The Trouble with Demons (Raine Benares #3)

No one was taking him from me.

Mychael was standing at Justinius’s right, wearing his steel gray formal uniform. Vegard had told me once that Mychael was responsible for the uniforms he and his knights wore. If I didn’t know Mychael was humble, modest, unassuming and all that, I’d say that he’d had those uniforms made for the express purpose of leaving no doubt that he was completely irresistible. I smiled. Then again, I’d only known Mychael for a little over two weeks. There was lot about him that I didn’t know.

Mychael was still an enigma, wrapped in a riddle, coated in yum. Only now the enigma was a little less mysterious; I was a few clues closer to solving the riddle—but damn, that man would always be coated in yum.

“A fine man, your Guardian,” my father commented.

“He’s not mine.”

Now it was Arlyn’s turn to smile. “That’s not what your eyes are saying.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Precisely what I said.”

“He’s a Guardian; I’m a Benares—never the two shall meet.”

Vegard cleared his throat meaningfully behind me. Mychael and I had more than met.

“You know what I mean,” I told him.

“Ma’am, the boss doesn’t care what anyone thinks.”

Until the Saghred and I came along, Mychael’s reputation was spotless and his position secure—and his neck wasn’t in danger of leaving his shoulders. “Maybe he should,” I murmured.

“Or maybe you shouldn’t,” Vegard countered.

One side of my mouth quirked in a quick grin. “You sound like your boss.”

He winked at me. “Why, thank you, ma’am.”

At Justinius’s command, Piaras arose to thunderous applause. Arlyn and I joined in, and Vegard added some loud whistles. He wasn’t the only one. The Guardians in the audience were enthusiastically welcoming their new little brother. Between what Piaras had done with the bukas and his display of courage at the Saghred’s containment room door, he was well on his way to gaining the respect and admiration of his brother Guardians that he’d always wanted. I didn’t think I’d ever seen Piaras that happy. The kid was virtually glowing. Dreams coming true had a way of doing that.

Now all we had to do was stop the nightmares from becoming real.

Six souls had escaped from the Saghred.

Sarad Nukpana was one of them.

The demon king was still inside. But to tell you the truth, if I’d had a choice between the demon king and Sarad Nukpana, I would have picked the demon. His demonic majesty just wanted to raise hell. Sarad Nukpana wanted vengeance: slow, sweet, and personal. Then he wanted the Saghred and all the power that came with it.

I didn’t think it could get any worse than demons. I was wrong.

My father had told Mychael and me that Sarad Nukpana and the others would possess one body after another, keeping themselves corporeal until they could find the perfect hosts—people with enough magical power and influence to be useful to them.

“Sarad is still body jumping,” Arlyn said, his voice low enough for my ears only. He could still read my mind. I wasn’t surprised. And considering that we had to hide who he was, it could be a literal lifesaver. “If he remains in the same body from one sunrise to the next, it’s permanent. He doesn’t want that—at least not yet.”

It was the “not yet” part that had me waking up in a cold sweat for the past two nights. I could feel the son of a bitch; I knew he was out there. And he wanted me to know it; he wanted me to wonder when and where he would finally show himself. The goblin wanted me, but first he wanted me terrified. His cat-and-mouse game had only just begun. He could be anywhere—and inside of anyone.

I don’t play cat and mouse. And I don’t do terrified—at least I was trying really hard not to. Not being scared out of my skin was easier said than done. Sarad Nukpana wasn’t just stalking me, he was haunting me. He wanted to drag out the game as long as possible. I was determined to end it before he got started. I knew where he had to be—the goblin embassy. Problem was, getting in would be next to impossible; getting out would take nothing short of a miracle. Quite frankly, I wasn’t chomping at the bit to take a stroll into enemy territory to go ghost hunting.

Rudra Muralin had come through that mirror into the citadel, and he hadn’t been seen since. Tam’s source in the goblin embassy said their new ambassador had come home. What I needed to know was had he come home alone. I was betting he hadn’t.

“What will happen to the people he infests?” I asked Arlyn.

“When he leaves them, they’ll be disoriented for a day or so; or insane if they weren’t emotionally stable to begin with.”

I could see where being possessed by Sarad Nukpana could do that. And Rudra Muralin was already nuts.

“No trail of dead bodies to follow?”

My father shook his head. “Sarad will be careful. He has everything to gain, and too much to lose. He will be cautious until he is ready to make his move.”

And when he made that move, we would all know about it.

I looked back up at the dais where a line had formed to welcome Piaras into the Guardians.

“Piaras is safe,” Arlyn assured me.

“How do you know that?” It came out a little sharper than I’d intended.

“Sarad would possess Piaras for spite, but it is too great a risk for him. As a cadet, Piaras will be living in the citadel, and he will be closely watched. Sarad will not risk capture to satisfy a petty vengeance.”

He was right, and I knew why. Sarad Nukpana wouldn’t waste time or strength on anything petty, most of all vengeance. No doubt Nukpana thought that revenge was best served in cold blood and up close and personal. And when he came for me, I wanted to have a fitting welcome waiting for him. I said I wanted to; I didn’t have a plan yet. I told myself that brilliant retaliation takes time. Too bad my time was running out.

Mychael was walking toward us, and I knew it wasn’t for a casual hello. We hadn’t had much time to talk in the past two days and had had absolutely no time alone. Mychael had the Guardians’ best spellweavers secure the Saghred as well as they could, and they’d done a fine job with no objections from the rock. The Saghred had been cut open; apparently it needed some time to heal. The spellweavers had likewise secured the Scythe of Nen, which was being kept in an undisclosed location. Undisclosed was good; hopefully spellweavers were good at keeping secrets—and hopefully elven intelligence hadn’t recently bought itself a Guardian spellweaver.

When Mychael got close enough, I asked the inevitable question. “Your office?”

“Please.”

The Guardians we passed in the wide corridors had smiles and salutes for their paladin. They’d heard that Mychael had closed the Hellgate. That was the story we’d told, and that was the story we were sticking to—and with Mychael’s report, that version had become official. It wasn’t a lie. It was more like a simplification of an entirely too complicated truth. Mychael had been the one to hit the Hellgate and the demons on the other side with more white magic than they could survive. My and Tam’s roles had been reduced to no role at all. Officially, I’d been too injured from my catfight with the demon queen, and Tam’s strength had been exhausted keeping the Hellgate stable until Mychael could take over. It was Mychael’s magic that had closed the Hellgate—that Tam and I had helped fuel that magic didn’t bear mentioning.

Vegard and Arlyn walked a few paces behind us. They were my bodyguards, but Mychael was their commander. I knew it had to feel strange beyond belief for Mychael with my father’s soul being in the body of one of his junior knights, but he handled it well, better than I would have in his place. I had to hand it to Mychael; he would have made a fine actor. No one watching or listening to him would suspect that Arlyn Ravide was anything other than one of his young knights.

Mychael told Vegard and Arlyn to stand guard and see to it that we weren’t disturbed, and then he closed his office door behind us.

Blessed silence, and no sense of anything outside of the room. Mychael’s office had always been warded, but he’d recently laid on a couple of fresh layers. Very recently.

“Just being careful,” he told me.

“There’s no way we can have too much of that.”

Mychael almost laughed. “You? Careful? I would say I couldn’t believe you broke into Carnades’s house and attacked the demon queen, but I can believe it. The last one I saw with my own eyes.”

“It wasn’t like I had a choice.”

“I will admit that even if he hadn’t already been kidnapped by Rudra Muralin, Carnades would never have turned over the Scythe to anyone. But attacking—no wait, that would be too dignified—tackling the demon queen was not—”

“Again, I had no choice. Tam needed a distraction, so I—”

“Tam is perfectly capable of causing his own distractions.”

“So I wanted to take down the bitch,” I snapped. “She sent her spawn to feed on students. The kids they would have eaten would have been the lucky ones.” I stopped and exhaled slowly, forcing myself to calm down. I spread my hands. “You do your job; I do mine,” I said in as much of a level tone as I could manage. “I’m a Benares. I can go places and do things that you can’t. Since you had no prior knowledge of my actions, your nose is clean. And since we weren’t caught at Carnades’s house, so is mine.”

“You could have been caught.”

“But I wasn’t.”

“What happened to sending for help? I could have gotten a search warrant.”

“I didn’t have time to wait for help, backup, a cheering section, or anything else. The fact that the Scythe had just been snatched only confirms it.”

Mychael gave me a look; you know the one. “You didn’t have time to wait, or you just didn’t want to?”

Coming clean is good for the soul—and sometimes the temper. I managed a crooked grin. “Both.”