Legacy of the Demon by Diana Rowland

and escalated to a deep thrum as I stopped at the center of the slab. Beneath my feet, a thousand silvery repetitions of a sigil—
my
sigil—formed the shape of a woman with her arms extended, much like Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man. A gift from Mzatal, and my focal point of power. Like Bryce and Seretis, Mzatal and I shared an essence bond. Yet ours had gone silent for a different reason than the closing of the ways between the worlds. At my urging, Mzatal had walled himself off, mentally and emotionally, and taken up his essence blade in order to maintain the undivided focus necessary to save his world.
    I could no longer feel him, but I didn’t need to. I
knew
, and that was enough.
    Tipping my head back, I inhaled deeply and let the power fill my entire being until every cell tingled. This was a lord’s power: Rhyzkahl’s. Mzatal had plugged him into the infrastructure of the nexus like a lordly battery. Here on the slab I was a demigod.
    Or more like a semi-demigod since I didn’t know how to do most of what was surely possible. Though the nexus hadn’t come with an instruction manual, I’d puzzled out enough on my own to allow me to do my part to help both Earth and the demon realm. But, most importantly, the nexus gave me full access to the arcane and had become my therapy of choice to “rehab” my own damaged abilities.
    Rhyzkahl continued to eye me from the middle of his swath, his arms folded and feet planted.
    â€œGo into your house,” I snapped. “I don’t have time for this today.” To emphasize my point, I raised a strand of potency behind him and gave him a rat tail flick across the back of his legs.
    Ignoring the swat, he lifted his chin in challenge. His scarred hand twitched hard at his side, but he lifted his other and gave me a bring-it-on gesture.
    He might as well have given me the middle finger. Anger swelled as the mounting worries crashed down on me, as if summoned by that stupid gesture. Cory and the others who were mutating. Xharbek. The Feds. Everything. I was sick to death of this game, sick of having this hated creature in my back yard and in my personal space.
    â€œI don’t have time for this shit!” Teeth bared, I flung my arms out, snaking a dozen bands of potency around Rhyzkahl to push-drag him to his stupid house. For a heartbeat he held firm against my efforts. Doubt flickered ever so briefly within me as he resisted. An invalid no longer, he was most assuredly regaining his strength.
    But without Zakaar he couldn’t hold the focus. A cry of frustration burst from him as he staggered back and fell through the open door of his house. Right before I slammed the door closed with a burst of potency, I caught a glimpse of his liquid expression. In it was triumph for holding out at all underscored with bleak despair at his failure, along with a shimmer of fear that he might never regain the powerful focus necessary to manage the arcane flows of an entire world, might never truly be a lord again.
    Shaken, I dropped to a crouch. I hated this. Hated Rhyzkahl. Hated everything about this entire situation. Hated that I knew the taste of that fear—the gut deep terror that I might never truly be a summoner again. And I especially hated that I’d lost my temper and given him an opportunity to defy me.
    Why why
why
did Mzatal have to send him
here
? Having my tormentor as my prisoner sounded fine and dandy, but it sure could suck hard. Resentment rose in a choking wave—partly toward Rhyzkahl, but also toward Mzatal for placing this burden on me. Like I needed even more shit to worry about and deal with and be responsible for. Because I
was
responsible for Rhyzkahl. I was his warden and his caretaker, which fucking
sucked.
And what was I supposed to do when the day came that Rhyzkahl managed to scavenge or hoard enough potency from the trickle allowed to him that he could, in fact, fully defy me?
    What was I supposed to