The Trouble with Demons (Raine Benares #3)

Part of me was tempted to let the demon finish its job. The instant Carnades died, most of my problems would die with him.

I’d never liked that part of me. I knew it’d be the worst mistake I’d ever made, but I kept my hand—and the harnessed Saghred’s power—on that demon where it belonged.

The demon may have been evil incarnate from the lower hells, but he wasn’t stupid.

“Gently,” I added, showing him more than a few of my teeth.

The demon complied. His movements were slow, jerky. I was making him do something he didn’t like and he wasn’t happy about it. His yellow eyes were glowing orange.

No, he definitely wasn’t amused.

I didn’t care and I probably should have.

Carnades took a step back, staggered, then steadied himself. His blue eyes blazed with hatred and every dark and twisted thing that lay beyond. He wanted that demon dead and cold, and me the same way beside it.

I felt them move before I saw them. In a blink, the other two demons were on me, then the third one joined them.

And Carnades did nothing to stop them.

Son of a bitch.

I released the hint of power that I’d held in check, and the three demons vanished in a hiss of steam and sulfur. Not just vanished.

Vaporized.

Sickened and gasping for air I couldn’t find, I staggered to my feet. Releasing that power released the hold I had on the rest of it. I’d just pulled a rock out of a dam with a wall of water on the other side, pushing through the hole I’d made, punching against the dam that held it back. Cracks were spreading; nothing could hold that torrent back; nothing could stop that power.

I couldn’t stop that power.

“Raine!” It was Mychael’s voice sounding like it was coming down a well. I was at the bottom of that well, trapped, with no way out.

“You’ve got to discharge!”

I was going to implode or explode or something fatal and final if I didn’t get rid of the power charge that had built up inside of me. I couldn’t force it back where it came from. There was too much of it, a wall of power bearing down on me. It was coming, and I couldn’t stop it. The Saghred and I were one. Mychael said the containments were failing.

Clearly, no containments held the Saghred now.

Or would ever hold it again.

“His magic grew him; your magic can destroy him,” Sora was calling down that same well.

I had no idea what she meant, but I knew what I could do, what I had to do before the power that surged through my veins killed me—and everyone else.

Then on some level, I understood what Sora meant. It was so simple.

I extended my hand, fingers spread. The yellow demon was massive, but it was across the room, and my hand covered it completely, at least that’s what it looked like. It was a distance illusion, but illusion was magic, too.

I began slowly curling my fingers closed. The demon began compacting like I was crushing a wet sponge in my hand. It roared, then those roars turned to screams, and finally a thin shriek as I closed my hand until it was the tightest fist I could make. I tasted blood in my mouth, and black blooms danced on the edge of my vision. I opened my hand and released what was left and heard a wet, sickening plop from across the room. Then came the retching noises from a few of the watchers.

That and awed—and horrified—silence.

The last thing I heard before silence and blessed unconsciousness took me was Carnades’s calm, cold voice.

“Lock her up.”

Chapter 7

I woke up in a dark, warm room. Not a cell. And I was tucked into a soft bed, not a prison cot with a threadbare blanket. Nice. And deeply wrong. When I passed out, I must have hit my head. Hard.

I was in my bedroom back home in Mermeia.

“Aside from bruises that most certainly will hurt when you wake up, you’re surprisingly unharmed, all things considered.”

My father sat in a chair half hidden in shadow near my window. That was one reason why I hadn’t seen him. The other reason was even more unnerving than waking up in a place where I couldn’t possibly be. Unnerving, but not unexpected. We’d spoken directly one other time.

I’d been able to see through him that time, too.

Eamaliel Anguis’s elegantly pointed ears marked him as an elf, a beautiful pure-blooded high elf. His hair was silver, and his eyes were the gray of gathering storm clouds. Eyes identical to my own. I could see why my elven sorceress mother hadn’t cared that he was nearly nine hundred years old.

Yes, nine hundred years old, and he didn’t look a day over thirty. Elves had the same life span as every other race, so having a father who looked four years younger than me took weird to a whole new level. He’d spent the last year or so inside the Saghred, the other eight hundred and something years the result of an extended life span from too much contact with the Saghred. A fate I really wanted to avoid.

I knew I wasn’t really at home in my bedroom. One, it was impossible. Two, this bedroom was way too neat to belong to me.

I felt my temple for the lump that had to be there. “No concussion?” I muttered to myself.

“Just unconscious from what you did.”

I remembered and groaned. I’d just done the worst thing possible at the worst possible time in front of the last person I wanted to see me do it.

I was screwed. Royally, completely, and utterly.

“Yes, you did put on quite a show,” my father agreed.

I sat up in bed, and surprisingly it didn’t hurt. “How are we—?”

“You’re dreaming. You picked the setting.”

“Why are you—?”

“Because we need to talk.”

“Stop finishing my sentences!” I didn’t mean to snap, but apparently I needed to.

“I know your thoughts as you think them, daughter. Isn’t communicating this way more—”

“Annoying,” I finished for him. Two could play at that game.

The corner of Eamaliel’s mouth quirked upward. “Since it’s your dream we’ll do it your way.”

I threw back the blanket and got out of bed. I went to the window and yanked back the curtain. Instead of Mintha Row with its shops and cobblestone street, there was a gray void.

My chest tightened. “You’re sure we’re not inside the Saghred?”

“Positive. For some reason, your dream only includes this room.”

“And you.”

“Apparently you wanted to see me.”

I could certainly understand why I’d want that. Get in trouble, go home to Dad.

I let the curtain fall back over the window. “I’m sorry I yelled.”

“No offense taken, Raine. I, of all people, understand your frustration.”

And fear. Let’s not forget gut-clenching fear. I looked down at my wrists. Just because there weren’t manacles on my asleep self didn’t mean my real self wasn’t sporting a pair right now courtesy of Carnades Silvanus.

“Thank you,” I said, sounding as exhausted as I remembered my real body felt. “I’ve had more than enough magic today.”

“I hate being the bearer of bad news, but magic is what we need to talk about. And we need to do it quickly because you’re going to be waking up soon.”

The tightness in my chest dropped into a knot in my stomach. “Waking up where?”

Eamaliel knew I didn’t mean in bed in my dreams. “That I don’t know. I only see what you see. And at the moment, you’re unconscious and not seeing anything.”

“Carnades could be taking you to prison,” purred a cultured and silky voice I knew only too well.

Sarad Nukpana was reclining on my bed in the exact spot where I had been.

“And it’s still warm,” he murmured, running a long-fingered hand over the sheets. His voice dropped, low and intimate. “Eamaliel isn’t the only one who knows exactly what you’re thinking.”

Sarad Nukpana had been the chief counselor to the goblin king Sathrik Mal’Salin, and grand shaman of the Khrynsani, an ancient goblin secret society and military order. At least Sarad Nukpana had held those titles before a little quick thinking by yours truly had gotten him sucked into the Saghred. Nukpana and his boss wanted to get their hands on the rock and bring back the good old days of conquering kingdoms and enslaving thousands. Sarad Nukpana didn’t want me dead, just tormented for eternity.

Here he was on my bed, in my dream. It wasn’t exactly torment, but it was close enough.

I just looked at him. “So, what am I thinking now?”

Nukpana smiled slowly, fangs peeking into view. “Such violence, little seeker. I don’t think what you propose is physically possible.”

I showed him a few of my own teeth. “I won’t know until I try.”

His black eyes glittered. “As always, I welcome your efforts.”

Being trapped inside the Saghred hadn’t diminished the goblin shaman’s dark, exotic beauty one bit. His long black hair was shot through with silver and fell loosely around his strongly sculpted face; the tips of his upswept ears were barely visible through the midnight mass of his hair. Nukpana’s pearl gray skin set off what was any goblin’s most distinguishing feature—a pair of fangs that weren’t for decorative use only.

“Since this is my dream, I say who stays and who goes,” I shot back smoothly. “Guess who doesn’t get to stay.”

Nukpana’s smile spread. “As I said, I welcome your efforts.”

I tried to not only ignore Sarad Nukpana on my bed, but to cease any thoughts of him, forget my memories of him, and blot out his very existence. I knew the last one wasn’t possible, but it never hurts to try.

The goblin was still there.

He laughed, a dark, rich sound. “Getting rid of me is easier said than done, little seeker. Perhaps dispatching those demons took more effort than you could spare.” He paused suggestively. “Or perhaps, you want me to stay. You just can’t say so in front of your father. I quite understand.”

“You’re a parasite, Nukpana,” Eamaliel noted coolly. “You’ll merely take more effort to detach. Though such extreme measures are usually fatal—to the parasite.”