer, any answer.
When he finally spoke his voice was low and rich, tinged with an emotion that I couldn’t process. “I am bound by oath, Kara,” he said, shocking me by the use of my name. I couldn’t remember the last time he had spoken it. It was usually “dear one” or something of that ilk. He stepped to me, let out a low sigh, and touched my cheek lightly with the tips of his fingers. “I know this frustrates you beyond measure. But I cannot answer this question. Ask another.”
Frustrated was putting it mildly. “You can’t tell me anything?” I asked, struggling to hold back my disappointment. I’d finally pinned him down and asked the damn question right, and all I got was “I am bound by oath”?
“I cannot answer this question,” he repeated.
A flare of annoyance rose. I opened my mouth to make a retort, but then I closed it and processed what he’d said. Part of my agreement with him was that, in return for summoning him no less than once a month, I could ask two questions, and he would answer them to the best of his ability. However, I’d also discovered that I had to be extremely careful about how I asked a question. If I didn’t phrase it properly, and he didn’t feel like answering it, he’d find a way to wiggle out of it. In other words, asking a yes/no question would get me a yes/no answer, and not a word more.
But he’d said that he could not answer this question, not that he couldn’t answer questions about Ryan.
I thought for a second. The demonic lord waited quietly, almost patiently as I worked out what I could ask that might give me a useful answer.
Sitting up, I took a deep breath and tried again. “What sort of offense could a demonic lord commit that might cause the other lords to strip him of his memories and exile him?”
“There is none,” Rhyzkahl stated, eyes never leaving mine. “The lords do not censure their own.”
Well, crapping hells. That didn’t make any sense. “So why…?” I stopped, shook my head. No, he wasn’t going to answer a direct question. I made myself think about the answer. Okay, the lords wouldn’t censure. So who would? Was there another level beyond even the lords?
I needed to think about that one some more. No sense wasting a question. Maybe time to go back to my other big question.
“Why was Szerain willing to be summoned by Peter Cerise and the five other summoners on the night that you were summoned by accident instead?” I was trying to be as specific as possible without knowing the exact date—not that the exact date would probably mean anything to the demonic lord.
Rhyzkahl turned away from me to face the fireplace. He stood with his hands clasped lightly behind his back, silent, but I had the impression he was gathering his thoughts. I waited, struggling to control my impatience. I had a strong feeling I’d just asked a doozy of a question.
He finally spoke.
“Because two of the summoners present were bound to him in much the same way that you are bound to me.”
Wow. I fought back the urge to pepper him with further questions. Which ones? Then why were there six summoners? How did it go so wrong? Was my grandmother sworn to Szerain? What was Szerain’s goal? What was your goal?
“Why did you kill them?” I blurted. “My grandmother…and the others?” I’d never known my grandmother—she was simply a name. I’d never felt any sort of connection to her, and I’d somehow managed to compartmentalize her cause of death into a category similar to poking bears with sticks. She’d been involved in something insanely dangerous, and when it had gone bad I’d somehow decided that it was tragic but not really Rhyzkahl’s fault. He’d reacted as expected, that’s all. Maybe it made me a terribly callous person, that I could have become intimate with the one who took her life, but I was a summoner. I knew the risks. Surely, so did she, and she’d accepted them. If a summoning goes badly wrong, you die. It’s worth it, though, because…
Because.…I frowned, forgetting Rhyzkahl’s presence and my unanswered question. Summoning was so incredible and satisfying. I felt clear-headed and alive and powerful after every ritual. Once I’d started summoning, I’d never once been tempted to go back to drugs. I hadn’t thought about that until now. How had I done that? Who the hell shook an addiction that easily? Right now I couldn’t imagine not being a summoner.
Was summoning an addiction? Now that I had the storage diagram I never went more than two weeks without conducting a ritual, even if it was simply a lower-level demon summoned for “practice.”
But I couldn’t ask him. The question about killing my grandmother and the others still hung in the air, and I didn’t expect him to answer it. He’d already answered two questions for me.
“It wasn’t revenge for being summoned,” I said, feeling a need to fill the silence as I worked it out. “I mean, not totally. You saw an opportunity to take away his advantage. Kill the two who were bound to him.”
He tilted his head back and closed his eyes, inhaling deeply. “It was not so simple as that,” he said. He looked toward the summoning diagram, and for an instant I could have sworn I saw agony mar his beautiful features, but it was gone before I could be sure. “I slew them for revenge,” he said, voice so low I could barely hear him. “But not for the errant summoning. I sought to hurt Szerain in the opportunity presented to me, by destroying his summoners and slaying the ones who would have supported his plans.” I was shocked to see his hands tighten into fists as anger slashed across his face. “It was the only vengeance I was allowed to take, and so I did, even though it was paltry and insufficient.” His eyes returned to mine, and the anger in them faded. “The women did not suffer in their deaths. I give you my oath on that. I simply freed their essences. They felt no pain.”
My throat felt tight and hot, and all I could do at first was manage a short nod to acknowledge what he’d said.
“What did he do?” I was finally able to croak out. “What did Szerain do for you to want revenge?”
Rhyzkahl moved to me, gently placed his hands on either side of my head and kissed my forehead in a move so tender I could only stare at him in complete bafflement.
“You have already asked your questions, dear one, plus a third,” he said softly. “But I will answer this one as well. Szerain stole something from me. Something deeply precious and priceless. He stole it, and then he willfully destroyed it, because he knew what the loss would do to me.” And with that he took a deep breath, kissed me on my lips, then straightened and was gone.
Chapter 7
I stayed down there, sitting in the armchair and staring at nothing in particular until my legs threatened to fall asleep and the rest of me as well. For once I’d come away from a session of “two questions” feeling almost overwhelmed with information—very little of which made any sense. Szerain had been some sort of asshole and took something from Rhyzkahl. In turn, Rhyzkahl killed the summoners to disrupt Szerain’s plans—out of revenge. So, what were those plans? What did Szerain take?
Fragments of memory spun in my head like leaves in a breeze, coming to rest in patterns I could almost begin to recognize. A name shouted in a moment of desperation. An ice cold visage.…
The house was dark and quiet when I made my way back upstairs. Eilahn’s motorcycle helmet was by the front door, which told me she was back from wherever she went, but she didn’t seem to be in the house. Maybe she sensed that I needed to be alone with my thoughts for a while. My jangling, chaotic thoughts.
If so, she was wrong.
I went out to the living room and sat on the couch. I tucked my bare feet underneath me and pulled the throw over my legs. “Eilahn…?”